My Road To Jesus Was Paved With Pain
I’m originally from St-Georges, Quebec, Canada. Back in the 80s, it was normal for religious education to come from the public school system. Born to Catholic parents, I was baptized as a baby and later did my first communion alongside my classmates. I was introduced to Sunday school when we moved to Palmer, Massachusetts, and my dad and stepmom wanted me to continue with my religious upbringing until I completed my confirmation. After that, they told me, “It’s up to you now whether you want to keep going to church.”
Like many others who call themselves “Christian,” church became a Christmas Eve and Easter thing. I didn’t have a personal relationship with Jesus. I didn’t know Him or the Holy Spirit. I believed in the “Big Guy.” I knew there was a God but everything about Him and my relationship with Him was according to my own preferences, needs, and desires. I was confused and questioned why I needed a priest to talk to God and saw no point in confessing sins I knew I would commit again. I also had no exposure to Protestant churches—I assumed you were either Catholic or belonged to another religion.
But while I didn’t know God, that didn’t stop Him from speaking, showing, and teaching me things. He was present in three distinct events in my childhood. The first one initiated what would become a source of great pain and a way for the enemy to establish significant strongholds.
The Burden of a Vision
When I was six years old, I had a vision of my older self in front of an enormous crowd. I knew what I was saying was important and impactful, but I couldn’t hear it. I told my mom about it, and she told me that God must’ve given me a vision of my future. Because I didn’t have a relationship with God and I had no way of knowing that it wasn’t up to me to make the vision happen, I assumed it was something I was responsible for making happen. It felt like an assignment, one I would fail if I didn’t achieve it. That burden would weigh on me for years.
A Fear-Conquering Lesson Wrong Applied
At nine, I was locked in the bathroom with my worst fear—a spider. Terrified, I screamed, panicked, and begged to be let out. Then, amid my fear, I heard a voice say:
“You can be trapped by your fears or freed by facing them.”
Immediately, peace and courage replaced my terror. I killed the spider and walked out of that bathroom different. I committed to facing my fears. By the time I became a Marine, I was chasing them. I refused to be afraid of anything.
Had I known God and understood scriptures like 2 Timothy 1:7—“For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind”—I would have overcome my fears with faith and learned humility and submission. Instead, I became overly self-confident, independent, and self-reliant.
God was reaching out, but because I didn’t know Him, over time the enemy twisted the lesson into a source of pride.
The First Time The Enemy Tried to Kill Me
A couple of years after that, we’d moved to Massachusetts, and many things had changed for me. I found myself in so much pain, rejected, and unable to live up to the expectations I felt were on me. I struggled to earn the love I thought I’d lost. I had many wrong beliefs and misunderstandings of my circumstances and feelings and that made me very vulnerable to the wrong kinds of influences. Which is how I ended up walking into my dad and stepmom’s bedroom, taking out my dad’s gun from the nightstand, and placing it against my head and pulling the trigger. Nothing happened. By God’s grace and my dad’s wisdom, the safety was on.
I put the gun back and vowed I would never hurt like this again. I allowed anger to take over. At this point, I was already self-reliant and independent, but now the real hardening of my heart began. I became determined I would never let anyone close to me again. I was 11 years old.
Called to be a Marine and to the Marketplace
I decided to join the Marine Corps at 16 and turned 18 in boot camp in September 1995, a few months after my High School graduation. I faced many obstacles, struggles, challenges, and some traumatizing experiences in the Marine Corps, but the Marine Corps aligned with my hardened heart, drive, ambitions, need to be on my own, and alpha personality.
A few key opportunities presented themselves for me to go to God. An injury at Officer Candidate School sent me looking for help into the self-help and spiritual sections of the bookstore when I was delayed for months from continuing my training at The Basic School. But instead of finding the truth in His Word, I found the enemy’s lies.
A couple of months before leaving active duty, I shared an office with a wonderful man of God in Baghdad, Iraq. He recommended I read the Bible. I confidently told him:
“I will never read the Bible.”
I had pieced together my own false religion, happily living in sin, believing I ruled my world. What could the Bible possibly offer me?
Little did I know about what awaited me. God was pursuing me and I kept turning Him away. God does not impose Himself on us. In the years that followed, I faced a mixture of tests, trials, temptations, and targeted attacks by the enemy.
The Price of Chasing a Vision Without God
After I took on the mantle of entrepreneur, I began to pursue the vision I had when I was six years old. I felt I was destined for greatness. I was arrogant and clueless yet talented, gifted, determined, and persistent. I ended up paying a heavy price for every lesson I learned. And the lessons were worldly, not godly.
A year into my entrepreneurial journey, I’d become a life coach, created the Loop of Confidence program, and launched a Coaching Agency. Still, I wasn’t successful at anything I was doing. I became furious with God.
“How could He show me what I would do but do nothing to help me?”
I continued to read the wrong books, further fueling my confusion and anger with God. The enemy established deep strongholds and ensured I would believe all the lies and deceptions he told me.
I ultimately failed at multiple businesses, losing everything and going into debt. Between the failures, I would return to the Marine Corps to regroup, pay off my debt and save money. This was also fueling my pride, ego, and strongholds. I was wearing my failures as badges of honor. Sharing how I was learning from them and persevering through them.
The truth was, a deep darkness was taking over my soul. I was not addressing the pain of the failures—I just kept devising new battle plans to force my way to success.
However, the perfect storm was brewing that combined failing in business and a relationship, multiple physical injuries, weight gain, a threat to my Marine Corps career, and basically absolute devastation because everything I had been burying for years was coming to head.
Jesus Found Me in the Big Easy
I began 2009 in a new city and relationship and was excited for a fresh start. I was on orders at Marine Forces Reserve in New Orleans. The first nine months were terrific. I was living large in the Big Easy and felt like the world’s weight had been lifted. But that didn’t last; it all began to unravel, and a year later I was at a crossroad. Give my life to Jesus or commit suicide.
Nothing was working out, no matter how much I tried, how hard I worked, or the effort I put into everything. My engagement had ended abruptly after months of growing apart and disagreements. I was facing financial hardship again after failing at another business. I was isolated, and filled with so much anger, pain, and a deep darkness that had taken over my soul. The enemy was getting his second chance to lead me to take my life.
But this time, God was reaching me in a way I could hear.
On my early morning drives to the gym, I began listening to Dr. Charles Stanley. At the gym, I saw Joyce Meyer preaching on TV. I didn’t fully understand what they were saying, but something in their words stuck.
When the breaking point came, I chose Jesus.