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There was a time when Robb Lane was embarrassed by his online master’s degree. But after long COVID and more than one brush with death, he’s seen the light. Here’s how he transformed his life and found his calling.

When Robb Lane graduated from a small Bible college as a young adult, his future appeared straightforward. He’d go to work in ministry, get married and raise a family in his Northern California hometown.

Like all good stories, Lane’s proved to include a few twists and turns. He did get married and raise a family in Northern California, and he did work in ministry. In fact, his ministry career started in his late teens. After five years, however, he “stumbled into social work.”

“This was where I found a comfortable niche and then was encouraged to pursue my master’s degree,” he says.

A graduate degree appealed to Lane. But at the time, he was busy learning his field and gaining experience. His work with a foster family agency was challenging, but it resonated.

“I helped prepare families to welcome children in need of care, stability and love,” he says of the three years he spent as a family placement caseworker. “That work stirred something deep inside me. I began praying and considering a graduate degree in marriage and family therapy or social work.”

He went on to work for both nonprofit and for-profit agencies and spent about a decade in the field of social work in total. Earning a master’s degree in family therapy or social work felt right. But state budget cuts in 2006 caused him to rethink everything. He realized he might need to upskill or change careers entirely. As a result, he began to consider psychology.

This was a tough pivot for Lane, who viewed the field of psychology somewhat negatively in the context of his evangelical church. Still, he felt it offered potentially more opportunity than social work might. He chose an online program at ������ý that would allow him to continue to work full time and still be present as a husband and father to two young boys.

There was just one problem: Online college had a poor reputation in some circles.

“When I shared my plan, I encountered skepticism,” Lane says. “Friends and family said online education was ‘not real school.’ Truthfully, part of me wrestled with those doubts too. But I committed fully, choosing optimism over insecurity.”

His trust was well placed. At ������ý, he connected with instructors and classmates alike. During his undergraduate studies, he’d simply gone through the motions of pursuing an education. But in his online master’s program, he found himself deeply committed. Perhaps it was maturity or focus. Perhaps it was the online format, which allowed him to keep everything else in his life going as usual. Whatever the cause, Lane thrived.

Yet he wasn’t proud of that fact. In 2009, he completed his Master of Science in Psychology, but he didn’t broadcast it. “Beneath the accomplishment, I carried a hidden embarrassment,” he says, because he was ambivalent about psychology as a field of study in the first place and concerned the world wouldn’t value his online degree.��

Lane may not have shouted his accomplishment from the rooftops, but he did gradually ease into new opportunities. He started teaching, for example, at a local college and at an online university. His field? Psychology.

He also took on a part-time position with his church as an associate pastor. While he describes himself as not overly religious, he felt a personal sense of calling toward this path. Gradually, that position grew into a full-time job.

Between March and July of 2025, however, things took a turn. Lane began feeling overwhelmed at work. His wife, Cara, lost her job and was suffering from what they would later find out was severe anemia. Everything came to a head in August when he stopped eating or sleeping and collapsed on the road outside his home.

“My spirit was leaving me, and I was saying, ‘I'm ready,’ and literally God said, ‘No, you're not.’”

Lane was rushed to the hospital and placed on a three-day psychiatric hold. Eventually, he was diagnosed with COVID psychosis. It was a “one-off” episode, he says, citing the fact he had no history of mental illness or substance abuse.��

Cara may not have judged him, but their ordeal was far from over. A week after Lane’s discharge, Cara was also hospitalized for her own psychotic episode. The trauma of seeing him hospitalized, Lane speculates, was the last straw after enduring months of stress and illness.

“Medical professionals later identified the likely diagnosis as folie à deux — ‘madness of two’ — a rare condition where psychosis is shared between closely connected individuals,” Lane explains.

Healing for the Lanes would not be a straightforward affair. Some of the church leaders had visited Lane in the hospital and misinterpreted what they saw as a spiritual illness. Others believed God would not punish someone with such suffering unless he deserved it. Ignoring plenty of theories and arguments on “the problem of pain,” as C.S. Lewis put it, these people sought to remove Lane from his position in the church.

“I couldn’t believe how much I got exploited and betrayed,” Lane says.

Tribulation, however, can lead to redemption. As the Lanes began to contemplate what a new life could look like, Lane looked upon his master’s in psychology with new eyes.

“I realized just how valuable my psychology education truly was,” he says. “Concepts I once dismissed were lifelines. Knowledge I once took for granted had become deeply personal and profoundly relevant. … What once felt like an accidental degree became a cornerstone of my calling.”

Lane called ������ý and ordered a replacement diploma. (He’d lost the original long ago.) Later, he and Cara visited Arizona, where Lane’s parents lived, to explore what life in the desert might be like. After a few serendipitous turns of events, Lane found himself interviewing for a teaching position at a religious university and was offered a job on the spot.

Such opportunity is far from typical. But for Lane, his good fortune is simply the presentation of divine grace. “I'm so grateful to be alive,” he says. “My purpose is so much more than I ever thought. I’m in my 50s. I never thought that my life would start over.”

His children are grown, and his first grandchild is on the way. He “still carries a pastoral heart for people,” and so he has begun a marriage counseling practice. He is writing his first book. And then there are the opportunities to tell their story in a way that might help someone else. Lane and Cara are pursuing speaking opportunities, think tanks, panel discussions, round tables, webinars and seminars within the mental health space to do just that.

“We want to educate the world on how to stop the stigma around mental illness and be the real help this world desperately needs,” Cara says.

This new calling, these fresh opportunities in the autumn of Lane’s life — all of it, he says, is part and parcel of redemption.

“I think true wisdom is found when you go through the deepest, darkest times of your life,” Lane says. “And, yeah, I feel like the best is yet to come.”

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