220 The Quiet Fraying: A Year in the Tension of Faithful Surrender
Words echoing in this rainy morning, how have I grown?
The rain is a soft percussion on the roof this morning, a steady, gray rhythm that matches the quiet within me. My prayers are done, the coffee is cool in my mug, and the house holds its breath. I realized I have not shared much with you this week. The words have been circling, waiting for a landing strip, but the runway of my attention has been occupied.
There is a sacred clutter to my days right now. A holy distraction. It is not the noise of the world, but the close, tender sounds of a life being attended to, moment by moment.
First, there is my mother. Her behavior has been off this week. It is a subtle shifting, a dimming of the lights behind her eyes. Alzheimer’s is not a single event, it is a slow, cruel tide that erodes the coastline of a person, taking a memory here, a recognition there. This week, the water has risen. So I watch. I check her blood pressure with the solemn focus of a priest taking a sacrament. I monitor her sugar levels, the numbers on the glucometer a silent prayer for stability. It is an hourly vigil. A ministry of presence and pricked fingers.
Second, there is Wiggles, my dog. Earlier this week, a lethargy came over her. A limp I thought was a stone in her paw, a sore joint, revealed itself as something quieter, more internal. She has bounced back, her wagging, stubby tail, recalling how she earned her name as a ten week old puppy just over 5 years ago. But I watch her, too. Does she sense my mother’s fragile state in a way I cannot? Is her animal spirit tuned to a frequency of decline that my human senses are too blunt to catch? I watch them both, the woman who gave me life and the creature who shares it with me now, two beings I love, tethered to the same slow, uncertain descent.
And third, a new strange. An urge has taken root in me, a desire to learn how to produce a podcast. This is foreign territory. I am a man of spreadsheets and numbers, of mechanical fixes and physical tasks. The world of audio engineering, of mixing voices and music, of crafting a sonic space, feels like a language I do not speak. Yet, here I am, deep in the manuals, experimenting with software, learning the rules of a new creative grammar. It feels absurd and necessary all at once.
These are the things that have preoccupied me. The care, the vigilance, the new creation. They are my current assignments. My “what is mine to do.”
But this morning, with the rain whispering, I felt a pull to look back. Not for nostalgia, but for measurement. To see the line drawn from who I was to who I am becoming. A year ago this week, I published three articles. I have taken them from behind the paywall. I went back to read them this morning, to sit with the man who wrote them. To see if I recognize him. To see how far the road has turned.
Article One: “Generation X: Our Legacy?” (March 05, 2025)
A year ago, I looked at my generation and I saw architects of decay. We built the internet, the always-on connection, the world in your pocket. We turned science fiction into daily utility. And I apologized. I apologized for the collateral damage. For the high-time preference that mortgaged our children’s future. For replacing ownership with subscription, durability with planned obsolescence, community with digital nomadism. We engineered a world of breathtaking innovation and seeded it with corrupt incentives. We gave them the tools and taught them to build cages.
I wrote: “We weren’t all bad… While we have brought to society some of the most transformative technology that our grandparents could have only dreamed of, we engrafted the DNA of those technological innovations with corrupt incentives.”
I ended with a promise to God, a prayer to find my part in the reparations.
Reading it now, I see the diagnosis was accurate, but the prescription was vague. A noble desire to “bring more unity” felt like trying to bail out the ocean with a thimble. The problem I identified was spiritual, but my proposed solution was still operational. It was the language of a man who believed systems could be fixed with better systems.
My update now is this: I see the cool things we built. I also see, with sharper eyes, that they are not neutral. Every platform, every algorithm, every device is a landscape where a spiritual battle is being fought for attention, for truth, for the very concept of the human person. My generation didn’t just build tools, we built theaters for a war we didn’t know we were in.
The reparations are not political or technological. They are incarnational. They are personal. It is in the refusing of the subscription model for the soul. It is in owning my time, my attention, my loyalty, and giving them not to a platform, but to a Person. It is in using the connectivity we invented not to broadcast an opinion, but to whisper a prayer for a friend. It is in turning the wondrous tools toward the oldest command: to love God and love my neighbor.
The legacy of decay is not undone by a better policy. It is undone by a different heart. My part in the reparations is happening right now, in this quiet house. It is in the patient care for my mother, a defiant act of love against a culture that discards the inconvenient. It is in the gentle stewardship of Wiggles, a small testimony that life is a gift, not a utility. It is even in learning this new, creative skill not for clout, but perhaps as a new way to steward a message, to connect a voice to a listener who needs to hear it. The repair happens in the mundane, the unsexy, the hourly vigil. This is where the DNA is being re-engrafted, one faithful act at a time.
Article Two: “A Mid-Day Prayer” (March 05, 2025)
That prayer was a bruise on the page. A confession of feeling lost, sinful, prideful, gluttonous, slothful. I called my body “the human vessel” I defile. I acknowledged the arrogance of calling it “my” body. I recited “thy will be done” while confessing my doubt that He heard me, that He had a plan.
I wrote: “I am a silly being in many regards, but truly a foolish understanding in this above all others.”
I was in the season of Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C. I was trying to manage God’s will like a project timeline, with contingencies for His perceived unreliability. My faith was a theory I agreed with, but my operating system was still self-reliance.
Reading it now is like reading the journal of a man standing on the shore, staring at a boat he’s supposed to board, but he’s too busy calculating the water temperature, the wind speed, and the structural integrity of the hull to actually get in and cast off.
My update is simple: I got in the boat.
I know better now. I know differently. If my faith and trust are truly in Jesus Christ, as I say they are in the prayers that I recite when I call out to Him, then I do not need these plans and their associated backups. I simply need to keep my focus on Jesus and obey as He commands.
The peace is not the absence of storms. It is the presence of the Captain in the storm. My mother’s condition is a storm. Wiggles’s mystery ailment is a squall. The urge to create something new is an unknown current. A year ago, these would have been crises to manage, problems to solve, sources of deep anxiety. Now, they are assignments. Portions. My life has improved immensely in this regard. While at times looking from the outside in, things may seem chaotic and highly stressful, internally, I am completely at peace. I know it is my Father’s will being carried out and I just need to be mindful to my part in all of it. I do this by faithful obedience to His command.
The prayer from a year ago was a cry from the shore. The life now is a quieter, more solid reality in the boat. The waves still come. But I am not bailing. I am sailing.
Article Three: “Cultural Christianity” (March 06, 2025)
I was wrestling with the hollowing out of faith. I saw a culture that wanted the benefits of Christianity, kindness, community, moral stability, but wanted to delete the source code: Jesus Christ and His atoning sacrifice. We wanted the cake without making the cake. We wanted to keep the traditions but do away with the source, the why. We thought we could codify God’s laws, etched on the heart, into legislative policy, DEI statements, hate speech laws. We tried to build the tower of Babel with ethical building codes.
I wrote: “The path to God’s Kingdom is a narrow one and simply living as a ‘good human’ does not automatically grant us access to that Kingdom.”
I saw politicians, myself included once, who were chiefly interested in election and re-election, in profit. They are not shepherds, they are weathervanes, turning to catch the prevailing cultural wind. And the wind blowing was for the aesthetics of faith, not the substance. I warned that spiritual warfare is real, and the enemy’s design is not for our comfort for 80 years, but for our souls for eternity.
Reading it now, I see I was an observer pointing at a disease. I described the symptoms, the hollowed-out churches, the politicized faith, the virtue without the Vine. What I have learned in the year since is the treatment.
The treatment is not better cultural critique. It is deeper personal cultivation.
My focus has shifted from diagnosing the sickness in the culture to inoculating my own soul against it. I am less concerned with what a politician says about his faith and more concerned with the quiet obedience of my own heart in the 3 a.m. watch over my mother. The war for our society is won or lost in a thousand private moments like these. It is won when I choose patience over irritation, kindness over judgment, presence over distraction. It is won when I rebuke the enemy’s whispers of worry the moment they arise. It is won when I confess and repent quickly, without drama. It is won when I love extravagantly in situations designed to stir hate.
I wrote then about the two-edged sword of cultural Christianity. One edge gives you a nice community. The other edge leaves you eternally severed from God. I have spent the last year learning to not just avoid the wrong edge, but to grip the true sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. To use it in the small, daily battles of my own thought life.
The core tenets have not just been erased from our society, they are under active erasure in my own heart, every day, by the constant drip of the world’s values. My mission is no longer to bemoan the erasure out there, but to be the scribe, tirelessly rewriting the truth in here, in my own spirit, through obedience.
So, with these old words echoing in this rainy morning, how have I grown?
God’s peace grows stronger around me with every passing hardship, every stressful episode, every challenging moment of the day. The trials are not random. They are the forge. A year ago, I saw the forge and feared the heat. Now, I am learning to see the shape the Maker intends in the fire.
I am super fast to rebuke the enemy’s lies and whispers. I hear them now, the old familiar tunes of anxiety, of control, of resentment. I have learned their sound, and I shut them down with a verse, with a prayer, with a deliberate act of trust. Quick to confess and repent when the moments warrant it.
I love even more when situations try to stir up anger and hate. This is the real test, is it not? To love the difficult neighbor, the frustrating relative, the political opposite, the failing body of a parent. To love when love is a cost, not a feeling.
I am exaggeratingly patient when my flesh wants to hurry the moment. I keep my mouth shut, when the flesh wants to speak what it thinks is right and true. I speak up when the flesh tells me it is more convenient to just be silent. This is the new rhythm. It is counter-intuitive. It feels like walking against a strong current. But the muscle is building.
I am making a concerted effort to hear the shepherd’s guidance and voice in everything, both big and small, that I do each day. This is the heart of it. The shift from asking, “What should I do?” to asking, “What are you doing, Lord, and how can I join you?” It turns a burden into a privilege. Even changing my mother’s sheets becomes a sacrament. Even learning a podcasting software becomes an act of stewardship.
So, while I worry about my mother’s condition and how much longer she will be with me, I know it is all in God’s hand. However it plays out, it is all good. While I worry about what might be troubling Wiggles, that too is in God’s hands.
And this is amidst a war in the Middle East, where bombs are being dropped and people are being killed. It is all in God’s hands. I pray for everyone on both sides. I also pray for the leaders, that they may hear the Father’s guidance and obey as He commands them to.
A year ago, I was analyzing, apologizing, and planning. Today, I am watching, waiting, and obeying. The articles from then were signposts, pointing out the landscape of brokenness. The life now is the slow, deliberate walk through that landscape, tending to the small patch of ground under my feet, listening for the one Voice that matters.
The legacy of my generation may be decay. But my inheritance in Christ is renewal. It starts here, in the quiet, in the care, in the small obedience. It starts with a man, his mother, his dog, and a strange new desire to learn how to make a podcast, all held in the same open, trusting hand.
The fraying at the edges of my small world is not a sign of chaos. It is the place where the thread of my faith is being woven, under tension, into a stronger fabric. The rain continues. The house is quiet. And in the tension, there is peace.
That is all, and thank you for reading.
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