WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE
Not every collision is meant to connect.
Pismo Beach.
Marty and I walking the shoreline… four Aussies moving in every direction like they own the place.
Camera in hand… just taking it in.
I looked away for a second…
then back…
And there it was.
Some collisions reveal connection.
Some reveal difference.
And some… reveal who you’ve been standing with all along.
DEDICATION
To the business that carried so many, for so many years… and to every person who poured themselves into it with honesty and heart. The ones who showed up. The ones who did the work right. The ones who stood in it with integrity when it would have been easier not to.
To my wife Marty… who stood with me even in the seasons she didn’t fully understand. There were parts of the business she wasn’t close to — parts she couldn’t have known — and still, she endured. She persevered. She stood by my side knowing my intentions were good, and she supported me in every direction the road turned. On the hillside. In the shop. In the silence. In the storm. You never left my side. And this walk has been what it has been because you were in it with me.
To the Holy Spirit… for keeping me present. Keeping me locked in. Reminding me — every step of the way — that I was accountable to my actions if I was going to example Jesus in the middle of it.
To the reader… who may see something in this they already recognize. Or something they may one day have to walk through. Either way… may you walk it with Him.
SCRIPTURE
“So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath; for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God.” — James 1:19–20 (NKJV)
“Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it.” — Psalm 34:14 (NKJV)
“Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.” — Job 13:15 (NKJV)
THE HOOK
Conflict doesn’t always announce itself.
Sometimes it walks in the door wearing a familiar face.
Sometimes it shows up the day you’re already carrying more than you can hold.
And sometimes…
It’s been standing there for years…
waiting for the right moment to finally show its hand.
THE STORY
For years… I had been praying about how this would unfold.
I knew the day was coming.
I knew closing a business of that size — heavily regulated, hazardous materials, environmental compliance — would not be easy. I had walked with it in my prayers for a long time. Turning it over. Asking God what that day would look like. Wondering how it would all come to rest.
I never got a clear answer.
Just a quiet understanding that when the time came… He would be with me.
Then the time came.
May 12, 2021.
My manager of forty-eight years had just died.
Ten days later… I made the call.
No one was stepping forward to run the shop. I physically could not. And we were still in the muck of COVID — the world half-closed, the road ahead uncertain, the weight of every decision heavier than it should have been.
So I made the call.
We were closing.
The day I had prayed about for years…
had finally arrived.
And it came up out of the water like a beast.
I was supposed to be in surgery.
Not elective. Not optional. Paramount.
The pain had become its own daily presence — sharp, relentless, the kind that doesn’t let you forget it for a single hour.
Instead of the operating table…
I was standing in my office handing out severance checks to twenty-eight employees.
The surgery had to wait.
So did my body.
I asked God to help me tough through it. He did.
But the surgery was only one piece.
I was rolling up a sixty-three-year business that had supported generations of families.
Not a small thing. Not a clean thing. The trial of my life — beyond a doubt.
COVID was still everywhere.
The kind of business I had built meant I wasn’t just closing a door.
I had over 250 regulatory agencies to satisfy before I could legally walk away.
A lifetime to build. A long road to disassemble.
And it had to be done right. Legally. Ethically. And most of all… with care for the people who had poured their lives into that place alongside me.
Thank God I had Marty standing next to me.
She was a rock.
Between the two of us… we closed that business down first class.
It was during that shutdown that the rest surfaced.
My manager hadn’t just died.
He had been embezzling from me for years.
Forty-eight years of trust… ending in a discovery I never wanted to make.
And it didn’t end with him.
His two daughters worked for me too. They knew.
Other employees knew.
I was the last one to find out — when an employee with a conscience handed me a box of materials that uncovered the whole thing.
That box broke my heart.
Not just because of what he did…
but because of how many people around me had chosen to protect the lie.
We prayed together the day I handed out the checks.
People were crying. I was finding them jobs with other industry leaders. Signing HR documents. Writing checks. Holding it together for them when I could barely hold it together for myself.
In a body that was begging me to stop.
And in the middle of all of that…
His family showed up.
They came to tell me I should have been at the funeral.
They didn’t know I wasn’t even invited.
That was the worst part.
But even if I had been invited… I wouldn’t have gone.
Because I had finally seen what I’d been part of for forty-six years.
A relationship that had been sideways for a long time.
I just hadn’t let myself see it.
And then his nephew showed up.
A man from Chicago who had never once stepped foot in my shop.
He flew in to protect his nieces — the daughters who had worked for me for twelve years — from getting bamboozled.
He didn’t know I had already cut them gracious severance checks. Multiple vacation checks. A package anyone would be thrilled to receive.
They saw it. They knew.
They didn’t say thank you.
They left as fast as they could — because they knew the moment they overstepped, I could pull the whole thing back.
Twelve years of working for me…
and not one word.
The paradigm had flipped right in front of me.
The nephew with no business in the room was acting like the authority.
The daughters who had cashed my checks for twelve years had gone silent.
And I — the one who had built it, paid for it, and was now closing it with care — was being treated like the threat.
Little did I know…
I was about to embark on one of the biggest journeys of my life in the months ahead. Attorneys. Legal professionals. Regulatory agencies. The full weight of shutting down a major operation the right way.
Opening a business is hard.
Closing one is harder.
All of it set in motion by differences and perspectives that had been hidden internally for years…
now uncovered externally.
What was under the water…
was finally above it.
THE MOMENT
Back on that beach…
Truman didn’t know what a seal was.
And that seal… didn’t know Truman.
One a land dweller. One a water dweller.
Both playing in the same surf. Both enjoying the same afternoon.
Same water. Same sun. Same moment.
But under the hood…
two completely different species. Raised differently. Built differently. Wired differently.
Both carrying the capacity for aggression if the moment turned.
Neither one knowing what the other was really capable of.
For a moment…
They met.
Nose to nose. Still. Curious.
Trying to figure each other out.
He wasn’t where he belonged.
And neither was the seal.
They didn’t fight.
They didn’t connect.
They just… recognized something.
And then eventually…
went their separate ways.
Some collisions are not meant to become connection.
Some are meant to reveal the difference… so you can finally walk.
THE TURN
That’s the thing about shared water.
It looks like common ground…
until the surface breaks.
For forty-six years I shared the same building with that man.
The same coffee. The same handshakes. The same Christmas parties.
Same water.
Until the box broke the surface.
When his nephew confronted me that day in the shop…
I felt it in my body before I had words for it.
The inner tremble. The stirring in my gut. The nervousness that comes when something you’ve been avoiding finally arrives at your door.
I didn’t have a response in that moment.
I just stood there.
And while I was standing there…
a cockroach crawled across my shoulder.
I didn’t see it.
But Marty did.
She walked up — calm, deliberate — and slapped it off with force.
Then she looked me dead in the eye.
She didn’t say a word.
She didn’t need to.
She grounded me.
And in that single moment… I understood something I hadn’t been able to put into words.
The cockroach didn’t land on me by accident.
I had been standing in the presence of cockroaches the whole time.
THE DRIFT
“You should defend yourself…”
“You should set them straight…”
“You should tell them what their brother really did…”
That voice sounds like justice.
It isn’t.
Justice waits.
That voice rushes.
Justice listens for what God says first.
That voice listens for what the flesh says loudest.
I know.
Because I followed it.
For years.
THE REFLECTION
When I finally did speak up… it wasn’t from the tremble.
It was from the hillside.
I owned my position.
I asked them what right they had to put their business into my business — especially since they had never been part of anything I had built. Not once. Not ever.
And during the shutdown… when I was carrying twenty-eight families through the hardest season of their working lives… not one of them offered to help.
That told me everything.
It was never about their brother.
It was about money.
They painted him as a man of integrity. A man of ethics. The kind of employee any owner would be lucky to have.
I let them say it.
I never told them what he had really done.
That truth wasn’t theirs to hold.
It wasn’t mine to hand them either.
Some truths are between you and God.
He already knew. That was enough.
What I had to learn — what God prepared me for — was the difference between defending myself and standing in my position.
He quieted my heart.
He gave me listening before speaking.
He gave me time to process before responding.
He gave me Marty… standing beside me on the hillside… seeing what I couldn’t yet see.
The same Marty who walked up and knocked the cockroach off my shoulder without a word.
That’s who God puts next to a man when the pressing comes.
Looking back… I think of Job. The one in the Bible. The man who lost everything in a single season — his health, his livelihood, his standing, the trust of those closest to him.
Not because what I went through compares to what he carried — but because trial has a way of pressing a man until something underneath finally surfaces. Character you didn’t know you had. Or character you didn’t know you’d been missing.
The pain in my body. The betrayal at my back. The silence around me. The weight of twenty-eight families.
God didn’t remove any of it.
He just stood with me inside it.
And somewhere in that pressing… He sharpened something in me that smooth seasons never could have.
The shutdown.
The surgery.
The months of recovery and rehabilitation.
The test it put on me. On Marty. On us.
We couldn’t have done any of it without Jesus at the center of our relationship.
Not the marriage.
Not the business.
Not the closing of one chapter and the slow walk into the next.
He was the only reason we walked it clean.
And when I did respond… it wasn’t to win.
It was to close the door.
I haven’t spoken to that family since.
I never will.
The collision wasn’t just with him.
It wasn’t just with the nephew in the shop.
It was with an entire circle of silence I had been standing inside of for years.
The daughters. The employees who knew. The ones who chose to protect a lie over a man who signed their checks.
We had all been swimming in the same water.
I just didn’t know what was underneath it.
Until the cockroach landed on my shoulder.
And Marty knocked it off.
Some collisions don’t end in resolution.
Some end in dismissal.
Not bitterness. Not revenge. Not silence as a weapon.
Just… discernment as a doorway.
I dismissed them.
I stepped away.
And the moment I did… something I had been carrying for forty-six years lifted off me.
Because some relationships were never meant to be reconciled.
They were meant to be released.
And I know this.
When God is given the opportunity… He can take anything and turn it into something amazing.
No matter how bad it stinks.
He refined me.
He reshaped me.
He is still forging me… into the man He wants me to be.
All of this — the pain, the pressing, the cockroaches, the silence, the shutdown, the walk away —
was training ground.
And I am grateful.
Preparation doesn’t just protect you. Sometimes… it positions you to finally walk.
WALKAWAY LINE
You don’t always control when worlds collide… but you do control whether you stay on the field after they do.
SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT
Is there a collision in your life that was never meant to become connection… that you’re still trying to make work?
MY PRAYER
Heavenly Father,
Slow us down in the moments that test us most.
Give us ears that listen before our mouths respond.
Give us the discernment to know when to stand… and when to step away.
Quiet our hearts when the trembling comes. Steady our hands when the pressure rises.
And give us the wisdom to recognize the difference between a collision that’s meant to refine us… and one that’s only there to drain us.
Send us the Martys. The ones who see what we cannot yet see. The ones who step in quietly and knock the cockroach off our shoulder without a word.
When the right response isn’t ready yet… hold us in the silence until it is.
And when it’s time to finally walk… let us walk clean. Without bitterness. Without revenge. Without needing to be understood.
Just released.
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~