Words That Walk With You

The first sign should have been enough.

As I guided an 80,000-pound tractor-trailer through the mountains, I noticed a yellow warning sign alongside the highway: "Steep Grade Ahead. Trucks Use Lower Gear."

I had driven mountain roads before, and I thought I knew what I was doing. I eased off the accelerator, but not enough. A few moments later another sign appeared. "Runaway Truck Ramp – 2 Miles." Then another. "Trucks Check Brakes."

The grade became steeper. Gravity took over. The truck grew heavier with every passing second, and I could feel the momentum beginning to push me faster than I wanted to go. My hands tightened around the steering wheel. My heart raced. What had begun as a routine descent was becoming something far more serious.

I knew I had a decision to make.

Would I humble myself and use the safety measures that had been provided, or would I convince myself I could handle it on my own?

Thankfully, that day I made the right decision. But I have often reflected on how much that mountain reminded me of life itself.

Long before I ever drove a truck through the mountains, I had already been traveling another kind of dangerous road.

As a young boy growing up in Chicago, I experienced abuse, fear, rejection, and uncertainty. There were warning signs all along the way, but as children we rarely recognize them. We simply learn to survive. We tell ourselves tomorrow will be better. We convince ourselves that if we just hold on a little longer, everything will somehow work itself out.

The problem is that unresolved pain gathers momentum. Fear becomes anxiety. Bitterness becomes anger. Rejection becomes insecurity. And before long, we find ourselves moving through life much faster than we ever intended, wondering how we arrived where we are.

For many years, I believed those broken roads would define my future.

But God had another plan.

He met me in places I never expected — a Christian foster home, quiet moments in prayer, churches, classrooms, paint crews, the cab of a truck traveling America's highways, trauma rooms, and eventually the sacred spaces beside hospice beds where people prepared to enter eternity. Looking back, I now realize that God was never waiting for me at the destination. He was walking beside me on every mile of the journey.

That is what this book is about.

From Broken Roads to Holy Ground is not simply the story of an abusive childhood, a trucking career, or my journey into hospice ministry. It is the testimony of a faithful God who redeems what sin has broken, restores what life has wounded, and brings restitution where loss once seemed permanent.

There is a phrase I have come to cherish over the years: God wastes nothing. Not our tears. Not our failures. Not our fears. Not even the roads we wish we had never traveled.

The very places that once caused us the deepest pain often become the places from which God builds our greatest ministry.

As you read these pages, you will walk with me through childhood struggles, foster care, athletics, painting, trucking nearly one million miles across America, ministry, higher education, trauma chaplaincy, and hospice care. More importantly, I hope you will discover the faithfulness of God in every chapter.

This is not a book about how strong I have been.

It is about how faithful God has been.

If your own journey has taken you down broken roads — roads marked by abuse, loss, disappointment, fear, grief, or uncertainty — I pray this testimony reminds you that your story is not over. The same God who met Moses on holy ground still meets ordinary people in extraordinary moments. He still redeems. He still restores. He still calls His children forward with hope.

My prayer is that somewhere along these pages, you will begin to recognize that the broken road you are traveling today may become the very path that leads you into the presence of God.

And when you arrive there, you may discover what I have learned over a lifetime:

Sometimes the holiest ground we will ever stand upon is the very place where God meets us after our journey down the broken road.