I was born on June 10, 1976, in a small hospital in Mason City, Iowa, and brought home to a worn farmhouse by a free-spirited mother and a faithful father. They raised me the best they knew how. I grew up loved, fed, and taught the difference between right and wrong.

But I never quite fit into what I was “supposed” to do.

It took me a long time to find traction. Growing up in a small school meant limited options, which, strangely, gave me more chances than I probably deserved. I stumbled through junior high and into a difficult start to high school—bad enough that graduation was no guarantee.

My junior year changed things.

I was kept out of football as a consequence for earlier failures, and that discipline forced me to engage academically. Around that same time, I bought a small acreage—once seized after its owners were arrested for running a meth lab. It was an unlikely beginning, but it marked the start of something shifting in me.

Those years were also when I began to write—at first seriously trying, if not yet succeeding. I also began to search. I read Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche and found myself empowered to deny God. From there, I drifted into existentialism, reading Hermann Hesse, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Immanuel Kant, trying to make sense of meaning in a world that felt unsteady.

Everything intensified. I loved, grieved, and unraveled more times than I can count. My friends and I lived as if we were brushing up against something ultimate—losing ourselves while trying to find something real.

By the grace of God, I broke.

And in that breaking, I walked away from everything. I sold what I had, left my job at a steel door factory, and went to Europe.

At 21, in 1998, with a backpack and very little plan, I spent six months moving across the countryside. When I returned, I moved to Minneapolis to pursue writing. I was captivated by the Beat writers—especially Jack Kerouac—and tried to shape my life in their image.

It didn’t go well.

I spiraled into alcoholism, unable to go a day without drinking. Still, another idea came—a second book, a journey to South America to capture how people pursue their dreams.

Before leaving, I tested my gear in the Rocky Mountains. That trip revealed more than I expected: I was addicted, out of shape, deeply broken, and completely lost.

It all came to a head on a little-known peak called Mount Rowe, where I nearly died.

Again, by the grace of God, I didn’t.

That moment became a turning point—not a dramatic conversion, but the beginning of a return. I stopped trying to deny God and started, simply, to seek Him.

In the years that followed, I traveled to South America, completed my second book, and slowly stepped into a different kind of life. Eventually, I landed in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where I spent a year compiling my work. When it was finished, I bought a $1,500 Mercury Tracer station wagon and set out across the United States for 336 days.

I was trying to capture the heart of the nation.

It was just after 9/11—a strange and searching time in America. Before I left, a woman I had long tried to ask out finally agreed to a date. During that conversation, she told me plainly: I wasn’t a Christian.

That stayed with me.

On the road, I bought a Bible. I went to church every Sunday. For over a month, I kept hearing the same message: you need to die to yourself.

I didn’t understand it at first.

But somewhere in those 336 days, something changed. One of my interviews became the woman I would later marry. After the trip, I moved to Muncie, Indiana, where she lived. We bought a small, worn house for $9,600 and began rebuilding it—and, in many ways, ourselves.

Marriage became the place where I began to understand what it meant to die to myself. Not perfectly, but truly. I began to take up the cross of Christ in a way that moved from idea to life.

From there, we moved to Florida, where I trained for pastoral ministry for three and a half years. Our first daughter was born during that time.

Later, we returned to Mason City, where I served in a church for nearly a decade and where our other three daughters were born. Those years taught me daily what it means to love my wife as Christ loves the Church and to grow into the calling of being a father.

After ten years in ministry, I stepped into Christian education, where I served another decade. During that time, I earned a master’s degree in Church History and Historical Theology. My writing never fully stopped, but it became scattered—something I carried rather than pursued.

In 2020 we made a big move to Kalamazoo, Michigan and I started serving in school. It was a big change and challenging times. God used it to shape me and my family alot. We have come to love our new home and community.

Recently, I stepped away from education and into a new role as COO of a small electrical contractor. This did not require a move but was a big change.

I didn’t expect what that change would do in me.

It brought life back.

The breaking I experienced wasn’t simply from failure—it was also from the weight of long obedience in demanding work. It was good work, meaningful work. And then, it was time to release it.

Now, I’ve returned to writing with clarity and focus. I find myself freed—to serve, to support others, and to pay attention again to what God is doing.

I don’t claim to have arrived.

If anything, my aim is simpler now: to become less, so that God might become more.

This blog is a place to share what emerges in this season—what I’m learning, what I’m seeing, and what is still being formed in me.

If there is a thread through it all, it’s this: to die more, to love more, and, in time, to disappear into the life of Christ.