I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone… and give you a heart of flesh.

-God (Ez.36)

Every day in the northeast corner of Lake Erie, there are fish whose lives are changed forever.

The fish live their entire life in the cool, calm depths of the great lake.

Then one day things change. They find a new spot with a new sensation: current. Something is happening to them.

While some swim back to familiar waters, others forge ahead. Before they can get used to this new normal, there's a noise.

A distant rumble. Then a sudden roar.

Then they are hurtling through the air, unable to breathe, gills pinned to guts as they brace for impact.

They've just plunged 180’ down Niagara Falls. They're in an entirely new place and will never return.

That's kind of what my faith story was like - chance encounters, a new current, a dramatic plunge… and then a new life.

I looked the same. I lived in the same room and took the same classes. But over the weeks that followed, friends would ask what had happened to me.

This post is the answer to that question - it’s what I found downstream.

Spiritually

Bible: Worst to first

Before I walked home from the fateful dinner, I agreed to go with a friend to a church service the next day. It was one of my first times attending a Sunday service in college.

The sermon topic was marriage, a topic that I cared approximately zero about at age 19. But as the pastor began, I was riveted. This was the best sermon spoken message I'd ever heard. The bible was alive for the first time.

And that insufferable weekly study that had made me so miserable for all of first semester? Starting that week, the study became the best, most anticipated event on my calendar.

First semester, the bible had somehow inspired boredom and guilt at the same time. Now I was addicted.

To Be Good

There's a paradox at the heart of the gospel. When you become a Christian, all your sin is forgiven - past, present, and future. This raises an important question: then why be good at all?

I had sensed and lived that tension for the last year and a half. In the blink of an eye, the tension was gone. I wanted to be good.

There was no “shoulding” ("well I'm a full-blown Christian now so I should shape up"). While my sin was still there, alongside it was a new desire - not to numb my conscience like before, but rather to live a holy life, powered not by moral fortitude but by God living in me.

So I changed spiritually - big surprise. But the changes didn't end there.

Intellectually

The "heady" Brett that my friends know was born at this time.

Confession: up until this point, I had been a bit of a closet "romantic". I was smart enough in some ways, but when it came down to it, life was about following your heart and embracing wherever your path (and feelings) took you.

The first book I picked up flew in the face of all of that. It was a pragmatic book on a topic that I didn't think pragmatism applied to. The book was called “Boundaries in Dating" and its central message was that while your emotions are good, they can blind you to reality if you let them.

If you knew how my mind worked up until that point, it was crazy that I read that book. It was even crazier that I listened to it.

Thus began a seismic shift, not just in my dating views, but how I approached life in general. The game had changed. Things didn’t need to “feel right” - they needed to make sense. Life wasn’t just about “fun and feeling good”, it was something to be understood - the books, conversations, and classes that could get me there became the priority.

The only changes bigger than those happening in my head were the ones happening in my heart.

Emotionally

There was a lot going on inside during these years. Anxiety and occasional depression were tips of the iceberg that was my emotional life. Being a good Minnesotan I had learned that if I could just ignore those things long enough, I might be able to get through my whole life without ever having to deal with them.

I quickly realized that if I was to walk this untrodden path of becoming a better version of myself, I was going to need to learn some new, terrifying skills: vulnerability and introspection.

After spurning the advances of my bible study in first semester, I still remember sitting down at Potbelly's sandwiches, of my own volition, and asking my friend if he wanted to meet up for weekly prayer and accountability.

We added another close friend and started meeting weekly. I didn't know it at the time, but this group would become the greenhouse where the seeds of a new life could grow. We laughed shot the breeze, we confessed sin, we let our guard down and we pushed each other.

For me, this group wasn't a new weekly activity, it was a new plane of existence - one where the deepest parts of ourselves didn't have to live alone, unknown in darkness. Light could come in.

Vulnerability was just the start. Over the next two years, through classes, books, conversations and programs, I'd learn about critical concepts like attachment, family of origin issues, neurochemistry and the incredible power of self-talk (CBT). This journey would not be quick, but the seeds that were planted during those weeks in November would set things in motion that would leave me anxiety and depression-free within about three years.

Into the Summer

That semester was the most transformative time of my life. A simple decision led to a fairly dramatic spiritual experience, setting off massive changes to the deepest parts of my life. The drama and intensity of those first weeks and months would eventually wear out, but the new direction would continue.

At the end of the school year, I sailed off into the sunset and life was puppies and rainbows from then on.

Yeah, that didn't happen. That summer would take me far from my safe haven of Christian community, first to a country with state-sponsored atheism before coming home to the most isolating, lonely months of my life.

What I didn't know was that in four months, my faith would be on the brink of disappearing.

What Happened When I Became a Christian