One of the most impactful events of my childhood was when I moved from Northern Virginia to San Antonio, Texas. My melodramatic younger self thought that life was surely over as we moved to endless summer halfway across the country where I knew no one. I never expected that it was in Texas that I would begin following Jesus, meet my wife and lifelong friends, and feel called to something profoundly bigger than myself. As a freshman at Dallas Baptist University, I found myself on a trajectory that seemed so steady and sure that in hindsight, I can see how it was easy to trust that I was in good hands and set up to follow my dreams and live a fruitful life. I felt a strong call on my life to pursue vocational ministry in the local church. I felt confident that I would marry my high school sweetheart, Sarah. Even through one of the most trying seasons of my relatively suffering-less life, in which my dad was diagnosed with cancer and my grandfather with Alzheimer’s, it felt natural to ...