The Rugged Path

Army officer Nick Merritt spent years hating himself for something God and his ex-wife had already forgiven, and it took one sermon on forgiving himself to finally set him free. Nick sits down with Dan Black just 48 hours after Dan felt led to ask him, no prep, no back and forth, both men going into the conversation cold.
Nick walks through a childhood he barely remembers, including being locked in a closet for protection during abuse, and the infidelity that ended his first marriage while he and his then-wife were stationed apart early in his military career. He gets honest about the years that followed at Fort Campbell, alone, drinking himself to sleep every night, calling himself a terrible person every single day. He talks about getting turned away by Special Forces recruiting, finding PSYOP instead, and the deployment to the Balkans that cost him his daughter's first birthday.
Listeners will hear how Nick met his current wife on Facebook Dating, chose brutal honesty over another lie on their first date, and found the sermon at Grace Church that changed everything he understood about forgiveness. The episode closes with Nick standing at a real crossroads, days from leaving the PSYOP work he loves to re-qualify into an entirely new Army career built around nuclear weapons policy, still not certain if it is God's calling or simply a good opportunity.
Subscribe to The Rugged Path for new episodes every other week, raw faith conversations the church usually leaves out.
 
Chapters:
0:00 — Introduction10:01 — Alone at Fort Campbell: Rock Bottom15:13 — Childhood, Abuse, and a Family Built on Faith He Didn't Own25:11 — Sports, College, and Finding Exercise Science33:33 — The Tough Mudder That Sent Him Into the Army38:22 — Turned Away by Special Forces, Found by PSYOP58:59 — Deployments, Family, and a New Calling1:02:53 — Infidelity and the End of His First Marriage1:08:43 — Meeting His Wife and the Freedom Cycle Sermon2:04:29 — Closing Reflection: Who Are You Underestimating?

His blood alcohol content was 0.46 the night an SRT team pulled him off his couch, and by every medical rule he should not have survived it. Efren Garcia spent over 23 years between the Air National Guard and the Army as a Cavalry Scout, an 82nd Airborne paratrooper, and a retired Sergeant First Class, deploying to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, to Iraq, to Afghanistan with 1st SFAB, and to Morocco. He carried himself like a squared away soldier the entire time. Underneath it, he was fighting a war nobody could see.
In this episode Efren sits down with Dan Black and tells the full story. A childhood in Chicago shaped by an abusive, alcoholic father. A forced move to Albuquerque and years running with loosely organized gangs. His first drink at eleven years old and the decades of functioning alcoholism that followed him through combat deployments, marriage, and fatherhood. He walks through the night it all caught up with him, a drunk driving accident, his wife leaving with their kids, a bottle of pills washed down with alcohol, and the drone and SRT team that found him in time.
Listeners will hear exactly what it sounded like in the hospital bed where Efren finally surrendered everything to God, and what happened after: sobriety, a men's discipleship group, baptism for himself, his wife, and both of his children, and the founding of Battleground Peer Support, a nonprofit built to help veterans and first responders get help before they hit the bottom he hit. This is a hard conversation and an honest one, with no polish and no formula, just a real man walking through hell and finding faith on the other side.
If you have ever felt like your worst moments disqualify you from God, this episode is for you. Subscribe to The Rugged Path wherever you listen, leave a review, and share this one with someone who needs to hear it.
 
CHAPTER MARKERS:0:00 — Introduction28:16 — Childhood in Chicago: An Abusive, Alcoholic Father41:50 — The Move to Albuquerque and Early Chaos57:53 — Joining the Air National Guard After 9/111:15:46 — Becoming a Cavalry Scout and Airborne School1:40:49 — The Haiti Earthquake Deployment2:06:46 — Iraq, Afghanistan, and Losing Brothers in Arms3:45:41 — Rock Bottom: The Accident and the Suicide Attempt3:47:30 — The Hospital, Detox, and Full Surrender to God3:54:11 — Baptism, Family, and Battleground Peer Support

He went back into the Navy to become a hospital corpsman. He didn't realize until years later that he actually went back to get saved. Phil Bivins served three separate enlistments in the United States Navy spanning Vietnam all the way to Desert Storm, and this conversation with Dan Black covers all of it.
Phil grew up an Air Force kid, moving between bases in Germany, Turkey, and Hawaii while his father fought a hidden battle with alcoholism that nearly ended his military career. Phil enlisted in the Navy on a whim after trying on a friend's dress blues, washed out of submarine school, and volunteered for Vietnam alongside his best friend, serving out the final months of Naval Support Facility Da Nang during the base drawdown. Years later, as a corpsman, he found himself aboard the USS Nimitz during the Iran Hostage Crisis, treating the pilot who could not complete the Operation Eagle Claw rescue mission, and helping rescue Vietnamese refugees adrift at sea.
But the real turning point in this episode happens at a picnic table outside a Navy chapel in 1978, when a submarine officer named Scotty Baldwin walked Phil through a gospel tract and he realized that being a good man was never going to be enough. Listeners will also hear Phil's honest account of two marriages that ended in divorce and death, the loss of his second wife to years of alcohol abuse, and the slow work of rebuilding his walk with God at Grace Church, where he still leads a men's small group today, still confessing pride the same way he did the day he got saved.
This is a raw, honest conversation about what it actually looks like to keep following God decades after most testimonies stop talking. Subscribe to The Rugged Path for more real stories of faith forged in hard places.

Jose Alvarez closed the garage door, started the car, and decided he was done. A fewminutes later he heard a voice inside him say "It is done. It's done. Let it go." --and that was the night God got his attention for good.
Jose was born in Quito, Ecuador, the oldest son in a family shaped by hard work,Catholic tradition, and a father who could light up any room. By the time Jose wasnine, that father was dead -- killed in a drunk-driving accident he had walked intovoluntarily. Jose carried that grief, and the rage underneath it, through militaryacademies, a near-professional soccer career with Club Deportivo El Nacional, and across-continental immigration at age 21 with his brother, a duffel bag apiece, androughly $600 between them. He built himself up from a $9.50/hour moving helper inNew Jersey into a logistics manager working commercial jobs inside Trump Tower and theoffices of Lehman Brothers. He built idols out of work, money, and the woman whobecame his first wife. When their marriage collapsed at Fort Bragg and the darknessthat followed took him to the edge, the only thing that came was a voice -- and afriend who handed him a Bible.
In this episode, Jose walks Dan through the whole arc: a brother miraculously healedof leukemia when Jose was ten, the knee injury that ended his soccer career andrevealed how thin his real friendships were, two years of praying for a marriage thatwould not be restored, the forgiveness he had to speak out loud to a woman who toldhim she was not going to heaven anyway, and a prophetic dream that came true at abaptism years later. He talks about Pastor Cannon -- the godly math teacher inFayetteville who became his first mentor -- and how digging into the Bible was neverabout answers for him, but about knowing who God was. He also names the next leap offaith: full-time ministry and a youth activity center built around faith, family,finance, and fitness for the next generation.
This is a story about what happens when every idol gets removed at once, and God iswhat remains. Subscribe so you never miss a conversation like this one.
 
 
CHAPTER MARKERS:0:00 — Introduction7:23 — Born in Ecuador: Family, Faith, and a Father's Death9:06 — Brother's Leukemia and the First Sign of Jesus28:46 — Military Academy, Soccer, and a Life Built on Rage46:40 — Immigration: One Ticket, One Duffel Bag, No Plan1:07:17 — Building the Idols: Work, Money, and a Woman Who Became His God1:32:24 — Fort Bragg, Infidelity, and the Collapse1:58:58 — The Garage2:06:49 — Conversion, Pastor Cannon, and Learning to Forgive3:01:12 — The Dream Comes True: A Baptism and a Generation Changed

Justin Koch spent twenty years in the Army, much of that as a Green Beret, and most of his life convinced he had his faith handled. He had been saved at thirteen. He knew the right answers. He could quote the right verses. What he could not do — and would not admit for two decades — was actually let God run his life. This episode is the story of a man who compartmentalized everything that hurt, performed everything that was expected, and kept the whole structure standing through willpower, alcohol, and a Special Forces identity that eventually ran out of road.
Justin's path ran from a split life in a Texas church to SF Assessment and Selection, from a combat outpost in Afghanistan to a hospital room where his wife showed him a positive pregnancy test and he realized with cold clarity that he could not feel anything. His teammate Steven was killed during an attack on their outpost. He ran to the tower expecting to treat an infantry casualty and found his friend instead. He triaged the wounded, managed the mass casualty, and shoved all of it down somewhere deep. He had been doing that his whole life. He was very good at it.
What you will hear in this conversation is the kind of reckoning that does not come all at once. It comes in layers — a year at a Christian college that drove him further from God than toward him, years of drinking alone after his wife went to bed, a pregnancy loss that left him emotionally numb, a retirement that stripped away the last idol and left him with daily panic attacks and nothing left to perform behind. What came out the other side was not a program. It was a man who finally stopped holding the controls. Justin now co-hosts the Unconventional Faith podcast and runs Cleaner Living with his wife Heather. He is six months retired, at peace, and more honest about faith than he has ever been in his life.
If you have ever believed in God and still managed to keep him at arm's length, this one is for you. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen, and leave a review if this show has meant something to you.
 
CHAPTER MARKERS:0:00 — Introduction1:39 — Who Is Justin Koch43:33 — Growing Up Double-Minded in Texas1:02:34 — The Master's College and the Chip on His Shoulder1:35:04 — The Lost Years and Coming Home2:46:57 — Army, SFAS, and Earning the Beret3:11:46 — Afghanistan and the Death of Steven3:36:45 — Savannah, Scout, and the NICU4:20:55 — Retirement, Panic Attacks, and the Last Idol4:27:04 — Surrender, Cleaner Living, and Unconventional Faith

Hunter Gochenour spent 30 years doing it his way — and it nearly cost him everything. He grew up in a Luray, Virginia mountain town with a mother unraveling into meth addiction and a father who was barely present. By 18 he was in Myrtle Beach selling cocaine and Adderall, driving Corvettes, and watching people around him disappear. When a close friend turned up shot multiple times in the back of the head and the death was ruled a suicide, Hunter decided it was time to leave before the same thing found him.
 
What followed was an Army career that started with four enlistment attempts and recruiter fraud and eventually landed him in the 18X-Ray Special Forces pipeline, through Infantry Basic, Airborne School, and the Special Operations Combat Medic course — until a bull riding injury put him on med hold. He deployed to Poland with the 82nd Airborne, served as a recon team leader, and was med-boarded out in 2024 against his will. By the fall of 2025, two relationships were over, the divorce was finalized, and Hunter was sitting on a horse farm outside Southern Pines with a .320 in his hand. A friend showed up with sunflower seeds. Then on November 10th, 2025, he drove to his buddy Tom's house, knocked on the door, and said he thought he needed to be saved. He walked into the yard and gave it all up on his knees. Tom had unknowingly cooked dinner for him and laid out four gifts and a card. Hunter says God knew he was coming.
 
In this conversation, Hunter and Dan cover the full arc — the childhood he survived, the Army career he fought to earn and didn't want to lose, the ego that kept God out for 30 years, the spiritual warfare that hit the moment after salvation, and the January 2026 job site accident where a 16,000-pound machine ran over him and he walked away with a bruise on his ankle and drove himself to the hospital. Hunter is 30 years old, six months saved when he sits down with Dan, still mid-fight — and already leading other men to Christ wherever he finds them.
 
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Chris Loschiavo grew up in church because his mother made sure of it. He was saved at six, baptized at twelve, and spent the next two decades doing exactly what he wanted while God kept redirecting him anyway. A coin toss made him a Quartermaster officer instead of Infantry. That sent him to Fort Bragg instead of a combat deployment. That put him on a helicopter to Kandahar as a first lieutenant doing the work of three senior officers. Every maddening redirect, every plan that fell apart, was a hand he would only recognize in hindsight.
In January 2007, alone in his condo in Fayetteville with a finished bottle of red wine and his loaded Glock 19, Chris came closer to ending his life than he had ever admitted to anyone. He looked across the room, saw his Bible sitting on the kitchen counter, put the gun down, and picked it up. He would deny that night had ever happened for the next ten years -- calling other soldiers who attempted suicide weak and selfish while he buried the truth so deep he almost believed it himself. It took a military psychiatrist in Korea nine years later to crack it open. He wept in her office. She diagnosed him with depression and PTSD. He finally told the truth.
This conversation covers 20 years of a man hearing God and choosing himself, until he finally didn't. It covers military identity, suicidal ideation, shame as a long-term survival strategy, marriage strain, and what it costs to walk away from everything you worked for since September 12, 2001. Chris turned down three battalion commands and a dream job at his alma mater because he believed God was calling him somewhere else. He retired as a lieutenant colonel in July 2025 and opened a barbecue food truck in the Sandhills of North Carolina. It is not paying him yet. He says he has never been more at peace.
If you have ever sat in a pew and gone through the motions while carrying something you were not ready to hand over, this one is for you. Subscribe wherever you listen, and share this episode with someone who needs to hear it.

Keith Golightly grew up in Grand Prairie, Texas, with no connection to faith, no
knowledge of his grandfather except through a handmade leather wallet sent from
prison, and no warning before his family fell apart. He is now an associate pastor
at Grace Church in Southern Pines, North Carolina, a former US Army special
operations intelligence officer, and one of the most clear-eyed people you will
find talking about what God does with a broken family and a hardened heart.
 
Keith's story runs through a father's suicide attempt on a Dallas highway overpass,
a chance invitation to a college campus ministry, and more than half a decade inside
JSOC running counter-ISIS intelligence operations that fed reports to the White
House. He deployed to Iraq, Syria, and Jordan. He ran Bible studies downrange. He
resisted the culture of chest-reading and ego that runs through special operations
while staying fully inside it, understanding himself not as a soldier who happened
to be a Christian but as a Christian who happened to be a soldier.
 
The turning point came on a Thursday night at Sam Houston State University, when
Keith walked to an altar for the first time and prayed the first prayer of his life.
The years that followed were a sustained process of God refining what had been hard
-- the bitterness toward his mother, the distance from his father, the pride that
special operations culture rewards and God does not. His final OER from a squadron
commander who was not a believer read: "You're a friend to the squadron." The Holy
Spirit reminded him of John 15. That was enough.
 
Listeners will come away with a sharper understanding of what it costs to carry
faith into a culture that runs on ego, what forgiveness actually requires, and what
it looks like when a man's deepest ambition shifts from building a career to building
a family. Keith closes with the last verse of the Old Testament and why it is the
thing he wants most to get right before he leaves the earth.