State of My Heart: Looking backward, understanding more, and remembering where this began.
Today’s Reading
Genesis 28–30
I knew eventually I would tell this story.
I just didn’t know when.
Then I read about Jacob.
God Meets Imperfect People
Genesis 28 begins in the aftermath of everything that happened between Jacob, Esau, Isaac, and Rebekah.
Jacob isn’t arriving at some beautiful spiritual moment after getting everything right.
He’s leaving behind a mess.
And that’s where God meets him.
Jacob falls asleep with a stone beneath his head and dreams of a stairway reaching from earth to heaven.
And God tells him:
“I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go.”
When Jacob wakes up, he realizes something:
“Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.”
That stopped me.
Because once again, I’m seeing something I’ve noticed throughout these readings.
God doesn’t wait for perfect people.
He meets people who are still struggling.
Still learning.
Still making mistakes.
Still becoming.
And immediately, I thought about where God first met me.
I Think It’s Time to Tell This Part
I grew up Catholic.
I believed in God.
But as I’ve shared before, believing that God existed and having my own relationship with Him were very different things.
My personal journey with God began in 2008.
And it began while I was incarcerated.
At that point in my life, I had become addicted to opioids. It started with OxyContin and eventually grew into everything that can come with active addiction.
In September 2008, I got into legal trouble in New Jersey while already having a warrant in Florida.
Everything happening in my life at that point was connected in some way to my substance use and the person I had become while using.
There is an entire story inside of that period that I’ll probably tell over time.
But for today, this is the part that matters.
Being incarcerated was terrifying.
Getting acclimated to that environment is something that’s difficult to explain unless you’ve experienced it. Add coming off substances on top of it, and you can probably imagine some of what was happening inside my head.
Local churches would come into the facility and hold services.
One day, I decided to go.
And during one of those services, a woman walked directly up to me.
She told me:
“You’re not supposed to be here.”
Then she handed me some Scripture readings and a bookmark.
I wish I knew who she was.
I wish I could find her today and tell her what happened after that moment.
Because she had absolutely no way of knowing what those few words would eventually mean to me.
At the time, I took them in more than one way.
You’re not supposed to be here.
But even more:
This isn’t where your story ends.
Lord, Take Control
There was something written on that bookmark.
Three words I’ve carried with me ever since:
Lord, take control.
I don’t have the bookmark anymore.
When I was eventually extradited to Florida, my belongings were thrown away.
But I never lost those words.
Eighteen years later, when my brain begins spiraling and I feel myself trying desperately to control an outcome, those are still the words I repeat.
Lord, take control.
They’re my grounding words.
And writing that tonight makes me realize something I hadn’t completely connected until now.
For the past week, I’ve been writing again and again about control.
Fear tells me to control.
Fix it.
Predict it.
Prepare for every possible outcome.
Faith asks me to surrender.
And somehow, eighteen years ago, before I understood any of this the way I do now, someone handed me a bookmark telling me exactly that.
Lord, take control.
Maybe this lesson isn’t new at all.
Maybe I’m finally understanding how deeply it has been woven through my life.
The Strangest Kind of Freedom
As I continued reading Scripture back then, something began changing.
I wanted to understand more.
I wanted to know God.
And slowly, I started experiencing something I hadn’t expected.
Peace.
Real peace.
And when I think about it now, the irony is extraordinary.
I was incarcerated.
Physically, I had less freedom than I’d ever had in my life.
And yet internally, I remember feeling freer than I ever had before.
I stopped obsessing over every possible outcome.
I stopped believing I had to control everything.
I felt forgiven.
I trusted that somehow, whatever happened, I was going to be okay if I stayed close to God and continued moving in the direction I knew I needed to go.
There were moments when I remember thinking:
Normally, I would be terrified right now.
But I wasn’t.
I had peace.
I trusted that God had me.
And for the first time, I understood the difference between being trapped by circumstances and being trapped inside my own mind.
Looking back, I think that may have been the first time I understood that freedom and circumstances aren’t always the same thing.
Then Came My First Godwink
Months passed.
Eventually, I needed to be extradited to Florida.
That had always terrified me.
I’d heard the stories.
As the holidays approached, I began asking a corrections officer every day whether my name had appeared on the court docket.
Every day:
No.
Finally, one night, the officer essentially told me to stop expecting it.
It was right before Christmas.
Things were shutting down for the holidays.
My name wasn’t on the docket.
With the holiday backlog, I was told I could potentially be waiting another 30 to 90 days.
I remember walking back feeling defeated.
And that night, I prayed.
I wrote my prayers down back then.
I remember telling God that I understood why I had needed to be there.
I knew I needed everything I’d gone through.
But I also felt something changing inside me.
I felt myself becoming more negative.
I worried that instead of continuing to grow, I might begin moving backward.
So I prayed.
And then I went to sleep.
At around three or four in the morning, I was suddenly awakened by a corrections officer.
That was when people were pulled for court.
I remember the officer telling me something along the lines of:
“I’ve never seen this in all my years, but they just added you to the docket. You need to go now.”
I couldn’t believe it.
I got on the bus with everyone else headed to court.
Eventually, another woman started making conversation with me.
She asked about my charge.
Then she asked which judge I had.
When I told her, she basically wished me luck.
She had the same judge.
The same type of charge.
She was appearing before the judge for the second time after already waiting months.
According to her, this judge was harsh.
He didn’t give favors.
Still, strangely, I don’t remember losing hope.
Maybe I was still too stunned by being added to the docket in the first place.
Then the public defender came to speak with me.
And he said something else I will never forget.
Essentially:
“This will probably be your lucky day.”
Apparently, the judge had recently gotten into some trouble and, right before the holidays, was being unusually lenient.
I went before him.
Everything happened quickly.
And just like that…
I was being released.
I remember calling my dad afterward in complete disbelief.
But underneath the disbelief was something else.
I immediately thought about the prayer I’d written only hours earlier.
For me, that was my first Godwink.
Could someone explain every individual event as coincidence?
Probably.
But that’s not what the experience was for me.
Something happened inside me that day.
I felt God.
And from that point forward, I couldn’t simply forget it.
Then People Started Appearing
That wasn’t the end of it.
It felt like once I started moving in a different direction, people began appearing in my life who helped me continue.
One was a priest.
He was incredible.
He would call me.
He wrote to me while I was incarcerated.
And after I was released, he stayed connected.
At a time when I was questioning everything I was beginning to believe and experience, I remember him telling me very plainly:
“This is real. God is real. The Devil is real.”
Whether I understood everything yet or not, having someone I trusted take my questions seriously mattered enormously to me.
Then there was Lisa.
By this point, I already knew something else about myself.
I wanted to be loud.
I wanted to fight stigma.
I wanted people to understand addiction differently.
So somehow, being who I am, I reached out to the state.
And Lisa responded.
Almost immediately, she invited me in.
And of all people, Lisa happened to be in recovery herself.
She became another person who helped guide me through those early days.
Those are only two examples.
There were more.
Looking backward now, it felt like every time I took another step, someone appeared who helped me understand the next one.
Maybe That’s Why Jacob’s Story Hit Me
Jacob wakes up and realizes God had been there before Jacob even recognized it.
And then he does something important.
He marks the place.
He takes the stone he’d slept on, sets it up as a pillar, and names the place Bethel.
Almost as though he’s saying:
Something happened here.
God met me here.
I don’t want to forget it.
Maybe that’s part of what I’m doing now.
I’m marking places.
Not physical places.
Moments.
The woman who walked up to me.
The bookmark.
The prayer.
The unexpected court docket.
The judge.
The priest.
Lisa.
Moments I don’t want to forget because they remind me where I’ve already been.
And maybe those markers matter most when I’m standing somewhere uncertain again.
What I Would Tell Her Now
If I could somehow sit beside the woman I was eighteen years ago – the one sitting in that facility with absolutely no idea what her life would eventually become – I think I know what I’d tell her.
Stay the course.
There will be distractions.
There will be seasons when things try to pull you away from what you believe.
There will be times when you’ll be incredibly close to God and others when you’ll realize you’ve drifted.
Don’t be afraid of that.
If this is what your heart believes, follow it.
Keep learning.
Keep questioning.
Keep growing.
At that point in my life, I think part of me believed I could change the world.
Maybe I needed that fire.
But I also had so much more living to do.
So much more growing.
So many lessons I hadn’t learned yet.
And eighteen years later, I’m still learning.
Maybe that’s one of the biggest things I’m beginning to understand about life.
We never arrive.
We keep becoming.
The Whole Picture
A few days ago, I came across a thought that completely opened my eyes:
God reveals Himself over time, and people respond one faithful step at a time – even when they cannot yet see the whole picture.
The woman sitting in jail in 2008 couldn’t see the whole picture.
She couldn’t see the life ahead of her.
She couldn’t understand how those pieces would eventually become part of the life ahead of her.
She couldn’t see the people she’d eventually meet.
She couldn’t see the lessons she’d carry eighteen years later.
She couldn’t see this blog.
But I can look backward now and see more than she could.
Not everything.
But more.
And that matters enormously to me right now.
Because the woman writing this in 2026 can’t see the whole picture either.
I’m living through another uncertain chapter.
I don’t know what happens next.
And my brain desperately wants answers.
But maybe I’ve already been taught what to do when I can’t see them.
Lord, take control.
Maybe God doesn’t always save us from the place we never wanted to be.
Sometimes He meets us inside of it.
Sometimes that place becomes where everything begins.
And sometimes it takes eighteen years of living before we can look backward and begin to understand what happened there.
Questions I’m Leaving With
How many places in my life felt unbearable while I was inside them but look completely different from where I’m standing now?
How often has God been present before I recognized Him?
What moments have I marked – intentionally or otherwise – so I can find my way back to them when fear returns?
If I could not see the whole picture in 2008, why do I expect myself to see the whole picture now?
And when I feel myself reaching for control again, can three words still be enough?
Lord, take control.
Today’s Takeaway
Sometimes the place you desperately want God to get you out of becomes the place where you discover He was with you all along.
Until next time… keep noticing.