I like to begin my testimony by saying that my mom and dad are great people, and I love them dearly. They came into their marriage fairly broken and so their brokenness manifested quickly. My mom ended up needing to leave the home and go into the hospital for an extended stay for mental health reasons when I was little. So, at a very young age, I experienced abandonment, and the experience of abandonment is completely contrary to what it means to be human. We are not meant to be alone. My mom didn’t do it because she wanted that. She just was not well.

Later, my mom and dad started going to marriage counseling to continue their healing journey. Unfortunately, one of the doctors they worked with prescribed pornography as something to help their marriage. When that occurred, pornography came into our home. My brothers and I found it when I was six years old. The combination of the abandonment and the exposure to pornography was powerful. The lies that came into my heart with the abandonment were, “I’m not loved and I’m not lovable.” The pornography really distorted my perspective of love. These things led me to pursuing love in all the wrong places.

When I got a little older, my brother asked me at one point, “Have you heard of this new thing called the internet? There are things on there that you might want to look at.” So, without knowing what that was, I went on the internet and began this deep struggle with and addiction to pornography.

I went to college, and it was the first time that anyone ever told me about sin, what sin does, and this thing called hell. It was a priest who told me this and he said,

“Do you realize that these sexual sins are actually mortal sins, that they can separate you from the life of God for good?”

That terrified me because I had these wounds of abandonment and the last thing I wanted was to be eternally separated from or abandoned by God. What the priest showed me was that there was a remedy and the remedy was God’s love and mercy. He said that the best way to access that love and mercy is through confession.

I began to go to confession like it was about to go out of style. There were times I would go daily because I kept falling. The battle with my own sin began, and I realized that I had an addiction. Here’s the beautiful part. I went to confession twice a day sometimes. For example, I would go on a Saturday morning and because of the depth of the pain, wounds, and addiction, I would fall again. Then, I would go and knock on Father’s rectory door sometime in the afternoon. He got so used to me that he would come to the door already wearing a stole and he would hear my confession right at the threshold. He never once got upset with me. He just showed me mercy upon mercy, and I’m eternally grateful for him.

At the time, I was studying psychology at Auburn University, but as I started going to Adoration and learning about the faith at the Newman Center, the priest said to me, “You know, these things you’re learning about? There’s a really good school you should consider where you can go and get a theology degree. It’s called Franciscan University. You should check it out.” So, I ended up going there. I went because I wanted to study theology, but when I was there, I encountered the Lord in a powerful way. I would say it was the first time that I consciously knew that the Holy Spirit was real and that I could have a relationship with Him. I also met my wife there.

I wish the story could end here with a nice crescendo of bliss, but it doesn’t. My wife and I started dating, and although I was battling and facing the sin, I was not experiencing a lot of breakthrough or freedom. As Bob Schuchts would say, I was taking a lot of the bad fruit off the tree, but I wasn’t getting into the root systems—the reasons why the sin was there. We can keep taking the bad fruit off the tree and bringing it to confession, which is important and good, but wouldn’t it be nice to not have bad fruit anymore? You get in a cycle, an addictive pattern, and you don’t understand what’s going on deep below the surface that’s fueling it all.

“We can keep taking the bad fruit off the tree and bringing it to confession, which is important and good, but wouldn’t it be nice to not have bad fruit anymore?”

Heather and I got married, and unfortunately, the sin continued. There was a fateful day where, in my pride and arrogance, I was boasting about how I knew which priest was good to go to for confessing sexual sin. Heather—I think by the power of the Spirit—just knew something was off and asked me, “How would you know this?” I was stuck and had to choose: Do I choose honesty and vulnerability, or do I continue to hide? I don’t know why, but I chose honesty that day. We describe that day as the best and worst day of our marriage. It was the best day because it was the first day that was fully honest. It was the worst day because of everything that had happened up to that point. At this time, I started to get below the surface.

We had a friend who was a newly ordained priest visiting us, and when he walked into the restaurant, he looked like a different man. We thought, “What happened to this guy?” He had life in him. He was different. We sat down and just asked, “How are you?” He then proceeded to share about diving into healing and getting serious about the wounds in his life, the lies he believed, the pain he suffered, and how that resulted in and fueled sin. It was right after all this stuff came out between Heather and me. I said, “I need that and I need it bad.” He said, “Well, that’s really convenient because there’s another retreat coming up in three weeks, and I’ll go with you.” So, I got into healing ministry to receive it for myself.

I went to this retreat and got serious about my own story and how it impacted me. The whole point of healing is to have an ongoing encounter with love and truth. When that occurs, life changes. You’re transformed. Confession and going to Mass were helping, but grace builds on nature and my nature was pretty broken. I wasn’t disposed to the grace that I was receiving. I needed help to put my nature back together and that’s what occurred in that healing retreat. It was a week of intensive healing prayer and psychotherapy, and it radically changed my life.

“The whole point of healing is to have an ongoing encounter with love and truth. When that occurs, life changes. You’re transformed.”

From that journey, I realized that I loved this deep soul work. I went on to get my graduate degree in counseling and began my practice. That’s where Bob Schuchts and I connected. He had been doing ministry for a while when I joined him. We started to do ministry to priests and bishops. It’s a beautiful thing because I’ve been so blessed by priests. They have loved me very, very well. It’s a real gift for me to be able to return the favor.

. . .

This article originally appeared in Renewal Ministries’ August 2026 newsletter and was condensed from a YouTube video that can be viewed at https://youtu.be/C1RxyYJrJgg.