LA to Texas

As I arrived in Spokane today after a night that was extremely difficult, I picked up the pen and started to write God a letter. I told him thank you for sending people in my life who are willing to help me and my son. Then my phone rang and distracted me into conversations with one of those angels. After hanging up the phone call I received a text from a man I met who produces stories for Channel 4. He accidentally texted me about his production van – “oops wrong Jodi,” he said. And then my phone showed me that magical number “37” hovering over my Facebook icon.

I honestly can’t remember the last time I opened Facebook. In my face was a post by a young man named Desmond Benjamin. He quoted Phillips 1: 9-10; and posted a prayer asking for God’s discernment. I felt like it was my own prayer from my heart now as I seek guidance from God in a difficult situation.

It was 2015 and our last season playing in the competitve youth circuits of Texas football. We made the decision to move from a league called Humble to a neighboring community in a town called Kingwood. As a predominately white, higher income area we assumed the season would be less intense and far less dramatic than the Humble league, where football games often turned to violence and parental arguments. We couldn’t have been more wrong.

My ex-husband Jake had signed up as a coach in the Kingwood Football league and because of the end-of-season All Star tournaments, the other fathers in the sport knew us well. We always had a winning team and my son’s reputation as a stand-out quarterback had made him somewhat of a local celebrity among Friday Night Lights lovers. In fact, just a few weeks before the draft, he appeared on a Sunday Night Football highlight real on ESPN and was featured in a HBO Documentary called Rising Stars. His fame as a little kid quarterback and youtube phenomenon, while very exciting to watch as a proud mother, also came with a new level of worry and danger. Kids were jealous and Dad’s hated him.

On draft day, there was another new face to the league at try-outs named Desmond. Despite his lack of experience in playing the sport, Jake picked him very first in the draft. The other coaches in the room laughed in mockery at what they presumed to be a horrible decision on his part. “I know an athlete when I see one,” Jake told me. “I can train him to be great.” But a few days after the completion of the teams, Jake received a call from the President of the Kingwood Football League. He claimed that the board had voted to not allow Desmond to play in this year’s football season because he had not completed the payment requirements on time. Panicked that he would lose his number one draft pick, he asked me if we could pay the boy’s $360 fee. I agreed to it.

The next day at practice I met Desmond’s mother. She immediately ran up with tears in her eyes and thanked me for the gesture. She explained that Desmond and her had just driven to Texas from LA a few weeks before to stay with a distant aunt, who was her only living family member. Desmond’s father wasn’t active in his life and the single mother of 2 had fallen into hard times. Meanwhile she explained that her 11 year old son wasn’t in a very good place mentally. He was timid, shy and had been through quite a bit of trauma, making it difficult for him to socialize at school. She thought football would be a saving grace to help him meet new friends and distract his mind from all that had happened back in California. In this conversation I also found out that she was struggling to find a job and the kids were living out of a suitcase of only a few items in their car. I put her in contact with several friends to help her find employment, and over the next few days went shopping for Desmond to have clothes for practice, a new helmet, football pads and cleats.

Devon and Josh were a quartrback – runningback match made in Heaven at the season opener – taking turns running up the scoreboard on the previous season’s undefeated team. We won our first game by a shut out, prompting the board of competitive fathers to meet again and raise issue with Desmond’s participation. Dads hate to lose and will stop at nothing to shut down what stands in their way of victory. After a long political fight on a weekday night at the fields, the board voted in favor of Desmond continuing to play and found no rules in the bylaws that prohibited the family of a coach from sponsoring another kid financially. The next day after practice I found a letter tucked into the windshield wiper of my Yukon from an anonymous author. It was full of hateful remarks and threats towards my son. The angry parent who’d left the racially charged note showed extreme hatred towards my family, stating, “Go back to your side of the bridge. We don’t want our kids around your ghetto trash.” The letter continued on with cruel remarks about my son and Desmond and concluded with threats towards my son and my family.

We played on and the kids finished the season undefeated and titled “Superbowl Champions” despite the drama, the threats, the continual chatter and name calling from the stands to the kids on the football field and a list of setbacks along the way, (even to include benching my son for a game after he made a block for Desmond the parents complained was too hard of a hit). We were proud of the boys not only for how they played, but in the inner strength they displayed to fight through difficult circumstances under the influence of discord and hatred.

The very last time the boys played together was January of 2016 during a 7 on 7 state championship tournament held at Cowboy Stadium in Dallas. They didn’t win the tournament that day. But it was a great weekend trip full of fun, laughter and good times. I recall feeling so proud of our son and our family for the close bond formed with the strangers from LA who showed up in dire need of help and a little bit of love.

That March Jake had a traumatic brain injury and almost lost his life. The very first visitor to see him after he was stabilized and transferred to a rehabilitation center was Desmond. When the young boy entered the room he broke down in tears, leaning over Jake’s bed to give him a big hug and a letter he’d written. I read it out loud to Jake as all of our eyes were full of tears. His letter was written on the subject of gratitude for Jake and me and the kids. He told us how much we’d impacted his life and how we felt like family to him. That was the last time I saw Desmond and his mom.

Ten years later, on June 4th in 2025, I received a call from my son in Texas to let me know that he’s on his way to California. It’s been 6 years since I’ve had a permanent placement in his life and words can’t begin to explain the hurt my heart has endured in watching my sweet boy dwindle away into a place much like the little Desmond that I’d met all those years ago. After his Dad’s brain injury, our family fell apart – piece by piece. His father’s memory never recovered, he lost his emotional attachments to me and the kids and hasn’t been capable of playing the role of a good dad. Yet my son refused to leave him – isolating in a room where he hasn’t had friends, a job or any normalcy in years. He pushed away me and his sister, the ones who love him and wish more than anything to see him healed.

This phone call was an answer to years of prayers. But it didn’t exactly come at a time of ease for me. I’ve only been in California for a few weeks now and am renting a room with a beautiful woman I met in the galley of an airplane months back. I have no place for my son to live. In fact it’s the first time in my life that I’ve had nothing to offer my kids. I don’t even have a car to get myself to and from work – taking Ubers and borrowing my roommate’s vehicle when I could. I don’t have the money to support him and I’m an emotional wreck myself after many years of falling deeper into a dark place as I’ve watched my baby boy’s physical and emotional health dwindle away.

A friend in Dana Point that I met a few years ago through real estate called me on that morning when my son set his broken down, barely operational car in the direction of west. “Send him here. I have a couch he can sleep on,” Glenn said – as if an angel had whispered in his ear an assignment to help. And now two weeks later my roomate, who is the most loving mother I’ve ever seen towards her own son is now offering to make him a bedroom out of the spare space on the first floor.

I know we have a long way to go and I’m not sure how we will get there. But today, something magical gave me a shimmer of hope. You see, about a year ago, my son who is quite imaginative and spiritually connected, told me that he keeps seeing the repetitive number 37. “When I see it, I have this strange feeling that God is telling me it has to do with a promise. And it has something to do with you Mom,” he explained. Today I saw the #37 pop up on my cell phone, hovering above the Facebook Icon. I clicked it and the first thing on my page was a message written by Desmond.

He quoted Philippians and shared a prayer about discernment. I felt as if he was speaking directly to my own heart as I’ve been battling with decisions in trying to find the best path for me and my son forward. I need him to find a foot forward with good friends, a job, healing in his body and hope for a future. I need this for me too.

Just yesterday I journaled about a scripture that was heavy on my heart. It says, “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” I’ve struggled with this text because for the longest time now I’ve felt like my life was in some sort of punishment phase. I wondered what I’ve done so wrong to reap such horrible circumstances for me and my children. But today, seeing this message from Desmond and the reminder of how God’s love placed on my heart impacted a single mother who had driven across the country from LA to Houston ten years ago is now being activated in other hearts towards me and my son.

In a world that seems dark and full of selfishness and greed, it’s not easy to keep walking in faith – believing that God has a plan to restore all that I’ve lost. But there is still good out there. He’s still on the throne and the spirit of Love (which is God) is alive and well today in these angels who have been placed in my path here in California. Perhaps we truly do reap what we sow and I’m grateful that in my times of plenty, God moved through me to help others and in my time of need and despair God is moving in the hearts of others to help me and my son find a light at the end of this dark tunnel.

To be continued…..