Spared for a purpose I had not yet surrendered to.

For decades, alcoholism had methodically progressed until my life and my relationships with family and friends were imploding. Depression had taken me to a place where I was thumbing through life insurance policies, looking for a way out while convincing myself I could still secure my family’s future.

On Memorial Day 2024, I blacked out in a bar while trying to leave and fell down a massive flight of stairs. Two days later, I woke up in an ICU. I had shattered two vertebrae and undergone emergency spinal surgery. My life had been spared, and the prognosis was for a full recovery.

That was rock bottom. But it was also where the seeds God had already been planting finally broke through. I had been attending Grace Meadows Church. I knew the language of faith. Yet I had spent years trying to manage my life, my pain, and my addiction in my own strength.

I did not need another plan to do better. I needed to surrender.

God had given me a second chance I did not deserve. Jesus met me with grace, not condemnation. My past was real, and so were the consequences, but it no longer had to be the authority over my life.

The 923 Way grew from that realization. Luke 9:23 is not a slogan to me. It is the path forward: deny yourself, take up your cross daily, and follow Jesus. Daily surrender is not how we earn grace. It is how we respond to the grace we have already received.

This ministry is not about putting my story at the center. It is about using the story God redeemed to point people toward Jesus, especially those who wonder whether their failures have disqualified them or whether change is still possible.

If that is where you are, I want you to know this: your lowest point does not have to be the final word. Christ can meet you there. And the next step does not have to be impressive. It simply has to be surrendered.