Good morning and hello friends,
This article is one installment of a multipart series. Be sure to check out my site for previous segments of this series. It will make more sense if you read them in order.
The first installment contained Chapters 1-3. This one contains Chapters 4-6.
Chapter 4: The Quiet Fraying
(Source: “220 The Quiet Fraying: A Year in the Tension of Faithful Surrender”)
The rain is a soft percussion on the roof this morning, a steady, gray rhythm that matches the quiet within me.
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 her puppy energy. 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, 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.
So, 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.
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.
A Moment in the Workshop
Where has the muscle of your faith grown in the last year? Can you name one area where the “new rhythm” has replaced the old one? And where is the fraying still happening, the place where the tension has not yet resolved into peace? Hold both in your hands. The growth and the gap. They are both evidence that the Maker is at work.
The Bridge: From Collision to Convalescence
If Part I was the emergency room, Part II is the rehabilitation ward. And rehabilitation, as anyone who has been through it will tell you, is less dramatic and more grueling than the initial crisis.
The collision with God is spectacular. It is the lightning strike, the fault line, the night the floor becomes the ceiling. It makes for a powerful testimony. People lean in when you tell them about the shoulder tap, the 3 a.m. classroom, the avalanche of knowing. It is the part of the story that sounds like a movie.
But no one makes a movie about what happens next.
What happens next is a Tuesday morning. The alarm goes off. The coffee is cold. Your mother cannot find her slippers. The dog needs her fiber, and she will not eat her fiber, and you are standing in a driveway in the Florida humidity wondering if the God who rearranged your entire cosmology on an October night really cares about your dog’s vegetable intake.
He does. And that is the scandalous, mundane, beautiful truth of what follows.
The collision was the surgery. The convalescence is the recovery. It is slower. It is quieter. It is the part where you learn to walk again, not on the wide highway of your old ambitions, but on the narrow path of daily obedience. It is the part where the fire of the encounter meets the floor of the ordinary, and you discover, to your astonishment, that the floor is holy ground.
Part II is about that floor. The kitchen floor. The bathroom floor. The driveway. The trail where you walk the dog at midnight under a full moon and realize that every step toward God is a step home.
Welcome to Monday morning after the Sunday revival. This is where the real work happens.
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PART II: THE CRUCIBLE
(When the Fire Meets the Floor)
Focus: Integration. Where the spiritual rubber meets the mundane road of caregiving, daily duties, and invisible faithfulness.
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Part II Introduction: The Daily Grind of Glory
You survived the earthquake. Congratulations. Now the real work begins.
I say that not to diminish what you have been through. The Kairos moment, the collision, the remaking, it is the most significant thing that has ever happened to you. It is the hinge of your existence. But here is the secret no one tells you at the altar call: the mountaintop experience is not the destination. It is the starting pistol.
After the fire on the mountain, you walk back down into the valley. And the valley looks exactly the same as it did before you climbed. The dishes are still in the sink. The bills are still on the counter. Your mother still needs her meds. Your boss still sends passive-aggressive emails. Your dog still refuses to eat her vegetables.
The temptation is to see this as a failure. To wonder if the encounter was real. To question whether God, who spoke with such clarity in the dark of the garage, has now gone silent in the noise of the day. Where is the fire? Where is the thunder? Where is the voice?
He is in the mess. He is in the dish soap and the trash bags. He is in the patience you extend to a sister who talks about her work anxieties at 6 a.m. when you crave solitude. He is in the question you ask the landscaper about his family. He is in the midnight walk with the dog, in the glucometer reading, in the tight corners of a well-made bed.
This is the core thesis of Part II: Spiritual growth happens less in lightning bolts and more in laundry cycles. Faith is integrated not in the dramatic, but in the dutiful. The crucible is not a one-time event. It is the slow, steady heat of showing up, day after day, to the tasks God has placed in front of you.
The chapters that follow are movements in this symphony of the small.
Chapter 5: The Midnight Clarity
(Source: “154 Midnight Walk with Wiggles”)
Mom was sleeping. The house was quiet. For a Friday night, the block was at peace. Midnight. Full moon. I had the urge to take Wiggles for a stroll.
I know this might sound “captain obvious” if you’re a believer. Like duh! But walking under that moon, God reminded me: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” He made man, the seas, everything. Existence was balanced. Life was good.
Then man sinned. That sin cracked creation open, giving the devil space to corrupt the Creator’s will. Suddenly, man had to toil, navigate sin, and face the enemy. Generation after generation, the devil swapped spears for smartphones, but his goal never changed: “steal, kill, and destroy.” He distracts us with new tech, tools, knowledge, until we forget our Creator and why we were made.
His cunning masterpiece? Convincing us that earthly things, our time here, and personal desires are what make life “good and meaningful.” Society today is his plan playing out: “The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers.” Every app, every hustle, every hollow promise, we think it’s our choice. But it’s designed to separate us from God until His faithful become zero.
Here’s the hope that flooded me as Wiggles trotted beside me: God is waking us up. He’s pulling back the curtain so we see the trap. “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” We finally see the choice: be in the world but not of it.
That’s what I chose this past year. To see distractions for what they are. To stop pretending my hustle gives me purpose. To become my Father’s prodigal son again, running home like the one who cried, “I will arise and go to my Father.” Not to hide from the world, but to live differently in it. Jesus prayed for us: “I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world.”
By the time we turned toward home, I understood my choice clearly:
To see the world’s noise as distraction, not destiny. “Do not love the world or the things in the world... the world is passing away.”
To live in step with His will, not the world’s rhythm. “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.”
To remember I’m loved, not condemned. Even when I wander, He waits like the father in Luke 15, running to meet me.
I’m eternally grateful He stays patient, kind, forgiving, and loving. While I chased empty things, He never stopped calling. “The Lord is patient... not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” And He lets me see, just a little, how He sees the world. Not perfectly, but clearly enough to choose Him again.
That moonlit walk wasn’t exercise. It was a reminder: every step toward God is a step home. Even when the world’s algorithm screams otherwise. Especially then.
A Moment in the Workshop
When was the last time you stepped outside of the noise, not to escape, but to listen? What is the “algorithm” that most effectively distracts you from the voice of God? Name it. Not to condemn yourself, but to see the trap for what it is.
Chapter 6: The Ministry of Small Obediences
(Source: “210 The Ministry of Small Obediences”)
I write from the quiet this morning. You may have noticed a silence from me this week. Few published words, fewer public declarations. Do not mistake this stillness for idleness. The hand is not always raised in proclamation. Sometimes it is curled around a broom handle, or extended to steady an elder’s arm, or resting patiently on a keyboard, reviving a machine that others have long forgotten.
I have been writing every day. The pages fill, but they are not for others. They are the ledger of a soul being adjusted, line by line, to a different frequency. The work the Lord is doing in me is specific, personal, and often painfully ordinary. He is not building a stage in my heart, but rather, he is laying floorboards. He is ensuring the plumbing works. He is teaching me to dwell in the small, windowless rooms of daily duty where no audience applauds.
This is my faith, right now. It is not a cascade of bold and noisy revelations. It is obedience through faith. A simple, terrifying equation. I ask, “Why this, Lord?” He answers, “Will you obey?” The revelation is in the yielding, not in the explanation. I do not know why He commands me to resurrect a server that died two years ago, a ghost in the machine. I only know He said, “Bring it back.” So I sit in the blue glow of a terminal, speaking the language of repair to silent circuitry. This is prayer. This is obedience.
It means I kneel on a bathroom floor, not in supplication, but with a sponge and a bottle of cleaner, scrubbing the tile in mom’s bathroom. It is making her bed with corners tight enough to please a sergeant. It is watching and listening as she mimes, again, the story she tells every night before she lays her head down, as if I weren’t tired and hearing it as if for the first time. Love, here, wears rubber gloves. Its halo is the scent of lemon disinfectant.
It means I stay put in the kitchen at six in the morning when the house readies for the day and my soul craves solitude the most. The coffee pot gurgles its psalm. My sister speaks of her job, her worries, the mundane anxiety of an HR manager facing the coming day. I listen. Not to fix, not to sermonize. Just to be a witness. My presence is my priesthood in that moment. To be with… this is the altar.
It means asking my brother about his knee. “How goes the war with the physical therapist?” And I must truly care for the answer. I must see the update, the slight improvement, the stubborn pain as a sacred report from a front line I cannot see. My interest is a form of intercession. “Slow incremental progress over months.” I reply, “Hang in there.”
It means stepping outside, into the blunt humidity, when the landscaper’s truck rattles up the drive. Not a wave from the window. An in-person. “How is your family?” The question is not politeness. It is a key turning in a lock. I listen as he speaks of his son’s baseball game, of his wife’s new job. For three minutes, he is not the guy who cuts my grass. He is a man, bearing the image of God, and I am called to honor it. This is evangelism without a tract.
It means putting the dog away, her joyful chaos a tempest in the hall, so I can invite the landscaper inside for a glass of water. Mom wants to say hello. My small act of order facilitates her act of grace. We are links in a chain of kindness we did not forge.
It means my niece visits for the weekend, a whirlwind of teenage angst and hope. “How is school?” I ask. And I must listen, past the shrugs and the monosyllables, to the heart beating beneath. What are her teachers speaking into her? What fears whisper in the hallway between classes? My engaged, caring ear is a sanctuary she may not know she enters.
This is the walk. It is not loud. It is not sexy. It offers no headline revelations and produces no viral clips. It is the opposite of spectacle. It is presence. It is mindfulness of the now, and a tuned ear to the whispers of the Holy Spirit, who so rarely shouts. He speaks in the prompting to call, to ask, to help, to listen, to be there.
Do you see? The kingdom of God advances on the tracks of a million small obediences. A cup of water given. A floor swept. A patient ear lent. A machine restored for reasons unknown. “And whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward.” The reward is often just the quiet knowledge that you were faithful in the thing you were told to do.
You long for the mountaintop, for the transfiguration where your face shines with uncreated light. But Christ walked down from that mountain. He walked directly into a crowd of human need, into an argument among his disciples, into the plea of a desperate father. The glory was revealed so that it could be deployed in the messy, uneventful work of restoration and healing.
The world shouts for revolution. Christ whispers, “Make the bed. Call your brother. Listen to the child. Fix what is broken. Do it for me.” And in the doing, with no fanfare, the heart is reshaped. The soul is aligned. And the kingdom, quiet as a seed pushing through dark soil, grows.
A Moment in the Workshop
What is the smallest act of obedience God has placed in front of you today? Not the grand gesture. The invisible one. The bed to make. The call to return. The question to ask. Can you do it as if it were the only assignment you had been given, because, for this moment, it is?
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Shashue Monrauch