Soccer Player’s Painful Path to Trusting God

For much of his early life, soccer was everything to Ben Locke. He was on the path to success until health issues—and something more sinister—nearly ended more than just his sports career. 

When Ben could no longer rely on his physical abilities, he learned to lean on Jesus Christ and a new talent God revealed. Listen as he shares his journey on this episode of GPS: God. People. Stories. 

Connect with us through email at gps@billygraham.org or on Facebook at Billy Graham Radio.

If you’d like to know more about beginning a relationship with Jesus Christ, or deepening the faith you already have, visit FindPeacewithGod.net.

If you’d like to pray with someone, call our 24-hour prayer line at 855-255-7729. People are available to answer 24 hours a day, seven days a week. 

Transcript

MUSIC STARTS 

Ben Locke:
00:00:00 I knew God like I know LeBron James or a celebrity that’s on TV. I recognize him and I might say that I know him, but if I walk past LeBron James on the sidewalk and acted like I knew him, he would think I was crazy. 

Jim Kirkland: Ben Locke was more focused on soccer than on God. He was working hard in making his dream of going pro to reality.

Ben:
00:00:19 So, I knew of the Lord and sort of convinced myself that I knew Him, and then when things really started to get tricky and difficult in my life, I quickly learned that I really didn’t have a deep, real relationship with the Lord. 

Jim: Ben opens up about the very painful difficulties in his life, and hopes what he has learned from his struggles might help you with yours. This is GPS: God. People. Stories. It’s an outreach of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. I’m Jim Kirkland. 

At the heart of Ben Locke’s story is an issue humans have been struggling with since Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden of Eden.

Billy Graham:
00:00:56 Why has man, made in the image of God, always been hounded by suffering? These are not easy questions for us to answer when we ask the question, “Why?”

Jim: Billy Graham has an answer to that age-old question from the Bible … and we will hear it later in this episode. 

Intro: GPS: God. People. Stories.

MUSIC TRANSITION

Jim: Ben Locke grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. He started playing soccer when he was just 4 years old. 

Ben:
00:01:24 I had a very strong family life, close relationships; had an older brother and an older sister and a mom and a dad. We were in the church quite frequently. As I got older, though, soccer became more prominent part of my life. I spent most of my weekends traveling and weekdays practicing and driving to practice, and so soccer really was the central piece of everything and quickly became that central thing in my life.

Jim: In fact, Ben’s intense love for the game, his dedication to it, and his dream of playing professionally all led him and his parents to make a big and difficult decision. He would move to Charlotte, North Carolina, … by himself and live with a host family while he was still in high school.

Ben:
00:02:07 So I moved out of the house when I was 16 to pursue playing soccer and kind of get to the next stage, get to the college level, and then hopefully play professionally. 

Jim: Ben says North Carolina was home to some of the best soccer programs in the country at the time. And in addition to that, his brother was going to college in Charlotte and his family had friends who lived there. So, the move seemed to make perfect sense for a number of reasons.

Ben:
00:02:30 You know, it was a decision that my family and I made together. My parents OK’d it. They constantly were checking in, Are you sure you’re ready to do this? And at the time I was so focused on soccer and was so set on being successful in the sport that I was like, I’m willing to do whatever it takes. 

Jim: Part of ‘whatever it took’ was leaving behind the comfort and security of home.

Ben:
00:02:51 I quickly found out how difficult it was going to be to not have my parents. I realized it was the small things—coming home from school, having conversations about what was happening in my life, about soccer, about friendships, about schoolwork, that kind of thing—went from normal to basically nonexistent. And so it was really tough. I didn’t have a preexisting relationship with anybody in the school, didn’t have any friends, so it really actually further, sort of, entrenched me in soccer. 

Jim: And it got him what he’d been hoping for. Ben landed a scholarship to North Carolina State University in his junior year of high school. NC State is in the Atlantic Coast Conference, which is consistently ranked as the highest—or one of the highest—conferences in the country for men’s soccer. Ben says he loved NC State’s program, the coaching staff—in fact, everything about the school.
 
Ben:
00:03:38 So it was a pretty quick turnaround. And the coach and the university that offered me the scholarship wanted me to come to the university early, so I actually ended up graduating from high school a semester early … started college in January instead of in the fall.

Jim: The position Ben played was midfield center, a position that requires a lot of running. About a month into offseason workouts, Ben started experiencing numbness from the top of his knees down through his toes. 

Ben:
00:04:04 I got diagnosed with something called compartment syndrome, which I had never heard of before. It’s a potentially career-ending injury. The doctors were like, Hey, you may never play soccer again, and even if we’re able to repair this to a certain extent, you probably won’t be the same player that you were before. 

Jim: Doctors did attempt to repair the problem through surgery, but what Ben experienced after surgery was more traumatic than his health problems. He had the surgery about two months into his college career.
 
Ben:
00:04:31 And that actually sort of began this snowball effect and process of things taking place off the field with my trainer. He began sexually abusing me because of the injury and the time that I had to spend with him. 

Jim: Ben says the trainer touched him inappropriately during massages that were meant to help him recover from his surgery. At first, Ben didn’t mention the abuse to anyone. 

Ben:
00:04:52 I was asking questions internally and obviously felt really uncomfortable and was really wrestling with what is happening. Like, what’s really going on here and is there something I should do about it? What do I say? The way I looked at it was, OK, this—I know this isn’t right and it’s uncomfortable and it’s all these things, but this is the man that sort of holds the keys for me getting back on the soccer field, and that’s all I care about.

Jim: But Ben hardly stepped foot on the field. 

Ben:
00:05:16 At my time at NC State, I was really sidelined the majority of the time, never dressed for a game. I was red-shirted both my freshman and sophomore years. So it was really difficult time, and so I ultimately ended up in a place where I really had no other option but to look elsewhere for a new fit.

Jim: That ‘new fit’ would be found at Lipscomb University in Nashville.

Ben:
00:05:36 I transferred to Lipscomb, played my first full college soccer season as a junior—which was kind of crazy—and then had to get a hip surgery right after that season ended. So I did continue the trajectory and kind of came back and was able to rehab and do the therapy that I needed to get back onto the field and then sort of got sidelined again. It was very much a stop-start process for me in college.

Jim: It was while he was at Lipscomb that Ben says he became fully aware that he had been the victim of sexual abuse.

Ben:
00:06:03 I realized how different I was being treated by my trainers and the ways that they were doing certain treatments versus what my other trainer was doing. So it was a little bit of a wake-up call. That was really when the process began of me sort of starting to accept that some of these things had happened, admit them, and then very, very, very slowly start to share that with other people. 

Jim: As Ben began trying to deal with his abuse, God wasn’t yet a big part of the equation. Ben still didn’t have a deep personal relationship with Jesus Christ. 

Ben:
00:06:32 I knew God like I know LeBron James or a celebrity that’s on TV. I recognize him and I might say that I know him, but if I walk past LeBron James on the sidewalk and acted like I knew him, he would think I was crazy. So, I knew of the Lord and sort of convinced myself that I knew Him, and then when things really started to get tricky and difficult in my life, I quickly learned that I really didn’t have a deep, real relationship with the Lord.

Jim: Instead, Ben used other things to numb his inner turmoil … particularly soccer and relationships. 

Ben:
00:07:03 I think when you go through something like abuse, things that feel like they’re so out of your control, what really quickly happens—subconsciously or consciously—is you start searching for and seeking things that are going to give you a level of security. And so that’s what I did. I was looking for anything that would sort of make me feel secure, whether it was a relationship or friendship or something that I could get in the world that would make me feel some type of way, that make me feel a little bit better about myself, a little more secure. 

Jim: Whatever false sense of security Ben may have felt was about to be blown up. And once again, his soccer career would be in jeopardy. This time it was on an icy road in January of 2019.

Ben:
00:07:42 I was at a three- or four-way intersection. It was icy. It snowed the day before. And if people are in the South or are familiar with people driving anytime it snows in the South, the roads are super icy. And so somebody hit me because they didn’t realize there was a stop sign. They hardly braked and then they skidded. 

Jim: The driver rear-ended Ben’s car going about 35 mph while Ben was at a complete stop. The collision gave Ben whiplash and a serious concussion. 

Ben:
00:08:11 About three or four months after that happened, I literally laid in a dark room, wasn’t able to read, wasn’t able to watch TV because of the severity of the concussion and the neck damage. 

Jim: Eventually, though, Ben recovered enough to play his fifth year of soccer that fall while pursuing his MBA. The professional soccer clubs had their eye on Ben. His dream of going pro still seemed possible—but everything was about to change one more time. Just 11 months after the car accident, this happened: 

Ben:
00:08:43 It was two weeks after my last game. I was out to dinner with my family. The room started spinning. The floor started moving. I thought I was going to pass out. And that’s when I ended up in the emergency room. The symptoms were so extreme. I thought I was dying. It just sort of felt like my body was shutting down.

Jim: Ben was just 22 years old. He began experiencing severe migraines, vertigo, extreme fatigue … and even had trouble breathing. Over the course of the next year, he saw a dozen doctors, and he had to start coming to terms with the realization that his dream to play soccer professionally would never become a reality.

Ben:
00:09:18 Part of the challenge was I still thought I had kind of made it through the other side, and then all of a sudden, the floor was kind of pulled out from underneath me. And so not only was I wrestling with sort of the end of my playing career, I was kind of thrown into this very nebulous, not a lot of clarity, not a lot of answers about what was going on in my body. 

Jim: But finally, Ben found a doctor who started putting the pieces together. He determined that Ben’s multiple concussions from soccer and the car accident had left him with brain and neck trauma. On top of that was Ben’s compartment syndrome—the medical condition he was diagnosed with at the start of his college career. Ben was in a difficult season … but, it was a season that God would redeem and use in a life-changing way.

Ben:
00:10:03 I hardly left the house. I hardly left my bedroom because of how sick I was. It was fatigue to the level that it was hard for me to walk up a set of stairs without being winded and without collapsing. So it was really extreme for two, two and a half years, and so quickly my life changed from Oh, I’m fine. I’m in control. I have a good understanding of my body and my mind and my relationships and the dynamics that I’m experiencing in my life to I have no control. My body has turned on me. My mind has turned on me. I can’t really rely on myself for something as simple as going to the grocery store and getting food and cooking for myself. 

Jim: That loss of control—and abilities—finally brought Ben to a place of digging in and trying to understand God and the Bible and his own faith. He describes it as a “last resort” and says he was “going to the Scriptures with a healthy desperation”… hoping that it might change his circumstances.

Ben:
00:10:57 And so God used a series of really difficult things to force me really into a position where He was like, Is this real? Do you really believe I am who I say I am and that what I say is true? OK, Ben, do you really believe what this Word says? Because if you don’t ... you’re going to struggle to get through this day. You’re going to struggle to make it to tomorrow.

Jim: This was the beginning of Ben’s reconciliation with Jesus Christ.

Ben:
00:11:20 It was a wrestling process that was days and weeks and months long. I don’t really remember a moment where things suddenly changed and there was a light bulb, necessarily, that went off. I always believed in God. I couldn’t ever live life in a way where it made sense that anything other than God was true, but walking in a way that actually honored that and exemplified that was not something I was doing, so, in terms of coming to the Lord and sort of being humbled and brought back to Him in an intimate and genuine way, it was really that those two years were pivotal to that. 

Jim: And throughout that entire time, Ben’s family was alongside him, encouraging him in his spiritual journey.

Ben:
00:11:59 It was a lot of tears; it was a lot of anger; it was a lot of sadness; it was a lot of grief. And me starting to express some of those things, even the traumas that I had been through in the past, and wrestling with those in the Lord’s presence.

Jim: In the process of all of that, Ben discovered that he had the wrong idea about how to begin a relationship with Jesus. 
Ben:
00:12:18 I had this notion of I had to clean myself up. I had to fix myself outside of God’s presence. And whether that was in the world, whether that was just privately, I had to put myself in a position where I was presentable to God, and then I could go and pray to Him and present myself to Him. I had to unlearn that. I had to realize that the things that I was trying to fix—my anger, my bitterness, the resentment that I’ve been feeling, the confusion that I had, the questions that I had. How could a good God allow this to happen to me? Why did I have to lose my dream? Why did this person do this to me? It was a process of taking those questions directly into God’s presence. 

Jim: As Ben got serious about reading the Bible, he began to understand that his security could not be found in his own control of circumstances. It could only be found in Jesus Christ.

Ben:
00:13:05 I saw Scripture that reflected what I was wrestling with and what I was feeling. The questions that I felt, the doubts that I had, I saw in lot of—you know, Job 4, 5, and 6 were really important chapters for me. A lot of the Psalms reflected the grief and the lament and the process of writing was really more of an external expression of that.

Jim: One of the examples of the many Scriptures that ministered to Ben during this season was Job 42:5, “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you”; and Psalm 119:67, “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I obey your word.” What Ben read in Job and the Psalms inspired him to buy a notebook and start writing his own prayers.

Ben:
00:13:50 I had never written before. I was not a writer. I was not somebody who kept a journal. The sort of severity of what I was going through, it was more of a, I can’t do anything else, so I’m just going to start writing. So, God used journaling and writing. I just started writing down my prayers for me to essentially emote the things that I had been processing and things that were in my head and things that were in my heart. I put them down on paper, and God really used that process of me expressing things that I thought I had to hide from Him and instead expressing them in His presence—that’s when things really started to change.

Jim: One of the biggest changes was that Ben came to the point of being able to fully trust God. He understood that God wasn’t to blame for the things that had happened to him. 

Ben:
00:14:33 What God desires for my life and what God will permit are very different things. Because we live in a fallen world, God permits things to happen, but at the same time, God didn’t desire for somebody to crash into me and destroy my body. God didn’t desire to send an abuser into my life to hurt me in the ways that I was hurt. And so I had to wrestle with that too, because that then changes the question of, “Why God?” to, OK God, You’ve allowed this—for whatever reason—You’ve allowed this, so how are You going to make it good? How can I trust that You’re going to make it into something good? That’s a really different notion.

Jim: Now, Ben sees his suffering as a blessing because it caused him to confront his faith and experience God’s presence. Taking his cue from the poetic style of the Psalms, he filled his entire prayer journal cover to cover with creative expression. Ben shared his journal with his sister and she loved it. He was encouraged by her response, so Ben decided to see about turning his journal into a book. With some internet sleuthing, he was able to email the right person at the publishing house, HarperCollins. The person he reached out responded in just a few days, and she was interested, and asked him for a formal book proposal. Within two months HarperCollins told Ben they wanted to publish what he’d written. Today, what was Ben’s private journal is a book that glorifies God by helping others through their grief and suffering. 

Ben:
00:16:00 I’ve heard from people that are in their 60s and 70s, and I’ve heard from other people that are in their 20s and kind of everything in between. And, not only that, the way that it’s applied to people. Some—a lot of people have used it sort of as they process grief and loss, but other people with addiction and battles with certain things that have happened in their past. So, I think God has been really faithful about the way that it can kind of appeal to people across the spectrum of suffering and pain and grief and sickness, whatever it is.

Jim: While Ben’s book is helping others find healing, his own story of healing isn’t finished quite yet.

Ben:
00:16:31 I’m obviously not in bed anymore, so I’m much healthier than I was. But I’m still pretty far off from what I was before. I still have all the symptoms that I mentioned to you before are still things that I’m battling with today. And I actually think that’s a really important message for listeners and for whoever might be hearing this is: The book in a lot of ways is still sort of a present representation and reflection of where I’m at. I think a lot of times people, myself included, struggle when they see other people talking about their story and maybe healing and the reconciliation that’s happened because they think and assume that the person has kind of gotten to the other side of that—and to be totally honest, that’s not the case with me. I’m still battling my health and the repercussions of that and so I want people to know that, that the book is sort of an invitation for us to join together in whatever you’re going through. It’s not me sort of looking back and saying, Hey, you know, keep going, keep fighting. It’s really an invitation to sort of meet those things in the middle.

MUSIC TRANSITION

Jim: Just as Ben Locke has drawn near to God through his trials, you can too. If you’d like to know more about that and about having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, we are here for you at FindPeaceWithGod.net. That is FindPeaceWithGod.net. If you’d like to speak with someone, you can call our 24-hour Billy Graham prayer line. Someone is on the other end of that number, ready to talk with you right now or whenever you want to talk. 855-255-PRAY. That’s 855-255-7729.

In just a moment, we’ll hear more from Ben as he shares one of his deepest struggles.

Voice-over: You’re listening to GPS: God. People. Stories., a podcast production of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

MUSIC STARTS

Billy Graham:
00:18:31 Why has man, made in the image of God, always been hounded by suffering? Why must all these people suffer?

Voice-over: Billy Graham …

Billy Graham:
00:18:40 These are not easy questions for us to answer when we ask the question, “Why?” However, the Bible teaches that sin is a ruthless tyrant. Its whiplash strikes out against the innocent along with the guilty. Even though Jesus Christ Himself had no sin, He did not escape the impact of sin. It struck out against Him and nailed Him to a cross. To the Christian, God is in command and in control. Suffering is dated. Someday there will be no more suffering. Just today I was reading in the book of Revelation, “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.” Why don’t you give your life to Jesus Christ and let His grace, love, and mercy sweep your heart and soul with joy?

Jim: Would you like to know more about beginning a relationship with Jesus—or, if you know Him as your Lord and Savior, about deepening your relationship with Jesus? We’re here at FindPeaceWithGod.net. That web address again: FindPeaceWithGod.net.

Our guest on this episode of GPS is Ben Locke. He faced a series of difficult challenges as he tried to achieve his dream of becoming a professional soccer player. Ben says before he discovered the magnitude of God’s grace, he often felt what he called “disqualified as a believer” because of his experiences. He hopes you don’t feel that way. 

Ben:
00:20:16 The things that I was wrestling with, the questions that I had, the doubts that I had, the ways that I thought I was feeling even towards God of, Why am I angry? Am I angry at God? Is that allowed? The anxiety and sort of the extreme levels of stress and fear that I was experiencing because of what my body was going through, the shame that I felt because of things that have happened in my past. I struggled for a long time with, Does this make me less qualified as a believer? Am I less of a believer? Is my faith lesser than other people? Because a lot of times what I saw in church was people looked like they had it all together. Everything looked so good from sort of an external perspective that I felt really disqualified from being a part of that community sometimes. 

So, I think what I really hope people understand and hear is that whatever you’re going through and whatever you may be battling, it doesn’t make you less qualified to be a son or a daughter or a brother or sister in Christ. Bring those things that may be hidden or that you may think disqualify you into the presence of other people—most importantly, into the presence of the Lord. You’re going to start to see how God can take those things and really heal them and really free you to serve Him in different ways. 

Jim: We appreciate Ben Locke’s willingness to be so transparent about his story … and his heart for those who are battling their own trials. We’ll have another story of God’s work in someone’s life in the next episode of GPS. To make sure you do not miss it, subscribe to GPS wherever you listen to podcasts. We post new episodes every two weeks on Wednesdays.

I’m Jim Kirkland, and this is GPS: God. People. Stories. It’s an outreach of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association—Always Good News.

CLOSING MUSIC

# # #