About Me
About Me
My name is Mike.
There’s nothing particularly remarkable about me… except that I’m still here, still drawing breath after everything life has thrown at me.
I’ve come dangerously close to death more times than I can comfortably count. I’ve been in respiratory arrest around a dozen times. I’ve survived multiple motorcycle accidents, been beaten badly in an underground carpark, and once died from a heart attack following an opioid overdose. Another time I hit my head so hard I genuinely believe I caught a glimpse of hell — and it was nothing like the wild party I used to imagine.
All told, I’ve probably spent close to two years of my life in hospitals. Some of those months were spent watching my first wife battle leukemia. She passed away on the morning of my 44th birthday after 26 years together. That loss remains the deepest pain I have ever known.
Before I encountered Christ in 2008, I was a heavy-drinking, chain-smoking gym junkie fuelled by testosterone and poor choices. Even after that profound night with Jesus, change didn’t happen overnight. I carried on with smoking, drinking, and other habits well into my late forties. It was only later — with the support of my second wife and a deeper surrender to God — that real transformation began.
One by one the chains started to break. Cigarettes went first. Then marijuana. The alcohol has been the hardest battle and still tries to pull me back at times. But when I stopped just crying out for help and actually started accepting the strength God offers, things began to shift in ways I never managed on my own.
Looking back, many of my adult struggles trace back to confusion and shame planted in my younger years — things that left deep marks I didn’t fully understand at the time. I came from a loving, hardworking family, yet somehow by my teens I was already walking a dark road: alcohol, heavy metal, anger, and more than one serious thought of ending it all. The night I met Christ was the very night I had planned to take my own life.
Even after coming to faith, the real battle was often against myself. It still is, some days. A 24/7 fight. I’ve drifted away from God more than once, fallen back into old patterns, and even cursed Him in my grief after losing my first wife. Yet through it all, He never let go of me.
I’ve lived many lives in one: running businesses, painting houses, selling online, mowing lawns, and working as a security officer at Jupiter’s Casino, where my faith was tested almost daily. I know what rock bottom feels like, and I know what it is to be carried through it.
Today my life is far from perfect. The temptations haven’t vanished, and the old wounds can still ache. But through Christ I have discovered a strength greater than my own, a purpose that runs deeper than mere survival, and a hope that has refused to die no matter how dark the season.
That is what I want to offer here on “Live Regardless.”
If you are carrying heavy questions, deep pain, doubt, grief, or ongoing battles with addiction and shame — you are not alone. I don’t claim to have all the answers, and I won’t pretend my journey has been neat or easy. But I have walked through some of the hardest places life can take a person, and I’m still walking.
If you’re looking for someone who understands what it is to struggle — really struggle — and who is willing to sit with you in those questions without rushing you, then I hope you’ll feel welcome here.
There is hope. There is purpose. And you don’t have to face it all by yourself.
