Posted by At the height of Darryl Strawberry’s baseball career, his mother Ruby prayed that God would knock him “off his throne.” The reason? Despite having established himself as a premier home run hitter and winning World Series with both the Mets and Yankees, Darryl struggled with addiction, womanizing, and other issues that were creating chaos in his life. Ruby simply wanted her son to be “humbled’ and “saved.”
Though it took many years, Ruby’s prayer was answered when Darryl made the decision to surrender his life to Christ and devote himself to preaching God’s word. He shares his healing journey in the new memoir “Another Life: Discovering the Healing Power of Purpose on My Long Journey From Player to Preacher,” and we discussed it recently on “Christopher Closeup” (podcast below).
Darryl Strawberry grew up in a challenging environment. Though Ruby was loving and supportive of her five children, her husband Henry was emotionally and physically abusive to all of them to the point that Darryl and his brother were once ready to kill Henry themselves so he would no longer beat their mother. Henry moved out after that incident, and Ruby’s faith and resilience became a model for her children.
Darryl’s natural baseball talent eventually led him to success with the Mets, with whom he won the World Series in 1986. He also found himself living a “worldly lifestyle,” which Ruby warned him against. Like many young people, Darryl didn’t listen, thinking he could handle it.
“There’s a price to be paid,” he admitted. “But [my mother] kept interceding and praying behind the scenes because she was a woman of faith. And I always tell mothers, ‘Don’t ever stop praying because it’s not up to you to do the miracle; it’s up to God to do the miracle, and God hears the prayers of the righteous.'”
Shortly before Ruby died of cancer at age 55, she told Darryl, “God just spoke to me. He’s going to get it out of you. You’re going to go through it, but He’s going to get it out of you.” And after her death, Darryl and his siblings found their mom’s journal, which included the entry about her prayer for God to knock Darryl off his throne. In retrospect, he wishes he would have listened to her sooner.
“A lot of times we don’t understand faith when we’re young…because we’re so busy trying to accomplish all these worldly things,” Darryl observed. “We want affirmation from everybody else and their opinions mean more than God at the time…God sometimes has to stop people and transform them. In my case, that’s what it was. I always tell people: don’t wait that long because you’re going to cost yourself a lot of headaches if you just wait around and have God stop you. Because He will stop you after you’ve been covered and prayed over and interceded for.”
Darryl credits his wife Tracy with being God’s instrument of grace on his road to recovery. Having struggled through addiction herself, she had been off drugs and alcohol for one year when they met at a function for people in recovery. Whereas most attendees were hovering over Darryl to get pictures with him because he was famous, Tracy recognized that he was a man who was hurting and struggling. And she was right, since Darryl described himself as still “active in addiction” at that point.
“Her pursuit after me was from God,” Darryl said. “God had sent her to rescue me. I didn’t know it at the time, but I would eventually come around to seeing that…All these other different people were important in my life, but she was the key because He sent her to come pull me out of places, [where I was] using drugs. [She told me] that God has a plan for my life. I said, ‘Why don’t you and that God just leave me here and let me die?’ And she used to throw her finger up at me and say, ‘You’re just not that lucky.’ And I go, ‘Wow, God, she is crazier than I am.'”
“We broke up and split off, and I had to go get well and get clean,” Darryl continued. “And then we would come back together and do it the right way and get married and live according to [God’s] principles. She just became the centerpiece of my life: the joy, the strength, just about everything that I needed to help navigate me through life situations and troubles…She was the one that said, ‘You have to take responsibility for this. If you want God to help you, you have to clean up the mess that you created.’ What most people fail to realize, it’s a process. It’s not an overnight miracle…She led me back into church. I had to sit for seven years to go through discipleship and be able to learn God’s will, God’s word, His principle, and walk in faith. And that was hard. It was very challenging…Without her and without my mother’s prayers, I probably would be dead…And I think a lot of people need to understand, God always has people out there that’s trying to lead you and guide you towards Him. You just have to be able to say ‘yes’ and receive it. I think too many people don’t receive it, and they keep going the other way and wondering why it never changes for them.”
Darryl has now been clean for 22 years, and he travels the country sharing his story with diverse groups of people, including addicts in recovery and inmates in prison. One thread that runs throughout “Another Life” is that Darryl never approaches anyone with judgment.
He explained, “We’re not called here to judge people. What if God judged us? When you know and understand grace, you go back and you extend that to everybody else because it’s been given to you. And when you realize that, it’s not about judging someone because we don’t know where people come from….There had to be some brokenness, wounds inside of you that led you down the road that you went down. “
Darryl added, “I was given the talent to play baseball. Baseball and the uniform did not make me a man. That made me a baseball player. I didn’t become a man until I had the encounter with Jesus Christ and realized the real purpose of life is far different than hitting home runs and winning championships. So, I don’t go into any place and look at anybody as ‘less than’ because I think: but for the grace of God, there go I. That could be me. I’ve been in that situation before. I think that’s why God saves us. He saves us because we need a savior, but He also takes what He saves you with and equips you to go back and share His love with people. I think that’s where we miss it a lot. We want to be over the top. I don’t Bible thump nobody over the head. You live for Christ. It’s your actions that speak louder than your words.”
(To listen to the full interview with Darryl Strawberry, click on the podcast link):
Light One Candle - the blog of The Christophers 