Written by: Erica Sawyer
It’s Okay to be Broken, It Means God is Still Shaping You.
Written by: Erica Sawyer
This photo popped up on my husband’s FB “memories”. If a picture speaks a thousand words, then I have ten thousand to say about this one.
This photo was taken of a man wearing a mask. A mask hiding the pain he was in. A mask deceiving those he let close to him. A mask designed to make everyone around him think he was “okay”, when in fact he was not.
Let me give you a behind the scenes look at the real man in this picture.
The man in this picture served the US military fifteen months in Iraq, returned “home” with emotions so raw they rotted him from the inside out. An inability to process what he had done, saw, smelled, heard, and lived through ignited uncontrollable fear, anger, and rage encompassed by an insatiable, unconscious appetite for total self-destruction. The twenty-four seven need to match the adrenaline rush, mask the wounds of war and trauma from childhood, torpedoed Jacob into a world of hell.
It was post-traumatic stress manifesting without anyone even knowing it.
It was the beginning of the ultimate quest to fill a void so large, a void emptied out by lies, that the journey to fill that infinite-sized hole nearly killed Jake multiple times.
Arrests, suicide attempts, multiple car accidents, homelessness, burning bridges, and violent relationships were his normal. It took God sidelining him with a back and neck fusion to get him to see the kind of life he was living was not sustainable.
A few years before this picture was taken, Jake wrestled at the University of Nebraska at Kearney and the University of Southern Maine weighing in at 141 pounds.
When Jake realized the gym was a perfect outlet to take out his rage, he began bulking up, shortly after winning his first Mr. California bodybuilding competition at 157 pounds.
When this picture was taken he had already won the Mr. California Body Building competition for the second time, weighing in at 175 pounds.
But this is not a picture of a healthy man. It is the picture of a man trying to be “better“ in someone else’s eyes.
His joints were taxed. He is a 5’6″ man dead lifting 500 pounds, curling 90 pound dumbbells, and bench pressing 400 pounds–all to achieve a look coveted by photographers, modeling agencies, and of course Jake himself. He was believing the lies that he was not “good enough”.
A joint originally created to support a 160 pound human-man frame was struggling to sustain his 220 massive, hulk-like structure he artificially built.
The inflammation from the constant trauma induced to the muscles, tendons, and ligaments sent him into a healthcare nightmare.
His cholesterol was sky high, indicating an enormous amount of inflammation ravaging his body. His kidney and cardiac function levels were so vital, he could die from kidney or heart failure at any moment. His blood pressure was so high, he required multiple medications to control it. This is a picture of a man with an extra 70 (seventy) pounds of muscle on his body, which his heart and lungs worked extra hard just to sustain.
This is a picture of a man that could barely breathe because of the extra stress his body was under trying to carry the extra mass around. The immune system had a difficult time managing the constant hormone fluctuations, repeated trauma, and weight differences. For a competition, Jake would cut weight from 220 pounds to 175 pounds by starving himself, dehydrating every muscle and tendon, meanwhile flooding his system with an overload of poisons. He had been coached by “those in the industry” which cocktail of steroids and supplements and total starvation worked, with the best results. He learned how to “spot inject” muscles, to induce more trauma, causing the muscles to “heal” larger than before. It became the perfect vessel Jake could use to steam down the tracks at one hundred miles an hour, trying to be the biggest and the best, not realizing he was headed for an imminent crash. Sixteen hours in the gym was a normal day for Jake.
It was the devil’s perfect way of keeping Jake preoccupied with an obsession guaranteed to deceive. Jake took the bait and ran with it.
The constant effort to be better, look better, feel better, be liked more was fueled by the constant ego stroking, competition winning, and attention getting, removing all common sense that what he was doing was slowly killing himself. He saw many of his friends in the industry die around him, tragically, because of an intense desire to do the next best thing, be the bigger guy than the next, and to numb an intense pain.
But that is not sustainable.
Jacob’s body eventually gave out, and so did all the people closest to him. He could no longer fuel his intense desire to numb at the gym. In addition, his support system was no longer supportive. So he sought numbing in other unsustainable ways. When drugs, alcohol, sex, and partying didn’t fill the void, Jacob had no where else to turn.
He fell to his knees and accepted that Jesus Christ was his ultimate void-filler. There was no amount of weight lifting that would satisfy what Jesus Christ offered him. There was no amount of drugs or girls or cars or money that could fill the pain in his heart like the peace his Creator gave him. Although God’s providence protected Jacob every second of his life, to look back on the repeated self-harm inflicted by a constant desire to be better, makes me realize how gracious our Lord really is. He created us to have a body able to withstand the constant self-inflicted harm—until we are able to work for His purpose.
Jacob lives with muscle pain everyday from the decisions he made to look larger than life. That pain is a reminder of how far he has come up out of a world of darkness, despair, and hopelessness, reminding him that he is still alive, when he should have been dead many times over. God’s providence made sure he remained available for a greater purpose. Romans 8:28 says all things work out for good to those called according to His purpose.
Jacob and I went to elementary school together. I have followed his journey on social media over the past couple of decades. But here’s my regret. I never said anything to Jake. There were many times when he would post pictures, like this one, and my initial reaction was, “Oh, Jake. What are you doing??” My heart could see the pain in his, but what could I do about that?? “It’s not your business to say something to him, Erica.” I convinced myself. And so I didn’t.
I prayed, though. I did pray. And I prayed hard. The Lord would always stop me from praying for Jake’s body, although I could clearly see he was hurting by the way he was treating himself. Instead, Jesus guided me to pray for his heart and his mind to be healed–the body would come later. I had no idea what that meant, but that is what I would pray for–his heart and mind to be restored. It was going to take his heart and mind being restored for him to see exactly what it was he was doing to himself. God knew that. I didn’t.
Although I regret not saying anything back then, God used my prayers to restore Jacob’s heart and mind to a place where self-harm to look better no longer dominates his thinking. God restored him back to a place where “Good Enough” is not measured in the eyes of another individual but in the eyes of the one who created him. And for that truth I drop to my knees in thankfulness, because I do not know what would have happened to Jacob if God’s army didn’t protect him from his own self.
I married Jacob in April of 2019. I get to see the consequences of his repeated self-trauma daily. Jacob’s body is reaping what he sowed all those years, in addition to all the trauma from life causing pain.
But through physical therapy, clean eating, discipline, prayer, God’s Word, and lots of love, Jacob is on a path to healing from all the pain thrown his way.
So to all the souls out there trying to be better than you are now, remember your beauty does not come from outward appearances. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. He looks at the heart.
1 Samuel 16:7
God can take a heart of stone and turn it into a heart of flesh—if you’d just trust Him.
Connect with us: