Covering his nose with his shirt, 13-year-old Rashad Jennings opened his dad’s bedroom door. His father, Albert, sat with a cigarette in one hand and a bottle of alcohol in the other.
“Can you stop drinking and smoking?” he asked his dad. “If not for yourself, then for me?”
A few months earlier, Rashad’s mother, Deborah, had rushed Rashad to the hospital. He had suffered an asthma attack. Afterward, the doctor warned him to avoid anything that could trigger his asthma—including cigarette smoke. For a short time, Rashad’s father smoked outside, but he soon reverted to smoking in his bedroom, and the fumes permeated the house.
As Rashad waited for a reply, his father took a drink. “Rashad,” he said, “what do you want to be when you get older?”
That was an easy question. Rashad lowered his shirt and smiled.
“I want to play running back in the NFL,” he said, eager to share his dream.
His father responded with a puff of smoke and another swig from his bottle. He snapped at his son: “Do you think you’d be able to make it to the NFL without drinking and smoking yourself?”
Rashad, with tears in his eyes, stared at his father and made a vow never to smoke or drink. “Just to prove you wrong, I am never going to do it.”
Rashad kept his vow.
“As a 13-year-old, I was dealing with poor physical health, my father’s emotional absence and learning challenges,” he writes in his book, The IF in Life. “But in the midst of those obstacles, I knew that the One who did love me unconditionally was walking through the storms with me.”
Remaining true to his vow, Rashad pursued a healthier lifestyle by persevering and trusting in God, and was able to manage his asthma and made good on his dreams of playing running back in the NFL. Along the way, he eventually restored his relationship with his father.
“All things are possible for one who believes”
“My father taught me everything I didn’t want to be,” Rashad recalls. Rejecting his father’s negative example, Rashad says he never experimented with drugs either and refused to let peer pressure distract him from achieving his goals.
Fortunately, his mother has always shown him love and comfort. His older brothers, Bryan and Butch, stood in as father figures in their own father’s absence. They encouraged him to pursue his dream. They even helped pay for his education at a private high school, Liberty Christian Academy in Lynchburg, Virginia, where he could improve his grades.
More than that, they displayed God’s love and encouraged Rashad’s faith. His brother Butch shared with him the story from Mark 9:17-24 about a father who begged Jesus to heal his son, a boy plagued with evil spirits. Jesus told the father, “All things are possible for one who believes”—a declaration that continues to guide Rashad’s decisions.
“I’ve heard you get on your knees and pray like it all depends on God,” he says. “Then, you work as if it all depends on you” and trust God with the results.
With this attitude, Rashad worked hard in school, persevering, and began to see his dreams take shape. Even though he started high school as a fifth-string running back (a bottom-rung position created especially for him), he was eventually offered a scholarship to play football at the University of Pittsburgh—a school where he had high hopes of being spotted by an NFL scout.
But in 2006, only a year after he started college, Rashad received a call from his mom that changed his plans and began to teach him the meaning of unconditional love.
“I’m proud of you”
Rashad answered the phone and immediately sensed anxiety in his mother’s voice.
“Mom, what is it?” he asked. “Are you OK?”
“I am, Shad, but Dad isn’t.”
Rashad’s dad had long struggled with diabetes. As a result, doctors had already amputated one of his toes. Now they needed to amputate an entire leg. Rashad told his mom he’d come home for the surgery. But he wanted to do more—to transfer schools so he could be more readily available.
Later that year he transferred to Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. Since it was a smaller school, however, the move could have hurt his chances of making it to the NFL—a risk Rashad decided to take for his dad’s sake.
Yet even at Liberty, Rashad still managed to catch the attention of NFL scouts. And, in 2009, he again had high hopes of being drafted.
He also caught his father’s attention. After he transferred to Liberty, Rashad’s father slowly warmed to him, showing him more appreciation than he had in previous years. His dad recognized the sacrifice his son had made for him, and it softened his heart.
Then one evening, only a week before the 2009 NFL draft, Rashad heard the words he’d longed to hear all his life. As they watched sitcom reruns together, his dad looked over at him and said, “It don’t matter if you make it or not, I’m proud of you.”
A few days later, Rashad was drafted by the Jacksonville Jaguars. He eventually spent eight seasons in the NFL before retiring in 2017. Over the course of his career he played for the Jaguars, the Oakland Raiders and the New York Giants.
“Unconditionally”
During the 2017 offseason, Rashad competed on ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars.” He dedicated his week four performance to his father and invited his family to attend.
The song he danced to that week was called “Unconditionally,” and Rashad says he cries when he listens to it. “The lyrics are strong. . . . It was a tribute to my dad because unconditional love is something I have for him and something I was chasing to get from him.”
The choreography—created by Rashad’s dance partner, Emma Slater—depicted his pursuit of his father. “And at the end,” Rashad says, “we finally catch each other.”
As his performance ended and the music faded, Rashad walked over to his father, kneeled and embraced him. Father and son wept together as the studio audience applauded.
Promises
Rashad’s father passed away in the early hours of March 1, 2020. Before his father was buried, Rashad placed a letter inside his father’s coat pocket. In that letter he made several promises. With God’s help, he’ll stick by them.
“My amazing mother was your beautiful queen before she was my mom,” he wrote, describing the letter in a Facebook post from June 21, 2020. “I promised you I would cover her. The name Jennings was carried 32 years before me. I promised to carry it well. From as early as I can remember, you never made excuses, and I promised to follow suit. You fought in the Air Force for my freedoms. And I promised to fully exercise them. . . .
“Every good you began I will build on it,” he added, “and I will inspire the next Jennings to do the same. Legacies come from men taking care of their homes! And I promise you that I will do just that. I love you man! I honor you.”
