Across the street in Las Vegas stood a row of sexually explicit newspaper boxes — called adult entertainment, yet placed where any child walking by could see them.

I stood there with my camera.

Different boxes.

Different images.

Different invitations.

And I remember thinking…

This is where it often starts.

Not with adultery.

Not with addiction.

Not with a broken marriage.

Not with a ruined family.

Not with murder.

It begins much earlier.

It begins with a conversation.

The most important choice you’ll ever make will probably begin with a conversation no one else hears.

No audience.

No applause.

No witnesses.

Beneath all the noise, two invitations.

One drawing you toward life.

The other quietly persuading you there is another way.

DEDICATION

To the Holy Spirit — who remained with me, guided me, and stayed present even in the years I didn’t know how to recognize His voice.

To my wife, Marty — who continually encourages me to write, to express what I have lived, and to believe it may be worth sharing.

To the reader — with the hope that something here causes you to pause, reflect, and walk away with a new perspective on the voices you hear and the choices you make.

SCRIPTURE

“So the LORD said to Cain, ‘Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.’” — Genesis 4:6–7 (NKJV)

“My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.” — John 10:27 (NKJV)

THE HOOK

Most of us think our lives are shaped by the big moments.

The promotion. The betrayal. The diagnosis. The wedding. The affair. The addiction. The failure. The apology.

But by the time everyone else notices the decision, the conversation has usually been taking place for quite some time.

Every consequence has a history.

Every history begins with a conversation.

Long before David stepped onto a rooftop…

Long before Judas reached for thirty pieces of silver…

Long before Peter denied he even knew Jesus…

Long before Cain lifted his hand against his brother…

There was a conversation.

That is where I want to begin.

Not in the field where Abel died.

But in the place where the Father spoke.

THE STORY

For years I thought Cain’s story was about murder.

Then I thought it was about jealousy.

Later I thought it was about anger.

Now I believe all of those are consequences.

The story begins much earlier. It begins with a Father pursuing His son before the decision became irreversible.

That changes everything.

Because suddenly the center of the story is no longer Cain.

The center of the story is God.

His patience. His pursuit. His warning. His invitation.

Go back and read the Father’s words to Cain slowly.

God does not begin with judgment.

He begins with questions.

He asks His son why he is angry. Why his countenance has fallen.

Questions invite relationship.

Questions slow us down.

Questions uncover what has already begun inside us.

Notice something else.

Abel is still alive.

Blood has not touched the ground.

History has not yet recorded the first murder.

Yet the Father is already speaking.

That has become one of the most beautiful discoveries of my life.

God speaks before the choice.

His warnings are not threats. They are invitations to return before the choice becomes the consequence.

I wish I could tell you I have always recognized His voice.

I haven’t.

Years ago, I walked forward at a Billy Graham crusade.

Like countless others, I confessed Jesus Christ as my Savior.

It was real.

Life changing.

But somewhere along the journey, something happened that I never expected.

I did not stop believing.

I stopped remaining.

There is a difference.

Drift is rarely dramatic.

No one wakes up planning to drift away from the Father.

It happens quietly.

One hurried morning.

One distracted evening.

One prayer postponed.

One conversation replaced by another.

Days become weeks.

Weeks become months.

Months quietly become years.

For nearly ten years, I drifted.

Not rebellion.

Drift.

Looking back now, I do not remember one decision that carried me away.

I remember thousands of little ones.

Drift rarely begins by saying no to God.

It usually begins by saying later.

THE MOMENT

The frightening part is this.

It was never His silence.

That discovery humbled me.

It forced me to ask a question I had never considered.

What if God had not become quieter?

What if every other voice had simply become louder?

God never stopped speaking.

I simply became fluent in every other voice.

THE TURN

Most of us spend our lives moving from room to room.

The room of success.

The room of ambition.

The room of disappointment.

The room of religion.

The room of distraction.

The room of desire.

The room of pain.

Each room promises something.

Success promises significance.

Ambition promises fulfillment.

Religion promises acceptance.

Distraction promises relief.

Desire promises satisfaction.

Pain promises justification.

So we keep changing rooms, believing the next one will finally quiet the ache we have been carrying.

Meanwhile…

the Father has been patiently waiting in the room we were too busy to remain in.

That picture has stayed with me.

I can almost see Him.

Not impatient.

Not offended.

Not keeping score.

Simply waiting.

The Father of my soul.

Waiting beside the chair I quietly abandoned years earlier.

Waiting because love refuses to force itself into the room.

Love waits.

Relationships change the way we recognize someone’s voice.

If my wife called my name in the middle of a crowded airport, I would know it instantly.

Not because she speaks louder.

Because I have spent years listening.

Recognition is born from relationship.

Not information.

Not repetition.

Relationship.

You cannot recognize the voice of someone you refuse to remain with.

That sentence has changed the way I pray.

It has changed the way I read Scripture.

It has changed the way I listen.

We have become comfortable visiting God while resisting the invitation to remain.

We want the answer.

He wants the relationship.

We want direction.

He wants communion.

We want clarity.

He wants us.

His sheep hear His voice. They are known. And then they follow.

This is not a transaction.

It is relationship.

That photograph stayed with me long after I left Las Vegas.

I knew the day I took it that I would use it someday.

I just didn’t know for what.

It took fifteen years for God to unfold in my heart what I had seen on that sidewalk.

Across the street sat that row of newspaper boxes.

Different boxes.

Different colors.

Different images.

Different invitations.

Yet nearly every one carried the same two words:

TAKE ONE.

I realized that is how many of life’s greatest decisions begin.

Not with a command.

With an invitation.

A thought asks to be entertained.

A desire asks to be fed.

A lie asks to be believed.

A voice quietly says…

Take one.

Before our feet ever move, something inside us has already reached toward the box.

The world keeps placing voices in front of us and calling them free.

But every voice eventually asks for something.

Attention.

Agreement.

Desire.

Direction.

A choice.

Photography taught me something I never expected.

The photograph is rarely discovered by moving faster.

It is discovered by slowing down enough to notice the light everyone else walks past.

Perhaps hearing God works the same way.

Perhaps He had not stopped illuminating.

Perhaps I had become too hurried to notice.

Stillness is not inactivity.

Stillness removes competing voices.

Recognition grows in stillness.

The longer I remain, the more familiar His voice becomes.

Not because He becomes louder.

Because I become quieter.

THE DRIFT

You’re not walking away. You’re just busy this season.

God knows your heart. He’ll understand.

You can pick the conversation back up whenever you want.

Besides — it’s free. Take one.

That voice rarely begins by demanding.

It begins by inviting.

I took one. Then a thousand.

The chair never moved.

I did.

THE REFLECTION

Truth always surfaces because it is alive.

I have watched it happen in business.

In friendships.

In ministry.

In my own heart.

You can bury truth.

Delay truth.

Ignore truth.

Fight truth.

But you cannot kill it.

Because truth is not merely something God speaks.

Truth is Someone.

Jesus did not claim to carry the truth. He claimed to be it.

A lie requires constant maintenance.

Truth simply waits.

It rises.

It surfaces.

It calls.

Years of sitting with men through Influencers and men’s retreats taught me something profound.

Lives rarely collapse without warning.

The warning came first.

The conversation came first.

The compromise came first.

Eventually, a man would say, “I knew something wasn’t right.”

The consequence may have surprised everyone around him.

The conversation never surprised God.

He had already been speaking.

God is never late.

He is usually early.

His mercy often arrives before the crisis does.

When I was fourteen, gold mining with my uncle in Yosemite, we took a trail to see a nest of ladybugs in a downed tree.

He was leading the way.

Stepping over a fallen log, he was struck — a rattlesnake bit him in the calf, buried beneath the leaves.

We never saw it coming.

What followed was chaos and clarity all at once.

Following his instructions, I made a tourniquet from his belt and got him back to the Jeep.

He was shaking violently by then.

I had never driven a stick shift before.

I did that day — grinding gears through miles of overgrown manzanita until we reached the small hospital in Greeley Hill.

They had anti-venom.

He survived.

That day etched something deep into me I will never forget.

You don’t always see danger coming — not the real kind.

Sometimes it’s quiet, patient, and disguised as something harmless.

That’s exactly how sin works.

It creeps in softly, almost unnoticed, until it leaves its mark.

Sin rarely announces itself.

The Father always does.

The warning is not the destination.

The Father is.

That is the invitation hidden inside Cain’s story.

God was not only trying to stop a murder.

He was trying to keep a son.

Perhaps He has been doing the same thing with each of us ever since.

Perhaps your next decision will not begin with temptation.

Perhaps it will begin with a conversation.

One voice will invite you toward yourself.

The other will quietly invite you home.

Pull up a chair.

Quit changing rooms.

Remain.

Listen.

The Father is still speaking.

WALKAWAY LINE

God speaks before the choice.

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

If God hasn’t become quieter, which voices have become louder?

MY PRAYER

Heavenly Father,

Thank You for speaking before the choice. Thank You for asking questions before consequences arrive, and for waiting in the room long after I stopped showing up. Forgive me for the years I answered every voice but Yours — for every invitation I reached toward because it called itself free. Teach me to remain. Not to visit, but to remain. Quiet the voices that promise everything and hold nothing. Train my heart through remaining, the way years of listening teach a man to recognize the voice he loves, so that when the next conversation begins, I recognize You first.

And Father, I lift up the one reading this. Draw them into a deep reflection of their own walk. If something here resonates, let them know it is Your voice they are hearing — and open the way for their response before the choice ever arrives, the way You have always spoken first. Meet them in the conversation no one else hears, and quietly invite them home.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.

ABOUT G~

G~ writes from lived experience — exploring identity, authority, and time through the lens of faith, trial, leadership, and surrender. His reflections are not meant to condemn or hype, but to steady. Rooted in covenant, forged through adversity, and anchored under the authority of Jesus Christ, his work invites readers to examine who governs their lives — and to live intentionally under truth.

If what you’ve read resonates with your journey, feel free to reach out.

G~

This is not the gym at Andrew Hill. But the light is right. The dust is right. The empty bleachers are right. And the rope is exactly right. I spent a season of my life beneath one just like it — looking up, reaching higher, and returning when no one else was in the room.

They gave me a name I never chose.

A rope I couldn’t climb.

And an empty gym that changed everything.

DEDICATION

To the Holy Spirit — who was with me before I recognized His presence, and who held me long before I knew how to hold on.

To the coaches in my life — few, but powerful.

To Mike Stanley — coach, brother, fellow climber. Still on the rope.

To Marty, my wife — always supporting my writing, always encouraging me, always holding me with her love.

To the reader whose grip is weak, loosening, or unsure — still discovering what is worth holding onto. May you be strengthened, and encouraged to keep growing that strength.

SCRIPTURE

“For who has despised the day of small things?” — Zechariah 4:10 (NKJV)

“…let us run with endurance the race that is set before us…” — Hebrews 12:1 (NKJV)

“This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast…” — Hebrews 6:19 (NKJV)

THE HOOK

1974. Andrew Hill High School. Freshman year.

Coach Shalaba’s PE class was not built for freshmen. Only two of us in that class were freshmen. The rest of the room was filled with older JV and varsity athletes — bigger, faster, already performing at another level. Jim McMahon was one of them. That tells you something about the caliber of the room.

And then there was me.

I was overweight. The room could see that before it knew anything else about me.

Coach Shalaba was the first to say it. He called me “Marshmallow” instead of Marchand, and the room took it from there.

A name like that isn’t a description. It’s a verdict. Soft. Easy. Done before it starts.

What came next hurt even more.

He refused to leave me alone.

Extra drills when the drills were over. Extra conditioning when the conditioning was done. Constant pressure, every class, aimed straight at the freshman least equipped to handle it. I couldn’t tell whether he was trying to break me or build me.

At that age, the two feel identical.

THE STORY

There was a rope in that gym. It hung from the rafters to the floor, and every time I walked past it, it asked me a question I didn’t want to answer.

So I decided to answer it where nobody could watch.

After school, when the gym emptied and the doors stopped swinging, I stayed. Nobody knew. Not Coach Shalaba. Not the athletes. Nobody. Just me, a rope, and the particular silence of an empty gym — the kind of quiet where you can hear your own hands failing.

Progress came in inches. Real inches. Some afternoons I gained a hand’s width. Some afternoons I gave it back. My arms shook. My grip burned. The rope didn’t care. Ropes never do.

There is no applause in an empty gym. Nobody claps for inches.

But one afternoon — no crowd, no coach, no witness — my hand touched the ceiling.

I hung there for a moment at the top of the room that had named me Marshmallow.

Then I came down, picked up my books, and told no one.

THE MOMENT

Coach Shalaba ran a drill with a length of hose. Two men. One hose. You kept your grip, or you didn’t.

The day my name got called, another name got called with it.

Overstreet.

Senior. Varsity linebacker. One of the biggest athletes in school. The room didn’t laugh out loud, but it didn’t have to. Everybody already knew how this ended.

We took our grips. And somewhere in the first pull, something in me made a decision my body would have to keep:

I was not letting go.

He was stronger. He was heavier. Most of the time, my feet were not even on the mat. He had every advantage but one — he assumed there was a point where I would quit. I had spent a season alone in that gym discovering there wasn’t.

I don’t know how long it lasted. I only know how it ended.

With the hose in my hands.

No cheering. No noise at all. Just silence — the sound a room makes when it has to rewrite what it thought it knew.

Coach Shalaba gave it two words.

“Good match.”

Then came the day the ropes were part of class. In front of everyone.

When my turn came, I climbed to the ceiling and came back down.

Then I climbed it again. And came down.

Then I climbed it a third time.

And the room erupted. The same athletes. The same gym. The same kid they had named Marshmallow — and this time Coach Shalaba saw it, all of it, everything those empty afternoons had built into me.

I never let him see me practice.

He only got to see what the practice had made.

The match was won in public.

The strength was built in secret.

THE TURN

I never became a star athlete. That was never where this story was going.

But the nickname died somewhere between the hose and the third climb, and it never came back. I left that gym strong. Competitive. Respected.

And I left with a lesson I would carry for fifty years — and get half wrong for most of them.

Here is the half I got right:

I did not become strong and then climb.

I climbed.

The climb made me strong.

The strength never comes first. The showing up comes first — the empty gym, the shaking arms, the inches. God builds strength the same way, in rooms nobody applauds, long before there is ever a moment worth watching.

Here is the half I got wrong:

For most of my life, I thought the lesson was grip.

THE DRIFT

Hold on tighter.

Grip harder. Outlast everyone.

If your hands are strong enough, you’ll never fall.

It all depends on you.

I believed every word of that. I had the calluses to prove it. Then life began hanging weight on my rope that no human grip could carry — illness, loss, betrayal, pain, and seasons that emptied without warning — and I learned something that gym never taught me.

My hands were never the problem.

The problem was what my rope was tied to.

THE REFLECTION

Look at the photo again. Not the rope this time — the bottom of it.

There is a carabiner lying there. Old. Scarred. Built for one purpose: connection. A climber’s whole life travels through that small gate of steel, because a climber’s rope is only as good as its anchor. You can have iron hands on a rope tied to nothing, and all you have done is decide where you will fall from.

Every life is tied to something. Approval. Performance. Money. Recognition. Health. Relationships. Fear. Control. We clip in early — usually without ever deciding to — and we climb for decades trusting that the anchor will hold.

Then the full weight comes down. And every one of those anchors, sooner or later, fails. Not because we didn’t grip hard enough.

Because they were never load-bearing.

I have been at the end of my rope more than once. I used to think that was the tragedy of the story. I don’t anymore. Sometimes reaching the end of our rope is where the greatest revelation begins — because the end of the rope is where you finally stop staring at your grip and look up to see what it’s tied to.

For most of my life I asked the wrong question about that gym.

The question is not, “How strong is my grip?”

The question is, “What is my rope anchored to?”

Hebrews calls hope an anchor of the soul. Every other anchor I ever trusted eventually gave. Christ has held every ounce of weight I have ever put on Him.

And climbers know one more thing about carabiners. Sometimes you clip into another climber. Sometimes another climber clips into you.

Which brings me to Mike Stanley.

Mike is a coach. Not was — is. The field changed; the calling never did. Years ago he walked The Journey, a discipleship road I had the honor of leading him down. And when he reached the top of it, he didn’t unclip. He turned around and brought other men up behind him. His body is aging now. His faithfulness is not.

He wrote me something recently that I have not been able to put down:

“You write so beautifully and with such truth. As always you inspire me. Greg let’s finish well together.”

Read that last line again. A man who spent his life coaching is not asking me to help him win.

He is asking me to help him finish.

A younger coach demonstrates strength with his body.

An older coach demonstrates faithfulness with his life.

Coach Shalaba taught me not to let go of the hose. Mike Stanley is teaching me not to let go of the rope. And both of them, in different decades, have been pointing at the same truth:

We are not done on the rope until God says we are done.

We may clip into one another — brothers, coaches, climbing partners for a stretch of the wall. But every rope must ultimately be anchored to Christ. Because someday every hand weakens, every coach ages, every climber comes to the end of his rope.

And on that day, your grip will not be the question.

Your Anchor will.

As for me, I settled that question a long time ago.

No longer a marshmallow. A rock for Jesus now — not because my grip never weakens, but because my Anchor never does.

WALKAWAY LINE

The question was never how strong my grip was — it was what my rope was anchored to.

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

What is your life anchored to — and will it hold when your full weight comes down on it?

Who is connected to your rope, watching how you climb?

MY PRAYER

Heavenly Father,

Thank You for the empty gym. Thank You for every season You built strength into me when I believed no one was watching — and for the truth that You were there for every inch of it. Thank You for the coaches who pushed me, for the brothers who clipped into my rope, and for the ones who let me clip into theirs.

Forgive me for the years I trusted my grip — for every anchor I chose that was never meant to hold me. Anchor my life in Jesus Christ, the One who has never failed.

And Father, for Mike, and for every brother still climbing — keep us faithful to the end. Don’t let us come off the rope until You say we are done.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.

ABOUT G~

G~ writes from lived experience — exploring identity, authority, and time through the lens of faith, trial, leadership, and surrender. His reflections are not meant to condemn or hype, but to steady. Rooted in covenant, forged through adversity, and anchored under the authority of Jesus Christ, his work invites readers to examine who governs their lives — and to live intentionally under truth.

If what you’ve read resonates with your journey, feel free to reach out.

G~

He was about ten weeks old when Marty and I brought him home. The runt of the litter — a little body and a small head, but the loose skin and oversized tongue of a Saint Bernard.

Marty and I looked at him, then at each other, both thinking the same thing:

He’ll grow into it.

He never did.

His head never grew. But that skin and that tongue stayed every bit as large as the day we met him.

That small head, that oversized tongue, and that crooked smile simply became Truman.

Today — July 16, 2026 — is going to be one of the hardest days Marty and I have faced in a very long time.

Today we will say goodbye to Truman.

The cancer has spread throughout his body.

Love now requires mercy.

DEDICATION

To the Holy Spirit — for entrusting Truman to us for thirteen years and twenty days.

To Marty — who loved him, cared for him, gardened beside him, and received his morning hugs and sloppy kisses.

To my sister — who loved having Truman at Hobart Mills and always made him feel at home.

To every friend who threw him a ball, watched television with him, shared an adventure, laughed at that oversized tongue, or helped make his life so full.

To every reader who has already loved and lost a faithful companion — and to every reader who someday will.

SCRIPTURE

“To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven: A time to be born, And a time to die…” — Ecclesiastes 3:1–2 (NKJV)

“A righteous man regards the life of his animal, But the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.” — Proverbs 12:10 (NKJV)

THE HOOK

Truman woke up smiling.

Not most mornings.

Every morning.

He would get up already grinning, thrilled to see Marty and me as though we were a surprise he had not dared hope for. Then he would be just as thrilled to greet the younger dogs.

After that came his rounds — a slow, serious patrol through the yard to discover which critter had trespassed during the night and to confirm that the world was, once again, wonderful.

I have thought about that a lot lately.

We can stand at the same window and see two different worlds.

I might look outside and see one more ordinary morning.

Truman looked out and saw a yard that needed exploring, pups that needed greeting, critters that needed investigating, and two people worth celebrating all over again.

Maybe the window was never the difference.

Maybe it was the eyes looking through it.

When we came home — even after being gone only twenty minutes — Truman welcomed us as though we had been away for a month. His whole body wagged, head and all, and that grin stretched from ear to ear.

If you let him, he would lick you from your feet to the top of your head before you ever got the door shut.

It did not even take an open door.

Truman could be sound asleep across the room, and if he woke and looked over at me, I would point my finger straight at him.

That big grin would break across his face.

Up onto his feet he would go, running toward me as though I were his long-lost friend.

Every single time.

He simply loved knowing I wanted him near me.

That was the view through Truman’s eyes.

Everything was a gift.

Everyone was worth the whole-body welcome.

THE STORY

Truman had his treasures, and he was faithful to every one of them.

His favorite was a squeaky glow ball — the one he could still see and chase after dark, which made the yard feel like it belonged to him around the clock.

In his younger years, he was a genuine champion with that ball and a Frisbee. Fast. Sure. Ready for one more throw.

Age eventually slowed his legs, but it never reached his desire.

When he could no longer chase the way he used to, he would still lean toward the throw as though the old champion were running inside him.

All we had to do was land the ball in front of him.

To Truman, he had made the catch.

He supervised the garden as though it were his second job.

He followed Marty out to the beds, sampled the tomatoes, inspected the avocado trees, and bit at the spray from the hose until he was soaked and delighted while she watered.

He genuinely watched television, especially whenever another dog appeared on the screen.

And he was, by private arrangement with an old partner named Peaches, a career avocado thief.

For years, the avocados kept disappearing, and we blamed the gardeners.

We only cracked the case when we found the pits hidden deep inside their dog beds like two children burying treasure where the grown-ups would never think to look.

Mostly, though, Truman was Marty’s shadow.

Wherever she went — the garden, the yard, whatever project the day happened to hold — Truman wanted to know where she was and what she was doing.

He was her companion in the truest sense of the word.

When Marty came into view, his entire face changed. The grin opened. The tongue came out. He moved toward her as though she had been gone far longer than she had.

Truman had his commentary too.

Dinner never seemed quite sufficient.

Is that all I get?

Any time we headed for the door, there he was.

Aren’t you taking me with you?

It could be 115 degrees outside, and Truman still wanted to come.

Because coming along was the whole point.

Truckee.

Hobart Mills.

Rivers, streams, and lakes he waded into as though he had been waiting all his life.

Woods and mountains.

Vacations and long stretches in the RV.

He even ran alongside the mule, keeping pace, thrilled to be part of whatever the day held.

He loved the ocean too.

He is the only dog I have ever known to touch noses with a sea lion out in the open water — the two of them meeting in the middle of the ocean as though they had been introduced.

I caught it in a photograph.

I will never forget that day.

Truman always had a sense of adventure.

He did not care where the road went.

He only cared that he was on it with us.

At Hobart Mills, he had my sister, who loved him and always made him feel as though he belonged there — because to her, he did.

On his last visit, over twenty days, Truman gathered seventeen small sticks.

When he could not find a safe place to bury them because the other dogs kept digging them up, he began carrying each stick back to the door before coming inside.

We piled them there.

By the end of the trip, all seventeen sticks were waiting beside the door — a small, quiet record of good days.

Those seventeen sticks are still there.

Still waiting by the door.

Truman will not be back to claim them now.

But whatever my sister eventually decides to do with them, they will always remind us of his last great collection.

He had his own friends too — people who threw him the ball, shared his adventures, watched television beside him, and loved that ridiculous tongue.

His life was full because they helped fill it.

But if you had asked Truman to name his favorite place in all of it — the mountain, the stream, the garden, the RV — he would have chosen none of them.

His favorite place was wherever Marty’s feet or mine happened to be.

As long as he was there, he was home.

THE MOMENT

As Truman’s condition declined, Marty and I could not bear the thought of him suffering after all the good years he had given us.

Years ago, the three of us watched The Art of Racing in the Rain, Truman stretched out beside us.

By the end, Marty and I were both bawling.

Truman was not.

He was simply delighted that another dog had appeared on the television.

But the story stayed with me.

Life changes the course.

The road gets wet.

The turns get harder.

There are stretches that call for pressing forward, and there are moments when love recognizes that the final lap has become too painful to ask the one beside us to run.

Yesterday, a branch broke from Truman’s favorite avocado tree, heavy with more fruit than it could hold.

Even then — weakened and sick — Truman went outside and helped Marty bring the avocados back toward the house the best he could.

One last harvest.

One more day of doing the thing he loved beside the people he loved.

That was Truman.

Right to the end, he was still showing up.

Still helping.

Still glad to be included.

Some dogs spend their lives chasing a ball.

Truman spent his chasing joy — and somehow, he taught the rest of us to chase it too.

THE TURN

Truman was the oldest of our four Australian Shepherds, and he ran the place.

He was playmate, protector, disciplinarian, occasional rebel, and quiet teacher to every younger dog that came behind him.

They respected him.

They learned how to be dogs by watching him.

He set the tone for behavior, responsibility, play, and even a little rebellion.

Tomorrow, three of them will look for him.

They will not understand cancer.

They will not understand mercy or the decision Marty and I had to make.

They will only understand that their morning companion did not come out into the yard.

Ball time has lost its teacher.

The rhythm of the house has changed, and no one explained why.

Even Jasper — who spent a good many years mildly jealous of Truman — will feel the absence.

After all that time together, he will miss him too.

Marty is losing her companion — the one who followed her into every garden, every yard, and every ordinary day. The one whose entire face lit up whenever she walked into the room.

She will wake and, out of thirteen years of habit, look for him first.

I already know I will do the same.

We know that loving them means our hearts will one day break.

We love them anyway.

THE DRIFT

There is a voice that shows up on a day like this.

It sounds like love.

It almost is.

Hold on one more day.

Ask him to stay — not for his sake, but because you are not ready.

And when this is over, protect yourself.

Do not love another one this much.

It costs too much to lose them.

It is a convincing voice.

I said something close to it to Marty this week.

“Now I understand why some people lose a dog and never get another one. They cannot bear the thought of walking through this pain again.”

But avoiding this grief would have meant avoiding Truman.

It would have meant thirteen years and twenty days that never happened.

No morning smiles.

No whole-body welcomes.

No seventeen sticks waiting by the door.

No oversized tongue.

No stolen avocados.

No glow ball cutting through the dark.

The grief is this deep because the love was this great.

THE REFLECTION

I keep coming back to how much of Truman’s life was spent waiting.

He waited at the door.

He waited beside the vehicle.

He waited at our feet.

He waited for us to come home, and then he waited for the next invitation to come along.

None of it looked like impatience.

It looked like trust.

As though he already knew we were worth waiting for.

I did not teach him that.

It was simply in him.

The longer I sit with it, the more familiar it feels.

Because I know Someone who waits like that.

Someone who welcomes like that.

Someone who stays close.

Whose mercy meets me before I finish the apology.

Who does not hold over me what He has already forgiven.

Truman’s faithfulness was never the destination.

It was a window — a small, four-legged, tongue-out window into the heart of the One who thought love up in the first place.

Dogs are not divine, and Truman certainly had his rebellious moments.

But faithful love always carries the fingerprints of the One who made it.

For thirteen years and twenty days, we were loved faithfully.

If you have one of these faithful companions in your life right now, hear me.

Enjoy them while you have them.

Every ordinary moment is part of the gift.

Truman was happiest simply being near us.

He never needed to know the destination.

He only needed to know whose feet he was resting near.

Maybe that is part of what God has been teaching me all along.

Peace is not always found in knowing where the road leads.

Sometimes it is found in knowing Whose feet we are resting near.

There is one last thing love is asking of us today.

It is the hardest thing on the list.

Letting Truman go is not giving up on him.

Mercy is not giving up.

Mercy is refusing to make the one we love suffer because we are not ready to let go.

It is the final and hardest act of stewardship.

The last gift we get to give.

At night, I will still wake and think I need to check on Truman.

Then I will remember.

There is no longer a Truman to check on.

The room will be quieter.

His place will be empty.

For thirteen years and twenty days, Truman never knew how many days he had left.

He simply lived every one of them as though it were another good day to love us.

Today, that day comes to an end.

But his love will not.

Neither will ours.

WALKAWAY LINE

The gift was always greater than the goodbye.

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

What might change if you met tomorrow the way Truman met every morning — as one more gift and one more chance to love the people right in front of you?

And when faithful love finds you — in a person, in a companion, or in an ordinary day — do you follow it all the way back to the One it came from?

MY PRAYER

Heavenly Father,

Thank You for thirteen years and twenty days of Truman.

Thank You for the runt with the small head and the Saint Bernard tongue.

Thank You for every morning he woke up smiling, every whole-body welcome, and every mile he traveled beside us just glad to be included.

Thank You for the glow ball in the dark, the stolen avocados, the seventeen sticks by the door, and every ordinary day that did not feel extraordinary until we realized it would not come again.

Thank You that through one faithful dog, You showed us something true about Yourself — that You wait, that You welcome, that You stay close, that You forgive, and that You do not hold over us what You have already forgiven.

Give Marty peace.

Give me peace.

Comfort my sister.

Steady the three who will look for him in the morning.

Help us remember that mercy was not the absence of love.

It was love’s final act.

And Father — if it is Your will, and only if it is — let Truman carry one big fat avocado to Peaches.

We trusted You with him for thirteen years and twenty days.

We trust You with him still.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.

ABOUT G~

G~ writes from lived experience — exploring identity, authority, and time through the lens of faith, trial, leadership, and surrender. His reflections are not meant to condemn or hype, but to steady. Rooted in covenant, forged through adversity, and anchored under the authority of Jesus Christ, his work invites readers to examine who governs their lives — and to live intentionally under truth.

If what you’ve read resonates with your journey, feel free to reach out.

G~

This image represents the filtration and deionized water system I designed inside our anodizing shop after discovering that a process can look right, sound right, and still fail when the source feeding it has changed.

For eight months, I was trying to solve the wrong problem.

I inspected everything the water touched.

I never thought to question the water itself.

DEDICATION

To the Holy Spirit, who was present long before I knew how to recognize Him — protecting, guiding, sustaining, and preparing lessons I would not fully understand until many years later.

To Marty, who stood beside me through the long days, late nights, and weight of responsibility — and who continues to draw from a faithful Source that strengthens our marriage, our home, and our walk with God.

To every person who refuses to settle for an answer that only treats the surface, and who keeps searching until truth is found — even when the search is costly.

And to you, the reader. Thank you for continuing to walk through these stories with me. May something here invite you to pause, examine what is feeding your life, and consider the Source from which you draw.

SCRIPTURE

“…If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” — John 7:37–38 (NKJV)

“…but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.” — John 4:14 (NKJV)

THE HOOK

In 1994, one of our medical customers began having trouble with the anodized finish on a series of high-end aluminum centrifuge components — the kind of equipment used to spin and separate blood.

The dye would not hold correctly. The finish looked acceptable at first, but it was not stable.

For me, the greatest concern was not losing the customer. It was knowing they had paid us for a quality finish — and we were not consistently giving them what they had trusted us to deliver.

At first it was one customer. Then it became several. Some knew there was a problem. Some had not discovered it yet.

But I knew. And once I knew, I could not ignore it.

THE STORY

I began where any experienced anodizer would begin.

The aluminum. The racking. The electrical contact and the current. The rectifiers, the temperature, the sulfuric acid. The etches, the dyes, the seal. Every chemical mixture and concentration. The timing from tank to tank.

Anodizing is electrolysis. It is not one action. It is a chain of controlled conditions, and every link has to work with the others.

I stood on those catwalks watching focused employees move racks of parts through each stage, and I examined the process from every angle I knew. We questioned contamination. The aluminum supplier. The dye manufacturer. The chemical manufacturer. Whether a formulation had quietly changed. We tested. We refreshed tanks. We read books. We called experts. We broke the process down link by link.

Nothing explained it.

For roughly eight months, I went in early, stayed late, and carried the problem home in my mind. Marty knew how heavily it was weighing on me.

There came a point when I began questioning myself. Maybe I was missing something obvious. Maybe I did not have the skill set needed to solve it.

But frustration has always done something unusual in me. It does not make me quit. It charges me up. When frustration reaches its deepest point, a breakthrough may be closer than it appears — because something in me refuses to leave the problem unanswered.

Still, eight months is a long time to stand in front of a process you understand and admit that you do not understand what is happening.

THE MOMENT

One day, I stepped into the small bathroom at the shop.

It was nothing special. A toilet. A porcelain sink. A chrome faucet I had used every day.

But this time I saw something around the base of the faucet, where the chrome met the porcelain. A heavy white buildup. Not the light mineral spotting you occasionally see. This was thick. Hard. Calcified.

I stood there staring at it, trying to decide whether I was seeing soap, dirt, corrosion, or something else.

Then I scraped it with my fingernail.

It flaked.

And in that instant, the entire investigation changed direction. Something had changed in the water. I did not yet know how. I did not yet know why.

But I knew the faucet was not the problem. It was the evidence.

I had spent eight months studying everything the water touched instead of the water itself.

You can perfect the process and still fail… if the source is contaminated.

No amount of excellence downstream can overcome a compromised source upstream.

THE TURN

I assumed the water was pure because I could see through it.

Pour it into a glass, and it looked clean. No obvious color. No visible particles. Nothing that announced danger.

But clear and clean are not the same thing.

The minerals were present at levels the eye could not immediately detect. They became visible only after the water dried, collected, hardened, or interacted at the molecular level with the anodizing process.

That was when I began researching the water supply itself.

We were in the middle of a severe drought. The local system drew from more than one reservoir, and as conditions changed, the county shifted between sources. When one reservoir ran unusually low, the mineral concentration climbed. Then the supply would switch again, and the problem would seem to disappear.

That was why the failures were intermittent. Nothing inside our shop had changed. The source feeding the shop had.

There was no public notice explaining those changes. I had to work through channels, ask questions, and eventually build a relationship with the water board. Later, they would let me know when the reservoirs were switched. By then, it no longer controlled our outcome.

I designed a custom filtration and deionized-water system that treated the incoming water before it entered the process. The largest investment was time and energy — engineering, testing, rebuilding the water supply, and the commitment of a customer willing to stay engaged while we pursued the truth.

Once the tanks were refreshed with water from the new system, we ran the first production rack. Everyone gathered around. The parts moved through each stage and came out finished. I inspected them. I performed the test.

They passed.

The entire shop erupted in a scream of joy. Eight months of pressure released in one moment.

Then the customers began calling — one at a time — grateful that the finish was right again. Soon, work began arriving from customers whose regular platers were still fighting the same problem.

That could have become an advantage I kept to myself. Instead, I presented what I had learned through the Metal Finishers Association. Shop owners called afterward and thanked me. Competitors became friends. When one of us became overloaded, we shared the work. The solution grew larger because it was shared.

That lesson stayed with me. Share your resources. And when the source is true and good, share the Source too.

THE DRIFT

If it looks clean, it probably is.

If the outcome is bad, work harder on the process.

Adjust the behavior. Change the appearance. Replace the faucet. Polish what people can see.

That voice can sound practical. It can even sound responsible.

But sometimes we spend years improving what is downstream while never asking what has been feeding it.

A clear source may still carry something invisible. A respectable life may still be drawing from fear. A successful business may still be governed by pride. A generous person may still be fed by approval. A religious life may still be supplied by performance instead of relationship.

The most dangerous sources are often the ones we never think to question.

I know.

Because I used that sink every day — and for eight months, I never questioned what was flowing through it.

THE REFLECTION

The strange thing is, the shop was not the first place I learned this lesson.

In my mid-twenties, I backpacked through Yosemite with a group of about twelve men. It was a hot summer, water was hard to carry, and everyone was thirsty. I had brought purification tablets. Whenever I filled my canteen, I strained the water through a piece of denim cut from a Levi pant leg, dropped in a tablet, shook it, and mixed in lemonade powder to cover the terrible taste.

The others laughed. I can still see it on their faces. They pointed at the water running hard and bright over the rocks. “Look at it. It’s crystal clear.”

I kept telling them the same thing. “You do not know the source.”

They drank it untreated.

By nightfall the laughter was gone. Within days they were seriously ill with intestinal parasites — what we called beaver fever — and needed a prolonged course of medication once we came off the trail.

Near the end, we climbed high enough to see where that beautiful stream began. A large lake. And standing around its perimeter, knee-deep in the water, a massive herd of cattle — drinking from it and fouling it. Downstream, the water looked untouched. At the source, the truth was standing in plain sight.

Years later, at Du-All, I had forgotten the lesson that once protected me. In Yosemite I questioned the source. In the shop I assumed it.

Today, when someone brings me a problem, the first thing I do is stop. I look at the problem itself. Then I look at what supports it. What authority is it under? What is feeding it? Where is it coming from? Only then do I look at the outcome — because once the source is known, the outcome is rarely a mystery.

That principle now reaches into every part of my life. My thoughts. My health. My relationships. My writing. My decisions. My faith.

Whatever becomes your source will eventually become your authority. And whatever becomes your authority will eventually shape everything flowing downstream.

In 1994, I was not a praying man. I would not pretend otherwise. But looking back now, I can see the Holy Spirit present throughout that season — keeping the business moving, sharpening my mind, protecting customers, and planting a lesson I would only fully understand decades later.

If I could sit down with that younger man on the catwalk, I would tell him to slow down, take his time, and consider the source. I would point him toward Jesus sooner if I could. But I trust God’s timing. Apparently I needed to paddle around in a lot of water before I could understand what happens to a man’s heart when he finally knows that his authority — and his Source — is Jesus.

The world may change reservoirs without notice. Circumstances change. Health changes. People change. Success comes and goes. But once the Source is right, those changes no longer hold final authority over the outcome.

I once treated water because I did not trust what I could not see. Later, I trusted water because I could see through it. Now I know better. Clear is not always clean. Visible is not always true. And some of the most important lessons in my life were not learned once. They were remembered.

Today, I know the Source by name.

His name is Jesus Christ.

WALKAWAY LINE

Everything downstream eventually tells the truth about its source.

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

What is feeding your life — and what is it leaving behind?

MY PRAYER

Heavenly Father,

Thank You for being present in the seasons when I did not yet know how to recognize You — for the lessons You planted long before I understood their weight.

Teach me to stop before reacting. To pause before assuming. To look beneath the outcome and examine what is feeding it.

Show me the sources I have trusted simply because they looked clear. Reveal any hidden deposits — fear, pride, bitterness, performance, self-reliance, approval — that have been collecting within me. Help me test what feeds my thoughts, my relationships, my decisions, my body, and my spirit.

May Jesus never become one source among many. May He remain my Source, my Provider, and my Authority.

And for the one reading this, give them courage to look upstream without fear. Lead them past appearances, past easy answers, past what merely looks clean, to the living water only You can provide. Then let everything flowing downstream from their life carry evidence of You.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.

ABOUT G~

G~ writes from lived experience — exploring identity, authority, and time through the lens of faith, trial, leadership, and surrender. His reflections are not meant to condemn or hype, but to steady. Rooted in covenant, forged through adversity, and anchored under the authority of Jesus Christ, his work invites readers to examine who governs their lives — and to live intentionally under truth.

If what you’ve read resonates with your journey, feel free to reach out.

G~

Marty took this at my sister Jeffrey’s kitchen table in Hobart Mills. She never asked us to pose. She was sitting there with us — listening, watching, feeling the weight of what was happening across the table. My hands are on the left. Jeffrey’s are on the right. By the time I noticed, the moment had already been kept.

Two pairs of hands on a kitchen table.

Older now. Weathered now.

Marked by life, labor, tenderness, pain, service, surrender, and grace.

Nobody posed them. Nobody needed to.

DEDICATION

To Jeffrey — my sister. Ten years apart. Arriving together.

To Marty — whose hands were in the story even when they were not in the photograph.

To our mother — whose hands wished healing over me before she ever knew the One who heals.

To anyone with boxes they have been afraid to open — this one is for your hands too.

SCRIPTURE

“Even to your old age, I am He, and even to gray hairs I will carry you! I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you.” — Isaiah 46:4 (NKJV)

“A time to gain, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to throw away.” — Ecclesiastes 3:6 (NKJV)

“Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day.” — 2 Corinthians 4:16 (NKJV)

THE HOOK

June 25, 2026. We had finished dinner, but the table was not finished with us.

Tacos at my sister Jeffrey’s place, up in the pines near Truckee. Marty was there with us. The plates had been cleared. The conversation had not.

We were talking about our childhood. Our parents. The house we both came out of — ten years apart.

And somewhere in that conversation, a truth surfaced that we had both known for a long time and had never quite said out loud to each other.

We were raised under the same roof, but not inside the same childhood.

Same walls. Same last name. Same family.

Two different worlds.

And both of us carried more out of that house than either of us knew how to name for most of our lives.

THE STORY

Some people notice eyes first. Some notice hair, or the way someone walks, or the shoes they wear.

I noticed hands.

I always did.

As a little boy, that was the first place my eyes went. I would take someone’s hands, turn them over, study the lines, the veins, the little divisions in the skin, the shape of the fingers. I wondered where those hands had been. What they had carried. What they had built. What they had lost.

Hands told the story of a person’s journey before their mouth ever said a word.

They reminded me of old doorknobs. Bright and smooth at first — then the shine changes. Not because they are ruined, but because life keeps passing through them. People enter. People leave. Doors open and close. Every touch leaves something behind.

Now I look down at my own hands and see the contrast.

The boy who used to study old hands is wearing them.

That weekend, those hands went through boxes. More than twenty of them. Old photographs — decades of memory. Sorting. Scanning. Keeping. Giving away. Throwing away.

It sounds simple until you do it.

Every photo is a door. Some open into laughter. Some open into grief. Some open into rooms where the air still feels heavy.

The photos of our mother were the easy ones. Jeffrey, me, and Mom — keep. Every time.

Her hands were healing hands. I knew that before I knew much of anything else. As a boy, around four, I had what I’ve always called my Forrest Gump feet — braces on my legs, hardware on a small child. At night my mother would take those braces off and rub my feet. Massage them. Tend them.

She didn’t know the Lord yet. She wasn’t praying — not the way I would come to understand prayer. But her hands were wishing healing over me. Love was doing what it knew how to do.

I remember studying those hands. Her veins. Her fingernails. The shape of them. I remember thinking, even then — she has old hands.

Now I look at mine. And I understand differently.

Age has a way of making you look back more than you used to. Maybe because the body starts telling the truth before the mouth is ready to say it. The skin changes. The veins rise. The scars stay. The knuckles carry history.

Suddenly you are not remembering old age from a distance. You are wearing it.

My father’s hands were different.

They were the hands of a man shaped by the Great Depression and a world war. Hands that knew lack, labor, and survival. Hands that built something from nothing, because nothing was what he was given to start with.

I honor that. Those hands fed us.

But those hands also hurt. And I have learned this about pain: it can stay in the body long after the hand is gone.

Before I trusted the water, I trusted my sister’s hands.

I was about seven. Jeffrey was about seventeen. She was teaching me to swim in the deep end of the school pool — holding me up with both hands, carrying me across, teaching me how to float.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Relax. You’ve got this. Don’t be afraid. Trust me.

And I did.

My safety was her hands.

That is what her hands have always been to me. Safety. Tenderness. The kind of touch that is different from every other touch on earth. When she rubs the back of my head, touches my shoulder, hugs me — something in me still knows those are my sister’s hands.

Years later, the care turned the other direction. After her back surgery, when the pain sat heavy on her, my hands rubbed her feet. I could not remove the pain. But I could soothe what I could reach. My hands could say what words could not fix.

Her hands once held me up in deep water. Mine later held what I could for her.

And together, our hands cared for our mother. Jeffrey — faithfully, day after day, in ways most people never saw. Me, when I was with her — feeding her, holding her hand, driving her places, sitting beside her, talking with her, praying over her.

Marty’s hands have done the same for both of us.

That is what I keep seeing now. Hands do not just age. They reveal.

Hands belong to the body, but they reveal the soul.

They hold faces and wipe tears. They serve meals and dress wounds — and sometimes cause them. They discipline and correct. They greet strangers and hold children. They say hello, and they say goodbye. They steer toward adventure and toward places of sorrow. They build businesses, run them, close them down, and learn how to let even that go.

They clasp together in prayer — for ourselves, for family, for loved ones, for things we may never fully understand this side of heaven. They hold a newborn hand no bigger than a thumb and wonder how something so small can carry so much life. They wash a mother when love requires tenderness more than words. They rub a body worn thin by surgery and pain. They hold animals loved deeply — and when the season comes, they bury those same beloved lives with tears, gratitude, and release.

They hold on. They let go. They bury the dead and welcome the living.

And sometimes, by the mercy of God, they finally release what the heart no longer needs to carry.

THE MOMENT

Back at the kitchen table, the sorting caught up with us.

Some of those photographs had opened things in both of us. The hardest ones were the rare frames with all four of us together. Mom. Dad. Jeffrey. Me. One frame holding both worlds at once.

And some photos carried something else. Something old. Something heavy. Something already dead.

Not every photo needed to be saved.

Not every image needed to be resurrected.

Not every piece of the past deserved another room in the house.

So our hands kept sorting. Keep. Release. Keep. Release.

And with every box, the grip got softer.

Then the conversation deepened. Tears were falling onto the wood. Not the tears of fresh wounds — the tears of two people finally standing on the same side of the same story.

We had both spoken forgiveness before. This was not that.

This was deeper. Understanding. Acceptance. Safety. Admiration. A brother and a sister looking at everything those hands had come through — and realizing neither of us was holding it alone anymore.

Marty saw it before I did. She didn’t say a word. She picked up the camera and captured the moment.

She told me later that her hands were in that photo too. We were all three in the midst of deep prayer over the time together joining our hands in a prayer huddle. She had to pull them back to take the picture.

Marty’s hands were not visible in the photograph, but they were in the story.

These hands remember what happened.

But they no longer have to hold it the same way.

THE TURN

I understand now what that weekend actually was.

It looked like sorting photographs. It wasn’t. It was two old sets of hands sorting memory — deciding what still carried life and what had already died.

Grace was not asking us to keep carrying the smell of what God had already buried.

We arrived together that week — but not because we found our way back to childhood. We arrived because mercy brought us both to the foot of Jesus.

I may have come to Jesus first, but grace did not leave my sister behind.

She saw what had changed in me and wanted it. Marty was in the middle of it too — one of God’s steady instruments of love and truth in both our lives.

Brother. Sister. Wife. All of us touched by the same mercy. All of us knowing Jesus as Savior — the one authority our lives had been needing all along.

We prayed together that weekend. Not as a performance. Not to force something spiritual onto the room. God’s presence was already there. Felt in the table. Felt in the tears. Felt in the boxes. Felt in the hands.

And there is another memory in my hands — one I will not try to explain without making it smaller. I have known what it is to interlock my hands with Jesus and experience His divine healing.

So when I look at this photograph, I am not only seeing two aging sets of hands.

I am seeing hands that have been held by mercy.

THE DRIFT

Time heals all wounds.

Just let the past be the past.

What’s done is done — leave it there.

It sounds like wisdom. It almost is.

But time never opened a single one of those boxes. Time just stacked them higher in the garage and let the tape yellow.

It was not time that sat two gray-haired kids at a kitchen table with tears falling onto the wood. It was mercy. And mercy does not tell your hands to forget what they held.

Mercy teaches them how to let go of it.

THE REFLECTION

There were seasons I did not think I would make it here. I believe Jeffrey could say the same.

And yet here we are. At her kitchen table. Old enough now for our hands to tell the story without either of us saying a word.

That is the part that undoes me when I look at Marty’s photograph.

We arrived together.

The same sister whose hands carried me across the deep end when I was afraid now sits across from me with hands that have carried her own life, her own pain, her own faith, her own surrender.

My hands are still here too — scarred, stitched, bitten, crushed, broken, battered. Still reaching. Still serving. Still learning how to soften.

Age has found me too. My hands know it. My feet know it. My body knows it. Honestly, there were seasons I never thought I would make it this far. But here I am — and now I find myself excited to keep pushing through and keep moving. I still have to keep up with my sister, Marty, and all those Australian Shepherds.

There is no going back, and I am learning that maybe I was never meant to. The work now is not to fight the season, but to receive it with gratitude.

These hands are not just looking back anymore. They are reaching forward. Forward into the seasons God still has for me. Forward with my sister. Forward with Marty. Forward with the same Jesus who carried us through every deep water we thought might take us under.

And now I cannot help but wonder if some small child will one day look at my hands the way I used to look at the hands of a person seasoned by life. Maybe they will see the lines, the scars, the veins, the weathered places — and wonder where these hands have been.

I hope they see more than age. I hope they see mercy.

The boy who once wondered where old hands had been is now looking at his own — and realizing mercy was there in every line.

Our hands carry the evidence of a life.

But under God’s mercy, they do not have to carry the sentence of the past.

WALKAWAY LINE

The years marked our hands, but mercy softened our grip.

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

Have you ever looked down at your own hands and thought about the life they have lived?

What have they held, and who have they helped?

What might God be inviting them to reach for now?

MY PRAYER

Heavenly Father,

Thank You for hands.

Most of all, thank You for the hands of Your Son — stretched out and nailed to the wood of the cross for our sin.

Thank You for the hands that held us when we were afraid. For the hands that served when words were not enough. For the hands that fed, carried, comforted, sorted, released, and prayed.

Thank You for healing what hurting hands could not destroy. Thank You for carrying us even to gray hairs, just as You said You would.

And thank You for the hands of Christ that will welcome us home when our days and seasons have ended.

Teach our hands the difference between keeping and carrying. Soften every grip still holding what You have already redeemed. And for everyone still afraid to open the boxes — let mercy meet them at the table.

Let our hands remember grace. Let them release what no longer belongs to us. And let them reach forward for the season still ahead.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.

ABOUT G~

G~ writes from lived experience — exploring identity, authority, and time through the lens of faith, trial, leadership, and surrender. His reflections are not meant to condemn or hype, but to steady. Rooted in covenant, forged through adversity, and anchored under the authority of Jesus Christ, his work invites readers to examine who governs their lives — and to live intentionally under truth.

If what you’ve read resonates with your journey, feel free to reach out.

G~

Truckee. Hobart Mills. My sister Jeffrey’s place.

Jasper Stone stood in the open field, surrounded by wild grass, pine air, and the kind of quiet you do not manufacture. You receive it.

He is thirteen now. My life companion. My service dog. Named after the jasper stones in Scripture.

So when I saw him standing there in that field, still moving through open ground, something in me paid attention.

He is not young anymore.

Neither am I.

But there we were.

Still in the field.

Still breathing mountain air.

Still moving.

Still here.

DEDICATION

To the Holy Spirit, for all He continues to do in me — refining me, pressing me, shaping me, strengthening me, and carrying me through the seasons of life I would not have chosen, but could not have survived without Him.

To my wife, Marty, who walks each step with me side by side. Sometimes lifting. Sometimes pulling. Sometimes steadying what pain, age, and exhaustion try to weaken. Her presence has been one of God’s faithful mercies in my life.

To my sister Jeffrey, who continues to offer more than a place to visit. She offers an environment, a sanctuary, and open ground where we can come with our dogs, breathe again, receive the blessing of time together, and keep bringing God back to the center of all of it.

And to the reader, who may find something in this Spark that stirs a question, awakens a memory, softens a hard place, or helps them see something a little differently than they did before.

SCRIPTURE

“For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb.” — Psalm 139:13 (NKJV)

“…He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.” — Philippians 1:6 (NKJV)

“Behold, I will do a new thing, Now it shall spring forth; Shall you not know it?” — Isaiah 43:19 (NKJV)

THE HOOK

I thought I was taking a trip back to the pines.

God knew He was showing me what had survived.

THE STORY

There are places that hold more than memory.

They hold evidence.

Truckee has always done that for me. Hobart Mills. My sister’s place. The trees. The open ground. The dogs running like they have been released from every rule except joy.

But this trip carried a different weight.

For years, age, extensive surgeries, exhaustion, and pain had been working on my body and speaking to my confidence.

Not loudly every day.

Not dramatically every moment.

Just steadily.

You may not get back there.

You may not drive that far again.

You may not walk those woods again.

You may not stand in that field and call altitude life instead of limitation.

Pain has a way of shrinking a man’s map.

Not all at once.

Just one surrendered distance at a time.

A road gets too long.

A walk gets too uncertain.

A hill gets too expensive.

A place you love becomes something you remember instead of somewhere you return.

That was part of the reckoning.

This was not just a trip.

It was a return.

Marty drove ahead of me. The dogs were split between vehicles because there was too much life for one car to carry. Pine trees lined the miles like old witnesses. The Sierra Nevada opened wide, and my sister’s place came back into view — tucked away in the kind of country where the forest breathes with you and neighbors are measured in miles.

And something inside me cracked open.

Space.

Quiet.

Breath.

Memory.

Joy.

We had not been sure this trip would happen.

Honest truth — we had not been sure I could make it.

But there we were.

Marty with that joy in her eyes that carried more than happiness.

It carried relief.

The kind of relief a wife feels when she has watched her husband fight long and hard for a moment most people would not even think to count.

Jeffrey glad to have me back in those woods again.

The dogs moving through the field like creation had been waiting for them.

And Jasper Stone, my old faithful companion, standing in the open ground.

THE MOMENT

That is the part that stayed with me.

Jasper in the field.

Not performing.

Not posing.

Just being.

Thirteen years old now, with a lifetime of miles in his body and loyalty in his bones.

He has been with me through seasons I still do not know how to explain. He has been beside me in the room when pain was louder than words. He has walked with me when walking was not simple. He has traveled with me, waited with me, watched over me, and given me the quiet companionship that does not require explanation.

And now there he was in the field at Hobart Mills.

Still moving.

Still alert.

Still Jasper.

I watched him, and something in me got quiet.

Because I understood him.

He is aging too.

He is carrying his own seasons too.

And somehow, watching him move through that open ground felt like watching both of us receive a small mercy from God.

Not a loud miracle.

Not a dramatic rescue.

Just a field.

A dog.

A man.

And enough strength for the moment in front of us.

THE TURN

That day, I took a walk in those woods.

A small walk by most standards.

A monumental one by mine.

There were seasons when I wondered if simple things like that would ever return. To walk without fear. To breathe mountain air. To watch my dogs sprint through God’s creation. To feel the burn of elevation and call it life instead of limitation.

That night, God met me in the exhaustion of the day.

In the ache.

In the burn.

In the quiet victory of one sentence:

I made it.

Then, at 12:03 AM, I woke up.

One word was there.

Gestation.

Not a word I had been carrying around.

Not a word I would have chosen for a field, a dog, a drive, or a walk in the woods.

But there it was.

Gestation.

And I understood something.

God had not just brought me back to a place.

He was naming what He had been doing in me all along.

THE DRIFT

We usually want restoration to look like arrival.

A clear breakthrough.

A strong body.

A clean answer.

A door flung open.

A before-and-after that makes sense to everyone watching.

But much of God’s work does not begin where people can see it.

It begins hidden.

Beneath the surface.

In the quiet.

In the pain we did not choose.

In the limitations we had to reckon with.

In the nights we wondered if the old strength was gone for good.

In the small decisions to keep trusting when nothing looked finished.

That is gestation.

The hidden life before the open field.

And maybe that is why the word landed so deeply.

Because I had spent years wanting to know what God was restoring, when He was restoring it, and how much of my old life I would ever get back.

But maybe God was not trying to give me my old life back.

Maybe He was forming something truer.

Quieter.

Deeper.

Less dependent on strength.

More dependent on Him.

THE REFLECTION

Jasper helped me see it.

That is what faithful companions do.

They do not always explain the lesson.

Sometimes they just stand in the middle of it.

There he was, in the field, still moving through the season he was in.

Not the dog he was ten years ago.

Not untouched by age.

Not pretending time had not passed.

But still present.

Still free.

Still alive in the open ground.

Maybe Jasper did not have to run for the field to still be his.

Maybe I did not either.

I think God was showing me the same thing about myself.

I am not the man I was ten years ago.

I am not untouched by pain.

I am not pretending the surgeries, exhaustion, limitations, and age have not cost me something.

They have.

But cost is not the same as defeat.

Weariness is not the same as being finished.

And hidden formation is not the same as absence.

Some freedom returns quietly.

One step at a time.

One drive at a time.

One field at a time.

One breath of mountain air at a time.

One old dog standing in the grass, reminding you that life is still moving.

WALKAWAY LINE

Not everything God is growing in you is ready to be seen, but that does not mean it is not alive.

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

What if the season you thought was only limitation has also been formation?

What if God has been doing something deeper than giving back what you lost?

What if the field you are waiting to run in is not behind you — but ahead of you, prepared for the moment when what He has formed in secret is ready to stand in the light?

MY PRAYER

Heavenly Father,

Thank You for the quiet places where You meet me without noise, performance, or striving.

Thank You for the pines, the open field, the breath in my lungs, the strength to return, and the mercy of being able to stand again in a place I was not sure I would reach.

Thank You for Marty, who continues to walk beside me through every season — lifting when I am weak, pulling when I am weary, and loving me through the parts of the journey most people never see.

Thank You for Jeffrey, for the sanctuary she continues to offer — the open ground, the quiet woods, the welcome, and the gift of family time centered back on You.

Thank You for Jasper Stone, my faithful companion and service dog. Thank You for the years he has walked with me, watched over me, traveled with me, and waited with me. Thank You for the quiet loyalty that has carried more than words ever could.

Thank You for every animal You have placed in our care and along our path. Protect them, strengthen them, comfort them as they age, and let their presence continue to remind us of Your gentleness and Your faithfulness.

Father, forgive me for the times I mistook hidden formation for absence.

Forgive me for measuring Your work only by what I could see, feel, or explain.

Teach me to trust the gestation.

Teach me to honor the quiet work.

Teach me to recognize the field when You bring me back to it.

Guide the direction I am headed. Keep refining what You are forming in me. Keep pressing me through the seasons of life with Your hand on my heart, my words, my steps, my family, my animals, and the work You have placed before me.

For every reader who feels hidden, delayed, weakened, limited, or unsure if life still holds open ground for them — meet them gently. Let something in this Spark awaken hope, stir courage, soften fear, or help them see their own season through Your eyes.

Remind them that silence is not abandonment.

Waiting is not wasted.

Weakness is not the end.

And what You begin, You complete.

Let us keep moving with You.

One step at a time.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.

ABOUT G~

G~ writes from lived experience — exploring identity, authority, and time through the lens of faith, trial, leadership, and surrender. His reflections are not meant to condemn or hype, but to steady. Rooted in covenant, forged through adversity, and anchored under the authority of Jesus Christ, his work invites readers to examine who governs their lives — and to live intentionally under truth.

If what you’ve read resonates with your journey, feel free to reach out.

G~

April 26, 2025 — around one o’clock in the afternoon. Marty sent me this photo from Arkansas, where she was at a women’s retreat. She was on a break with a friend, and somehow they ended up on a quick tour through a historical area — a guide walking them past this old cabin while telling the story of the Civil War. She snapped the picture and sent it to me because she knows how much I love old, weathered places. For one brief moment, I wondered if she had gone house shopping without me and found the ideal log cabin she wanted us to live in. Thank God that was not the case. But the longer I looked, the more I felt the invitation. Not just to see it. To sit there awhile.

An old cabin in the Arkansas trees.

Everyone who first called it home is gone.

It is still standing.

And it asked me a question I have not been able to put down.

DEDICATION

To the Holy Spirit, who reminds me that every opportunity is a moment to pause — to reflect on who we are, what is coming, and where we are going.

To Marty, who is always thinking of me — inspired enough by an old cabin in Arkansas to stop, take the photograph, and send it my way. This Spark exists because she saw it first.

To Sam Ramsdale, who lived simply in the mountains above Boulder Creek — and without ever knowing it, handed a boy something that outlasted him.

To the reader — may you be inspired, may you identify what matters most, and may you find the places where your temporary life is asking for more than a temporary look.

SCRIPTURE

“So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” — Psalm 90:12 (NKJV)

“I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.” — John 15:5 (NKJV)

“For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?” — Matthew 16:26 (NKJV)

THE HOOK

The cabin Marty sent me did more than make me think about history.

It took me back.

Not to Arkansas.

To Boulder Creek.

To the mountains above Boulder Creek, into the woods, not far from the cabin my parents owned — the one where I stayed with my grandfather during the summers when I was a boy.

Those were hard years for me.

Harder than I knew how to explain at the time.

I was under the control and toxic influence of my grandfather, and there are some things a child does not yet have words for. He was not just a hard man. Something in him had gone beyond the surface. The mold had gone all the way to the bone, and no pocketknife could cut it away.

So I learned to look for air.

The woods became that for me.

A place to breathe.

A place to wander.

A place where the pressure lifted for a little while.

And one of the places I loved most was the cabin where Sam Ramsdale lived.

THE STORY

Sam lived in the mountains above Boulder Creek, tucked back into the woods.

I met him as a child through my parents. He was their friend, but to me, he stood apart from almost every adult I knew.

He was not a believer, at least not in the way I understand belief now. He believed there was some kind of higher authority, but I do not remember him speaking the name of God.

He was not really a mentor, either.

Not in a formal way.

He was more like a mountain man philosopher — a free spirit, a hippie throwback, a simple man whose life stood apart from everyone else I knew.

When he was not working, I remember him wearing a hippie-style American flag headband around his forehead. It fit him. Back then, in the 1970s, some highly intelligent people did not dress to impress anyone. Sam was like that.

Most of the time, I remember him in the same rusty old clothes. I do not really remember seeing him out of them. Work clothes, mountain clothes, thinking clothes — with Sam, it all seemed to be the same thing.

But his mind never stopped.

As soon as you walked into a room with him, you could almost see his eyes turning.

Processing.

Measuring.

Solving.

Taking everything in.

He had a little stutter, a stammer, and a nervous energy about him — not because he was scattered, but because his mind was always working ahead of the room.

Anything that became a thought-provoking challenge, Sam was all over it.

He was one of the simplest highly intelligent people I knew as a child.

I was exposed to him often because I spent summers in those mountains.

And I remember how excited I would get on the weekends, because I knew I could go see Sam.

He had ways that were so different from other people.

He worked for a large aerospace company. He was an engineer. He could have lived with far more comfort than he did. He could have owned more, displayed more, collected more, and managed more.

But he lived in a little cabin shack with an outhouse outside, no running water, and no bathroom inside.

He brought water in jugs, or drew it from the creek. Every night after work, he would drive about forty miles back into the mountains, park his old white Dodge van up on the flat, and make his way into the cabin.

That van was part of him.

Tools in the back.

Parts scattered around.

Evidence of whatever he was fixing, patching, adding, repairing, or keeping alive.

He was always working on something.

A little add-on.

A small repair.

A piece of the cabin that needed attention.

He did not own much. Maybe two or three shirts. A couple pairs of pants. A couple pairs of boots. Clothes worn down by use, not display.

The kind of life most people would look at and think he could have had more.

But I think Sam understood something most people miss.

The more you have, the more you have to manage.

The more you collect, the more you have to monitor its decay.

Tools rust.

Vans break.

Leather cracks.

Wood rots.

Roofs sag.

Food spoils.

Bodies age.

Everything here keeps telling the truth, whether we want to hear it or not.

Sam rolled his own cigarettes and smoked a corn cob pipe. I can still remember him holding that pipe in his mouth, the smell of the tobacco hanging in the air around that cabin. It is funny what stays with a boy — not just the words, but the smells, the sounds, and the way a man carried himself without trying to explain who he was.

Sam liked his coffee black.

I did not.

I was young, maybe ten years old, but I had already been introduced to coffee. I liked to sip it, but I wanted cream in mine.

Sam would tell me not to put cream in it because cream did not keep.

Black coffee, he said, keeps.

Just drink it as it is.

Because the more we add, the more complicated things get.

That was Sam.

Simple coffee.

Simple clothes.

Simple cabin.

Simple tools.

Simple words that stayed with me long after I left those woods.

I did not yet know how much I would need them.

Years later, I would understand Sam in a way I could not have understood as a boy.

I was about twenty-four years old and had just stepped into taking over Du-All. We needed a grainer — a large sanding machine used to grain aluminum. It was one of the first major pieces I wanted to add to the company so we could grow.

I started looking for one.

They were expensive.

Tens of thousands of dollars.

Sam looked at it differently.

He was an engineer, and he said, “I can build that.”

Not in a proud way.

Not in a flashy way.

Just matter-of-fact, like a man looking at a problem and seeing the parts inside it.

So he went to Orchard Supply Hardware.

He bought screws, bolts, nuts, bearings, framework, and whatever else he needed. He welded it together over a couple of weekends and built one of the most impressive custom grainers I had ever seen.

It was adjustable.

Practical.

Strong.

Built from ordinary parts by a man who understood how things worked.

Then he looked at it and said, “Do you want a smaller one too?”

So he built that one too.

That was Sam.

He could see the larger problem, then see the smaller need inside it.

And those machines helped change the economics of the business.

For decades, that grainer made money.

It never failed.

I never had to rebuild it.

I changed belts, cleaned it, oiled it, greased it, and kept using it.

When I eventually closed and sold the business, I do not know what happened to that grainer. But I remember the new owner looking at it and saying, “Wow. That is an impressive custom grainer. I have never seen one like that.”

Built from parts from Orchard Supply Hardware.

That was Sam.

But not long after he built those grainers, I got the phone call.

Sam was gone.

That hit me hard.

His temporary had finally come to pass.

And there were those machines — still standing, still working, still producing — built by a man who was no longer here to see what they would become.

A man passes through.

But what he builds, what he teaches, what he repairs, what he leaves in another person — some of that keeps working long after he is gone.

THE MOMENT

When I remember Sam, I do not go first to the grainer.

I go back to the fire pit.

I remember sitting outside with him near the fire, talking in that mountain air.

He loved cheese.

And he often had blocks of it around that looked ruined to me.

The outside would be covered in mold, and I would look at it like there was no way we could eat that.

But Sam would take out his pocketknife.

He would cut away the outside and tell me the outside was temporary. It was there to protect the inside from harm.

Cheese, he said, decays from the outside in. So you cut down to the place where the decay is gone, and underneath there is still something good.

Then he would hand me a clean, fresh, pearly white piece.

And I would taste it and think, Wow. This is good.

I did not know it then, but a lesson was being planted in me.

Some things only need the temporary part cut away.

Some things are still good beneath what the world sees first.

And maybe that is why I remember Sam so clearly.

Because in a hard season, under a hard authority, I found my way through the woods to a man with rusty clothes, a restless mind, a black cup of coffee, an old white van full of tools, and a way of teaching me that the outside was not always the whole story.

Sometimes temporary words leave permanent marks.

Some things spoken to us in passing do not pass. A sentence may be temporary in the mouth of the one who says it, but permanent in the heart of the child who receives it.

Sam’s words did that in one way.

My grandfather’s influence did it in another.

One gave breath.

One brought weight.

And both left me holding the same question: what is passing through us — and what is remaining in us?

Not everything marked by time is ruined.

Not everything with decay on the outside is dead on the inside.

THE TURN

That old cabin in Arkansas did not just make me think about an old building.

It made me remember a boy in the woods.

A hard season.

A mountain cabin.

A white Dodge van.

A pocketknife.

A block of cheese.

A cup of black coffee.

A handmade grainer.

A corn cob pipe.

And a man who kept showing me that everything on the outside was passing away.

Then it made me wonder how many stories had passed through that Arkansas doorway.

How many hands touched those walls.

How many boots crossed that porch.

How many meals were eaten there.

How many arguments were left unfinished.

How many prayers were whispered in rooms no one remembers.

Walls like that have heard more than they will ever say.

It stood through years most people only read about now. Through weather, change, loss, silence, and the passing of generations.

The hands that built it are gone.

The voices that filled it are gone.

The footsteps that crossed that porch are gone.

But the cabin remained.

That is what caught me.

Because cabins do not remain by accident.

Wood rots.

Roofs sag.

Foundations shift.

Old places disappear into the ground all the time. Many buildings from that same era are gone now — sunk, burned, forgotten, reclaimed by the earth.

But this one stood.

Somebody maintained it.

Somebody remembered it.

Somebody believed the story was worth preserving.

And the more I looked at it, the more I thought about people.

Because our lives are temporary too.

We like to pretend they are not.

We build.

We plan.

We collect.

We schedule.

We assume there will be more time to say the thing, forgive the person, obey the call, surrender the hidden room.

When a hard season comes, we comfort ourselves the same way every time.

It is only temporary.

We forget the good seasons are only temporary too.

And here is the strange part.

We stand there sorting our lives into temporary and permanent — and we are doing the sorting from a body that is temporary at all times.

The one doing the measuring is as passing as the thing being measured.

All of life is temporary.

That is not the discouraging part.

That is the extraordinary part.

Because if all of it is passing, then none of it is throwaway.

Every day carries weight.

Every season is asking to be lived, not waited out.

The cabin may still be standing — but everyone who first called it home is gone.

That does something to a man when he lets himself sit with it.

It made me think about a question deeper than where a man sleeps.

Where is your home?

Not your address.

Not the town you came from.

Not the place your mail gets delivered.

Where is your soul living?

A man can live in one house while his soul is renting space somewhere else. He can sleep under one roof and still be scattered across old wounds, old regrets, old ambitions, old fears, and old names God never asked him to keep carrying.

Sometimes the soul does not need a new address.

It needs to come home.

There is a difference between being in a temporary season and living a temporary life.

A temporary season can be something God uses.

A wilderness.

A waiting room.

A healing place.

A forming place.

Seasons when the ground under us feels unfinished do not make us faithless. They may simply mean we are being formed.

But a temporary life is different.

A temporary life is an avoidance system.

It is what happens when a man gets so used to holding back that he starts calling it wisdom.

He stays close enough to responsibility to appear interested, but far enough away to avoid the cost.

Close enough to surrender to talk about it.

Far enough away to stay in control.

He does not fully leave.

He does not fully enter.

He hovers.

He rents space beside the call.

He can look responsible from a distance.

He can sound thoughtful.

He can have gifts, dreams, and language.

He can talk about what he is going to do one day.

But someday can become a hiding place.

Potential can become a shelter.

And a man can spend years protecting the idea of who he might become while never surrendering to the work required to become him.

I know this man because parts of him lived in me.

There were places in my life where I held back just enough to stay in what I thought was control. I could give a lot. I could work hard. I could show up. I could care deeply.

But there were still rooms I kept reserved for myself.

An exit.

A fallback.

A corner I did not fully surrender.

I learned something the hard way.

Ninety-nine percent of something is one hundred percent of nothing.

Almost surrendered is not surrendered.

A lot of men were taught that surrender is weakness.

Wars taught us not to surrender to the enemy.

Pain taught us not to surrender to people.

Wounds taught us not to surrender control.

I have seen it in rooms full of men. At retreats — a hundred and fifty, two hundred men — a leader would ask, “How many of you had a great relationship with your dad?”

Only a few hands would go up.

That tells a story.

A boy learns early whether it is safe to trust.

Whether authority is something that protects him or something that wounds him.

And if a man has never known healthy authority, surrender can feel like defeat.

But surrender is only weakness when we surrender to the wrong authority.

Surrender to fear will shrink a man.

Surrender to pride will harden him.

Surrender to comfort will numb him.

Surrender to Jesus will make him whole.

And Jesus does not meet the temporary man with a hammer in His hand, ready to crush him for every year he delayed.

He meets him like shelter.

Like sunlight.

Like food for the soul.

Like a strong chair under a tired body.

Like a rocking chair on an old porch, inviting the man who has been pacing his whole life to finally sit down long enough to tell the truth.

That is mercy.

Not permission to remain temporary.

Strength to come home.

THE DRIFT

The temporary man has a voice that keeps him company.

It sounds like this:

Keep your options open.

Never give anyone all of you. That is how men get hurt.

You will settle in once things calm down.

Staying loose is not avoidance. It is wisdom.

It sounds careful. Measured. Almost mature.

I called it wisdom too.

For years it was a packed bag sitting by the door of a life I was invited to own.

But that cabin did not remain because somebody kept their options open.

It remained because somebody stayed.

THE REFLECTION

A man can spend years around the things of God and never move into the life God is calling him to live.

He can go to church.

Read the Bible.

Pray the prayers.

Serve in the room.

Know the language.

And still follow from a distance.

Because proximity is not the same as connection.

A branch lying near the vine is still disconnected.

Jesus did not say to stand near Him and bear fruit.

He said to abide.

Remain.

Stay.

Live connected.

The temporary man keeps asking God for fruit while refusing the rooted life that produces it.

He wants peace without surrender.

Purpose without obedience.

Legacy without discipline.

Fruit without abiding.

But the branch does not bear fruit because it tries harder.

It bears fruit because it remains.

That old cabin remained because it was tended.

Its story was not preserved by accident.

Neither is a life.

A life that carries weight must be tended.

A character that remains must be guarded.

A testimony that outlives us must be lived intentionally.

Time is honest about this.

Psalm 90 says to number our days — not so we gain a heart of panic, or a heart of regret, but a heart of wisdom. And wisdom stops pretending there will always be more time.

Wisdom looks at the old porch, the weathered walls, the story that somehow remained, and asks the harder question:

What am I doing with the life God placed in my hands?

I looked at that cabin and saw something weathered.

I know what that feels like.

Weathered by years.

Weathered by battles.

Weathered by loss.

Weathered by things remembered and things forgotten.

But weathered does not mean wasted.

Weathered wood can still stand.

A weathered man can still carry wisdom.

A weathered life can still become testimony.

And the older I get, the more temporary life becomes impossible to ignore.

When I was younger, I would buy things and wonder how long they would last.

A car.

A house.

A tool.

A camera.

A pocketknife.

Would it hold up?

Would it be worth the money?

Would it last long enough to matter?

Now I find myself asking a different question.

Will it outlast me?

That question changes a man.

A pocketknife can outlive the hand that carried it. A tool can remain in a drawer long after the man who used it is gone. A photograph can outlast the eye that framed it. A house can still be standing after every person who first called it home has returned to the ground.

Even the things we call disposable can remain longer than we do.

That is sobering.

Because the body does not stay.

The flesh gives way.

The body returns to the soil.

What we dressed, fed, protected, strengthened, treated, and worried over eventually releases its claim.

And still, something remains.

Scripture speaks of bones more than once — dry bones, buried bones, bones that testify that God is able to speak life where everyone else sees only what is left behind.

I do not want to press that farther than it should go, but I do think bones remind us of something.

A life was here.

A person walked here.

Someone loved, worked, failed, endured, prayed, carried wounds, made choices, and passed through.

The body is temporary, but the life was not meaningless.

That is where Jesus changes the whole story for me.

Because without Him, temporary can feel cruel. It can feel like everything we build, love, hold, and become is slowly being taken from us.

But in Christ, temporary is not the same as empty.

Temporary is not the same as wasted.

Temporary is not the same as lost.

When I think about Marty, I do not think of our love as something that simply expires when the body gives way. I believe what Christ has formed in love is not lost when flesh returns to dust.

Our marriage has been lived here, in time, inside temporary bodies, through temporary seasons, in a temporary world.

But Jesus has been at the center of it.

And what He holds is not fragile.

That gives me peace.

I have seen people near the end who did not know where they were going. I have watched the weight that comes into a room when a person has no anchor beyond the body.

I do not say that with judgment.

I say it with heaviness.

Because the question eventually comes for all of us.

Where are you going?

Not where are your things going.

Not who gets the tools, the house, the photographs, the pocketknife, the old van, the furniture, the files, the memories.

Where are you going?

That is the question the temporary man cannot afford to avoid.

And by the mercy of Jesus, I have peace with my answer.

I know where I am going.

This world is temporary, but I am not headed toward nothing.

I am passing through a temporary place on my way to a permanent one.

There was a time when I was an overachiever.

I pushed, proved, built, and carried.

But life has a way of humbling a man, and God has a way of teaching him the difference between achievement and overcoming.

I do not want my life remembered because I achieved everything.

I want it to testify that I overcame.

Not by my own strength.

Not because I never failed.

But because Jesus kept calling me out of temporary places and into rooted ones.

From control into surrender.

From performance into abiding.

From holding back into becoming intentional.

A temporary man can become an intentional man.

But not by accident.

He becomes intentional when he stops waiting for someday to do what obedience is asking of him today.

When he stops blaming his wounds and starts bringing them under the authority of Christ.

When he quits standing near the doorway — and finally steps inside.

We are temporary men, but we are not called to live temporary lives.

WALKAWAY LINE

We are temporary men passing through a temporary world, but in Christ, we are not called to live temporary lives.

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

Where are you still renting space beside the call — and what has staying there cost you?

Where is your home, and where is your soul living? Are they in the same house?

What would change if you stopped waiting for someday and stepped inside today?

MY PRAYER

Heavenly Father,

Teach me to number my days — not in fear, but in wisdom.

Show me where I have lived temporary.

Show me the corners I have held back, the rooms I kept reserved, the call I stood beside but never fully entered.

Cut away what has been decaying from the outside in.

Do not let me mistake damage for death, delay for safety, or proximity for surrender.

Teach me to abide in You.

To remain when I want to run.

To surrender to Your authority — not as defeat, but as life.

Make me intentional.

Make me rooted.

Make me faithful.

Let my life carry more than activity.

Let it carry fruit.

Let it become testimony.

And when this temporary body gives way, let what You formed in me remain in You.

I do not want to live beside the life You called me to.

I want to come home.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.

ABOUT G~

G~ writes from lived experience — exploring identity, authority, and time through the lens of faith, trial, leadership, and surrender. His reflections are not meant to condemn or hype, but to steady. Rooted in covenant, forged through adversity, and anchored under the authority of Jesus Christ, his work invites readers to examine who governs their lives — and to live intentionally under truth.

If what you’ve read resonates with your journey, feel free to reach out.

G~

I took this in my backyard, at my own cross — the one where I’ve surrendered everything. A smaller cross forged from nails rests on the stone. Against it leans a band that says MAN OF GOD — the kind Stephen and I have offered to men after conferences with The Influencers. Fifteen years of roads led to this frame. I didn’t arrange it to preach. It was already true when I picked up the camera.

Not every strong line comes from a changed heart.

But when the heart is changing, you can hear it in the words.

I’ve been hearing it in a brother’s.

This one is for him.

DEDICATION

To Stephen Elcano — my brother in life. Fifteen years of men’s events, two roads crossing and crossing again, until God braided them into a friendship only He could have built. Different paths — but both of them arrived at the foot of the same cross. This one is for you, and for the journey — may we keep writing in the same direction. He’s been writing for years — now the words have a home at stephenelcano.substack.com. Walk with him.

To our wives — who make room for two men to write what God is still working out in them, and who steady us more than any page shows.

To our families — for the patience, the grace, and the quiet support behind every word.

To the readers — the ones who pause to tell us something landed. You lift both of us more than you realize. If a single line moves one brother to consider something he’d been walking past, that is the whole intent.

SCRIPTURE

“…For the Lord does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” — 1 Samuel 16:7 (NKJV)

“Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.” — Galatians 4:7 (NKJV)

“So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” — Psalm 90:12 (NKJV)

“…He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.” — Philippians 1:6 (NKJV)

THE HOOK

I have been reading my brother Stephen’s words for a while now.

Not one post. Not one strong line that lands and fades.

A pattern.

A man can write about leadership and still hide behind performance.

A man can write about marriage and still avoid the mirror.

A man can write about faith and still keep Jesus at a safe distance.

A man can write about transformation and still only describe it from the outside.

But every so often, you see something different.

You see the writing become less about the topic and more about the man God is forming underneath it.

That is what stopped me.

Stephen has been covering a lot of ground — marriage, fatherhood, leadership, calling, conflict, rest, sonship, identity. The quiet places where men either become honest or become harder.

But under all of it, I hear one steady question rising.

What is actually changing in me?

THE STORY

That is the question most of us avoid.

We would rather ask if the room was full.

If the post did well.

If the marriage still appears intact.

If the people around us still think we are fine.

But God is not nearly as impressed with appearances as we are.

He keeps going after the hidden place.

The heart behind the motion.

The motive behind the service.

The wound behind the reaction.

The pride behind the defense.

The orphan behind the leader.

That is where becoming begins.

Not on the platform. Not in the applause. Not in the part of us that knows how to sound wise after the pain has passed.

Becoming begins in the middle of it.

In the hallway between who we were and who God is still forming us to be.

That is not a comfortable place. It feels like an old skin that no longer fits while the new one has not settled yet. The man you were cannot carry where God is taking you — and the man you are becoming is still learning how to stand.

I think a lot of men live in that hallway longer than they admit.

They keep producing. They keep showing up. They keep carrying the room.

But somewhere inside, the tank is running lower than anyone knows.

THE MOMENT

And then God, in His mercy, begins asking the deeper question.

Not, “What are you doing?”

But, “What is driving you?”

That question changes everything.

Because two men can do the same thing and be moved by two completely different engines.

One serves because he is loved.

The other serves because he is trying to be.

One leads from identity.

The other leads for approval.

One builds because God gave him something to steward.

The other builds because stillness feels too much like failure.

One loves because covenant has roots.

The other loves as long as the feeling stays easy.

Same motion.

Different heart.

THE TURN

And eventually, the heart tells the truth.

It tells the truth in marriage.

It tells the truth in conflict.

It tells the truth when the apology costs more than pride wanted to pay.

It tells the truth when no one is watching.

That is why presence alone is never enough.

A man can be in the room and still not be engaged.

He can sit at the table and still not live covenant.

He can be married and still not be pursuing.

He can open the Bible and still never let the Word open him.

That one is hard.

Because most of us learned how to count motion as maturity. We checked the box. We showed up. We were there.

But the people closest to us can tell the difference between being present and being offered our presence.

A wife can feel it. A child can feel it.

So can God.

That is why the process matters more than the event.

The wedding is beautiful. The marriage is the work.

The conference may stir a man. The secret place forms him.

The testimony may move the room. The hidden surrender is where the grace first became real.

The post may carry the message. The life has to carry the weight of it.

I have watched that truth walk on two legs for fifteen years.

Stephen and I have stood in a lot of rooms together. Men’s events. Influencers gatherings. Different cities, different seasons, two men on two paths that kept crossing until God stopped letting them uncross.

In the early years we questioned everything. Are we doing the right thing? Are we saying the right thing? What does God have planned for us? We were always looking forward — and the whole time, God was looking inward. Pruning us. Each man on his own branch, each cut in its own season. Some cuts we understood years later. Some we are still understanding now.

And through all of it, the conversations. The long, grounding ones — the kind only two men growing under God’s hand can have, where nothing gets performed and nothing gets fixed, just two brothers telling the truth about where the cut is landing. I am thankful for every one of them.

And somewhere along those years, something quieter happened. The rooms stopped being the measure. There was a season when a man notices who gets asked, who gets seen, who gets the platform. And there is a season, if he lets God finish the cut, when he realizes he doesn’t need any of it — he just needs to be present in the Holy Spirit, and let the fruit speak.

We have watched rooms full of men get stirred — and we have learned, slowly, that the stirring was never the point.

The point was what a man did with it on Monday.

Stephen keeps circling back to that cost in his writing. The cost of comfort. The cost of approval. The cost of laying down the old self. The cost of listening before defending. The cost of loving well.

And every time, the same truth rises.

What God asks a man to release is never greater than what He is forming in him.

THE DRIFT

You showed up. That counts.

You checked the box. You carried the room. Nobody could ask for more.

If it looks strong, it is strong. Keep moving.

I lived on that voice for years. I could fill a room with motion and call it maturity.

But motion is just sand through the glass.

And the glass has never once cared how impressive the pouring looked.

THE REFLECTION

The deeper work does not feel easy.

Sometimes growth feels like grief.

We grieve the old protections. The old version of ourselves that knew how to survive but not how to surrender. We grieve the applause we used to need. We grieve the control we once confused with strength.

But there is a freedom on the other side of that surrender that cannot be faked.

A man who knows he is loved does not have to perform for every room.

A man who knows he belongs does not have to dominate every conversation.

A man who knows his Father’s voice does not have to chase every other voice for approval.

That is sonship.

Not a religious word to hang on the wall.

A settled place to live from.

The son leads differently. He can tell the truth without needing to win, and apologize without losing himself. He can receive love without suspicion, and give it without keeping score. He can lead without needing the room to prove he matters.

That kind of man changes the atmosphere.

Not because he is loud.

Because he is rooted.

And rooted men are rare. They do not drift with every reaction. They do not let pride write the ending of a story humility could have redeemed.

They stay.

At the table. In the marriage. In the secret place. In the hard conversation. In the becoming.

Not perfectly.

Faithfully.

And maybe that is what has encouraged me most in my brother’s words.

Not perfection. Faithfulness.

Because most transformation does not look dramatic from the outside.

Sometimes it looks like a man getting up before the world wakes and meeting God before the demands begin.

Sometimes it looks like bringing flowers just because.

Sometimes it looks like washing a father’s feet before love becomes memory.

Sometimes it looks like closing the Bible study agenda because a brother’s heart is bleeding.

Sometimes it looks like naming the rock in the backpack before it becomes a lifetime of hidden weight.

Sometimes it looks like choosing the second mile when pride already had the closing argument prepared.

That is what love does.

Love stays long enough to become believable.

Love keeps swinging long enough to find the gold behind the wall.

So maybe the real question is not whether a man is gifted. Plenty of men are gifted.

Maybe the question is whether his gift is submitted.

Is his leadership submitted? Is his voice submitted? Is his ambition submitted? Is his pain submitted? Is his becoming submitted?

Because an unsubmitted gift can still build something impressive.

But a submitted man builds something that lasts.

That is what I see happening in Stephen’s writing.

Not just posts.

Formation.

A man writing from the wrestle, not only from the resolution. A man inviting other men to stop performing long enough to become honest.

There is a cross in my backyard. In front of it sits a smaller one, forged from nails, resting on stone. And against those nails leans a black band that says MAN OF GOD — the kind Stephen and I have pressed into men’s hands after conferences, year after year, room after room.

I photographed it in the evening light, and it told me the truth about all of it.

The band is what a man brings home from the mountaintop.

The nails are what it cost.

And the cross behind them both is where every road that matters finally arrives.

Fifteen years of events, and here is what the years taught us: the sand in a man’s life passes through a narrow neck. One grain at a time. No man gets to pour faster, and no man gets to hold the grains back. Every one of us is passing through the apex of the hourglass — becoming, grain by grain, whatever we are surrendering to.

And there is nothing like passing through it with a brother headed the same direction.

What are we building before the sand runs out?

So keep building, brother.

Not castles for applause. Not monuments to performance.

Build what remains when the sand runs out.

Build from sonship. Build from obedience. Build from love that costs something.

Keep writing. Keep wrestling. Keep becoming.

The gold is not only in the words.

It is in the man God is forming beneath them.

WALKAWAY LINE

When a man starts becoming, he gives other men permission to stop pretending.

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

What is God forming in you that you keep trying to manage instead of surrender?

Where are you present, but not engaged?

Where are you calling it wisdom when it is really fear?

MY PRAYER

Heavenly Father,

Thank You for brothers who let You do the deeper work — who write from the wrestle and not just the resolution. Thank You for fifteen years of crossed roads that You were braiding the whole time. Search the hidden place in me. The motive behind the motion. The wound behind the reaction. Form a son where a performer used to stand. Teach me to number my days, so the sand in the glass makes me faithful instead of afraid. And let the men around me find, in my becoming, room to be honest.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.

ABOUT G~

G~ writes from lived experience — exploring identity, authority, and time through the lens of faith, trial, leadership, and surrender. His reflections are not meant to condemn or hype, but to steady. Rooted in covenant, forged through adversity, and anchored under the authority of Jesus Christ, his work invites readers to examine who governs their lives — and to live intentionally under truth.

If what you’ve read resonates with your journey, feel free to reach out.

G~

My sister’s retired ballroom in the woods. The Philodendron mayoi stood close to fourteen feet, reaching for the skylight, too large for the room it had been growing in. I photographed it the way it stood that afternoon — on casters, as if it already knew it was ready to be moved.

Some things outgrow the room they were given.

Some roots circle until there is nowhere left to go.

And some cuts are not the end of anything.

DEDICATION

To the Holy Spirit, who was with me long before I knew how to name His presence — tending my soil, guarding my roots, pruning what needed to go, and keeping life alive in me.

To Marty, my wife, who tends the garden of our life — watering, nurturing, pruning, caring for the soil we both live in. She carries a tenderness toward living things that reminds me daily what faithful care looks like.

To my sister, who cared for me even in seasons when neither of us fully understood the soil we had been planted in. She gave shelter where she could, love where she could, and helped keep life growing in me when the ground around us was hard.

To my mother, who taught us how to care for plants and, in her own wounded way, taught us how to care for one another. She poured love into my sister and me — and that same nurturing spirit still lives on through Marty, through my sister, and through every living thing she taught us not to give up on.

And to the reader whose soil may feel dry, crowded, contaminated, or too small for what God intended to grow. May the love of Jesus water what is thirsty, heal what has been cut, reveal what needs to change, and give you courage to stretch your roots toward the soil He has prepared for you.

SCRIPTURE

“I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.” — John 15:1–2 (NKJV)

THE HOOK

The room used to be a ballroom.

My sister taught dance in it for years. Now it belongs to the plants — a quiet sanctuary in the woods where more than one kind of life happens at once.

That afternoon it held three quiet corners.

My sister in one, working through boxes of old family photographs. Marty in another, reading her Bible. Me nearby, on the computer.

And standing over all of it — the philodendron. Fourteen feet of green, full and alive, too big for the room that had raised it.

There was peace in that room.

Then my sister looked up and asked Marty a question:

Would you take the plant home and trim it down? It’s gotten too large.

I watched Marty’s eyes.

She wanted it.

But underneath the joy sat a harder question —

how do you move something this alive without killing it?

THE STORY

We didn’t just talk about it.

We did it.

We cut the plant about three-quarters of the way down. We left one rooted stub in the soil at my sister’s place — something she could nurture, something that would grow again. We wrapped the upper section, gathered the leaves, let the roots hang off the side, and drove it home to Bakersfield.

It survived the trip.

One plant became two.

One stayed in the woods.

One came home.

That plant carried more than leaves.

It carried my mother.

This was her plant. Hers first — her hands in that soil before anyone else’s.

And it had already been cut once. Years ago, Marty received that first cutting and grew a whole plant from it. My mother’s plant had multiplied before — and it was about to multiply again.

My mother loved plants. She mixed nourishment into the water. She moved from plant to plant, smiling as she watered them — trimming, treating the sick ones, bringing back plants most people would have thrown away.

She said plants grew better if you talked to them. If you played them music.

She looked at plants the way she looked at me — with pure love and care.

And here is the truth I can only see now:

my mother tried to keep life alive in soil that had wounded her too.

While the plant stood in the middle of the room, my sister kept working through the boxes. Twenty-five of them. Old family photographs — some reaching back to the 1940s. The war. The Depression. Generations of the garden we came from.

By the end, we kept four.

The rest went to recycling.

I expected release to feel like loss.

It didn’t.

Some memories were not worth resurrecting. They needed to be buried, not carried.

My sister’s spirit lifted. Mine did too. We had broken free of the old garden — and in a way, we did it for our mother. I don’t think she ever fully got free.

My sister is ten years older than me. She fought her own battles in that soil, a decade ahead of mine — and still, when she could be there for me, she gave me her best.

Watching her and Marty together now, tending the same plant from two ends of the state… that is a garden the old soil never could have grown.

Because here is the thing about children:

we don’t choose the soil we’re planted in.

We don’t know who handled it before us. What was mixed into it. What was missing from it. Whether the caretakers knew how to keep anything alive.

The soil I came from had been contaminated long before I arrived — generational sickness, abuse, distortion, and sin, worked into the ground by hands that came before me.

I first sensed it around six or seven. The drinking. The late nights. The yelling. The feeling that something was wrong in the house and nobody would say it out loud. I learned to hide in my room. To be seen, not heard. I waited for school mornings, because school meant I could get out of the house for a while.

Hard soil. Dry. Neglected.

And a boy’s roots kept growing anyway.

THE MOMENT

A plant can only grow so far in a pot that can no longer hold it.

Eventually the roots circle. They press against the walls. They search for water, for space, for soil that isn’t there.

Standing in that ballroom, looking up at fourteen feet of life that had outgrown its room —

I realized I was looking at my own story.

By fifteen, my roots had already grown over the edge of the pot.

I left home.

Not rebellion. Survival.

And it took me most of a lifetime to see what that first cut really was.

The cut didn’t kill the life.

It multiplied it.

THE TURN

People used to say I was lucky.

Lucky to get out. Lucky to survive. Lucky things turned out the way they did.

I wasn’t lucky.

I was blessed.

I didn’t know Jesus then. But looking back, I can see He was already tending the soil. Every moment people called luck was a hand I couldn’t see yet — protecting, guiding, keeping something alive in me before I knew how to name Him.

I gave my life to Jesus around forty. Full surrender came closer to fifty.

And that was when I finally understood: the vinedresser had been working all along — taking away what could not bear fruit, pruning what could, and never once setting down the shears to walk away from me.

THE DRIFT

Bloom where you’re planted.

Good roots stay put.

The soil made you who you are — honor it by staying in it.

Leaving is abandonment. Loyalty means enduring. Family is family, no matter what’s in the ground.

It sounds like faithfulness.

It isn’t.

I know what it costs to keep growing in a pot that can’t hold you. I circled those walls until I was fifteen.

The Gardener never asked me to bloom in contaminated soil.

He cut me out of it.

THE REFLECTION

Right now, in Bakersfield, the cutting is drying out.

Marty won’t plant it for a few days. That’s not neglect — that’s how it works. A fresh cut planted too soon can rot. The plant needs stillness before it can take new soil.

I’ve lived those seasons.

Seasons where God went quiet and nothing seemed to be growing. Seasons where I looked dead to everyone watching — maybe even to myself.

But a drying-out season is not always death.

Sometimes it is preparation for repurpose.

Sometimes what looks finished is only waiting — for the right soil, the right water, the right light.

I have been cut many times by life.

But I was never cut off from Jesus.

At sixty-seven, I am still growing. God has prepared new soil for this season — a pot groomed for my growth, holding things I could never have held before. He is my true Caretaker now. He waters the soil. He tends the leaves. He prunes what needs pruning. He provides the sunlight.

And Marty is out looking for the right pot for the plant’s new home. She tends our sanctuary the way she tends me: faithfully, quietly, like it matters. I feel safe in her care. She feels safe in mine.

Back in the woods, the rooted stub is already reaching again under my sister’s hand.

One plant became two.

One in the woods. One in Bakersfield.

My mother’s love for living things — still alive, still spreading, in soil she never got to see.

WALKAWAY LINE

Being cut is not the same as being cut off.

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

What soil are you still trying to grow in?

Are you root bound — and calling it loyalty?

What if the dry season isn’t death, but preparation?

MY PRAYER

Heavenly Father,

You know the soil each of us came from — who handled it, what was mixed into it, what was missing from it. Reveal the soil we are still trying to grow in. Heal the old cuts that never closed right. Prune what needs pruning, even when it hurts, and help us trust the shears in Your hand.

Give us courage to release what was never meant to be carried, and to leave the soil that cannot hold the life You intended. And when the season turns dry and quiet, remind us that stillness is not abandonment — it is preparation.

Replant us, Father, where we can bear fruit. And thank You for coming for us long before we knew how to name You.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.

ABOUT G~

G~ writes from lived experience — exploring identity, authority, and time through the lens of faith, trial, leadership, and surrender. His reflections are not meant to condemn or hype, but to steady. Rooted in covenant, forged through adversity, and anchored under the authority of Jesus Christ, his work invites readers to examine who governs their lives — and to live intentionally under truth.

If what you’ve read resonates with your journey, feel free to reach out.

G~

June 15, 2026.

I was sitting at my sister’s place in the woods, a quiet place for me — the kind of place where my thoughts slow down enough to hear what is rising underneath them.

I had sat down to write a Spark.

Then a text came through from my friend Bob.

Bob is a dear friend — to my sister, to Marty, and to me. We met him years ago, up near my sister’s place. He comes to camp, hikes the dogs, and travels the states with a camera in hand, always hunting a piece of God’s creation worth getting in front of. He sees country with the kind of eye that makes you stop and look twice.

He sent me this — Shafer Canyon Road in Utah. A switchback carved through red rock, turning back on itself again and again as it works its way down toward the bends of the Colorado River below.

The moment I saw it, my jaw dropped.

I said, “That’s my next Spark.”

I asked Bob if I could use his photo. He said yes.

So before this goes any further — thank you, Bob.

This photograph did more than capture a trail.

It opened one.

You can feel it at the top of any hill.

The pull to go.

The quiet certainty that you can handle whatever is waiting at the bottom.

DEDICATION

To the Holy Spirit — who knows how to use a photograph, a memory, and a quiet place in the woods to bring an old lesson back with new mercy.

To my wife, Marty — who has blazed and traveled every trail with me, the guardrail on the narrow stretches and the second set of eyes I never knew I needed. She is a treasure beyond measure, God’s gift to me, the love of my life.

To my friend Bob — for the photograph that stopped me in my tracks.

To Ronnie — who taught me more than he probably knew. A bush pilot, a hunter, a guide, a grit-filled soul whose life was wrapped around those Idaho ranges and the elk that moved through them. When he said yes, he meant yes. When he said no, he meant no.

To the men I once hunted with in the high country, and to the country itself — the horses, the mules, the snow, the cold air, the wild places. Most of those men are gone now, but their voices, their grit, their laughter, and their lessons still ride somewhere in the backcountry of my memory.

And to the reader standing at the top of a hill, feeling the pull of momentum, wondering whether to head down.

Pause first.

Ask God before the descent.

Some roads are not meant to be taken by confidence alone.

SCRIPTURE

“Trust in the LORD with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths.” — Proverbs 3:5–6 (NKJV)

THE HOOK

A switchback is not the fastest way down a mountain.

That is the mercy of it.

A switchback makes you turn before the drop takes you. It slows your confidence. It forces you to respect the grade. It reminds you that straight lines are not always wisdom, especially when the road is narrow, the ground is loose, and one wrong decision can carry consequences all the way to the bottom.

Bob’s photograph was taken in Utah.

But what it opened in me was Idaho.

The Profile Range.

Yellow Pine.

Cougar Mountain Basin.

The high country where friends and I hunted elk, packed mules, cut trail, and learned fast that the mountain does not care how confident a man feels.

We crossed those trails through dry summers and snow-filled winters, when the snow stood six feet deep, sometimes ten. Friends beside me. Mules under load. Tools in hand.

Every mile taught the same lesson.

The mountain only respects humility, preparation, and endurance.

THE STORY

I was in my mid-twenties then — strong, confident, and sure-footed enough to believe I could handle most things the mountain put in front of me.

But I was not arrogant.

By then, life had already handed me enough lessons to know when strength needed to bow to experience. I knew there were moments when a man had to humble himself, listen to those who had gone before him, and let the mountain teach instead of trying to prove something to it.

The men of substance around me gave me a nickname.

KID.

The kid.

The grunt.

The mountain goat.

I earned every bit of it.

I had been brought into the outfit as young help — strong, willing, useful — which meant I got handed just about everything that needed doing.

Feed the horses before daylight.

Saddle the stock.

Load the gear.

Cut the trail.

Help the clients.

Listen more than I talked.

Learn from the men who already knew what one bad decision could cost up there.

Ronnie was one of those men.

He did not learn the mountains from a brochure. He was born into them — a bush pilot, a hunter, a guide, a man of true grit who was part of the soil, part of the dirt, embedded in that rock the way the trail itself was carved into it.

He flew for the Mosquito Abatement Program in Idaho and belonged to the Million Mile Plus Club — millions of miles in a Cessna, reading weather and terrain and risk from the air long before I understood how much wisdom that took.

Men looked to him for the way onto that mountain, and the way back off it alive. He took a lot of people in over the years, me among them, and I can tell you he was one heck of a pilot.

Years later, Ronnie died in a small plane crash going back into that same camp country.

That still settles heavy in me.

If any place ever held Ronnie’s life, it was that country. I cannot explain why that day went wrong. I only know it did, and the weight of it never fully left.

I will come back to that.

It matters more than I knew at the time.

Ronnie taught me a lot.

Not with speeches. Mostly by grit, repetition, and consequence — the kind of mountain wisdom you only learn when one wrong move can end you right where you stand.

You learned to pay attention to everything.

If you saddled your horse wrong and did not allow for heat, sweat, and gut expansion, you were going to learn fast. A bad cinch in that country could put you on the ground, under a load, or draped over the back of a mule before the day was done.

That country gave a man nothing for free.

It was home to high-altitude elk — and once you saw one, you understood what that meant.

These were not ordinary animals wandering through easy country. They were specimens. They lived where most men could not reach them, and that was part of what made them what they were.

To hunt that country, you had to earn your way in.

You might find yourself on the belly side of a horse, hanging on for dear life across a ten-inch trail, looking down a cliff of shale, stone, or snow. You might cross snowdrifts so deep that if you went through wrong, it felt like spring might come before anyone pulled you out.

That was the kind of country that formed a man.

It taught by weight and weather, by fear and failure and repetition.

Every decision in that country felt absolute.

Either you made the right one, or the mountain corrected you.

And somewhere in all of it — under the load, behind the mules, beside men who had already paid their dues — the kid started becoming a man.

We hunted country that did not forgive carelessness.

In summer we flew supplies in low by Cessna — welded fifty-five-gallon drums dropped near the old miner cabins where we would set up camp. When winter came, we brought the clients back in by horse and mule, cutting trail for days through heavy drift snow just to reach it.

The clients were men with money — most of them stepping into that country for the first time. They came with the best of everything: new rifles, new chaps, new thermals, sleeping bags rated for cold they had never felt. Overpacked with gear they were certain would carry them through.

By the end, most of it had not mattered.

What a man actually needed up there could not be bought.

He needed know-how he did not have — and someone he could trust to get him off that mountain alive.

It was treacherous and beautiful at the same time, and the two never traveled apart.

Camp sat around eighty-five hundred feet. The hunting country climbed toward ten thousand. At that elevation, in November, winter does not arrive politely.

It comes with teeth.

You learn quickly that the mountains are not scenery.

They are a test.

And that trip was one a man never fully forgets.

The crash I am about to tell you was not even the worst of it. Before it was over, a client — a doctor — died of altitude sickness before we could get him out, and a horse went down in a way I still do not write about lightly.

Some memories do not leave cleanly.

They stay — not only to haunt you, but to warn you.

This is one of those.

THE MOMENT

It was late.

We were hauling mules into camp — Ronnie at the wheel of a big flatbed diesel, a long trailer behind us.

Snow was falling.

The road was iced over.

At the bottom of the switchback, in a wide turn, the clients had parked their brand-new Suburbans. Five of them. Bought that same year through some business deal. Shiny. Expensive. Lined up right where they never should have been.

The men stood around them with cigars and whiskey, laughing, talking, excited for the trip, waiting for us to come down.

No cell phones.

No way to send word ahead.

No warning.

Ronnie started us down.

Then the trailer began to slide.

Right.

Left.

Correct.

Overcorrect.

Right again.

The headlights caught the snow hanging in the air. The road disappeared under the ice. The weight behind us started making its own decisions.

Ronnie looked over and said, “Hang on, kid.”

And I did.

All I could see were those five Suburbans at the bottom, waiting like targets.

The men saw us coming.

At first they laughed.

They pointed.

They stood there watching it unfold like entertainment.

Then they understood.

We were not just coming down the hill.

We were coming for them.

And instead of moving the vehicles, they scattered.

That mule trailer came down into the turn and tore through every one of them.

Metal folded.

Panels crushed.

Wheels bent.

A few had to be towed out.

The animals were shaken and banged up, desperate to get out of that trailer the moment we could open the door.

Getting them out was the easy part.

We do not lose control at the bottom of the hill.

We lose it at the top — the moment we start down without asking.

THE TURN

I stood there afterward looking at the wreckage — embarrassment, relief, and disbelief all at once.

And I remember Ronnie turning to those men and asking them plainly:

Why didn’t you move your vehicles?

You saw us sliding.

You were laughing and pointing.

Why didn’t you move?

That question stayed with me.

Because the danger had been obvious.

The slide had already started.

Wisdom was standing right in front of them, waving its arms — and still they did not move what was sitting in the path of consequence.

They were watching the big thing.

The trip.

The excitement.

The whiskey and the cigars and the season ahead.

They missed the small thing sliding toward them in the dark.

That is usually how it happens.

Not because the danger is hidden, but because we are looking somewhere else — so fixed on the big thing that we miss the small one already in motion.

Ronnie’s whole life turned on small details done right. And the day it ended, it was a small thing — an ordinary run — that simply went wrong.

And it did not end at the bottom. On the drive home, one of the wrecked Suburbans was still drivable, so they took it — a hunting rifle packed barrel-back on the floorboard, never unloaded, the safety never set, clothes and hangers piled on top. The miles did the rest. The sway and the stop-and-go worked a hanger into the trigger, and somewhere on that road a shot went off and blew the back window clean out. Nobody was behind them. One more small thing, ignored. One more set of choices that became everyone’s consequence.

I have lived parts of my life that way too.

Not with a mule trailer and five Suburbans.

With pride.

With decisions.

With confidence.

With roads I started down before I ever asked God whether I should be on them.

THE DRIFT

The voice at the top of the hill always sounds reasonable.

You have done this before.

You know this road.

Your experience will carry you down.

You can correct it on the way.

And if something goes wrong, you will handle it — you always have.

It sounds like wisdom.

It sounds like confidence earned the hard way.

But experience is not the same as discernment.

And confidence is not the same as surrender.

I know the difference now.

I learned it on an iced-over switchback, hanging on beside a man who knew those mountains better than I knew myself — and even he could only correct so much once the weight behind us started making its own decisions.

THE REFLECTION

For a lot of years, I think I was on a switchback trail and did not know it.

Back and forth.

Turn after turn.

Trial after trial.

Correction after overcorrection.

Trying to manage momentum, I had already handed over to the wrong things.

I thought I was making my own way.

But when I look back now, I can see the mercy.

Jesus was not absent from the trail.

He was bending the road.

He was slowing the descent.

He was keeping me from taking a straight line into destruction.

I did not know it then, but every switchback was part of the way home.

That is what I see now, at sixty-seven.

The mountain I had to climb.

The turns I did not understand.

The men I learned from who are gone now.

The younger version of myself — strong but not yet wise, useful but not yet surrendered — hanging on beside older men while the mountain revealed what kind of man I really was.

And I see Jesus.

Not only at the end of the trail.

On the trail.

In the turns.

In the pauses.

In the near misses.

In the wreckage.

In the mercy that kept bending the road before momentum broke me completely.

He has walked every trail with me — from the day I was born to the day I take my last breath.

Some days still go wrong.

Some things still happen that should not, and do anyway — the way they did for Ronnie.

I cannot control every detail on the descent.

No one can.

But I have learned where to put my trust.

Not in my grip on the wheel.

I ask Jesus to be in the cab before the slide begins.

We carried carabiners on those trails — you clip them to whatever is strong enough to hold you when the ground lets go.

A man clips his life the same way. Too often, to someone else’s choices, until their choices become his consequences.

These days I clip mine to Jesus. I am often put out front to guide, but I am not the one leading — I am under His leadership and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and He holds the path before me and behind me.

It has been more than half a lifetime since that mountain, and only God could have carried me from that icy switchback to this quiet chair in the woods.

That is why I can receive a memory I would never choose to relive and be glad to give it away — to hand it to someone who has not reached their switchback yet, someone sure they can make the bottom on nerve alone. If it slows even one of them before the slide, nothing on the hard road behind me was wasted.

My faith did not grow strong because the road got easy.

It grew strong because He stayed with me through the hard turns.

WALKAWAY LINE

A switchback is mercy carved into the mountain — a slower way down so we do not destroy ourselves in a straight line.

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

Where in your life are you already starting down the hill, telling yourself you can correct it later?

What big thing has you so fixed that you are missing the small thing already sliding toward you in the dark?

And when you look back at your hardest turns, can you see where mercy was bending the road — slowing a descent you would have taken straight into ruin?

MY PRAYER

Heavenly Father,

Teach me to pause at the top of the hill before I rush into the descent.

Give me eyes to see what pride ignores, humility to ask for Your direction, and the wisdom to know when confidence has quietly become carelessness.

Thank You for the switchbacks You have allowed in my life — the turns, the delays, the corrections, the hard places that slowed me down long enough to find You.

Do not let me mistake momentum for calling.

Do not let me mistake strength for surrender.

And if the turns I have survived can spare someone else a straight line into chaos, let them serve that purpose.

And when the road turns sharp, the ground goes slick, and control begins slipping from my hands, remind me that Your mercy is still greater than my momentum.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.

This story began with a choice that was not mine — Bob’s, to take the picture and send it my way. One man’s choices become another’s consequences. Bob’s became a gift. Thank you, my friend.

ABOUT G~

G~ writes from lived experience — exploring identity, authority, and time through the lens of faith, trial, leadership, and surrender. His reflections are not meant to condemn or hype, but to steady. Rooted in covenant, forged through adversity, and anchored under the authority of Jesus Christ, his work invites readers to examine who governs their lives — and to live intentionally under truth.

If what you’ve read resonates with your journey, feel free to reach out.

G~

Truckee, California. June 13, 2026. I was walking the valley at my sister’s place with Marty, my sister, and eight dogs running ahead. It was peak daylight — the worst hour to photograph an open field, the kind of light that flattens everything. One bush stood alone in the center of all that space, and somehow the whole scene came together anyway.

Every creature in the valley seemed drawn to it.

The coyotes. The dogs. All of them.

I thought that was the story.

DEDICATION

To the Holy Spirit, who can take a bush in a valley and turn it into a mirror.

To Marty, who walked beside me while God let the field speak.

To my sister, whose valley gave me the picture and whose words opened the thought.

To the reader, tired of marking what God never asked them to own — and ready to be rooted where He is watering.

SCRIPTURE

“He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither; and whatever he does shall prosper.” — Psalm 1:3 (NKJV)

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; For You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.” — Psalm 23:4 (NKJV)

“But those who wait on the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” — Isaiah 40:31 (NKJV)

“Abide in Me, and I in you…” — John 15:4 (NKJV)

THE HOOK

I saw it before I understood it.

A single bush, standing alone in the center of a vast Truckee valley.

Not tucked under the trees.
Not hidden in the shade.
Not leaning against the hillside for cover.

It stood in the open, under the full weight of the sun, surrounded by miles of field and wildflowers and sky and silence.

And somehow, it looked like it owned the ground it had grown from.

THE STORY

On June 13, 2026, I was walking the valley at my sister’s place in Truckee with Marty, my sister, and eight dogs moving ahead of us like they’d been handed temporary ownership of the land.

I was moving slow. The rocks, the uneven ground, my own unstable footing — all of it kept me deliberate. A ski pole in one hand for balance, my camera in the other. Marty and my sister kept an eye on me as I picked my way through.

I was hunting the shot.

It was noon. The valley was hot. The sun sat straight overhead — the worst time of day to take a photograph. High sun. Harsh light. Open field. The kind of light photographers learn to avoid, because it flattens everything and makes beauty harder to catch.

So I kept looking anyway, hoping. Because God doesn’t always wait for perfect light to show you something worth seeing.

And then — there it was.

In the center of that valley stood one large bush. Not near the tall trees. Not tucked into the shaded edge. Not protected by the hillside. Out in the middle of everything, alone, with a kind of quiet authority.

I stopped and said, “Wow. That is quite a bush.”

And it was.

It looked like a statement of survival.

Here I am.
Among the tall trees.
Out in the open.
Still growing.

It wasn’t proud. It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t trying to draw attention to itself. It simply stood there, full and alive, as if it had learned something about that valley everything else had missed.

Then my sister said something that made me laugh.

The coyotes come down from the hills and mark that bush all the time, she said.

And right about then, our dogs reached it and started doing the very same thing. One by one, they went over and left their message.

I laughed, because the whole thing was so earthy and ridiculous and perfect.

That bush had become the bulletin board of the valley. The central post office. The gathering place. The one spot where every passing creature seemed to stop and say, “I was here.”

So I gave it a name.

The Coyote Bush.

Later, my sister told me that bush had been standing there since she moved in back in 1999 — and probably long before that.

Since 1999, she had watched it hold that same spot — twenty-seven years of seasons. A little larger every year. Still there every season.

Coyotes came to it. Deer came near it. Just about every four-legged creature in that forest seemed to find its way to it. And because my sister runs a dog camp — sometimes as many as seventeen dogs on the place — the pattern repeated every time they took the trail through that valley.

The dogs knew it. The wild animals knew it. The valley knew it.

That bush was not a moment.

It was a witness.

THE MOMENT

But the longer I looked at it, the more something turned over in me.

That bush wasn’t standing there because the coyotes marked it. It wasn’t full and alive because the dogs stopped by. Its authority in that valley had nothing to do with the traffic around it.

I had the whole thing backwards.

The bush was not growing because everything marked it.

Everything marked it because it was growing.

THE TURN

Its life was coming from somewhere the marking never touched.

From underneath. From above.

The winter runoff. The seam of water that ran through the low place. The minerals gathered where the ground dipped. And over all of it, the open sky and the direct, unbroken light.

Water below. Light above.

That bush had found the one place in the valley where hidden water and open light met. That’s why it thrived.

There was something else about it, too.

It was round. Almost perfectly balanced.

It hadn’t stretched off in one direction, straining for a single break of light. It wasn’t lopsided from living on one thin trickle of water. It looked like it had been fed from every side and touched by light from every angle.

That became another mirror.

A faith fed from only one side can grow misshapen. But a life receiving from God in every direction — His Word, His Spirit, prayer, suffering, surrender — begins to take a different shape. Not perfect. But formed.

And as I looked around, I noticed the others. Smaller bushes, closer to the trees. Tucked into the shade. More cover. More protection.

And smaller. Many of them don’t make it through the winter. They have shelter, but not enough light. They have cover, but not the same water.

The exposed bush had both. The protected ones were slowly losing the fight. What looked the most vulnerable, out in the open, was the most sustained thing in that valley.

The bushes along the shade lines were seasonal. They’d come up green, but after the winter snow, many of them shrank back or sank into the soil — alive for a stretch, then gone. They never reached the runoff or the open light the way that lone bush had.

And faith can be like that.

Sometimes our hearts get planted in shaded places and unwatered soil. We look alive for a season. Then the branches start to dry. We shrink back. We survive in appearance, but we never grow the deep, thriving connection to the Father that carries a life through winter.

That is why location matters. Not just where our feet stand. Where our hearts are rooted.

Sometimes we ask God for shade when He is trying to grow us in the open.

Then the question came. Not loud. Not complicated. But deep enough to stop me where I stood.

Am I rooted where God is watering — or am I just marking what someone else’s roots have produced?

THE DRIFT

Because people do this too.

We circle the same bushes. Social media. Old arguments. Family roles. Reputation. Control. Past success. The old wound we keep coming back to scratch. The familiar ache of “they should have seen me.” The worn-down place that says, “I need to prove I mattered.”

And the flesh has such reasonable words for it.

We call it legacy.

We call it discernment.

We call it ministry.

Sometimes it’s legacy, and sometimes it’s only insecurity. Sometimes it’s discernment, and sometimes it’s only control. Sometimes it’s ministry, and sometimes it’s only the need to be noticed. Sometimes we aren’t bearing fruit at all. We’re just leaving a scent on the bush to prove we passed through.

But not every mark begins in pride.

Sometimes a mark is a message. A way of saying, “I’ve been here before.”

I spent years backpacking in Yosemite, marking a trail so I’d know if I’d looped back, wandered off, or come round to the same place again.

A mark can help you remember where you’ve been. But it can fool you if you start trusting the mark more than the Guide — and sooner or later someone comes along and moves it, rewrites it, changes the sign you were leaning on.

That’s why I can’t build my life around the marks.

I need the Shepherd.

I know that pattern from the inside. Not from watching other men fall into it — from living there myself, longer than I’d ever want to admit.

For most of my life I moved from bush to bush with an entrepreneur’s spirit. I built things. I mastered things. I solved the problem, ran the business, left my mark on the season — and once I’d conquered one thing, I went looking for the next. Another hill. Another challenge. Another place to prove I could make something grow.

Then one day, without choosing it, I found myself in a valley. Physically. Spiritually. Emotionally.

Health trials came. Pain came. Limits came. Stillness came. Age came. Loss came. The pace changed, the tools changed, the body changed.

There are valleys you hike into by choice, and valleys you find yourself in because life walked you there.

And at first all I did was look for the way out. I didn’t want the valley. I wanted the next hill.

So I stood in the low place, looking around for a bush to climb toward.

And slowly, God showed me something I didn’t want to see at first.

I was the bush.

He hadn’t set me down in that valley to bury me. He’d planted me there to water me. The suffering, the prayer, the stillness, the illness, the marriage, the Scripture, the surrender — that was the hidden seam of water, running right under the place I thought was my ending.

I thought I’d been set aside. He was rooting me.
I thought I’d been hidden. He was watering me.
I thought I’d lost the open field. He was giving me the light.

THE REFLECTION

And over time, people came.

Some came for shade. Some came to leave a mark. Some came with encouragement, some with wounds, some with judgment, some with love. Some came just to know they weren’t the only one standing in a valley they never chose.

But not one of them was the source.

That’s the difference between being marked by the world and being rooted by God. One leaves a scent. The other gives life. The world can notice what God has grown, gather around it, even leave its mark on it — but it can never become the water.

I thought about the old parable of the eagles set down in a valley where food was everywhere and nothing was hard. No hunting. No wind. No long climbs. At first it looked like a blessing — everything they needed, right there on the ground.

But the eagles stopped flying. They stopped facing the wind, stopped using their wings, grew content feeding from the valley floor. And when the storm finally came, when the season turned, they couldn’t rise. They still had wings. They’d just lost the strength to use them.

The same valley held two different lessons.

The bush thrived because it was rooted where God gave water and light. The eagles failed because they settled for comfort and forgot the wind.

A valley can nourish what God plants. It can also weaken what refuses to rise. The danger isn’t the low place — it’s mistaking provision for permission to stop growing.

And maybe that’s what still has me thinking.

How many times do we walk past a bush and never think twice? How many times does something stand right in front of us — full of years, full of quiet survival — and we look straight past it because our eyes are fixed somewhere else?

I’m still trying to understand why that bush caught me the way it did. Maybe it wasn’t only the bush. Maybe it was the invitation to stop. To turn aside. To notice.

Moses saw a bush burning in the wilderness, but the holy moment didn’t begin until he turned aside to look. He stopped long enough for God to speak.

This wasn’t that bush. It wasn’t burning. It wasn’t Sinai. It was a Truckee valley — full sun, eight dogs, uneven ground, and one old bush standing where water and light had kept it alive.

But God still used it to stop me.

And sometimes that’s the mercy. Not every holy interruption comes wrapped in fire. Sometimes it looks like a bush in a valley, standing quietly for twenty-seven years, waiting for the day you finally have eyes to see it.

Sometimes Jesus is closer than the thing we’re staring at. Sometimes He’s standing right in front of us, knocking at the patio door, while we’re busy looking past Him into the yard.

We keep scanning the distance for a sign and miss the One already here. We keep waiting for God to speak from somewhere dramatic while He’s using something ordinary to interrupt us.

A bush. A valley. A trail. A camera. Eight dogs. A slow walk. A thought that won’t let go.

Maybe faith begins again the moment we stop looking past what God set right in front of us.

And I’m grateful.

I think I can speak for Marty and my sister when I say it.

We’re still able to walk that valley.
Still able to notice the bush.
Still able to laugh at the dogs.
Still able to leave a message.

And maybe that’s different from trying to mark what God never asked us to own.

There is a difference between leaving a mark to prove you mattered and leaving a message of gratitude because God let you pass through one more time.

One says, “Remember me.”
The other says, “Thank You, Lord — I’m still here.”

Near the Coyote Bush were two smaller ones. A fraction of its size, but there. Growing. Reaching for the same seam of water, the same sun.

And after thinking about a bush that had held its place for twenty-seven years, I thought about how this ends. One day the old bush fades. Its season closes. But before it does, it drops seed.

That’s the legacy worth leaving. Not a mark. Life.

A mark says, “I was here.”
A seed says, “Something can grow after me.”

I’ve left enough marks. I’d rather leave seed.

Maybe that’s what God’s been teaching me in this season. Stop spending your strength marking someone else’s bush. Cultivate the one He planted you to become. Let Him root you where the water gathers. Let His light reach the places you keep trying to hide in the shade. Let the valley do its quiet work. And when the time comes — drop seed.

The flesh wants to leave a mark. The Spirit teaches us to grow roots.
The flesh wants territory. The Spirit bears fruit.
The flesh wants to announce itself.

The Spirit abides.

WALKAWAY LINE

The world may mark what God has watered, but it cannot become the source.

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

What has God placed in front of you that you keep looking past?

Are you rooted where God is watering — or are you circling what someone else’s roots have produced?

Are you leaving a mark just to prove you were here — or are you dropping seed so something can grow after you?

MY PRAYER

Heavenly Father,

Teach me the difference between leaving a mark and bearing fruit.

Root me where You are watering. Let Your light reach the places I keep trying to hide in the shade.

Deliver me from the need to own what You only asked me to observe. Deliver me from the need to prove I was here.

Teach me to stop long enough to see what You have placed right in front of me.

If I am in a valley, show me whether You are rooting me, renewing me, or calling me to rise. Give me the humility of the bush that receives water in the low place, and the patience to wait on You until You say rise.

Let my roots find Your water.
Let my life receive Your light.
Let my season leave seed.

In Jesus’ name,
Amen.

ABOUT G~

G~ writes from lived experience — exploring identity, authority, and time through the lens of faith, trial, leadership, and surrender. His reflections are not meant to condemn or hype, but to steady. Rooted in covenant, forged through adversity, and anchored under the authority of Jesus Christ, his work invites readers to examine who governs their lives — and to live intentionally under truth.

If what you’ve read resonates with your journey, feel free to reach out.

G~

This is Mr. Basil. He lived in our garden the summer I was learning how to stand again. He grew to nearly four inches, and he ruled that bed like he owned it. Most days, you would walk right past him. He preferred it that way. But if Marty was with me, she had an eagle eye for him. She could spot him in all that green, and when she did, she would light up like a little kid — then turn to me and ask, “Do you have your camera?”

I thought I was the one looking.

A camera, a shovel, and a question my wife had never asked me before.

Seventeen years between the first photograph and the thought that finally caught up with it.

DEDICATION

To the Holy Spirit — for guiding me into the deeper places of thought, memory, and reflection. For helping me explore what I am carrying, uncover what needs to be seen, discover the wisdom God is revealing, and recognize the truths He wants me to understand at this stage of life.

To Marty — for always being in the garden with me. For turning the soil with me, smelling the roses with me, slowing down with me, and helping me stay present in our marriage and our life. You are more than beside me. You are yoked with me. Wherever we stand, the garden becomes sanctuary because we are standing there together under God.

To the reader — for sitting with these stories, bringing your own life into the reflection, and allowing God to speak where something needed to be heard. My prayer is that these words do more than inspire thought. I pray they open a quiet place where the Holy Spirit can reveal what matters, what needs tending, and what belongs back in the shed.

SCRIPTURE

“Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it.” — Genesis 2:15 (NKJV)

“So teach us to number our days, That we may gain a heart of wisdom.” — Psalm 90:12 (NKJV)

“Keep your heart with all diligence, For out of it spring the issues of life.” — Proverbs 4:23 (NKJV)

THE HOOK

In 2009, I walked out into the garden with my camera in hand.

Marty and I had already done the trimming and pruning for the day. The work was behind us. We were just standing in it, letting it be what it was — full, green, reaching for the light.

I had come out looking for a picture.

I was carrying a lot more than a camera.

THE STORY

I was still rebuilding after severe West Nile. I had survived something I should not have survived. By every measure I had been given, I was one of the few who made it through. My body was weak, my future uncertain, my pace nothing like it used to be. I was learning how to stand again, work again, breathe again — and notice what I had almost missed.

Then I saw him.

Mr. Basil — the praying mantis — out on the green stems, still and hidden, the king of the garden in my mind. He blended in so completely that he all but disappeared into the leaves.

But if you slowed down, there he was. Watching. Waiting. Completely at home — with no concern for anything I was carrying in my mind.

THE MOMENT

That is what stopped me.

A small living thing, tucked into the leaves, fully present. No hurry. No fear of tomorrow. No need to control what was coming next. And me, standing over him with a camera, thinking about everything — where I had been, where I was, where it was headed.

I thought I was looking into the garden.

It felt like the garden was looking back.

That is the strange thing about a long gaze. The eyes go still, but the mind keeps running — a hundred miles an hour, chasing something it cannot name. The eyes are only trying to catch up to the thought.

Sometimes what stares back at you is your own thinking.

And sometimes, if you hold still long enough, it is something far larger — watching, waiting, holding the gaze until you finally hold still too.

At the time, I was running two businesses. One lived in the world of hazardous compliance — liability, pressure, responsibility, consequence. The other lived close to my natural wiring — IT, computers, systems, tools, the edge of whatever was coming next.

I was standing between soil and systems. Between a garden and a future. Between what God grows slowly and what man keeps trying to make faster.

Seventeen years later, I am standing in that same garden bed.

Still with a camera in my hand. Still looking for a shot. Still wondering where it is all headed.

THE TURN

Only now I am sixty-seven.

There are days I can hardly pick up a shovel anymore, but I can still pick up my camera.

Time changes what you can carry. It also reveals what you were never meant to carry in the first place. In 2009 I thought so much of life was about what had to be done now — the next job, the next problem, the next decision that could not wait. I was working so hard I nearly missed the garden I was standing in.

This time, I was not working. I was just there. Enjoying it. Listening to it. Letting it speak.

And it asked me a different question than it had asked the younger man with the camera.

How much of what consumed me was ever as important as it felt at the time?

The garden does not only grow fruit.

It grows the gardener.

I have changed in the years between that first photograph and the man now standing in the same soil. I take longer now — to think, to answer, to move. I am no longer willing to hand over a response I have not weighed. I check it against my emotions, hold it against what is true, and make sure I am standing in my own identity before I let it go.

The younger man answered fast. This one would rather answer right.

Not long ago, Marty asked me what I thought about AI. She had never asked me that before. So we sat down and talked — not for five minutes, but for the better part of two hours. And underneath her question I could hear what so many people are carrying right now: concern and wonder, opportunity and suspicion, fear and amazement, all at once.

Some are terrified of it. Some are nearly worshiping it. Most do not realize how long they have already been living with smaller versions of it.

The noise around it is loud. Fear is loud. Promises are loud.

And in the middle of all that noise, I found myself back in the garden, assessing the soil.

It is a tool. That is where I land first — not the gardener, the seed, the soil, the rain, or God. A tool. And every tool must stay in its proper place.

THE DRIFT

A tool is neutral, they say. It only does what you tell it. Set your boundaries and you will be fine.

A shovel opens soil or it damages roots. A car carries a family home or becomes a weapon in the hands of rage. A hammer frames a house or harms a life. The tool is innocent. The hand decides.

So set the boundary, keep the tool in its lane, and the garden takes care of itself.

But I have held tools my whole life, and I have learned that a boundary only tells me where a tool belongs. It never tells me whether it belongs in my hand at all — or what it is quietly doing to the hand that keeps reaching for it.

THE REFLECTION

Not everything dangerous is evil by design. Some things are dangerous because they are misused. Some are dangerous because they are doing exactly what they were built to do. Knowing the difference is the whole work of discernment.

So I have learned to hold three things together. A boundary tells me where a tool belongs. Discernment tells me whether it belongs in my hand at all. Wisdom teaches me when to use it, how to use it, and when to put it away.

God did not place man in the garden so the tool could rule the garden. He placed him there to tend and keep it. Stewardship came before production. The garden was never only about what could be harvested — it was about what was being formed in the one who tended it.

That is what I do not want to lose. A tool can help me work the soil, but it cannot do the surrender for me. It cannot pray in my place. It cannot abide for me, repent for me, or carry my cross. Some things were never meant to be automated, because they are the very things forming us while we do them. Pruning forms us. Waiting forms us. Struggle forms us.

I can get a tool to hand me perfect words. But perfect words without a surrendered heart are still artificial.

So I have stopped asking only whether a tool can do the work. The better question is whether it should — and beneath that, the one that keeps pressing on me: what fruit is it producing? Is it making me more truthful, more patient, more surrendered, more aware of God? Or just faster, louder, and more impressed with myself?

The danger was never the intelligence. The danger is intelligence without wisdom, power without surrender, progress without love.

So before I ask what a tool can do, I have to ask who is governing the one using it.

A keyboard still has a heart behind it. A screen still has a soul sitting in front of it. If that heart is not surrendered to Christ, something else will always look for the opening. The enemy does not need to own the tool. He only needs an unsurrendered hand willing to use it.

If Jesus is not in it, then who is?

WALKAWAY LINE

The garden was never meant to be ruled by what we built for the shed.

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

What tool in your life has started helping so much that it is quietly asking to lead?

MY PRAYER

Heavenly Father,

Teach me to use what You place in my hands without surrendering my heart to it. Give me wisdom to know the difference, discernment to see the fruit, and the courage to put a thing back in the shed when it starts reaching for the lead.

Do not let what I build become greater than the One who made me.

Keep every tool in my hand — and my hand itself — surrendered under Christ.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.

ABOUT G~

G~ writes from lived experience — exploring identity, authority, and time through the lens of faith, trial, leadership, and surrender. His reflections are not meant to condemn or hype, but to steady. Rooted in covenant, forged through adversity, and anchored under the authority of Jesus Christ, his work invites readers to examine who governs their lives — and to live intentionally under truth.

If what you’ve read resonates with your journey, feel free to reach out.

G~

I am standing at the Western Wall in Israel with my right hand pressed against the ancient stone and my left hand holding a small plastic baggie filled with prayers I carried from Bakersfield, California. Marty took this photo without me knowing it. I was in tears — praying for her, praying for friends, feeling the weight of a place saturated with prayer.

I never thought I would write about abide.

I thought I was carrying prayers to a wall.

God was teaching me how to remain.

DEDICATION

To the Holy Spirit — for continuing to move me, grow me, correct me, and show me new understandings I could not have reached on my own. Thank You for not just teaching me about abiding, but patiently leading me into it.

To my wife, Marty — for walking this Journey with me, abiding with me, taking up the sword beside me, and carrying the torch together. When one of us grows weary, the other lifts it. Under Christ we are not two separate flames trying to survive. We are one body, one yoke, one covenant, one shared calling.

To Rocky Fleming, Influencers, and the men who helped shape this path — for the Holy Spirit-inspired Journey material that has changed the course of so many lives. To Rocky, a man of God, whose surrendered life has helped many of us see that the greatest influence is not found in being seen, but in becoming yielded enough for Christ to be seen through us. To Les Pearsey, Bryan Craig, David Dobbs, and the men who have walked with me, challenged me, sharpened me, and helped me understand what an abiding life can become.

To the readers, the seekers, and the men still standing near the edge — especially those who are tired, unsure, or not yet certain what abiding really looks like. Be assured of this: when you find Him there, you will know. And when you truly begin to abide, your life will not stay the same.

SCRIPTURE

“Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me.” — John 15:4 (NKJV)

“I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.” — John 15:5 (NKJV)

“He must increase, but I must decrease.” — John 3:30 (NKJV)

THE HOOK

I know there are books and teachings and sermons on the word abide.

This is not one of those.

This is not me trying to explain the word from a distance.

This is me trying to tell you what it has come to mean after sixty-seven years of living, resisting, surrendering, writing, praying, walking with my wife, guiding men — and learning that Jesus was never asking me to visit Him.

He was calling me to remain.

Truth is, I never thought I would write much of anything.

I was not the kid in school imagining English would become some sacred tool in my life. I had no long, formal training in language. I did not come into this with a writer’s background.

And yet here I am.

Writing.

Reflecting.

Sitting with the Word of God and asking Him where it covers me. Where it corrects me. Where it explains what I have lived.

Somewhere along the way, writing became more than writing.

It became therapy.

It became prayer.

It became one of the places God taught me to abide.

Not perform.

Not impress.

Not make myself visible.

Just stay close enough to listen.

THE STORY

In 2015, Marty and I traveled to Israel.

That trip changed something in me.

I had read Scripture. I believed Scripture. I had heard it taught for years. But walking the Holy Land brought something alive in me I cannot fully explain.

It was not that God became more real there.

God was already real.

But the Word took on ground. Dust. Stone. Footsteps. History.

I walked places Jesus walked.

I stood in places where prayer had soaked the stones for generations.

And one of those places was the Western Wall.

In the photo, my right hand is pressed against the ancient stone.

My left hand is holding a small plastic baggie filled with rolled-up prayers I had carried all the way from Bakersfield, California.

Names. Friends. Burdens. Hopes.

People had trusted me with those prayers, and I carried them there.

A rabbi was beside me. Around me, men were praying with a depth and devotion that moved me to the core. The women had their own side of the Wall, and somewhere nearby Marty was there too.

I remember thinking about her.

Praying for her.

Wondering where she was and what she was experiencing.

What I did not know in that moment was that she was the one taking the picture.

I was in tears.

Not a few quiet tears I could hide.

Real tears.

I felt the weight of such enormous prayer around me. As if the heaviness of the world had gathered into that one place. So many people praying. So many lives. So many whispered cries pressed into stone.

I felt gratitude.

I felt unworthy.

I felt small.

Not worthless.

Small.

There is a difference.

Worthless forgets who God made you to be.

Small remembers who God is.

Standing there with my hand on that Wall and those prayers in my other hand, I felt the magnitude of worship, history, longing, faith, and need all at once.

One by one, I placed those prayers into the Wall.

One by one, I lifted those people to God.

I did not have fancy words.

I did not need them.

I just carried them there.

THE MOMENT

Looking back now, I think God was teaching me something about abiding before I had language for it.

Abiding is not just standing close to God for yourself.

It is becoming the kind of man who carries others into His presence.

That moment was in 2015.

Now it is 2026.

Around the same time of year, I look back at that photo and it still brings tears to my eyes.

Because I can see more now than I could see then.

I can see that many of those prayers were answered in ways beyond what I could have imagined.

Not always exactly the way we would have written the story.

God is too holy and too wise to be reduced to our preferred outcomes.

But He answered.

He moved.

He covered.

He carried.

And in some places, He did far beyond what I thought to ask.

But the deepest answer was not what happened to the prayers in that bag.

The deepest answer was what happened to me.

I did not just leave prayers in that Wall.

I left a version of myself there too.

THE TURN

Somewhere in that season, something settled in me.

I had spent much of my life accepting and objecting.

Accepting certain parts of God.

Objecting to others.

Accepting His comfort. Objecting to His authority.

Accepting His help. Objecting to His timing.

Accepting His forgiveness. Objecting to the surrender He was asking of me.

But I cannot object to the Word of God anymore.

I have seen too much.

I have lived through too much.

I have walked too close to the places where Jesus walked to treat His Word like theory.

At some point, a man has to decide whether Jesus is an addition to his life or the authority over it.

That is where abiding begins.

For me, abiding has become very simple.

Not easy.

Simple.

It is time. It is proximity. It is remaining.

It is putting Jesus before everything and into everything.

It is waking up grateful that I am still here after all I have been through.

It is opening the Word not just to read it, but to let it read me.

It is praying while I am driving.

It is asking God what He is showing me in the middle of something that frustrates me.

It is standing at the foot of the Cross in my heart — not once in a while, but as the posture of my life.

And yes, I still slip.

There are still moments when my mind drifts.

There are still times when I put Him on the back burner longer than I should.

But not like before.

Not with the same distance.

Not with the same resistance.

The old bridge has been burned.

I crossed the Bridge, and by the grace of God, I do not want a bridge back to the old man.

That does not mean I am finished.

It means I know where home is.

THE DRIFT

The drift says you can love Jesus and still keep one hand on the old life.

The drift says you can follow Him closely enough to be comforted, but not closely enough to be changed.

The drift says you can visit the Word when you need something, then return to your own reasoning when life gets loud.

The drift says a man should be strong enough to carry it all himself.

The drift says surrender is weakness.

The drift says abiding is for softer men, slower men, quieter men.

The drift says visibility is proof of value.

The drift says if nobody sees it, honors it, applauds it, or names it, then it must not matter.

That is a lie.

Abiding is not weakness.

Abiding is a man finally coming under the right authority.

It is a man laying down the illusion that he can carry what only Christ was meant to carry.

It is a man learning that leadership without surrender becomes pressure.

Strength without intimacy becomes performance.

Prayer without obedience becomes noise.

Influence without abiding becomes self dressed up in spiritual language.

And visibility without surrender can quietly become another altar.

I know that ground.

I stood on it longer than I care to admit.

There is something in a man that wants to be seen.

Recognized.

Affirmed.

Respected.

Applauded.

And some of that desire is understandable. We all want our lives to matter. We all want to know that what we have carried, built, endured, and poured out was not wasted.

But the abiding life begins correcting even that.

Because Jesus does not invite a man into intimacy so the man can become impressive.

He invites a man into intimacy so the man can become surrendered.

And sometimes the most powerful servant in the room is the one who has stopped needing the room to know his name.

I know that hunger. I have felt the pull to be seen, named, and affirmed for what I carried. But the longer I walk with Jesus, the more He keeps showing me that the servant does not need to become the story. Christ does.

That is the version of me Jesus keeps asking me to leave behind.

THE REFLECTION

Much of the language God used to shape this in me came through Rocky Fleming and the Journey material he was Holy Spirit-inspired to write.

Rocky is a man of God, and those materials have changed the course of life for many.

Marty and I are two of them.

That process did not just give us information.

It gave us a path.

A way to understand what Jesus was inviting us into.

Not religious appearance.

Not performance.

Not just being a better version of ourselves.

Intimacy. Self-feeding. Personal abandonment. Absolute trust.

Abiding relationship with Christ.

The Journey helped me see that a man cannot keep living on someone else’s spiritual food forever. At some point, he has to learn how to feed himself from the Word of God.

He has to stop being spoon-fed only on Sundays.

He has to sit down with Scripture.

He has to wrestle.

He has to listen.

He has to ask, Lord, what are You saying to me?

A man who does not know how to feed himself spiritually will eventually grow weak, even if he looks strong everywhere else.

That is one of the great deceptions a man can fall into.

We can appear strong and still be starving.

We can lead businesses, families, ministries, teams, and conversations, and still be spiritually malnourished.

We can know how to provide, protect, fix, build, manage, and push through — and not know how to remain.

And Jesus did not say, produce fruit by trying harder.

He said abide.

Remain. Stay connected. Stay under My authority. Stay in My love. Stay close.

As men, we sometimes miss that target.

We want the plan. We want the assignment. We want the fix. We want the weight room, the strategy board, the next play, the thing we can do with our hands.

But abiding starts before the doing.

It starts in the staying.

It starts in the hidden place.

There Jesus forms a man away from the noise. Away from the applause. Away from the pressure to be seen. Away from the need to have every act noticed and every sacrifice named.

But abiding was never meant to stay locked away in a private room with Jesus.

If it is truly abiding, it does not stay there.

It walks back into the world with us.

It walks into our marriage.

It walks into our family.

It walks into our conversations.

It walks into our work.

It walks into our friendships.

It walks into our ministry.

It walks into our pain.

It walks into our calling.

That is where abiding becomes visible.

Not because we are trying to prove something.

Because Christ is now going with us into everything.

A good friend of mine, Dan Bartel, once shared a concept that has stayed with me.

He said it is like a quarterback in a football game calling out, Hut one. Hut two. Hut three.

But in this picture, the quarterback is Jesus.

And instead of calling hut, He calls:

Abide.

Abide.

Abide.

I love that.

Life is always shifting at the line of scrimmage.

The defense moves. Pressure comes. Noise rises. The clock is running.

The temptation is to panic, force the play, or rely on our own read of the field.

But the call remains the same.

Abide.

Abide.

Abide.

Stay connected before you move.

Stay surrendered before you speak.

Stay under His authority before you try to carry authority.

Stay close before you try to lead others close.

That is not weakness.

That is the strongest place a man can live.

Because a man who abides is not drawing from ego.

Not drawing from fear.

Not drawing from old wounds, old appetites, old proving grounds, or old identities.

He is drawing from Christ.

And when a man draws from Christ, his influence changes.

His marriage feels it.

His children feel it.

His friends feel it.

His words change. His silence changes. His decisions change. His patience changes. His prayers change.

Even his presence changes.

Maybe that is part of what it means to become invisible.

Not because your life does not matter.

Because it has finally stopped trying to be the main thing.

Because the applause no longer governs your obedience.

Because Christ is becoming more visible than you are.

That kind of invisibility is not absence.

It is surrender.

It is the posture John the Baptist lived — less of him, more of Christ.

It is a man who no longer needs to be the headline because he has finally found the King.

It is a servant who can walk into the room, carry the burden, pray the prayer, speak the truth, wash the feet, make the call, show up again — and never need to make himself the story.

That is not a small life.

That may be the largest life a man can live.

And that is one of the things I have seen through the Journey groups over the years.

When one man truly begins to abide, it does not stop with him.

Marty is helping lead women through that same process. Rocky, even in the later years of his life, still flies across the country to sit with women and men, pouring into lives that are still being shaped by the Journey.

That alone says something about the abiding life.

It keeps giving.

It keeps showing up.

It keeps carrying the torch.

And there is a picture I keep coming back to.

Picture a man clipping a carabiner to a cord.

In this picture, the cord is Christ.

That moment — when the carabiner closes around the cord — is the moment a man stops trying to live near Jesus and starts living connected to Him.

Then he carries Jesus into the next place.

His marriage.

His kitchen table.

His drive home.

His conversation with another man who is hurting.

And in that place, another man clips in to the same cord.

Then he carries Jesus into the next place he goes.

And another connection forms.

Before long, what looked like one man’s private walk with Christ becomes a web of abiding influence.

One man abides.

A wife feels it.

A son watches.

A daughter remembers.

A friend gets carried.

A stranger gets reached.

A prayer gets placed in a Wall.

And maybe that web is not only there to show who influenced whom.

Maybe it is also there to catch a man when he falls.

A web of abiding under God’s grace.

Held by the hands of His mercy.

Covered by His love.

That is abiding love.

Not sentimental love.

Not soft religious language.

Not words we say because they sound spiritual.

Abiding love is covenant love.

It stays.

It remains.

It keeps showing up.

It carries names in a bag from Bakersfield to Jerusalem.

It prays with tears against ancient stone.

It walks back home and keeps praying when the photo is over.

It sits with the Word.

It leads men.

It honors a wife.

It changes a family.

It burns the bridge back to the old life.

It keeps saying yes to Jesus when the old self wants an exit.

And slowly, if we let Him, Jesus makes us less obsessed with being seen and more willing to be sent.

Less hungry for applause and more hungry for obedience.

Less controlled by affirmation and more anchored in His affection.

Less interested in being impressive and more willing to be faithful.

There are many ways to explain the word abide.

But for me, at sixty-seven years old — after all these miles, all these prayers, all these failures, all these rescues, and all this mercy — I think I would say it this way:

Abiding is learning to live so close to Jesus that leaving Him no longer feels like an option.

Not because I am strong.

Because He is home.

WALKAWAY LINE

Abiding is not becoming invisible because you do not matter; it is remaining so close to Jesus that He becomes what others see.

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

Where is Jesus asking you to become less visible so He can become more visible through you?

MY PRAYER

Heavenly Father,

Teach me to abide.

Not as a concept. Not as a word I admire. Not as something I teach, quote, or write about from a safe distance.

Teach me to remain in You when life gets loud.

Teach me to stay close when my flesh wants control.

Teach me to listen before I move, surrender before I speak, and trust before I try to fix what only You can carry.

Teach me to stop chasing the places where I am seen, and help me become faithful in the places where only You see.

Make me less hungry for applause and more hungry for obedience.

Make me content to grow smaller, so that You grow clearer through my life.

Thank You for the prayers You allowed me to carry.

Thank You for the people You placed in my life.

Thank You for Marty, for the Journey, for the men and women who have walked beside us, and for every quiet place where You have taught me that Your presence is not something to visit.

It is where I am meant to live.

For the one reading this who is still looking, still uncertain, still standing near the edge — let them see that You are not calling them into religious performance.

You are calling them home.

Let them know that when they find You there, they will know.

And once they truly begin to abide, nothing will ever be the same.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.

ABOUT G~

G~ writes from lived experience — exploring identity, authority, and time through the lens of faith, trial, leadership, and surrender. His reflections are not meant to condemn or hype, but to steady. Rooted in covenant, forged through adversity, and anchored under the authority of Jesus Christ, his work invites readers to examine who governs their lives — and to live intentionally under truth.

If what you’ve read resonates with your journey, feel free to reach out.

G~

I took this in an aspen grove, late in the season, the light coming in low and gold. From where I stood, it looked like a thousand separate trees. It was not. An aspen grove is one organism — a single root system pushing up trunk after trunk, each one looking like it stands on its own. I didn’t go looking for a metaphor that morning. I just kept the camera up and paid attention. The metaphor was already there, under my feet.

Many trunks.

One root.

What looks separate above the ground is sharing life beneath it.

And the deepest work is happening where no one can see.

DEDICATION

To the Holy Spirit — for revealing what moves beneath the surface of my own heart. You have been faithful in the quiet places, where clarity forms long before the words arrive.

To my wife, Marty — for your encouragement, your listening heart, and the way you draw out the stories God has placed in me. You have been more than a companion on this journey. You have been a sharpening voice and a steady witness beside me.

To the readers — for walking these Sparks with me. Your willingness to read, reflect, and tell me how the words meet your own walk means more than you know. I love doing this with people who are listening for Him beneath the surface of ordinary life.

SCRIPTURE

“Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had come that He should depart from this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.” — John 13:1 (NKJV)

“To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven.” — Ecclesiastes 3:1 (NKJV)

“Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me.” — John 15:4 (NKJV)

THE HOOK

Everyone you love will have a last day with you.

Most of the time, neither of you will know it.

It rarely announces itself. No banner. No warning. Just an ordinary conversation that turns out to be the last one — and you only learn it was the last one later, looking back.

I don’t say that to darken the room. I say it because it changes how you stand in the room.

When Jesus knew His hour had come, He didn’t withdraw. He didn’t rush. He washed feet. He spoke peace. He gave thanks at a table where betrayal was already sitting. He loved His own to the end — and He finished what love had to say.

He left no love unfinished.

THE STORY

Recently, I stood in a room honoring people whose season of leadership was ending — and welcoming the ones just stepping in.

New voices. Younger leaders. Callings still forming.

I was there for Marty as she moves deeper into her own ministry calling. I came to stand beside her the way she has stood beside me for years. So I watched the next generation rise, and I felt my own season shifting under me at the same time. My years. My service. The slow turn from carrying things out front to learning how to bless, steady, and stand behind what God is raising up next.

And I watched Marty live out the DNA of Jesus — surrounded by kindred souls, all of them trying to abide, all of them wanting to carry the good news. What started as one invitation years ago was standing right in front of me, grown into a room full of people.

Then my phone went off.

A text. From a friend, responding to a Spark I’d written called Are You Ready. He said he believed I was ready. That he was ready too. And that the clearest sign of readiness he knew was a life marked by gratitude — and that we both lived there now.

I didn’t take it as flattery.

Then it landed deeper. Because this was the man God used to open the door to my deeper walk with Jesus. In 2010 he tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Come with me.” No pressure. No pitch. Just presence. He brought me into a small group of men, and that one invitation reshaped my faith, my marriage, and the way I now recognize the Spirit moving.

He couldn’t have known what it would become. Neither could I.

So when his words came back to me fifteen years later, I didn’t hear flattery. I heard fruit.

Fruit from a seed, I didn’t understand when it was planted. Fruit from a root system I stepped into before I had any language for it. Fruit from the quiet faithfulness of God, working underground long before I knew He was working at all.

THE MOMENT

I looked back across that room.

The ones completing a season and the ones stepping into one. The younger and the older. Marty in the middle of it, living it out. The text still warm in my hand from the man who first said, “Come with me.”

And I realized I wasn’t looking at a collection of separate people.

I was looking at a forest.

What looked like many separate lives was one living thing.

The roots had been growing the whole time.

THE TURN

We tend to read a room like that as motion. People coming and going. One season closing, another opening. Endings on one side, beginnings on the other.

But that’s the surface.

Seasons change above the ground. The life beneath them does not. The endings and the beginnings, the youth and the age, the seed and the fruit — they weren’t separate events happening near each other. They were one work, surfacing in different places at the same time.

That was the convergence. Past merging into future. Gratitude and readiness meeting in a single room.

THE DRIFT

There’s always more time.

You’ll say it later — at a better moment, when it isn’t so emotional, when the words come out cleaner.

The season isn’t really ending. It only looks that way. Nobody’s last day is today.

That voice is patient and reasonable and almost kind. It lets the love stay unspoken because tomorrow feels guaranteed. It tells you the people who rooted you will always be there, so you never have to thank them.

But a man tapped my shoulder fifteen years ago and said, “Come with me.” He didn’t wait for a better moment. He just spoke.

A forest grew out of it.

THE REFLECTION

An aspen doesn’t grow as a single tree. It grows as one life, expressed many times.

That is how the Body of Christ works.

A word spoken in faith. An invitation offered without pressure. A life touched — then another, then another. And one day you look up and you’re standing in the middle of a forest, and you didn’t plant it. Grace kept moving underground while you weren’t watching.

It doesn’t come from striving. It comes from abiding.

The branches look separate. They are not. They are held by the same vine, fed by the same root, alive by the same Spirit. What I saw in that room was not effort. It was abiding, made visible over time — God forming and correcting and sustaining people until they had become a body, equipped and ready for the work He had in mind.

I did not see individuals standing alone.

I saw one thing — held together beneath the surface, and held together in love.

WALKAWAY LINE

Readiness is not measured by the time we think we have left, but by the love we refuse to leave unspoken.

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

Who rooted you — and have you said so, while there is still time?

MY PRAYER

Heavenly Father,

Thank You for the ones You use to draw us closer to You. For the seeds planted in faith, and the fruit revealed in time.

Teach us to abide and not to strive. Teach us to recognize the roots beneath the surface, and the people You used to plant them.

Give us the courage to speak love before the season passes. Let gratitude mark our lives. Let nothing You have asked us to say stay buried in us.

Root us deeply in Christ, and use our lives to strengthen others.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.

ABOUT G~

G~ writes from lived experience — exploring identity, authority, and time through the lens of faith, trial, leadership, and surrender. His reflections are not meant to condemn or hype, but to steady. Rooted in covenant, forged through adversity, and anchored under the authority of Jesus Christ, his work invites readers to examine who governs their lives — and to live intentionally under truth.

If what you’ve read resonates with your journey, feel free to reach out.

G~

I was sitting in the bow of a steelhead boat on the Umpqua River when God started teaching me about water.

Cold air.

Moving water.

The bow pointed forward.

And beneath the surface, something was traveling in a place I could not see at first.

The fish were not everywhere.

They were in the seam.

DEDICATION

To the Holy Spirit — for all You continue to show me, for the quiet corrections I do not always recognize at first, and for faithfully helping me remain in the seam when the currents of life try to pull me somewhere else.

To Jesus — for being the Living Water that does not leave us circling in stagnant places.

To the men of God I was fishing with — walking beside you has changed my life. What we shared on that river was more than a trip. It was fellowship. Brotherhood. Iron sharpening iron. Laughter that came from a good and honest place. And God using the current to teach me long after we came home.

To my wife, Marty — for always supporting me on these adventures, for understanding the way God speaks to me through moments, roads, rivers, cameras, and creation, and for standing beside me as I keep learning how to follow His flow.

SCRIPTURE

“I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.” — Galatians 5:16 (NKJV)

“My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.” — John 10:27 (NKJV)

THE HOOK

Not every current is the flow of God.

Some carry you forward.

Some pull you sideways.

Some look harmless at first —

until you realize you have been circling the same water for years.

THE STORY

February 2019. The Umpqua River, Oregon.

Steelhead fishing with dear friends.

Cold air. Moving water. Lines in the river from dawn to dusk.

I had a camera in my hand more than I had a rod.

That was not unusual for me.

The guys were catching fish.

I was catching moments.

And somewhere in the middle of that river, God started showing me something I could feel before I could name.

I was sitting near the bow.

The boat was pointed forward.

The river was alive.

Everything was moving.

But the men who knew that river were not dropping lines anywhere.

They were looking for something specific.

The seam.

The place where two currents meet.

The place where the flow changes.

The place where the fish travel beneath the surface.

To the untrained eye, it looks like just another stretch of river.

But to someone who knows what to look for, the seam matters.

It is where movement becomes meaningful.

It is where the harvest waits just below the surface.

And that stayed with me.

At the time, I thought I was just watching water.

Looking back, I believe the Holy Spirit was giving me language for something I would need later.

Because life has seams too.

THE MOMENT

A river does not move in one simple line.

There are currents. Pressure. Pulls.

Fast water. Slow water.

Places where the river moves clean.

Places where it swirls back on itself.

And then there is the eddy.

The eddy looks calm.

Almost safe.

But it is not really carrying you forward.

It circles.

It pulls.

It holds.

It creates motion without progress.

And I have known places like that in my own soul.

Places where I was moving, but not growing.

Busy, but not obedient.

Thinking, but not surrendered.

Reacting, but not being led.

The enemy does not always need to drag a man into obvious destruction.

Sometimes he only needs to move him into a circle.

The same fear.

The same offense.

The same wound.

The same old story.

And because there is movement, a man tells himself he is still in the river.

But he is not moving forward.

He is circling beside it.

THE TURN

That is why discernment matters.

Because not every current is the flow of God.

Some pull with urgency.

Some pull with emotion.

Some pull with appetite.

Some pull with offense.

Some pull with fear.

Some pull with the voice of the past.

And if we are not listening to the Holy Spirit, we will mistake movement for direction.

We will mistake pressure for calling.

We will mistake familiar water for safe water.

But the Holy Spirit does not lead us in circles.

He leads us into truth.

He leads us into obedience.

He leads us into living water.

Not always easy water.

Not always calm water.

But water with purpose.

Water with direction.

Water that keeps the soul alive.

And He does not always explain the whole river.

Sometimes He only shows the next current.

THE DRIFT

There is a voice that says:

Just stay here.

At least you know this water.

You can deal with that later.

You are not stuck. You are just waiting.

You are not drifting. You are just tired.

That voice sounds reasonable.

It isn’t.

Reason listens for wisdom.

This voice negotiates with stagnation.

It tells a man motion is enough.

It tells him familiar water is safer than surrendered water.

But the longer a man stays in an eddy,

the easier it becomes to forget what forward feels like.

I have stood still in moving water and called it forward.

THE REFLECTION

The seam is not where life gets easy.

It is where God teaches us how to stay in His flow.

It is where competing currents reveal what is really pulling us.

It is where obedience has to become more than an idea.

Because the Christian life is not passive.

We do not just float.

We follow.

We listen.

We respond.

We adjust.

We surrender.

And sometimes we have to admit we are not in the flow of the Spirit at all.

We are in the eddy of our own reactions.

Old habits.

Resentment.

Control.

Comfort.

Whatever keeps us moving just enough to avoid admitting we are stuck.

That is a hard thing to see.

But it is grace when God shows it.

Because the Holy Spirit does not reveal stagnation to shame us.

He reveals it to lead us out.

There have been seasons in my life when I thought I was moving forward because I was busy.

I had responsibilities. Plans. Work. Ideas. Even good intentions.

But looking back, I can see stretches where I was not being carried by the Spirit.

I was being carried by momentum.

And momentum can look like calling

until God asks you to surrender the direction.

That is where the seam becomes sacred.

Because in the seam, you have to pay attention.

You have to watch the water.

You have to listen.

You have to know the difference between the current that carries life

and the current that pulls you away from it.

The Holy Spirit is not just comfort after the storm.

He is guidance in the current.

He is the One who says:

Not there. Here.

Not that voice. Mine.

Not that circle. This way.

Jesus did not promise stagnant water.

He spoke of rivers of living water flowing from the heart of the one who believes in Him.

That is what He invites us into.

Not familiar circles.

Not safe stagnation.

But a flow that comes from the inside out, sourced in Him.

The fish in that river were not traveling without purpose.

They were moving toward what they were created to do.

And maybe that is part of what stayed with me.

God has placed purpose in us too.

Not just survival.

Not just reaction.

Not just another lap around the same old pain.

Purpose.

Direction.

Calling.

A life in step with the Spirit.

A life that learns where the seam is.

A life that refuses to confuse stagnation with peace.

Because peace is not the absence of movement.

Peace is knowing Who is leading the movement.

The seam is not just a place in the river.

It is a place of discernment.

A place where a man learns the difference between being pushed by pressure and being led by the Spirit.

A place where he stops calling circles peace.

A place where he learns to follow the Living Water instead of drifting beside it.

The enemy does not need to pull you out of the river

if he can keep you circling beside it.

WALKAWAY LINE

Not every movement is progress.

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

Where in your life are you being carried by the Holy Spirit — and where have you mistaken familiar water for forward motion?

MY PRAYER

Heavenly Father,

Teach me to recognize the seam.

Not just in the river,

but in my own life.

Show me the places where two currents are pulling against each other.

Your Spirit and my flesh.

Truth and comfort.

Obedience and control.

Living water and stagnant circles.

Give me discernment to know the difference.

Where I have mistaken movement for progress,

wake me up.

Where I have called the eddy peace,

lead me out.

Where the enemy has tried to keep me circling the same wound, the same fear, the same habit, or the same old story,

break the pattern.

I do not want to be carried by impulse.

I do not want to be led by offense.

I do not want to drift beside the river and call it faith.

I want to walk in the Spirit.

I want to stay in Your flow.

I want to move where You are moving,

pause where You say pause,

and follow where You lead.

Keep my bow pointed toward You.

Keep my heart tender to Your voice.

And when the current gets strong,

remind me that I am not alone in the river.

You are with me.

You are leading me.

And I want to stay in Your flow.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.

ABOUT G~

G~ writes from lived experience — exploring identity, authority, and time through the lens of faith, trial, leadership, and surrender. His reflections are not meant to condemn or hype, but to steady. Rooted in covenant, forged through adversity, and anchored under the authority of Jesus Christ, his work invites readers to examine who governs their lives — and to live intentionally under truth.

If what you’ve read resonates with your journey, feel free to reach out.

G~

He didn’t know I was there. I walked back inside, found the camera, fitted the telescoping lens, and eased my way back out slowly — staying behind him just enough to hold the moment without disturbing it. He sat perfectly still in the grass. Not frantic. Not looking for a way out. Just present. Looking out across the street like he already knew exactly what he was doing.

Some seasons are not meant to be announced.

They are meant to be lived.

Built.

Prayed through.

Survived.

DEDICATION

To my wife Marty — for the countless conversations at tables, in cars, in quiet evenings, and through long seasons where we sat together and kept asking the same question: “Where are we headed?” Thank you for walking beside me with like mind, like spirit, and a shared desire to keep Jesus at the center of our marriage, our direction, and our future.

To my sister Jeffrey — for continuing to travel this adventure with us and allowing us to walk beside you in yours. Watching your growth, your resilience, your continued development, and your support through the years has been a blessing deeper than words can explain.

To Bakersfield — for becoming far more than a place on a map. For the kindness, warmth, faith, and community Marty and I found here after leaving behind nearly forty-five years in the Bay Area. For the people who still look each other in the eye… still wave… still ask how you’re doing and actually mean it.

To the Holy Spirit — who was nudging me long before I fully understood who He was. Thank You for guiding my steps even when I could not yet recognize Your voice.

SCRIPTURE

“But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place…” — Matthew 6:6 (NKJV)

THE HOOK

I walked outside one day and stopped.

There was a squirrel in the front yard — sitting perfectly still in the grass.

Not frantic.

Not darting.

Just sitting there, looking out across the street.

Focused.

Aware.

Like he already knew exactly what he was doing.

I watched him for a moment and then went back inside.

Found the camera.

Fitted the telescoping lens.

Eased back out through the front door slowly — staying wide and quiet enough to hold the moment without disturbing it.

Standing there behind that lens…

Something about that posture hit me.

He was not wasting movement.

He was reading the environment before taking the next step.

THE STORY

That image stayed with me longer than I expected.

Because honestly — moving to Bakersfield felt a lot like that.

After nearly forty-five years in the Bay Area, Marty and I stepped into a completely different world.

The Bay Area taught me many things.

It shaped part of my story.

But somewhere along the way… it also became emotionally cold.

Busy.

Concrete.

Disconnected.

You could ride an elevator with ten people and no one would say a word.

Everyone moving.

Everyone guarded.

Everyone somewhere else mentally.

Then we came to Bakersfield.

And almost immediately… something felt different.

Not perfect.

Different.

Alive.

We began knowing our neighbors.

Not waving-across-the-driveway knowing.

Real knowing.

People coming to gatherings.

Stopping to talk.

Checking in.

Laughing together.

Doing life together on a near daily basis.

And honestly — that hit me harder than I expected.

Because back in San Jose, we lived in a small cul-de-sac for years.

And out of the entire neighborhood… we barely really knew one neighbor.

That realization stayed with me.

Bakersfield was a new experience.

It started as simple as the grocery store.

Cashiers would remember conversations from the week before.

Remember your name.

Ask how things turned out.

Simple things.

Human things.

Things that used to feel normal in this country.

Strangers would look you in the eye.

The man walking down the street would say, “How you doing?”

Not because he wanted something.

Because kindness still lived here.

And underneath all of it… there was something else.

Faith.

Community.

People who openly loved Jesus.

Not perfectly.

But sincerely.

You don’t always realize your soul has adapted to isolation until someone sincerely asks how you’re doing.

That realization stayed with me longer than I expected.

There was a time in my life when I thought growth needed witnesses.

Proof.

Momentum.

Recognition.

I thought if something important was happening… people needed to know about it.

But life has a way of humbling that mindset.

THE MOMENT

Seeds do not break open in public.

Roots do not grow in front of crowds.

Even Jesus withdrew.

Into wilderness.

Into solitude.

Into prayer.

The world celebrates visibility.

But heaven often develops people in hidden places first.

And if we are not careful…

we can confuse attention with transformation.

One feeds the ego.

The other changes the soul.

Some soil can hold you…

and still stop feeding you.

THE TURN

I have learned something difficult over time.

Some people only understand finished fruit.

They do not understand roots.

The pruning.

The breaking.

The rebuilding.

The silence.

And honestly…

some things lose strength the moment they are constantly announced.

Because talking about becoming something…

and quietly becoming it…

are not the same thing.

There is a kind of discipline that grows stronger in private.

A kind of faith that matures away from crowds.

A kind of identity that settles when nobody is clapping.

THE DRIFT

“There’s nothing wrong with letting everyone know…”

“People should see your progress…”

“You need to keep yourself visible…”

That voice sounds productive.

It isn’t always.

Sometimes it is just the hunger for validation wearing the mask of connection.

I know.

Because I stayed in soil that had stopped feeding me.

For years.

THE REFLECTION

The older I get…

the more I realize that God is rarely in a hurry.

He grows oak trees slower than weeds.

He builds foundations before platforms.

And He often removes noise before revealing direction.

Some of the strongest people you will ever meet…

will not be loud.

They will be grounded.

Steady.

Difficult to shake.

Because they were formed somewhere deeper than public approval.

There is nothing wrong with sharing life.

But there is something powerful about protecting what is still becoming.

Jesus said to pray in secret.

Because secret places change people.

And sometimes the most powerful thing a person can do…

is disappear long enough for God to rebuild them properly.

Looking back…

that squirrel understood something I was still learning.

Provision matters.

But environment does too.

He sat still long enough to discern where life was actually coming from.

And maybe that is part of wisdom.

Not simply moving.

But knowing where your soul can truly grow.

WALKAWAY LINE

Private growth often produces the strongest fruit.

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

Are you spending more energy announcing who you want to become… or quietly becoming it?

MY PRAYER

Heavenly Father,

Teach me how to grow without needing attention.

Help me resist the urge to broadcast every unfinished piece of my life.

Strengthen me in quiet places.

Build roots deeper than recognition.

Where pride still seeks applause… humble me.

Where fear still seeks approval… steady me.

And where You are rebuilding something inside me…

help me trust the process enough not to rush it into the light too soon.

Teach me how to become strong in secret.

Not for my glory.

But for Yours.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.

ABOUT G~

G~ writes from lived experience — exploring identity, authority, and time through the lens of faith, trial, leadership, and surrender. His reflections are not meant to condemn or hype, but to steady. Rooted in covenant, forged through adversity, and anchored under the authority of Jesus Christ, his work invites readers to examine who governs their lives — and to live intentionally under truth.

If what you’ve read resonates with your journey, feel free to reach out.

G~

This sphere sits in my own backyard. Nothing remarkable about it. Just glass.

One evening I looked through it. The entire scene bent around a single focal point.

The Cross.

And the world rearranged itself around what was already standing there.

Most of us don’t see what is leading us.

The world is quick to praise it.

And by the time we finally recognize it —

We have already been following it for years.

DEDICATION

To the Holy Spirit — for showing me the way and showing me the light. And most of all, for unhooking the leash and giving me the ability to recognize who I am actually leashed to — my Heavenly Father. His love. His grace. His mercy.

To my sister — who always inspires me with her stories of adventure. The dogs. The leashes. This Spark was birthed in those conversations, and her input is woven into the heart of it.

To my wife — who always supports me, loves me, and encourages me. Who once sat me down and said, “Honey, you need to keep writing.” And so I’m writing. And writing. And writing. Thank you.

To my readers — who continue to encourage me and be inspired. I hope your lives receive something fresh from these pages. A new perspective. A new thought. Something worth carrying.

SCRIPTURE

“Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage.” — Galatians 5:1 (NKJV)

“For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.” — Romans 8:14 (NKJV)

“Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” — Matthew 11:28 (NKJV)

THE HOOK

The strongest leash in my life was the one nobody could see.

Including me.

From the outside, it looked like discipline.

From the inside, it never let me rest.

THE STORY

There was a time in my life when I believed strength meant outperforming weakness.

Not just weakness at work.

Weakness in identity.

Weakness in where I came from.

I grew up around instability and survival systems that quietly shape people long before they recognize it. I watched patterns move through generations. Some loud. Some subtle. And somewhere inside me, I made a decision very early —

I would not become what I came from.

My father passed down a lot of things I eventually had to leave behind. But one thing he gave me — and gave me cleanly — was discipline.

He knew how to work.

I watched him sleep on a couch beside an alarm clock, waking through the night to rotate parts inside chemical tanks so jobs would keep moving. The discipline was real. The rest of what surrounded it… I could not carry forward.

So I pushed hard the other way.

Harder than most people probably realized.

When my father had to walk away from the business, I stepped into a world I was nowhere near prepared for. Young. Inexperienced. Carrying something much larger than myself. Liability. Responsibility. Pressure. Employees. Decisions and consequences I did not yet fully understand.

And I knew immediately — if I was going to survive this, I had to earn respect.

So I did what came naturally.

I outperformed.

I learned every process. Every system. Every moving part. I worked beside the employees. I mastered what they mastered. Then I pushed myself harder.

Eventually, the respect came.

So did the leash.

At the time, I did not recognize it. Because the world rewards people like that. Discipline gets praised. Achievement gets rewarded. Reliability gets admired.

Nobody pulls a high performer aside and says —

Be careful. This might quietly become your identity.

So the leash kept tightening.

Not just in business.

Everywhere.

The gym. Softball. Bowling. Hunting. Boating. Photography. Projects. Goals.

Whatever I touched — I had to master. And once I mastered it, I moved on to the next.

At the time, I thought I was building excellence.

Looking back, I was outrunning inadequacy.

I was not tethered to the activities.

I was tethered to what was driving them.

And what drove me was deeper than ambition.

It was survival.

If I could outperform the room, I felt safe. If I could become exceptional enough, maybe nobody would ever see the frightened parts underneath.

Then life added weight.

Marriage. Children. Responsibility. Grief I did not have language for. Forty-five employees. Managers depending on decisions. Payroll. Liability.

There was no pause button.

No room to collapse.

Failure was not digestible to me.

Not disappointing.

Not inconvenient.

Annihilating.

So I pushed harder.

And for a long time — externally — it worked.

But somewhere along the way, the realization arrived.

The leash was not the business.

Not the responsibilities.

Not the hobbies.

Not the discipline.

The leash was the fear underneath all of it.

The need to prove.

The need to survive.

The need to become untouchable.

The need to outrun where I came from.

THE MOMENT

And the most disorienting part of an invisible leash is this —

The world applauds it.

It does not warn you.

It celebrates you.

It hands you trophies for the very thing tightening around your chest.

And the people praising you have no idea what is actually holding you upright.

Neither do you.

The leash I could not see was the one leading me.

And the world applauded it the whole way.

THE TURN

Years later, I met Jesus.

But the real shift did not come from believing in Him.

It came from a complete heart exchange with Him.

I had a saying I lived by for decades —

Ninety-nine percent of something is one hundred percent of nothing.

When I finally surrendered my life to Christ, I knew immediately this could not be partial.

I could not give Jesus occasional authority.

Because partial surrender still leaves something else holding the leash.

So the exchange became complete.

Not overnight perfection.

Alignment.

Abiding.

Daily pursuit. Daily surrender. Daily recalibration.

And something inside me changed.

The leash did not disappear. But it stopped leading me.

That distinction matters.

Because there are things we may never fully be rid of this side of heaven. Old instincts. Old fears. Old reactions. Old survival systems.

But God does not leave us tool-less.

He gives awareness.

Discernment.

Wisdom.

A toolbox.

And over time, you stop walking into every room emotionally unprepared, reaching for performance, control, or fear.

You pause long enough to reach for the right tools.

The old leash still tugs sometimes. Writing. Projects. Goals. The instinct to master.

But now I recognize it.

And recognition changes everything.

There is an undercurrent inside me now that steadies me before emotion takes over.

Not perfectly.

Consistently.

A muscle built through abiding.

I can sit in rooms where emotions rise all around me and feel peace underneath it.

Not because I am stronger.

Because I am aligned.

And when things become imperfect, I know I have a God who is still perfect.

THE DRIFT

Push harder.

Stay disciplined.

Outwork what you feel.

Outperform the weakness.

Discipline solves what feeling cannot.

The performance is the proof.

I know. Because I followed a leash I could not see. For most of my life.

THE REFLECTION

Looking back, I understand something I could not see then.

My life was never truly transformed by achievement.

Achievement only temporarily silenced the fear.

Peace came later.

Peace came through surrender.

Through realizing I no longer needed performance to tell me who I was.

And along the way, I came to recognize something else.

Not every leash we carry is fully our own.

Some are inherited. Through atmosphere. Through grief. Through fear. Through survival systems passed quietly down.

And the beautiful part of it is this — what I found is reachable for anyone.

Not because my way is the great way.

Because surrender changes what is leading you.

I am not trying to become someone people follow.

I am trying to live in a way that reflects the One I follow.

That carries enormous responsibility.

Because how we live affects people. Our words. Our reactions. Our alignment.

The older I get, the more I believe the greatest responsibility we carry is not success.

It is the care of others.

Kindness.

Presence.

Stewardship.

Those are the things that leave the deepest marks.

I spent enough years fighting for first place.

Now —

I fight for second.

WALKAWAY LINE

Just because something drives you… doesn’t mean it should lead you.

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

What invisible leash may still be quietly shaping your decisions, your reactions, your identity, or your sense of worth?

MY PRAYER

Heavenly Father,

Thank You for loving us enough to reveal the things quietly leading us.

The fears we learned to survive through.

The pressures we learned to perform through.

The wounds we learned to hide behind.

Teach us how to recognize what is pulling at us before we surrender authority to it.

Help us exchange striving for surrender. Performance for peace. Fear for alignment.

Teach us to abide closely enough to hear Your voice above the noise of the world.

And let the lives we live leave behind kindness, wisdom, care, and truth for others.

In Jesus’ name,

Amen.

ABOUT G~

G~ writes from lived experience — exploring identity, authority, and time through the lens of faith, trial, leadership, and surrender. His reflections are not meant to condemn or hype, but to steady. Rooted in covenant, forged through adversity, and anchored under the authority of Jesus Christ, his work invites readers to examine who governs their lives — and to live intentionally under truth.

If what you’ve read resonates with your journey, feel free to reach out.

G~

The corner lifts. Ace and Jack. Twenty-one. There was a season of my life I had learned to read what was in my hand without ever showing what was on my face. The skill was real. The cost took years longer to see.

Some games don’t destroy you because you lose.

Some destroy you because you get very good at winning them.

I have spent most of my life learning systems.

How to read them.

How to survive them.

How to stay ahead of them.

Long before I ever sat at a blackjack table…

I was already learning the game.

DEDICATION

To my sister — for the role you played in my life, and for teaching me things no one else ever could have taught me.

To my wife, Marty — for walking through storms, trials, victories, and revelations beside me. Thank you for recognizing something in me I did not fully understand myself. A peculiar treasure of God, as you would say. Thank you for loving me through every season — and for helping lead our lives toward Jesus instead of away from Him.

To the reader — if something inside this story stirs reflection about your own walk, your own identity, or the games you may still be playing, I pray God reveals truth gently and clearly to your heart.

To life itself — the long road, the painful lessons, the unexpected adventures, and the difficult seasons that one day become the very things that taught us who we really were.

SCRIPTURE

“For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?” — Mark 8:36 (NKJV)

“O Lord, You have searched me and known me.” — Psalm 139:1 (NKJV)

THE HOOK

I didn’t become “the outlaw” because I wanted attention.

I became him because I never wanted to feel exposed again.

THE STORY

When I was young, I learned early that vulnerability came with a cost.

If you were different…

You got noticed.

If you were weak…

You got preyed upon.

If you were emotionally exposed…

Someone eventually used it against you.

So I adapted.

Sports.

Fighting.

Competition.

Winning.

Control.

I became obsessed with learning systems.

How people moved.

How pressure worked.

How environments shifted.

How to stay ahead emotionally while everyone else reacted.

At some point, survival stopped being behavior…

and became identity.

People started calling me “the outlaw.”

At the time, I wore it like armor.

Confident.

Strong.

Capable.

Untouchable.

But underneath all of it…

I was just building a man nobody could wound anymore.

THE MOMENT

What most people never understood was this:

I was never reckless.

I was disciplined.

Even at the blackjack table.

Especially there.

I didn’t drink away money.

I didn’t spiral emotionally.

I didn’t lose control.

I studied.

Blackjack became another system to solve.

Pattern recognition.

Emotional discipline.

Reading the room.

Knowing when to press.

Knowing when to walk.

And eventually…

I became very good at it.

Too good.

One vacation especially stays with me.

Marty and I were on a cruise ship years ago.

The first night I walked through the casino, I noticed they were running two-deck hands.

The moment I saw it…

I knew I could take the table apart.

So night after night…

quietly…

carefully…

under the radar…

I did exactly that.

I counted cards.

Stayed composed.

Stayed unnoticed.

Or at least I tried to.

Each evening I walked away with more money than the night before.

Each afternoon Marty and I would head down to the pool.

At first it was just casual conversation.

A few questions.

“How did you do that?”

“How are you walking away ahead every night?”

Most people leave their money at the table.

That’s the part they couldn’t understand.

But day after day…

The circle around us kept growing.

Ten people.

Then twenty.

Then thirty or forty gathered around the pool wanting to hear about the tables, the systems, the discipline, the edge.

People are fascinated by someone who seems to understand a game they keep losing.

I remember Marty and I going back to the room one afternoon and realizing something had shifted.

“Oh boy,” she said,

“we better get a handle on this.”

And she was right.

Because that old edge in me…

the outlaw…

the part that learned how to survive by staying ahead of systems and people…

was becoming visible again.

But something else was happening too.

Even while winning…

I was already beginning to leave the table internally.

Because deep down…

I could already see the cliff hidden behind the thrill.

I had watched enough people lose themselves chasing the rush.

Lose marriages.

Lose money.

Lose identity.

Lose peace.

Stay at the table long enough

and the game starts playing you.

THE TURN

So while I could have kept going…

I walked away.

Not because I lacked skill.

Because I finally understood the danger of becoming mastered by the very thing I thought I controlled.

And the truth is…

no one really knew me back then.

Not fully.

Not my parents.

Not my friends.

Not even the people closest to me.

I was emotionally unavailable by design.

Like a ninja.

Always studying the room.

Always guarded.

Always ahead of the threat.

I confused isolation with strength.

I confused being unreadable with power.

But eventually…

God began revealing something deeper.

I wasn’t free.

I was protected.

There’s a difference.

THE DRIFT

There is a voice that teaches men to build armor so thick they eventually disappear inside it.

Stay sharp.

Stay ahead.

Stay untouchable.

Never let them see weakness.

Never need anyone.

Never lose control.

That voice sounds like wisdom.

It isn’t.

Wisdom builds character.

Fear builds fortresses.

And some men spend their entire lives confusing emotional isolation with strength.

I know. Because I wore that armor. For years.

THE REFLECTION

The real turning point in my life didn’t happen at a blackjack table.

It happened in my backyard.

At the cross.

After the surgeries.

After the health scares.

After the trials.

After enough life had pressed hard against me to expose what still remained underneath all the armor.

I sat there one day and began uncovering, discovering, and discarding the things I needed to lay at the feet of Jesus.

Control was one of them.

The outlaw was one of them.

The need to stay untouchable was one of them.

And slowly…

The games started losing their authority over me.

Not because they stopped being thrilling.

But because peace started becoming more valuable than power.

Today, winning looks very different.

Winning is waking up beside a wife who loves Jesus.

Winning is putting my feet on the ground every morning and thanking God for another day of life I was never guaranteed.

Winning is knowing my sister walks with Him too.

Winning is sitting beside people rooted deeply in faith instead of performance.

Winning is gratitude.

Winning is peace.

Winning is still being invited to sit beside God’s campfire after everything I’ve carried through this life.

And one day…

when this final game is over…

I pray I hear only this:

Well done.

Welcome home.

Game’s over.

WALKAWAY LINE

Some of the most dangerous games in life are the ones you become very good at winning.

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

What part of your identity was built to protect you — and what would happen if God no longer required you to hide behind it?

MY PRAYER

Heavenly Father,

Thank You for every difficult season that revealed what truly lived underneath my strength.

Thank You for the lessons hidden inside survival — the ones I could only understand years later.

Teach us the difference between wisdom and fear…

between protection and isolation…

between control and surrender.

Show us the places where we still hide behind identities built from pain instead of truth.

And remind us that real peace is not found in mastering every system around us…

But in finally becoming known by You without needing armor.

In Jesus’ name,

Amen.

ABOUT G~

G~ writes from lived experience — exploring identity, authority, and time through the lens of faith, trial, leadership, and surrender. His reflections are not meant to condemn or hype, but to steady. Rooted in covenant, forged through adversity, and anchored under the authority of Jesus Christ, his work invites readers to examine who governs their lives — and to live intentionally under truth.

If what you’ve read resonates with your journey, feel free to reach out.

G~

She opened her hand and showed me two coins. Small. Bronze. Worn smooth at the edges the way things get when they’ve lived in a pocket for years. Armor of God coins — carried so long their shape had pressed itself into the denim of my Levi’s.

I thought I knew the trail. I had been there before. But the seasons had turned. And the field had grown over everything I remembered.

DEDICATION

For my mother — who brought me into this world and delivered me through the first labor of it. And for the trials that came after — which taught me more than I could thank them for at the time.

For the friend who first walked into the berry patch beside me — and trusted me to get us out, even after I was the one who led him in.

For the ones who walked alongside me — who cared when they could have moved on, who inspired me once in a while in ways they may never know.

For Marty — who sees what I walk past. Who reached into my pockets that day, held out two coins, and called me into the room to tell me there is nothing more precious to her than being married to a man who armors up every morning and carries it with him wherever he goes. She wanted me to know I was loved. Honored.

For the readers — those still inside the thorns, clearing what needs to be cleared. And those who have walked out of the field, and no longer stand under the pressure of it.

SCRIPTURE

“My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.” — James 1:2–4 (NKJV)

“Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.” — Ephesians 6:11 (NKJV)

“When they had twisted a crown of thorns, they put it on His head…” — Matthew 27:29 (NKJV)

THE HOOK

I almost didn’t make it into the world.

Born early. Underweight. The umbilical cord wrapped around my neck before I drew my first breath.

They placed me in an incubator just to keep me here.

I think about that sometimes.

Not with bitterness.

With recognition.

The labor started early for me. Before I had a name for it.

THE STORY

When I was young, we had a cabin in Boulder Creek.

When friends came to visit, we chased everything the hills had — the creek, the redwoods, the trails that wandered far past where anyone told us to stop.

One afternoon I decided to lead a group of us through a berry patch trail I had walked before. I knew it. I had been there.

But the seasons had turned.

The trail was gone.

The vines had taken everything over — chest high, then taller — crossing and tangling until no path could be traced, no ground could be trusted.

At first it felt like adventure. We laughed. Ate berries. Pushed forward.

Then the field changed.

One bush. Then another.

Then we lost the trail completely.

Before we understood what had happened, we were trapped deep inside a massive field of thorn-covered vines. No edge visible. No tools. No way back that made any sense.

The more we forced ourselves through it, the more the thorns tore at us.

Our skin. Our Levi’s. Our arms. Our faces.

By the time we found the other side, we looked like we’d been through a paper shredder.

One of my friends looked at me — scratched, bleeding, shredded — and said:

“What did you get us into?”

THE MOMENT

Years passed.

Life started filling in the answer.

Marriage young. Children young. Financial pressure that moved in and didn’t leave. Fear that found the walls of the house and made itself at home.

Performance with no ceiling.

Survival that felt like a full-time job with no days off.

I had been taught the rules clearly:

Be tough. Provide. Endure. Work hard. Stay silent until spoken to. Defend your honor.

I did all of it.

And the thorns still came.

The harder I pushed through, the more I bled.

It wasn’t until I was forty that I visited the idea of Jesus seriously. And then spent nearly a decade doing almost nothing with it.

Then something began to shift beneath me. Not sudden. A slow excavation.

I found myself standing at the cross in my backyard.

Not metaphorically.

There was a physical cross there. And I stood at it.

And I laid everything down.

My sin. My failures. My bitterness. The wounds from childhood I had pressed into corners of myself where I thought no one could see them. The anger. The need to prove something to people who were no longer even in this world.

All of it.

I asked God to excavate whatever was left.

Something lifted.

The field didn’t end because the thorns stopped.

The field ended because I finally stopped believing I had to carry them.

THE TURN

I understand the Armor of God differently now than I did the first time I read Ephesians 6.

Then I read it like a text.

Now I wear it like gear.

Every morning — the belt tight, the breastplate in place, the shoes on, the shield up, the helmet seated, the sword in hand.

Not partially. All of it.

You cannot wear half the armor and expect full protection. That is not faith. That is decoration.

And the sword — I learned this the hard way — must first penetrate your own heart before it can help anyone else.

Marty does laundry the way she does everything. Thoroughly. No corner missed.

She called me into the room one afternoon and held out her hand.

Two coins.

“You never cease to amaze me. I find these everywhere. Your pockets. Your jackets. Your drawers. And I’ve watched you give them to men for years.”

She wasn’t correcting me. She was telling me what she had witnessed.

That the armor had become so embedded in what I carry that it leaves impressions even when I don’t notice.

The coin pressed its face into the watch pocket of my Levi’s. Year after year.

What you carry long enough eventually leaves its mark.

THE DRIFT

There is a voice that tells you the field is what makes a man.

That the bleeding is the point.

That if you survive it alone, you’ll come out the other side forged.

That real men find their own way out.

I believed that voice for a long time.

Every time I pushed harder through the thorns alone, I just bled more. And told myself the bleeding was proof I was doing it right.

The field doesn’t care how tough you are.

It just keeps growing.

THE REFLECTION

The hardest thorn God ever removed from me was bitterness.

Not the obvious wounds. The ones I had buried so deep I had forgotten they were still bleeding.

Forgiving people who hurt me as a child — people who were no longer even in this world — was the thorn that had worked its way in furthest.

When God finally pulled it free, peace entered places in me I didn’t know existed.

Not relief. Peace.

That is a different thing.

There is a night at Dolphin Bay I have carried for years.

We sat down to dinner and our waiter approached the table. Something inside him registered immediately. Not anxiety. Darkness. The kind that sits low and quiet and isn’t looking for conversation.

I asked Marty to head back to the room after dinner.

When his shift ended, he sat down.

We talked for hours.

The next afternoon, we were passing the same restaurant when he spotted us from across the lawn.

He dropped what he was doing and ran toward us.

Then picked me up and wept.

We didn’t understand the full weight of it until later.

He had planned to go home that night and end his life.

But something about being seen — truly seen — changed what he did next.

Today he is married. Has children. Became a professional golfer.

That story is his to tell.

I only know what it taught me:

The armor is not only for surviving your own thorn patch.

Sometimes it prepares you to walk into someone else’s.

You cannot do that for another man if you are still bleeding through your own.

WALKAWAY LINE

When I finally walked out of the field — I realized the thorns had already been carried for me.

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

What thorn have you been forcing yourself through alone — one that was never meant for you to carry?

MY PRAYER

Heavenly Father,

You know every thorn patch we have wandered into — some by ignorance, some by pride, some by trusting a trail that had long since grown over.

You know the ones that are still bleeding.

Thank You for not leaving us inside them.

Thank You for the Cross — where the thorns already went before we ever arrived.

Help us to stop white-knuckling through what we were never meant to carry alone. To lay it down. To let You excavate whatever is left underneath.

And teach us to armor up — not to prove our strength, but to protect what You are building inside us. So that when You call us to walk into someone else’s field, we are ready for that too.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.

ABOUT G~

G~ writes from lived experience — exploring identity, authority, and time through the lens of faith, trial, leadership, and surrender. His reflections are not meant to condemn or hype, but to steady. Rooted in covenant, forged through adversity, and anchored under the authority of Jesus Christ, his work invites readers to examine who governs their lives — and to live intentionally under truth.

If what you’ve read resonates with your journey, feel free to reach out.

G~

An island of photographs. Some I return to often. Some I haven’t opened in years. All of them still here — because for most of my life, keeping was easier than choosing.

A photo captures.

A photograph reveals.

And what you keep — eventually keeps you.

DEDICATION

To the Holy Spirit — for being present in my photographs long before I knew how to see You. For walking beside me when You were invisible to my heart… and for now giving me a clearer view of the photograph my life has become.

To my wife, Marty — who continues to be one of my greatest joys. Some of the best photographs I’ve ever taken are the ones that captured our life… our journey… together.

To the photographs I’ve finally released — and to the ones I’m still learning to. You showed me that keeping isn’t always loving, and letting go isn’t always loss.

To the reader — who holds their own library of moments. As you scroll through what you’ve kept… may you begin to see differently. What still serves you. What no longer does. And what matters most.

SCRIPTURE

“But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.” — 2 Corinthians 3:18 (NKJV)

THE HOOK

I have been taking real photos since 1976.

Before that, I was the one carrying a Polaroid Instamatic — capturing moments before I even understood what they meant.

That year my parents bought me my first real camera.

A Canon AE-1.

And that was it.

I thought I was chasing the perfect photograph —

the one I would take… and never need to take another.

It doesn’t work like that.

THE STORY

Years turned into decades.

Cameras changed. Technology changed.

But one thing didn’t —

The photos kept stacking.

Thousands. Tens of thousands. More than I could keep track of.

Entire libraries filled with moments I didn’t want to lose.

At one point, I needed tens of terabytes just to hold it all.

And somewhere along the way, something shifted.

The more photos I had —

The harder it became to find the one that actually mattered.

You ever try to show someone a picture?

“Hey… I want to show you this.”

And then it starts —

Swipe.

Swipe.

Swipe.

You know it’s in there. You just can’t find it.

They’re standing there waiting. Watching you scroll past image after image that means nothing to them.

Eventually you just say —

“I’ll send it to you later.”

Because you know what it’s going to take to find it.

Time.

Effort.

Focus.

THE MOMENT

But somewhere along the way…

The photo stopped being just a photo.

It became a photograph.

The kind that doesn’t just capture a moment —

It carries the heart of it.

The kind you don’t forget.

Not because it’s perfect.

Because it tells the truth.

There are images like that in all of our lives.

Moments where you can look back and see exactly who you were then —

and who you were becoming.

Not always better. Not always clearer. But different.

Over time, something shifts.

The resolution improves.

The image sharpens.

Not because the camera got better —

but because the man did.

Some photographs don’t need a caption.

No explanation. No backstory.

You can feel it the moment you see it.

The image tells the whole story.

Life works the same way.

We store everything.

Moments. People. Experiences.

Some meaningful. Some painful. Some long past their time.

I’ve got photos in my library of people who aren’t here anymore.

Friends. Moments. Animals I loved.

Every time I see them, something comes back.

Not always bad. But not always alive either.

Sometimes it doesn’t feel like remembering —

It feels like resurrecting something that was never meant to stay.

And yet —

I don’t delete them.

I can’t even fully explain why.

It’s not logic.

It’s attachment.

And that’s when it hit me —

I wasn’t just managing a photo library.

I was managing my life the same way.

Holding onto things I didn’t need.

Scrolling past things that didn’t matter.

And when it came time to find something real —

I didn’t always know where to look.

Jesus wasn’t even in my library.

Now He’s the first image I see.

THE TURN

I wasn’t looking for Him then.

Didn’t think about Him.

Didn’t search for Him.

He wasn’t buried in there somewhere —

He just wasn’t there.

Now He’s the last one I carry.

Everything I look at.

Everything I remember.

Everything I try to understand —

It all runs through Him.

I used to think the goal was to capture the perfect image.

Now I know —

It doesn’t take thousands of photos to reveal a man.

Just one that tells the truth.

That image changes over time.

It ages. It carries a few more lines. A little more wear.

But something else happens —

it gets clearer. More honest. More aligned.

God doesn’t just preserve the image.

He refines it.

THE DRIFT

You can spend a lifetime collecting moments —

and still not know what your life actually points to.

Because it’s not about how much you’ve stored.

It’s about what shows up first when you go looking.

Most men aren’t lost.

They’re buried.

Under too many attachments. Too many memories. Too many things they never released.

And when it matters most —

They’re still scrolling.

There is a voice that says —

“Keep it… you might need it.”

“Don’t let that go… it still matters.”

“Hold onto it… it’s part of you.”

That voice sounds careful.

It isn’t.

It’s clutter.

Because eventually —

What you refuse to release becomes what you can’t see past.

I held a full library and an empty center. For many years.

THE REFLECTION

Everything changed for me when I didn’t need to search anymore.

Not because I had fewer memories —

But because I finally had a center.

Now when I look back —

I don’t just see moments.

I see where I was without Him.

And I see where I am with Him.

And the difference —

is unmistakable.

WALKAWAY LINE

You don’t need a full library to reveal your life — just one honest image that makes it obvious who you belong to.

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

When someone scrolls through the library of your life… what shows up first?

MY PRAYER

Heavenly Father,

Show me what I’ve been holding onto that no longer belongs.

The images I revisit. The attachments I’ve kept. The things that still shape me in ways I don’t always see.

Give me the courage to release what clutters my view.

Give me the clarity to recognize what truly matters.

Let my life not be defined by what I’ve stored —

but by what You are forming.

Sharpen the image.

Refine the man.

And make it unmistakable who I belong to.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.

ABOUT G~

G~ writes from lived experience — exploring identity, authority, and time through the lens of faith, trial, leadership, and surrender. His reflections are not meant to condemn or hype, but to steady. Rooted in covenant, forged through adversity, and anchored under the authority of Jesus Christ, his work invites readers to examine who governs their lives — and to live intentionally under truth.

If what you’ve read resonates with your journey, feel free to reach out.

G~