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Caroline Hardwick thought she was just out for a walk on the Clear Fork trail along the Trinity River that day. Along the way, a woman from Redemption City Church extended a simple act of kindness—a bottle of water and an invitation to church.
“We regularly send a team with a few cases of water to the Clear Fork, the most popular running trail in Fort Worth,” Redemption City Pastor Matt Kendrick said. “Most take the water and say thanks and keep going. Many turn back with questions about the church and what we believe.”
For Hardwick, that bottle of water portended the living water she soon would embrace.
Searching for truth in all the wrong places
Hardwick’s faith journey started long before that afternoon at Clear Fork. She grew up occasionally attending a mainline denominational church with her family, including four siblings.
“I went through confirmation class at 15, got baptized … just to be safe. I don’t think any of us [had] a relationship with Christ,” she said. “… We lived in America and that’s what we were: Christian”
At her private school, Hardwick found she enjoyed attending chapel daily. As a senior, she was nominated as prefect, a chapel leadership role. She read devotionals nightly and felt “kind of a relationship with Christ bubbling up.” Even so, something wasn’t clicking, she said. At least not yet.
With college came partying and drinking, Hardwick said. Her interest in Christian things fell to the wayside and her drinking habits continued beyond graduation. So did her spiritual search, which she initially satisfied by exploring “eastern esoteric practices,” dabbling in psychic phenomena, investigating Chakra alignments, and practicing yoga.
At 27, she found herself across the globe in Bali for a month, training to become a yoga instructor.
“I got into Hindu spiritualism, where there are all kinds of gods,” she recalled, adding that the world of eastern mysticism and yoga meant one was always searching for spiritual reality.
She hit bottom in 2020 when her mother was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. “I just drank for eight months on my couch,” Hardwick said. One day an internal voice spoke: “You have got to stop.”
“I listened,” Hardwick said. She began attending recovery meetings and has been sober since Nov. 1, 2020.
She was still practicing yoga and exploring Hinduism and Buddhism at the time, but as she started working through a spiritual 12-step program, she embraced the habit of praying: “Not my will, but God’s will.” She wasn’t quite sure who she was addressing when she was praying, but she recognized the need for the higher power the program stressed.
Sober, she returned to Bali in 2023 for five weeks to teach and practice yoga, agreeing to become a business partner in the yoga school.
“Hindu teachings emphasize a constant search for healing,” Hardwick said. “My partners wanted me to take the business to the United States and create a hybrid online and in-person school using their intellectual property,” she said. She was to teach the premise that people become their own healers as they connect with their bodies through yoga.
Yet the idea of self-healing didn’t quite resonate with her. During a social media scroll in Bali, Romans 8:28 came to her: “We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to His purpose.”
“That verse kept resonating in my mind,” Hardwick said.
Finally, she realized her recovery process was guiding her back to the Christianity of her youth. “I did grow up with a Christian God,” she admitted, and headed back to Texas.
“We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to His purpose. That verse kept resonating in my mind.”
Nudges from the Spirit
Back home, she reconnected with a believing friend and started studying the Bible. Movies like the late Phil Robertson’s “The Blind,” concerning his salvation and recovery from alcoholism, affected her strongly. Christian radio stations seemed ubiquitous. One day she snapped a photo of a street sign, only to notice later that the words “Jesus Saves”
appeared in the background.
Small things. “But I felt the Holy Spirit nudging me,” she said. Even reading about the near-death experiences of others gave her pause as she realized a common denominator: “If people saw a religious figure, it was always Jesus.”
But would Jesus want her?
One Saturday morning, assailed by thoughts of unworthiness, she stopped during her walk along the Clear Fork. She recalled thinking, “I don’t think Christ would want me. I have been into all this yoga. I am not a Christian person.” In despair, she sat down to weep.
The offer of a bottled water made her look up.
“Are you thirsty?” a woman asked, handing her the water accompanied by a flyer with information about Redemption City Church. The woman invited her to visit on Sunday.
The following morning, Hardwick hesitated. Then she went.
“Everybody was so down to earth and nice,” she recalled. “It was not what I was expecting.”
When worship songs urged surrender to God’s will, the language was familiar to her, reminiscent of recovery.
“These are people just like me,” she realized. “Even if someone is not an alcoholic, they still have issues.”
She began attending Redemption City regularly in September 2023. That October, she remembers watching the evening rain from her kitchen window, meditating.
“I go to my heart center, and Jesus is there,” she recalled. “Jesus, what are you doing here?” she asked. And then she knew: “He is saving my soul.” She realized no one would ever love her like Jesus does. She cried. The peace of God descended. She understood.
“Everything downloaded. It made so much sense,” she said, describing the moment of her salvation. She realized that she did not have to teach a curriculum about becoming your own healer.
“Jesus did it for me,” she said. “Jesus did it all.”
Hardwick said the “scales fell off” her eyes as she experienced a huge epiphany, sleeping soundly that night after reading Colossians 3:15 and shaking while imploring Jesus to “drive any darkness out.”
She soon read Deuteronomy, and its warnings against idolatry and other forms of ungodliness forced her to reevaluate her career path. She left the yoga business.
“Jesus radically changed me,” Hardwick said of her now two years as a believer. She was baptized in February 2024 and became involved in recovery ministry and small groups at Redemption City. Her mom, a cancer survivor, is a strong believer also.
“Jesus was crucified at 33. I just started living at 33,” she said.
And, oh yes, she sometimes accompanies teams to the Clear Fork trail along the Trinity to pass out water … and hope.
