A Reckoning: When God Used a Jammed Gun

Some nights leave a scar deeper than any wound you can see.

In the summer of 2018, I reached my breaking point. Addiction, despair, and a storm I could no longer outrun brought me to a mountain pass in Colorado with a cooler full of vodka, a gun, and the belief that my story was finished.

I wrote goodbye messages. I was ready for the end.I pulled the trigger.

But it didn’t fire.

In that silence, louder than any gunshot, something shifted. What should have been the end of my story became the beginning of a new one. Days later, my father discovered the truth: weeks earlier, in a drunken mistake, I had accidentally fired that same gun. The shell casing had lodged itself inside, jamming the mechanism. Impossible odds. A hidden safeguard. A divine intervention.

What I thought was a failure became my rescue. What I thought was evidence of my brokenness became the very thing God used to keep me alive.

That night on Jones Pass wasn’t just survival, it was surrender. A turning point where despair collided with grace, and where God whispered: “I’m not done with you.”

This moment was my reckoning. The kind that strips away illusions, shatters pride, and leaves only truth: that even in our darkest failures, God can weave redemption.

This is only a glimpse of my story. To read the full chapter and walk deeper into this journey of brokenness, rescue, and grace, get your copy of To Die Is to Live today.