When you look at your life as it is today, is there a moment, a situation from earlier in your life that had the biggest impact on where you find yourself today?

Yeah, I mean, and this was probably not super original, but for me, it has to be the moment where I just came back into the faith, right? So, you know, my story really begins when my life changed drastically.

My parents got divorced when I was in fourth grade, third or fourth grade.

And what made this particularly challenging was that my mom was kind of a cultural Catholic at the time, right? It's like we're half Hispanic, she's Mexican, so she was Catholic because she was Mexican, kind of a thing.

So I was baptized as a baby.

I was sacramentalized, but by no means evangelized, right? My dad, good man, virtuous man, but never like really a practicing Christian or not a Catholic.

So when they separated, you know, I had these two different families I was trying to please, right? So after the divorce, my mom did start getting into her faith.

to anymore, right?

That one hurt for a lot of

reasons.

But at that point, I was also really introduced into sports I loved, right? So growing up, I played everything.

By the time I was in middle school, I focused on football and tennis.

And then going into high school, that's when I just really leaned into tennis.

And so I played tennis.

for on average like two to three hours a day um like every single day almost and um so i could just eat whatever i wanted to because you know i was playing tennis all the time and stuff but then i actually got injured my my junior year i threw my rotator cuff because i didn't work out um and so i was playing so much tennis and so much strain on it but i didn't take care of my body i didn't like lift weights i just played tennis i threw my rotator cuff and that essentially ended my tennis career Um, and at the time, uh, that's when I got into beach volleyball.

Are there stories that you can think of in your work, Chase, of clients who came maybe with some goals about objective physical health but over time it was revealed that there were like some deeper spiritual emotional needs that, that were at the root of it even more.

times.

yeah yeah so um i remember we watched that together um and uh that girl and i anyway we just turned out of that relationship but that was still kind of a cool experience um and uh so that was the first time i really tried to dive into theology of the body but i remember even after that being like that was good but it's not enough like there's like i i didn't it bugged me that I didn't quite grasp it fully.

And so this is before I started my undergrad in philosophy, theology, and my master's in biblical theology.

And so as part of the reason I actually went to JP was because one John Paul the Great, I was like, I like this guy, I like the name of the school, like maybe let's check it out.

But also when I was a missionary, I remember because I never read the Bible growing up.

I listened at Sunday Mass, but I didn't care at all.

But I remember I was trying to do my personal prayer every day because I was told I should do that.

But we have to be careful not to confuse these things as there's a moral requirement that suddenly gets added to these things that might be... improper to or first of all it's it's not a moral where it's not it doesn't make sense it's not a moral thing but it may not be proper to your state in life and that can only be that can only be discerned through a dialogue with the lord and deepening into your relationship with the lord and these devotions can often be just kind of external i pious pious actions that we conform ourselves to to the neglect of a relationship Uh, because in some ways that can be, that's, that can be like a little bit of a easier thing to do, a scarier thing to enter in the relationship where the Lord might invite you to do something that's not as, uh, regimented as, as, uh, you know, just check these boxes and you're good.