When I was a kid, my mom would take my brother and I to the movies. It was  somewhat of a pastime for us to detach from our life and enter into this new  world through film for two hours right in the center. This movie by the name of  bad boys came out, which was directed by Michael Bay. That was the first movie I remember seeing where there were two heroes who looked like me, and they  weren't playing thugs or gangsters or drug dealers, but instead they were  playing heroes who were essentially running, gunning and saving the day. A  year later, Michael Bay's second film, The Rock came out, and that was the first  time I was exposed to Navy SEALs, and I was just blown away by this betrayal  of men who were coming out of the water and going into this place to go  sacrifice themselves to save others. That really resonated with me, and I  thought, if I was to ever turn my life around, that's what I would do. I don't know  gone ever since I was young, I always wanted to control things. When I would  want something, I would literally, if I had to, if I had to, I would run through walls  to get it. I've always felt like I needed to be the one to make things happen in my life, and it's hard for me to trust people or to trust something outside of me.  Through culture and music, I was constantly bombarded with this message that  said, You're a young African American male, you need to be a hustler, or you  need to be a thug, or you need to be a player, because I didn't have a positive  male role model to tell me otherwise, to say, No, this is not what a man is. This  is what a man is. I started out stealing from my mom that progressed to running  scams and that progressed to selling drugs. And when my father died, I took in  any and everything that I felt would satisfy that paternal void that would teach  me how to be a man. One day, I was laying in bed, and this voice, whatever it  was, it was a voice to me, but it was just, it just kept on pressing upon me that I  needed to join the military. I needed to get out of New York and join the military.  was what I needed to do. There's not many jobs out there where you can get  paid to, you know, jump out of planes and go after bad guys and protect those  who couldn't protect themselves, essentially be that guy who stood in the face of bullies and said, Not on my watch. My acting coach, he trained in a Stella Adler,  and Stella Adler was a proponent for actors getting out of their environment and  traveling the world, seeing different cultures, tasting different foods, experiencing love, experiencing pain, experiencing all these experiences that life has to offer,  and then taking those experiences and cataloging them so that actor is able to  pull from those experiences to bring the character to life. I went to cold weather  survival training in Alaska, and while I would walk through this wilderness, I  really had time to reflect upon myself in the silence, because it was completely  silent out there, I began to think about how I treated my mom and how I treated  people I claimed I loved, and I would think about things that I did in the past, and I still yearned for that paternal presence. I couldn't really sleep. And then I began to have suicidal thoughts. I was at the lowest point I had ever been in my entire  life. I didn't know anything about the Bible, but by a simple ounce of faith, I 

literally began to cry out to Jesus. Literally began to cry out to Jesus, help me.  Jesus, help me. Then I began to surround myself around Christians who didn't  just read the Bible, but they actually lived the Bible. And I began to pray and all I  wanted to do was be with Him and do for him and forsake that life I used to live  and live this new life with him. My whole life was dramatically changed, you  know, ladies and gentlemen, just like I felt God tell me you need to join the  military, I felt God pressing upon me the importance of it's time for you to get out of the military. It's time for you to move on. I have something else for you. I didn't know how I was going to pay the bills. I was expecting to have all these  opportunities for speaking engagements, because I got into speaking and that  didn't happen. The phones didn't ring. I began to get really nervous, because I  knew that I had only about six months of savings. I have a wife, and she's  pregnant with our first son. We're just barely scraping through like we're living  paycheck to paycheck. I had financial problems, and then to compound the  financial problems, we had significant marriage problems, and the marriage  problems were so bad, we both contemplated getting a divorce. It just didn't  work out the way I expected it, and when it didn't work out, I got so frustrated.  There were there was a point where I got mad at, God, I hear you wrong. Was I  supposed to get out of the military? Was I supposed to make that decision? It  was silence. It was silence. Around that time, I received a phone call from a lady who I worked with years prior. She she cast me in a TV show by the name of the last ship, you know, back in 2013 for as for a day of filming. And she said, Well,  I've been trying to, you know, find you for this movie that starts filming tomorrow.  And I was like, Okay, what movie is that? She said, Well, Transformers started  out as a day player. Two weeks later, I was called back for three more weeks of  filming. I started to get lines from the director, which was unusual for me,  because I was like, Wow, I'm just just no background extra. They said to me,  Hey, the director wants to upgrade you to a principal role. Are you available to  film for the rest of production? And I said, Absolutely, the director happened to  be Michael Bay. It's the same one who inspired me to be a seal. You know,  when you look at my story going from the Bronx to the military and to special  operations out of that in a marriage, having being a husband, being a father, and then now having a career in acting in the film industry. There's one word I could  sum it up with, is God. And so he's been with me throughout my entire life, he's  seen The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, and he's used it all to bring me to where  I'm at today. I don't want to force things anymore. I just want to allow God to do  whatever it is that he wants to do in my life. If he wants to take me out of this  acting career next week, then so be it if he wants me to get back into the  military. So be it if he wants me to go into ministry full time. So be it if he wants  me to take up a job I don't know, as a pilot or whatever. So be it because I know  that his plan is better than any plan that I could ever have, and even though his  plan may not make sense to me, within his plans is everything that I need, and 

everything that is not just good For me, but good for my family as well. 



آخر تعديل: الاثنين، 30 يونيو 2025، 10:29 ص