My name is James. And I'm going to tell you the truth.
Not the cleaned-up version. Not the highlight reel. The real thing.

The Addiction

I was a heroin addict for 14 years. I ran from city to city — Denver, Delaware, Atlanta, New Orleans — thinking a new zip code could fix what was broken inside me. It couldn't. I was a high-functioning addict. I showed up to work. I performed. I hid it well enough to keep going. Until I couldn't.

On October 16, 2008, I got high in front of my mother in a parking lot. She didn't scream. She didn't yell. She just cried. That broke me harder than drugs ever could. I never used again.

I have been sober since that day. That's not willpower. That's God.

The Rebuild

What followed sobriety wasn't a straight line up. I spent 10 years on medication-assisted support. I had hallucinations. Depression. I gained 200 pounds. I beat suicidal thoughts. I had to learn how to be a person again.

CrossFit saved my body. I lost over 100 pounds. I posted a 995-pound total in the primary lifts. I completed Murph at over 300 pounds body weight. For 7.5 years, I trained like my life depended on it — because it did.

But God had to teach me that the body is a temple, not a monument.

The Accident

In October 2022, a golf cart accident changed everything. A 900-pound, six-seater electric golf cart pinned me and the driver between the cart and a parked car. The driver was trapped and couldn't breathe.

So, I clean and jerked 900 pounds off of him.

I walked away with six herniated discs, a broken sternum, and a concussion. I tore all the chest muscles from the sternum outwards on the jerk part of the lift. My CrossFit career ended that day. But the driver lived.

The Surgeries

I didn't have one surgery. I had three. All of them on my spine. All of them done without pain medication.

Surgery 1: Level 3 Cervical Arthroplasty. They stretched my spine 11 millimeters to place the hardware. Eleven millimeters. No pain meds.

Surgery 2: Lumbar Right-Side Discectomy at L4, L5, and S1. No pain meds.

Surgery 3: Cervical and Thoracic Foraminotomy at C6, C7, and T1. May 2025. No pain meds.

Before surgeries I ran a blood pressure of 179 over 110 for an entire year. I had more epidural injections than 99 percent of the women walking this earth. Six of them were blood epidurals — they drew my blood, spun it down, and shot it back into my neck. I didn't take the Percocet they offered me before a single one.

Because I'm sober. And sobriety isn't something I negotiate with.

The Church

We started attending Crosswater Community Church in July of 2022. By October we hadn't even become members yet. We barely knew anybody.

Then the accident happened. And they showed up at our door unannounced. Strangers. Showing up for strangers.

I couldn't pay my tithe because I couldn't work. But I could cook. So, I started working with the meal train. My wife drove because I was too hurt to travel. My kids carried the food to the door and said, 'thank you for letting us serve you.'

I couldn't pay my tithe with my money — so I paid it with my time.

The day after my third surgery, I got up and cooked a meal for a family in need. Because suffering gets dangerous when it turns all the way inward.

My Wife

There were nights I didn't know how I was going to make it to morning. My wife carried me through those years. That's not poetry. That's fact. I crawled out of the darkest places with her holding my hands.

The Vision

Be Jesus Tough was born from all of it. The addiction. The sobriety. The pain. The surgeries. The faith. The church that showed up for a stranger.

Every shirt is a conversation starter. Every conversation is an open door. Every open door is a chance to say — Come see.

A portion of every sale goes back to Crosswater Community Church — to fund a school, to employ my children, to create a legacy where kids learn how to give.

I didn't build this from success. I built it from the floor.

And if God can do this with my broken back and my empty pockets — imagine what He can do with your story.

"Fear not, for I am with you." — Isaiah 41:10

Be Jesus Tough. Are You?