Life as a Hollywood Fashion Designer
I had made it in Hollywood. As a set designer in the fashion industry, I worked with supermodels and celebrities - Natalie Portman, Claudia Schiffer, Drew Barrymore. I designed photo shoots for Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. I traveled the world, attended award shows, partied at the homes of the rich and famous.
I was also openly gay, and had been since leaving my Christian upbringing in Dallas. Los Angeles embraced me completely - my creativity and my sexuality. For years, I lived exactly the life I wanted.
But at a fashion party in Paris, surrounded by everything I thought I desired, I was overwhelmed with emptiness. "Is this all there is?" The question haunted me. I had done everything, met everyone, been everywhere. Yet I felt profoundly hollow.
Coffee Shop Encounter with Christians
Then came September 2009. I was at Intelligentsia coffee shop in Silver Lake with a friend when I noticed a group of young people nearby with actual Bibles open in front of them. In all my years in LA, I had never seen anyone with a Bible in a coffee shop. Curious, I walked over.
"Are you guys, like Christians? What's the deal?"
They were from a church called Reality LA in Hollywood. We started talking, and they invited me to their Sunday service. I went, mostly out of curiosity. I walked in as a self-proclaimed atheist and a gay man.
Instant Christian Conversion at Church
The pastor was preaching from Romans 7. Every sentence resonated as true. The more he preached, the more riveted I became. Something was happening inside me that I couldn't explain. By the time the service ended, two hours later, I walked out a born-again Christian.
It was that fast. That dramatic. That complete.
My entire worldview shifted in a single morning. The homosexuality that had defined my identity suddenly lost its power. Not because I tried to change or went through therapy, but because Jesus became more real and more beautiful than anything I had ever known. When you encounter the living God, everything else pales.
Life Transformed Through Jesus Christ
I gave up my career in fashion to attend seminary at Talbot School of Theology. Now I spend my time speaking at churches and universities about identity in Christ, about the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus.
My sister-in-law Kim had prayed for my salvation for twenty years before that Sunday morning. God is sovereign over all of it. He used her prayers, that coffee shop conversation, and a sermon from Romans to rescue me from myself.