What We Keep Without Knowing Why
Most people thought the crash was the worst part.
It wasn’t.
The worst part came after—the fear, the helplessness. Grief that crawled into bed with me and refused to leave. Seeing myself not as a father, not as a leader, but as a Failure. Capital F.
Someone I respected even said to me, “You, Michael, are a cautionary tale.”
What a thing to say. As if I were Jesse Smollet or George Santos.
But here’s what no one tells you: you can’t rebuild a life until the one you built on false foundations fully collapses. And mine had only just started to fall.
Somewhere in the fog of those first days, something stirred. Not loud. More like a whisper I almost missed. I began to wonder if maybe this is where God meets us—not after the fall, but right in the middle of the implosion. In the rubble of the life we thought would save us.
For the first time since I was ten years old, I began to think seriously about God, about Jesus, about what surrender might actually feel like. Not the polished kind. Certainly not the performative kind you roll out at weddings, funerals, or holiday Mass. No. The desperate kind. The no-options-left kind. The kind where all your cards are face-up and you realize no one’s coming to rescue you. It’s surrender or die.
It started in my garage. I was surrounded by the boxed-up remains of my former life—degrees, plaques, books, “Congratulations Dr. Hynes!” letters stacked like tombstones. My career laid to rest in Tupperware bins.
At the bottom of one bin, I found a small green book I hadn’t seen in years. Creased, weathered, with a bookmark halfway through. I flipped it open and the words leapt out:
“God doesn’t meet us after the fall. He meets us in the rubble.”
I laughed out loud. Rubble? Please. I had enough rubble to build a small city and still have leftovers for a strip mall.
That night, I thought back to when I was ten, auditioning to be an altar boy. I didn’t make the cut. Who doesn’t make the cut for altar boy? Seriously. That rejection stung more than I ever admitted. After that, church became something distant. Christmas, Easter, weddings, and guilt.
The next morning, after I buried the last of my superintendent gear in the garage, I pulled out a plain set of Rosary beads. Cheap white plastic in a fake leather pouch—the kind you’d find at a flea market. I never learned how to use them. Still, for some reason, I’d kept them. Along with a brown scapular. Relics from a life I never fully lived.
Why did I keep them? I don’t know. Maybe because some part of me had been searching all along.
That night, I tucked those squeaky white Rosary beads under my pillow and whispered the only prayer I could remember:
“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee…”
And then I blanked. So I fumbled.
“Our Blessed Mother Mary… please help me believe again. Please intercede for me. Please speak to Jesus. Tell Him I surrender.”
Just to be safe, I told Jesus myself. In case Mary was busy or forgot. Over and over, like a drowning man clinging to the only rope he’s got:
“Jesus, I surrender. Jesus, I surrender. Jesus, I surrender.”
I fell asleep mid-prayer. And for the first time in years, I actually slept.
When I woke, my body ached. Shoulders, neck, jaw. I hadn’t moved all night. But I had rested.
And then I remembered.
The beads.
I reached under my pillow, expecting flimsy white plastic. Instead, my fingers closed around something heavier. Larger. Different.
When I pulled them out, I froze.
They shimmered pink. Luminous. Each decade etched with delicate images of Mary. The plain white set I had placed there? Gone.
I just sat there, staring. Had I imagined this? Had someone swapped them out? The first person I thought of was Erin. I carried them to her like contraband.
“Did you switch the Rosary beads under my pillow?”
She blinked. “What are you talking about? I didn’t even know they were there.”
I don’t know how to explain it. I only know what I saw. And in that surreal, quiet moment, something cracked open in me.
Not certainty. Not relief. Just the faintest spark of something I thought was buried forever.
Hope.
Because what came next would test everything I thought I knew. But this time, I wouldn’t be walking alone
“We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed;
perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted,
but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.”
-2 Corinthians 4:8–9
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