BLEED-OVER
Every signal carries further than we think.
The Tram D201A. Mine, once. I let her go in a garage sale — and I remember the day. A quiet sadness in it, the kind that shows up when you know you’re closing a real chapter. She wasn’t just equipment. She was a whole season of my life walking out the door in someone else’s hands. I bought her to reach further. It took me fifty years to learn why reach was never the point.
Some men chase frequencies their whole lives.
Some get tuned instead.
I spent years building antennas.
Heaven was building me.
DEDICATION
To mistakes — for teaching me what pride never could.
To my friend — who got in trouble with me, trusted me, and let me learn what leadership costs.
To my mother — whose calm frequency steadied her son in a moment of recklessness.
To the Holy Spirit — who was tuned to me long before I knew how to tune to Him.
SCRIPTURE
“Keep your heart with all diligence, For out of it spring the issues of life.” — Proverbs 4:23 (NKJV)
“And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice.” — 1 Kings 19:12 (NKJV)
“Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy — meditate on these things.” — Philippians 4:8 (NKJV)
THE HOOK
Yard House. Wednesday evening.
Marty and I had just sat down.
Screens on every wall. Basketball on one. Baseball on another. An argument on a third.
Music overhead. Loud enough to compete.
Phones everywhere. Couples across from each other, eyes down, thumbs moving.
Nobody was transmitting on the same frequency.
I looked across the table at Marty.
Still. Present. Waiting on her menu like waiting was a form of prayer.
She was the only clean signal in the room. And somehow, we were both on the same frequency.
And that’s when the word came back.
Bleed-over.
Hadn’t thought it in fifty years.
THE STORY
The Tram D201A cost me real money.
A working man’s month. Not a kid’s allowance.
But I’d wanted her a long time. And when I finally sat her on the bench in the garage, I felt the satisfaction of a man holding mastery before he’s earned it.
I was young. Santa Clara County.
Everything about electronics fascinated me — radios, systems, signal power, the way sound could travel through air and land in another man’s living room twenty miles away.
Something in me wanted to push every system I touched one step past where it was designed to go.
My friend was quieter.
Thoughtful. The kind who’d question a plan once — not twice — and then go along with it because we were friends and he trusted I’d thought it through.
I hadn’t thought it through.
Not really.
I’d thought about it the way a young man thinks — the result, not the path. The reach, not the cost.
We built a field of antennas behind the property.
Scrap flareline pipe. Copper wire strung between the posts across an acre. Batteries wired into an illegal linear amplifier I’d modified past any reasonable limit.
We powered it up.
For a few minutes, we were gods.
Then the county lit up.
Fire dispatch bled into police.
Police bled into ham.
Ham bled into CB.
CB bled into private frequencies, aviation bands, commercial radio.
Somewhere over Santa Clara, a pilot was trying to talk to a tower and getting my amplifier instead.
We didn’t know that yet.
All we knew was our own signal, strong and clean, punching through to whoever was listening.
The authorities knew more than we did.
They triangulated us inside an hour.
And then the horses came through the wire.
I don’t remember who owned them.
I remember the sound.
I remember running toward the field and finding what copper wire does to an animal’s legs when it’s stretched at chest height and charged.
No deaths.
But injuries you don’t forget.
Injuries that weren’t theirs to pay for.
My friend didn’t say much that night.
Neither did I.
I took the blame. Not because I had to — because I knew.
I was the one who’d convinced him. I was the tone-setter. The voice. The frequency he’d tuned his own decisions to.
He’d doubted the plan.
I’d drowned out the doubt with volume.
I was leading before I was wise enough to lead.
My mother met me at the door.
She didn’t yell. She didn’t cry.
She didn’t break me down. She didn’t excuse me.
She defended me to the people who needed to hear a mother defend her son — and then, in the quiet after, she corrected me with a calm I’ve been trying to carry ever since.
She didn’t raise her voice once.
She didn’t have to.
Her frequency was already higher than mine.
Then came the cost.
The consequences that would be etched into my soul forever.
I wanted reach.
God wanted surrender.
THE MOMENT
I’ve thought about those horses for fifty years.
Not every day.
Not every year.
But they come back — usually when I’m about to open my mouth about something I haven’t thought all the way through. Or when I’m about to raise the volume on a room that’s already loud.
They come back because they were innocent.
They didn’t ask for my amplifier.
They didn’t tune into my signal.
They were just animals in a field, living on their own frequency, and my reach bled into their lives and left a wound.
That’s what bleed-over is.
Not the noise you mean to make.
The noise that spills into people who never asked to receive it.
Some signals speak.
Others wound.
I thought I was broadcasting.
Heaven was triangulating me.
THE TURN
Two different men.
The young man who flipped that switch in the garage.
The older man sitting at Yard House decades later.
The road between them is longer than any antenna field I ever strung.
The young man wanted to reach past the county line.
He wanted to dominate.
He wanted his voice to carry.
He wanted to be heard — because somewhere underneath it, he wasn’t sure he mattered unless he was loud.
The older man sits across a table from his wife.
Watching a room full of people transmit into each other without knowing what they’re spilling.
Wanting something different entirely.
I don’t want reach anymore. I want clarity.
I don’t want volume. I want presence.
I don’t want to overpower channels. I want to guard atmospheres.
I once chased power.
Now I protect peace.
Marty has done that for thirty-one years.
Guarded atmospheres.
Her peace wasn’t handed to her. She earned it. Through her own years, her own fires, her own quiet decisions to stay tuned when everything around her was static.
Her frequency is wide-band peace.
It doesn’t fight for airspace. It settles into a room and lets the room settle with it.
I’ve watched her walk into chaos and calm a room without ever raising her voice.
That’s tuning.
That’s what I didn’t have a word for when I was building antenna fields.
THE DRIFT
The drift has a voice. Always has.
It tells you things that sound like wisdom, but aren’t.
Be louder. Be heard. If you don’t dominate the room, someone else will.
Turn up your signal. The strongest frequency wins.
Push past the limits. Limits are for people who don’t have your gifts.
The right amount of power is always a little more than you have.
If you’re not reaching, you’re not living.
I know.
Because I amplified it. For years.
THE REFLECTION
There’s a reason Elijah didn’t find God in the wind. Or the earthquake. Or the fire.
Those were the frequencies Elijah expected.
Big power. Big reach. Big signal.
The kind of voice a prophet on the run from a queen might want — loud enough to drown out the threat and confirm he hadn’t been abandoned.
But God wasn’t on those channels.
God was on the still small voice.
The smallest voice in the scripture.
The quietest frequency on the mountain.
And the one Elijah had to stop transmitting to hear.
I think about that passage more now than I did at twenty-five. More than I did at forty.
I think about how much of my life I spent trying to be heard on frequencies God wasn’t broadcasting on.
I think about how much bleed-over I’ve caused in rooms that didn’t deserve it.
Not horses in a field this time.
People. My people. The ones closest to the antenna.
Proverbs says to keep the heart with all diligence — because out of it spring the issues of life.
Every issue.
Every signal.
Every word that leaves your mouth is a broadcast of what’s already tuned inside you.
You cannot transmit peace from a heart set on dominance.
You cannot transmit grace from a heart set on winning.
You cannot carry the still small voice of God into a room when the inside of you is still running a linear amplifier at full power.
So the Lord does something merciful.
He tunes us.
Through mistakes. Through wives. Through mothers. Through horses we’ll remember for fifty years.
Through the Holy Spirit who was on our frequency long before we ever learned to find His.
Some men grow older.
Some men get tuned.
It took me sixty-seven years to tune what mattered most.
I thought I was chasing frequencies.
Heaven was trying to reach mine.
WALKAWAY LINE
The strongest signal in my life was never volume — it was peace.
SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT
What are you spilling into the people around you — without knowing you’re doing it?
MY PRAYER
Heavenly Father,
Thank You for tuning me when I didn’t know I needed tuning. Thank You for the mother You gave me, the wife You gave me, the friend who stood beside me in my foolishness, and the horses in a field who taught me what reach can cost. Thank You for every mistake You used to cut my volume down until I could finally hear the still small voice that had been calling me all along.
Lord, guard what I transmit. Keep my heart clean, because I know now that what’s inside always spills out. Give me the discipline of restraint, the discernment to know when silence is the strongest signal, and the humility to carry peace into rooms that are starving for it.
Tune me daily, Father. And when I drift off frequency, pull me back quickly — before the people I love get caught in the wire.
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 amazing spark! Thank you for those insights. You are a gifted writer, one who resonates with all people living the human experience.