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
The love I have received and am still learning to give: the Father, family, grace, mercy, and relationships.
Reflection Seeing
I’m Still Growing Up With My Children I’m still growing with my children and grandchildren, learning about my mother, our Father, and the hope I carry for the generations to come.
Reflection Walking
Seeking Purpose I was down and upset with myself this morning. Jesus walked me through it. I’m feeling much better, and I’m still working through it.
Reflection Seeing
See Me, Know Me Showing my mother a new car led me into something much deeper: the need we all share to be seen, heard, and loved.
Reflection Walking
I Need to Live It “I don’t need to shout it out. I need to live it.” A thought about letting the life Jesus put in me become visible in an ordinary day.
Reflection Seeing
The Pain Did Not Change. I Did. The same memories can look different as a person grows. I’m beginning to see how grace has changed the man looking back.
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 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
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 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
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
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
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.