My name is Philip Gibson, and this is my story.
I created Gnarly Nomad Brand in 2018 when I was an agnostic worshipping nature instead of the one who created it. I knew full and well what I was worshipping. I just wanted something tangible to worship after losing faith in Jesus and the Bible after graduating from Baptist seminary in 2015.
Doubts about the goodness of God, the problem of evil and many other things consumed my mind and eventually eroded belief in the God I had dedicated my life to serving when I went to seminary. I remember crying out to God in prayer for answers to my questions or at least peace about them. And I felt like God was silent.
I eventually reached a point where I didn't think I would ever believe in the God of the Bible again. If this God existed, I didn't think he was good or worth serving. I never thought I would ever get to a place again where I could believe that the Bible was inspired by God or that Jesus actually rose again from the dead!
The biblical foundation my marriage was founded on was demolished. There were many times when my wife and I didn't know if it was going to work. My heart was really hard toward God. We would try and have discussions and it just always seemed to end in fights.
Despite all of the difficulty she never lost hope. One summer after I returned home from a road trip, I remember my wife telling me, "I'm not sure If I should tell you this or not, but God told me you were going to come back to Jesus". I chuckled and told her as nicely as possible, "don't get your hopes up". I didn't think I would ever come anywhere close to believing the essentials of Christianity ever again.
We needed a fresh start after seminary and we ended up moving to Texas where I became a public-school teacher. I was able to go on some epic road trips out west during my summers off and it changed the course of my life. I fell in love with nature, adventure, and getting out into the wild of the best national parks America has to offer. I just felt this sense of freedom and a connection to the land and to nature.
Those trips always made it hard going back to work when summer was over. I would always dream of the next adventure. The monotony of the 9-5 work life put me in a box that I wanted to break out of. So, after my summer road trip in 2018 I started an online t-shirt and upcycled bracelet company with the hope of one day being able to be my own boss and to have the freedom to travel more.
After contemplating names for the company, the name Gnarly Nomad came to my mind in the middle of one night. I wrote it down and Gnarly Nomad was born. I trademarked it and was all in on pursuing that path. I also wanted to be radical in giving to a specific mission for the less fortunate and donated 50% of my profit.
Gnarly Nomad was an outlet for a spark of creative energy I had. I wanted something tangible to worship and nature became that object for me.
But God had his way of halting those plans. Kids! My wife and I had children in 2018 and 2019 and all of the sudden the long adventures during the summertime became harder and less desirable. As much as I wanted to get back out into the wild, leaving my family for road trips didn't seem like a good idea if I wanted to stay married!
When Covid hit in 2020 Gnarly Nomad became less desirable to pursue. The madness of the world over the course of the next few years would eventually drive me into a deep depression. I started drinking alcohol more, I had no meaning, hope, or fulfillment in life and was searching for something to fill my emptiness.
I ended up leaving the teaching profession to pursue more money in a sales job that originally I did well in. But the stresses of the job and the roller coaster life of sales just ended up taking me even deeper into depression and anxiety. Alcohol became my escape. I started drinking to numb the pain and emptiness. I could feel my mental and physical health deteriorating.
In January 2023, one morning after my wife and now three kids had left the house, I noticed a large glass of wine that my wife didn't drink from the night before. How could I let it go to waste? I downed it on an empty stomach before I left for work. That's the point I was at in my life! About five minutes into my drive to work I started feeling sick to my stomach. Shocker, right?
I pulled over to the side of the road and when I went to push my hazard light button the whole face of the triangular button broke into the dash of my car. I got out and threw up on the side of the road. When I got back into my car, I looked at my hazard lights flashing on my dashboard. I tried to turn the lights off by pushing the button, but it wouldn't turn off. It just moved even further inside my dashboard. I looked at myself in the rear-view mirror and was hit with a profound intuitive feeling that God was trying to warn me of destruction. I drove back home with my hazard lights on overwhelmed by the feeling of warning. I had to cut the wiring just to get the lights to turn off.
Over the course of 2023, I continued to get what I perceived as warning after warning like the hazard light incident. I felt like God was trying to wake me up through situations I would encounter. I began contemplating my life in profoundly deep ways and was really overwhelmed by the thought of my death. Thoughts like, "If I were to die today would my kids remember me?", "how would people remember me?", "what will my legacy be?" began to haunt my mind.
I truly felt if I continued to go down the path I was on it would kill me. And I wasn't ready to die. Despite all of the hardness I had toward God, I knew I needed to get around people who were seeking to better themselves. My wife sensed an openness, and she asked if i wanted to start getting involved at church. I said, yes.
Despite all of my doubts and unbelief, I took the first step in getting into a men's small group at church. I was open about where I was at in life, my doubts and unbelief. It was honestly refreshing to just be around men again who were struggling just like me in their own unique ways.
By this time, I had been living in Texas for almost 8 years and hadn't had any real true friends outside of my family. I never sought it out and didn't know where I could find friends who could understand what I was struggling with.
I continued to seek God for answers and peace about the questions and doubts which had held me back all these years. To be honest with you my path back was by no means orthodox. It was no Damascus Road experience where I was hit with the full truth of the gospel. It started off with me looking at the Bible and Jesus in more of a rational and logical way.
To give you an example, I wasn't sure if Jesus really rose again, but I was able to get to a place mentally where I could believe the spirit of Jesus was alive. I felt it in the worship center during church...even though I still wouldn't sing at that time. I could see it in the lives of the people walking in close relationship with him.
I took a similar logical, rational approach to the problem of evil and what I felt like was the hiddenness of God and other questions that had caused me to abandon my relationship with God. It helped me stay the course and keep taking steps.
I made mistake after mistake and continued to struggle, but I just kept praying, seeking God, and taking steps in his direction. Throughout this time I felt like God would speak to me in random ways similar to the hazard light situation. Certain things would happen to me or I would encounter something in life and I would get these spiritual thoughts that would come to my mind that could only be explained by God. My faith slowly increased.
In January of 2024, my wife and I participated in a time of prayer and fasting for three days to start off the new year at our church called, "Prepare". The whole church was encouraged to not eat for three days and to pray about specific things for the new year. Each night we would all gather at church for a time of prayer, worship, and then would listen to a special guest speaker. Before the first night, my wife and I journaled specific things that we wanted to pray for.
The first night, two things happened that I felt doubled my faith overnight and has now set the tone for the rest of the 2024 year for me and the rest of my life. One, I was praying for a mentor. Or an older man to meet with to help me in my faith journey. God laid a specific man from church on my heart but it was someone I wasn't very close to. One of the things I wrote down as a prayer was that God would let me see him during the first night of Prepare if he wanted me to approach him about it.
Our church has 2,500 seats in the worship center and when we got there it was already packed with people. I told my wife, "let's just go find a seat toward the top" of a section with stairs to find an easy, open seat. As we were walking to the top, my wife randomly decided to go sit in the middle of an open section lower than I had imagined. I was a little annoyed to have to squeeze by all the people to get to the open seats, but I rolled with it.
As soon as we got to our seats I looked down and two rows in front of me was the man I prayed to see, who I hoped might become a mentor for me. I had actually forgotten about what I had written down in our journal until I saw him! I usually always rationalize these types of moments. I probably would have done the same thing If I had just seen him in passing, but of all the seats we sat in he was right in front of me! It was just a small thing that gave me and increased my faith and allowed me to feel that God heard me.
The second thing that happened the first night was who God placed us next to in those seats that my wife chose in the middle of the section. We were in a time of guided prayer where we were encouraged to pray with some people near us.
My wife opened up conversation with a young woman sitting by herself next to us. The woman asked what we're praying for and my wife said, "our marriage". My wife asked her what she was praying for and she went on to tell us that she was praying for her marriage as well because her husband no longer believed in Jesus.
Come to find out, one of the women's leaders at our church had met this woman about 4 months prior to this and had told my wife that she wanted to connect them because she was going through a similar situation as my wife. But for whatever reason they never were able to connect.
So out of all the open seats that were available in the multi-thousand seat worship center, in the middle of a section that I didn't even want to sit in, God placed us next to this woman and two rows behind the man I prayed I would see. These two encounters doubled my faith overnight.
During these three days of fasting and prayer, I was praying about what God might want me to focus my attention on outside of teaching (I went back to teaching after quitting sales). I've felt a pull toward something else for a while, but just wasn't sure about what God might want me to do.
While I was praying one of the nights, God brought Gnarly Nomad Brand to my attention. I felt in my spirit that God told me he wanted to flip it around and use it for the kingdom of God.
I didn't quite understand how God could use something called Gnarly Nomad, but the more I thought and prayed about it the more God showed me that it was exactly what he wanted it to be called.
First, one of the definitions of gnarly is to describe something difficult or challenging. Or also something very good and excellent. Jesus could fit those definitions! Secondly, Jesus did not have a home. He was a nomad.
These words could also be used to describe the human life and the Christian journey through it. This world is not our home. We're just passing through. We will all die eventually and move to a spiritual home.
Not only that but this world we live in is hard. It's difficult, challenging and full of struggle. But the Christ follower has hope, embraces the struggle and continues to pursue God no matter how difficult life gets. So, in some sense, all followers of Jesus are Gnarly Nomads!
Since that time in January, I've come to a place where God has increased my faith enough to believe it all. I never thought I would ever say that. Obviously, I don't have all the answers to everyone's questions, but after seeking, asking, and knocking, God helped me find peace.
I'm finally at a place where the questions I once had mean less to me. I just want to spread the gospel again. Because I believe it with all my heart. Don't get me wrong, I still want answers! That's just part of who God made me to be. But I'm able to rest in the reality that God is so much bigger than we could ever fathom.
Imagine trying to explain to one of the individual cells in your body about the magnitude of what it is a part of. Now expand that infinitely higher to the God of the universe. The mind, the being who created all things. We can't comprehend it. Just like our cells can't comprehend what they are a part of.
For 8 years I tried to live life apart from a relationship with God. I tried to construct my own philosophical and moral foundation. In the end, it led me to destruction. God let me wander off to the gates of hell on Earth so that I could experience what life apart from Jesus is like.
I'm honestly thankful for the struggles I've experienced because it led me to start taking steps toward God again. If I had been disciplined with my life and had my life in order without God, I'm not sure If I would have ever come back to where I'm at.
I feel sorry for those who can find discipline, order, and structure in their life without believing in God. Because I honestly believe they are participating in the attributes of God and don't even realize it. Instead of worshipping the one true God, the source of all goodness, order, and structure, they worship themselves.
I'm going to be faithful and obedient to God's call of returning to Gnarly Nomad so he can use it to build his kingdom on Earth in whatever small or big way he chooses.
I also want to be obedient to the 50% donation of all profit that was originally placed on my heart even as an unbeliever at that time. I believe God will honor that faithfulness and multiply his kingdom and provide for me and my family all that we need.
50% of all the profit from each purchase will be going to a girl's orphanage in Haiti called, La Limye (The Light). I personally know the young woman who started it. I was in the same group as her when she went to Haiti for the first time back in 2011.
Her faithfulness and obedience to God's call to Haiti is incredible despite the chaos the country is currently experiencing. I'm looking forward to sharing more of her story.
Starting out, the redeemed version of Gnarly Nomad Brand will focus on selling the 480 upcycled bracelets I have left from the originals I had made in 2018-19.
These bracelets are a picture of the gospel to me now. God takes old, worn-out lives and gives it new life and purpose! They were all hand crafted and each one of them is unique.
Along with the bracelets, I've created various designs that point to Jesus in a unique way or point to the creator of the natural world. These designs will be used for t-shirts and high-quality vinyl stickers.
In addition to these first products, I want to create content that promotes discussion around faith, doubt, unbelief, the gnarly journey we're all on in this life and encourage believers to keep fighting the fight.
But also encourage unbelievers to seek God and test him to see if he's true. I want to share the stories of other "Gnarly Nomads" and their stories. People of all walks of life with different experiences.
I truly believe God created every single human being for a purpose. We all have unique stories, talents, and abilities that God wants to use to advance the kingdom God while we're here on this Earth.
God is calling YOU to do something, say something, or build something that ONLY YOU can do, say, or build. Will you embrace God's adventure for your life? It's time to walk into it fully!
If you feel led, please share this story for others who might need to hear it. And help share Gnarly Nomad with the world.
All glory and honor to Jesus!