Former NFL player Shawn Harper was the keynote speaker Thursday at a National Day of Prayer event, where he narrated his unexpected rise to the NFL and his spiritual awakening following a foot injury.
Harper played offensive tackle for the Los Angeles Rams and the Indianapolis Colts before going on to play for NFL Europe, totaling seven years in the league. But his six-figure income as a professional athlete was a far cry from where he started, as one of six children raised by a single mom in Columbus, Ohio.
Harper, now a business owner and motivational speaker, was diagnosed with a speech impediment and multiple learning disabilities at a young age. “I stuttered my entire life,” he said. “I could not complete a sentence until college.”
He was held back in elementary school and graduated at the bottom of his class, with no expectation of making it into college. “I walked around every day with my head down, defeated,” Harper said.
When a junior college in Mason City, Iowa, recruited him to play college football, things started looking up. After his second year on the team, he was picked up by Indiana University and later the Los Angeles Rams.
While the world was watching and approving, he said, life was great. But when public opinion wasn’t in his favor, the pressure was crippling. “There’s a dark side of the game no one talks about,” he said.
Image becomes everything, he said, and players are “just as concerned about what they look like on camera” as they are how they play. “My goal was not only to play in the NFL, but to look good playing in the NFL,” Harper said.
He said most players had to prove themselves every game or risk getting kicked off the team. He said he played many games with a fear that he was going to embarrass himself or lose his job.
When a foot injury put him out for the season, his fears became a reality. He said he quickly realized that many people only cared about him for his status.
“Once the word got out about the injury, my teammates stopped talking to me,” he said. “My coach, my father figure, stopped talking to me. I was so angry.”
That’s when he realized that his whole life he had defined himself based on the opinions of others. In his humiliation, he said, he turned to God as a source of joy and peace apart from football.
Harper encouraged the audience to build a relationship with God that would sustain them through the good and the bad.
“In life, if you don’t know who you are, you’re who they say you are,” Harper said. “I learned that football’s not who I am. Who I am is grounded and rooted in the love of Christ.”
The event was organized by the Profit and Loss Association of Southwest Louisiana, an organization of Christian businessmen and -women.
from American Press: Your Best News And Advertising Source - Home http://ift.tt/2pHocvm
0 التعليقات:
Post a Comment