Heart of a Champion

Macy Capen spent seven years of her life defining herself as a volleyball player.

Now, she’s defined by her calling to impact families globally.

Capen is not far removed from her high school days, having graduated from Orange Lutheran in 2012. And the person she became at OLu continues to frame who she is today.

“In high school, I put so much value into myself and into being a good volleyball player. But I learned that at the end of my life, when I stand before God, He won’t want to know how many kills I had in a championship volleyball game. He will care about how well I loved other people and how much I loved Him.”

And for that reason alone, in 2015, Capen founded seven + heart, a non-profit organization that makes and delivers baby swaddles to orphanages and hospitals across the globe.

Seven + heart, which refers to Jeremiah 24:7, was born out of Capen’s desire to move on from the sport she dedicated herself to for nearly a decade, after injuries derailed her athletic career.

“I was a soccer player my whole life, but I got burnt out, so I decided to play volleyball,” said Capen of how she got into volleyball. “I had never played, so I made the OLu freshman team barely and the next year, I made the JV team barely. But I began to play club and I got better.”

It was during her club matches that Texas Christian University caught wind of Capen and began to recruit her.

“My senior year of high school, I knew I had a gift in volleyball to glorify Christ,” Capen said. “I had something that could get me through college.”

Capen earned an athletic scholarship to TCU and began in the fall of 2012.

That’s when the real-world learning process began.

Macy Capen '12

“The jump from playing volleyball in high school to college is super hard,” Capen said. “It was unreal. I didn’t think I would make it at times.

“I learned that I have to be so much more than a volleyball player. By the time I was a senior at OLu, in my mind, I was good. I thought volleyball was Macy Capen. When you think of her, you think of volleyball. But to go to TCU and be the bottom of the bottom as a freshman, what I learned was that I can’t define myself as a volleyball player.”

At TCU, Capen played three years of indoor and one year of outdoor volleyball. However, she suffered from chronic back pain and going into her senior season, decided to see a doctor.

Doctors told Capen that she could play her senior year and then have surgery on her back after she graduated because the injury wouldn’t get worse. But while Capen underwent all the necessary treatments in an attempt to alleviate the pain, she finally realized that something was seriously wrong.

In May of 2015, she visited a specialist who informed her that she was born with a mild form of spina bifida. Capen now had to decide to continue playing and risk worsening her condition, or step away from volleyball and have surgery.

“I asked myself, ‘Do I want to play volleyball or risk being wheeled down the aisle?’ And that caused me to look at my life as a whole.”

TCU honored Capen’s scholarship for her senior year, even though she decided not to play. For Capen, the question was what to do with her life now that her volleyball career was finished.

“The biggest thing was I knew I’d be bitter about it and mad that I couldn’t play. And I didn’t want to be like that. I didn’t want to be laying on a couch feeling bad for myself. I had to find something that I could pour myself into.”

Ironically, laying on the couch is exactly what led Capen to create seven + heart.

"I’ve always had a passion for children and babies, so I wanted to do something with that. I was laying on the couch one day and one of the pillows had this flap that folds down into a button. So I started playing around with it and thinking what I could make with it.

“I ran to the garage and got some pillowcases and sewed buttons on them. I took my brother’s football pillow, that was about a baby’s size, and wrapped it up in the pillowcase. And that’s how it started.

In June of 2015, Capen began to create baby swaddles, giving each their own personal touch by placing different Bible verses on the tags.

And in merely a year, Capen has sent over 300 swaddles to eight countries across the world: Zambia, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Uganda, Kenya, Peru, and Mexico.

A baby wrapped in a seven + heart swaddle.

Capen mainly sends the swaddles with those going on mission trips or traveling. She also has a team of volunteers that now make the swaddles while Capen handles the logistics of the project.

Capen makes no money off of seven + heart.

“It helps me reach outside of myself and love others more while at the same time, loving Him,” Capen said.

In August of 2015, Capen had surgery, which included a double laminectomy and a spinal fusion. The recovery time is 18 months and August 3 of this year marked one year since the surgery.

“It was hard,” Capen said. “You’re practicing with friends and teammates one day and the next day, you’re sitting in a wheelchair. But, it made me realize how lucky I was that I got to play as long as I did.”

This fall, Capen is off to Baylor University for graduate school, where she will study speech and language pathology and hopes to have a career working with kids with cleft palates. Her younger brother, Cole, is a junior at OLu and her younger sister, Mckenna, graduated from OLu in 2014.

Capen is in conversation with many at OLu about continuing to expand seven + heart to other countries and across the nation, and says that her time at OLu prepared her for adulthood by strengthening her relationship with God at a young age.

“I think it’s the greatest place ever,” Capen said of OLu. “It was just a cool place to go to school. I feel lucky to have went here. It made it easy to have a relationship with Christ.

And it’s that relationship with God that Capen says has carried her to where she is now and will help develop the future of seven + heart.

“My relationship with God has been the rock that I have leaned on heavily throughout my life. The grace of God has brought me to where I am today and His love for me has encouraged me to spread that love to others through seven + heart. I am able to show children the kind of tangible love that I feel God surrounds me with every day.”