I built this because I needed it and it did not exist.

When I was young I wanted to act. I went on auditions. I did an independent film, a couple of plays, a few showcases.

Everyone told me to have a plan B.

So I got one. I went to college for journalism, because it seemed close to acting. Then public relations, because that seemed close to journalism. Then marketing, because people kept saying business was the way to go.

I graduated in the top one percent of my class. Everybody was proud of me. I still had no idea what I was doing.

Then it was job after job. A PR agency. Communications for a company working with rare diseases. Digital marketing at a mortgage company. Sales.

Every one of them was interesting for about six months, and then I would look up and think, this is not it either.

Every single time I knew what I actually wanted, somebody told me to be careful. And I was careful.

It was good at first. New place, new work, new everything.

Then my wife and I made a plan to build something together. A business, ours. She was genuinely excited about it, more excited than I had seen her in a long time.

I took a job instead. One I hated. Because it felt safer.

That was the moment, though I did not know it at the time. Everything spiraled from there.

We ran out of money. I went into a depression deeper than anything before it.

I used to be a guy who played sports and had a lot of friends and chased things. I looked in the mirror and did not know who that was.

My marriage nearly came apart. We both got real help, and we rebuilt it one step at a time. It was slow and it was not pretty.

We had our daughter. She is the best thing that has ever happened to me, and I mean that without any qualifiers.

And having her gave me something to fight for, so I fought. I got serious. I climbed. I got promoted, made more money, and we lived more comfortably than we ever had.

I kept climbing and striving until I burned out completely.

By the end of it I was crying most days. I hated what I had become and I hated who I was. There were evenings I sat on the floor next to my daughter and was not actually there.

Then my wife asked for a divorce. That was the bottom.

The church brought me home. It got me saved, convicted, transformed.

And then what?

Where was the part that teaches a man how to actually hear God? How to get direction for his own life? How to know what to do on a Tuesday?

So I started doing it myself. Every morning, one page. What did I read. What did I hear. What am I going to do about it.

I kept it up for months. Ezekiel. Hosea. Job. Numbers. Proverbs. Habakkuk. Some mornings it was nothing. Most mornings it was something small. A few mornings it took the top of my head off.

And on February 6th, reading Hosea 6, I wrote this down: on the second day He will revive us, and on the third day He will raise us up.

Return. Revive. Rise.

Three weeks later I walked out of my job.

I am not writing this from the other side of anything.

I am eleven years sober. That one is settled, and it is the only thing in my life I would describe that way.

I still fight fear and control. Money fear. Health fear at two in the morning. Comparing myself to other men. The belief that everything depends on me and I had better get out in front of it.

I have a written plan for that and brothers who know about it, and it still gets me.

I am also in physical pain most days. I am doing this anyway. That is not toughness. It is just what obedience looks like when your body is not cooperating.

This is a lifelong walk. I am somewhere in the middle of it, same as you.