God calls us all for something. He calls us to be fathers and mothers, doctors and teachers, leaders and servants. He calls a few to be football players too.
For a while, I was one of them.
He gave me all the gifts I needed to play football. Ever since high school, I’d had the size to play on the offensive line—the physical presence to fill a gap. After years of lifting, I developed the strength not just to fill that hole but also make my presence known there. I could protect my quarterback from charging nose tackles and make gaps through the defense for a running back. I had the ability to play the position mentally, as well—a job that, according to ESPN’s Adam Rittenberg, often makes centers the smartest people on the team. The position requires much more than just snapping the football and pushing around another guy like a sumo wrestler. You’ve got to know—or figure out fast—what every one of the twenty-two players on the field are about to do, adjusting line coverage and spotting potential trouble on the fly. And you’ve got to do it all while the quarterback might be calling his own audible and barking out the snap count.
If I had been a pretty good player before, Ducie’s dog tag gave me the extra push to the next level.
The tag reminded me that whatever faced me out on the football field was nothing compared to what Ducie went through. Whatever sacrifices I made for the team, it was nothing compared to Ducie’s own. I didn’t feel like I was playing with just his dog tag; a little bit of Ducie was with me. It gave me drive and a never-say-quit attitude. And my teammates saw it.
“Jason, what’s wrong with you?” they’d say on a ninety-five-degree day while I was cheering them on. “Are you immune? Are you a machine?”
I was a man on a mission. That constant reminder of Ducie made football easy.
Don’t get me wrong: The sport is difficult. It demands a lot. But for the rest of my career at Carolina, I knew that no obstacle was too difficult, no challenge too hard. I was a match for pretty much anyone on the other side of the line, and if I ever did get beat on a play—if a defensive lineman ever got the best of me and knocked me to the ground—I’d bounce back and shake it off quickly. They say that quarterbacks need to have short memories; the same can be said of offensive linemen. Every once in a while, even the best get beat. The secret to being the best? To shake it off and get right back in the game—body, mind, and heart.
Playing on the line, I was never going to get the broad recognition from the fans that quarterbacks or wide receivers or star pass rushers do. Offensive linemen are rarely destined for stardom. But the coaches knew. My teammates knew. The opposing teams knew. I developed the reputation of being one tough son of a gun.
Jason Brown is tough, they’d say. Jason Brown has no quit in him. I was the guy you wanted to go to football battle with, the guy you wanted beside you. I strove to be that guy. After all, that’s the kind of man Ducie was—a man who would, and did, literally lay down his life for others. And, although I knew that football was a game, that nothing I did on my field of battle could be remotely compared with what Ducie did on his, I was determined to emulate my big brother—to be the sort of man he pushed me to be.
Having Tay by my side didn’t hurt either.
When you look at medieval or Renaissance paintings of Jesus or Mary or the saints, they often have halos around their heads—bright disks of yellow or gold radiating from their faces like a sun. It was the painter’s way of encouraging the viewer to look more closely at the man or woman and remember the saint’s role in God’s story. This person, the painter tells us, is special. This person is walking with God. See him. Notice him. Behold him.
Now, I’m not saying that Tay’s a saint. But when I first saw her, she was glowing. No joke.
Let me back up for a minute.
When I first arrived at UNC, I was ready for a serious relationship. At first I was determined to find that relationship the right way. I prayed to God to send me the right person. I prayed and I prayed and I prayed. I promised God that I would abstain from any sort of sexual immorality—to be pure and save the gift of physical intimacy for only my wife. I said, God, I’m going to leave it all in Your hands.
But I also put Him on a timetable. And instead of me waiting for God to show me the right person, I thought I’d give Him a helping hand. I saw some cute girls running around on campus and thought that maybe God had chosen one of them for me, and me for her. I was trying to force God to pick someone I wanted Him to pick.
God wasn’t having any of that. Every time I approached one of these young women and asked her out to dinner or a movie, she would turn me down flat. It wasn’t “Sorry, Jason, the time’s not right.” It wasn’t “Can we just be friends?” It was just the straight-up, flat-out “Get lost” sort of rejection. After a couple of months of this, I was getting pretty discouraged.
Meanwhile, I was watching some of my more womanizing teammates have the time of their lives. It’s not that hard to be a ladies’ man when you’re part of the football team, and those guys made the most of it. My route of staying pure and trusting God was getting me nowhere in the relationship department. God was not working fast enough for me. So I decided to take the matter into my own hands. When a few of those friends invited me to a little hole-in-the-wall club in Durham, North Carolina—home to Duke University and just a half hour from Chapel Hill—in late April 2002, I decided to go and try it their way for a change. I went to the club with the worst of intentions.
My intentions that night fit right in. The nightclub was not what you’d call a real classy establishment. It was the sort of place that changed its name every couple of years after a fight or a shooting or something, and it was filled with plenty of people who also had the worst of intentions. I had already gotten three phone numbers from three different women when I looked across the room and saw Tay. I could tell right away that she was different—very, very different—from anyone I’d danced with that evening. She was dancing with a few of her friends, and she was absolutely luminous. Not figuratively: literally luminous. There was, truly, a glow about her. Maybe it was a trick of the club’s lighting, but it seemed God was making sure I noticed her—pointing the equivalent of a big neon arrow at her. Behold, Jason.
So I walked up to her and used what must’ve sounded like the corniest pickup line ever.
“Girl…you’re glowing.”
“Excuse me?” Tay said with a wrinkle of her nose. “What did you just say?”
“You’re glowing,” I repeated.
We introduced ourselves. I asked her if she wanted something to drink.
“I don’t drink,” she said with a frown. Strike one. (I learned later that she never went to nightclubs, either. She was there that night only so that one of her best friends wouldn’t have to be there alone.)
“Oh, no, no,” I said, trying to recover. “I didn’t mean alcohol. Of course not alcohol. I meant, can I get you some water?”
We talked for the rest of the evening in a quiet corner of the club. I could see from the very beginning how much we had in common—how important faith was to her, how smart and determined she was to succeed without ever losing track of God in her life. When closing time came and everyone started pushing for the door, I had Tay hold on to the back of my shirt and walk behind me while I used my offensive-line skills to clear a way to the parking lot. There, I showed her my 1999 Chevrolet Tahoe, which I hoped would impress her.
It didn’t. Strike two.
I asked her for her phone number.
“No,” Tay said, and my heart sank. Glow or no, neon sign or no, it felt like I’d struck out again.
“I’m not giving you my number,” Tay repeated, “but I’ll take yours. And I’ll call you. Maybe.”
When people meet Tay today, they think she’s the quietest, most introverted, most loving person they’d ever met. And she is.
But they don’t see the lion.
She reminds me a little of Jesus in that respect: the lion and the lamb. Everyone wants to choose the lamb side of Jesus. They want to see Him as being so meek and mild and loving and, of course, being our best friend. No one wants to talk about the lion side of Jesus—the guy who turned over the tables in the temple market or said in Matthew 10:34, “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” When Jesus comes back, He’s coming back as the Lion of Judah, and we better watch out. He’s not playing around.
So many people see only one side of Tay. They see only the lamb. My children and I know about the lion—that fight she has inside her. She needed that fight growing up.
Some people might think that because Tay graduated from Duke University, one of the country’s most elite and most expensive colleges, she must’ve been born wealthy. But it’s just the opposite. Tay grew up south of San Francisco, in the San Mateo/Palo Alto area. Her mother was just seventeen when she had Tay, and for a long while it was just the two of them, trying to figure out how to make it in a hard world.
Tay and her mom weren’t wealthy people. They didn’t have a car. They didn’t have a washer and dryer, and Tay remembers walking block after block with her mother, carrying their clothes to the laundromat. They’d walk to the grocery store, then walk back carrying bags and bags of food through some very bad neighborhoods.
But God was with them—both Tay and her mom believed that. Her mother taught her valuable lessons and instilled character inside that little girl with every step through those neighborhoods. She taught her to fight. To never give up. To never make excuses.
Back then, Tay and her mom fought for everything they had, and they always, praise God, had food on the table. But those lessons stuck with Tay. They stuck with her through high school, where she fought like crazy to succeed and excel. They stuck with her as she worked to raise money for college and applied for scholarships. They stuck when she made her way into Duke, where she had a job straight through college to pay for tuition as she made her way through dental school. She worked and fought for everything she’s achieved. She’s a lion, through and through.
Maybe it was only fitting that she’d make me fight for her too.
The day after Tay and I met at that dive in Durham, she called me and we arranged to go out to dinner that Saturday. The afternoon of the date, I threw away all the trash in the Tahoe and bought a single white rose for Tay, which impressed her way more than the Tahoe did. I had hoped to take her to what qualified as a pretty fancy place for a couple of college kids: Outback Steakhouse. But the hostess told us there’d be a two-hour wait for a table, so we went right next door and ate at Bob Evans instead—a chain that sells and serves down-home comfort food like country-fried steak and pot roast. It was just a humble country meal, but it was real. And that made it a pretty fitting first date with Tay.
The very next day, I called my parents.
“It’s over,” I said. “I’ve found the one. God sent me the woman I’m going to marry.”
And He had.
We dated for about fifteen months and got married on July 25, 2003. We were both still in college. I was just twenty years old.
Ducie died less than two months later.
Looking back, it feels like Tay came into my life at a crucial time. If I hadn’t had her support in the days right after Ducie’s death, I’m not sure what I would’ve done, what bad choices I might’ve made. The tragedy shook me to my very core. I thought about quitting school. I contemplated quitting football. When I lost my brother, a big part of my foundation was knocked out from under me. But Tay, along with my parents, gave me another foundation to rely on—another source of comfort and support when I needed it more than anything in my life.
Over the next couple of years, that foundation grew bigger and stronger. When God chose Tay for me, He chose well.
We were completely compatible in every way, it seemed: We loved God. We both wanted between three and five kids. She was finishing up her own degree when we met, preparing for dental school, and she was smart and driven, just like I was. We both dreamed big, and we were focused on achieving those dreams and ambitions. We didn’t have time to party. We didn’t have time to goof around much. But when we got married, even though we were both working really hard, we saw each other every day. Everything felt normal. Like that Bob Evans meal, it felt real.
But as my graduation inched closer, and as the NFL draft drew nearer, our shared future was going to be challenged in some unprecedented ways. During those years in college, we’d shared the same priorities that I’d embraced way back in middle school: faith, family, and education. But now our future was on the threshold, knocking at our door. And it didn’t just come with a big cardboard Publishers Clearing House–like check; it came with some new demands too.
For most careers, college graduates can choose, within reason, where they’ll be employed. They can apply to the businesses and corporations they’d most like to work for, ignoring those they’d rather not. They might only send résumés to the cities or towns where they’d want to live. They might get multiple offers, and they can choose the one that seems to them the best: the best money, the best location, the best fit for them and their families.
It works differently for draft-worthy NFL-bound football players. There’ve been a few exceptions, but for the most part, the National Football League tells you where you’re going to work. And that can make planning for the future, especially when you’re newly married, a little more difficult. I knew that once I was drafted, I could be heading to any one of thirty-two teams located in every possible area of the country. I might be heading to Boston or Miami or Seattle. And if Tay and I were just concentrating on my career, we could relocate together.
But as hard as I’d been working in the sport of football, Tay had been working hard to reach her own goals in the field of dentistry. As excited as my family and friends were for my opportunity, her family and friends were just as excited about her future. Her family had sacrificed a lot to help send her to Duke, and they had hopes and dreams for Tay. She needed to apply to dental schools well before I knew where I’d be playing professional football.
Both of us knew from the first night we met that we each had big goals. We knew how serious we were about those goals. After all, we’d spent the past two years watching each other work like crazy to achieve them. We knew what our priorities were: We valued our faith. We loved each other. We wanted to start a family and pour all the care and attention we could into our children. Neither of us was trying to pursue selfish goals without thinking of the other.
But those opportunities—those dreams we had that we’d sacrificed so much for—were calling us. And our families, our friends, the whole world would think we’d be absolutely nuts if we ignored that call.
By the world’s logic, the decision we made was a good one—the best possible one. We decided to keep our home base in North Carolina. I’d go wherever the draft took me. Tay would apply for dental school at UNC. She’d become a Tar Heel, just like me. And we’d just be sure to make our relationship work around our careers.
One of my teammates, Ronald Brewer (we called him Brew), asked me what team I wanted to go to. I told him, hands down, that it would be awesome if I were to be drafted by the Carolina Panthers. They’re my home-state team, after all, located right down in Charlotte and just a couple of hours away from most everything I’d ever known.
Brew asked, “So is that what you’re praying for?”
“No,” I said. “I’m just praying for God’s will to be done.”
“Come on, Jason,” Brew said. A committed Christian, he quickly broke out Scripture, quoting from Psalm 37:4: “The Word says, ‘Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.’ ”
I had to explain to Brew that just because I desired to play for the Panthers at the time, it didn’t necessarily make them the best fit for me, my family, or my career. Only God knew what the right fit would be. I didn’t have a crystal ball. I couldn’t see the future. I wanted the decision to be where it belonged: in God’s hands, not my own.
By my senior year at North Carolina, all the experts said I was one of those surefire NFL players. Most of them, including ESPN’s draft guru Mel Kiper, said I was almost guaranteed to be a “first-day” guy, meaning that I’d be drafted in one of the draft’s first three rounds. Friends and family encouraged me to throw a party on that “first day,” a Saturday, so that we could all celebrate my success together.
Yeah, I’d heard that before. But I didn’t want to celebrate too soon. I’d seen other guys throw first-day parties only to end up feeling discouraged or even humiliated when they weren’t drafted until later or not at all. Not to mention how uncomfortable it was for those of us at the party!
So, instead of throwing a party, I went fishing. Tay and I went to my parents’ house in Henderson that day, where they have a small pond in their backyard. While my mom watched the draft on TV, I brought out a lounge chair, set it up right by the pond, and took a nap. I slept right through not getting drafted. And I was very much at peace about not being picked.
The next day, during the fourth round, I got a call from Ozzie Newsome, the general manager for the Baltimore Ravens at the time.
“Hey, Jason,” he said. “We’re on the clock, and we just wanted to know if you would love to come and be a Baltimore Raven.”
“Daggone right, I would!” I said. “Thank you very much.”
I wasn’t lying to Mr. Newsome. Baltimore was a great fit for me—better, I think, than Carolina would’ve been. God always knows what He’s doing, doesn’t He? And it was still close. Only two teams, Carolina and Washington, were closer to Henderson and my parents’ backyard pool. I was just a five-hour drive away from the Ravens’ training facilities.
And although it’s always gratifying for your ego to be drafted early, my agent (Harold Lewis, of the National Sports Agency) said that being drafted in the fourth round was the best thing that could’ve happened to me. Based on the NFL’s bargaining agreement with the player’s union at the time, first-round players were locked into five- and six-year deals. That sounds good on the surface; I originally wanted to sign as long a deal as possible, because a longer contract equals more security. But, as Harold pointed out to me, it also locks players into lower wages for a longer period of time. That same bargaining agreement limited the amount teams could pay their draft picks too.
As a fourth-round pick, the Ravens wanted to give me only a three-year contract. In the fourth year, I’d be a restricted free agent (which meant that I could talk with other teams but the Ravens could match any contract offer and keep me). And in the fifth year, I’d be an unrestricted free agent, which meant I’d be free to sign with any team I wanted to.
“I know how good of a player you are,” Harold told me. “You’re going to outperform your rookie contract. And because you’ll hit free agency sooner than the players drafted ahead of you, you’re going to be able to break the bank that much faster.”
So now I knew where I was headed and where I’d be working, God willing, for at least the next three years: Baltimore.
I was drafted by the Ravens about the same time Tay was accepted by UNC. That meant we were going to be separated—live physically apart for much of the year and try to make a long-distance relationship work as best we could. It was the sort of concession I think many couples in our position would make. When the American Dream calls, you answer. You must answer, people say. Do you know how many people would kill to be in your position? they’ll tell you. How many people would give their lives for that opportunity you have right now? If you have an opportunity to climb that corporate ladder, to make a boatload of money, to be a professional athlete, then you better do it.
So you start shifting your priorities around. You start making those calculations. You start compromising.
God’s math is always different from our own. He’s a jealous God, and when we start compromising—when we make that American Dream our priority instead of following Him—we fall out of alignment. We forget our priorities. We lose our center.
When I was growing up, my mom must’ve said a thousand times, “You can’t have your cake and eat it too.” I never knew what that meant. If there’s a piece of cake right in front of me and I eat it, sure, it’s not in front of me anymore. But I still have the satisfaction of eating it, right?
But my mom knew what she was talking about. You can’t have everything, even if the world tells you that you can. Every choice comes with a cost. And sometimes the cost can be pretty high.
I was rich. I was heading to play for a franchise that, just a few years before, had won a Super Bowl. And I won’t lie: I was excited about it all. My hard work and dedication had paid off. I was going to play professional football, a vocation that millions would envy. But even then, I was worried about the implications.
The NFL season starts around the middle of July, when training camp begins. The Baltimore Ravens held their own training camp back then at McDaniel College, located in a Baltimore suburb called Westminster. Now, if you know anything about that area of the country, you know how hot and muggy it gets in summer. It can be miserable to even step outside, much less spend hours in that heat, running up and down in full pads. The humidity is so terrible that ESPN even did a story on it one year. It’s even hard to breathe in weather like that. The air just presses down on your shoulders and sometimes feels as though it might suffocate you.
We weren’t the only ones out there in that heat. Ravens fans are true fanatics. Thousands would show up to watch us practice, suffering through all that heat and humidity just to have a chance to say hi or get an autograph. So, naturally, players are encouraged to shake a few hands and sign a few autographs when practice is done.
I was a rookie offensive lineman. No one was spending hours in the heat to see me. Fans wanted to talk with Jamal Lewis, who two years before ran for 295 yards in a single game, or Todd Heap, a two-time Pro Bowl tight end called the Stormin’ Mormon. They wanted to see Jonathan Ogden and Ed Reed, who both have since been inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, or Deion Sanders, another Hall of Fame legend, who was finishing out his career in Baltimore. And they especially wanted to see linebacker Ray Lewis, perhaps the greatest linebacker to ever play the game.
These were some of the NFL’s biggest heroes. Football gods. I was just a fourth-round draft pick. And that gave me time to look around a little.
One afternoon while we were over at one end of the field where all the fans gathered to meet the players, I looked over across the field to the other side. There I saw a man standing all by himself. I could barely see him through all the humidity. There was a haze blanketing the practice field, and it made me wonder whether I was seeing him at all. So I turned more fully toward him and put my hand to my forehead, trying to shield my eyes from the glare of the sun, just trying to make out who or what I was seeing.
And then I knew: it was Jesus.
I heard Him speaking to me—not across the field, but in my heart.
Who is going to follow Me? He asked. Who is going to follow Me?
I know there’ll be doubters out there. Maybe I was a little hazy myself because of the heat. Maybe the image was just some fan who got lost. Skeptics could figure out a thousand different ways to brush that moment away.
But I know what I saw. And I realized, in that moment, what a challenge God had given me. He’d brought me into a game, a profession, that is surrounded with rampant idolatry. I heard those fans holler for autographs, and I knew that for many of them, those players—those Baltimore Ravens—were their idols. They’d wear their jerseys. They’d hang up posters in their bedrooms and man caves. They’d scream on Sundays for the players to save the game. For a few fans, a player like Ray Lewis might as well walk on water.
I thought about all the children who grew up watching those games, who grew up loving their favorite players. Just because I was a Baltimore Raven—because I wore the jersey and played on that green field—I was, in a way, idolized too. I was no Ray Lewis, but I was a Raven. And I remembered what Matthew 18:6 said about those little children: “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.”
That plagued me for a while, because I was a little guilty of idolatry too.
Ray Lewis might be one of the most passionate football players I’ve ever met. Every game day, Ray would watch the movie Gladiator on a portable DVD player as he got ready for the game. As Russell Crowe’s gladiator Maximus Decimus Meridius suited up, so would Ray. As Maximus fired himself up to enter the arena, so would Ray. They both got ready for battle—to entertain the masses with their sweat and blood.
It was hard to look at Ray Lewis—at the time a two-time Defensive Player of the Year and Super Bowl MVP—and not idolize him a little. My rookie year, that was the guy I was going to have to face at almost every practice. It was kind of intimidating.
Then one day while we were in the locker room, a light bulb went off for me. I saw Ray putting on his armor, just like I did. He put on his socks, and I put on my socks. He put on his jockstrap, and I put on my jockstrap. He had to lace up his shoes the same way that I had to lace up mine. Underneath all that armor, he was a man. Just like everybody else.
Most people see their superheroes only in uniform. We don’t see them when they’re vulnerable. But I did. I saw Ray when he got treatment for all the bruises he’d suffered on game day. I saw him in the cold tub from being so sore. And, for me, that leveled the playing field.
He’s just a man, I thought to myself. Just like I am.
The next day at practice, the coach called a play where I was supposed to go to the next level—and that meant squaring off against Ray Lewis.
And I pancaked him. I didn’t just block him. I knocked him down and fell on top of him, eliminating him from the play.
We got back to the huddle, and Tony Pashos—a third-year offensive tackle and a good friend of mine on the team—pulled me in.
“Jason,” he said, “what did you just do?”
“I just did my job; that’s what I did.”
“No,” he said. “No. You don’t do that.”
“What do you mean, ‘You don’t do that’?” I asked.
“You don’t pancake Ray Lewis,” Tony told me, showing a wisdom beyond his youth.
I was still puzzling over this when the next play was called—the very same play that we’d run just a minute before. I’d need to face Ray again.
I came through to the next level, getting ready to block Ray. But then, an instant before I could get my hands on him, he somehow juked to the side, grabbed the tail end of my jersey from my back, and pulled it over my helmet. And then he threw me to the ground. Hard.
So there I was, my arms flopping around like stalks of grain in a strong breeze. I couldn’t see anything because the tail of my jersey was covering my eyes. I flailed around like a 320-pound fish on the riverbank. And when I finally freed myself of the jersey, I saw Ray staring at me with a look that Maximus Meridius himself would’ve been proud of.
He didn’t say a word, but his eyes said, Rook, show some respect.
I didn’t say a word. But my eyes said, Yes sir.
Ray Lewis was just a man. He still is. But even men deserve a level of honor too.
After a rough 2005, my rookie season, we won thirteen regular-season games in 2006, losing just three. It was the best regular-season record in the franchise’s history, a mark that wouldn’t be topped until 2019.
My career was beginning to click. Although the travel was tough and the time we spent apart from each other painful, Tay and I were trying to do the best we could under the circumstances. I spent as much time at home in North Carolina as I could during the off-season (roughly February through July). It was far harder for me to get back during the football season, but I drove home as often as I could. Whenever Tay had a break, she tried to drive up to Baltimore to see me. But you just can’t get much quality time in those short, unreliable visits.
But we were both excited to welcome a third member of our family.
The Ravens had just finished playing in Buffalo, New York, on October 21. It was the last game before our bye week, which meant that I had almost a week of rest and recuperation time before the team would start formally preparing for our November 5 game against the Pittsburgh Steelers. I was looking forward to spending that week with my very pregnant wife. As soon as the team got back to Baltimore, I made the five-hour drive down to North Carolina. I didn’t even tell her I was coming back home that night.
When I pulled into the driveway, her car wasn’t there. No lights in the house were on. She wasn’t answering her phone.
In desperation, I called Tay’s best friend to find out what was going on.
“Oh, hey, Jason,” she said sweetly. “I’m with Tay. In the hospital.”
Tay had gone into labor that morning. She didn’t tell me because she didn’t want to distract me from the game.
Think football players are tough? They don’t have anything on my wife.
Two days later, JW came into the world. I call him my first-begotten son.
With JW’s arrival, I wanted to be home even more. But the NFL doesn’t give paternity leave. We finished out our 5–11 season that year, then went 11–5 the following year. But to be part of that successful season, I was doing something I promised myself I would never do.
You remember my daddy issues: I knew what it was like to grow up without a father in the house. I knew what it was like to see my dad just every now and then. He sacrificed his time with us to provide for us. His job in DC allowed us to buy a slightly nicer house, to drive slightly better cars, to afford a few luxuries. But back then, when I was missing him so much, I didn’t care about any of those things. You can’t put a price tag on the time you spend with your father.
And here I was, doing exactly what my dad had done. I was a great provider, but I knew in my heart that I wasn’t being a great father.
About a year after JW was born, and at the beginning of that successful 2008 season, I was preparing to leave for Baltimore again. Tay was still working her way through dental school, and I’d just dropped JW off at the babysitter’s house, just like I’d done countless times. I said goodbye, just like I’d done countless times. But somehow my son—even though he couldn’t even walk yet—knew that this goodbye was different. As soon as I put him down, he was bawling—wailing as loud as he could with those little baby lungs of his. He was clawing at my legs. He was crying so hard that he couldn’t even get out the word no, but I knew what he was saying to me.
Daddy, don’t leave me, he was saying. Please don’t leave me.
But I did. It tore my heart out, but I turned and walked away. I didn’t stop. I didn’t stay. And in that moment, I felt like I had abandoned my child.
When I tell that story, some people think I’m laying it on a little thick. Oh, that’s so dramatic, they tell me. They remind me that this experience isn’t unique. Many mothers and fathers work. Lots of children spend much of their time with babysitters or at day-care centers. People go to work every single day and sacrifice that time so their families can have bread on the table and clothes on their backs.
Just like my father did. Just like I was doing.
I get why both parents work, why they leave their children with babysitters and day-care centers and preschool. I really do. But man, when I look at the state of families today—all the brokenness experienced in so many homes—I believe it’s often because our priorities aren’t where they’re supposed to be. Look at the shattered families, the divorce rates, the rise in anxiety and depression in kids. Is it because we, as parents, sometimes focus on the wrong things? That we focus on the worldly treasure, and we overlook the priceless, living gifts that God has given us? Does anything—even an NFL career, even a Super Bowl ring—compare with a great day with our children? Does a seven-figure bank account outweigh the time we could spend with our kids playing catch or fishing or just talking? I don’t think so.
My NFL career was shaping up just like my agent said it would. I started all sixteen games at center in 2008, that 11–5 campaign, and I helped turn Baltimore into one of the league’s top rushing offenses. We went to the playoffs again, ultimately losing to the Steelers in the AFC Championship Game. We were one game away from the Super Bowl, but by any measure, we had a successful season. I still had that reputation of being one tough son of a gun, a guy without an ounce of quit in him. And as I went into free agency, I was considered the top interior offensive lineman available.
The St. Louis Rams, a team that had gone 5–27 the previous two years, were looking for some heavyweight help, and they turned to me. The Rams pulled out their checkbook and signed me to a five-year, $37.5 million contract, making me the highest-paid center in NFL history at that time. I was the team’s first pickup—the first piece to what new head coach Steve Spagnuolo hoped would be a successful rebuilding effort.
“There was no question he was going to be the guy we were going to focus on at that position,” Coach Spagnuolo told the Associated Press after I signed. “I’m just glad it all fell in place like it did.”
Tay finished dental school the same year I wrapped up my time in Baltimore. It freed us both up to move to St. Louis, to build a real home. No more commuting back and forth between cities. And although the life of an NFL player is never normal, it looked as though we were getting closer to some semblance of normalcy. I’d come home from a day at the “office” and spend the evening with my wife and son. It wasn’t The Brady Bunch, maybe, but I hoped that we were on the way to feeling like a family—a real family.
Looking back, I don’t think our priorities were right on target. We were going to be a family on our terms. Like the great philosopher the Notorious B.I.G. once said, “Mo money, mo problems.”
Every strong family needs a place to live—a family home—so we bought a house: a ridiculous twelve-thousand-square-foot mansion with marble fireplaces and exotic wood floors and two massive bars. We didn’t drink, but it didn’t matter. I stocked those bars with every high-shelf bottle of liquor available, right down to a $1,500 crystal bottle of Louis XIII cognac.
When I wasn’t playing football, we also went to church every week, putting on our best clothes and heading off to the service, just like a good family is supposed to do. We looked the part of the perfect American family on Sunday mornings—a perfect power couple with their adorable little boy. But Monday through Saturday, our lives were anything but perfect.
Everything looked like it had fallen into place for us, but Tay and I weren’t clicking the way we used to. The time apart had taken a toll on our relationship, and we lost the humility and grace we used to give each other. We were prideful, arrogant.
I was a big, important football player. Everyone was telling me how great I was. But Tay didn’t see it. Why couldn’t she see how wonderful I was? Why couldn’t she see what everyone else saw in me? Meanwhile, Tay—Dr. Brown now—was ready to be respected as well, and she wanted me to show her that respect. And if I didn’t show it sufficiently? There’d be problems. We were fighting all the time, it seemed. We felt out of sync.
We’d pursued our dreams. We’d reached our goals. We’d achieved everything we’d worked so hard to achieve when we were poor, happy college students. But our success—all the wealth and fame and respect we thought would make everything great—actually made it harder to live with each other. Individually, we’d done everything we’d wanted to do. But our marriage, our family, was hurting. And no one knew it but us.
Faith and family, we’d always said. Faith and family. Those were supposed to be our priorities. I think we still paid lip service to them. But our actions? Our attitudes? Our pride? Anyone who looked closely at our lives could see that our real priorities were different.
It was May 5, 2010. My birthday. I woke up in our mansion, pushed the thousand-thread-count sheets off my body, put my feet on the exotic wood floor, and shuffled off to the bathroom. I should’ve been happy. I turned twenty-seven that day, and it seemed as though I’d already given myself every worldly gift possible. My presents were all around me.
But I found myself thinking about Ducie. He was twenty-seven years old when he died. I thought about what I’d done in my life and what he’d done. I realized I couldn’t compare the two. I was playing a game for a living. I was in the entertainment business, giving people three hours of distraction on a Sunday afternoon. Ducie had lived a life of service.
People always told me that I looked a lot like my brother, especially when we smiled. But when I looked at our lives—how we lived them, what those lives said about our values and priorities—I realized they didn’t look much alike at all.
I looked in the mirror. And I saw Ducie.
You know what that reflection told me? The same thing that bratty, snotty-nosed kid had told Ducie years before, right after losing a race.
What are you doing with your life that’s so great? the reflection said. What are you doing with your life that’s so awesome?
I knew in my spirit what the answer was: nothing.
“Keep your eye on the ball.” Almost every coach in almost every sport says that. For most athletes, it’s rule number one. But in football, that feels especially true, even when the ball isn’t actually moving. In the moment before the snap, every eye is focused on that football. Every offensive player is listening for the quarterback to call for the snap. Every defensive player is focused on that ball, waiting for it to move out of the center’s hands. Every man, woman, and child watching the game—be it a field of three hundred or a stadium filled with eighty thousand—is waiting, almost breathlessly, for the ball to move.
All the action centers on that weird-shaped, blown-up piece of pigskin. I guess it makes sense that the guy who sets it all in motion, every snap, would be called the center. He is, in a way, the center of that tiny, self-contained world of sport at that moment, in the pause before the storm.
Maybe I took my role of center too seriously. For the next several years, I listened to the world. I became the center of my own existence. I had my mansion. I had my eight-figure NFL contract. I had what the world says to value. And, ironically, I’d taken my eye off the ball.
“Do not love the world or the things in the world,” the Bible says in 1 John 2:15–17. “If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.”
It was time to get back to the basics. It was time to find the ball again. That scolding in the mirror, Ducie glaring back at me in my own reflection, planted the first seed of what would be a whole new direction in my life.
But as every farmer knows, it takes a while before you see that seed start to grow.