David Izor

Exploring the Humor and Absurdity of Life

Category: Writing

  • Prelapse and the Art of Disappearing

    There’s a peculiar skill some of us develop in recovery: the ability to be surrounded by people and still live like a raccoon under a porch.

    People invite us in. They save us a seat. They say, “Good to see you.” and they mean it. Someone texts. Someone notices when we’re gone. Someone from church shakes your hand and remembers the thing we told them three weeks ago, which is both deeply kind and mildly alarming because now we have evidence we were noticed.

    After engaging for a while, after smiling and nodding and doing our best impression of a functioning adult with a calendar and appropriate footwear, something in us quietly backs toward the exit.

    Not physically at first, we disappear mentally.

    We’re still in the room, but we’re no longer available. We start interpreting faces. We read pauses like court transcripts. Someone’s tired expression becomes an indictment. A delayed text becomes abandonment. A short reply becomes proof that they’ve finally discovered what we’ve always suspected: that we’re exhausting, disappointing, unstable, or one confession away from being returned to whatever emotional warehouse defective people come from.

    Nobody says this, of course.

    That’s what makes the whole thing so effective. We don’t require evidence, we’re more than happy to manufacture it in-house. Shame will take ordinary human behavior—silence, fatigue, distraction, busyness—and produces a custom-made verdict: They’re judging me.

    And once that verdict is reached, we do what seems reasonable, we retreat.

    We’ll stop texting back. We miss church. We skip the meeting. We tell ourselves we need space, which sounds healthy and mature, like something a therapist might say while holding tea. But not all space is rest, sometimes space is just isolation wearing linen pants.

    Then physical isolation follows mental isolation like a faithful dog.

    We go dark.

    At first, it feels like relief. No expectations, no explaining, no one asking how we’re doing, no one seeing the inconsistency in our life. No one questioning the gap between what we say we want and how we’re living. Isolation has a terrible habit of becoming a room with no windows.

    The shame grows louder and the old comfort begins to clear its throat. Resentment pulls up a chair. Self-pity opens a bag of chips. Fear starts narrating the documentary of our failure. Eventually relapse appears, not as a monster, but as a comforter.

    That’s the danger.

    Relapse rarely begins with the drink, the pill, the screen, the secret, or the escape. It begins when we become unreachable and distant.The substance or behavior simply enters a house we’ve already abandoned.

    The painful irony is that many of us don’t isolate because nobody loves us, we isolate because people do.

    Love feels dangerous when we don’t trust it. Acceptance feels suspicious when shame has been our native language our whole life. Community feels exposing when we’re accustomed to surviving by hiding.

    So we do this strange thing: we long to be known, but panic when people get close enough to actually know us. We want brotherhood, but we also want an emergency exit. We want grace, as long as it’s delivered without eye contact.

    This is where recovery and faith meet on common ground. Recovery tells us we can’t heal alone and the gospel tells us we aren’t saved by presenting a cleaned-up version of ourselves. Both truths are offensive to the isolated self.

    Because the isolated self wants to control.

    It says:
    “I’ll return when I’m stronger.”
    “I’ll answer when I’m less ashamed.”
    “I’ll show up when I can explain myself.”
    “I’ll be known after I become impressive and stable.”

    But grace doesn’t work that way.

    Grace isn’t God saying, “Clean yourself up and then you can come.” Grace is God coming near while we’re still hiding behind the bushes, sewing together whatever emotional fig leaves we can find. Grace isn’t sentimental softness, It’s the terrifying kindness of being seen and known completely and not being cast away.

    That’s what makes it so hard to receive.

    Many of us can believe in discipline. We can believe in consequences. We can believe in accountability, restitution, meetings, routines, prayer, fitness, work, and becoming useful.

    Those things are easier to trust because they give us something concrete to do and hold on to. Discipline has handles we can grip. Love has open hands, and that’s what frightens us.

    Because love is harder than discipline.

    Love asks us to hold still while someone blesses us without the need for us to earn it. Love asks us to believe we’re more than our worst chapter and to stop cross-examining every act of kindness as though affection or fellowship must have a hidden clause.

    When we have hurt people, destroyed trust, disappointed our families, embarrassed ourselves, or lived for years with a divided soul, receiving love can feel almost offensive. Some part of us says, “Don’t let them be kind to you. They don’t know you enough yet.” However, maybe they know more than we give them credit for. Maybe they actually know enough to know we’re not finished and we need help. Maybe they’re not as naïve as we project. Maybe they’re genuinely showing mercy and generosity simply out of genuine love.

    This doesn’t mean everyone is safe, it doesn’t mean every person deserves access to our inner life. Wisdom matters and boundaries matter. Not every handshake is brotherhood, and not every smiling person should be handed the keys to the cellar.

    If we treat all love as a threat, we’ll eventually protect ourselves into loneliness.

    So the work is simple, but not easy: stop disappearing.

    When the thought comes—They’re judging me—we pause, and we don’t crown it king. We ask for evidence and consider other explanations. We remember that feelings are real, but they’re not always reliable witnesses.

    Then we do one small brave thing.

    We send the text. “I’m starting to isolate. I don’t need you to fix it. I just need you to help not disappear.”

    That’s not dramatic it’s warfare.

    We go to the meeting and sit in the back if we must. We go to church and let the awkward handshakes happen. We accept the invitation to coffee even if we feel like a badly folded napkin. We tell a trustworthy person the truth before shame turns it into a novel.

    The goal isn’t to become emotionally needy, the goal is to stay reachable.

    Because a reachable man can be helped. A hidden man can only be hunted by his own thoughts.

    There’s humility in staying connected while feeling insecure. It’s admitting, “My instincts aren’t always my shepherd.” Often times they’re a drunk raccoon with a flashlight, leading me back under the porch.

    So today, I don’t have to feel secure to act securely.

    I don’t have to believe everyone understands me to let someone love me.

    I don’t have to wait until shame leaves before I walk toward community.

    I can be unfinished and still show up.

    I can be afraid and still answer the phone.

    I can feel judged and still refuse to vanish.

    And maybe that’s how healing begins—not with a grand transformation, but with the small, stubborn refusal to go dark when love is still leaving the porch light on.

  • Fear and Sobriety

    Sobriety arrives carrying a clipboard, wearing sensible shoes, and asking me to sign forms I’m fairly certain I never agreed to read.

    It wants eye contact. It wants returned phone calls. It wants court dates remembered, doctor appointments kept, bank statements opened, apologies made, and the emotional maturity of someone who owns matching towels, which seems excessive. I preferred my feelings the way some people prefer their vegetables: hidden inside something else and covered in sauce. This is alarming, especially if my previous life philosophy was mostly, “Let’s not open that envelope.”

    Getting sober doesn’t just mean putting down the substance. It means picking up reality and engaging community, which is heavier than expected and comes with terrible handles. Suddenly there are consequences to face, people to answer to, trust to rebuild, and responsibilities standing in the hallway like disappointed relatives.

    One of the quiet fears of sobriety is that people may start depending on me again. That sounds beautiful until I remember I’ve spent years being about as dependable as a folding chair at a family reunion. Being needed can feel like a compliment and a threat at the same time. What if I fail them? What if I disappoint them again? What if becoming trustworthy means I can no longer live as though my actions happen in a private weather system?

    I may fear accountability because accountability removes my favorite costumes: victim, misunderstood genius, exhausted martyr, and tragic philosopher of the couch. It asks me to stop blaming my childhood, my heartbreak, my stress, the courts, my ex, the economy, or the suspiciously aggressive moon.

    I may fear maturity because it sounds like boredom wearing pleated khakis. I may fear peace because chaos, at least, gave me something to narrate. Sobriety can feel dull at first because the nervous system is used to sirens. A quiet evening can feel suspicious, as if peace is setting a trap.

    But fear is not always a warning to run. Sometimes fear is the soul’s smoke alarm going off because something old is finally burning down.

    Today, I don’t have to become perfect. I don’t have to become the patron saint of balanced living by lunch. I only have to tell the truth, show up, do the next right thing, and resist the urge to retreat into the comfort that was slowly killing me.

    Sobriety gives me reality and community back. At first, reality feels rude. Then, slowly, it becomes a type of mercy.

    Today, courage may look small: brushing my teeth, answering one message, making one appointment, paying one bill, admitting one truth, especially staying present when I want to disappear.

    Fear may come with me, however, it does not get to drive.

  • The Quiet Mercy of the River

    The Art of Not Being Seen

    There are places where creation doesn’t simply exist but quietly interprets reality for us. The Santa Ana River Basin in spring is one of those places. It doesn’t argue or insist; it rearranges your soul. Standing there with my friend Daniel along the cold current, fly rods in hand, I realized how rarely I’m still before God. Not outwardly still—anyone can stand quietly—but inwardly, where the mind tends to hum like a generator left running too long. Yet here, among cedar and stone, the landscape refuses to cooperate with that kind of noise. It exposes it. It softens it. It begins, almost imperceptibly, to undo it.

    The river moves with a steady intelligence, slipping over granite shelves and curling into seams where trout hold in patient suspension, invisible unless you’ve learned to read the water like a language. The riffles chatter, the deeper runs murmur, and the current draws long, glassy lines that promise possibility but deliver nothing without humility and patience. The sound is constant, but it isn’t empty—it’s structured and layered, like something composed rather than accidental. If you stand long enough, you begin to sense that the river isn’t sustaining itself. It’s being sustained. Every movement, every glint of light across its surface, every insect riding the current—it all exists because the Creator continues to will it so.

    The air carries that dense, almost sweet smell of conifers and cedar, as if the forest has been steeping in itself for decades. A breeze slips through the canyon, just enough to lift the line slightly, just enough to remind you that wind can be either companion or saboteur. Too much, and your cast collapses, your drift betrays you, your fly skates unnaturally across the current like a lie that’s trying too hard. But here, the breeze behaves, most of the time. It moves with restraint, like it understands that even the smallest disruption can undo the illusion you’re trying to create.

    Fly fishing in a place like this isn’t a hobby so much as a negotiation with reality. You step into the river carefully, feeling the slick resistance of algae-coated rock beneath your boots, each step placed with a kind of reverence. The riverbed shifts just enough to remind you that you’re not in control. The water presses against your legs with quiet insistence, as if to say, You’re in my world now. Behave accordingly.

    You strip line from the reel, let it hang loose in your hand, then begin the rhythm—back cast, pause, forward cast, the rod loading and unloading like a breath you didn’t realize you were holding. The line unfurls in the air, loops tight and clean if you’ve done it right, sloppy and tangled if you haven’t. The fly lands on the water with the faintest suggestion of life, and then the real work begins—the drift.

    Because everything depends on the drift.

    Too fast, and it’s unnatural.
    Too slow, and it’s suspicious.
    Too controlled, and it’s obvious.

    The goal is something far more difficult—to let it move as if you’re not there at all.

    And that’s where the lesson begins to press in.

    We often live as though what’s hidden has no consequence, as though the unseen parts of our lives don’t enter the current. But the river makes this impossible to believe. Every misplaced step, every careless movement, every shadow cast across the surface—it all travels. It all registers. The trout feels it long before you see the result. And before God, it’s no different. There is no private drift. No hidden current. What we are beneath the surface moves outward, shaping what follows.

    The trout itself becomes something of a quiet rebuke. It won’t be coerced. It won’t respond to your urgency or your carefully constructed logic about how this should work. It demands something else entirely—precision, patience, and a kind of humility that acknowledges you’re entering a system you didn’t design. You can’t dominate this. You can only learn to move within it.

    Daniel stood downstream, casting into a slow run that curved beneath a fallen branch. His line traced clean arcs through the morning light, unhurried, deliberate. There’s a companionship in fly fishing that doesn’t require conversation, which is fortunate, because most of what you might say would either be unnecessary or wrong. We weren’t there to entertain each other. We were there to stand in something given, something neither of us controlled, something that—if we were honest—felt closer to prayer than most of the words we’ve spoken in quieter rooms.

    Above us, the canyon carried on without concern for our presence. Songbirds stitched quick lines of sound through the air, sharp and fleeting. A pair of crows hovered overhead, circling with that slow, deliberate confidence that suggests they’ve already assessed your situation and found it mildly amusing. Further up the ridge, red-shouldered hawk fledglings stumbled through their early attempts at flight, lifting awkwardly from branch to branch, as if learning in real time that what they were made for would take practice.

    There’s no anxiety in any of it. The birds don’t compare themselves. The river doesn’t hesitate. The trees don’t strain toward some imagined better version of themselves. They exist as they were created to exist, sustained by a God who doesn’t need their assistance to keep things running. And here we are, standing in the middle of it, trying to master what was never meant to be controlled.

    At some point, without quite realizing it, your mind begins to quiet. Not completely—this isn’t a miracle—but just enough. Enough that the usual noise fades into the background. You begin to notice things you would’ve missed. The way the current dips just before a submerged rock. The slight hesitation of your line as it drifts. The subtle difference between water that holds fish and water that doesn’t.

    And in that attention, something begins to change.

    You’re no longer trying to control the experience.
    You’re responding to it.

    There’s grace in that shift.

    You can’t force the trout to rise. You can’t command the river to cooperate. You can only present what you have—imperfect as it is—and let it move through the current. And waiting, here, doesn’t feel like wasted time. It feels like participation. Like trust practiced in small, quiet increments.

    The rocks beneath your feet shift again, just slightly, reminding you that even now, stability is provisional. But the river doesn’t stop. It doesn’t need perfect footing to continue. It moves because God sustains it, not because conditions are ideal. And maybe that’s the deeper reassurance. Your life isn’t together because you’ve managed it well. It’s held together because God hasn’t let go.

    The sun lifts higher, cutting through the trees at a sharper angle now, lighting the water in fractured patterns of gold and shadow. You adjust your stance, careful with your shadow, careful with your line, and cast again. The fly lands softly, drifting along the seam, indistinguishable from the insects that ride the surface in quiet abundance.

    And for a moment—just a moment—it all aligns.

    The cast.
    The drift.
    The stillness.
    The grace.

    Not because you’ve mastered anything, but because you’ve stopped interfering and started participating instead.

    Daniel glances up, gives a small nod, and returns to his line. No words are needed. They’d only shrink the moment.

    This is the quiet art of not being seen—not in the sense of disappearing, but in the sense of humility before the Creator. To be present without imposing. To move without announcing yourself. To realize you’re not the center of this story, and to feel, for once, that this is not a loss but a relief..

    Because the river doesn’t need your performance.
    The trout doesn’t need you to succeed.
    God, most certainly, doesn’t need you to control anything.

    You’re simply invited to stand, to cast, to wait. And whether the trout rises or not, you remain.

    Held—not by your footing, not by your casting, not by how well you’ve read the water—but by the steady, sustaining faithfulness of the One who made it all.

    And in Him, there is peace.

    Even here.
    Especially here.
    So you cast again…

  • Nowhere Left to Hide and No Way Home

    Bottles in Bushes

    There was a time in my life when I believed, with a kind of quiet confidence that only denial can produce, that hiding something meant it no longer counted. It wasn’t gone exactly, but it was managed, relocated, tucked just far enough out of sight that it couldn’t possibly affect anyone else. It was like shoving clutter into a closet five minutes before guests arrive and declaring the house “clean” while knowing full well that one curious hand on the wrong doorknob would unravel the entire illusion.

    It started with bushes. Not metaphorical ones, but actual bushes—the ones along the side yard of my own house and the ones scattered throughout the neighborhood. Ordinary shrubs that I slowly turned into unwilling accomplices as I began shoving vodka bottles deep into their branches, pushing them past leaves and twigs until they disappeared. I convinced myself that concealment was control, and that if I couldn’t see them then neither could anyone else, and therefore nothing was really happening.

    I would walk outside casually, glance around like I was checking the weather or considering yard work, and then grab a bottle out of my favorite bush, and take long and heavy swig. I treated it like a small, harmless act when in reality it was part of a system that was anything but harmless. Before long, the operation expanded, because denial rarely stays contained.

    Soon it wasn’t just bushes. It was boxes in the garage, carefully placed and vaguely labeled so no one would think to open them. It was vodka bottles hidden in my toolbox beside tools I rarely used, as if proximity to something practical could somehow justify what was being concealed. The shed out back became a kind of annex where I could close the door and continue the illusion that I was managing something rather than losing it.

    I had a system, a detailed and unnecessary system that required far more effort than honesty ever would have. It was a full time job with poor benefits. At the center of it was a belief that felt protective but was actually destructive: “as long as they didn’t know, it couldn’t hurt them.” It was a logic that only works if reality agrees to cooperate, which it never does.

    Even when the bottles were hidden—whether in the bushes on my side yard, the ones down the street, the boxes in the garage, or the shed out back—something was still happening. Something was still being felt, even if I refused to acknowledge it.

    Alongside this belief was another one that made everything feel justified. I didn’t think I had a drinking problem. That would have required honesty. What I believed instead was that other people had a problem with my drinking, that the issue wasn’t what I was doing but how it was being perceived.

    Concern became criticism. Care became control. Love became interference. When someone said that they were worried about me, what I heard was that they were trying to limit me, which I translated into a need to hide things better rather than address what was actually happening.

    So I improved the system. Better bushes, better boxes, better timing. I became the defense attorney for my own behavior, presenting arguments that sounded convincing as long as you ignored the fact that I was actively stepping into my side yard to shove vodka bottles into shrubs like I was feeding something that lived there.

    I told myself “I still went to work,” that “I’m not like other people,” that “I can stop anytime.” Meanwhile, I was demonstrating through my actions that I could not stop hiding things in increasingly creative places.

    The lie was simple: if I didn’t call it a problem, it wasn’t one. For a while, that worked internally. Externally, it was clear that something was off, especially to my wife.

    She didn’t need to catch me in the act or know every hiding place to understand that something wasn’t right. She felt it in the inconsistency, in the distance, in the way I was physically present but emotionally unavailable. I was there, but I wasn’t really there.

    Then there were the moments when the system failed. Not all at once, but in small, repeated discoveries. A bottle found in the garage, another in the shed, something out of place that couldn’t be explained. My life had turned into a tragic episode of Tom and Jerry

    Each time she found one, it wasn’t just about the bottle. It was about what it represented. Another instance of dishonesty. Another moment where the truth had to be uncovered instead of offered. Another confirmation that what I said and what I did were not aligned and completely disjointed.

    Every time, it hurt her. Every bottle she found was another dagger. Not dramatic, but real. The kind of hurt that settles in and becomes a permanent squatter.

    Still, I minimized it. I told myself it was just one, that it wasn’t a big deal, that she was overreacting. Which is a remarkable thing to say when someone is reacting exactly as the situation warrants.

    I made myself the victim. I convinced myself I was misunderstood and that the pressure I felt was unfair. I wrapped myself in a sodden cloak of self-pity so completely, that I couldn’t see the person in front of me absorbing the consequences of my choices.

    What I didn’t see—what I refused to see—was her sacrifice. Over and over again, she chose to stay, to hope, to believe that maybe “this time would be different,” that maybe I would come out of the shadows before another bottle betrayed my operation.

    That kind of hope isn’t passive. It costs emotional energy , resilience, and the willingness to trust again after being hurt. She paid that cost repeatedly while I complained about being misunderstood.

    Looking back now, I can see it clearly. She was holding things together while I quietly pulled them apart. She was investing in something I was slowly dismantling. She was choosing me over and over again while I chose something else just as consistently. She would regularly say to me that the bottle was like another woman. Which at first, I thought was an absurd comparison. Now I realize she wasn’t too far off.

    If I could go back, if I could take those bottles back from every bush in my side yard, every shrub in the neighborhood, every box in the garage, every corner of the shed, I would. Not because it would erase anything, but because I would finally understand what they meant.

    They weren’t harmless. They weren’t private. They weren’t under control. They were choices. Small, repeated choices that added up to something much larger than I was willing to admit at the time.

    Those choices led to the loss of my family. Not all at once, but gradually, in a way that felt manageable until it wasn’t. Like erosion that slowly removes what you thought was solid.

    That is the wreckage. Real and undeniable.

    And yet, here I am. Still here.

    Recovery became something different than I expected. It is not a performance or a redemption tour. It is a commitment to living without hidy-holes.

    There are no bushes now holding the loot of my secrets. No boxes in the garage filled with things I hope no one finds. No bottles tucked away anywhere. There is just me and a very uncomfortable mirror.

    And that (surprisingly) is a relief. Because there is a freedom in not having to pretend. The freedom of being able to be myself without managing a second version of reality. No more social cosplay.

    I don’t have to remember where things are hidden. I don’t have to look over my shoulder. I don’t have to rehearse explanations.

    I can sit in a room and simply be present and drink my tea. Honest. The same person everywhere.

    Today, I acknowledge the wreckage, not to live in it but to stay honest about where the old thinking leads. I acknowledge the loss, not to punish myself endlessly but to respect what was sacrificed and what I failed to see. And more importantly to learn from it.

    I let go of the belief that I didn’t have a problem and that others were the problem. And I choose something different.

    Not perfection. Not certainty. Not shame.

    Just… honesty, presence, and a willingness to live without hiding.

    One day at a time. One truth at a time. One version of myself.

    What you see is what you get, whether you like it or not…

  • Trusting God When Things Are as Clear as Mud

    Trusting God for provision sounds lovely on paper. Like something you’d cross-stitch onto a pillow and place on a chair you never sit in. But in practice? It’s a bit more like trying to bake a soufflé without a recipe, ingredients, or an oven—just blind optimism and a whisk made of anxiety.

    The bills come in. The account goes out. You stare at your refrigerator like it might spontaneously generate something redeemable, and you start to seriously question if lunch meat and cheese is nutritionally viable long-term. That’s when the Bible verses start swirling—“Consider the lilies,” “Do not worry about tomorrow”—and you wonder if any of those lilies have child support due on the 1st.

    There’s a strange tension in asking God for sustenance when you don’t even know what sustenance is anymore. Is it money? A job? A box of canned soup from someone’s church pantry? Or is it the quiet nudge that, even though things are fuzzy and frightening, you’re not doing this alone?

    Faith, I’m learning, is less about answers and more about awkwardly continuing forward while God seemingly ghosted your last five texts. It’s showing up to life—even the weird, uncertain, slightly mildewed parts—and saying, “Okay, fine. I trust you. Sort of. But I’m going to need signs. And snacks.”

    And somehow, the provision does come. A friend checks in. A check appears. A bit of peace sneaks into your chest like a cat finding a sunny spot on the carpet. That’s how he works I suppose..

    So no, I don’t have clarity. I have a God who listens. And a very questionable freezer. So I’ll keep walking. I’ll keep praying. And keep trusting. And maybe checking under the couch cushions one more time, just in case provision looks like loose change.

  • Self-Sabotage and Other Olympic Events

    There’s this grating little narrator in my head who’s made a full-time career out of sabotage. He sounds like an anxious substitute teacher with a superiority complex—endlessly muttering things like, “Sure, try starting your business, but don’t come crying to me when you fail spectacularly and your childhood dentist hears about it.” Charming, right?

    He thrives on doubt. A real connoisseur of self-sabotage. And just when I start building momentum—showing up to meetings, responding to emails like an adult—he slinks in with that smug tone: “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

    As if that weren’t enough, I also spend an inordinate amount of time complaining about things entirely within my control. “Why is this place so messy?” I say aloud, stepping over the laundry pile I created like it’s a permanent art installation. “I just feel so stuck lately,” I moan, while choosing to eat a block of cheese and scroll Instagram instead of doing literally anything to move forward.

    This, dear reader, is the internal ecosystem of someone who simultaneously dreams big and resents having to change socks.

    But here’s the thing: that voice is old. And lazy. And wrong. So these days, I try to do the opposite of what it suggests. Show up. Fold the laundry. Write the thing. Attend the meeting. Call your friends back.

    Because the real villain isn’t the chaos. It’s the part of me pretending I’m powerless in the face of my own dishes.

  • Brick by Brick, Breath by Breath

    Rebuilding your life after a chronic relapse feels a bit like renovating a house that’s already burned down—while you’re still living in it. You’re brushing your teeth in a sink that doesn’t drain– trying to “manifest stability” while the roof leaks shame and missed court dates.

    There’s the rubble: work you lost because you were too foggy to show up, weekends with your kids that disappeared into the fog of consequences, opportunities that stood at the door politely until they got tired and left. And now here you are, staring at the mess with a hammer in one hand and a Google search for “How to start over (again)” in the other.

    The temptation is to sprint, to fast-forward your way through healing. To prove—to everyone, to yourself, to the ghost of that last DUI—that this time you’re serious. But the wreckage won’t allow that. Rubble doesn’t rush. It teaches. And what it teaches most is patience.

    You build this life slowly. Sober mornings. Honest phone calls. Apologies without strings. The hard parts aren’t always the cravings—they’re the quiet mornings without your kids, the job lead that ghosts you, the reminder that trust is earned slowly and paid in installments.

    But here’s the thing: brick by brick is still building. Breath by breath is still breathing.

    You haven’t missed your chance. You’re just in the part of the story where the foundation is being poured—deep, steady, painful and real this time.

    And maybe someday your kids will walk through the front door of this rebuilt life and see not the rubble—but the courage it took to rebuild it.

  • Wrestling in Grace

    Grace rarely arrives through ease. More often, it is born in the middle of a spiritual wrestling match—bloody knuckled, breathless, and undone. When we engage in unconditional wrestling—a raw, persistent grappling with our doubts, our shame, our fears, and even with God Himself—we aren’t disqualified by the struggle. We’re transformed by it.

    Like Jacob at Peniel, we wrestle not to conquer, but to cling. We wrestle because we refuse to let go without a blessing, even if that blessing leaves a limp. It’s not the polished prayers or tidy theologies that shape us most. It’s the willingness to say, “I don’t understand, but I won’t walk away.”

    In recovery, in faith, in relationships—this kind of wrestling strips away the performance and invites honesty. And when we stop trying to win and start showing up vulnerable, grace rushes in. Not because we earned it, but because we stayed.

    Today, I will not despise the wrestle. I will let it soften me, not harden me. Because grace is not given to those who get it right, but to those who refuse to give up—even when their legs shake and their heart is tired.

  • Amnesia and the Art of Forgetting the Come Down

    It’s remarkable, really, how quickly I can forget the come down. One minute I’m swearing off everything stronger than herbal tea, and the next I’m fondly reminiscing about the “good times” like some unreliable narrator in a Netflix docuseries titled How Did We Get Here Again?

    Recovery amnesia is sneaky. It doesn’t just erase the carnage—it crops it. It edits out the shakes, the shame, the hospital visits, the texts I shouldn’t have sent (all 42 of them), and replaces it with a gauzy montage of euphoric nonsense. Wasn’t I fun? Didn’t that run end with a sunrise and poetry? No. It ended in the ER with my pants inside out and a half-eaten granola bar stuck to my forehead.

    But still, the forgetting happens. Like emotional dry rot. You remember the glitter but not the cleanup. The rush but not the crash. You forget the way the silence felt afterward—how cold it was, how alone you were, how your soul felt like it had been evicted from your own body.

    That’s why recovery needs anchors: meetings, journals, awkward honesty, and people who will lovingly remind you how incredibly horrible you treated yourself.

    So today, when the highlight reel plays, I’ll hit pause. I’ll remember the full story. Not to punish myself, but to stay free.

    Because the come down wasn’t just a bad night. It was the thing that nearly ended me. And I didn’t crawl out of that pit just to jump back in because nostalgia suddenly showed up in a leather jacket.

    No thanks. I’ll keep the herbal tea—and my dignity.

  • The Coyote Mindset

    Mark Twain’s description of the coyote in his book Roughing It is possibly the best metaphor for the feelings of isolation that often accompany personal growth. He calls the coyote a “long, slim, sick and sorry-looking skeleton, with a gray wolf-skin stretched over it.” Which, coincidentally, is exactly how I feel when in this season of growth. Like some awkward, half-starved creature stumbling through recovery, unsure whether I’m progressing or just making a fool of myself.

    When you start to grow, you leave behind your old ways, but you haven’t quite found solid footing in the new. Often you can feel stuck in this uncomfortable in-between, much like Twain’s coyote. Alienated, twitchy, and deeply uncool. The coyote doesn’t command the respect of the noble wolf, nor does it have the carefree charm of a house dog. It just slinks around, judged by everyone often family, including (and especially) itself. And if you think about it, that’s what happens when we abandon our old identities and try to become something more. There’s a deep loneliness in realizing that personal growth often means standing apart, and insecurity loves to feast on the fear of not belonging.

    Jordan Peterson writes that we need to push forward anyway, and consciously carry the “burden of transformation” even when I feel ridiculous or out of place. Today, I will embrace my awkward growth phase, knowing that discomfort is not a sign of failure but of progress. i will guard against the mental isolation that I use to operate in, I will embrace and employ what I am learning in this phase of my growth, despite the expectations and judgements of others. I may not be a wolf at this point, but I sure as hell don’t have to stay a starving coyote.

  • Welcome.

    I’ve reached the age where a man begins to look at his life the way one looks at a garage that was supposed to be cleaned out three summers ago. There are useful things in here, no doubt. There are treasures. There are stories. There are also some broken lawn chairs, a box of mystery cords, and a fair amount of emotional wreckage that at one point seemed reasonable to keep.

    So this blog is, among other things, an attempt to sort through the pile.

    I’m a father. I’m a man who has made mistakes both ordinary and spectacular. I’m someone who has known what it is to lose his footing, and also what it is to get up again, slower than expected, with grass stains on his knees and just enough dignity left to call it growth. I’ve learned that a person can be both wounded and stubborn, both ashamed and hopeful, both exhausted and still willing to try again the next morning.

    That still surprises me.

    I love things that are real. Honest conversations. Dirt under the fingernails. Good stories. Deep laughter. The older I get, the less interested I am in polished performance and the more drawn I am to what is true, even when it’s awkward, inconvenient, or wearing yesterday’s clothes.

    That is part of why this blog exists.

    I’ve stepped away from the constant churn of social media and chosen something a little more old school. And when I say ”old school” I mean like early 2000s. I wanted a place to think in full sentences where I don’t
    need a ring light, a thumbnail, or a carefully rehearsed caption.. A place to say something with a little weight behind it. A place to put my mind out there without trying to become an influencer, build a brand, or turn my inner life into bait for strangers scrolling in line at Target.

    There’s nothing wrong with creating content, I suppose. But if I create anything worth sharing, it will be here.

    Not in fragments. Not in performance. Not in the strange digital flea market where every thought has to put on makeup and ask for approval. I’d rather write in a way that feels slower, more deliberate, and more honest. I love writing because it lets me discover what I actually think. It lets me take the loose wires in my head and, on a good day, braid them into something that resembles a living thought. It is one of the few places where chaos can be invited in and, with enough patience, persuaded to sit down.

    Outside of writing, I am drawn to the kinds of things that make a man’s soul quieter and more awake. Fly fishing is one of them. There is something about standing in moving water, trying to outwit a fish with a feathered hook, that restores a proper sense of proportion. The trout may be small. The river may be cold. The cast may be terrible. But for a few hours, at least, a person can be free from the modern obligation to have opinions about everything.

    I love my garden for similar reasons. Gardens are humbling places. They do not care about your plans, your moods, or your inspirational quotes. They care about sun, water, timing, patience, and whether you remembered to protect the young plants from whatever creature has been holding nightly salad bar privileges in your yard. A garden is both a sermon and a mild insult. It teaches hope, but only after exposing your laziness.

    I also share my life with animals, which has done much to improve my character by showing me how little authority I actually possess. There is Tiger Kitty, who began as a once feral cat and has now been domesticated to the degree that she occasionally accepts affection without looking as though it violates her civil liberties. This feels like progress. We have, over time, reached a mutual understanding. My family provides food, warmth, and increasingly expensive treats. She permits me the honor of existing near her, especially when I’m in the garden. She awkwardly prefers my dad, which is odd, because he’s not a cat human.

    Then there is Herschel, my crow, with whom I have attempted a similar arrangement. “Attempted” is the key word here. If Tiger Kitty is a reluctant tenant, Herschel is more like an amused visiting professor who finds my efforts charming but fundamentally unserious. I have made several vain attempts to domesticate him, if by domesticate one means hoping he might someday regard me as something more than a useful mammal with pockets. So far, Herschel remains sovereign, inscrutable, and just intelligent enough to make me feel that I am the one being observed. Hopefully, someday he’ll be bringing me $20 bills.

    Part of what I’ll write about here will be recovery, not as a slogan or a shiny poster in a counseling office, but as it actually is: daily, humbling, sometimes beautiful, sometimes boring, and often built from small choices that do not look heroic at all. Drink water. Tell the truth. Go for a walk. Pray. Apologize properly. Try again. Repeat. It lacks glamour, but it has the advantage of being real.

    I also want this place to have room for the full range of a human voice. Some posts may lean toward humor, toward the irony and absurdity of life, because often that is the most honest way to tell the truth. Other posts may be slower, deeper, and more thoughtful, reaching for language that can hold grief, gratitude, faith, beauty, and the hard work of becoming a better man. Life itself seems to require both. Sometimes you laugh because the world is ridiculous. Sometimes you go quiet because it is holy, heartbreaking, or too weighty for jokes. I suspect this blog will make room for both kinds of telling.

    I want to write about the things that keep a person alive inside. Faith. Beauty. Memory. Nature. Family. Books. Music. The odd details that stay with us for reasons we don’t fully understand. The things that break us open. The things that patch us back together. The quiet mercies that remind us a human life can still be rebuilt.

    I don’t have a grand brand statement. I don’t have a five-step framework for becoming your best self by Thursday. What I have is a life that has been hard, meaningful, funny, painful, and not yet finished. I have a desire to encourage people who are trying to make their way out of darkness, or through it, or simply around it with as little unnecessary damage as possible.

    So that’s what this is.

    A place for truth. A place for recovery. A place for writing, reflection, rivers, gardens, odd creatures, and the things that inspire me enough to sit down and try to name them properly. A place where the tone may shift from laughter at life’s strange ironies to deeper, more searching reflections on what it means to endure, believe, fail, heal, and keep going. A place to write honestly, and maybe in doing so, offer some encouragement to someone else who is still trying to stand up and make a life.

    **And yes.. I will from time to time, I use AI for editing. Which means that if a sentence here sounds unusually well-behaved, there’s a chance a machine helped comb its hair.
    95% me—5% Machine.**