The complete collection

Writing for the
road home.

95 reflections on faith, memory, teaching, ordinary grace, and the moments that make us laugh.

A place to begin

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the spinach can

Looking Back · August 17, 2025

The Spinach Can

For a teenager wanting to fit in, a father’s refusal to buy a color TV feels like a punishment. But years later, a simple pantry discovery revealed that his frugality wasn’t stubbornness—it was a survival tactic born of the Great Depression and a silent act of love.

A narrative collage showing a distressed man in a hospital waiting room, a figure standing in a coastal storm, and an older couple walking hand-in-hand down a peaceful wooded path.

Faith under pressure

Overcoming Anxiety & Fear · November 15, 2025

When the Doctor Closed the Door

We were just kids when the word "malignant" shattered our world in a sterile waiting room. It takes a long time to learn that courage isn’t about the absence of fear, but about finding solid ground when the mud is rising.

Dorothea Lange's famous migrant mother series of photos from the Great Depression

Looking Back · February 6, 2026

When the Manna Stopped

In the classic Depression-era film The Grapes of Wrath, the Joad family piled everything they owned onto a flatbed truck and headed west with nothing but hope and some dubious flyers promising work in California.

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A writer sits quietly before a blank screen in a dim home office at dawn

Living Faith · February 7, 2026

Not Running on Empty

I was sitting in a Sunday service recently listening to my pastor talk about the importance of staying close to God, and my mind started comparing my spiritual walk lately to a car that just won’t start. The picture came so clearly I had to pull out my iPad right there and jot down the scenario before I lost it.

Dorothea Lange's famous migrant mother series of photos from the Great Depression

Looking Back · February 6, 2026

When the Manna Stopped

In the classic Depression-era film The Grapes of Wrath, the Joad family piled everything they owned onto a flatbed truck and headed west with nothing but hope and some dubious flyers promising work in California. They were characters on a screen, but for my family, those rickety trucks and dusty roads were real life.

A massive and strong tree anchored in the storms

Living Faith · February 5, 2026

Roots Before the Storm

When God created the earth, He didn’t make a single thing to stand on its own two feet forever. Not an insect, not a bird, not a beast of the field, or a plant was designed to be self-sufficient. Every living thing has a hunger that must be satisfied, a need to be made new and whole again day after day.

A man seen from behind looking through a window at widely scattered leaves drifting over an open plain

Living Faith · January 20, 2026

Observing the Wind

Whether you are building a business, raising a family, or just trying to get through a Tuesday, the human mind often feels like a chaotic laundry room. A look at the paralysis of perfectionism and the ancient wisdom that helps us finally break the cycle.

An opened canned ham sits before a vintage photograph of an idealized glazed ham with pineapple rings

Giving Thanks · January 17, 2026

Fool’s Gold and Canned Ham

We’ve all been fooled by the picture on the box. Whether it’s a gelatinous dinner or a shiny casino, the world is great at selling us a wrapper that looks better than the gift. When I was a kid, the idea of a ham in a can (from an exotic, faraway land like Denmark, no less) was fascinating.

a grandfather talking to his grandson about two wolves

Overcoming Anxiety & Fear · January 12, 2026

Same Anxiety, Different Headlines

The virus faded from the front page, but anxiety just found new targets to latch onto. The headlines change, but the cure remains the same: stop running on your own power and start feeding the right wolf. I ran across something I wrote during the dark, early days of the Covid outbreak.

Grace Has No Outdated Addresses

Grace & Forgiveness · January 2, 2026

Grace Has No Outdated Addresses

I can still picture the faces of students weighed down by guilt that wasn’t theirs. What I didn’t notice at the time was how it was also shaping me. Only years later did I begin to connect the dots. And the truth of it still works on me.

A vintage brass balance scale with one side weighed down by papers labeled sin and failure, and the other holding a wooden cross labeled paid in full.

Grace & Forgiveness · January 2, 2026

The Economics of Grace

We spend our lives trying to keep the ledger in the black, hoping our good deeds will eventually tip the scales in our favor. But the math of heaven is different than the math of earth, and the debt was never ours to settle.

A metaphorical recreation of Edgar Allan Poe’s "The Tell-Tale Heart" in a modern professional setting. A glowing, realistic human heart pulses beneath a gap in weathered floorboards. A man in a dark suit stands over the hole with a cane, while two other men in suits sit comfortably in the background, smiling oblivious to the secret beneath them.

Overcoming Anxiety & Fear · December 29, 2025

Tear Up The Planks

We all have something thumping beneath the floorboards of our lives while the world sits calmly above. The internal noise can be maddening, but there is a way to finally silence the drum. In Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, a man is driven to madness by an old man’s pale, filmy “vulture” eye.

Envato labs image edit 2025 12 28T220433.934 Large

Looking Back · December 28, 2025

When the Bank Came Down

They blew up the first Pasadena State Bank building today. Yes, I know today we call it an implosion. But this was a building of the 1960s, and in my youth, turning a 12-story steel and concrete tower into dust meant you blew it up.

A man sits at a dimly lit desk holding a phone, looking at a document stamped "PAID IN FULL" while a business card for "B.L. Zebub Senior Collector" rests on the table.

Grace & Forgiveness · December 28, 2025

The Debt is Dead

Alex: (picking up the phone) Hello? Zebub: (A voice like grinding stones) Alex. I’ve got the ledger open. You’re in the hole for a fortune, and your time just ran out. I’m filing the fraud warrant as we speak. You pay this massive debt now, or you can rot in a very dark prison until you pay every last cent in full, plus interest.

An older man with glasses sits at a cluttered desk at night, illuminated by computer screens and a single candle, typing on a laptop with an open Bible beside him.

Christmas · December 26, 2025

The Myth of the Finish Line

We are told we can have it all, but economics and the soul agree: everything has a price. When the holidays feel like a placeholder and work becomes a hiding place, the hardest thing to do is simply close your eyes. Traditions are falling away like dry needles.

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