The Final Prayer

Wherever you are, right now. The truck works. So does the floor.

Lord, it's us. The men from this book.

You know which ones. The ones the house reads like weather. The ones with the glass, the screen, the office, the temper, the years we can't get back. The ones who made it all the way to this page still carrying the thing we've been carrying since chapter one.

We're done carrying it.

Take the mask. Take the anger and what we pour on it. Take the empty apologies and the bounced checks and the walls we earned. Take the nights we don't talk about. We're not asking You to make us look better. We're asking You to make us different, and we finally believe You can, because one of us wrote this book and we watched You do it.

Thank You for the cross, where all of this was already paid for. We don't come clean. We come covered.

Give us our wives back, in Your time, at their pace, by Your hand, and where that door is closed, give us Yourself in the empty chair. Give us our kids back, one honest talk and one held door at a time. Give us the years ahead, since the years behind are Yours to redeem. And give us the knees for it, every morning, every doorway, every watch.

We are not the men we were. We are not yet the men You're building. We're the men in the middle, on our knees, exactly where the battle turns.

And now, brother, say the last line alone. It only works in the singular, one man, one watch, one prayer:

Make me the man they deserve. Amen.