#3 Our Road to Judaism

The Life We Knew

For as long as I can remember, our world has been Christian. It wasn't just a Sunday-morning habit; it was the family business. My grandfather is still a pastor. My dad was a youth pastor. My brother, my cousins... the list of family in ministry goes on. My wife, Heather, grew up in a family just as faithful. In that kind of life, you don't really have doubts. Faith is just who you are.

The Move That Changed Everything

In August 2022, we packed up our lives and moved to El Paso, TX, for the military. This was my second time in the service, and it was a huge adjustment for Heather, who was now navigating life as a military spouse instead of a soldier.

We started to find our rhythm. The kids were excelling in school. I was looking at a promotion. Then, we got two life-altering pieces of news at once: I was scheduled for a nine-month deployment, and Heather was pregnant. We were so excited, but we couldn't help but worry about the long separation ahead.

The Day Our World Stopped

Since I was leaving soon, I tried to attend every doctor's appointment. Everything was going fine until one day in April 2023.

I had driven Heather to her appointment with the kids. They weren't allowed in, so I took them to a local park to wait. Suddenly, my phone rang. It was Heather. She told me to come inside the doctor's office with the kids. I knew immediately something was wrong. When I walked in, I saw Heather crying. The room was heavy and silent. Then the doctor began to explain what was happening. We had lost the baby.

The Questions That Followed

The next few months were a blur of grief and agonizing questions. Why did this happen? Was this our fault? Was this G-d? Why us? We were crushed, and we started asking the hardest questions of our lives.

We thought of Job in the Bible, but the comfort felt distant. The platitudes we had heard our whole lives—"G-d needed another angel" or "Everything happens for a reason"—felt hollow. They didn't just fail to provide peace; they felt scripturally thin. We weren't just grieving our baby; we were grieving the version of G-d we had always been taught to believe in.

For the next year, we were in a spiritual fog. In that silence, I stopped reading devotionals and started reading the Word for what it actually said, not what I was told it meant. I stopped looking for "comfort" and started looking for truth. As I read, I started noticing inconsistencies between the Old and New Testaments—tensions I had felt before but had never let myself acknowledge.

The Central Question

This led us to one central, unavoidable realization.

Jesus was a Jew. He lived as a Jew, taught from the Torah, and followed the commandments or Mitzvot. Why, as followers of Christ, were we not doing the same? If He is our ultimate example, where did the disconnect happen?

That single question set us on an entirely new path. It was a road we never expected to walk, especially given our origins, but it was a road we now had to follow.