by Ben Utecht
“Ben, you need to pray and ask God if this message is really from Him,” my dad said.
Now, you have to understand that I hadn’t been doing a lot of praying the past few months, except to tell God how mad I was at Him. But this episode so rattled me that I took my dad’s advice. I got down on my knees for the first time in forever and said, “God, if this is from you, you need to tell me what to do. You need to tell me what I’m not giving to you.”
I prayed like that for a while, and I didn’t hear any answers coming down from heaven, so I got up and went back to my desk. When I opened my computer I noticed I had some new emails. I clicked on one from my aunt. At the top of the email was a Bible verse from Proverbs 3:5–6. The verse said, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to Him, and He will make your paths straight.” The moment I read this passage it felt like a bolt of lightning struck my room. The hair on my body stood up and warmth radiated all through me. I had the answer to Melissa’s questions. I knew the one thing I had not completely given to God.
Me.
When I was ten years old I went to my mom and dad and asked them about Jesus. I heard my dad talk about him every Sunday, and, as a preacher’s kid, my whole life had been immersed in God stuff. That night long ago my mom explained to me what it means to have an actual relationship with God through faith in Jesus, His Son. I prayed a prayer with my mom and dad right there in my room. After that, whenever anyone asked me if I was a Christian, I always went back to that night with my parents and said, “Yes, I am.”
However, after my encounter with Melissa I realized that I had never completely given my entire self to God. I wanted faith in my life, and I certainly wanted God to bless me. After all, I felt like that was the least I deserved, since I always tried to do the right thing. But in this moment I realized there is a huge difference between wanting God to be part of your life and totally surrendering yourself to Him. I remembered the old movie Chariots of Fire and the story of Eric Liddell. Liddell once said, “You will know as much of God, and only as much of God, as you are willing to put into practice.” I hadn’t been willing to put that much into practice, at least not the hard sayings of Jesus, where He said, “If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?” (Matthew 16:24–26). Denying self means total surrender of oneself to Christ, including one’s hopes and dreams for the future. When my first injury occurred, my mother asked me, “Do you trust Jesus?” Now I had to decide if I really did.
• • •
The conversation with Melissa proved to be a turning point for me. I apologized to God for growing so angry with Him. “If my future is going to turn out different than my dreams, so be it,” I prayed. “I don’t want my plan anymore but yours.”
Blessings from heaven did not suddenly pour down on my life. In terms of football, life got a lot worse. Our team ended exactly the opposite of how it began. We started off the year with four straight wins as I led the nation in receiving. We ended with four straight losses. I did what I could, which wasn’t much. But rather than get mad, I surrendered my season to the Lord. I felt a great deal of peace.
Even with our four straight losses at the end of the year, our team was invited to play in the Music City Bowl in Nashville, against Arkansas. We had five weeks between our last game against Wisconsin and the bowl game, five weeks where I could stay off my foot completely and let it heal. The next time my cast came off, it came off for good. A week or so before the bowl game I found I could run once again without pain. When it came time for the game, I played like I did in the first month of the season. I led the team with seven receptions and scored one touchdown. We won, 29–14. More than that, I felt like for the first time in a very long time I was back where I needed to be, not as a player, but as a man.
CHAPTER 7
MOVING FORWARD
I GOT A LITTLE AHEAD of myself at the end of the last chapter. I wanted to complete the circle and tell you how my season ended. But having a great game and coming away with a win in the Music City Bowl was far from the most important thing that happened in Nashville with that game. I had a good game, but a couple of days before the game I had a conversation that altered the course of my life forever.
I also need to make it clear that my encounter with Melissa, while it proved to be a turning point in my life, did not result in an instantaneous transformation. Old habits die hard, even if they aren’t very old. I had a lot of days where I took three steps forward and two steps back. However, one action I took proved to be the strongest cure to keep me from slipping back into the destructive patterns I wanted to leave behind. Not long after my conversation with Melissa, I picked up the phone and called Karyn. Calling her was a huge gamble. I hadn’t called her since our last date, which had been months earlier. And that date came nearly a year after the one before. I couldn’t blame her if she never wanted to hear from me again.
I wasn’t so sure she didn’t. Since that last date I’d noticed some subtle changes in her demeanor toward me. In the past, when I looked over her way at an FCA event we usually shared a flirtatious glance. Not anymore. Both of us were on the FCA leadership team, which meant we interacted as part of the group, but she never gave the slightest indication that she was still interested in me romantically. If I had been really perceptive, I would have realized that she had moved on. She’d dated other people, as had I, but there was more to it than that. I now know that when we first went out she had hoped the two of us might develop a very special relationship. That’s why she invited me to the sorority formal. My tepid response afterward didn’t help matters. The fact that I called about once a year made it clear to her that any kind of relationship with me was never going to happen, and she was perfectly fine with that.
But I called her anyway, not to ask her out but just to talk. Even with all the mixed signals I’d sent and our totally random, annual dates, Karyn and I were friends. I knew I could trust her. More than that, I needed her. Every time I was around her I felt Karyn was a kind of antidote to the garbage I had allowed to fill my life when I became so angry at God. However, I didn’t say that when I called her that first time. I don’t really remember how I started the conversation. I probably said something like, “I was just thinking about you and wanted to talk.” I know she was surprised I called out of the blue. She was more surprised when I called her the next day. I may have called the day after that as well. All I know is our phone conversations became very frequent, and each one was longer than the one before. After a while the two of us talked for hours at a time.
A couple of weeks into our regular phone conversations, I mustered whatever courage I had left and asked her out. Luckily for me she said, “Yes.” However, there’s a lot more to the story. Before Karyn developed her college crush on me, she had a serious high school crush on a different guy, who ironically was in the same business school as Karyn in college. He was sort of like me in that he never really reciprocated the feelings that Karyn had shared for him. Fate, it seems, decided to put Karyn to the test.
Out of the blue he called and asked Karyn out. She said yes. He took her out to dinner and they returned to her apartment and started talking, then all of a sudden her phone rang. For whatever reason she felt compelled to answer. Yep, this was the moment I picked to call and finally ask her out on a date that I hoped was going to be the first step toward a lasting, long-term relationship. I had no idea she was on a date. I just said something like, “Hey, Karyn, some of my teammates and their girlfriends are getting together tonight. I was hoping you might go with me.”
A long, awkward pause followed, which I now know was due to the other guy being in the next room. Finally Karyn answered, “Yes!”
“Gr
eat,” I said, “I’ll pick you up around seven.”
The story doesn’t end there, however. Karyn hung up the phone then said to her friend, “That was Ben. He called to ask me out. I told him yes.”
Her high school crush reacted to the news in a way that shocked Karyn, and it shocked me when she told me about it later. He said something like, “Karyn, I know this may be too little, too late, but the reason I called and asked you out was to tell you that I like you a lot and I think the two of us are great together. I wanted to see where this relationship might lead.” And then he leaned over and kissed her.
I will admit that when she first told me this story I was pretty upset that he kissed her, and she let him, but my reaction was only due to my own insecurity and a little jealousy. The miracle is how she responded to her date. She looked over at him and all she felt was a strong urging within herself to run toward me. A peace came over her. It was as though she could see her future and all she saw was me. She had made her decision.
“I want to thank you for a wonderful evening and for sharing your feelings with me,” she said to him. “But I have to see where things lead with Ben. I hope you can understand that.” When I think about this story today I have zero doubt that God’s providence was at work, and that the timing of our relationship was being written by a divine hand. I cannot imagine a life where Karyn did not answer her phone or what might have happened if I had waited longer to call her.
After that date, I immediately called Karyn and asked her out again. However, I learned the hard way that I had much more to learn about what made a great date night for Karyn. On our second date I picked her up and took her to see a horror movie. Guys like horror movies because girls will often grab tightly on to us as if we can protect them. Karyn didn’t grab on to me. Instead she spent the entire movie with her head buried in her hands. I don’t think she looked at the screen one time after the opening credits. That wasn’t what I had in mind when I picked the movie. We probably went out for something to eat afterward. To be honest, the details of the date are a little sketchy for me now. However, I do recall feeling different about her than I had any other time we went out. I also felt horrible for making her sit through that terrible zombie movie.
Looking back, I get angry at myself for not walking her out of the movie and asking Karyn what she would like to do! Trust me, I learned my lesson. Let’s just say we don’t watch those kinds of movies together anymore, or ever. After the zombie movie and dinner I took Karyn back to her apartment at University Village and walked her to the door. I didn’t try to kiss her good night and she didn’t expect me to, but this time, I wanted to.
I called the next day. “I had a great time last night,” I said. “A bunch of us are going out for wings tonight. Would you like to go with me?” I wish I could have seen her face, because this had to surprise Karyn. Normally I let at least twelve months pass before asking her out again; now I had called twice in one week!
“Sure. That sounds like fun,” Karyn said.
That night marked another change in our relationship. A couple of my friends from the football team were there along with their dates. Overall, the wings place was really crowded. We didn’t have enough chairs for everyone. I told Karyn, “Why don’t you sit here on my lap?” That gesture was my first bold step toward indicating to her that I wanted to be more than friends. Finally I had the courage to start showing some more physical affirmation.
We went out again a short time later. I don’t really remember the date, but I hope to never forget what happened next. At the end of the date I invited Karyn to come back to my dorm room with me. When we walked in the door I had candles arranged strategically throughout the room. She gave me a sort of look like, What are you up to? The candlelight set the mood. I then took my guitar and began playing and singing Edwin McCain’s “I’ll Be.” I know it sounds cheesy, but it worked! I finished the song and before she could say a word, I launched into the Ben Folds song “The Luckiest.” The song starts off about how the person singing doesn’t get many things right the first time, which was definitely true of how I had handled my relationship with Karyn. I wanted to find a way to tell her how I had really messed up and how I regretted confusing her and how blessed I felt that she had given me another chance. I couldn’t think of a good way to say that, so I let Ben Folds say it for me.
By the time I finished the second song, Karyn’s eyes glistened. I then dropped down on one knee, which, with my height, put us face-to-face as she sat on the edge of my bed. Setting my guitar aside, I leaned in and gave her a hug. As I slowly pulled out of the embrace I kissed her on the cheek. I drew back, and looked her in the eye for a sign of affirmation, which I received along with her beautiful smile. I then kissed her for real for the very first time. The moment was magical for both of us. I pray I never lose this memory.
• • •
All of these phone calls and dates took place late in my redshirt junior football season and in the five-week gap between our last Big 10 game and the Music City Bowl. It was a pretty relaxed month. Practices were light up until a week or so before the game. Like I said in the last chapter, the closer we got to the game against Arkansas, the better my foot felt. I was able to run and regain the speed I lost when I could only limp across the field.
The team flew down to Nashville a week before the game. Every bowl game has all sorts of activities planned around it. We toured historic music places in Nashville and stayed at the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Conference Center, which is one of the largest hotels in the world. The place literally felt like the Mall of America in my home state of Minnesota, with rooms attached. With seventeen restaurants, indoor rivers, and walking paths along tree-lined paths, I had never stayed in anything quite like it.
Looking back, though, none of that mattered to me. The best part of the week was the fact that Karyn came down to Nashville for the game as a student-athlete representative on an athletics and academic advisory council for the university. On trips like this, our team has a pretty tight schedule. Between all the bowl committee activities we have to do and our practice sessions, there’s not a lot of time for yourself. That made this a hard week. All I really wanted to do was find Karyn and spend time with her. But time was hard to come by.
One night I called her and said, “Let’s meet. I have to see you.”
“Me, too,” she said, “but what about your curfew?” She knew that if we went out at that late hour, I was going to be in violation of team rules.
“I’ll take my chances,” I said. “We won’t leave the hotel, so technically I won’t be in violation. I’ll meet you downstairs and we’ll go to whatever restaurant we can find that is still open.”
That was harder than I thought. We walked all around looking for a quiet place to sit and talk and grab a bite to eat, but most everything was closed for the night. The massive indoor atriums were pretty much empty. Finally we found a quiet table next to one of the indoor ponds where we could be alone. I pulled my chair over close to Karyn. “I’ve given this a lot of thought,” I said, “and I, I want to be in a serious relationship with you.” This was more than me saying I wanted us to be exclusive and see no one else. In my mind I was already looking ahead at a long-term future together.
Karyn gave me a big smile. “I want the same thing,” she said.
“Really?” I said. I guess I sounded surprised, or maybe I was just relieved. I felt confident in Karyn’s feelings toward me, but being vulnerable is always a nerve-racking experience.
“Yes, Ben. Really.”
We shared a kiss and just sat there, holding hands, for a very long time. We talked a little, but mainly we just sat there, together. We never did get anything to eat, but I didn’t care.
That moment, alone with Karyn at a secluded table under the trees and next to a pond in the middle of the Opryland hotel, was the only part of the trip that mattered to me. If I had not been able to play a single down in the game a couple of days later, the week would
not have been diminished. This conversation changed the course of my life.
As it was, I did get to play, and I played well. Maybe it was because my foot was completely healed. Or maybe it was because my serious girlfriend was sitting in the stands next to my mom, cheering me on. Either way, I had the game of my life. A few years later, when I was with the Colts, one of my new teammates connected my name to that game. He had been on the opposing team. “Man, you tore us up,” he said. I just smiled. I love this memory.
• • •
I could have ended my college football career with the Music City Bowl. I was on track to graduate in May, and while my draft stock had taken a hit after my foot injury, after my performance in the bowl game I thought I might still have a good chance of making an NFL team. However, as I considered declaring myself eligible for the April draft, I couldn’t help but feel I still had unfinished business at the U of M to take care of. For one thing, if I was serious about making it in the NFL, I needed to skip the spring semester to prepare for the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis in February, along with the personal tryouts that teams put prospective players through. Trying to do all of that while also maintaining the course load I needed to get my degree didn’t exactly go together. And I really wanted to get my degree. That’s the whole point of going to college.
More than that, I did not want to end my college career on the down note that was the last seven games of my redshirt junior season. Yes, I played well in our bowl game, but to me that did not compensate for the missed opportunities caused by my broken foot. I believed that if I came back for my senior year and played healthy all season long, the dreams I had of going high in the draft would come true.
