In the past, I could pacify her frustration with a promise to change my work habits, but that night she doubled down. She never said “separation,” but I saw it on the horizon if nothing changed.
I went into our bedroom closet, shut the door, and sat in the corner. I wrapped my arms around my knees. My breathing came in gasps and gusts, and I began to weep.
Days later, at the end of a meeting with our small staff of three, we began to ask how we could pray for each other. I somehow coughed out, “I don’t like my life.”
The church plant was gaining all sorts of momentum. Other church planters had begun messaging me, asking what we were doing that was working. People I didn’t know well recognized me around town. People that didn’t know the love of God were asking questions. But at that point I wondered if it mattered.
I sat there, tears streaming down my cheeks. A staff member named Pete began praying, “God, you love Bryan’s life. I believe you love Bryan’s life. Help Bryan see that you love his life.”
He kept saying those words, and I kept crying. Looking back, I can’t say that was the moment when things shifted for me. But this event stands out in my memory because it was the first time that I had dared to say the thing aloud, in front of others, that had been circling inside my head. It took time, knocking my skull against the truth a few times to get the reality in my head, but over time I began to agree with Pete that God loves my life.
Kandice and I had work to do on our marriage, and thankfully we put in the time and effort to make things right again.
Continuing the Journey
Church planting would make me small in the ways of the world, and push me through the needle’s eye. It would set me right in front of the most anxious and angry parts of myself; it would send our family’s finances through a sieve and punch my marriage in the mouth. It would send me searching for God in the silence and leave me looking, until I was really ready to see him (and myself). But through all this, God worked in me.
The church we planted just celebrated its seventh anniversary. We have seen a humbling amount of growth. Hundreds have come to faith and been baptized. Those stats are good for annual reports and social media promotion, but they are small compared to what God has done in me and countless others in this church.
I know not every story ends this way. Some marriages don’t survive planting a church. Some church plants close their doors. Some planters walk away from ministry altogether, and God is no less present in those stories. I don’t share mine as a blueprint but as a testimony.