“Uncovered” by Gabriel Grimm

When I was a child, I lived in Washington, D.C., in a big house with a lot of people. My grandparents were there. My mother and father. My sisters. For a while, even my aunt and her kids. Everyone lived together. It felt like my family went on forever. As a kid, I thought I had more family than I could ever meet. And honestly, it was good. We were close. That was how my grandmother wanted it.

My grandmother was the center of everything. She led with what I’d call a stern tenderness. She was loving, but you didn’t argue with her. She knew what she was doing. If you listened to Grandma, things went well. If you didn’t, well—don’t mess with Grandma. She loved us fiercely, and she wanted us together. Always together.

Eventually, D.C. started getting dangerous. There were some close calls with crime, enough that my grandparents decided it was time to move. They sold the house, and when I was about five or six years old, we all moved together to Florida.

Once we got to Florida, we settled into church life. We went to First Filipino Baptist Church with Pastor Ordonas. He was a small Filipino man, but he preached like thunder and fire. He’d say things like, “Praise God—you don’t want to go to hell!” He was intense, but he loved Jesus. And I was raised in church. Youth group. Helping out. Eventually even helping lead youth group when I was still young myself. Church was normal. Faith was part of life.

For a while, we all lived together again in Florida, but in a much smaller house. Grandparents. Aunts. Cousins. Everyone. It was crowded. A little chaotic. But we were close.

Then we moved out of my grandmother’s house. My parents bought a place a few neighborhoods away. And that’s when things started to change.

Slowly, the family started breaking apart. My parents worked all the time. They were never home. My sisters and I mostly raised each other. We stopped going to church. We stopped going to Grandma’s. The house got chaotic. There were financial problems. Hoarding. Animal hoarding. Fighting. Loud, constant fighting.

We all gained a lot of weight—fast. Almost overnight. I went from a normal kid to the fat kid. We all did. And that weight stayed with me most of my life.

My mom loved the Lord deeply, but she also interpreted a lot of things through spiritual warfare. Deliverance language. Evil spirits. When I was eight or nine, I started having sleep paralysis. I’d wake up and couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Terrifying stuff. When I told my mom, she said it was demons. She burned papers with spirits’ names on them. She went through my room and threw away my cards, my music—everything—because she believed unclean spirits were attached to them.

At the same time, she was breeding English mastiffs in the house. Big dogs. The house smelled like a kennel. No matter what I did, my clothes smelled like dog. I hid my clothes in the garage. I showered and ran outside in a towel to get dressed. I stuffed my backpack and shoes with incense and potpourri. Nothing helped.

At school, I was the fat dog kid. Christian T-shirts. Bowl cut. Smelled bad. It was brutal.

Somewhere in all that, I made a decision. I was ashamed to say it, but I said, “Okay. I won’t do this anymore.” I left church. I walked away from faith completely.

And honestly—life got easier. The sleep paralysis slowed down. The health episodes became less frequent. The joint lockups stopped. The cluster headaches eased. And in my mind, I connected the dots. I believed God had put a target on my back and left me there. So I decided I wanted nothing to do with it.

From about age thirteen until my late thirties, I stayed away. If people asked what I believed, I’d say, “If you believe in it, it believes in you—and I don’t want that.”

I built my life around myself. I got big. Big physically. Big in ego. Big in pride. I poured everything into work. Tattooing. I used every gift I had to glorify myself and make money. And I did well. Very well. I made a lot of money. I was proud of it.

Meanwhile, my family started dying. My grandmother got sick. My wife and I moved in to care for her. I paid her bills. Eventually my wife quit her job to care for her full-time. My shop made enough money that I only worked about ten hours a week. The rest of my time was spent with my grandmother. That part was a blessing.

But around us, everything was crumbling. My sister struggled with heroin addiction for six years. My father died in his work truck. Less than a year later, my sister overdosed and died in my mother’s house. Six months after that, my mother was diagnosed with stage-four cancer.

I had money. A beautiful house. Paid-off cars. A tattoo shop making money even when I didn’t work. And none of it could save anyone.

I panicked. I gave my tattoo shop away. I sold my house. I bought land in Maine and tried to gather everyone together again. I wanted to be the hero. The savior. The guy who fixed it all.

My mom was given six months to live. She lived almost seven years. She got a year here with my daughter, Iona. I was with her when she went. I felt it when she died. Something more than grief—like a covering lifted. Like a prayer stopped mid-sentence.

After that, things unraveled. My business turned dark. The imagery I was tattooing disturbed me. Symbols. Darkness. Things I didn’t want to put on people anymore. Eventually, my body gave out. Panic attacks. Anxiety. Hospitalization. I came to Maine alone in winter. No plumbing. One room with electricity. Melting snow to flush the toilet.

That’s when my friend Forrest showed up. Forrest was the bad kid growing up. Knife-carrying. Fire-starting. Trouble-making. I used to drag him to church, and he hated it. Now, years later, he was the one crying on my floor, telling me he loved Jesus.

It didn’t make sense. But he kept coming. He listened. He didn’t argue. And slowly, my heart softened. I remembered my mother’s prayers. I realized what I’d felt when she died. And I knew—I was uncovered.

I started looking for a church. I wanted my daughter to have a fair shot. We visited a big church. Nice people. Big programs. But something in me said, They don’t need you.

Then we came here. This place felt like home. Small. Real. Loving. Like the church I grew up in. People knew each other. There was space to belong. Space to help. Space to be needed. And that mattered to me.

I don’t have everything figured out. But I feel called to help. To listen. Especially to men. I want real fellowship. Brothers who will carry me when I fall. And whom I can carry too.

I believe God shaped me through everything—every mistake, every scar—for something beyond myself. This is where I’m meant to be right now. And I’m listening.

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