S3: God’s Plan

Caleb Campbell knew growing up that God’s plan for his life was sports. And when you believe that God himself is responsible for your football career, you feel a LOT of pressure to succeed.

By the time he makes it to the NFL, Caleb is suffering from severe depression and anxiety. He’s having regular panic attacks. He feels like he’s disappointed everyone, including God. He turns to drugs and alcohol to cope with his self-hate. 

When Caleb leaves sports behind and finds himself working as a church janitor, he finally begins to heal. 

Originally published 10/29/2019

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

---

I’m Nora McInerny, and this is Terrible. Thanks for asking.

If you grew up religious, specifically Christian, which is pretty much the only religion I know anything about, or if you are a fan of the singer-rapper Drake, you may be familiar with the term God’s plan.

The idea that God or the universe or whatever you want to call it, already knows your path in life. Caleb Campbell was very familiar with God’s plan growing up.

Growing up in evangelical Christianity, the number one thing you’re looking for is the will of God for your life, the purpose of God.

You grow up hearing this verse from Jeremiah 29, 11 is like, I have plans for you and plans to prosper and plans, so on and so forth, and I’ve always heard that verse and it’s like, you’ve got to know the will of God for your life.

You’ve got to know the purpose of God for your life. You just want to please God with your life.

Caleb knew that God’s plan for his life was sports. Caleb was good at them. He was strong.

He was fast.

Yeah, I was fast. Yeah, so like, I was just a really, really fast kid. I was the fastest kid in the region, basically.

The region is Texas.

And from the moment Caleb’s little but big for his age body stepped out onto a football field, he just knew what to do.

I think more or less you would know where the ball is going. Like, I could, from a defensive point, I would be like, oh, like, this makes sense. They’re going to run the ball right here.

This is where they’re going to run the football. So I know I need to be there to make the play.

And then from an offensive side, just knowing, basically looking at a defense, and it’s crazy because you’re six years old, just looking at a defense and knowing like where the week’s out of the defense is and being like, okay, this is where I’m

going to take this play. And I think early on I was gifted to play football. I intuitively knew things as a young kid on the football field that you normally wouldn’t know.

And so there was just like, oh, wow, like he’s gifted, like he’s a talented young boy. Football is definitely what he was supposed to do or is supposed to be doing in life.

Caleb was not just talented, he was driven by his love of God and the love of his mother. Caleb and his mom were all about football.

At 6, when Caleb got the game-winning touchdown in a flag football game, his mother took his little face in her hands and said to her beloved son, Caleb, you did it. We love you so much. And from that moment, his fate was sealed.

He would win. He would be loved. It was all tangled up together in a big little package named Caleb.

He would win. He would be loved. And it worked, at least with his mom, who is not just his mom.

She’s literally everything, Nora.

She’s my protector. She’s my validator. My mom became the god of my life.

She fought my battles. She spoke on my behalf. She contended for me.

She pushed me. She coached me. She was my driver.

She was my confidant. She was every role. That was my mother’s role.

And so from an early on, it really was like she was god in my life.

You can’t be a driven kid without a driven adult to drive you, literally to take you from point A to B to C over and over again. Most of parenting is just being an unrated Uber driver whose riders don’t appreciate that you pack them juice boxes.

But Caleb’s mom dedicated her life to her son’s life. She home schooled him for two hours each morning, then brought him to a gym where he’d train on his own for six hours, then pick him up, take him home, and finish up his schoolwork.

The goal was to win, to achieve excellence. But what does that mean when you’re a kid? Where is all this effort going?

That’s when I would start to hear my mother say, basically, you know, we don’t have the means to send you to college.

And if you want to do something with your life, if you want to be somebody, this is on you. And you’re going to have to use football or use sports and whatever capacity to make something of yourself.

To make something of himself, Caleb needed to break the cycle he saw around him in his small town in Texas, where people would graduate high school, get married and work in the oil fields until they retired.

Caleb’s goal was to work hard, get into a college and go pro. Work hard, go to college, go pro. So driven by God and by his mother, who was a licensed driver, unlike Jesus, Caleb was a football and basketball star by middle school.

I was the kid that was running wind sprints on my own because I wanted to get better.

I was shooting a thousand shots a day on the courts because I wanted to get better. I knew early on somebody was training harder than me and I didn’t want that.

Oh my goodness.

There was no room for failure at a very young age and I don’t even think I could explain to you what failure actually meant, other than disappointing God and disappointing my mom.

Sports were half of Caleb’s life. The other half of Caleb’s life was God. Caleb and his family would go to church at least a few times a week.

And I also remember being at church in junior high and we had like a guest minister come in and like they would turn to what we would call quote unquote a revival.

And so this guest minister was supposed to come in for two days and she ended up staying for a month. And we had nighttime services every single day for a month. And I remember getting what they would call a word from God over my life.

And this guest minister basically like prophesied over my life and saying like, you know, something along the lines is like, you’re going to be, you’re going to make the game winning shot in life or something like that.

As God’s plan would have it, Caleb was set to play a basketball game the Friday after this prophecy. Game day comes and the game is close. Caleb is playing his middle school hard out, but it’s neck and neck, fourth quarter.

The clock is ticking down. The crowd, many of whom were at that service earlier in the week where he was prophesied to make the winning shot. Watch Caleb get the ball at the last minute.

Watch him square up to the basket. Watch the ball leave his fingertips. Watch it arch through the air and miss.

Miss?

Missing that shot was wrong.

That’s not winning. Was God wrong or was Caleb wrong? Caleb is pretty sure that he’s the one who’s wrong because he’s supposed to be excellent.

This isn’t just a missed shot. Caleb’s not just going to kick the ball across the court, crush a can of Mountain Dew on his forehead, and get over it like some beefy jock man.

Caleb is really gentle, and moving from home school to a public middle school has not been an easy transition for him. He’s not a big popular jock bully.

I was the most soft-spoken. I had the most generous and big heart. I cried so much for other people.

Like, I would cry for the kid sitting alone at lunch. I honestly literally cry for this person. I didn’t curse.

I didn’t do anything that would get me in trouble. I walked a fine line, scared of getting in trouble, scared of disappointing people.

And missing the game-winning shot was definitely disappointing people. And if winning is how you earn love, what happens when you lose? Caleb didn’t want to know the answer to that.

Caleb was a star on the field and on the court, so you’d think he was the belle of the middle school ball. But no, he was a pariah everywhere. The love that he earned by winning had a limit to it.

Once the jersey came off and the game was over, the spell was broken.

I was extremely bullied early on. It was interesting because I was a star athlete, but when I say I was hated, I was literally hated.

I was an awkward kid, a very awkward kid, great football player, but I never felt like from an early age that I belonged anywhere. And so I always felt like I was an outcast, I always felt rejected, I had square pegs trying to fit in a round hole.

And my mom would make it worse even though she would try to make it better by like calling the parents of the kids who were creating so much and wreaking havoc in my life, it would just amplify it now when I went to school the next day.

So my mother would very much try to fight the battles with me being bullied and made fun of and humiliated on a daily basis.

And then she would also try to fight the battles with the coaches if she didn’t agree that the coaches were basically managing my giftings and my talents properly.

She meant the best and I love her dearly for it, but it just created a lot of chaos in our life.

That bullying is what Caleb thinks about as he trains on his own when other kids are making out in basements and stealing Pokemon cards from the corner store. It’s what Caleb dreams about when he’s being tormented in class.

That someday he’ll leave this town and his success will be a big fu to everyone who ever doubted him. At first, he has to get through high school. And high school is no better than middle school.

In fact, it’s much, much worse.

I mean, there were days that I would walk into school, and there would be Photoshopped images of me plastered on every single locker throughout the entire school.

There would be signs, a sign that said, somebody basically hijacked the digital sign in the office that was on the front of the school, and I drove to school and it said, National Kick Caleb’s Ass Day.

And it was just like a prank, and nobody ever got in trouble for this.

Because there were so many students involved, it was easier to remove me from the class and make me do my work in the office isolated and alone, instead of reprimanding the group of students who created so much chaos.

And so it just created this narrative that something is so intrinsically wrong with me. Like, what the fuck? Like, why am I the broken one?

Why am I the one getting in trouble? Something must be terribly wrong with me. But the only time I ever did feel some level of acceptance in life and like I belonged was when I was scoring touchdowns.

All of this energy makes Caleb hate himself, even when he’s winning games, even when he’s inducted into the Texas High School Football Hall of Fame while he’s still in high school, nothing’s good enough.

There’s nothing he can do or say, nothing he can win, that makes him good enough for the kids at school. And this is anxiety-inducing, and the only way Caleb knows how to deal with this anxiety is through God.

And God’s plan for Caleb’s anxiety was for Caleb to just banish it, for Caleb to rebuke it in the name of Jesus. How would you rebuke it? Like you would just be like…

Just say that.

Like, I rebuke that anxiety in the name of Jesus. You have no place in my life. And then you’d go on with life.

And you would honestly think that I have to have faith in Jesus to deal with this anxiety.

But Jesus is not a licensed mental health professional. And the rebukeing doesn’t work. So Caleb tries to act like his anxieties aren’t there, even if they are all the time and they’re getting stronger.

I remember one time in high school, I flipped out.

I had a meltdown. And I walked out. And I remember a kid that was on the football team.

He saw that I was so terribly upset. And we were not friends. He created a lot of chaos in my life.

Specifically, him. And I was like, I’m done. I want to go kill myself.

And I literally was, I wrote a suicide note that night before. And he, his words were, Caleb, we have a game tonight. And I was just like, are you fucking kidding me?

And I went on this hour long drive and he drove behind me. And he basically made sure that I got to the stadium.

And so there was just this narrative that like, OK, if I want to find something in life or acceptance in life and belonging in life and find my place in this world, all right, I better get my shit together and I better become the best damn football

Work hard, go to college, go pro.

But that vision of leaving this town, of going to a D1 college, is more complicated as high school goes on. Caleb’s mother’s devotion to managing her son’s gifts means that she makes a lot of phone calls.

To coaches, to teachers, administrators, what she views as enthusiasm is viewed by other people as meddlesome at best. Part of getting noticed by college coaches is having your high school coach do some networking and promotional work on your behalf.

Maybe they make some calls, send some game tape to college recruiters. Your high school coaches vouch for you and your talent and hopefully help you lock in a college scholarship. But Caleb’s coaches don’t do that.

They don’t put him forward to schools, possibly because they were so annoyed by his mom. And as Caleb’s high school career draws to a close, that window of opportunity is more like a keyhole.

By the end of senior year, Caleb has two choices if he wants to go Division I. There’s the University of Tulsa, or the United States Military Academy at West Point. When Tulsa takes back his scholarship offer, he has one choice.

He signs with West Point.

At the graduation ceremony, they would basically say your name and where you’re going to school, and if you got a scholarship, and how much the scholarship was for.

And they said, Caleb Campbell, United States Military Academy at West Point, scholarship $350,000. Which you don’t get a scholarship, like everybody goes to West Point for free, tax dollars are paying for it, and that’s the nature of West Point.

But that was like a moment where I knew my mom was like so proud, because it was like a big fuck you to everybody. Like you try to take my son down, but look at him now. And that’s how I honestly felt.

I honestly at an early age felt like, fuck you, I’m going to prove to you that you guys made the biggest mistake by making my life a miserable hell.

Caleb is on his way to that big F-U he dreamed of. He’s going to leave that town in his rear view mirror. But what Caleb doesn’t know is that hell was just getting started.

More on that after a little break.

And we’re back, back in Texas, packing up so we can head to upstate New York along the cliffs above the Hudson River at West Point at the United States Military Academy, where Caleb is now officially enrolled to play football and learn to be a

military officer. Expectations here are high. West Point is highly competitive, and Caleb is a star athlete who can really do something for their not-very-good football team.

Everyone expects everything from Caleb, and they’ve promised him that West Point is the place to fulfill his dreams in return.

You know, they sit you down with CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and basically saying like, this is what you’re going to get when you come to West Point.

And so it’s like a no-brainer, like I’m going to play division one football and then I’m going to serve my country and I’m going to be part of this elite group of people that just crush it in life.

Like, sure, I feel really special now, so I would identify it as a success.

Crushing it in life is a high bar. And yeah, Caleb has been crushing just about everything up to this point. But he’s also still that sensitive kid who cried for the kid alone at lunch, who got bullied all the time by all the people in his life.

I remember sobbing the day that I left my hometown, like just weeping out of fear.

The fear is the same one he felt as a kid when he lost that game-winning shot.

The same fear he felt any time he lost a game or made a mistake on the field. It’s the fear that he’s not going to be good enough and that everyone is going to find out.

And I remember thinking to myself as I was leaving to go to West Point, like I’m going to do whatever it takes to fit in. I don’t care what it costs me.

Mind you that like I don’t drink, I haven’t had sex, I’ve messed around with one high school girlfriend and we thought we were going to hell.

Not even joking, she burned her bra because she was so ashamed and we were so ashamed that my hands touched her boobs. So I have done absolutely nothing.

A military academy is not quite the freewheeling party that most college experiences might be for a bullied, teetotaling, virgin sports star. It’s a lot.

You’re trying to play Division I football with no food because you’re in boot camp as well. You are sleeping two to three hours a night, probably. They would say more, but literally two or three hours a night.

But even in your freshman year at West Point, Nora, your hands have to be cupped the entire year unless you’re in your bedroom or in a class.

If you’re in your bedroom or in your class, you can uncup your hands, but other than that, your hands have to be in a fist for the entire year. And it’s just like this weird discipline thing. You have only four responses as a first year cadet.

Yes, sir, no, sir, no, excuse, sir, and sir, I do not understand. And you have to memorize this Bible of knowledge. And at any point, an upperclassman can quiz you on your knowledge, and if you don’t know your knowledge, you’re reprimanded.

Remember that Caleb’s entire life up until now has been saturated with discipline.

He’s been through rigorous training his entire life. He grew up in a very religious household. And he’s entering a stiflingly disciplined and rigid environment.

And he really, really wants to fit in. He wants to be liked, loved.

I started drinking. We started to break rules. We started to get out, like try to get away with whatever we could get away with.

Everything so much shit was suppressed in me.

That release of Rebellion for the sake of fitting in uncorks a whole bunch of stuff along with it. Way more than Caleb expected.

All of this suppressed and all this repressed energy is coming to the surface. And I turn into a nightmare. I turn into literally the Hulk.

I am just a giant full of rage. I walked out of my room, and you have to be in a uniform at all times at West Point, and I walked out of my room with my shirt untucked.

And an upperclassman basically put me up on the wall, which is standard protocol, and started hazing me because my shirt was untucked. And it was my first moment of rage. Where I went black, everything went black, and I flipped.

And I started punching myself uncontrollably in my face, trying to get him to punch me so that I could fight, just so that I could release the inner, just release the rage. And I started, I was screaming at the top of my head.

I started, my nose started bleeding, uncontrollably punching myself in my face, like, hit me, hit me, motherfucker, hit me. And everybody now is out of their rooms in the hallway, and this guy is just terrified.

And he backs off, he’s like, whoa, dude, like calm down. And I walk away.

And I’m holding back my tears because I remember thinking in this moment, like, I’m in so much trouble, I’m in so much trouble, but nobody here is going to question if I’m weak or not.

I went to my best friend Jordan’s room, and I just broke down, and I lost it. Just uncontrollably sobbing. And that was my first moment of real rebellion.

Found myself in a lot of trouble the next day.

Being reprimanded is a punishment called brigade board, which amounts to spending a Saturday in your full uniform walking in a square for six hours at a time. Caleb gets 90 hours for beating the crap out of himself. With 90 hours of walking.

Caleb pays with his time. And he pays the way he always has by hating himself. And by being hated.

There’s an unspoken rule not to speak to Caleb unless he speaks to you first, which means that off the field he’s left alone. On the field he’s worshiped by a crowd of fans and by his mother, who is still there on the sidelines cheering him on.

I remember my freshman year, my mother actually divorced my father and followed me to West Point. And my mom found this group of people and they worship my mom because I was her son.

And so my mom like found this external validation and this whole new level of love, like where she felt like I’ve invested everything in you and now I’m getting the reward too, it’s paying off for me as well.

So she’s also finding this love and acceptance that she’s basically, that has been up to this point unparalleled in our life.

The dream is still in effect. Work hard, get to college, go to the pros. Caleb’s done the work, he’s doing the work, he’s in college.

But it starts to become clear that getting to the pros is going to be harder.

Caleb is in the military training to be an officer, which means when he looks ahead towards life after graduation, he’s got five years of military service to do, which is unlike his peers in other football programs at other schools who get drafted to

I had a standout sophomore year in football, and I was nationally known now as a football player.

Everybody knew me, so NFL scouts started to come around. NFL coaches started coming around, and they started to ask, like, wait, like, what’s the deal with this Campbell kid? Can we draft him?

Can he, like, he’s on a draft board now, sophomore year, he’s the number six strong safety in the entire country. Like, we want him, like, what’s the deal? And so there was all this talk going on.

That talk is about changes to a policy called the Alternative Service Obligation Policy.

It’s a policy that typically allows members of the armed forces to train for and compete in the Olympics as their military service. But this change would allow the policy to fit Caleb’s situation.

So if it changed, Caleb could be drafted by the NFL and would serve as a recruiter during the off season and serve in the capacity of a professional football player during the season.

And Caleb is excited because he might get to achieve his dreams on time. And the Army is excited because no one from West Point has ever gone directly to the NFL. And this would be a huge recruitment tool for them.

I’m sitting at a table with two three-star generals, several one-star generals, a two-star general, and a bunch of colonels and me.

And they’re telling me what my future is going to look like. And that’s when they tell me about this new policy that was just created basically for me. Where if I was good enough to get drafted in the NFL, they would let me go and play.

And suddenly, I’m like, wow, God, you’ve got me. This is your plan for my life.

You just created something that’s really never happened before in the history of one of the most historical schools in our country and arguably the greatest leadership school in our country and arguably the world. And you just did this for me.

This really is my plan. This really is my purpose.

This is years of history being changed. Maybe not because of Caleb, but in time for him. If there’s any bigger confirmation that you’re on the right path, what could it be?

This is the culmination of Caleb and his mother’s life work. He could go to the NFL. He has the ability to be drafted.

In his senior year, it seems like it’s going to happen. He’s even one of the few players who are invited to attend the draft.

Not only do they invite me to the NFL Draft, Seventh Round comes up, and they’re basically following me live throughout the entire draft. So the entire world watching this draft is getting this story of Caleb Campbell and West Point. Is he gonna go?

Is he not gonna go? Like, what’s his deal now? What’s gonna happen?

And the Seventh Round happens, and the commissioner of the NFL, which he’s never done ever, walks to the podium in the Seventh Round, and he says, like, you know, with the 218th pick, I’m happy and proud to announce that the Detroit Lions have

selected Caleb Campbell. And the entire Radio City Music Hall, filled to capacity, is chanting, like, USA, USA. Like, I am now the feel-good story of this NFL draft. Everybody in the country and the sporting world now knows my name.

Listen, Caleb Campbell being selected by the Detroit Lions out of West Point may have been the feel-good story of the second day of the draft and maybe the entire draft.

This is a huge FU to his high school tour mentors.

Caleb drops the mic and heads back to West Point that night to celebrate. And we will be right back.

We’re back, Caleb has just been drafted to play pro football for the Detroit Lions. His dreams to work hard, go to college, and go pro has reached its culmination. He did it, these are life dreams coming true.

Caleb leaves New York City in the spectacle of the NFL draft. They drive up the Hudson River and arrive back at West Point, where he’s met by his friends and a box of pizza and a night of celebration. He’s the feel-good story of the moment.

But just after falling asleep, Caleb isn’t feeling so good.

I woke up at two in the morning and I thought I was dying. And I was having my first panic attack. And I crawled to the bathroom and I turned on every shower in the bathroom.

And I just laid there for almost 45 minutes and I uncontrollably sobbed once I was able to catch my breath. And because I, for the first time in my life was like, I just made it to the NFL, like this is everything that I’ve been looking for.

I could literally cry right now. What if I don’t make it? Like what happens now?

Like if this is all the acceptance I’ve been looking for, how do I sustain this? You know, like how do I hold on to this now? And that was when fear really hit me.

And I was like, oh my God, now I’m risking losing it all. If I’m not good enough, I’m going to risk losing it all.

The goal was to get there to the NFL. If he could just get there, he’d be good enough. And after graduating from West Point, Caleb was there at the pros at his first week of workouts in Detroit.

But when you get on the field, that’s what I wasn’t ready for.

Like when you get on the field, everything is fast. There is like drill after drill after drill, and you know, like, you go here, you go here, you go here. And there is like not one step lost.

You cannot be behind one step in anything. And there’s no room for mistakes. And I was just making mistake after mistake after mistake.

And so it was finally like, Campbell, you fucking suck. Get off the field, go inside. And then you’re like, holy shit.

Like all the media is there. Everybody’s watching. And I just get kicked out of practice.

And I got to go inside. I just knew that holy shit, I’m not going to be able to make it.

He’s deathly afraid of being cut from the team. And that signing due date comes a little closer.

The day of my contract signing, the morning I was supposed to get my contract signing, I got called back to the NFL Stadium. And everybody was sitting in a room, and there was this phone, and somebody was on the phone.

And that’s when they told me that that policy that they signed and put into motion my sophomore year is no longer in place. And I have to return back to active duty immediately.

To pack my bags, I can’t play football, that policy no longer exists, and you got to come back to West Point now and wait a future assignment to the military.

Just like that, Caleb’s NFL dreams are stripped away. The Department of Defense overturned the Army’s decision for reasons that are unclear. Caleb’s NFL dreams are done.

I was rejoicing that they called me back to active duty and I couldn’t play because I, it was like I got to get out of jail free card.

So much of the sports world had sympathy for me, and I didn’t have to be exposed as this failure or this fraud that didn’t have what it takes to make it in the NFL. And so I protected my face, like I was able to hide.

Caleb leaves Detroit to return to service. His goal is to keep training and working on his football skills so that when his military term of service is over, he can go back and survive the NFL.

I knew that everybody was counting on me going back, and I still knew deep down that this was God’s purpose for my life and God’s plan for my life, and I gotta go back.

So for three years, Caleb gets up every morning at 4 a.m. and goes to sleep at 11 p.m. just so he can work out twice a day.

And that’s outside of his military duties. He becomes even bigger, even faster, and even stronger. And when he returns to the Detroit Lions as a free agent, he is so physically ready, it’s intimidating.

The day that I got back to the NFL, my first practice, I said, this is it.

And I knew I was ready for it. And I knew the fear that I had dealt with three years prior. I was just so confident and sure.

I was confident in my ability and my skill set and my strength and my size and my speed. And I remember walking out on that field that day and then hitting the turf and like running onto the field.

And as soon as I stepped onto the actual football field, I stopped. It was like a truck hit me full of fear. And not even exaggerating that I had to run around the corner of the building and I started to puke because I knew I was fucked.

I knew that the same fear that had hit me almost three years prior didn’t just come back, but it came back bigger and much more heightened. And I realized like, holy shit, I’m fucked.

Caleb is a brick wall of a human. He’s talented. He’s smart.

He knows the game. He’s physically and mentally absolutely capable of getting on that field and holding his own. But emotionally, he’s an imposter.

He’s terrified. He’ll fail. He’s sure he will fail.

So his goal immediately changes from playing in the pros to just being in the pros. And there is a difference.

Trying to be good enough to actually be on the practice roster or be on the team, but not good enough to play on Sundays.

Because if I could be good enough to be on the practice roster, I had little or a chance of being exposed as somebody that didn’t have what it takes.

And I still got all the recognition, the love and the acceptance of going out during the week and being on an NFL team and people worshiping you and loving you and me getting that hit of just acceptance.

But not good enough to play on Sundays because if I played on Sundays, I really risked the world seeing me and being exposed as somebody that just wasn’t good enough. I hated myself and the shame that I was living in.

Nora, like, I then, I, oh my god, I remember when I, you know, just living with the tension, my back and my muscles and my body spasming and having anxiety attacks and panic attacks, walking into the NFL locker room, the stadiums for my practice and

just every day feeling this sense of rejection and outcasts and like, I don’t belong here, I don’t belong here, I don’t belong here and not knowing how to process that. Because at this point, I can’t name my emotions, I can’t name my feelings, I

can’t name my thought, I can’t name anything. I’m just, I live 100% reactive to what I feel. And it’s just chaos. And I don’t know how to deal with it.

With adoration and debilitating stress, Caleb starts to treat his anxiety with something other than Jesus.

It’s just drug after drug after drug and drink after drink after party after party, just trying to cope with how bad I hate myself.

I didn’t want to study my playbook, Nora, because if I studied my playbook and I went out there on the field and I wasn’t still good enough, what does that say about me now?

At least in not studying my playbook, I could go out there on that field and not be good enough and have the excuse in my back pocket that I didn’t actually study my playbook. But if I did study my playbook, things would be different.

What are you afraid of at this point in your life?

Living an insignificant life. I think that’s always been my fear.

Caleb has achieved all of his dreams. He served his country in the armed forces. He’s accomplished his goal of making it to the NFL.

He’s actually living his dream of being in the NFL. But he’s no longer really dreaming. Instead, that space is being filled with fear, the fear of failure, the fear that he’s not good enough, the fear of living an insignificant life.

Caleb bounces between the active roster and the practice roster, back and forth. He plays in three games, he makes three tackles. One season, after he starts in Detroit, he gets cut by the Lions.

After that, he gets picked up by the Indianapolis Colts for their practice team. And then he’s cut again after two months and put right back into the free agent pool. He still has panic attacks, he still can’t find his place.

He’s seriously considering leaving the NFL entirely. His worst expectations of himself are coming true. He’s not good enough.

Caleb spends nine days in his once basement in Colorado before getting a call from the Kansas City Chiefs. They want him on the team.

And I was like, all right, I’m going to give it one more shot. Scared to death, but I’m going to give it one more shot.

And I go out to Kansas City and the general manager of the team, he’s a spirit-filled Christian and he’s talking to me about God and how he feels like the Lord laid it on his heart to bring me in. I’m just like, what?

Like, oh my God, like, this is amazing. Like, this is what I, for the first time, I feel like I’m home. I love Kansas City and I love this atmosphere at the stadium.

Like, wow, this is amazing. Like, did I get through it? Is this what I’ve been looking for?

And when I get to Kansas City, it’s just like everything like aligns properly. And I remember, because I had mentioned, like practice is everything. And I remember going to my first practice at Kansas City, Nora, and I crushed it.

Literally had the best practice of my NFL career. Everybody’s congratulating me. People are like, you know, slapping me on my ass and on my helmet and saying, great job, like you’re doing it.

We’re pumped that you’re here. Everything is good, right? And I remember just feeling like, fuck, I did it.

This is what I’ve been waiting for.

Finally. And now that he’s dominated a practice, Caleb is excited to finally be pointed out as the example of what to do on the field. For the first time, he’s not dreading sitting in a room and reviewing the practice tape with the team.

This time I’m like, hell yeah.

Like I just had an amazing practice. Like this is going to be great. I’m ready for this.

I’m excited. I’m laughing. I’m having a good time.

And I remember sitting down in my seat and I remember me coming up on the film and coach said like, where’s this new kid Campbell at? And I’m like super excited, right?

Because I’m like, oh yeah, like he’s going to congratulate me and like awesome and whatever. And I’m like, I’m here coach. And he looks at me and he takes this long dramatic silence pause.

And he looks at me and he says, if I ever see you do this shit again, you’ll never see this field or this team, or you’ll never put on a uniform from this team, as long as you’re in the NFL.

And then he proceeded to basically unravel this play and find every small thing that I did wrong. I was so angry. I was biting my lip to the point of bleeding.

And I remember freaking out, walking out that day, and looking up at God and walking out and storming out and just being like, God, when the fuck is good enough, ever good enough for you?

And that’s when I realized something was drastically wrong in my life, and I had to walk away from football to go figure it out.

Three months later, Caleb gets cut from Kansas City. And instead of re-entering the free agent pool and trying to make it back onto a practice roster on some other NFL team, Caleb walks away.

Away from the NFL, away from his mother’s expectations, away from his significant life.

When I got cut for the final time and I told my mom, I’m done with the NFL, and I called her and I told her that, like I’m done, she said, what am I going to do with my life now?

And I think that illustrates my relationship with my mother and her relationship to me. But I just remember being like, wow, okay. And my response was, don’t worry about a mom.

I’ve got us. I’ll take care of us. I’ll figure something out.

And I don’t, I just knew that like, who is Caleb Campbell? Like who the fuck are you? I have no idea.

Where does he walk to?

Right back to his aunt’s basement, to drink and turn down job offers from former classmates who are now working with big medical companies where Caleb would make really good money, but in his mind, be insignificant.

And I’m sitting in my aunt’s basement, and I’m on the third bottle of wine, and I’m drunk, and I’m scrolling through Twitter, and I come across this Twitter feed from a church in Canada that somehow ends up on my Twitter feed, never met these people

before, and I’m just like, holy shit, thank you. You are putting to words how I feel in this moment. And I felt known. Looking back, it was the first time I felt known and seen in my life.

I packed up my car with what could fit in my car, and I drove to Canada, and I walked into this church, and I basically said, hi, my name’s Caleb, you guys don’t know me.

I don’t know any of you, but I really feel in my heart, and I’m sorry if this sounds crazy, but God told me that I was supposed to come here. Can you help me? And they said, yeah, we can help you.

And I went from playing in the NFL to sleeping on the basement floor in a boy, the room of a church for almost four years and became the janitor of a church. Fuck, I just took 20 steps back. Like nobody knows where I’m at.

Everybody thinks I lost my mind. My parents think I need to go check into a Looney Tune. A four-star general personally calls me and tells me that I’m committing career suicide for this decision.

Nobody agrees with me. I’m all alone and I’m trusting complete strangers in my life to help nurture me and lead me down this process. And I don’t have a damn clue who Caleb Campbell is.

Caleb has made it to the church God told him to go to.

He’s finally in the place where his soul can rest, where he can just be Caleb. But he doesn’t know how to do that.

I had my bags packed for about six or seven months. And I told myself I was gonna leave every single day. But it was this level of just self-forgiveness that the people that I had hurt along the way and my self-hatred.

I lived with so much self-hatred. I hated myself. I had zero compassion for myself, zero grace for myself.

I held myself to the most just absolutely ridiculous standards in life that nobody could meet. And I demanded that of myself every single day. I tried to bring like this performance-driven mindset into healing.

And it crushed me about six months in. And I just, like, I didn’t know how, I knew how to, like, take my life forward by doing more and being more and achieving more.

I didn’t know how to take my life forward by surrendering, because surrendering was a sign of weakness, or I looked like losing and looked like failure. And so it just, it just wreaked havoc on me. And the depression hit me at an all-time high.

And after months of using his performance-driven approach at the church and perpetuating his own anxiety and self-degradation, Caleb finally opens up and begins to heal.

They built so much intimacy with me, so much trust with me, where I was allowing myself for the first time now, arguably since I was a little kid, allowing myself to be seen and to go and do inner child healing.

And healing basically was the journey of losing all of the ways that I have found to protect myself, all of the ways that I have found to find love for myself outside of myself, all the ways that I found to find acceptance and validation and

affirmation in this world, outside of myself. And through the healing process, you learn how to find all of that internally.

From his earliest memories, Caleb has been defined by what he does or what he could do. He spent his life trying to get somewhere, trying to accomplish something, trying to be significant, to be loved, to be worthy.

So after six years of working on himself, after cognitive behavioral therapy, and working with a mentor, after eventually leaving Canada and heading to California without a plan, who is Caleb Campbell?

I’m just Caleb, and it means, like, if you look at my name from a biblical standpoint, it means I’m a man with a different spirit, and I’m a wholehearted man. That’s what it means from a biblical standpoint, and I really think that’s who I am.

I’ve never stopped looking for what has been rightfully mine this entire time. For me, honestly, personally, like, I’ve woke up my entire life trying to live a significant life, and now I wake up living from a place of significance.

You know, that’s always been the driving force in my life, because I’m trying to find my thing so that I can feel significant and so that I can feel success in life, right? I gotta find my thing.

And I had a conversation with somebody, and they said, Caleb, you don’t see it, do you? And I was like, see what? And he said, you’re the thing you’ve been looking for.

Like, you are your lane, you are the thing. And I was like, what? And I caught a glimpse of it, but I couldn’t fully understand it.

And because I couldn’t fully understand it, it let me down what I would call a deeper level of holy frustration, where I was really just like so frustrated.

And it brought me down this level of surrendering, doing some work and journaling and some like just flow stream journaling and some subconscious work where I was like, holy shit, I am what I’ve been looking for. I am my thing.

Okay, I have one more. I was just thinking about the pastor who had the prophecy over your life, saying that you’re gonna get the game-winning shot in life. Do you think about that?

And maybe she was right, just in a different way?

She was so right. Yeah, she was so right. And I think that’s the whole point of life.

I think life is learning how to detach ourselves from the expectations of the way that we think life is going to look like.

Because every time we live life according to our expectations and thinking life is going to be the way that we think life is going to look like, we literally reduce God or we put God in a box to meet our agendas.

The expectations and the promises that God or this universe has for your life is true. It’s real. 100%.

I don’t have a lot to say about God’s plan, but I know a little something about seeking love and approval through accomplishment and approval.

Like if you approve, stranger, listener I’ve never met, I’m okay. If you do not, literally I will change everything about myself immediately. Just send an email to norachangeyourselfatttfa.org.

I do know that it’s the work of a lifetime to try to untangle our self-worth from what we do and how we do it and how well we do. And I know that Caleb is still young and the process is not finished for him.

It’s never really finished for any of us, I don’t think, at least not for those of us who are blessed slash cursed with any fraction of a sense of self-awareness. We will spend our lives on this, on this journey. And I did say journey.

And Hans was like, really, you want to say journey? Yeah, dude, it’s a journey. Pack your bags.

We’re trying to get better. We’re trying to figure out where we’re going and why. And I wish us all the best of luck.

And so does Caleb.

It’s just never going to happen the way you think or expect it to happen because that’s the process. It’s got to go that way because in that process, you’re going to begin to discover who you really are through an inner healing journey.

And that is the spiritual journey back home to yourself.

I’m Nora McInerny, and this has been terrible. Thanks for asking. Our senior producer is Hans Butow.

Marcel Malekebu is our associate producer. Hannah Meacock-Ross is our project manager. Jordan Turgin, and just really every, all the things.

Jordan Turgin, big, big help. Megan Palmer is our intern and a vegan. Sasha Aslanian is a gentle and kind soul who always gives us such insightful comments on our episodes and helps us get them ready and helps them be better.

Sasha is on this journey with us. Thank you for being on this journey with us, Sasha. I strongly recommend following Caleb on Instagram.

His handle is Caleb underscore Campbell. You can find him at CalebCampbell.me. He’s just a lovely, lovely, wonderful, wonderful person.

I’ve been reading a lot of books about stuff like the brain and how it works. I’m reading this one called The Whole Brain Child by Dan Siegel. He’s a doctor.

It’s really to help you raise your kids better, but I found it really helpful for myself because maybe I’m a child. Anyways, we’ll link that on our Instagram, which is TTFA Podcast. You can find me on the internet at Nora Borealis.

We are a production of APM, which stands for American Public Media. Oh, our theme music is by Joffrey Wilson and he’s a dad now. He’s the best.