I was born outside the church—very far outside. Neither of my parents were Christians when I was a kid. We were a military family, my dad a Marine, and we bounced around several military bases, mostly in North Carolina. My dad was made of stone, a chiseled, highly decorated Marine who had served in the Vietnam War era. And while he was an excellent Marine, he was better at holding weapons and dodging bullets than he was at engaging with his family.

When I was 12 years old, my dad decided that domestic life was not for him. He abruptly left our family, never to return. Frankly, it is hard to describe the emotional trauma our family experienced when the strongest, most respectable man any of us had known simply walked away. With four kids to feed, my mom worked her tail off, and my siblings and I spent most of our time running the streets.

The same year my dad left, I started doing drugs and drinking alcohol. By age 18, I had been selling and using all kinds of drugs for years. During my senior year of high school, my friends and I showed up drunk to a basketball game against a local rival. I threw up on the other school’s principal, which promptly got me suspended. The days I missed pushed me over the limit for allowable absences, forcing me to repeat senior year.

By the time I finally graduated, I had joined wannabe gangs, gotten shot at twice, and been arrested. My senior class had voted me “most likely to live in a VW van.” I had grown dreadlocks, which made my marijuana-centered lifestyle a poorly kept secret. On graduation day, my principal awkwardly withheld my diploma and summoned me to his office. He and I were never on very good terms, but he felt duty bound to tell me I was following a destructive path.

After high school, I moved to the beach. But I grew bored of being a nowhere man, so I began pursuing a two-year community college degree in therapeutic recreation. It sounded fun, but I was hardly prepared. After ...