“[God] revealed to me that I use this game and my craft at times as an excuse to not fulfill my duties as a brother, to not fulfill my duties as as a son, [and] to not be there for my people in my life,” he added. “He also revealed to me that I can fail to be delicate with the beautiful flowers and beautiful people that are placed in my life.”
Fitzpatrick admitted that its not easy to “flip the switch” from being a hard-hitting safety “to having to be a tender and loving son to a mother who just lost her [own] mother.”
God also revealed to Fitzpatrick that he can fail at empathizing with others. “Not because I can’t feel what they feel or don’t want to but because in order to empathize with somebody, you have to get on their level and go to a place with them that might be uncomfortable for you and for the other person,” he explained.
“And to be honest,” he continued, “sometimes it can be hard for me to be vulnerable with with people, whether it be a teammate, a friend or my little brother.”
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Fitzpatrick said that he was surprised that he won the award “because there was a lot that I learned about myself that I need to continue to grow [and] continue to develop.”
As he reflected on what it means to be a “good man” during his quiet time with God, Fitzpatrick said that God told him that a “good man is a dead man.”
“At first I heard that and I was like, ‘I don’t really know what that means. I want to live,’” he jokingly said. But then God reminded Fitzpatrick of a tattoo he has, which depicts “one of the first requirements that Jesus gave to his disciples, [which] was to take up his cross and to follow him.”
“What God was saying to me was that a good man is a dead man. A good man is a man who is willing to pick up his cross and follow Jesus,” Fitzpatrick said. “A good man is a man who’s willing to get up on that cross daily, sometimes multiple times throughout the day, pin his flesh to it and continue to follow Christ.”
Fitzpatrick went on to express that he is “nothing but the product of sitting at the feet of Jesus. I’m nothing but a product of a man who sits at the feet of Jesus at the foot of the cross and lets him mold his heart, mold his mind.”
