Crushed by the Press: Why I Welcome the Weight

 There are moments in life when the pressure becomes unmistakable.

Not the small, passing stress that comes and goes with everyday responsibilities. I mean the kind of pressure that reaches deeper into the soul. The kind that makes you pause, breathe slowly, and ask yourself what God might be doing beneath the surface.

That is the season I feel myself in right now.

It feels as though I am being crushed in a press.

Yet strangely, I do not feel fear in it.

I feel acceptance.

Even joy.

That may sound unusual. Most of us spend our lives trying to escape pressure. We want peace, stability, and calm waters. When life becomes heavy, our first instinct is usually to run from it or ask God to remove it.

But over time I have learned something about the deeper ways God works in a human life.

Some things can only be produced through pressure.

Olives release oil when they are pressed.

Grapes become wine through crushing.

Diamonds are formed through immense weight deep within the earth.

Pressure, when guided by purpose, does not destroy something valuable.

It releases it.

And lately I can feel that pressure building across several parts of my life at once.

There is the pressure of life itself. The everyday responsibilities, the decisions that shape the future, the quiet internal battles that most people never see.

There is also the pressure of transition.

A new job is fast approaching, and stepping into a new environment always carries its own weight. Any new season forces you to adapt, to grow, to step into unknown territory. There is anticipation in that, but there is also pressure.

You feel the responsibility of showing up well.

You feel the quiet question inside your own mind.

Will I rise to this moment?

But perhaps even deeper than that is the pressure I feel as I begin stepping more intentionally into ministry.

For years my faith has shaped my life privately. It has guided my choices, my recovery, my healing, and the way I try to walk through the world.

But stepping into ministry carries a different kind of weight.

It means allowing your life to become visible.

It means allowing your story to be used.

It means speaking openly about things many people keep hidden — pain, redemption, faith, and the journey between them.

There is a responsibility in that calling that is not light.

Ministry is not simply about speaking.

It is about carrying people’s burdens.

It is about walking with others through suffering.

It is about telling the truth about both darkness and hope.

And when you begin to step into that kind of calling, you quickly realize something.

God does not usually choose polished people.

He chooses people who have been through the press.

Because those are the people who understand what it means to survive the weight.

My life has never been free from pressure.

I was born into physical struggle from the beginning. My first surgery happened when I was only three days old, and many more would follow in the years ahead.

Pain entered my story early.

And trauma has been something I have had to wrestle with for much of my life.

Trauma is a strange thing. It does not always disappear with time. Sometimes it sits quietly beneath the surface, shaping the way you see the world and the way you see yourself.

Healing from trauma is not a straight road.

It is more like walking through fire and slowly realizing that the fire is refining something inside you.

There are still days when the memories feel heavy.

There are moments when the past presses against the present.

But I have also learned something powerful through that process.

God often uses the very wounds we wish had never happened.

Not to glorify pain.

But to transform it.

To turn ashes into something meaningful.

This is something I began to understand more clearly after the moment that changed my life forever.

When I was eighteen years old, I contracted meningococcal disease and slipped into a coma. Doctors did not know whether I would survive.

In that place — somewhere between life and death — I encountered something that forever changed me.

I encountered the presence of Jesus Christ.

When I woke from that coma, the world looked different.

My life looked different.

The boy who went into that hospital room did not come back the same.

Looking back now, I understand that moment as one of the deepest presses of my life.

The weight was overwhelming.

But something powerful was released through it.

Faith.

Clarity.

Purpose.

The press revealed what had been hidden beneath years of pain and confusion.

And that same pattern has continued through many seasons of my life since then.

Every time pressure increases, something new is being formed.

Sometimes the press exposes weakness.

Sometimes it reveals fears that need to be surrendered.

Sometimes it simply deepens faith.

But the press is never meaningless.

Even now, as I stand in this current season, I can feel that same weight returning.

There is pressure in the responsibilities of everyday life.

Pressure in preparing for a new job.

Pressure in stepping toward ministry.

Pressure in continuing to heal from trauma while still moving forward.

At times it feels like multiple layers of weight pressing down at once.

But I have come to recognize something important.

This is not the pressure of destruction.

This is the pressure of formation.

Scripture reminds us that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance produces character, and character produces hope.

That order matters.

Hope is not built in comfort.

Hope is built through endurance.

And endurance is built under pressure.

One of the most powerful images of this truth appears in the life of Jesus himself.

On the night before the crucifixion, Jesus went to pray in a garden called Gethsemane.

Many people do not realize that the word Gethsemane means oil press.

It was the place where olives were crushed to release their oil.

And it was in that place of pressing that Jesus faced the weight of the cross.

Scripture says the anguish was so intense that he sweat drops of blood.

That is the image of the press.

Overwhelming pressure.

Yet even in that moment Jesus did not run from it.

He surrendered to it.

“Not my will, but yours be done.”

Those words carry enormous depth.

They are the language of someone who understands the purpose of the press.

When I reflect on that moment, it reshapes how I see my own struggles.

If the Son of God walked through the press, why would I expect a life without it?

The press is not something followers of Christ avoid.

It is something we pass through.

And on the other side of that pressure, something new is produced.

Oil.

Light.

Clarity.

Depth.

When olives are crushed, the oil becomes fuel for lamps. That oil brings light into darkness.

In many ways, the same thing happens in our lives.

The pressure we experience today may be releasing something that will bring light to someone else tomorrow.

I have already seen this happen through my own story.

The suffering I once thought would destroy me has become the foundation of my voice.

The trauma I carried has become the foundation of my writing.

The darkness I walked through has become the foundation of my testimony.

My books, my story, and even my desire to step into ministry have all emerged from that same place.

From the press.

And because of that, I see pressure differently now.

It is still heavy.

It still stretches me.

But I no longer view it as something purely negative.

It is part of the process.

It is part of how God shapes a life.

So today, as I stand in this season where life feels heavy — with a new job approaching, ministry beginning to open, and old wounds continuing their slow healing — I find myself choosing something unexpected.

I choose to welcome the press.

Not because suffering is pleasant.

But because I trust the hands that control the pressure.

I trust the God who transforms broken things into something beautiful.

I trust the process that turns pain into purpose.

And I believe that when the pressing is finished, something valuable will emerge.

Oil for the lamp.

Light for the road ahead.

And a deeper understanding of the God who can take the crushing weight of life and turn it into something sacred.