About · From Jake
A letter to the man
who found this page
Brother,
If you came here looking for an author bio, I’ll disappoint you. I’m not going to list credentials. I don’t have the kind that matter for this work anyway.
Here’s what I’ve got instead.
I served in the US Navy. I came home. And coming home was harder than going. Nobody warns you about that part.
I spent years being strong in all the ways that don’t count. Strong at work. Strong in the gym. Hollow everywhere else.
I was angry at everyone and at nothing. I drank to get through the day and drank again to get to sleep. I was not a good husband, and I was not a good father, and I told myself that was normal.
I was in the pit. I mean that plainly.
I am a suicide survivor. There was a night I decided I was done, and I’m alive today only because God reached me after I had already given up. He did not wait for me to climb back up to Him. He came down to where I had quit. I wrote that whole story down in a book called From the Darkness. If you need to know a man can go all the way to the bottom and come back, it’s in there.
“On your walls, O Jerusalem, I have set watchmen.” Isaiah 62:6
What pulled me out wasn’t willpower. It was Christ. And it started with one honest prayer I barely got through.
So I’m not writing about rock bottom from a book. I know the weight of it. And I know the voice, the one that tells you flat out that you are worthless, that the people who love you would be better off if you were gone.
Brother, that is a lie. It is the oldest one there is. Your worth was never something you earned, and it is not something you can lose on your worst night. God made you, and He does not throw away what He makes. He is not finished with you either, because the One who started the work in you is the One who finishes it, not you. And the people who love you are not better off without you. They are better with you, and they would tell you so if that voice would ever let them get a word in.
You are not too far gone. You cannot out-sin the reach of the cross. And the way up is not you gritting your teeth harder. It is you stopping, and letting God carry what you were never strong enough to carry alone. He has held men who had already let go. He can hold you.
If tonight is heavy, do not sit in it alone. Get help. That is why 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, is on every page of this site. Call it or text it. If you wore the uniform, dial 988 and press 1. There is no shame in making that call. It is not weakness. It is one man reaching for the hand that is already reaching for him.
There are three things I’m prouder of than anything I’ve ever done.
The first
the relationship I have with Christ now
Not the version I faked for years. The real one. It cost me everything I was pretending to be, and it handed me back a life worth living.
The second
my wife
She stood in the darkness with me when walking away would have been easier and nobody would have blamed her. She was my rock when there was nothing solid left in me. I don’t get to write a word of any of this without her, and I know it.
The third
my daughters
They love Christ, they’re smart, they’re kind, and they’re growing into women stronger than I was in the ways that actually count. Watching it happen is the clearest proof I have that God redeems what a man breaks.
So that’s what I write about, and who I write for: the man who’s sure he’s too far gone. I’m training for ministry through the Timothy Pastoral Program, under my elders, because I never want to hand a man something I haven’t been taught to carry rightly.
I am praying you find God, and that you find His peace. Stay. You are not finished.
Stand your watch. I’ll stand mine.
No man is too far gone.
Not you. Not now.
What I believe
Jesus Christ is Lord. Crucified, risen, coming back.
The Bible is true, and it’s for men like us, not just for pastors and scholars.
Prayer is not a last resort. It’s the first move.
No man is too far gone. Not you. Not anyone.
A recurring series