How I Chose Between My Dream Job & My True-Self
A Best-selling author, Christian evangelist and renown speaker who was born without arms or legs. He was initially my idol, then he became a friend, which followed by him becoming my employer and mentor. He writes how to be a Christian mentor in his latest book, which actually featured a whole chapter about our journey together. However, he neglected to mention the true end to our relationship about why I was pressed to resign after I was “outted” to his family. His name will be referred to as “he” and his identity kept anonymous for legal reasons.
My name is Bradon Schwarz and I used to work and be mentored by an incredible man that inspires the world with his story of finding hope and happiness despite being born without arms or legs. His adversity is what makes my own that much more difficult to accept. In his book, he wrote a chapter on our journey together — describing our unconventional meeting as “ordained by God”. However, his romanticized tale boasts in the positive impact he made in my life while unjustly excluding the end of our relationship which left me depressed and suicidal. Since he still claims to remain a mentor to me, I’ve decided to share the truth from my story with this inspiring homophobic evangelist.
An Unconventional Meeting
He started as an icon to me. A man I would see only on TV or speaking to stadiums of people. The inspiring story of how a limbless man became one of the world’s top speakers shaped my life ever since I was 12 years old. Fate seemed to bring us together over the span of 10 years.
I first heard him speak at a Christian music festival in 2007, where my life was forever changed by becoming a Christian. He is the reason I am a Christian today, but the same man that helped transform me back then would later reject me when I needed him most, leaving me shattered.
Fast-forward six years after I first heard him. It was my first day at a new retail job when I spotted them. Both he and his pregnant wife came into the store on my first day. The crazy coincidence? I was offered that job on the spot a few days earlier and he had never been into the store prior to that. Crazy, right? Attempting to keep my cool, I approached them. We had an amazing conversation, but we never actually planned to ever meet again. Of course, we did eventually meet, but it was because of another “right place, right time” occurrence three weeks later between he and my dad.
Our relationship developed out of a foundation of happenstance in ways that seemed too impossible to be coincidence. He quickly transitioned from being an icon, to a close friend, to eventually becoming my mentor and employer as we would soon tour the world together.
The Radical Proposal
After a few vacations to Colorado his support continued to grow for my family’s non-profit organization, Extreme Mobility Camps. He presented me with a radical proposal. He suggested I drop out of college to begin traveling with him as his assistant. Obviously, he didn’t have to ask me twice. It was spring 2015 when he began mentoring me to expand the charity as we traveled to over 15 countries in two years.
One day I was studying for finals and the next I was sitting business class on a plane to South Africa with my childhood hero. I blinked and was seeing countries I never thought I would see and meeting esteemed people I never would have aspired to meet. It all felt like a dream until somebody pinched me.
Two years later, I received a call from somebody close to him. “They know” is all that was said. My legs instantly went numb while my stomach sank. Somebody had told his family I was gay, but he still didn’t know yet. I didn’t know which was worse: the cat being out of the bag, or now having a timeline to tell him if I wanted him to hear it from me first?
I wanted my dream to keep going another year or even just another month, but I saw the writing on the wall. He shares his beliefs on the LGBT community both publicly on stage and privately amongst his circle. I can recall cringeworthy conversations I was barely able to sit silently through.
Pray It Away
If I wanted to know how he would react to me, I just had to think back on what his advice was to high school students who would seek him out for guidance after a speech. “God doesn’t accept you as you are” he would say. Followed by his simple remedy of “pray it away”.
It was actually harder for me to come out to him than it was my own parents because what was at stake, but I eventually mustered up the courage. I knew he would not want to employ a person from the LGBT community and would likely find an excuse to fire me to circumvent California’s anti-LGBT discrimination laws. Therefor, I offered to resign in exchange for a small severance.
To make a bad (unemployed and non-graduate) situation worse, he began to pull his support from our non-profit. The charity’s growth was stunted when he pulled away and we remain limited in how many people we can work with each year. Our charity helps blind youth reach their full potential through challenging them with action sports.
The end of our relationship brought me through the troughs of depression to the brink of suicide. I felt the loss of a friend, mentor and job simultaneously. My dream quickly turned into a nightmare as I saw a man that preaches to love everyone reject me for something I can’t change. Over the last two years, there have only been a handful of texts outside of a meeting where he prayed over me and tried to convince me I wasn’t actually gay.
Was It Worth It?
I initially chose not to discuss what happened publicly to help move on more quickly, but when I read the chapter he wrote, I saw the harsh reality: he still believes what he did to me was the right thing to do. He still doesn’t have the slightest comprehension to the wreckage he left in my life. If he was given the opportunity today, he would likely still tell me to “pray it away”. I can say with full confidence having said that prayer for most of my childhood, he is wrong. I am proud to be a gay Christian. I wanted to share my story to hopefully inspire someone out there to still be authentic to themselves despite knowing a difficult road is ahead.
The worst part is knowing that he continues use his platform to steer vulnerable LGBT people down emotionally damning paths, despite them having 3x the average suicide rate.
This man was someone who changed my life since I was 12. He is solely responsible for some of the best and worst experiences in my life. I’m not out to hurt his reputation, only share my story. Looking back in hindsight; what I lost after I came out was in trade for everything I gained. Was it worth it? Yes. 100% yes.
By: Bradon Schwarz
