Something Broke
The Walk | Part 2 of 3
Rachel wanted me to go to church with her.
I went. The church she attended was expressive in ways I wasn't used to. People raised their hands. There was speaking in tongues. I don't say that critically — it just wasn't where I was. It wasn't a good fit for me, and I knew it. I tried to keep going, but a lot of weeks I didn't.
But Rachel's faith was real in a way I recognized even if I couldn't name it yet. And she never stopped wanting me to find what she had found.
Then Sarah and her husband Keith — Rachel's daughter and son-in-law — got in contact with a church planter named Trent Travis. He and his family had followed a calling from God — out of Kentucky, by way of Florida, and into a brand new church plant in Johnson City, Tennessee. CrossPath Church.
Sarah and Keith invited us to the grand opening. I've been going almost every Sunday since.
What kept me coming back was simple: Pastor Trent teaches. Not just preaches — teaches. He opens the text. He explains the context, the language, the why behind what's written. That's what I needed. That's what had always gotten through to me, going all the way back to Pastor Jim Carroll at Littlecarr Bible Church — someone who respected me enough to explain rather than just declare.
Sunday mornings, I'd leave fired up. Genuinely moved. Ready.
Then Monday would come. And whatever had opened up in me on Sunday would quietly close back down. I wouldn't do anything with it. The gap between knowing and doing — the one I'd been living in my whole life — would reassert itself like it always had.
Week after week. For years.
Earlier this year, something broke.
I don't know exactly how to describe it. My life, by any external measure, was good. I have a job I find meaningful. I have Rachel, who is the best wife I could have asked for and who has never stopped pointing me toward God, sometimes without even trying. I have four kids — Kieran, Lachlan, Graham, and Hay — all at Virginia Tech, healthy and building their own lives.
The surface was fine.
But something underneath it wasn't. And for the first time in my life, instead of ignoring that feeling or moving on to the next thing, I stopped and turned toward it.
I prayed something I hadn't really prayed before. Not a polished prayer. Just honest:
I need help. I need you. Something isn't right and I can't fix it. I need you to weaken my resistance. I need to be closer to you.
That was it. That was the prayer.
I don't know exactly what shifted. I can't point to a single dramatic moment. But something moved. The resistance that had been with me since I was a kid on that church bus in Michigan — the same resistance that had let me set down every tool God ever handed me — started to loosen.
Have I been perfect since then? No. I wouldn't tell you that even if it were true, because it isn't. But I'm trying in a way I wasn't before. I'm showing up differently. Something is different.
CrossPath Church describes itself as a family that crosses paths with God daily and crosses paths with others daily. That language landed differently for me once something broke open. For most of my life I'd been crossing paths with God and keeping walking. Nodding politely and moving on.
I'm trying to stop and stay now.
Part 3 is about what that looks like practically — the tools I've built, the study system I've put together, the way I'm trying to make sure Monday doesn't undo Sunday anymore.
But the tools only matter because of what happened first. You can't build on ground that hasn't been broken.
*Next week: Part 3 — "What I Built When the Devotionals Stopped Being Enough"*
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## Scripture References
"But be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves." — James 1:22 (CSB)
"I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh." — Ezekiel 36:26 (CSB)