AMAZING STORY
Injured Motocross Racer Walks Again in Renewed Faith
By Rod Thomas
The 700 Club
CBN.com-To win in motocross racing takes speed, agility and sheer determination. Trey Canard knows that feeling well. Known as ‘Turbo Trey’, he’s one of the sports top racers. His accomplishments speak for themselves. “We’ve had a lot of successes. I've won a motocross championship and a super cross championship in the lights class. And being a part of the Motocross for Nation's team was a huge, huge honor for me.”
Trey says he can’t take credit for his abilities. “I've heard this quote and something I really like is, ‘your talent is what God's gift is to you, and what you do with it is your gift to God.’"
Motocross has always been a family affair for the Canard’s. Trey’s dad, who owned a motorcycle shop, trained him to race. “My dad was definitely the driving force behind racing for me. At age 3 I went to my first race. When it became a little more serious, I was probably about 9 or 10 years old, I got my first contract.”
Trey started racing regularly, which meant most weekends. Still, his parents made sure they all went to church. By the time Trey was 12, he was well on his way to becoming a star. Then, that year, his dad died. Trey buried his pain and focused on racing. A few years later, that grief surfaced in a bad way. “I remember being about 18, 19 years old and things just hitting me like a ton of bricks out of nowhere. I was riding and for some reason I was just screaming, ‘it's not fair, it's not fair.’ I think I just held on to that for so long and didn't know how to process it.”
He went through counseling, but the pressure of trying to keep an edge on his competition, was tough. “I'd won a championship and I felt this enormous pressure to continue to be successful.”
Eventually, he started losing his edge on the track. Then came the injuries; he was forced to take an honest look at his life. “It really brings perspective to your life. You start to really see life for what it is and not this fairytale I think that we get caught up in. Not only was I chasing something that was not going to fulfill me in the first place, but it wasn't fulfilling me for sure because I wasn't doing well.”
Eventually he recovered and got back to racing. Then he suffered another broken leg. Trey says it was then that he started looking to God for answers. “That downtime was filled with searching. And, faith comes by hearing and by hearing of the Word of God, so there was a lot of time spent in church with my friends and my family. God was just kind of churning my heart.”
Then, at a church youth group meeting, he finally understood what was missing in his life. “I remember thinking right after the class was over, ‘this is personal.’ For a lot of years it had not been personal. It had been this, ‘inherited faith’. I'd inherited this idea of what God is, what Jesus is, the Holy Spirit is, from my parents. I walked up to the youth minister and I said, ‘Hey, I think I need to start my walk over with the Lord.’
Trey accepted Christ as his personal Lord and Savior. “He was born, He died for my sins and that He's my Lord and confessed Him. And right there I was baptized and put on newness of life.”
With a renewed faith and new perspective on life, Trey got on his bike and went back to work. Then, in 2012, he broke his back during a race. Doctors weren’t sure he we would even walk again - but this time, he trusted God to bring him through. “It was as close to death as I've ever been and as close as I ever really want to be without going home. Just looking at that and going, ‘I don't know what You have in store for me, God, but I trust You. I love You and You're working all things out for the good of those who love You.’”
After surgery, rehab and lots of prayer, Trey was back on his bike. Today, he continues to grow in his faith, and he’s married to Hannah. Trey strives to let his life be an example of Jesus both on and off the track. “Riding as a follower of Christ, as a Christian athlete is why I do it, really. I feel like I've been given this passion, I've been given all these opportunities for a reason. And for me that's honoring the Lord. As long as the opportunity is there, I'm going to do it and I'm going to do it to my fullest potential no matter what.”
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