Russell Dawson

I wasn’t raised in church. For most of my life, I actually believed religion was for weak people. I thought faith was something people turned to when they weren’t strong enough to handle life on their own. And I had spent my entire life learning how to handle things on my own.

My parents divorced when I was very young, and growing up without my father left wounds in me that I didn’t really understand at the time. I was angry. I was resentful. I carried a lot of things with me from my childhood, and that anger became part of who I was.

But that anger also created something else in me. It created a drive.

I became independent at a very young age. I learned not to depend on anyone. I learned that if something needed to be done, I could do it myself. I became determined to succeed, to overcome obstacles, and to prove that I was strong enough to handle whatever life put in front of me.

One of the ways I learned to use that strength was through wrestling.

Wrestling became more than just a sport to me. It taught me discipline. It taught me how to push through pain, how to get back up after being knocked down, and how to keep fighting when I was exhausted. When you step onto that mat, there is no one else to blame and no one else to fight the battle for you. You have to dig deep and find a way to keep going.

In a lot of ways, wrestling reinforced what I was already learning in life: I could depend on myself. I could fight my own battles. I could overcome.

But when I was a teenager, God placed another person in my life who would have an impact on the man I would become.

My stepfather came into my life, and although I had grown up learning to be independent, he helped mold that independence into something stronger. He taught me things about being a man, about responsibility, hard work, and perseverance. He helped shape me into a stronger and more independent man, and I am grateful for the role he played in my life.

At the time, I didn't understand how God could use the people He placed around me to shape me for something I couldn't yet see.

For a long time, I didn't believe God existed.

In fact, I was angry at a God I wasn't even sure was real. And eventually, that anger turned into doubt. I convinced myself that God was just something people made up because they needed something to believe in.

Faith was weakness. Religion was make-believe. And I was strong enough to make it through life on my own.

Then, when I was 20 years old, I met my soulmate, Julia.

I had never experienced a love like that before. I never thought I could love someone as much as I loved her, and somehow, she softened a part of my heart that I had spent years trying to protect.

Then we had our son who has special needs.

Becoming a father terrified me. Becoming a father of a special needs child terrified me even more.

I had grown up without my biological father, and I knew what that absence had done to me. I was afraid I wouldn't know how to be the father my son needed. I was afraid I would somehow repeat the things I had experienced.

But my son taught me something I desperately needed to learn. He taught me patience.

Then our girls were born, and they softened my heart even more. Somewhere along the way, I began to want to believe that God was real. My heart was becoming open to the possibility of Him, but my mind still fought against it.

I wanted to believe. But I couldn't convince myself to believe.

Because if God were real, then maybe I wasn't as strong and independent as I had always believed. And I wasn't ready to admit that.

But as I looked back over my life, something began to bother me.

It seemed like every obstacle I had faced had somehow prepared me to face the next one. The struggles I had experienced, the things I had overcome, the lessons I had learned through wrestling, my family, my childhood, and the people God had placed in my life all seemed to be shaping me for something.

There were situations I had survived that I had no business coming out of. There were moments when the odds were completely against me, yet somehow I kept making it through.

At some point, I had to ask myself: How much of this could really be a coincidence?

So I started looking at the people around me—especially the men I respected.

I looked at men I considered strong men. Strong leaders. Men who had faced adversity. Men who had experienced difficult childhoods and their own struggles, yet had overcome them.

And I noticed something. Many of these men attributed their strength to Jesus Christ.

That challenged everything I thought I knew about faith.

I began to think, If these are some of the strongest men I know—men who have endured things far greater than what I've endured—and they believe in Jesus, then maybe I should be willing to find out why.

So Julia and I started going to church. Then we started going to Sunday school. Then Bible study. And slowly, God began to change my heart.

Around that same time, I became an assistant wrestling coach at Gloucester High School. I began working with teenage boys who were dealing with some of the same struggles I had experienced growing up.

I saw pieces of my younger self in them.

I found myself giving them advice, encouraging them, and trying to help them navigate things I knew all too well. I wanted them to understand that their circumstances didn't have to define them. I wanted them to know that they could overcome adversity and become strong men despite where they came from.

And eventually, God used those young men to teach me something.

I realized I couldn't just talk the talk. If I was going to tell these kids how to live, how to overcome adversity, how to become better men, then I had to be willing to walk the walk myself.

I couldn't tell them to trust God while I refused to trust Him. I couldn't tell them that they weren't alone while I continued trying to carry everything by myself.

That realization changed me and I stopped keeping God at a distance.

I started diving deeper into His Word. I dedicated more of my time to church. I began seeking Him—not because I was weak, but because I was finally beginning to understand where true strength came from.

And on Easter Sunday, I was baptized. That day represented something much bigger than getting baptized. It represented surrender.

For most of my life, I believed strength meant being able to do everything myself. I believed independence was a virtue and depending on someone else was weakness.

Wrestling taught me how to fight.

Life taught me how to survive.

My family taught me how to love.

But Jesus taught me that I was never meant to fight every battle alone.

And one of the strongest things I can say today is:

I can't do this on my own.

And I don't have to. Because I have Jesus.

Today, I look back at the struggles I once resented, and I thank God for them.

I don't thank Him because those experiences were easy. I thank Him because He used them.

He used my childhood.

He used my anger.

He used wrestling.

He used the people He placed in my life.

He used my failures.

He used my struggles.

He used the things I thought had broken me.

And He turned them into experiences that allow me to recognize and help other people who are walking through similar battles.

That is one of the most freeing things about following Christ.

No matter what situation you find yourself in, you are not alone—and you never were.

When the situation feels desperate, when the odds seem completely stacked against you, when you don't know how you're going to make it through the next day, you don't have to face that battle by yourself.

Jesus is there.

The God I spent years being angry with—the God I once doubted even existed—is the same God who pursued me when I wasn't looking for Him.

He softened my heart. He changed my life.

And He showed me that the strength I spent my entire life trying to find within myself was never meant to come from me in the first place.

It was always meant to come from Him.

Now I want to spend the rest of my life pointing people toward Jesus.

I want to help people who feel lost, angry, broken, or alone understand that their story isn't over. I want to see the Gospel spread. I want to see God's Kingdom grow.

And I want to be obedient to the calling He has placed on my life—to take the Gospel beyond my own community, to all nations, and to the ends of the earth.

Because if God can take someone who spent most of his life believing he didn't need Him and completely change his heart, then I know there is no person too far gone for the grace of God.

I thought I was strong because I could do everything on my own.

Then Jesus showed me what true strength really is.