GORDON ROBERTSON (reporting): When Zachary was an infant, he was dropped accidentally. He suffered blindness and permanent brain damage.
BRENDA WARNER: I remember sitting in the hospital room and doing everything that I knew to do: I claimed verses, I prayed with all of my heart, I believed for miracles. I did everything I knew to do and it was not happening. That shook my world and made me think, OK, maybe I am not supposed to understand everything, but I am supposed to have faith. I made the decision then that God had a plan for Zachary's life, and I am still believing for healing, but I can also see this plan developing and I am just thrilled to be a part of it. It is not how I would have written it, but I am blessed to know that I get to be a part of his life and to see what God's going to do with it.
GORDON ROBERTSON (reporting): Kurt, meanwhile, grew up with a Catholic background. But faith in God was not something he took seriously.
KURT WARNER: It wasn't the reason I lived my life. He wasn't the focus of everything I did. He was just kind of a part of it. I went to Mass and felt like it was more of a thing I was supposed to do more than necessarily wanting to do it or wanting to have that strong relationship. I felt that with my upbringing, it was a thing I was supposed to do and God was supposed to be a part of my life, but I really didn't know the extent that I needed to give my life to Him like I do now.
GORDON ROBERTSON (reporting) April 14, 1996, a tornado touched down in Arkansas and killed Brenda's parents. That tragic event forever changed the way Kurt and Brenda looked at life.
KURT WARNER: That situation showed me that you don't know what is going to happen tomorrow. You have to live life for today and for this moment. It was at that point that I realized the Lord needed to be at the center of my life. I couldn't wait until tomorrow or next year. It needed to be right now.
BRENDA WARNER: When someone is dead, there is not a happy ending to that, in a sense. That was hard, because this great God that I believed in, I didn't understand why He wouldn't stop that tornado. Again, I don't have the answers. It brought up a lot of questions. Kurt let me say some awful things and did not preach back to me, and that helped a lot. There are still some tough times. I don't understand it, but I know that the devil destroys and God doesn't. God was there to pick them up and take them, and I hold on to that.
GORDON ROBERTSON (reporting): About that time, Kurt's football career in the arena league was showing promise. But a matter of convenience turned into an issue of compromise.
You've admitted in your book that you guys lived together. What did you go through in your own minds about that?
BRENDA WARNER: I remember after my parents were killed, Kurt said, 'Move down here.' I needed help with the kids. I was a single mom with two. My parents were there to help me in a bind and suddenly they were gone. The relationship Kurt had with my children, it worked well, because he was already a father figure. When I moved in with him, it was more I needed that strength. I was really having a hard time dealing with my parent's death, and so that's how it started. Then it gets comfortable and it becomes, you know, why change it? If it seems to be working, why change it?
We look at it now that we would definitely do it differently, but we learned a lot through that and we try to take what we learn from it. We also didn't take each other for granted after losing mom dad, and that caused us to want to make our relationship stronger and get it going. We would change it. I know that we would both admit that we would do it differently and that we would love to give that gift to each other on the wedding night, but we made our mistakes and God's grace covers it. That's what is so neat. Our story shows that we are not perfect, but that we are sinners and have repented and we want to move on to be better people for God.
GORDON ROBERTSON (reporting): You have heard it all before: athletes who are quick to publicly thank God for victory or success. Kurt Warner does it a lot, but what does it really mean?
KURT WARNER: When you stand up and say, 'Thank You, Jesus,' they think you are saying, 'Thank You for being here. Thank You for moving my arm forward and making the ball go into that guy's hands so that we could score a touchdown and win the game.' But, in essence, it is a matter of thanking Him for the opportunity, thanking Him for being there in my life, for being the stronghold, for being the focus and the strength to accomplish all things, to accomplish anything, and to be where I am at, to have gone through everything I have gone through. It is a constant thing in my life. It is not just for something specific He did on the football field to help us win; it is for everything that He has done in my life up to that point and for everything He will continue to do in my life from here until eternity.
And, here is why he wears #13:
TAMPA, Fla. — Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kurt Warner is a born-again Christian whose faith informs his every decision, right down to his jersey number. By choosing No. 13, Warner means to send the message that his spirituality allows no room for superstition. He was one of five players on the active rosters of the 32 N.F.L. teams to wear No. 13 in 2008. The others were wide receiver Steve Johnson of Buffalo and quarterbacks Richard Bartel of Cleveland, Brock Berlin of St. Louis and Shaun Hill of San Francisco. Warner is the sixth Cardinal since the franchise joined the league in 1920 to wear the number, and perhaps the last. After leading the franchise to its first Super Bowl, Warner may have his jersey retired someday to the team’s Ring of Honor. “A lot of people believe 13 is an unlucky number,” Warner said, “but I’ve kind of embraced it.” He added: “A lot of negative things come with the No. 13. My life is never dictated by superstitions. My faith is first and foremost. If you believe that God’s in control, there is no reason to believe in superstitions.”
Sorry, I can't resist, here is one more article:
Faith still at core of Warner's success
Cardinals quarterback goes out of his way to credit God
The Arizona Republic
"If you ever really want to do a story about who I am, God's got to be at the center of it. Every time I hear a piece or read a story that doesn't have that, they're missing the whole lesson of who I am." - Kurt Warner
It has become part of the sports landscape. Athletes congregate on the field after a game to pray or offer a soundbite to a higher power.It rarely makes the news.
Cardinals quarterback Kurt Warner understands this. The man who led this organization to its first home playoff game since 1947 knows that discussion about resurrections comes only in the context of career revivals and that tape recorders shut off when faith references start up.
During a visit to The Oprah Winfrey Show, Warner "basically had three sentences to say, so, in the middle one, I made sure I mentioned my faith, because how could they cut it out?" he said. "I went to watch the show on replay . . . and they cut it out!"
Warner, 37, is right. There is dishonesty in telling his story if you ignore what drives him, especially if you accept its role in one of the NFL's great success stories. In five years, he went from a 22-year-old stock boy at a Cedar Rapids, Iowa, grocery store to Super Bowl MVP. He has morphed again, from unemployed veteran to record-setting starting quarterback with the Cardinals, who on Saturday in Charlotte, N.C., will try to advance to the NFC Championship Game by beating the Carolina Panthers.
"I wasn't always this way," he said.
During his final season at the University of Northern Iowa in 1993, Warner went to a country-music dance bar called Wild E. Coyotes. He spotted Brenda Carney Meoni and asked her to dance. Her immediate reaction?
"Get away. Get away," she thought.
"Here's this cute guy in a bar with an entourage of females, and I'm the last person that makes sense for him to go to," Brenda said. "I'm a divorced woman with two kids, one with special needs. And Kurt's 21. Twenty-one."
They danced, and the next day, Warner was knocking on her door with a rose.
"Again, I'm screaming in my head, 'Go away!' but I opened the door and said, 'C'mon in,' " she said. "My 2 1/2-year-old grabs him by the hand and shows him every radio we own.
"He fell in love with my kids before he fell in love with me. When we'd have a fight and were going to break up, he'd say, 'Well I get the kids.' I'm like, 'But they're my kids!' "
They stuck together, even when it appeared football wasn't in Warner's future. He signed with the Green Bay Packers as a free agent in 1994 but was cut before the season began. He returned to UNI to work as a graduate assistant football coach and spent nights stocking shelves at the local Hy-Vee grocery store. He moved in with Brenda, who was struggling financially and turned to food stamps for a while. They drove a car that died every time it turned left.
He landed with the Arena Football League's Iowa Barnstormers in 1995 and three years later was signed by the St. Louis Rams, who allocated him to the NFL's developmental league in Europe. His backup with the Amsterdam Admirals was Jake Delhomme, now the Panthers' quarterback.
Around this time, Warner began challenging Brenda about her faith. She had become a devout Christian as a 12-year-old after seeing a fundamentalist Christian film called A Distant Thunder (1978). Warner questioned her, suggesting she was picking and choosing her beliefs from the Bible at her convenience. During this exploration, he closely studied the Bible.
"When I did, it was obvious what the truth was," Warner said.
He committed himself to the Bible's message. That's Warner's way, why he has succeeded in football. He studies, commits, believes.
Before they married, he told Brenda they should follow the Bible faithfully, which meant, among other things, no premarital sex.
"I'm like, 'Dude, we've got so many other things to work on. Why that one?' " Brenda, now 41, said, laughing.
They married in 1997. In 1999, he took over as the Rams' quarterback when starter Trent Green was injured. What followed was two Super Bowls, two MVP titles and a legion of Christian followers.
He was both revered and scorned for his outspokenness about faith. Since Warner's arrival in Arizona in 2005, and the revival of his career, people here treat his religion with more curiosity than debate. Many were amused by Warner giving an invocation one year at Celebrity Fight Night, a popular black-tie fundraiser for Muhammad Ali's Parkinson Research Center. Ali is of the Muslim faith.
"I never feel like, 'Should I say this, or do I not,' but I do try now to strategically figure out (during interviews) how I can get somebody to include it because it's so important to who I am," Warner said.
How does Warner express his faith? He always has the Bible in his hand when he does postgame interviews. He joins players in postgame group-prayer sessions on the field. He loves to engage in spiritual discussions with teammates but says he tries not to be in-your-face about it. He wants the words of the Bible to guide his everyday life.
When he and his family dine on the road, they always buy dinner for another table in the restaurant but keep the purchase anonymous. The children choose the family. Brenda Warner said it's their way of teaching their kids one of the Bible's messages: It's not your circumstances that define you but what you do with those circumstances.
Warner shouldn't be categorized only one way, Delhomme said.
"Football doesn't define Kurt Warner, and I think that's the biggest thing to me. It's not who he is. Kurt Warner is a lot bigger."
Added Cardinals defensive tackle Bertrand Berry: "To limit Kurt as a Super Bowl champion would do a disservice to him. I think his legacy will be that he's just a great human being, and I think that's the highest compliment that you can give anybody."
http://web.mac.com/reidferrin/Site/AUDIO_SPORTSCASTS/Entries/2008/3/12_Arizona_cardinals_QB%2C_Kurt_Warner.html
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