A Nation Cannot Outsource Its Soul

There is a photograph from 2021 that still startles me.

I am lying flat on my back beneath a white hospital sheet at Vanderbilt. A breathing apparatus is positioned over my mouth. Sensors are attached near my face. Blue tubing stretches across the bed, wires disappear into machines around me, and a monitor glows a few feet from my head.

In another photograph, taken closer, my eyes are open.

I look trapped because, in many ways, I felt trapped.

Until then, health had been one of the assumptions underneath my life. I exercised every day. CrossFit was part of my routine. I ate reasonably well and had spent so little time around doctors that I did not have much of a framework for becoming seriously ill.

Then I contracted the Delta variant of COVID.

What followed became severe long COVID. I eventually counted around 173 symptoms, an almost absurd number for someone whose body had always seemed dependable. Suddenly I was learning the vocabulary of hospitals and monitors while trying to understand why ordinary functions no longer felt ordinary.

At Vanderbilt, strapped into that bed and surrounded by machines, the thought that frightened me most had little to do with career plans.

I wondered whether God would ever use me again.

Five years later, I was sitting inside the United States Capitol with the Speaker of the House.

That distance still feels difficult to explain.

Speaker Mike Johnson and I were talking about faith, America and the burden I had been carrying for the country. During the conversation, he told me he wanted to help. He committed to sharing my contact information with members of Congress and encouraging them to connect with me.

I thanked him.

Then I left.

Afterward, he followed through.

Members of Congress began reaching out. Doors that ordinarily require repeated emails, staff relationships and a great deal of patience began opening in ways I could not have arranged for myself.

My first response was gratitude.

My second was attention.

I have come to think of favor as directional. When God opens a door that I could not force open myself, I try to look through it carefully. There may be an assignment on the other side.

So I walked through these doors.

I sat with members of Congress. I asked questions about faith and public life. Conversations moved through national security, religious liberty and artificial intelligence. I listened to people whose responsibilities gave them access to information and perspectives most Americans rarely encounter firsthand.

Something unexpected happened along the way.