Twist of faith

Ramon Diaz, Jr. was a rock star in high school — not from being in a band, but from athletics, his lifestyle and his attitude that he was all about being cool, being a jock, partying and existing as the center of attention.

That was from the outside. Inside, it was a whole different story.

Diaz felt empty and isolated. He describes himself as always wearing a mask that he knew people expected to see. As his life began to crash and burn around him in college, though, he finally pulled his mask off and purposely moved his life in a totally different direction – toward God and being true to himself and others in his life.

Diaz, now 23, grew up in Morris. He was always into sports and excelled in them throughout school. He played on the 2004 Morris Redskins’ state runner-up football team and was named an all-state tackle that year. He also played basketball for Morris and was named an all-state power forward for the 2004-2005 season.

“In high school,” he said, “I was always ‘that guy’ – the partier, the jock, the rocker and I rose to that occasion.

“I was raised as an athlete. My dad’s message of love was training, training, training, work, work, work and athletics. If I didn’t work hard, I felt I wasn’t deserving of love and attention, even of God’s love.

“What a curse that was. Even today, I struggle with that, wanting to just beat myself up to feel worthy.”

Inside, Diaz had always felt empty, even though he tried hard to not let people know.

“Going to high school, I thought as long as I had enough cool kids around me and a girlfriend and was playing well on the field, I was alright,” he said. “I went through those four years with this mask.”

Diaz now knows that most teenagers do the same. It’s Satan’s influence on us, he said.

“Satan tells kids no one will understand your story,” he said, “and you’re too weird and you should not talk about your emotions. Little by little, I was dying inside.”

Diaz didn’t have the kind of religious faith on which to fall back in those days, either. Although he had gone to church all his life, he said it was always a remote experience for him.

“I went solely on the reasoning that my parents went,” he said. “What I learned didn’t really make sense to me, though. A lot of it was just tradition.

“Nobody really took the time out to explain God’s love to me. Emotionally, I was so apart from the church. Mentally, I was completely checked out. It was very easy for me to walk away from the church.”

Diaz graduated from high school in 2005 and went to prestigious Northwestern University on a full football scholarship.

What should have been the time of his life ended up as one of the lowest points. Early injuries forced him off the field onto the sidelines his freshman year.

He and his long-time girlfriend also broke up at that time, and his grades were suffering.

“I thought I was a failure in my life. And I had this constant fear of being alone,” he said. “I thought I just needed somebody to hold me and tell me I was loved. I didn’t have that in my life as a child or then. I felt that no one really cared how I felt.”

Diaz went into clinical depression and began drinking more and getting into what he called promiscuous relationships. Falling deeper into his pit of depression his sophomore year, Diaz took too many of his prescription pills one day that had been given to him for his injuries and for depression.

“I felt my coaches had given up on me because I was so injury-prone,” he said. “I felt I had let everyone down in Morris because of that, and because I knew I wouldn’t be able to go to the NFL. I felt like I was done.”

Waking up hours too late for his classes the next day, Diaz told his academic counselor what he had done, and she told his coaches. Diaz was at his lowest point. He remembers going into the street and yelling at God for what he thought God was doing to him.

“I yelled an obscenity at him,” he said. “I was so naïve. I was pointing fingers at God like he made those decisions for me. I was using my own free will, but I was blaming it on God.”

Then, out of nowhere, a teammate invited him to an FCA (Fellowship of Christian Athletes) meeting.
"I told him I couldn't because I was Catholic," Diaz remembers saying.

He was told that Catholics are Christians, too, and that the meetings were open to everyone. He still balked, but the offer of free food got him to the meeting. What he found there was more than pizza, though, and Diaz found himself taken aback.

“They all greeted me with love,” he said. “The way I felt – that love – I had never felt that way before. They came up to me and hugged me and told me they loved me. I couldn’t understand why they were being so nice to me when I was such a sinner.

"Later, I found out it was because of God's unconditional love. It was being given to me through them."
Diaz kept attending FCA, still with some cynicism, but it was a weekend Christian retreat for college athletes where the message finally hit home.

By the end of the weekend, he found himself pulled up and out of his chair and up to the front of the room, where he accepted Christ into his life.

“I had goosebumps, and it felt like a rush of wind on me, but we were inside a building,” he said. “I felt like someone had pushed me out of my chair, but it wasn’t a person. It was the Holy Spirit.

“When I got up there, I just started crying. I didn’t know why, but I was on my knees sobbing. My friend was right there beside me on his knees to support me. I knew I had found God finally.

“That was the start of my new life. After that, things started getting easier.”

Little by little, Diaz’s injuries began to heal, and he was back playing left tackle on the football field his junior and senior years. His grades began to climb back up to where they should have been, and he double majored in political science and economics. He continued to attend FCA meetings and got active in Campus Crusade for Christ, as well as Destino, a Latino Christian group.

He graduated Northwestern last year and began an inner city youth ministry in Chicago with a group, By the Hand. Even with solid degrees from one of the top universities in the world, Diaz had decided it was God’s plan for him to devote his life to Christian youth ministry.

“My calling is to be a youth minister,” he said, “and I know that now. I know that because of the way I’m able to personally connect with kids. I have been where they have been, and they can feel that.”

Diaz moved back to Morris in May, and he began volunteering for the Christian Youth Center Morris and joined the church, My Father’s House of Prayer. He was baptized in that church just last month and was one of the speakers for this year’s Morris Community High School Baccalaureate.

This past week, he has been a volunteer at the Family Youth Bible Camp at Lake Williamson in Illinois, and he couldn’t be happier.

“I love sharing the gospel with kids,” he said. “Eventually, I want to do full-time ministry.”

His church has begun offering ministerial classes affiliated with Oral Roberts University, and Diaz plans on beginning those right away. He also has hopes of starting a Latino ministry in Morris, something which My Father’s House of Prayer pastor Rick Barnard said he has been considering for several years.

Diaz still finds it amazing to think about God’s love and how it had really been there for him all along.

“It’s amazing to know that there is someone who loves you so much that he was put on the cross and died for our sins,” he said. “I am where I am now because of the healing through prayer that I received. Walking alongside God now has helped me see this with clarity.”