I wasn’t planning to share this story. For a long time, I thought the right thing to do was to move forward and not look back — to focus on where I was going and quietly close the door on where I had been.
But I’ve learned that our stories have a way of insisting on being told. And the parts we most want to hide are often the parts that most need to be heard.
So here’s mine.
The Jenga Tower
Imagine a Jenga tower. You know the game — you pull out blocks one at a time, and for a while everything holds. The structure looks fine from the outside. But at some point, the wrong block gets pulled, and suddenly the whole thing comes down.
That’s what my life felt like in my darkest season.
I had spent over two decades in ministry — pouring out, serving, leading, counseling, preaching. I loved what I did. I believed in it. But somewhere along the way, I lost track of how many blocks had already been quietly removed. The unprocessed grief. The relational wounds I never dealt with. The identity that had become so fused with my role that I wasn’t sure who I was apart from it. The marriage that was straining under the weight of everything I was carrying alone.
And then came a season where it all came down at once.
The Valley
If you’ve been through a season like that, you know there aren’t really words for it. It’s not just sadness or stress. It’s a kind of disorientation — like the map you’ve been using your whole life suddenly stops matching the terrain.
I lost things in that season. Relationships. Roles. A version of myself I thought I understood. And for a while, I wasn’t sure what — if anything — was going to come next.
What I didn’t lose was God. Though there were moments where even that felt uncertain.
Psalm 40:1-3 became one of the truest things I held onto during that time: “I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God.”
That passage didn’t just describe a spiritual idea to me. It described exactly what happened.
What the Breakdown Built
I want to be careful here, because I’m not one of those people who will tell you that God caused your pain just to teach you a lesson. I don’t fully believe that, and I think it can be a harmful frame.
What I do believe — what I’ve lived — is that God is extraordinarily good at redeeming what was never part of his design.
The breakdown built things in me that decades of successful ministry never could. It built empathy that goes all the way to the floor. It built a deep and personal understanding of what it actually feels like to need help and not know how to ask for it. It stripped away the performance and the posturing and left something quieter, truer, and far more useful.
It built the foundation for Your Caring Coach.
Why I Do This Work
I coach pastors and ministry leaders because I know exactly what it’s like to sit in that chair. Not as an abstract concept, but as a lived reality. I know what it’s like to feel like the bottom is falling out. I know the shame of struggling when you’re supposed to have it together. I know the loneliness of carrying something too heavy to carry alone.
And I know what it’s like on the other side of it.
That’s what I bring to every conversation. Not a formula. Not a five-step program. Just the wisdom that comes from someone who has walked through the fire and can say with genuine confidence: there is a way through.
If you’re in the hard place right now, I want you to know that your breakdown does not have to be the end of your story. It might just be the beginning of your most important chapter.
You reached out to read this today for a reason. Maybe this is your moment to take the next step.
“He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.” — Psalm 40:2
