He Changed Me

It’s surreal to think about how different I used to be, back when I was a freshman in college, still riding on years of declared atheism that I picked up well before I even hit high school. In those days, I didn’t just doubt God; I flat-out denied the notion of Him. It was all so certain in my mind: Life was random, and any sense of deeper meaning was just some made-up concept people use to cope with reality. And for several years, that was comfortable enough. I never really struggled with fear or panic, at least not the way many people do. Then the sleepless nights kicked in. Anxiety snuck up on me—like a slow storm that started as a drizzle and somehow turned into a downpour—night after night. I even had these mild audio-visual hallucinations, but I always knew they weren’t “real” in the sense of threatening my grip on reality. Still, they were strange and unsettling and gave me a feeling I’d never had before: that I wasn’t in control.

God’s sense of humor is wild, though, because the turning point happened at a retreat I attended for a girl (who’d later become my wife). I wasn’t there seeking spiritual guidance. I wasn’t chasing any grand revelation. I was purely trying to impress her, if I’m honest, showing up to a retreat center because I thought it might give me some “cool” points. And that’s where it started. I can’t point to a single moment of thunder and lightning, but I do remember feeling this wave of healing, this calmness that washed away the nonsense I’d been battling for so many nights. It wasn’t like I suddenly understood the Catechism, or had a comprehensive picture of the Trinity, or realized the Book of Genesis could be literally true. But I knew, as weird as it sounds, that I’d been healed by Jesus—and that alone was enough to shift me from atheism to something more like, “All right, there’s something real going on here.”

But let me rewind for just a second, because it was a mess leading up to that moment. I’d been hallucinating for hours every day—two, three hours, sometimes more. It was getting worse fast, but I refused medication; I couldn’t bear the thought of losing the last shred of creativity I had. Not that I was doing much with it in my anxious stupor, but sedation felt like giving up completely. So here I am, at this retreat I barely wanted to attend, and I’m actually told by someone that I’m too unwell to stay—maybe I should head home for my own sake. Except this one brother gently insists I don’t leave. “Hang in there,” he says. Something about that small kindness convinces me to stay, and that’s when the whole thing comes crashing in.

I was ticked off at God. Full-on angry. My mind spun with these accusations: “Why give me intelligence if You’re just gonna yank it away? Why make me creative if You’re set on pulling the rug out from under me?” So I’m kneeling there during the healing service on Sunday—holding on to the cloth draped around the monstrance—and all of a sudden, I’m not just thinking about myself, I’m thinking about Jen. She’s crying a few feet away, and I’m like, “How could You do this to her, God?” Then it hits me harder: “How could You do this to my parents?” Basically, I hit rock bottom and all I could do was beg. I said, “God, if You’re really there, take this away from me. Just take it. Please. If You do, I swear I’ll use everything You’ve given me for Your glory. I’ll never again let anyone make me doubt You exist.”

And that’s when it happened. The second my turn with the monstrance was over, I bolted to the back of the room—everyone else was still kneeling, but I couldn’t wait. This monstrous migraine slammed into me, like someone was jamming forks into my brain, scraping around. It was agonizing, but it lasted only long enough for me to realize something was shifting. Since that day, I haven’t had a single visual or audio hallucination. It was gone, just like that. If you don’t believe me, you can ask a priest named Father Peter—he’ll back me up.

That was the moment Jesus went from a nebulous “maybe” to a definite “yes.” I saw it. I felt it, literally pounding in my head. And that was the start of me wrestling with Him intellectually, following this long path that’s led me straight to where I am now.

From that moment, I grew closer to Him as an agnostic early on. I knew God healed me. I knew Jesus healed me. I guess you could say I was a Christian. And then I intellectually defined myself as Catholic. I learned a lot about the faith. It wasn’t until maybe three or four years ago—about ten years in total—that I started immersing myself more deeply because of exposure, kids, church, and private school. Then my grandfather passed. He was such a rock in my life, even an early investor in my company, and that day before he went to the hospital, he complimented this archway I’d built in the kitchen. It’s such a small snapshot, but it’s seared in my memory forever, like I can see exactly where he stood and what he wore. It was such a peaceful last moment with him, a little gesture of love that somehow felt bigger when I replayed it in my head after he was gone.

Not long after, I started meeting with Father Richard—over breakfast, of all things—and he took my curiosity and sense of debate head-on. I’m not sure he realized I’d walk in like a bulldozer with questions, opinions, and that classic “righteous anger” I have over fairness, but he just loved it. He was like, “Yeah, bring it on.” And we’d talk faith, Scripture, Catholic teachings, everything. Because of those talks, I ended up going to daily Mass more frequently, dipping into Adoration whenever I could. That’s also around the time a big falling out happened with my family, not to mention I already had a tough relationship with my wife’s family. So I was in this weird stage of isolation, but ironically, that isolation pushed me into God’s arms even more.

Then I got a book called Trust in Divine Providence, which basically turned my world inside out. It wasn’t some soft, surface-level read; it was deep and heady. The guy who wrote it was so brilliant and well-read that I’d have to put the book down just to chew on one paragraph. At one point, I paused halfway through and just started praying—not even for blessings, but for God to remove all the junk in my life, all the baggage in my head, so I could see clearly. And I swear I heard (or maybe more like felt) those verses from Ezekiel about taking away a heart of stone and giving me a heart of flesh. The moment hit me hard. It wasn’t some sweet, comforting feeling, though. It was more like I’d been torn open. Suddenly, every mistake I’d made, every sharp word I’d thrown at people, came rushing back. I felt it in my bones, like the pain I caused others was turning on me. I left Adoration in tears, texting Father Richard at an ungodly hour: “I can’t get this out of my head. I can’t stop crying.” He calmed me down, prayed with me, and got me right back in front of the Eucharist to face it all again.

This experience didn’t just dissipate into some fleeting emotional trip. It led me to ask Father Richard, “What can I do more for the Church?” because it felt like if I didn’t do something outwardly with this intense new faith, I’d implode. Around that same time, he approached me about the possibility of joining the diaconate. He reached out to the diocese, got the requirements, and it turned out they needed an autobiographical reflection—and I happened to have written a 62-page reflection on my life just weeks before. The puzzle pieces started falling into place in this bizarre, perfect way that felt way above my pay grade.

In the midst of all that spiritual upheaval, I basically pivoted my entire company to build an AI, which came as a sudden inspiration in Adoration. I can’t explain how or why. One minute, I’m thinking about how to keep my company afloat, and the next, I’m mapping out an entire AI product—complete with the name —like it dropped into my head fully formed. People thought I was nuts, but for the first time in my life, I was like, “Okay, let’s just do it. God’s got this.” Sure enough, we landed our first big deal, and from being on the brink of running out of resources, we somehow soared past six figures in revenue. Don’t ask me how I pulled it off, because I didn’t. That was all Him.

One of the craziest parts is this prayer I wrote around that same time, where I basically said, “Lord, if I must be humiliated to destroy my pride, let it be so,” and a bunch of other lines offering up the worst situations possible. And you know what’s funny? He didn’t use any of it. He didn’t humiliate me. He didn’t tear me down and leave me in darkness. He showed me that nothing is impossible through Him, and He did the deep surgery on my heart without all the dramatic extremes I’d offered up. He built me up, handed me these incredible opportunities, planted me on a podium I didn’t ask for. I wrote something like 70 songs in the last year, got invited to speak publicly several times, found harmony in family relationships that once felt hopeless—He basically flipped everything around. It’s like He said, “You’re willing to go that far to find Me? Well, I’m going to show you there’s a better way.”

I think often of that bit from 1 Corinthians about God using the foolish to shame the wise. I’ve always felt kind of scattered, disorganized, easily excitable—just not the straight-laced, neat-and-tidy person you’d expect to see up front in church. Yet He’s taken my personality, my impulsiveness, my messy side, and He’s painted something beautiful with it. People see me in action, or they see the successes we’re having, and they assume it’s me, but it’s not. It’s definitely Him. If there’s any unexplainable sense of zeal, or passion, or unstoppable optimism radiating out of me, it’s the Holy Spirit, not me.

It’s so important to me that everyone knows that this can happen to them, too. He doesn’t just pick “special” folks; He calls everyone, and we have this choice to say, “Yes, okay, I’ll step forward.” As soon as we do, He takes that yes and multiplies it beyond anything we could imagine. When I look at the entire timeline—from the anxious nights to the atheist retreat fiasco to the heartbreaks and breakthroughs—I see that He was always there, gently nudging me, sometimes giving me a swift kick, but always staying true to His promise.

I suppose my story, all of it, can be summed up by the simple truth that God meets us where we are. He found me in the haze of anxiety, in the arrogance of atheism, and in the glare of my own ambitions. And somehow, He turned all that chaos into a relentless hunger for Him. If people think I’m the one who “did it,” that’s off base. It’s the Lord, showing off His power by taking a scatter-brained, talkative, half-baked musician and making me an instrument for His glory. I’m just grateful I finally stopped running long enough to see it.