Ben Locke, a former captain of a National Collegiate Athletic Association Soccer team, has written his first book, ‘In Our Suffering, Lord Be Near: Prayers of Hope for the Hurting’ (Thomas Nelson Publishers, July 2024). Christian Daily International interviewed Locke about his spiritual journey, which led him to write his story.
Ben Locke has always enjoyed watching soccer as a fan and spectator. Before illness and alleged abuse darkened his life, he played the sport at near-professional level.
Locke began playing soccer when he was toddler and the sport defined his upbringing. He achieved a scholarship to play at college “which was my dream, my goal and the next stepping stone to playing professionally.”
Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, Locke left home at 16 years old before receiving a soccer scholarship to attend North Carolina State University. Then he moved to Nashville, Tennessee to attend Lipscomb University to finish his undergraduate studies in business and complete an MBA. He has remained in Nashville ever since then.
By his own admission, Locke, now 26, felt “wrapped up in the game itself” when he looked back at his years of playing college soccer. He found a sense of self-worth by being a successful player. However, he noted that “the wheels started to wobble” about his spiritual identity at that time.
He suffered a car accident just before his last season doing his master’s program at Lipscomb in January 2019. The accident happened right outside the university, according to Locke. It left him with damage to the neck and head, brain trauma, a concussion and other injuries.
“That was probably the time that I should have called it quits on my athletic career,” Locke reflected. “I decided to try and come back from that injury, and play my final season and, again, hopefully sign a professional contract after that.”
Locke also said he suffered sexual abuse in his college years before the accident.
“For me, the experience of sexual abuse was something I wanted to keep in the dark and me keeping it in the dark made it exponentially worse. And the process of bringing that most shameful and embarrassing thing from the hidden parts of me into the light gradually over the years was really the only way I started to experience healing.”
For legal reasons and an ongoing court case, no further details about the alleged sexual abuse may be disclosed.
Locke found himself “sidelined” because of his car crash injury and “all that was going on.” In 2017, he transferred to a school in Nashville, Tennessee.
“And that basically kickstarted what has been the headline of my life for the past four or five years, which has been a battle with chronic illness and the culmination of things that happened when I was in college, some of the injuries I had, surgeries and that kind of thing.
“My body told me ‘no’ and the Lord had something very different for my life.”
That “something” developed into writing a journal. Locke revealed that he saw about 12 doctors over the course of a year to get a diagnosis for his chronic illness. Eventually a doctor explained that the severe brain trauma from the accident had triggered an immune response.
“Obviously the brain is in control of the body… He essentially explained it as, my cup was not quite full, and so I was managing to still be healthy and cope with what was going on. And then the car accident basically caused the cup to completely overflow and my body essentially shut down.
“So it’s an autoimmune disease which can present itself in a lot of different ways, and I’ve been dealing with it ever since. The challenge is that the autoimmune conditions sort-of paired with the neurological damage.”
Locke further explained that Lyme Disease is the most accurate way to describe the autoimmune illness. It and a group of other autoimmune conditions often present themselves and are diagnosed and treated similarly. The symptoms from which he suffers range from extreme fatigue to body temperature fluctuations and challenging vestibular balance issues.
“I’m still working towards a diagnosis. It could be Lyme Disease but it could be something else. But it’s in that group of illnesses.
“I get really bad vertigo. It starts with a debilitating headache and head pain, and vision issues.” The dizziness is the worst symptom for Locke. He recalled a typical scenario whereby he would sit in a chair doing a normal activity and “I feel like the room starts spinning or feel like I’m going to fall out of my chair. This is still quite severe for me and quite challenging to navigate.”
Yet for autoimmune conditions like Locke’s, symptoms show up in a variety of other ways, too.
“I’ve probably had between 20 to 30 very different and complex symptoms over the last few years. But fatigue and the neurological issues are the headline symptoms, and I have struggled with short term memory loss since the car accident.”
Writing the journal – now published as a book for the general public – proved to really help Locke as he wrestled with his difficult life experiences and sought a refreshed relationship with God.
“This book is actually born out of the journal… . It’s not changed really that much at all since I started writing in a notebook, which I began after that final season in college, in the winter of 2019 when I ended up in hospital the first time.
“I spent the next two to two-and-a-half years really bedridden. I was stuck in bed and couldn’t do much else. I hardly left the house at that time and I was encouraged by people in my life, such as my family who were incredible to me, to start writing.”
Locke described that period as a “crisis of identity” and he did not know what to believe. He feared not being able to “make it through the day” because of the health pressures and found inspiration for the journal through sheer desperation. “I couldn’t really do much else and it was one of the only things that I was physically capable of doing. I was slumped over my bed writing most of the prayers that make up this notebook.
"That’s how it started and it was really one of the only things I was able to pour myself into, and so I did and I really expressed the processes, challenges, struggles and questions that I was feeling.
He described feeling desperate and in despair as he thought about how he would get through the day without his faith in God. “Things were that dark and intense and painful, that I was like, if I don’t have a purpose beyond this life and getting through this day, then I don’t know if I can make it.
“And I think that’s the beauty of the book itself. I never set out to write a book, so I didn't have that outcome in mind. I didn’t think another person was going to read it.”
Locke said his book is not “the type of book you want to pick up and read cover to cover, like a novel. I think it functions better as a devotional.
“You can open to a section that might speak to you whether you’re going through grief or loss or whatever, depending on sort-of where a person is at. It’s a resource for devotions, prayers and meditations with the Lord, rather than a novel.”
Locke grew up in a church fellowship alongside his parents who enjoyed a strong marriage and faith. When he left home as a teenager however, he became exposed to what the world offers and walked away from the Christian faith.
“I don’t know if I ever really had a genuine faith at that time in my life. But even before I got sick, when I was in college, I started to wrestle with my identity. But it wasn’t until I was bedridden that it became a necessity. I had to answer the questions: Do I believe in God and what does that mean? And what do I do with that information? How do I wrestle with that?
“So really the book represents that place in my life where I started to wrestle with the Lord and whether or not I believe in him, whether I had a relationship with him, and how all that played out.”
