I did not arrive at this work through a carefully planned route. I spent years building a federal career, raising my sons, caring for people I love, and trying to understand a call I often felt unqualified to answer.
My life has included heartbreak, loss, cancer, open-heart surgery, caregiving, and more than one beginning.
None of it made me an expert on life. It made me a better listener. I learned to notice the quiet ways God speaks through Scripture, silence, conversation, and the ideas that refuse to leave me alone.
The books, reflections, ministries, and creative work gathered here are my response. I listen. I write. I build what I am given to build, then trust God with where it goes and whom it reaches.
In February 1992, I walked a path at Accotink carrying more anger than I knew what to do with. My marriage had left me feeling rejected, misplaced, and abandoned. Eventually, that anger turned toward God. I blamed Him. I cursed. Then I demanded, “If You are really there, why don’t You say something?”
Everything around me went silent. Not quiet. Silent.
The answer did not reach me as an audible voice. It rose from within my chest with a force I could not mistake:
“AND WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE ME SAY?”
I knew immediately that it was God. I also understood what I had been asking beneath all that anger. I did not need an explanation. I needed to know He had not abandoned me.
That conversation did not remove the struggle. It changed the way I listened. In time, it became the beginning of my writing and the first seed of everything I would later be called to build.
That conversation did not make me an author overnight. It taught me that God could speak and that I had a responsibility to what I heard.
Later, He told me to write a book. That book would become God Speaks: A Dialogue. I heard the instruction, but I was not ready to trust myself with it. I worried about what people might say. I questioned
whether I was worthy to place words on a page and say they had come from God. So I delayed.
Years passed. I built a career, raised a family, moved through change, and tried to set the call aside.
THE BOOK WAITED. THE CALL DID NOT.
When I finally completed it, I understood that God had not chosen me because I was fearless or fully prepared. He had asked for my willingness.
I also began to understand the difference between being an author and being a scribe. An author writes from what he knows. A scribe listens for what he is being given and records it faithfully.
Writing became the first way I answered. The work has since grown into books, reflections, studies, ministries, and creative ventures, but my response remains the same: listen, receive, and write what I am given.
I do not write from a life untouched by struggle. I write as a father and grandfather, as a son who has cared for aging parents, and as a man whose own body has carried him through cancer and open-heart surgery.
I have sat in hospital rooms, prepared spaces for weddings and funerals, walked beside people experiencing memory loss, and learned that sometimes the most faithful thing we can do is stay present.
Those experiences changed the questions I ask and the way I hear the answers.
Faith has not always arrived for me as certainty. Often, it has looked like getting up, showing up, caring for the person in front of me, and trusting that God is present even when I cannot yet see what He is doing.
That is the life I bring to my writing. It is not a polished life observed from a distance. It is a lived one, shaped by the grace that has met me in both loss and love.
J-O-Y stands for Jesus, Others, and You. It is more than an acronym. It is the order I try to bring to my writing, relationships, and service.
J — JESUS
Jesus comes first because He is the source. Before I write, teach, build, or serve, I try to listen for His direction.
O — OTHERS
What God gives us is not meant to stop with us. I believe words, care, and creativity become meaningful when they reach another person where they are.
Y — YOU
You matter, too. This final place does not mean neglecting yourself or disappearing into the needs of others. It means caring for the life God gave you without making yourself the center of every story.
I do not live this order perfectly. I return to it whenever I lose my way. Jesus leads, the work reaches beyond me, and my own life remains a gift I am responsible for tending.
Today, I continue to write, teach, care, and build. I am not looking back at a completed body of work. I am still living the call.
Some days are spent at a desk. Others are spent caring for my father, leading a Bible study, preparing a church for a wedding or funeral, or sitting with someone who needs to be heard. I no longer divide those days into work and interruption. They all belong to the same life.
The work grows alongside that life. I no longer see that as a delay. The responsibilities and people in front of me continue to shape what I can offer.
I do not know where every word or project will lead. I know that I am still listening. When God says, “Now,” I intend to answer.
The conversation that began on a path in 1992 did not end there. It continues each time I listen, write, or place something new into the world.
If something in my story has spoken to you, I invite you to continue through the work. Follow the branch that meets you where you are and trust where the conversation may lead.
Along with my creative endeavors, I have also worked in federal service and corporate America. Should you choose, review my resume, which will give a larger picture of my life and experience.
I did not arrive here by a straight road.
The work I do today grew from a lifetime of faith, questions, fatherhood, caregiving, illness, loss, and conversations with God. Some experiences strengthened what I believed. Others forced me to examine it again.
Together, they taught me how to listen.
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