Our Story

My name is Bobby, and for a long time I did not look up to Him. I looked at myself. I was the one in control. My will, my way, my plan.

2018: The first surrender

In 2018 I met a woman and she became pregnant. Then came the hardest season of my life. She wasn't sure she wanted me, and she wasn't sure about the child. Everything I thought I controlled was slipping through my hands, and there was nothing my will could do about it.

So for the first time, I stopped looking at myself and looked up. I surrendered to Jesus. Not a bargain, not a backup plan. A real surrender.

He brought her back to me. Today she is my wife, and that child is my son.

2020: The second surrender

Two years later, COVID took my career. I had a one-year-old at home and a family to provide for, and no idea what came next. The old me would have white-knuckled it. Instead I remembered what He had already done, and I surrendered again.

He gave me a business, and He blessed it far beyond anything I could have built on my own. I know exactly where that came from, and it wasn't me.

Why a bracelet

Here is what I learned the hard way: I don't drift toward God. I drift toward myself. Every time I started looking down at my problems or inward at my own strength, things fell apart. Every time I looked up, He showed up.

I wanted something on my wrist that would catch my eye a hundred times a day and say four words: Look up to Him. Not to the business. Not to my own strength. To God.

I want my kids to grow up watching their dad look up to Him. I want my marriage built on Him. And I want to put that same reminder on as many wrists as I can.

That's UpBracelet. A way of looking up, and a reminder of who we look up to.

“I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the LORD.” — Psalm 121:1–2

God bless,
Bobby Samai
Husband, father of two, founder of UpBracelet