Follow a thread through the story
These are not boxes to keep a life inside. They are five threads that keep reappearing as I look back.
All connections Learning to Live What I Thought I Knew Life Love Faith The Story My Journey
A developing path through fear, failure, shame, love, judgment, grace, relationships, and the difference between knowing something and learning to live it.
My Story Awakening
I Saw Jesus in the Red Letters At seventeen, in John's basement bedroom, I opened a King James Bible and saw Jesus in the red letters. I felt as though He had chosen me.
My Story Seeking
The Fire in the Early Years The house meetings in Hampton felt like family. We sang, listened, asked questions, and made room for the children to speak.
My Story Breaking
I Wanted My Children to Know Me I wanted to be a father my children could know. I loved playing with them, and I also brought anger and selfishness into our home.
Fatherhood Parenting Relationships
My Story Breaking
The Motel Room After the waterbed venture fell apart, I found myself in a rundown motel room with a hotplate and a tiny television. My children were the reason I kept going.
My Story Learning
Day by Day, I Kept Going A furniture store gave me work as a manager. Later came television, a house, and more years of learning what my children needed from me.
Fatherhood Learning Through Experience Relationships
My Story Seeing
Learning to Receive Love I kept returning to Jesus, even through years when I could not feel His presence. Later I began to experience Him close to me again.
My Story Seeing
Learning to Look Again Every decade I have seen some part of life differently. I want to share what changed in me and leave others room to see for themselves.
Wisdom Relationships Learning Through Experience
My Story Legacy
The Work Still in Me I want to leave my children and grandchildren what I have lived and learned. This past year I have begun to trust God with the time and the work.
Story Wonder
The Phantom Limb My father abandoned our family when I was only four or five. His absence created a phantom limb in my emotional life — a constant longing for masculine validation.
The Father Abandonment Identity
Story Wonder
The Man of the House Well-meaning relatives looked at me and said, 'You're the man of the house now.' I was just a boy, entirely clueless about how to anchor myself, let alone carry the emotional survival of an entire family.
Story Breaking
The Porch I was standing on the front porch when I saw my five-year-old son walking home from kindergarten with his shoulders completely slumped. In one agonizing flash, I realized I was the reason he looked that way.
Fatherhood Failure Redemption
Story Learning
Building the Sanctuary My house became their clean, structured sanctuary — a place where they could just breathe and be teenagers. I drew an ironclad boundary: no relationship would ever integrate into our family unit.
Fatherhood Parenting Purpose
Story Seeing
The Bittersweet Ache I consciously poured everything I had into raising them to be exceptionally strong, independent people. And that intention backfired on me. The very strength I gave them is the thing that keeps them from needing me.
Fatherhood Relationships Legacy
Story Legacy
What My Grandson Taught Me About Prayer Last night, my oldest grandson said the timing of what I sent him was perfect — he was trying to understand his own faith apart from his parents' faith. Sitting alone with tears running down my face, I realized none of it had been wasted.
Prayer Grandfatherhood Legacy
Story Seeing
A Realization About the Women I've Loved This morning I had a thought that surprised me. The women I've loved throughout my life have shared something with my mother — a certain insecurity, a way of seeing what was wrong before seeing what was good. I'm beginning to wonder if what felt familiar wasn't always what was healthiest.
Relationships Self-Awareness Grace
Story Seeing
Becoming a Grandfather Changed My Theology Looking down into the eyes of those innocent grandchildren, I experienced a depth of unconditional love that I didn't know the human heart was capable of. It shattered my understanding of the Father's heart.
The Father Grace Grandfatherhood
Encounter Awakening
The Basement Bedroom In John's bedroom in the basement, I read the red words in a King James Bible and felt that I was meeting Jesus.
Encounter Awakening
Yeah The next day Russ, the friend I had spent so much time with, asked, “So are you a Jesus freak now?” I said, “Yeah,” and walked into school.
Encounter Awakening
In Jesus' Name The atmosphere inside the car suddenly shifted into something thick and malicious. She lunged for my throat. In that split second of panic, a phrase dropped into my mind from completely outside my own intellect.
Encounter Seeking
The Home Meetings In Hampton, families gathered in a circle to sing, share, and ask questions. Even the children could speak. To me it felt like family.
Religion and Relationship Community Faith
Encounter Seeing
Who Is Between Me and You? I was in church with my eyes closed when the back wall vanished. Three majestic horses and their riders charged toward me. A piercing voice asked a single question that changed everything.
Jesus Religion and Relationship Freedom
Reflection Seeing
The Armor That Becomes a Cage The armor you forge as a teenager often becomes the very cage that locks you in as an adult.
Reflection Learning
The Inheritance I Didn't Mean to Leave To this day, my kids carry the emotional echo and fear of the angry man I was back then. I would spend a lifetime learning to overcome that rage.
Fatherhood Anger Redemption
Reflection Walking
The Decade of Silence I have spent the last ten years living completely alone in absolute silence. It was a decade of profound solitude I didn't know I needed.
Solitude Healing The Father
Reflection Learning
Windshield University Those empty highway miles became my classroom. I recognized echoes of profound spiritual truths in the motivational tapes — principles that harmonized with scripture I had carried since I was seventeen.
Learning Through Experience Wisdom Mindset
Reflection Walking
Running Toward In my twenties I was driven by clawing, desperate fear. Today I work twelve hours a day not because I am running away from poverty, but because I am running toward a clear, beautiful purpose.
Pattern Breaking
The Wine and the Wineskin You cannot mix the wine of a raw, experiential faith with the rigid structures of institutional religion without something tearing.
Religion and Relationship Faith Flesh and Spirit
Pattern Breaking
The Fear Factory The church camps we sent my son to were a factory of intense fear and control. They drove into him that he was not worthy, not loved unless he performed perfectly.
Religion and Relationship Shame Fear
Pattern Seeing
The Melt of Hell Holding my grandchildren, I realized: there is nothing they could do that would make me send them to be tortured for eternity. If I, a broken man, possess that much love — how much greater must the Father's love be?
Pattern Seeing
Beyond the Cross The church stopped walking far too early. The story doesn't end at the crucifixion. The cross was simply a threshold. When you look beyond it, you don't see an angry judge — you see an unfolding reality of wisdom and overwhelming grace.
Pattern Seeing
Who Is Between Me and You? A piercing voice asked a single question that changed everything: 'Who is between Me and you?' I looked at the pulpit and the answer hit me like a physical blow.
Religion and Relationship Freedom Jesus
Pattern Seeing
I Started Looking at the Fruit As a little boy, I watched people — some filled a room with peace, others with fear. I realized everything in life is producing something. If you want to change the harvest, you have to understand the seed.
Fruit and Systems Wisdom Learning Through Experience
Pattern Seeing
Every System Produces Exactly What It Was Designed to Produce I spent most of my life seeing it. I just didn't have a name for it. Every system faithfully produces what it was designed to produce. The difficult part is that most of us don't see the system — we only see the results.
Fruit and Systems Learning Through Experience Wisdom
Pattern Seeing
The Difference Between Information and Understanding Information never changed me. You can know everything about forgiveness and still refuse to forgive. The difference is between filling your mind and slowly transforming your life.
Wisdom Learning Through Experience Scripture
Pattern Walking
When Certainty Became Trust Young Rick asked if I was afraid to ask too many questions. I was terrified. But I discovered something better than certainty — trust. Certainty depends on having all the answers. Trust depends on knowing the One you're walking with.
Pattern Walking
God Can't Be Contained in a Book Young Rick held his Bible and asked why I keep saying God can't be contained in a book. Because that's exactly what this book has been trying to teach me. The Bible was never meant to replace God — it was meant to introduce you to Him.
Scripture Faith Religion and Relationship
Pattern Walking
What If We've Been Asking the Wrong Questions About the End Times? The better question isn't who the Antichrist is. The better question is: what is God trying to reveal?
Pattern Walking
What If the Mark of the Beast Is About More Than a Chip? For decades, people have searched for a technology — a barcode, a chip, a digital currency. But what if the battle has always been over our attention?
Good and Evil Flesh and Spirit Wisdom
Legacy Legacy
If I Could Sit With My Seventeen-Year-Old Self The young man beside me doesn't know who I am. He's seventeen. Restless. Confused. Searching for something he can't put into words. I remember him well. Because he was me.
Identity Redemption The Father
Legacy Legacy
What My Grandchildren Are Really Inheriting Young Rick asked what I'd leave my grandchildren. I didn't answer right away — because for most of my life, I would have answered that question differently.
Legacy Grandfatherhood Redemption
Legacy Walking
Why I Stopped Trying to Fix People Young Rick told me I don't argue anymore. I told him I finally figured out what my job wasn't. People rarely change because someone tells them they should.
Relationships Compassion Forgiveness
Legacy Legacy
Who Are You, Grandpa? Young Rick finally asked the question that had been waiting since the beginning. I smiled — not because the answer was simple, but because it took a lifetime to discover.