DEREK: I will say that both of my brothers
enjoyed giving me a football and saying, "Hey, can you hit that house over there?" or "Hey,
can you throw it that far and hit that sign?" Or for at the beach, "Can you hit that umbrella?" Derek Carr, NFL Quarterback I think Christ really became real to me when my wife -- who is now my wife; at the time, she was just a friend -- she wrote me a letter,
and it said, "You're not the person that I thought you were. HEATHER: He would say one thing, but act the
opposite way. So he was talking about God and how much he loved God, and then I would
see him going to the parties, hanging out with the girls. DEREK: Staying till 3 a.m., all those things.
That was my lifestyle. HEATHER: I thought he was so in love and on
fire for God, but then I saw what he was doing, and it just wasn't adding up. God was speaking. Derek Was listening. DEREK: I remember at that moment, I felt so
selfish, I felt so arrogant, and I felt so cocky. But I was still a nice, genuine person,
but all of a sudden all these feelings came upon me. I got down on my knees, and it was
finally that time where God kind of put His foot down on my throat and said, "Hey, I've
got special plans for you, and you're screwing it up." HEATHER: So I ended up sitting down, talking
to Derek, and he had apologized how he acted to me; he apologized how he'd not been living
the Christian life. DEREK: And next week, we had a game at
the University of Ole Miss, and I got up in front of my whole team, and I told them, I
said, "Guys, I've been calling myself a Christian, and I haven't been living it.
You guys know what I've been doing. I'm a Christian now, and I've asked God for
His forgiveness. Now watch how I live my lifestyle," and that's really what a Christian's about. HEATHER: So that's when we started hanging
out again, and then later on we started to date. Then we made it official, and then...
yeah. Dallas Mason Carr was born on August 5, 2013 DEREK: I remember just looking at him,
and I was just in awe of God's creation. HEATHER: You pack all the first day outfits
that you're going to go home with, and you're just so ready to take your baby home. But later that night everything began to change. Dallas began to experience vomiting that wouldn't stop. DEREK: I remember I went to go grab the
nurse because I knew something was wrong.
I've been around seven nieces and nephews, but I'd never seen anything like that. HEATHER: I couldn't sleep. I held him all
night, sat straight up, would not fall asleep. And you're already so exhausted from giving
birth. DEREK: He had x-rays done and all that.
He tells us Dallas is going to have to have surgery, emergency surgery. Before he went
into surgery, they wheeled him out, and we all grabbed hands and I prayed over him, and
I prayed for strength, and I praised God that we even had one day to spend with him. I remember just laying down, and I finally
-- I was so tired that as soon as my head hit, I fell asleep. They woke me up and the
doctor said everything was great. HEATHER: They told us at that time we'd
spend 48 hours in the NICU, and then we'd get to go home. Well, I remember 48 hours
later, he ended up having a second surgery. After 23 days in the hospital Dallas was released, and Derek and Heather brought him home. We were home for about two weeks, and Dallas
started to throw up again. So we ended up taking him to the emergency room, and this
time the surgery was five hours long. So you're just waiting there like, "Is something really
wrong? What's going on?" DEREK: I kept telling my wife that he was
going to be okay. She kept saying, "How are you so strong?" and I told her, "If
you only knew. If you only knew," because I would go into the bathrooms and cry my eyes
out. You can be a real Christian, but be dying inside, because we're human. The Carr family was finally able to go home. Dallas hasn't been sick another day. HEATHER: I just remember feeling God's peace
that I could not ever explain. DEREK: That's how I know He's with
me, because I have a peace and a joy. I can't describe it, but I have it, and I know it's
real.
