When I was little and something awful was happening my Mama would tell me to close my eyes.She was tryin' to keep me from seeing her do drugs or other bad things. And then when she was finished or the bad things were over she'd say, “now when I count to three, you open your eyes and the past is gone, the world is a good place,and it's all gonna be okay.

Don't ever allow yourself to feel trapped by your choices. Take a look at yourself. You are a unique person created for a specific purpose. Your gifts matter. Your story matters. Your dreams matter. You matter.

It’s true that we can’t help the circumstances we’re born into and some of us start out in a much tougher place than other people. But just because we started there doesn’t mean we have to end there.

If you die trying for something important, then you have both honor and courage, and that's pretty good.

Courage is a hard thing to figure. You can have courage based on a dumb idea or mistake but you’re not supposed to question adults or your coach or your teacher because they make the rules. Maybe they know best but maybe they don’t. It all depends on who you are, where you come from.

That’s why courage is tricky. Should you always do what others tell you to do? Sometimes you might not even know why you’re doing something. I mean, any fool can have courage. But honor, that’s the real reason you either do something or you don’t. It’s who you are and maybe who you want to be.

It's never been about football, but about becoming the best and fullest person I could be. And to think that I went from the kid with a GPA in the basement to going to college on a football scholarship-I was thankful and humbled by how far I'd come in just a few years. I knew that miracles really do happen.