How Terry Crews Found Strength in Vulnerability
Movieguide® Contributor
EVERYBODY HATES CHRIS actor Terry Crews is sharing one of his God-given “superpowers” — vulnerability, a trait that didn’t come easily for this previously prideful man.
“One day in February 2010, I was on location in New York City. Rebecca was home in L.A. We were arguing on the phone, and I finally broke down and told her everything I’d tried to keep hidden — emotions I didn’t even understand why I was having,” the AMERICA’S GOT TALENT host revealed, “primal fears of vulnerability and loss of control that my muscles could no longer conceal.”
He confessed to his wife, Rebecca, that he had a pornography addiction and cheated on her before.
But a lot of things happened for Crews to get to that point of vulnerability.
His father was abusive, and for much of Crews’ life, he dreamed of putting him in his place. One day, he finally got that chance when he left his kids with his family on Christmas and his dad punched his mom.
He dropped what he was doing, went to his parents’ house and asked everyone except his dad to leave.
When they were alone, he told his dad, “I’m grown now, and you will never lay hands on my mother again.”
READ MORE: TERRY CREWS OPENS UP ON OVERCOMING PRIDE, ADDICTION: ‘GET REAL WITH GOD’
“Then I punched my father in the face. Hard. Years of anger were bound up in that fist,” he recalled.
But that moment he dreamed of for years didn’t feel like he thought it would.
“All I felt was empty. Hollow,” the former Movieguide® Awards emcee said.
“I thought it would feel good. And he’s on the ground, bleeding, crying, and I didn’t feel one bit better. It left me with nothing,” he said.
“My dad wasn’t the only one crying,” he continued. “I bawled like a baby, full of shame and remorse. I’d never felt so vulnerable than at that moment, worse than when my dad had shunned me all those years before.”
This was the start of his path toward letting go of sin.
“For most of my life, something like that would have been an unbearable humiliation,” Crews said of his pornography addiction. “Now I work every day to become a better husband and father.”
“I have discovered strength in vulnerability, for who was stronger and yet more vulnerable than Jesus, who loved the poor and weak and defied the Pharisees. Who sacrificed his earthly life so we could live with him in heaven. What requires more vulnerability than to forgive and be forgiven? Well, I’m working on that.”
“I remember that love conquers fear — always — and that to be a man means accepting myself, weaknesses and all. That’s my true superpower,” he said.
READ MORE: TERRY CREWS’ WIFE GIVES ‘PRAISE AND GLORY TO GOD’ FOR RESTORING MARRIAGE
- Content: +1Share:
- Content: +3