“Daryl Strawberry is in the house.” The Tampa narcotics convention was all abuzz with the news. When Tracy first met Daryl there 13 years ago, however, the sight sickened her. “Physically he was not well,” Tracy says. “He was in a dangerous state, active in his addiction, but people looked at him as just the baseball player.” Tracy had been sober for a year, and a week before they met, she had turned her life over to Jesus.
Daryl now agrees with Tracy. “I wanted to drink and drug,” he says. “You don’t want to get involved with me. My life is a mess. I’m a wreck,” he told her.
Even after he stole her car, Tracy refused to give up on him. She risked her own sobriety by chasing him, banging down crack house doors, and pulling him out. “I saw the potential,” she said. She finally left to return to her parents home in Missouri. If he really loved her, if he was totally committed to giving up his addiction and turning to Christ, she told him, he could follow and live in her parents’ basement.
“I didn’t have anything,” Daryl said. “She didn’t have anything. I was in debt for $3 million, but I felt free inside.” They never wavered about whether their relationship would work out, determined to let God lead them.
After they turned their lives over to Jesus, they got involved in worship in The Church on the Rock in St. Peters, slowly eased out of debt and married in 2006. Today, StrawberryMinistries.org aims to help people allow God to change them from within (Romans 12:2). They opened the Longview Christian Recovery Program in eastern Texas and plan to launch in Orlando and St. Louis.
“Here I am,” says Strawberry, “a baseball superstar, falling into the pits, having everybody write you off. Then, God says, ‘I’m going to use your mess for a message.’ How beautiful is that?”
How is your life right now? Are you a mess? God can do for you what he did for Daryl, use your mess for a message. Check out StrawberryMinistries.org today.
