My name is Quinn. This is my story.

With a brain full of fog, half asleep.

My calves: burning. I’m trudging up and down, up and down the stairs.

My wife, Melinda, nursed our two-month-old at midnight, so I cover the 2AM feeding. But he will not go back to sleep. Rocking him doesn’t work, stroller, or car rides work, but the instant I lift him from the seat he’s awake. Again.

Pacing the stairs is the only way he falls asleep.

I mention this in passing to our pediatrician. “Might be because you’re mentally and physically focused on the stair steps, so your arms are relaxed and Paul feels that. There is peace in your arms.”

I don’t feel completely peaceful. Life in North Carolina is fine,

but I need to make a shift. I work in video production. At that time, in sports TV.

I seek the peace of something less than a 60-hour week, and without the nights, the weekends, and deadlines of sports. As Melinda and I start a family a colleague suggests looking into a government job.

We move to Maryland in 2017, and join Chapelgate at the end of 2019.

Along the way, God clearly reveals that this is His path.

As life grinds to a halt in the pandemic, many of my old sports colleagues are working part-time at best; many are laid off.

But here, I am on paid admin leave, with time available to serve. God opens the opportunity to edit Chapelgate’s songs, prayers and sermons into the weekly livestream.

To look back, the pandemic created gained time with Melinda and by then, three kids. But the livestream edit demanded 40 hours, Thursday to Saturday overnight. I was honored to serve the community, but the tension of a crazed schedule returned and the strain stirred an anger in me. I wasn’t serving or leading my family well at all. God was using me. But sometimes it also hurt. My journey now is learning how to serve, without sacrificing my family.

Since 2020 I’ve been climbing those Chapelgate stairs to the production booth. Trudging up those steps is manageable thanks to several others who step in to share their time, and heart, because we don't serve alone.

Whether life is comfortable, or challenging, when I rest in and receive the peace of Christ’s healing for me, I find peace in my heavenly father’s arms.