Who you are talking to
I went allthe way down
I served in the US Navy. I came home, and coming home was harder than going. Nobody warns you about that part.
For years I was strong in all the ways that don't count and hollow everywhere else. Strong at work. Strong in the gym. Nothing left over for the people in my house.
I am a suicide survivor. I am alive today because God reached me after I had already given up. What pulled me out was not willpower. It was Christ.
II · II · MMXX
The night I was done.
He did not wait for me to climb back up to Him. He came down to where I had quit.
I wrote the whole thing down in a book called From the Darkness, because the version of me sitting in that chair needed to read it and there was nothing there.
Hope is my service dog and she is with me every day. My wife stood in the dark with me when walking away would have been easier, and I do not get to tell any of this without her. We have two daughters who teach me what it means to be kind.
I am training for ministry through the Timothy Pastoral Program, under my elders.
Speaking
Put me in frontof your men
Men’s groups, retreats, youth groups, whole congregations. I travel anywhere if travel is covered, there is no set fee, and I hold a current background check for youth work.
The night I was done
Men, retreats, whole congregations
The one only I can give. The Navy, coming home, the pit, and the God who came down to where I had already quit. Told plainly, because a man in that seat can tell the difference.
Strong where it costs nothing
Men's groups, breakfasts, retreats
Strong at work. Strong in the gym. Hollow everywhere else. What the performance protects, what it costs a wife and a kid, and the first honest sentence out of it.
The face you put on
Youth groups, students
Written for teenagers, not watered down from the men's talk. Running two versions of yourself full time in front of a crowd that never goes home. The crisis numbers go on the screen and I do not skip past them.
Too far gone is a lie
Men, recovery groups, congregations
For the man who is not in crisis and is not fine either, who has decided he is disqualified and quietly settled for it.
Tell me who is in the room and I will shape it before I get there.
