In 2004, I stood outside the church I served in Sycamore, Illinois, watching it suddenly erupt in a massive backdraft. One moment I was running toward the building as both pastor and fire chaplain, and the next I was on the ground with stones raining down around me. In an instant, everything I knew — my work, my identity, the life I had built — was literally on fire in front of me.
The explosion was powerful enough to blow the roof off the building and injure two firefighters. But what stayed with me even more was how quickly I slipped into pretending I was fine. I didn’t even stop to check in with myself. I just put the mask on and kept going.
If you’d rather watch than read, you can scroll down to the video at the bottom of this page.
Looking back, my alcoholism was already there, smoldering in the background. But that fire didn’t start the problem. It just pushed everything I’d been avoiding right up to the surface — louder, sharper, and impossible to ignore. It didn’t create the pain inside me, but it made it a whole lot harder to pretend it wasn’t there.
What I didn’t understand then is something I try to live out today:
When life gets overwhelming, the real danger isn’t the fire outside — it’s the story we tell ourselves about how we’re supposed to handle it.
Back then, my story was that I had to be the strong one. The steady one. The person everyone else could rely on. Pride and ego played a big part in that. I didn’t want anyone to see me struggling — not my congregation, not my family, not even myself. So even though I was falling apart on the inside, I kept showing up like nothing was wrong. I hid behind the role, the expectations, the image. I didn’t let anyone see the cracks, and honestly, I didn’t want to see them myself.
It’s important to say this clearly: the rebuilding didn’t start on that cold February day in 2004. My journey back was a long one — filled with periods where I felt like I was making progress, but also periods of more pain… both for myself, and for the family and friends who did their very best to support me with love and patience. It took many more years before I could be truly honest with myself — before I could admit I wasn’t okay and finally start facing what I’d been avoiding for so long.
Today, my practice looks very different.
Now, when life gets overwhelming — when stress rises, when emotions come out of nowhere, or when something unexpected shakes me up — I try to pause and ask myself a simple question:
“What’s really happening inside me right now?”
Not the polished version. Not the tough-it-out version. Not the version I think other people need from me. Just the truth.
Because the truth is, most of us don’t fall apart because something went wrong. We fall apart because we don’t give ourselves permission to feel what’s actually going on — and we go to great lengths to avoid what we’re feeling, sometimes by numbing it, and sometimes by simply avoiding it or running from it.
Life has taught me how to respond instead of react. How to breathe instead of hide. How to stay present instead of slipping back into old patterns.
The fire taught me something I couldn’t see at the time: we don’t rebuild by acting unbreakable — we rebuild by being honest.
So this week, if something feels heavy or uncertain in your life, give yourself a moment to tell the truth. A breath. A pause. A little kindness toward yourself in the middle of whatever you’re carrying.
Because healing begins in presence, not performance.
