By Mallory Mattingly
Ever wonder how your favorite athletes came to Christ? Sports Spectrum’s “I Once Was” series does just that.
The faith-filled sports news outlet believes that “we want our stories to matter. It’s those stories of deep and lasting impact that come to life when a person encounters Jesus and responds to Him by faith.”
“I Once Was” sees “those in the pro sports world…share their own transformational stories, describing the very moment that changed their lives forever,” and recently, they talked to former professional soccer player Tijana Duricek.
Duricek and her twin sister were born in Serbia and grew up in a state of war.
“It was a big fall of Yugoslavia, then followed with the bombing, which was just a year after we were born,” she revealed. “So my family and I had to escape to a neighboring country to seek refuge and safety.”
As Duricek grew older, she noticed her father become a “very heavy alcoholic.”
“He would drink too much and become extremely abusive towards our mom,” she said. “Many nights when he would come back home, we didn’t know if our mom would make it or survive the night. Our hearts were really filled with fear of what was going to happen.”
In those times of fear, Duricek and her sister would recall the words of their grandmother, a faithful believer in Christ.
“She would always say that in our best and worst moments, when we are afraid, we can pray to Jesus because He’s the God who cares and who loves us,” the former soccer pro said.
“So we were in the other room, hearing all the screams and the pain from the other room, and just praying, ‘Jesus, if You’re really real, if You’re really alive, we need You right now. We need Your peace. We need Your presence right here with us,'” she added.
It was in that moment that Duricek found God.
Related: MLB Shortstop Tommy Edman Shares Testimony: ‘I Once Was’
“He [God] found us under that table, scared and afraid. He filled our hearts with presence,” she recalled. “He filled our hearts with peace that only He can give. It was the first time in my life that I knew that Jesus is alive, that He loves us, and that He cares for us deeply.”
As Duricek grew, she fell in love with soccer and wound up playing in college for Texas Christian University. While at TCU, Duricek realized that her identity was wrapped up in her performance.
“I really didn’t realize is how big of an idol soccer had become in my life. My love for the game was directly competing with my love for God,” she said. “I got offered my first professional contract when I was 17 to play for a team in Hungary. Just a month before signing it, I had my first ACL and meniscus injury and surgery, so the deal was off.”
As Duricek went in to get surgery on her knee, she felt God whisper to her, “If you never played a single game again, would you still trust Me? Would you still love Me?”
“I realized that God needed to do surgery on my heart before He needed to do one on my knee. He wanted to restore that relationship,” she remembered.
Looking back on that moment now, Duricek knows it was God’s “kindness that led me to repentance, where I truly got to find my identity in Him. I got to realize that I was not a sum of my every high and every low, but that my value was extravagant because I was created in the image of God. That just changed the way I viewed God. It had to change the way I viewed sport or did sport and played sport. That really brought freedom into my life — knowing that I’m fully loved and fully known, and that God’s love for me is not based on my performance.”
Just like Duricek, many other athletes, including Benjamin Watson, Tommy Edman, Nate Prosser and more, have shared how God saved them on Sports Spectrum’s “I Once Was.”
Read Next: ‘My Foundation’: Former NHL Player Reflects on His ‘Personal Relationship’ with Jesus
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