Losing My Strength, Finding My Faith

People ask me how I’m feeling all the time, and most of the time they mean physically. How’s the chest healing, how’s the breathing, how’s the heart rhythm, how’s the fatigue. Those questions matter, but the truth is that the hardest part of recovering from open-heart surgery has been everything you don’t see.

When I woke up after surgery, I thought the hard part was behind me. I had been cut open twice. I was under for 28 hours. I woke up in a nightmare fog from the narcotics and then slid straight into severe afib. I thought once I got home, things would finally start moving forward.

I was wrong.

Healing physically is one thing, but rebuilding your identity after something like this is another. When you’ve been an athlete all your life; when you’ve built businesses and routines around fitness, coaching, training, and movement; when your whole life has been built on strength and performance, being suddenly weak changes you at your core; not just physically, but mentally, and emotionally.

There were days I couldn’t lift my fork without pain. Days where walking a hallway felt like climbing a mountain. Days where I couldn’t even sit down without bracing myself. I used to train kickboxing and jiu-jitsu four times a week, I use to squat 350 lbs for reps, I could carry my own bodyweight 300m; now I couldn’t pick up a grocery bag. I felt like a stranger in my own body.

And then throw in being a dad on top of that, and how that balanced out the rest of my life; all of me was completely flipped upside down. I couldn’t play. I couldn’t draw. I couldn’t build Lego. I couldn’t wrestle. The first thing my youngest asked when I got home was, “When can we wrestle again?” and that crushed me. I felt like I couldn’t take care of my kids or protect my wife if needed. I’m a provider and protector, and I felt weak and helpless. I felt the least of a man that I have ever felt in my life.

If this had happened six years ago, I don’t think I would’ve survived it mentally. Back then, I had no faith. My anxiety was through the roof and controlled me. My identity was basically built on fitness and fatherhood, and if both of those had been stripped away at the same time, I don’t think I would’ve handled it well at all. And that’s a scary thought.

Thankfully I refound my faith five years ago, and this year, I leaned into it harder than I ever have before. My prayer life got deeper. My trust in God got stronger. And the parts of me that used to break under pressure held together, healed, and rose from the ashes.

Fatherhood kept me grounded; my boys keep me steady; and now my daughter has added a whole new layer of why I want to get healthy again. And faith… faith kept me stable.

Recovery is still frustrating. I’m still not where I want to be. My heart rhythm still misbehaves and we don’t know why. I can’t play my sports yeet but my strength is coming back… slowly. I’m still trying to relearn what my body can and can’t do; I just want it back. But the mental and spiritual growth has been massive.

I’m not the same person I was before surgery, and that’s a good thing in so many ways. God didn’t just heal my heart physically; He’s been healing me from the inside out.