Before we tell you how this started, we want to tell you where we are now.
By day, we run a small vibecoding studio called Raize The Vibe, where we help people untangle the internet and build digital systems that reflect who they are and what they're trying to create. It's creative work. It's technical work. And it's grounded in truth.
Raize The Vibe Apparel is different. This is our mission.
This drop is about our freedom, about loving and protecting our kids, and about showing up for our community without hiding.
Sarah and I have been clean since January 11, 2024. That date marks the beginning of a life we never thought we'd get back. That's why this drop happens on the 11th.
Now, here's how we got here.
The Parking Lot
Two years ago, we were living in our car in Arkansas — about a thousand miles from home. Which is still funny to say out loud because who goes to Arkansas on purpose?
We didn't. We ended up there.
The kind of cold that makes your bones argue with you. The kind of hunger that turns a dollar into a plan. The kind of exhaustion where tomorrow feels like a rumor somebody else gets to believe.
We were lost in darkness, and meth was tangled up in that darkness. Not as a headline. Not as a story to shock you. Just the truth.
One night, we woke up in a Walmart parking lot. Windows fogged. Phone almost dead. The world outside still dark.
You take inventory in moments like that. How much gas. How much time. How much dignity you think you have left.
You tell yourself you're going to move. You're going to work. You're going to keep going. Not because you feel strong — but because you don't see another option.
And then a stranger did something holy.
At a gas station in Arkansas, someone offered us kindness like it was normal. No lecture. No judgment. No performance. Just compassion, like we were still human.
It didn't solve everything. It didn't teleport us home. But it cracked a door. It reminded us we were still people.
Thirty Days
So we stayed in that car for thirty days.
We delivered food through DoorDash. We drove until the miles blurred. We split meals. We slept wherever we could.
We tried to provide our own way — not because we were proud, but because we finally understood something hard:
If someone cleaned up our mess again, we'd just end up with a mess again.
We were learning responsibility. One day at a time. The next right thing.
Then grace showed up in a way we didn't even know to ask for.
After those thirty days, we were invited to my mom's home. At first just to take a shower and have a meal.
That small opening became what we now call our hundred days of grace.
The Hundred Days
If you've never taken a real shower after living in your car, you might not understand what it feels like when the water hits your skin and you realize you're safe for a minute.
Not fixed. Not finished. Just safe.
Those hundred days gave Sarah and me space to breathe, to soften, and to heal in ways we never even asked for. Our nervous systems stopped screaming long enough for our souls to breathe.
We slept. We ate. We started telling the truth. That's a big theme in our story.
Prayers being answered that we never prayed. God moving obstacles that were bigger than us.
Tabitha
Not long after that, we drove to the airport to pick up my youngest daughter, Tabitha.
I was there when she was born. But I had been gone so long that it wasn't a memory she carried.
For her, this wasn't a simple pickup. This was the first time she was meeting her dad.
We picked her up three days before her eleventh birthday. And because God has a way of writing poetry with real life, we took her to Harry Potter World on her eleventh birthday. Just like Harry.
She got her Hogwarts day on her eleventh. And we got a miracle we didn't deserve.
Our daughter holding our hands. Her laughter. Her eyes taking it all in. A brand new memory replacing a decade of absence.
From there we went to an Airbnb, and we began what we can only call a reuniting adventure. That adventure turned into a road trip to Texas — where Tabitha met her brothers and sisters for the first time.
And then God kept writing the story with the kind of mercy that makes you laugh through tears.
Good Medicine
Because we didn't raise our hand and say we were ready to be everyday parents.
God put a little girl in our arms whose mom was serving the same darkness that overcame us for so long.
I get to hold her as she cries herself to sleep asking why her mom isn't the mom she needs.
That's good medicine. Not because we enjoy pain. Because it keeps us honest. It keeps us humble.
It reminds us that love is not a caption.
Love is responsibility.
Two and a Half Blocks
After we arrived in Texas, we did something that mattered more than it sounds on paper.
We moved close. Two and a half blocks away from my ex-wife.
Not to ask for anything. Not to take. Not to demand what we hadn't earned.
We moved close to carry weight. To be useful. To show up in the unglamorous places where real repentance lives.
School drop-offs. Pickups after drama. Schedules. Early mornings. Late nights. Even a 4 a.m. drive to get a kid where they needed to be for a debate competition.
We were trying to live our repentance, not perform it.
And God did something that still doesn't make sense unless you've lived it.
We were welcomed back in.
Friday night pizza and a movie became routine. Ordinary family moments became normal again. The kind of restoration that feels impossible when you know exactly why people had to protect themselves from you.
That's the miracle. And it's also where Raize The Vibe truly began.
My Kids Changed Me
Because coming home to your children changes you.
When we returned, our older kids weren't the babies we left behind. They had grown. They had become. Some of our kids are gender nonconforming. Names changed. Identities evolved.
And I want to tell you what happened inside me — because I think it matters.
My opinions melted. Not because I suddenly had every answer. But because the question stopped being political. It stopped being ideological. It became parental.
These are my children. The children God entrusted to me.
And here's what I realized, standing in my kitchen watching my kids navigate a world that feels more cruel than the one I grew up in:
I don't get to have theories about my children.
I don't get to hold positions about their humanity from a distance.
I get to love them. I get to protect them. I get to make sure they know — with God, they are always safe and never alone.
And when I watched them making choices that scared me? Choices I didn't fully understand? The only tool I could reach for was God.
Not to fix them. Not to mold them into my image. But to help them find the One who already made them in His image.
That's my job now.
Not to shape them into who I think they should be. But to point them toward the Father who already knows who they are.
And to make sure that while they're figuring it out, they never once doubt that love lives here.
Raize The Vibe Is Our Refusal
Raize The Vibe is our refusal to pass pain down.
It's our choice to stop generational hurt instead of baptizing it with excuses.
It's our choice to not hide behind the sentence, "That's just how my parents did it."
It's our willingness to ask the most dangerous question a grown adult can ask:
Who would I be today if I wasn't hurt the way I was hurt?
Then it's our responsibility to live like that answer is true.
Because hurt people hurt people. That's not an excuse. That's a warning.
And our job now — our Christian job, our human job — is to stop hurting others on purpose.
My job is to hurt no one.
That's how Jesus walked. That's what He asked. He didn't tell us to win arguments. He didn't tell us to dominate other people's identities. He told us to love.
And love is not demanding the world take care of your fears.
Love is taking responsibility for your fears and refusing to use them as weapons.
Looking for a Church Home
We learned that lesson again when we went looking for a church home.
For about a year, we got in the car every Sunday morning and drove somewhere new. Every week, a different building. A different congregation. A different roll of the dice.
And I want to be honest about what that year felt like inside my chest.
On the drive there, my mind was never quiet.
Is someone going to be hateful to one of my kids?
Are we going to be asked to leave?
Does this place believe in the media — or in the gospel?
I'd pull into the parking lot with my armor already on. Hoping this would be the place. Hoping someone would see my family and not flinch.
Some Sundays, we found warmth. Real people. Love that felt like shelter.
Other Sundays, we found fear dressed up like faith. Theology that felt more like a wall than a door.
And I won't lie to you — that year brought deep heartache. Sadness. Confusion I didn't know how to name.
Not because I was angry at the Church. Because I love the Church.
I believe the Church is the hope for the world.
I believe that even with all its flaws — even with hurt people hurting people inside the building — the Body of Christ is still where God shows up. Still where light breaks through. Still where strangers become family and broken people find a seat at the table.
That's why we kept getting up. That's why we kept putting on the armor. That's why we kept driving.
Because we weren't looking for perfect. We were looking for sunlight.
And eventually — thank God — we found it.
What We Believe About Healing
That experience burned something into us.
We don't want a faith that makes people unsafe.
We want a faith that looks like Jesus.
That's also why we speak the way we speak about trauma, addiction, and healing.
We don't believe we are "sick." We don't believe our story is best explained by a permanent disease label.
What we do believe is this:
When someone is a victim of trauma — especially complex trauma — the first thing that matters is coping. Drugs and alcohol can become refuge that most people will never need to understand, because most people never had to survive what a trauma victim survived.
When you tell the truth about that, you can actually help somebody.
Because if you remove drugs and alcohol from a trauma victim without offering a healing solution, you're asking them to feel all the pain that makes them want to die — with no tools and no support.
Too often people are told they're not doing it right, when the truth might be they need a different approach, a different level of care, a different path home.
We believe many paths lead home.
We believe harm reduction saves lives.
We believe keeping people alive long enough to come home is holy work.
This Story Is God's
This story is God's. This brand is God's.
These shirts are not the point. They are a platform. They are art with a purpose. They are flags we were asked to raise.
We are simply serving the Lord the way He called us to — by telling the truth, by making something beautiful, and by welcoming people who have felt pushed out into the same tribe.
That's our story. That's our flag.
And if you're here… you're welcome in it.
Thank You
Thank you for taking the time to read our story.
Thank you for your attention, your care, and your willingness to sit with something real.
If you choose to support Raize The Vibe Apparel, thank you for the opportunity to earn your business.
And if this story meant something to you, the greatest compliment you could give us is to share it with someone who needs it.
Your vibe attracts your tribe.