Deb: I grew up in San Diego, in a family who attended church regularly, but didn’t follow the Lord outside of Sunday services. Our family valued intelligence, winning arguments, and being “right” over Biblical truth. My parents both worked, so I grew up with the freedoms and dangers of being a “latchkey” kid. I was lonely, isolated, and a bright kid with enough attitude to sometimes struggle with discipline. I spent a lot of time reading, a lot of time watching educational television, a lot of time by myself. I understood our family dynamics even as a young girl, and knew that I needed to tow a careful line so as not to worry or embarrass my parents. 

Brian: My family was a pretty typical American family. We lived a comfortable life where my dad worked, my mom stayed home, and morality was a fairly relative concept. I was exposed to pornography in elementary school and became sexually active in middle school. In high school, I started drinking. I was a social chameleon who could get along with anybody. I hung out with a drug crowd, but didn’t start using drugs myself until later in high school. 

Deb: I didn’t get into trouble in high school, and I avoided the kids who did. I was a tomboy. I found my “place” in drum and bugle corps. I ended up playing in the drum corps until I was 21. During that time, my dad, who had always been physically unhealthy, died from a heart attack. I was sad, and also angry. I had asked God to let my dad walk me down the aisle on my wedding day. Here I was, unmarried, and my dad was gone. I took his death as a personal affront from God, and I shut the door on any idea of faith. 

Brian: After high school, I tried junior college for a time, but ended up just working and partying. I was always a hard worker, a good employee, even a workaholic. But when I wasn’t at work, I partied. At one low point, I robbed multiple Targets of their Sudafed supplies, then spent the weekend making methamphetamine. It was the first time I had tried the drug. Another time, a friend and I got incredibly high on meth and then drove to a casino. We were pulled over, and I was arrested. I was sent to jail, then received a fairly lenient sentence that allowed me to attend a diversion program and eventually have my record expunged. 

While Brian continued to use marijuana and drink heavily, his arrest served as a welcome wake-up call that prevented him from further dabbling in other drugs. He moved out of his parents’ house, and threw a party in his new home. Deb arrived at the party with a friend, and their first impressions of each other were vastly different. While Deb saw Brian as “trouble,” Brian had an indescribable inkling that Deb was “the one” - the girl he would marry. Deb, who had started rebelling and experimenting with alcohol following the death of her father, avoided Brian’s initial advances. She eventually returned to another party, though, and Brian convinced her to move in. 

For three years, the couple lived together. Their party lifestyle continued, and their relationship grew increasingly dysfunctional, even co-dependent. Deb attended culinary school and worked, while Brian forayed into the high-risk, high-return world of mortgage sales. When the 2008 financial downturn hit, their personal debt mounted, adding another stressor to their unstable home life. 

Deb: I got a job at a health cafe in a gym after culinary school. It turned out that many of my co-workers and bosses were also involved in planting a church called Barabbas Road. I argued with them incessantly. I was bent on proving them wrong, intent on finding the cracks in their theology and exposing their Christianity as a farce. I was constantly trying to get under their skin. They put up with me, and they answered my questions, and eventually, we started going to church. We weren’t sober. We weren’t following Jesus yet. But we were going to church on Sundays. 

On February 15, following a Valentine’s sermon about God’s love letter to His people, Deb responded to the Spirit’s tug on her heart and stepped forward to pray during the altar call. As her friend celebrated the moment with her, she instructed Deb to turn around. There was Brian, on the other side of the room, bowing in his own prayer of salvation. 

Brian: We were just baby Christians, trying to soak it all up. Our pastor encouraged us to marry or to stop living together, so we got married on the beach in our jeans one afternoon. We dove in and tried to change all the things that were so messed up about how we had been living.