Eric L. Walker

I imagine a fountain deep enough to hold all my wishes.

For each love that turned to distance, I would toss a coin.

Not to erase them, but to meet them again, fresh, unbruised, unshadowed by what we could not carry.

We would see each other the way strangers do, eyes soft, questions rising, warmth flickering between us like the first spark of a fire.

Hours of talk, the kind where time slips away. Then one kiss, so true it tells us everything.

From there, we would walk into a place untouched by regret. A place without the words we wish we had not said, without the things we cannot undo.

Only newness.

Only discovery.

It would feel like two people learning love after a long season of solitude.

And maybe it would feel like forever, starting again.

Today, in the grocery store, we paused together in aisle eleven.

Ten minutes of presence.

It struck me again, as if it surprises me every time. How life offers itself in passing moments.

We walk through our days, and suddenly, we cross paths with one another.

We speak of where we’ve been, what has happened, where our hearts still long to go, and what it might mean to arrive.

Even if we get there, though, will we ever stop striving? For each season there is a reason.

Each of us carries a weight, yet each of us also carries a light.

There is rest within reach. There is laughter to break the heaviness. There is fruit ready to be shared.

When we part, I feel the truth of it. The dark nights shape us as surely as the bright days.

These small exchanges, these touches of soul against soul, are what make the journey bearable, and beautiful.

Deep in your mind live all your memories. The smell of cookies at grandma’s house, your first day of school, that time you got scared in the dark. They sleep there, waiting. Life happens and we are reminded. Life happens and we make more memories, piling onto the heap.

When you pick up your pen or pencil and accept the invite of the blank white page something magic happens. Your brain becomes a detective, digging through boxes of forgotten things:

a joke your old friend told,

a movie that made you cry,

the way snow feels on your tongue,

the whispered secret your 7th grade girlfriend placed in your ear, and in doing so gave you your first tingle of intimacy.

It mixes them altogether like ingredients in a recipe only you can make.

Your hand moves across the paper and suddenly there it is – a thought you never knew you had, a story only you could tell.

Some folks think they’ve found a shortcut. They type commands into a computer:

“Write my story about summer vacation.”

“Make it sound sad and happy.”

“Add more details about the beach.”

The computer spits out words. Perfect words. Clean words. Words that sound like everyone and no one.

I’ve been guilty of this. I’ve used so called AI to help me write things that belonged only to me, and I regret it. That email that I thought connected the dots, or made the perfect point, was actually an undoing that dislodged everything that belonged to me. I’ll never make that error again.

So called AI can’t capture the scraped knee from falling off your bike. Or the weird dream you had last Tuesday. It can’t know of the joy and safety in your kitchen when your mom hums and cooks.

So called AI doesn’t know these things.

It can’t reach into your heart and pull out the messy, real, beautiful stuff that makes you YOU. It never felt embarrassed or excited or scared. It never had a best friend, or lost a tooth, or fell in love and lost that love. Only you have that secret treasure chest. Only you can dig deep to find the gold buried in your brain, in your heart, in a lifetime of small and big moments.

So don’t let a computer write your story.

Also, don’t be indifferent to your story. It’s yours and only yours. Pay attention to it. Cultivate it. Add to it. Change its direction. Full speed ahead. Wrestle with it on the page of life and jot down little and large pieces of it on paper. Take that paper to the keyboard and let it bleed out of your typing hands onto the digital white space. Wrestle with the words. Cross things out. Delete. Try again. Because what comes out is yours alone.

Kids, family, friends, you reading this…

That’s all I’m trying to do here. This is “Eric L Walker” [dot] com for a reason. Me. And I think it’s now more important than ever.

Why? Because an onslaught of inevitable video and text AI is upon us. Finding the others who are creating and reading plain text from their own noggin will be the equivalent of going for a quiet walk in the woods. We just have to make sure that the forests we craft on cream paper spark from our own human-ness. And as it has always been, we have to continue practicing to get the communication right.

There was no need for another phone call. The break was clean and things were clear.

Besides, the track was waiting, nine lanes wide, enough space for me to run down all my hurt.

I no longer had any questions. There was no more waiting in anticipation.

So I ran hard, harder than I thought I could. I dug deep, made it hurt, and let the physical pain match the hurt I carried.

When I came home, I slowed down. A long soak in the bath. A clean, careful shave. An early bedtime. My kids tucked me in with care. They understood without saying much.

Rest came with acceptance. I felt what I needed to feel. I let it settle when I closed my eyes.

I will not fault myself. My hesitation was justified. My reflections were true. No one is perfect. Not me, not her. I know how well I treated her, and I know that will stand the test of time.

I would have gone all the way with her, but it was too late. Her heart changed. That is not on me. She has a different journey now.

For today, anyway, that’s how I will remember it.

I have a church to lean into. I have everything I’ve always had, and more. Wiser for the time. Ready for all that can come next. I pick up where I left off, simply and happily walking through my days like I was the day we met.

Link: 9 Lane Therapy

God accomplishes His will in spite of our brokenness. I used to be under the assumption that the Bible was a Hallmark story. The Hallmark story is clear, predictable and clean. It begins with a little conflict, but then the conflict gets resolved and everything is happily ever after. Actual grace doesn’t work that way. The way God works in a person’s life, in people’s lives, in family’s lives, in a Country’s or a Kingdom’s lives is never clean or clear like a Hallmark story. Sure, there are times when God manifests Himself powerfully and miraculously, but many more times, God allows us to choose. He wants us to choose good. He wants us to choose grace. He wants us to choose the best thing. Also, He allows us to choose brokenness. He allows us to choose in a way that He would condemn, and yet He still works with it and works with us. That’s the key to faith, I think, it’s that everything that we surrender over to God can be used. There’s nothing God can’t use when we give it to Him. I know that God will work with it in ways I can’t imagine. With that, I trust in the Lord. So it’s with this understanding that I surrender to God. That I give all of my brokenness, and all of the brokenness that I’m associated with to Him. I know that God is faithful to His promises and steadfast. I will continue to pray, and I will give my brokenness to Him. I will strive to also be faithful to my promises and steadfast. Amen.

Even after I ask,
“Who will love me now?”
And Jesus replies,
“I will always love you.”

After I stare the sun down
’til my eyes go blind.
After I scroll endlessly,
like a chimp with a cocaine lever,
looking for something
that will never be there.

After I say no to weed
again, and again, and again —
though it promises to soothe,
to sweet talk me into rest.

After I lift weights
’til my body breaks,
’til I can’t press one more rep.
After I walk,
I run,
I sprint the track
until I drip sweat like rain.

After I’ve kicked the doors down
that needed to be kicked —
and when kindness called,
I’ve worn kid gloves.

After I’ve saved the day for my kids,
and they love me.
After I’ve ruined the day for my kids,
and they hate me.

After I’ve worked all the hours I can work,
paid the debts,
met the savings goal.

After I’ve turned from the quick fix,
chosen the slow burn of growth,
kept my promises to myself.

After my health has slipped,
my integrity bent.
After I’ve argued with myself like a lawyer,
after I’ve stuck myself up,
jammed a nine millimeter in my own face.

Even if fear were to vanish,
even after love gained,
love lost,
love returned,
or gone forever.

After new friends,
after old friends,
after all the coming and going —

I must learn to sit still with myself.
To breathe calm
in the middle of the hurricane.
To watch rainbows rise,
to watch storms pass.

I must find a way to live,
a way I never knew before.

The countdown sharpens my focus. It snaps my attention to a moment, to what’s about to unfold. Or what’s unfolding. The numbers are dropping, never rising. The closer to zero, the more the tension rises. But the real point isn’t the numbers, it’s the promise that’s been made. Zero on the count means we do the thing, or we just did the thing. The commitment gets made first. A countdown just carries what’s already been decided.

I’m exhausted tonight after a six-hour round trip to Chicago.

The drive got intense… congestion, a missed exit, and eventually an extra 20 minutes tacked onto my arrival time. No big deal in the end.

But sitting in that traffic made me think about fear-setting, the practice of writing down the worst-case scenario instead of only focusing on goals.

Most of the time, the “worst case” is just temporary discomfort, not catastrophe. And that discomfort can actually stretch us, extend our range, and build our ability to do hard things.

The opposite is also true: when we avoid discomfort, we shrink our range. We fossilize. We stagnate. That’s a bad way to age.

Today the traffic reminded me that growth often hides inside inconvenience.

His comment:

“I have had to learn to shut my mouth to keep the peace at home. Smoking weed helps me with this so I don’t call out my wife’s behavior. I am not going to risk my marriage or my family over stupid disagreements. I just light up a joint and go do my own thing. I know it sounds dumb, but that is the best way to keep the peace as an aging man with a family.”


My response

Dear Friend,

Thank you for being open about what you shared. That acknowledgment alone takes courage.

I know a few men that think the same thoughts, feel the same fears, but never speak them out loud.

I hear how much your family and marriage mean to you and I respect that immensely. Family comes first.

But here is one concern …

Peace bought by silence or passivity is a fragile peace. It is understandable to want calm, to avoid the sparks that might start a fire, but sometimes avoiding hard conversations quietly builds a different kind of distance.

Real closeness, the most respectful and fulfilling kind, comes when we can stand in our truth and still hold each other close.

That is the hard work.

If you were my brother I would tell you to refocus your aim for a relationship where you can be yourself without having to sedate a part of who you are just to keep the peace.

That, or what the heck?!? Do you really need the weed that badly just to not be a jerk?

And I say this without preaching. I know weed can help with delivery. I know it can soften the edges.

Yet, the most difficult thing any of us will do with the women we love is find the hard words and speak them with enough care that they become a bridge instead of a wall.

Tough stuff. Worthy pursuit.

I am not criticizing. Honestly, half the time smoking weed and retreating to your own thing is probably the right call.

But I want you to know this. It is not dumb to admit what you admitted.

Many men fear losing their families as the years pass, but in my experience the deeper loss is if you were to slowly lose yourself along the way, and never make that realization.

Food for thought. Grist for the grindstone. Thank you for bringing the realness to the table.

Keep going. Keep growing.

Eric “just a guy that has tried and failed at this stuff, too” Walker

Part 2. Continued from “Looking Away“

Just like that, I felt redeemed.

I was leaving my local food co-op when I saw him again. Earlier, I had passed him in the parking lot, mumbling to himself, a Bible tucked under his arm. He was one of those people you see milling about downtown who doesn’t seem “right” in the head.

As I walked out of the food co-op, he approached me. I figured he was going to ask me for money.

Instead, he asked:

“Will you pray for me?”

I did not hesitate. I reached for his hand, and when our palms met, I did not let go. I cannot recall every word, but I prayed aloud:

“Dear Father in Heaven, please shine a light on this man. Please guide his steps and bless him in a meaningful way that will make a positive difference in his life. Amen.”

When I finished, he began to walk away. Then he turned back to me.

“No one has prayed for me in a long time,” he said. “Thank you.”

What he could not have known is that he had just blessed me. His request had been a gift.

I had been given a second chance to do the thing I had turned away from before.

Part 1.

Today I walked past a haggard looking homeless woman ugly crying on a picnic table on my way back to my car coming from the downtown library.

Her shirt was torn away above the belly button and hung loose on her unkept frame. Her pants were torn and dirty.

Through the tear in her pants, I saw a bloody scraped knee. She curled into herself in a way that spoke of deep exhaustion.

Her smell reached me even from several feet away. It was the unmistakable smell of old sweat mixed with alcohol.

I thought of Jesus who could have laid hands on this woman and made it feel better and healed all the wounds that she’s suffering from.

For a moment I considered approaching her to offer a hug, or a hand on her shoulder with a prayer. This pull toward compassion caught me off guard.

But she was so ugly and so nasty looking and so distressed that I turned the other way and kept walking.

These words sound harsh as I write them, but that’s what happened. My body recoiled at the thought of getting closer.  I focused my eyes elsewhere.

Then I thought of Peter, who denied knowing Jesus three times when the moment came to stand with Him.

Despite all his passionate declarations of loyalty, when fear took hold, Peter claimed he’d never even met the man he’d followed for years.

I felt what I imagined to be a similar recognition wash over me. I had just denied this woman’s humanity the same way Peter had denied Christ.

An unsettled feeling stuck in my chest. It stayed with me as I walked to my car. It was that familiar hot feeling when you know you’ve failed some essential test of who you want to be.

How many people like me have looked the other way? How many times has she been invisible to those who could have offered even the smallest gesture of recognition?

As I was driving home, the encounter gripped me. The image of her crying, puffy, and dirty faced, along with what feels like my own failure. 

Maybe that’s what Peter felt after his third denial.

As I pen these thoughts, I can only describe it as a weight that won’t lift, and refuses to let me forget.

Which makes me consider that maybe redemption begins with feelings of guilt or shame.

Read what happened the next day when I was given a second chance.

You can give away pieces of yourself you will never get back. I held some of mine too tightly, thinking there would be more time. If sorrow could buy one more tomorrow with you, I would welcome it. The past is heavy. The future feels unsteady. I walk alone in the rain wishing you were beside me. Your smile is trapped in a picture frame but in my mind it is still warm. Everything I want is everything I once held. Once, your kisses were mine.