A new story from Leading Saints Podcast

Automatic TRANSCRIPT

And as a kid from San Antonio, Texas, who only saw snow one time in his life, snowmobiles was it, man. And so going to BYU was a vastly different context. You leave a predominantly multi -ethnic space to a predominantly white space, but not just a white space, but Mormon white space. And so that's a whole different cultural context. So it took me about a semester to really adjust. But one of the good things is being in an environment where everybody is so different, you learn to be curious, you learn to ask questions, you learn to learn people. And so that was a blessing. I ended up meeting a girl on the BYU track team named Vicki. And we've been married as of May 31st for 31 years. Brandon Hall Yeah, we have two kids, 26 and 22. So at BYU, everything was going according to plan. Football career was great. She was crushing it. Ended up getting drafted to the Indianapolis Colts. And then that's kind of when the bottom of this world I had constructed began to fall apart. And so I get to the NFL. I go from being a big fish in a small pond to being a minnow in the Pacific Ocean. And so God in that time is beginning to wean me from my idolatry of thinking that football is my significance, football's my worth. So my third year in the NFL, I'm a team captain, I'm playing pretty good. But at the end of that third year, it hits me like, okay, there has to be more to life than just this. Okay, so I've got the money, I've got the girl, I've got the career. But here's what I don't have. I don't have unconditional love. Here's what I don't have. I don't have forgiveness. I don't have grace. I can't get over the fact that my father was not involved in my life. And so from 1995 to 1997, I started experiencing injuries. And so basically, my life that I had built on sand began to just be wiped away.

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