Faith in Recovery - Cross Fitness

My Cross Fitness

November 2023. Upstate New York.

Not the romantic fall foliage version. The gray, cracked, nowhere stretch between airport gates and vending machines. A shitty motel that smelled like wet drywall and years of bad decisions. Thin walls. Paper sheets. A heater that made more noise than heat.

I had logged over 300 days of travel that year. Flew more miles than I slept. Spoke at events. Led workshops. Signed contracts. Shook hands with powerful people.

And I had never been more empty in my life.

Professionally? I was at my peak. Personally? I was disappearing. Lonely. Burned out. Unrecognizable.

I had everything I thought I wanted—money, recognition, accolades—and none of it filled the goddamn hole. .

I missed my wife so deeply it made my soul hurt. The applause, the paychecks, the praise — none of it touched the emptiness that had taken up residence behind my ribs. I missed feeling human.

And that night, in that godforsaken motel, I dropped to my knees. Not because I wanted to feel spiritual. Because I couldn’t fake it anymore. Not in reverence, in ruin.

No music swelling. No holy light pouring through the windows. Just a broken man in Room 13 off Exit 187 — the kind of place where dreams go soft and moldy in the carpet.

"God… is this it? This grind, this noise, this empty hustle — is this what I’ve spent my life chasing? There's got to be more to life than this."

I wasn’t asking for a burning bush. I wasn’t asking for angels or prophetic dreams. I was just desperate enough to admit the thing I spent years burying under ambition and fake smiles.

I was lost.

There was no voice. No sign. No shining light through popcorn ceilings.

Just silence.

And maybe, for once, that was loud enough.

I came home with nothing figured out. Just this ache — deep and guttural — that I couldn’t ignore anymore. When I got home, my wife and I both knew something had to shift. We didn’t talk about it like some grand spiritual plan. We just looked at each other and agreed — we need to go to church. So we went together.

My wife has stood beside me through every piece of this. Every hard conversation. Every quiet service. Every time I questioned whether I could keep going. She didn’t just support me — she stood in the fire with me.

And then, it just happened. Not because it was perfect. Not because I was miraculously HEALED! in some overhyped spectacle with incense, lasers, and a tambourine solo.

Why?

Because our church felt like a place to stop pretending. To sit in my own mess. To breathe. To try and stop judging myself for the last 43 years.

I didn’t walk in looking for God. I didn’t walk in looking for community. I didn’t walk in looking for shit.

I just didn’t know where else to go.

And so we became church people. Sunday-best-wearing, name-tag-having, bible-study-going churchy people.

What. The. Actual. Fuck?!

Easter 2024, I got baptized. Not because I’d found answers. But because I needed to draw a hard line between the man I was… and whoever I hoped to become. It was my reset. My line in the sand. Because I was drowning. Because I needed to declare war on the man I had become. My quiet rebellion against the numbness I’d called normal for too long.

And here’s the truth. I am still a deeply flawed, highly judgmental, wildly cynical Christian. Deplorable.

Some Sundays, grace feels less like comfort, more like a live wire I’m dumb enough to grab.

I don’t speak fluent scripture. I curse, a lot. I question, everything. I still roll my eyes at worship lyrics that sound like bumper stickers.

I side-eye any smile that feels too plastic.

I roll my eyes when some over enthusiastic kid with an acoustic guitar plays the same verse 25 times. We get it.

The over-churched, over-indoctrinated walk around like they’ve memorized the manual but never lived a damn page of it.

And I still argue with God more than I listen. I still wrestling with the broken parts of myself that don't fit into a nice little Sunday morning box.

My prayers are messy. Unfiltered. Full of doubt. Often argumentative. Sometimes very angry. Sometimes just silence.

But I show up. And still Christ shows up.

Not with theatrics. Not with thunder. With presence.

I’m a practical bastard. Logic, science — that’s how I’ve always made sense of things. I’m the type who trusts data, not divine signs. Pragmatic to a fault. Scientific by instinct. Faith wasn’t in my toolbox.

Turns out I can live with a balance of faith and ignorance. Faith isn’t clarity. It’s just the part of me too stubborn to lie down and die with the rest of my doubts. Most days, my faith feels more like refusal than belief.

And that refusal? That stubbornness? It didn’t just stay inside the walls of the church.

It started bleeding into everything — especially my body.

I had spent years abusing it, ignoring it, numbing it. Discipline wasn’t in my vocabulary. Endurance? Consistency? Taking care of myself like I mattered? Almost losing my left eye due to diabetes?

My discipline only came when faith did. Because once I believed there might still be something worth saving — I started acting like someone worth saving. Read this again.

That’s how I found CrossFit. I know... CrossFit, major groaner.

But the truth is, I needed a community. I needed somewhere to sweat, to struggle, to start piecing my body back together without judgment.

It could’ve been yoga. It could’ve been some bougie gym with eucalyptus towels and curated playlists. But this is where I landed. And so far, it's stuck.

The gym I go to happens to be owned by Christians — and as much as that would’ve made me roll my eyes a year ago, now? Now it means something.

Because two words I never thought I'd put together — Cross and Fit — carry weight for me now. Literal. Spiritual. All of it.

CrossFit is the gym for my body. Church is the gym for my soul.

Neither is gentle. Neither is comfortable. But both are helping me recover what I almost lost. CrossFit is saving my body. Christ is saving my soul. Physical recovery is CrossFit. Spiritual recovery is Christ. Faith has been part of my recovery. I believe there might still be something worth saving — so I'm acting like someone worth saving.

Neither makes it easy. Both demand consistency, humility, and a willingness to face the ugliest parts of myself. And they’re both forcing me to live again — from the inside out.

And let me say this loud for the people in the cheap seats.

If the mention of Jesus makes you uncomfortable — If the idea that I believe in something bigger than myself makes you cringe — If reading this made your fingers itch to type some passive-aggressive bullshit about “organized religion” or “my delusion” or “I didn’t know you were one of those people” —

Then get the hell off my page.

Unfollow. Unfriend. Unsubscribe. Choke on your enlightenment. There are better Christians out there that would have more patience. That would turn the other cheek. I’m not here to convert you. I’m not here to argue theology with people who worship their own intellect. If you can find strength in knowing how I struggle and yet I continue to give my life to Christ, then let my raw, gritty, vulnerable journey be your inspiration.

And yes, you can laugh, you can hate, you can dismiss it all — I’ll still be praying for you. Because that’s what faith does. Please understand, I'm here not to be vicious towards life or you.

I’m here because I almost died chasing success. I here because I almost went blind ignoring my health. And this — this imperfect, stubborn, sweaty faith — is part of what pulled me back.

This isn’t a story of arrival. This is a field report from the war.

The faith part? Still messy. Still angry. Still raw. But it's mine.

I don’t have all the answers. I just know I’m still here. Still showing up. Still breathing. Still willing to be changed.

Faith has been part of my recovery. The kind of faith that sits with you in the devastation. The kind that doesn't give you answers, but gives you enough strength to crawl one more goddamn step.

And for now?

That’s enough.