Baseball was fun. It was great. It was exciting. I was good. But at the same time, I had some real bad habits that had been introduced to me and that led me straight from myself and who I could have really been.

And you know what God did in the midst of that? He reminded me all these years that I was going through this life of trials and tribulations is because I wouldn't forgive.

Welcome to the Jesus Calling Podcast. Often we lament that our life isn't where we want to be because of the decisions we have made and we beat ourselves up with regret and remorse.

But what about the things we didn't do but that just happened far beyond our control to the side? Those kinds of situations can either send us into deep despair creating a desperation to escape the pain behind them or they can be the catalyst for us to take steps toward living a life where we look to the only one who has any control.

God and trust him to guide our steps toward doing what is right for our lives.

We have two powerful stories today that encourage us that it is always possible to start over and live a life of fulfillment and meaning no matter what kinds of decisions we've made in the past and sometimes in spite of the things that happen that we aren't able to control.

Former Major League Baseball star, Darryl Strawberry survived childhood full of deep struggles that left him ill-equipped to handle the fame and fortune that would ultimately come his way and he found himself suspended permanently from the sport and ultimately serving prison time.

Oklahoma City bombing survivor Amy Downs saw herself as a failure, flunking out of college, gaining 200 pounds and walking away from her faith.

Both Darryl and Amy had that wake-up call moment in their lives where they knew they wanted to live differently and over time they each turned toward God to walk in a new direction.

Let's start Darryl's story.

My name is Darryl Strawberry 58 years old. I played Major League Baseball for 17 years and now I sit as a man of faith who stand in faith because of the gospel of Jesus Christ that changed my life.

I wore Baseball uniform for 17 years and I identified myself as a baseball player and it wasn't until I came to Christ that I was able to identify myself as a man.

My early years was like a really struggle because I grew up in a very broken dysfunctional home. My dad was a raise in alcoholic and he would come home night after night drinking and be very loud and disturbing the whole house and wake us up in the middle of the night.

When I was 14 he woke us up at night and he was drunk and my older brother Michael said, won't you just get out of here and leave us alone.

He actually pulled out a shotgun and said he was going to really kill the whole family at that particular time and had enough in for my wonderful mother getting us boys out of the house because we went into action.

We were very serious about protecting our mother and one of my brothers Ronnie went and grabbed a butcher knife and I went and grabbed a frying pan and we were going to actually kill him and I was only 14.

Ronnie was 15 and had not been for mom getting us out of that house at night. It would have been a tragedy in my life. So at this point in our young age we were young but at the same time we were hurting because what was happening, the pain was real.

And I think a lot of people don't understand that brokenness is real. Lawlessness brings about brokenness and brings broken generations one after the next.

And from that point there my father was never around after that night. The next day my mother decided that she would move him out of the house and she would go on to divorce him.

So she had saw her kids responding in such a way she'd never seen us respond.

I picked up a baseball bat when I was young 13, 14 years old I love sports. I was really probably better at the time and basketball and football because I played a lot of football in the neighborhood and played a lot of basketball in the neighborhood.

But I got into little league baseball a little late and I started playing in park leagues and then it was fun you know it was really fun to be able to go out and experience that because I was like so broken you know because of the rejection of my father

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