Our 25th wedding anniversary arrives in September, but (1) both of us are in perennial busy seasons then and (2) I was told one of the best times to visit Slovenia was when May transitions to June. Last November, while my wife sweated out a missions trip in Sierra Leon, I designed a trip and crafted a proposal for a 6-day circuit of the Julian Alps and the Gulf of Trieste.
This might be the one part of my faith experience American Christian Nationalism hasn’t spoiled yet.
My sister posted a meme the other day, joking that God had to be a girl dad. Since I have a daughter, I Googled “girl dad” to see if I qualified for that label, too.
I had to sneak adventure into the cracks of 2024, as I worked 122% of the hours and 117% of the days I worked last year. But I had many beautiful, human moments where no photos were captured that live on in my journal and heart. But here are some that did make it onto the visual record.
What I found within the books on the list below were ideas and language that resonated with my soul. These thoughts and words kneaded a heart I’d laid bare to the world for months. These author’s anecdotes and antidotes carried me from one therapy session to another.
Over the last several years, I’ve been in the process of redefining what “family” means to me, what I value in friendships, and even what I want my legacy to be. I’ve been discovering that the tribes that used to help me describe who I am no longer prescribe who I’m becoming. I’ve been learning that I fit into fewer and fewer boxes—that less of my identity can be transcribed with shorthand. I’m still trying to figure out who I am, what I believe, and where I fit into this world. For the time being, a fraction of that is connected to a Japanese machine in my driveway. Whether or not I’m a “truck guy,” this pickup will take me places that’ll push me closer to the me I want to be.
November has been hyperbolic for me so far: rich moments that landed on my soul, anxious hours that’ve taxed my system, and pangs that have constricted my heart. So, I’ve escaped into the hills and the Psalm 121 that tells me to look for peace there.
What you’ll notice in online spaces is that most of the voices for sexual justice are female. The witnesses, whistleblowers, journalists, and protestors are mostly women. That may be part of why young women are leaving the church in droves at rates higher than young men are. Few Christian men want to go on record with their opinions. Few of the men in my parachurch Bible study seem comfortable with my passion for the topic.
I have only a handful of pictures of me as a kid. But tonight I was taken back to this picture because of a seemingly unrelated assignment at work.
I try not to take for granted that I mostly fly for free. I get to see so much of the world because I can jump countries and continents for less than what the airport parking will charge me when I return. Instead of complacency, that gift fills me with wonder that I can do what any caesar or pharaoh couldn’t—what titans like Carnegie and Rockefeller never experienced. I can start one day on one side of the ocean and start the next in another. I can hold my wife’s hand on two different continents on the same day and take pictures of creatures below the waves. I can leave the anvil on which I beat out a living and glide above the clouds.
I came to the high desert in hopes of finding a potential missing piece of myself. I also arrived with a boatload of insecurities (per usual) and even a wrong motive or two. But I left the wild lands of southern Utah with a sense of accomplishment, a filter for looking at my spiritual community back home, and tons of pictures I didn’t take.
I have a choice today to worry if I’ll ever see that road rager again, if he’ll be parked outside on some random night. I’m posting this to free me from rehearsing the story. And I guess that’s why I wrote my latest book—so my brain can move onto other stories, other adventures, and other nights’ sleeps.
Depending on which framework you study, people of faith have seven to nine different spiritual pathways. If you’re new to this concept, think of The 5 Love Languages—but with the sense of connection being vertical instead of horizontal. I take the test every few years, and my top two pathways are nature and then music. That’s why my spiritual adventure community meets most of the year outdoors. That’s why most of my prayers happen where there is no roof. And that’s why I’ve cried alone on dusty woodland trails while trying to sing along with spiritual songs. As I’ve rebuilt my faith after growing up in the trauma-riddled home of an abusive pastor from one of America’s biggest cults, I’ve had to reconsider a lot of who I thought God was and is. I’ve done a lot of that reconstruction out in nature, often while wearing headphones.
Podcasters have asked me how I rebuilt my faith after the trauma I experienced at the hands of my (pastor) dad, unsafe churches, and malignant indoctrination. Part of the answer to that question arrives in the process my therapist described of re-secured attachment. I have moved from the faith family I was given to a faith family I’ve chosen. In particular, my reconstruction has been guided by four categories of voices, examples, and connections in my life.
Abuse makes sense in light of what I was taught in churches, Christian schools, religious summer camps, and college courses. Instead of focusing on a winsome Good Shepherd who protects his sheep, I was one of millions of Americans conditioned to overlook verbal, physical, and sexual abuse. Predators and their enablers have indoctrinated potential victims, whistleblowers, and justice seekers with hijacked Bible verses, conditioning congregations for the inexcusable. Because of this, I’ve found the abuse of women and children—sexual or otherwise—has proven to be a feature, not a bug, of the religious institutions of my youth.
Standing up for the church’s victims, advocating for women in faith spaces, and seeking justice for powerful perpetrators will cost men friends, positions, and inclusion. But none of us will ever give up as much as Jesus did. And none of us can say we’ve fully taken up our crosses to follow him, if the women in our shared spaces don’t know we’d give up everything for their physical, emotional, and spiritual safety.
I didn’t think I’d ever return to Big Bend National Park. I’d visited three times in the past decade or so, and there are so many places on my list to see for the first time. But a close friend who’d never been to this wilderness asked me to show him around this hauntingly-beautiful corner of our country, and I’m so glad he did.
When I was young, you’d never have caught me in the woods alone—even in the daytime. But now I hike in the dark on Candlers Mountain every week. Tonight, as I luxuriated in a full moon and solitude, I tried to remember my first-ever treks in the dark. Between you and me, they were the times I was too scared to stay home
I’m working hard to bend the trajectory of life, to rewrite the story of my years on this planet. For years, I looked for that renovated legacy at awards ceremonies, in adrenaline-infused videos, on foreign continents, and with the books I’ve written. At this stage of my healing journey, though, I’m growing more content with offline affirmations from a quiet, faithful life. I don’t know how many books I’ll sell, how big I’ll grow my business, or how many countries I’ll eventually visit. But I know something more important: there are little feet that feel comfortable in my socks.
It was a holy moment. I struggled to feel worthy of the assignment. A beautiful soul trusted me with a vulnerable, passionate request. She was all of the parents in the Gospels who beseeched Jesus to heal their children. She was the thief on the cross who asked Jesus to remember him in his next kingdom. She was the exasperated man who cried out to Jesus, “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.”
And all of that was tucked into my shoulder.
A year ago today, I was snowmobiling in Idaho. I’m just now posting memories from the trip, but I can go back to moments from this weekend instantaneously. The conversations and the solitude, the whine of the Ski Doos and the thunder of waterfalls, the high altitude trails and the flat open fields. I invited about 70 guys on this trip, and Jesus knew which three would be able to go—the dudes with whom I was meant to experience it all.
Gramma didn’t know who I was. I didn’t need her to know. I was in good company, as she didn’t know half of the people who encircled her. In the bright rays of an August afternoon, she smiled as she searched my eyes—satisfied to sit with strangers. A tiny sparkle of wonder glistened between her eyelids. In her dementia, she had forgotten to maintain any façades, and she didn’t need to remember. She was the real Bette at a picnic table with nobody to impress, no masks to hold against her wrinkled cheeks. Her wheelchair held the antithesis of a culture that needs the world to know who we are and then affirm it. My aunt combed the disheveled hair and inspected the gnarled toes of a woman who owned the antidote to my decades of striving for significance. I realized in that moment that my grandmother at her core was exactly who I wanted to remember for always. She was who I want to be at her age.
I broke. Hot tears slid down my cheeks. I didn’t say anything to Aaron for a long time. I didn’t even turn around where he could see my liquid emotions. I was about to return home for the final phase of releasing a book about losing my dad to a very different selfishness, and Jesus knew how to reveal his Good Father’s heart to me. He sent a heron, full of memories from my childhood on the Chesapeake Bay and with figurative meaning from a book that salved my heart. In the front of that canoe, I now knew I would leave that desert with a nourished heart.
These books influenced my healing journey and spiritual reconstruction. Inclusion on this list doesn’t indicate endorsement, but I found ideas in these books that challenged, affirmed, and/or commiserated with my lived experience.
Usually, this annual list holds a variety of subject matter. I enjoy following my curiosity into random corners of pop culture. But this year, as I conducted research for a book proposal and then prepared for my upcoming publicity tour, I read and listened to books almost as homework. Their content unfolded as adjacent to the 80,000± words I’ve been editing all year in advance of the April 2024 release of my next book. So, if you’re sensing a theme in the list, your radar is well-tuned.