The last post on the neurological reality of spiritual transformations was a setup for this one. Let’s explore my story through the lens of mortality and responsibility, and discuss the neurological side of things. I’ve hesitated to share parts of it online, especially as they were happening. It’s been long enough, we can explore it and maybe pull some things out of it.
Buckle up. It’s a long one.
“Testimony” is one of those words I was trained within the church and trained others on, from crafting my Before-and-After-Jesus in high school evangelism training sessions to teaching others to be comfortable with the same. It’s been interesting watching the same religious words I used as a pastor become standard in marketing: testimonials, conversions, and brand evangelists are some of the terms out there now. Seth Godin’s marketing book, Tribes, and other material don’t shy away from such language.
“Testimony” is also one of those words that’s changed for me. Drunk Pastor started as something I needed to do. There were rants and raves, and a lot of processing over 60 posts since Easter – it’s been therapeutic. I try to have some flow and intentionality with my posts and, recently, was able to get a head on several blog post ideas. In between each one, there’s been a lot of processing. Sometimes, the posts are a topic that’s been on my mind and other times they’re a part of something bigger.
Biblical Transformation
The Bible describes spiritual transformation with language that evokes profound renewal and awakening, often likened to death and rebirth, blindness to sight, or darkness to light. Paul’s conversion is framed as scales falling from his eyes, signaling a radical shift in perception. Jesus speaks of being “born again,” a metaphor that suggests an entirely new existence, while the prophets describe encounters with God as fire refining gold, burning away impurities to reveal something pure and new.
These descriptions reflect a deeply personal (i.e. subjective) and all-encompassing change, not just of belief but of identity and purpose. The Bible frames this transformation as both a divine act and a call to personal renewal, culminating in Paul’s exhortation in Romans 12:2: “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” This renewal, described as a profound inner reorientation, captures the essence of biblical transformation—an ongoing process of becoming aligned with the divine. Of the places this change happens, the brain is undeniably a part of it.
“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” – Romans 12:2
Neurological Background
Neurologically, my family pedigree is interesting. I have no clear diagnosis, despite trying, other than some residual CPTSD and leftover struggles with depression. These have been changing and they are now more memory than present realities.
Before I was an adult, I had a handful of concussions. ADHD is something it looks like I have, and have been to a couple of experts, but I don’t. High cognitive filtering and processing? You bet. In my family, there’s bipolar, intelligence, depression, autism, schizophrenia, and addiction. It bothered me for a long time, since being sober, that I somehow made it through the genetic lottery without any of their baggage. This has clearly been a misunderstanding of mine. There was both baggage and plenty of neurological traits that I do share with my family.
“The human brain has 100 billion neurons, each neuron connected to 10 thousand other neurons. Sitting on your shoulders is the most complicated object in the known universe.” – Michio Kaku
Childhood and Early Struggles
As a child, and developing, my frontal cortex was attempting to form an understanding of society and myself. I did my best with what there was to work with. Being naturally gifted in school, I was left often to my own devices for much of my childhood. A lot like my middle child, I was energetic and active. In 5th-6th grade, I was a boy in a struggling blended family.
As the oldest, I was aware of my “responsibility” but couldn’t do anything when my family was falling apart. This feeling of failed responsibility continued on until I attempted suicide by cutting my wrist. I was maybe 12. The pressures mounting at the time were my family’s instability and a lack of secure connection with my parents.
Shortly after, I found wrestling and my family got into a church community. These two things helped my family. This time of life, between 12-15 years of age, is crucial for forming abstract thinking and developing a moral compass, as well as emotional confidence and security. At 39, these are things I finally have down. In school, I was performing fine on grades and a teacher’s favorite. Bullying, however, was a real thing then. I didn’t feel safe at home or in school.
“The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.” – William James
Finding a New Identity
A church gave my family some social context and community while I was also getting into wrestling. These helped me pivot from being the abused, bullied kid to a new identity: the stoner, straight-A wrestler. From 6th grade through half of 9th grade, this was who I was. I smoked pot and drank a lot between 7th and 9th grade – even had a little drug operation in my bedroom.
A Turning Point
In the middle of 9th Grade, a number of things had happened. My girlfriend had moved away, our house had caught fire, and eventually, I was caught with all the drug stuff. My step-father enacted a strict year-and-a-half plan for my recovery – I still kind of wish he just called the cops on me instead.
It was during this time that I was hit with the reality and responsibility of my actions. My stepfather had something of a conversion experience and started a homeless shelter a couple of years before. He was speaking at a Pentecostal church and I was in attendance. Sitting in the service, I was hit and hit hard by what felt like God. The Sunday school lessons and sermons all came back to me and the Gospel made sense. That night I prayed with my parents and my life was Jesus’.
Crisis and Calling
Fast forward to 7 years ago. After being in a couple of failed church experiences, it was obvious that I wasn’t capable of working at a church. I had too many issues. Yet, after working for a church for four years, they selected my family to start a church in Missoula. This was a crisis for me. I loved being comfortable in the middle of an organization. My mortality and responsibility were facing me again. I was being called to do something I knew I was capable of but didn’t want the responsibility of. I knew I was going to break.
Descent into Addiction
There was the very present awareness that I shouldn’t be allowed to lead a church since I knew my beliefs and thinking didn’t fit the mold. There was the hidden side of my personality and behaviors that I was sustaining at the expense of my ex-wife’s sanity. As I started a church I “could believe in,” I was also continually being crippled by the weight of it and my failures as a man. The Imposter Syndrome and the “gap” between who I was on the outside from the inside was too vast.
I descended further into drinking. Home life was not pleasant as I was an emotional wreck. I wasn’t an angry drunk – but I spun and twisted those close to me up in my vortex. Until I walked into my church office and my team held a surprise intervention. It was another moment of facing mortality and responsibility. I fled from that intervention, got a bottle of vodka, drank almost all of it, then drove home and submitted to going to my first rehab.
The First Rehab Experience
In my first rehab, I was infantile and pathetic. Kleptomania came out – I’d steal little things like pens and shower supplies to feel safe. A number of emotional collapses happened, each with me in the fetal position. I was there only to try to save face and security. It was a KJV-only rehab and, if you’ve read any of my blog posts, I didn’t fit well. The entire experience was traumatic, my doing, and the damage from my drinking was already done. My family was no longer my family, my church was no longer my church, and my friends were no longer wanting to put up with my shit.
“Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.” – J.K. Rowling
The Darkest Days
During the time between rehabs, my drinking got worse, as did my behavior. I slept around and tried to maintain a relationship with a woman to feel safe. Jobs were cycled through as I continued to dissolve my faculties with ethanol. I was utterly alone and it was dark.
Then my last binge happened. I was with a woman who helped me start wrestling with alcohol but that relationship wasn’t meant to last. Things came to a head. It was five days of intense drinking and being kicked off other AAer’s couches. I slept by a gas station with a liquor store next to it. I was taken to the hospital where my BAC tested at .407, an amount that puts people in comas or kills them. I was then put on suicide watch for five days. There was a court appointment waiting for me and rehab after.
Sitting in suicide watch, South Park was on one night (it wasn’t allowed so we didn’t tell anyone). It featured Towely and his addiction intervention. That episode stung. Facing the only person who came to visit me on suicide watch broke me. Thinking about what my kids and everyone outside of those walls thought about me was miserable. The weight of my consequences had pushed me to death’s door… I was either going to kill myself by drinking or with the pills.
I was done fighting the world and myself. I needed to get a handle on myself. I wanted to live.
The Neurological Impact
Neurologically, a lot of actual brain damage happens from drinking. We often don’t think of our brains in our everyday lives, but everything comes from and goes through them. Over 7 years of soaking my brain in ethanol killed a lot of neurological pathways while reinforcing unhealthy ones. The behaviors I chose were neurological pathways I depended on. By the end of my drinking, there was nothing left but dysfunction and that last inch of me that had some level of awareness and desire to live.
When I was in my second rehab, I was finally serious and ready for change. Everything about me I hated. Everything I had done and then avoided and ignored kept breaking me and I was tired of not being able to manage my life.
It was at this rehab that three lessons clicked well enough that I could at least begin the process of getting back to living a life. Radical acceptance, gratitude, and self-honesty were the first lessons. There have been countless more since then.
A New Awakening
Skipping three years, during last year’s Holidays, realizations from my inner work made me more and more aware of my avoidance and distancing. It’s a tendency that took a long time to see and work to break. Once I could see how I was perpetuating things from my parents, I couldn’t bear it. I wasn’t content anymore with the life I had made after getting sober or settling for a fast food management job – I was done with settling. By February, it was decided I was going to quit.
In the days leading up to my resignation, I had a personal conflict that broke me, something I had to face and it went awful. The day I was going to turn in my resignation, I was surprised with a test. My boss was a bigger man and sat next to me, looking over my shoulder. This was a situation I should have eased through – a simple test about basic things.
My psyche broke. I couldn’t read a single word on the laptop screen in front of me. I could maybe focus enough to notice a letter but my brain couldn’t hold attention to form a word. I could see everything fine, but there was a grid and gaps between all the objects and elements. It took days and a couple of good friends to put me back together.
Facing the Truth
For me, I was facing everything I had realized about myself over the Fall and from books like The Drama of The Gifted Child. I was committed to facing “everything.” I was still alone with the wreckage untouched from drinking, years of avoidance, and half-assed leadership. Facing more of my past was something I had to do and the way I was going to do it was by forcing myself to do all the things I was afraid to do before. It was a simple strategy. The past reality I had pushed up with my subconscious was crashing on and through the Truth that I had been avoiding all my life.
“The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.” – James A. Garfield
The Journey of Writing
I was already committed to writing again on Drunk Pastor. There was so much I had to get out and ideas I needed to wrestle with. Writing became my lifeline, a tether to meaning when the void seemed to gape open. Each post was a small act of rebellion against despair—a refusal to let my failures define me. It was important, for my journey, to do it in some kind of “public” fashion – not hiding.
I also needed to hear how Evangelical churches were talking and was hungry for a worship experience to engage with God. “Research” is what I called it. Then, Easter approached and I was sitting in a church, giving a typical Easter Sunday morning altar call. I found myself deconstructing and putting back together what “they” were saying. What Evangelicals were attempting to accomplish with the Gospel they preach “made sense.” It made sense but it didn’t match the Gospel that I understood.
A Divine Encounter
Then, Jesus took a 2X4 across my face and called my bluff – “Why don’t you do it then?” It’s hard to kick against the goads. I “warned” God about some things and then told Jesus, “Alright. I’m in.” It was a moment. The trip home was too. It hasn’t stopped being a moment. It has messed me up even more in every good way. Since then, what I’ve been through, I can’t think of many better words than “rebirth.” I was blind to things that I can’t unsee now. I was turned upside down and inside out. One day, I realized that I had the Holy Spirit and that It was helpful. Please, imagine my bewilderment as a recovering pastor.
I’m getting things down and learning to better manage basic human life while building on some dreams. Faith has made me aware of how much fear I lived in. Through adopting and developing personal therapeutic and spiritual practices, and taking on challenging situations, one thing at a time, the noise in my head has grown quiet. I’ve had to learn a whole new skill – how to keep good ideas from distracting me and taking over everything.
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” – Jeremiah 29:11
The Challenge of Growth
A lot of basic human things I didn’t learn along the way. These were things I’ve also avoided and reinforced. It’s silly how guilt from the past and the shame we carry alters our perception of reality – as if reality depends on our feelings to determine its status. That moment since Easter meant a lot of things for me. It also terrified me. It was a mantle and a yoke I didn’t want. I liked my misery much too much.
The hardest thing has been how hard I’ve made it. Dying to Self is excruciating when you’ve only been wearing crosses. Being loving and authentic are surprisingly straightforward endeavors – it’s all that other stuff we hold on to and the way we redefine and perceive others that makes it all complicated.
The personal studies early in sobriety, from things like Addiction Counselor credits to Kierkegaard, were things I was doing out of desperation. I could feel it like a cloud. Everything I did felt “disapproved” of. It felt like something was standing behind me constantly. Stuying helped me understand and learn things I couldn’t argue myself out of. The doctrines I was so concerned about holding drifted away.
Now, ideas are coming from inspiration, while that old panic and dread from my past are, comparatively, absent. This all feels weird and new to me.
The Need for Validation
I was changing and, while it was nice, it revealed a surprisingly deep need for validation. This deep validation has a spin and style that is mine. I’ve come to believe we all have this need for validation and some of us have learned healthy ways of maintaining it. It was something that ran so deep into my childhood that I don’t know where it originated. There’s been a couple of things in my past that took some work to heal but it didn’t seem to stem from those – just got mangled more. That thread of validation ran from my earliest memories and came up to the present life, distorted further through my actions and perceptions of others.
“The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.” – William James
Learning to Walk Again
I allowed my need for validation to keep me a child for so long that, at almost 40, it’s exhausting how simple lessons parents teach kids are clicking in profoundly spiritual ways. It’s impressive how not linear and clean this journey has been. I expected a black-and-white difference, a “fix” and a solution. It’s been more like a newborn donkey, dripping in embryonic fluid, learning how to walk with a family of flamingos. It’s been ambiguous and narrow, fine and expansive.
All along this time, memories have been coming back, spinning questions and new scenarios I needed to come to terms with. The gaps are less annoying than before. Fears have about my talents and potential now understood. Giftings and strengths turn into something else when we wield them in fear for that long. Masks become grafted and our shells become hollow reaction chambers.
Spiritual Awakening
Inside my head, I finally had the faith to ask hard questions. In my spiritual life and the habits formed since being sober, Holy Spirit experiences I heard about and preached about as a pastor started authentically happening. There are pastors I know, and more I’ve since reconnected with, that also don’t know if they know what the Holy Spirit is. I don’t mean to confess their dirty laundry but I was experiencing things I’ve heard other Evangelical pastors confess not getting. I was experiencing the same Holy Spirit, apparently, that Pentecostal and charismatic friends of mine post about on Facebook. Yet, there was a clear difference.
“The spiritual life does not remove us from the world but leads us deeper into it.” – Henri J.M. Nouwen
A New Philosophy
A theology was suddenly not only deconstructed but was left behind frew from within me. It was unmoveable, undeniable, and, in our modern world, inescapable. It, honestly, made things more confusing and disorienting while making the world clear as day to me. The confusion was my subjective person coming to terms with all of it. A philosophy was “in me” and I had to figure it out. It was pushing against and into everything within my brain. It was a lot to keep track of and put words to.
The way I had to figure it out was made clear to me – it had to embody me. No more of this living vicariously through what I hope other people understand. I had to get this first and do it right. There were too many stories of leadership and moral failures in the world (and in Scripture) for me to ignore. The implications of this worldview were wider than just American Christianity – it cut across categories and tribes. Actually, it dismantled all of it. It became a fire in my bones.
It was also driving me crazy: I could “see” the Kingdom of Heaven in my daily life but there was so much about how I lived, thought, and behaved that didn’t align with it. The amount of neurological unwiring in order for this new set of neurological pathways to be the new normal was embarrassingly brutal. Today, this paragraph is in the past tense and now I’m practicing all of this – and Evangelicals don’t understand what I’m saying.
Things like synchronicities, clarity, epiphanies, leadership, honesty, creativity, peace, and small behavioral changes were happening more consistently. Things that used to matter suddenly didn’t. Things that did matter were suddenly issues of prime existential focus. Things that matter to all of us suddenly were tangible. This upended the way I was going to proceed through the rest of my life. Things were happening in the world I felt perfectly made for it, but had to get through this part of my growth. I knew it’d break me and it did. I needed it. For it, I’m eternally grateful.
Technological Advancements and Personal Growth
Between technological advancements, historical discoveries, the growing world knowledge, and the personal growth I was experiencing, I found myself in a unique position. The convergence of these factors in the world elicited a sense of purpose and alignment that I hadn’t experienced before. It was as if the pieces of a complex puzzle were finally coming together, revealing a picture I hadn’t anticipated but felt deeply connected to. I was put on Earth for such a time as this.
The process of change and growth was far from linear or predictable. It resembled more of a chaotic dance, with steps forward often accompanied by stumbles backward. This journey taught me the value of embracing uncertainty and viewing challenges as opportunities for growth rather than obstacles to overcome.
“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”
Rediscovering Purpose
As I continued to explore this new path, I found myself rediscovering a sense of purpose that had long been buried under layers of addiction and self-doubt. This purpose wasn’t tied to external achievements or societal expectations, but rather to a deeper understanding of my authentic self and place in the world. It was grounded in Love and Truth, and would happen if I simply could have faith to live it out. We too often start with the future instead of the present moment, where we all exist but struggle to abide in.
Throughout this journey, the importance of relationships became increasingly clear. It’s the small things. While much of the internal work was solitary, the support, understanding, and sometimes challenging perspectives of others played a crucial role in my growth. This “community” wasn’t limited to those physically present in my life but extended to authors, thinkers, and Biblical figures whose ideas resonated with my experiences.
Ongoing Transformation
As I continue on this path, I’ve come to understand that transformation is not a destination but an ongoing process. Each day brings new challenges, insights, and opportunities for growth. The key is remaining open to these experiences and maintaining the courage to face them head-on.
While I can’t predict where this journey will lead, I’m filled with a sense of anticipation and hope. And it’s a journey I’m excited for others to take for themselves. The world is changing rapidly, and I feel equipped to not only navigate these changes but to contribute positively to the world around me. The struggles and triumphs of my past have prepared me for this, I just didn’t realize it, and now I’m ready to embrace whatever comes next with an open heart.
Closing: Connecting the Threads of Transformation
Mortality has a way of pulling everything into sharp focus. For me, it was never just the recognition of life’s brevity, but the acknowledgment of how my actions reverberate through the lives of others. Responsibility became a lesson learned the hard way—through failure, collapse, and rebuilding. Every relapse, every moment of avoidance, was a neurological groove etched deeper into my brain, solidifying behaviors that led me further from who I wanted to be.
But the beauty of our neurology is its capacity for change. Mortality and responsibility are not curses – that’s a myth we need not believe anymore. Neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to forge new pathways, correlates with the spiritual truth of transformation. The very neurons that once fueled my destruction have now been rewired through radical acceptance, gratitude, and an unrelenting commitment to Truth and Love. My story is not one of overnight redemption but of slow, painstaking reorientation—a recalibration of the heart, mind, and soul. It’s been a rebirth into a new life that I’m just beginning to be comfortable in. It’s a process, not a destination.
Spiritual transformation isn’t just a metaphor; it’s a lived, embodied reality. It happens in the neurons that spark new habits and in the soul that faces mortality with open hands. It’s in the acceptance of responsibility not as a burden but as an invitation to live a life that matters. It’s in the painful honesty that peels away illusions and reveals the raw, unvarnished truth of who we are and who we can become. it t
If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that transformation is less about erasing the past and more about redeeming it—about forging a new identity from the wreckage, with scars that speak not of defeat but of survival and hope.
This is the gift of mortality, the weight of responsibility, and the miracle of our neurological and spiritual capacity to change. It’s the story I’m writing, one thought and decision at a time.
The Gospel has become a gift in my life and one I can’t unsee now. The wiring is not only there but I refuse to let it go. I know God and God knows me. Why would I let go of that? This stuff is real and I pray others can find the same for themselves.
