The Story Behind Carry Your Cross™

My name is Andy, I started Carry Your Cross just a couple of years ago along with my good friend and brother in Christ.

Throughout my high-school and college years I left my Catholic faith and decided to stop going to church. I never “felt” anything and decided I was going to live life like my peers.

Growing up in a time where “hook-up culture” is rampant, drugs and alcohol are readily available, and God is not in the picture…turning away from our Lord was a recipe for disaster. The devil is smart, and he wants our souls. He makes sin look glamorous. But in reality, it’s like drinking poison.

I felt that. Luckily, Jesus showed me how much I needed him when he made me realize how miserable I was with the way I was living. Instead of turning to God in my trials and temptations, I turned to the world. I drank the kool-aid and I drank a lot of it. God has a way of bringing you to your knees. But sometimes that is the only way he teaches us to rely on Him.

It was at this time I began to take my first step on the journey back to God and reconnecting with my faith. I began to go back to confession and get right with God. I was lucky to find a friend who was also on this journey during our college years. It wasn’t easy to change my ways overnight. There are falls, and stumbles, but you must rely fully on Christ to pick you up and keep moving forward.

Losing friends, not going to the same “parties”, and building a new direction for your life can be an uphill battle. But it’s worth it.

The words “Carry Your Cross” were a weekly familiar motivational text in conversations with my friends who were on the journey back to God. The more these words were said the more they rang in my head as a way of life.

In Luke 9:23, Jesus says to his disciples, “if you wish to be my disciple, deny yourself, pick up your cross, and follow me.”

I wrote a whole blog on the meaning behind this here.

This led to a desire to share this message with the world in a greater way. We started by making a logo and creating a hat. Giving our friends a cool and subtle way to share their faith was the goal. From there, people wanted more!

Today we have built a full online store with all sorts of clothing that helps spread the message of carrying your cross.

My personal favorite is our black t-shirt. It’s simple, it’s bold, and people will definitely ask you what it means. You can wear it to the gym, to church, out and about…pretty much wherever.

Every product you get from CYC is super high quality. We figured, if you’re gonna buy a shirt, it better be comfortable, and it would be great if you actually want to wear it. Our customers constantly tell us how much they love the quality of our shirts.

At the end of the day, it’s about the message. Whether it’s a shirt, an Instagram post or a YouTube video…our goal is to build a lifestyle brand around the message of Carry Your Cross. Everyone can relate to it, and it’s a message the world needs to hear.

We live in a comfort culture. When we look to the cross, we don’t see comfort…we see sacrifice, pain, and total trust in God the Father.

I think we can all be a little bit more like Jesus.

I hope this gives you a bit more background about who Carry Your Cross is and the story behind it. I know it was a little long, but if you’re still here…thanks for reading.

God bless and carry your cross,

Andy, cofounder, CEO