Learning to walk with God

The first thing I began doing was praying with conviction, and praying often.

When I step into prayer about something I don’t understand, I am learning to lean less on my thoughts and more on my listening. If I already knew the way, I would walk it. But I don’t. So I go to the Lord and confess, I don’t know what to do. I have never stood here before. I have never felt this exact weight. I long for a different place, yet even if I arrived, I would not know how to remain there.

What could I possibly add after admitting that? Nothing.

I choose to listen. I set aside the voice in my head and the words on my tongue, because they will not lead me through. Instead I offer the ears of my heart, as if they might catch what the wind of the Holy Spirit carries.

The silence that follows is not easy.

It’s an “I’m on the edge of my seat” kind of listening.

A morning yearning kind of waiting.

This place has become a place of tuning.

I feel the discomfort, and still I stay. I let myself be small, and I listen.

If nothing comes, I take that as its own kind of answer: be still. Do not rush. Do not search for words or try to think it through.

Wait. Until the first response arrives.

And when it does, it is never the whole map. It is only a beginning. A small step that feels faint, like a whisper I might miss if I were not listening so intently.

Sometimes that step seems like a side path, even a detour, or out of order. Yet later I can see it was a foundation stone, not sand but rock. Then comes more waiting, more listening, until the next clue reveals itself.

This is what is happening to me. In the listening, I’m trusting God. Each step does not end the journey. Each step does not know the next step.

In this way, I’m learning to walk with God.

Learning a new way with words

Charlie’s name has stirred so much anger (and love, I must add), but in hearing others speak with such fire, I am reminded of my own past.

Oh man, it actually hurts me to look back at myself.

The way I enjoyed wielding my words like weapons. Too often, I have wounded relationships with words. Too often, I have felt proud of how sharp I could turn a phrase, how deeply I could make it cut.

Even after I first accepted Jesus into my heart, I carried that same cutting way with my words. I was always ready to write on behalf of someone I cared for, crafting a “talking point” that could be effective and sting, because I wanted them to win.

My attitude was: Cross me, I dare you. I will slay you with words.

Then this season of heartbreak arrived, and it has settled in. That’s when I realized how much I needed God. That’s when I saw how sorely I needed Jesus to teach me a new way to be. And now I am reduced to no longer having my words as weapons.

Something in me has softened. The vitriol that once burned in me to put an ignorant person in his place is gone. I simply do not have it in me to cut people down. I would rather pray for them.

So when I see Charlie defined by the harshest names, I pause. I recognize the old me would have relished in destroying folks who spoke ill of Charlie.

I believed in Charlie. What I think Charlie sought, at his best, was dialogue, an exchange of ideas in the hope that something larger than us might be revealed.

That “larger than us” thing is God.

In my shoes now, I know what it is to be reduced to my worst words and actions. Turns out, my own words have worked against me. I feel their accumulated weight now more than I ever have.

Judgment belongs to God. What belongs to me is prayer, humility, and the daily choice not to return contempt for contempt. Conviction is one thing, but to often it turns to contempt, and that only hardens the heart.

The Handwriting Path

I never expected a teenager’s clarity could emerge from the simple act of putting pen to paper. Yet that’s where the path has led me. Seems full circle in a lot of ways. Let’s unpack this.

Once upon a time…

I was at Michigan State, I studied elementary education because it felt natural, a practical, almost effortless choice. The English minor was my real passion. It pulled me deeper. Authors like Kerouac, Hemingway, Thoreau, Whitman, Dylan were voices I loved.

Then a children’s theatre class placed Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way in my hands. Morning pages changed everything. Three handwritten pages, stream of consciousness. No editing, no judgment.

I can still see it. The top floor of a cape cod just off campus. A candle lit. The pen moving. The page absorbing the clutter of thought until my mind felt as clear as dawn.

Haha, yeah… I wasn’t like the others 😉

That practice followed me west to Portland in the early 2000s. I was the quintessential young teacher, hungry to understand how children learned to write.

At Lewis & Clark College, I studied the craft. The Oregon Summer Writing Project widened my view. The highlight was “Daily Writing in the Spirit of William Stafford,” taught by his son Kim. It carved itself into my philosophy. Stafford believed daily writing was a way of paying attention. His words became my foundation.

For ten years, I watched fourth, fifth, and eighth graders transform when they found their voices. A quiet student lifting their head with the spark of discovery. A doubtful one surprising themselves with the courage of a single paragraph.

There was so much beauty in this experience. These were happy days.

I realized that if children can do it, so can adults.

My big take-away was that expression isn’t granted from the outside. It waits inside, like a seed, until the conditions are right. Plant small seeds from capturing small moments from the day, adding your own thoughts and responses so that you could call it yours.

Yep, it really is that poetic. That’s how I see it.

Then life shifted. We’re now in 2009-ish.

The internet arrived and I hungered for the demand of new skills.

Restless, I left the classroom for digital work. From my kitchen table I learned to shape words that moved people. I crafted emails, various campaigns where I found the rhythms of persuasion in a distracted world. I became fluent in attention as a kind of currency.

It worked, but after six years of helping others make their crap not look like crap so they could sell more crap, I longed for a slower ground where new growth could take root.

Once again, I had to begin again.

Through those screen-heavy years, my three children held me steady. Parenting with shared custody made presence a non-negotiable. In the ordinary hours of meals, homework, bedtime talks, I began to see the real work of growth. It isn’t measured in achievement. It’s measured in attention. Presence.

Presence itself is the ground.

Eventually, I grew up and got a “real” job. Another change.

For twelve years now, I’ve managed a greenhouse that supplies flowers to big box stores.

But what I really grow are the people. The seasons have taught me that growth requires patience, and the right conditions make all the difference. Watching flowers flourish or falter taught me to see the same in myself and in my children.

Because here’s what I see, and how I see it…

Just yesterday, my daughter showed my son a video of a man being shot.

Their minds are being cultivated by forces that don’t intend to grow them but to use them. Social media harvests attention the way a field is stripped bare. I see curiosity being depleted by constant consumption.

And yet, something simple remains. So simple. Handwriting.

Handwriting restores what screens scatter.

When my 16 year old writes by hand and stays with it, her mind begins to quiet. I’ve seen it time and again. I’ve seen it with my 10 year old daughter, too.

My 14 year old son needs a notecard. It feels less overwhelming than a notebook.

The page receives their thoughts until they hear their own voice. From that voice grows confidence. From that confidence, a hunger for the habit of finding stillness.

I hear my daughter say, “Dad, I’m going upstairs to write in my journal.” That makes me feel hope. Because I know.

I peek through the door and see her bent over her notebook, phone set aside. This is what restoration looks like.

The hand-brain connection forges pathways typing cannot. The way a distracted phone cannot. It anchors thought in the body. It slows the mind enough for depth to emerge.

I’m deep in it these days, too. It helps me make these connections here on this page now.

A journal and a pen remain among the simplest ways for a teen to know themselves.

Same goes for adults. Life work, not desk work.

I know both worlds. I know the splintering of attention, the constant tug of distraction.

As Gen X, I’ve lived one of the most striking changes of our lifetime. I also know the integration that comes when ink meets paper, because I return to it daily.

As if my teenagers need another lecture about screens. Instead, they need someone who can name what they feel, or at least give them a compelling reason to write.

My daughter found hers when she didn’t know how to communicate with a crush. I told her to write down different examples. It would be better than staring at her phone.

That small suggestion stopped her thoughts from slipping away. It helped her realize silence doesn’t have to feel foreign. From that moment, a journal was born.

It’s not a complicated way of being. In fact, it’s as ancient as it is near.

It can be a fresh notebook. A dollar store pad and a thin Sharpie. Even the back of a receipt. Notecards or sticky notes. What matters is that the hand moves, and the mind begins to follow.

Slow and steady. Journaling by hand. The voice will come.

Chisel Work

I call it chisel work.

Because each effort chips away at what is unnecessary, what is soft, what does not belong. What remains is not just muscle or sweat. What remains is essence.

Those 12-15 minutes on the Rogue Echo Bike are rigorous and vigorous, and downright brutal beyond 15 minutes.

But one or two 15 minute sessions per week leave me more alive than an hour of shuffling the neighborhood counting steps like a suburban zombie.

I’m carrying this rhythm into fall: 8-10 rounds, thirty seconds all out, one minute to recover. Heart pounding to 150+ again and again, in waves.

A friend tells me about tracking his 10,000 steps on a smart watch, and I nod. Mmm hmm.

Sure enough, there is so much value in walking. I love to walk, and do so nearly every day (though I’ve never in my life counted steps). I appreciate the steady movement of walking. It’s great for clearing my thoughts. It’s a quiet rhythm that our bodies regularly need.

My friend walks his dog, waits for his dog to poop, and listens to a podcast.

I climb into myself and come out drenched, emptied and awake.

We are not the same.

The Rogue Echo Bike is more than exercise.

It teaches me that transformation rarely comes from sauntering. It comes from pressing into what feels almost too much and discovering I am still here.

Walking tends to the ground. The Rogue Echo Bike sets fire to it.

Both matter, but only one shows me what I am made of.

How God is teaching me

He is the Father.

If one lesson does not reach me, another comes. And if that one fails, another. Still, if that doesn’t land, yet another. That loop is on repeat.

It’s a series of natural consequences.

It’s also a rescue.

It’s the quiet insistence of a Father who knows what is best, even when I cannot see it.

Oh, but now I see it! I feel it, too!

These days I’m reading the Bible with new eyes, listening with new ears. I see my life shining down at me.

It touches the corners of my heart that I’ve usually kept guarded. To myself, I call it “the great softening” and I’d like to think it’s taking what is rigidly worn in me and renewing it.

Before I may have just checked the box – yep, I read Bible today. But now it’s alive in me. I trust it.  It guides and shapes me.

I’m awake.

As a dad, I don’t think to choose comfort first for my kids. No, I just want to do what is best for them, and what will help them grow.

God does the same for me. It just so happens that it’s not always comfortable.

So when I turn away, or cut corners, the consequences are not intended as wrath, but they are the firm, loving hand of someone who will not let me drift from the heart I belong to.

And like we see with our own kids, that doesn’t always play out pretty. Sometimes it’s a hard lesson.

Or a hard season.

But God doesn’t want me to feel regret. He wants me to make the connection. Now I see my life closely, my choices, my relationships.

Am I moving with Him, or away from Him?

In that question, I feel what holiness might be. I have a new appreciation and understanding of the word Holy.

When you are aiming to walk in the Father’s will, you are letting His love shape the way you live in each small act and every quiet moment.

He sees all of it.

I pray that I don’t fall asleep or backslide to this understanding. This is what it means to “fear the Lord.” I pray that I maintain this awareness and closeness to His Word.

Amen!

Notes from the Turning Point

Over the last month and a half, I’ve written more than forty posts here at this blog. Yesterday afternoon and evening, I sat down and read through them all. Wow! What struck me was the story they tell when placed side by side. Without planning it, I’ve been documenting a turning point in my life.

So I took some time to organize them and sift and sort for the posts that best reflect what’s going on with me.

The thread is simple, but strong.

It begins with the smallest act: keeping promises to myself. No surprise there, that was easy to identify.

Each kept promise has been a stone in the foundation of real confidence, the kind I didn’t know I needed until living out life in this time period of July, August and the beginning of September 2025.

From there, the writing shifts into something larger: being awake to my own life instead of scrolling through everyone else’s. I’m not only NOT looking at social media (at all), I’m also no longer vexing over changing careers or making this decision or that decision. I’m living the life I have. One moment all the time.

And then, almost quietly, the focus turns outward. Self-awareness becomes service. Purpose begins to rise.

None of this was written as theory. I’ve been in the trenches.

It has come out of heartbreak, raising children, working long hours, and searching for God in the middle of it all. It has come out of the long hours of sitting still with myself, wrestling with myself in that stillness, and then at times standing up a little straighter than before.

When I gathered these pieces together, I gave them a name: A Man’s Guide. This guide does not hold answers, but it gathers moments that serve as signposts toward the kind of man I am beginning to respect. Again, I didn’t know I needed this, but now that I’ve lived it I’m living it, I see these times as a turning point.

Check it out here.

This personal blog is the source material for whatever comes next. I will keep writing authentically. It’s right there in my tagline, I document my journey and commit to having a point of view, which improves my thinking, my attitude, and my trajectory.

AND…ALSO…

I feel a shift, a slow down as my gaze turns away from the daily grind of wrestling through the trenches and more toward steady reflection, That might mean writing less often, perhaps, but with a deeper calm than the urgency that has carried me these last two months.

But again, I’m so grateful for what I have to show for these last two months.

When the Heart Idles

Why do I seek to trade uncertainty for control? I see this pattern again and again in myself.

An idle heart wants to make an idol of something, anything.

Yet in my shifting and unease, I am learning to lean into uncertainty. To lean into faith. To trust. To trust God.

And as I do, I feel a slowing within me. A slowing in my work. A slowing in my workouts. A slowing in my drive and motivation. None of these will disappear, but each will become more focused, more deliberate.

Whatever storm landed in me has passed. Now comes a return to calm, like the soft rain that follows a storm.

I see now that when my heart drifts idle, I turn to myself and to my labor: work, work, work, do, do, do. Perhaps that was needed in the past two months. I had to prepare myself for a landing. But now, the invitation is different. It is time to slow down. To pause for a breath. To sit still.

There is nothing left to overcome, nothing to cling to. What is lost is lost, and what is gained is gained. Now there is only wide open country, untouched. How will I traverse into this new region?

There is nothing in myself worth grasping, nothing to place my faith in except God.

And God says, You cannot control me. But you do not need to. I love you.

I can rest in that. I can sit with that reminder. I can be secure in prayer to Him. And perhaps this slowing is not a loss but a clarity. Not passivity, but trust. A way of laying down control and finding, at last, a posture of rest in God’s love.

So it shall be. Amen.

The Season of Tears

It is the season of tears.

Tears as I open my Bible.

When Abraham sends Ishmael away because of Sarah’s jealousy, and yet years later the brothers (Ishmael & Isaac) unite to bury their father. Tears because God makes straight lines out of brokenness, and that gives me hope.

Tears when Jesus fasts forty days in the wilderness. As a man, I know hunger and weakness. Tears in the beauty in how He turned temptation into proof of His strength. Tears because He did that for me.

Tears as my daughter struggles with friends and feelings. I watch her wrestle toward understanding. In the kitchen, she draws while music plays, and I do dishes just to keep her talking. I hide my tears so she will keep going.

Tears when my son runs until it hurts and then runs harder. The day he wins the meet, I see both what it cost and what it gave. I press back tears because all eyes are on us as we embrace at the finish line.

Tears listening to a friend describe leaving his daughter at college, driving home in silence. His story lingers. Tears rise in both of us as he speaks.

Tears on the drive home after working with a young man who lost his father. I see in his eyes the weight of loss, and of being lost. Tears because life can be unbearably hard.

Tears as my stepfather, 83, lets me complete forms he cannot finish alone. His thanks carries the sting of lost dignity. Tears because he has always given, and now must receive.

Tears as my Dad sits alone, unable to explain or change the unhappiness around him. His loneliness seeps into me. Tears because I remember his strength, and now all the fight is gone.

Tears when my children’s great-grandmother suffers a stroke. Their mother calls to tell me. Tears because Great-Grandma has always been steady ground in the middle of our differences. Tears because her life has been bright, and now the light begins to fade.

Tears when I shut out my mom after a breakup, unwilling to let her touch the ache I carry. Weeks later, when I finally told her everything, I wept. Not just tears, but the kind that make you a child again, cradled by your mother’s voice. More tears because my mom is a paradox: rare, fleeting, eternal. That is its own kind of sadness, and I have nowhere to place it.

Tears for love lost. For the cost of hope and the hollow ache of absence. Tears because even love that doesn’t last leaves its mark. More tears because she still lives inside of me. We’ve never been apart.

Tears of gratitude to finally know after all this time that I am capable of feeling fully.

Tears when my children return to their mother’s house, and Monday night leaves my home still humming with their absence. They were just here, and now they are gone. In the emptiness, the tears come. I have no one to love.

And tears now, as I write this. Can anyone hear me through these tears?

The crying has come in waves. Little by little, then all at once.

But tears are not only sorrow. They are the calm water by which I see my reflection. And this season, like all seasons, will pass.

Even in this loss, I will not be lost

Maybe the Lord gave us a year as a mercy. It was July 2024 to July 2025.

It could have been a time to reckon with how we had drifted from His design for purity. That being the line we had already crossed. When she felt convicted to step back and wait, we should have listened. We should have stopped, humbled ourselves, and taken the leap of faith into the ultimate commitment under God, or chosen to honor His design by waiting.

I could have been more supportive of her initial conviction to return to purity.

It was a sign.

Could have, should have… Didn’t.

Instead, conviction gave way to compromise, and compromise dulled us both into following the status quo we’d already established.

Now we’re no longer. The ache cuts through me like a blade, and I pour out my grief before You, God, for losing her feels like losing part of myself, but I trust that even this suffering serves Your purpose.

The message is loud and clear:

God does not want sleepwalkers. He certainly shook me awake.

Like Jonah, who fled from God’s command and then slept through the storm that followed, trying to hide from what he didn’t want to face. The sailors cast lots, Jonah lost, and he was thrown into the stormy sea. Swallowed by a great fish and delivered to shore exactly where God had commanded him to go in the first place.

I was sleeping through the storm too, hiding from whatever I didn’t want to face. Yet God would not let Jonah remain hidden, and He has not let me remain indifferent.

Please God wash me ashore to where I belonged in the first place.

I repent and pray. I repent again, and continue to pray.

My heart is no longer indifferent. I hear Him. I accept what has been revealed. That being His design for purity. I don’t see it as a burden. It’s actually a path back to life.

I pray for a second chance. I’m speaking directly about a second chance with love itself, and with the opportunity to walk rightly, following His way. To know His mercy is to be invited to begin again.

I’ve prayed for a second chance with her, too, because I love her.

I also accept what must be accepted. God’s lessons and God’s plans. He is a just God.

Every ending, no matter how painful, carries the seed of a beginning. The ending of one chapter is also the same paragraph that starts a new chapter.

If I can stay awake to that, then even in this loss I will not be lost.

Heart Swell

My son Lucan won a big cross country invitational this weekend.

All summer, he put in the work. He trained and I was by his side. He listened, trusted, and followed through. Today when it mattered, he was the one who crossed the line first.

My heart swelled. I had to hold back tears.

Yes, the victory is so sweet, but the quiet joy of watching effort ripen into fruit is the evergreen takeaway. What lesson is more fundamental than “hard work pays off!”

I’m proud of the runner he’s become, and even more proud of the young man he’s blossoming into. My son has a lot going for him.

In walking close beside him, in the guidance, encouragement, and the act of fully witnessing, I was reminded that my influence as a father has always been about presence. I don’t ever have to wonder where the time has gone because I’m always there. I don’t miss.

Here’s the thing that chokes me up, though. The time I give him is also the time he gives me, and in that exchange we are both shaped.

Lucan and Dad Front Yard September 2025

Sometimes love, sometimes not

Sometimes we bolt from love because the connection casts light on our partner’s hidden places, and they are not ready to face what is revealed.

Sometimes we know something they do not, and that knowing presses against our limits. We cannot explain it, only that it signals the end.

Sometimes we run because beauty itself is soft as a kitten’s nose, but as dangerous as a lion.  It’s beautiful enough to draw us close, powerful enough to destroy us. That frightens us, and fear is the one thing we have always obeyed.

Sometimes the moment will not allow us to hold that love, no matter how much we want to.

Sometimes one of us leaves because one of us is not yet strong enough to keep love safe.

And so it goes. Sometimes love, sometimes not.

The real work is not in clinging to every love as if it must last forever, but in learning how each one changes us, how each departure teaches us to love more fully the next time.

It’s about releasing our grip on guarantees while deepening our capacity for connection even especially in the hard.

For me, I pray the next time is forever this time. I don’t want to cling to permanence, I want to be ready.

A love where we’ve grown strong enough to tend to it without strangling it. Where we carry each other all the way home.  Not in refusal to let go, but in the experience of knowing how to hold on.

Dear Anxiety

Now I understand you. I’m sorry it’s taken me this long.

I never knew you were the world knocking.

I shouldn’t have bulldozed through you all this time. I see now that brute force alone cannot keep you from my door. Especially in my softening.

That’s okay and we’ll both be okay, haha.

You’ve been kind, actually, never holding me up the way you have others. Yet I can see your long shadow over some of my hardest days.

Your knocking is not a wall closing in. It’s an invitation I accept. You are the threshold of a door, waiting for me to step through.

Alright, I’ll step through.

I get it now. Something wants to be made, though neither of us knows what yet. That’s all right. You are only the messenger.

I won’t try to outrun you either. I see that your signal is a healthy reminder that I am alive, standing at the edge of creation.

So knock if you must.  I’m here.

I will walk through the door and sit still in the waiting, and watch your unraveling.

With clarity,
Eric

PS. You really need a name change. “Anxiety” has a bad wrap. If they only knew the real you.