Bobby Kenney
I had a lot of brokenness in family life as a kid. I did well in school and sports and tried to act as if I was okay interiorly, but I wasn’t. At 13, I began grasping for peace, happiness, and love in the wrong places. I lost my virginity, started smoking weed, and started drinking. This obviously led to more brokenness, and as the years went on, I began doing more drugs, to try to numb everything going on in my heart. By the age of 16, I had tried heroin and was hooked on it. I was also selling drugs to be able to provide for my habits. Two weeks before I turned 18, I was pulled over by 5 cop cars on I75 and found out they had a 3-month investigation going on me, and someone had a wire 3 different times during drug deals. I received 3 felony trafficking charges, yet my lawyer got me out of jail time since I had started college.
However, I failed one of my drug tests and had a court date, which I missed. There was then a warrant out for my arrest, and I decided to try to enjoy my summer before I went to jail. I was on the run for 2 and a half months in Cincinnati and pretty much homeless for those 2 and a half months. A friend bought me a pay-as-you-go phone and would text me addresses for parties and come pick me up, and I spent those months drinking and doing drugs every night, and it’s a miracle that I’m alive after that summer. Eventually, I got caught and was put in jail for 5 months.
While I was in jail, these three guys came in and said, “Hey, God loves you. Regardless of what you’ve done and where you are at, He loves you and is capable of bringing good out of everything you’ve been through. He desires to give you new life in pursuing Him and following Him.” This was the first time I ever really had hope, as my whole life I’d been called degrading names and told I wasted my life away and had no future.
The three guys shared the Gospel with me, how we were made for a relationship with God, and that relationship gets broken by all of us because we’ve all messed up and fallen into sin. We created this gap between us and God. But the Father sent Jesus to die for us and pay what we owe to bridge that gap so that we could be reconnected with God and live in His love. We just have to believe and respond by following Jesus.
They told me to begin by just praying, talking to God about everything as if He is my best friend, and to read through the Psalms. I read through them all, and they increased my hope even more.
When I got out of jail, however, I fell right back into the world. I began playing college baseball 2 days after I was out and started drinking every night and ceasing to continue my relationship with God.
I was kicked out of my parents’ house after failing my classes and went to live with my uncle. While working at Texas Roadhouse, I began dating a girl. A little ways into our relationship we both moved into my parents’ house, as I had to have spine surgery (for scoliosis) and had 18 screws and 2 twelve-inch rods put in my spine, and she was there to take care of me when my parents were at work. Once I was recovered, we moved into an apartment together (this was a very unvirtuous relationship driven by lust). At the time, we had been dating for 2 and a half years, and this was the girl I thought I was going to marry. Without having a relationship with God, I had centered my life around her. 3 months into us living together, she just left out of nowhere, and I crumbled. I fell into the most depressed and anxiety-filled stage of my life I’d ever been in, and would get off work and get as drunk as I could and try to find someone to hook up with, back to the same habit of grasping for love and happiness, trying to numb and run from what was going on in my heart.
9 months later I moved back in with my parents and broke down crying the first night I was there. That night, something clicked in my head, and I asked, “What am I doing? I’m not seeking any purpose in my life.” I decided to pray for the first time in 2 and a half years and just prayed for help and some sort of direction.
A month later, my mom gave me her old camera for Christmas, along with a necklace that had Jeremiah 29:11 on it, which says, “I know the plans I have for you, plans to give you a future of hope and to prosper you.” A month later, local 12 news put one of my pictures on their Instagram, and I thought, “Wow, I might be able to do something with this; this is crazy; where did this come from? I never had an interest in photography in my life.” I then remembered that prayer. It showed me how present God was in my life, and I just need to humble myself enough to realize I need His constant help and need His constant guidance. I began praying and reading scripture again, as those guys had told me to.
6 months later, I entered into the modeling industry and worked in that industry for the next 2 and a half years, shooting with very scarcely clothed models, as I thought I was just sharing the beauty of God’s creation in the body. My Instagram began to blow up (I gained over 20,000 followers), I began getting published in magazines, and began getting asked to travel to different states to shoot with people. Though I was receiving a lot of attention, I wasn’t making much money, so I was still working at Texas Roadhouse.
I began sharing my faith journey through my photography, and while at Texas Roadhouse, one day, there was a server crying at the POS stand. I walked over to her and said, “Hey, is everything okay? What’s going on?”
She told me what was going on, and I told her that I posted a picture today on Instagram and wrote about a struggle similar. I told her there is also some scripture with the writing and that I think she should go read it, as I think it will be encouraging. After I told her this one of the servers behind me who had overheard our conversation said, “Hey, Bobby, do you want to do a Bible Study sometime?”
I said, “Um, sure?”
I was hesitant since I had never heard of a Bible study and had no idea what is was.
We started doing them, and they very quickly began changing my life.
The first was about the fall and how God told Adam He was made in His image and has everything he needs in Him. The devil then tricked Eve into grasping for the fruit, something she knew she shouldn’t, but the devil tricked her into thinking it was good and that it would make her like God (yet God had already said she was made in His image).
I then realized I’d been grasping in the same way my whole life.
Three Bible Studies in we went over this parable of two men who built their house on a beach. The wise man built his house on a rock, and the fool built their house on sand. When storms came, the house on the rock stood strong, but the house on the sand crumbled and washed away.
The house is our life, and the rock is the Word of God. When we build our life on the Lord, we’ll stand strong regardless of what this world throws at us.
The sand is things of this world that are constantly shifting and changing, such as our desires, money, and other people.
If we build our life on these things, when storms in life come or one of them is taken away, we are going to crumble.
This convicted me to build every part of my life (relationships, career, etc. on the Lord).
During this time, I had also been planning on starting a clothing line called Bobby Kenney III, which was going to be like Calvin Klein underwear, since I had been shooting that style of photography and had a large network of models to work with to help market the brand.
During that same bible study, I asked Jarod, the man leading me in the bible study, “What do you think about my photography?”
He said “I’ve been wanting to talk to you about this for a long time but didn’t really know how to approach it. I know you love what you do. I think you’re very talented, and I think your heart is in the right place, but I think you can do it better.”
Which was probably the most graceful and gentle way he could have told me that I shouldn’t be shooting what I’m shooting. He then said, “I want to give you a book; I think it will greatly bless your life and your photography.” He ran upstairs and came back down with a book called “Theology of the Body in an Hour” by Jason Evert. I read it over the course of the next week, and it blew my mind. I had never heard any truth about a need for modesty and to protect beauty. It talked about how the body is such a beautiful gift and treasure from God and that no one is deserving of receiving that gift entirely unless they are giving their whole life to love and care for that gift, which only happens in marriage. Outside of marriage, that gift is just used and abused for selfish reasons. I realized then that I needed to stop shooting what I was shooting and also that I shouldn’t do the clothing line, which was terrifying after spending so much time building a platform on that kind of photography. However, I decided to trust that the Lord was doing something good.
Jarod invited me to SEEK19 soon after, a large Catholic conference put on by FOCUS, where 16,000 people and 600 priests attended. During the conference, I learned the truth, beauty, and goodness of the Catholic Church and how it was the Universal Church that Jesus built through Peter, the first Pope (Matthew 16:18). I then decided that I wanted to go through RCIA to learn about the Sacraments and be Confirmed in the Church.
A few other things happened at this conference. I went to Confession and told the priest my whole life story. He teared up and told me that I’ve been to hell and back, and God’s going to take everything I’ve been through and use it for good and that He has very special plans for me.
Another thing that happened there was that a speaker at a men’s talk said, “You can’t be a half disciple; either you’re all in, or you’re not. This was very convicting in encouraging me to give my whole life to serve the Lord.
One of the most profound things that happened at this conference happened while in personal prayer. Though I had decided to switch my photography to simply portraits, I was a bit stressed out still about what to do with the clothing line. I asked Jesus, “What do you want me to do with this? I’m giving it to you.”
While I was praying, I had a vision of this girl waking up with black makeup smeared under her eyes, looking like she had been crying. She got out of bed and walked into the bathroom, looked in the mirror, looked down at her shirt, and it said, “You Are Loved.” She smiled.
I knew what I was supposed to do.
I went home after the conference, designed a black shirt that said, “You Are Loved,” and came across 1 John 4:16, which says, “We have come to know and believe in the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever remains in love remains in God and God in them.”
After reading this verse, I realized the magnitude of the message God had given me, that it brings His presence everywhere it is displayed, and that everyone that reads it encounters His heart for them the moment they read it.
The clothing line did well in the first few months, but after about a year the sales came to a complete stop; after a couple months went by without a single sale, my business partner, who was backing it financially backed out as the expenses were higher than what we were making.
I had around 200 shirts just sitting in my mom’s basement, and I asked myself, “What am I going to do with these?”
I had started doing some homeless ministry in Dayton at this time and decided to bring some shirts with me to give out. The first person I gave it to was a guy sitting by a tree in the park near House of Bread in Dayton. I walked over and said, “Hey, want a T-shirt?” He said, “Sure, what does it say?” I told him, “It says “You Are Loved,” it’s a reminder God loves you.” He then said, “Ya know, after everything I’ve done, it’s kind of hard to believe that sometimes.” He proceeded to tell me his story and how he is currently battling a heroin addiction. He then gave me an opportunity to share my story, and I told him how God led me to freedom from my past. I asked if I could pray with him that the Lord also broke those chains of addiction in his life and gave him new life in following him. We started praying, and a little ways in he started yelling, “Thank you Jesus, Thank you Jesus,” and was crying tears of joy.
I couldn’t stop thinking about that day throughout the next week and how that guy encountered the Lord very powerfully right in front of me. That week, I was convicted that this is much more than just a clothing line; this is a mission the Lord is calling me to, to bring this message to those living in brokenness. I asked him soon after in Adoration, “What specifically is my mission with this? Three things came: to bring love to the homeless, to bring love to people in correctional facilities, and to bring love to the youth. It made so much sense to me why the Lord was calling me to this, as I had brokenness in all three of those areas and a lack of awareness of God’s love until those guys came into jail to tell me about it.
I then began looking into how to start a nonprofit organization, and as of February 2021, You Are Loved Mission became a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization aiming to bring God’s love everywhere possible but especially focusing on bringing it to those three areas.
The shirts are still a huge part of the mission, and they are all buy one give one now, so every time somebody buys one, we donate one to the homeless or youth.
Over 700 shirts have been donated since 2021, which is amazing since now all of those people, whether in the shelters or the streets or elsewhere, are able to spread the Gospel to those around them wherever they are when wearing them.
We’ve also painted murals in the homeless shelters in Dayton, at Emerge (an addiction recovery program in Xenia), and given posters and talks in various schools.
Currently, I am married to a wonderful Catholic woman whom I met after the SEEK conference in 2019 (she was at the conference, but I didn’t meet her until months later at a different Catholic retreat), and we have a 3-month-old son who is such a blessing of joy. I still do photography (mostly Catholic weddings) part-time, and I am full-time with You Are Loved Mission now, which entails me fundraising my salary to support my family and spending time in 3 different homeless shelters and on the streets each week. I also have been writing to an inmate in prison for the past two years, teaching him about the Church, and he went through RCIA and was confirmed this while in prison. I do youth ministry as well at a local parish. Please, pray for me, my family, and the mission that we may all be guided by the Holy Spirit and that we may be great saints who share the love of God with those around us.
God has a unique call for each of us. He meets us where we’re at with love and desires to lead us on a great adventure of learning to love and be loved better. As soon as I opened my heart to him, the adventure began.