I delivered this testimony in front of nearly 100 men at Gibraltar’s shop in Burnet, Texas on April 8, 2026. I was invited by Rodney McGee — my ex-wife’s father, my spiritual mentor, and the man who baptized me. What follows is the story I told them — about unconditional love, faith lived out daily, and how iron sharpens iron.

Thank you, Rodney.

Before I say anything else, I need you to understand something about the man who just introduced me.

Rodney McGee is my ex-wife’s father.

I know. Stay with me.

About nine years ago, I was the worst version of myself. I’d wrecked my marriage. I’d been fired. I was drinking my way through my kids’ childhood. And the man whose daughter I’d hurt — the man who had every reason to shut the door in my face — opened it instead. He took me into his home, walked with me, and eventually led me to Christ.

That’s who Rodney McGee is. And the fact that he’s given me the honor of standing here today — I don’t take that lightly.

My name is Matt Kelly. I’m not a pastor — if you knew me, the fact that I have to even say that is laughable. I sell construction software for a living today. Before that, I worked in steel. Before that, I bent rebar in a fab shop in Florida. Before that, I was a kid in Gainesville running with a crew that taught me how to break into houses and sell guns before I graduated high school.

I’m certainly not here to preach at you today. I’m just going to tell you some of what’s happened in my life. And if any of it sounds familiar, then maybe today was supposed to be for you.

three doors

I closed the bedroom door. Then I walked into the bathroom and closed that door. Then I opened the closet, stepped inside, and closed that door too.

Three doors. That’s how many I needed between me and my own life before I could sit down and breathe.

Houston. 2016. I’d turned the shower on so my wife would think I was in there. Past the shower, past all those doors, I could hear my boys in the other room. Muffled. Distant. Like they were in another house. And in a way, they were. I’d mentally been in another house for years.

I sat cross-legged on the carpet with a twelve-dollar meditation app on my phone. Not the Bible. Not a church. I opened a timer on my phone — a man so desperate for silence he’d locked himself in a closet with the shower running as cover.

I’ll come back to that closet. But first I need to tell you how I got there.

the kid

I grew up in Gainesville, Florida. My dad was there — doing his best to keep us safe and fed, like any good man. He taught me work ethic and discipline. Not always the way I wanted to receive it, but better coming from him than the world some days.

But the rules had their effect. I learned to escape early. I found a small crew of acceptance in high school — Josh, Mike, Ric — guys a little older and bigger than me, which didn’t say much. I was the youngest and the smallest. Hundred and fifteen pounds soaking wet. They taught me how to drink beer, how to smoke weed, how to break into houses and sell guns. By senior year I was skipping school, smoking during the day. We were tight and we knew the code.

I was lucky. I was a nerd with good grades. If it weren’t for the books and the straight A’s even while I was ditching school, this story ends very differently. I got into the University of Florida and remade myself. Same city, but new crew, new story. But I wasn’t fixed. I was just performing a new version of the same broken kid.

the shop floor

After college I thought I had it figured out. Engineering degree. Smartest guy in the room. My first real job? Bending rebar in a fab shop in Plant City, Florida.

The woman they assigned to train me was named Rose. Rose had lost three-quarters of her thumb between a number eleven bar and a bending pin. That was her first lesson.

“Don’t let your thumb get between the bar and the pin,” she said. “Your thumb will lose every time. Trust me.”

Lesson received, boss.

Plant City in the summer — hot and swampy. Mill scale everywhere. My shower was black. Rose was probably fifty, which is ironic considering I’m about to turn fifty this October. I was twenty-two, straight out of college, smelling like entitlement. That shop taught me more about respect and toughness than any amount of years of textbooks. From there I worked my way up — steel companies, traveled the world. I had the truck and the title.

But here’s what nobody tells you about the self-made man. He’s usually running from something.

the fall

From 2009 to 2017 — eight years — I was under the influence of something almost continuously. The substances changed. The pattern didn’t. The point was to not feel what I was feeling.

A therapist in Dallas named it for me. She said, “That feeling you’ve had your entire life — that’s anxiety.” Then she said, “It’s going to get much, much worse before it gets better.”

I almost laughed. Anxiety was for men who were weak. Then it got much worse.

Bankruptcy. Fired. Marriage falling apart — and I was doing most of the damage. I had two boys, Brock and Jack. I was at almost every bedtime they had when they were little.

I was sober for almost none of them.

Some of you know what that’s like. You’re there but you’re not there. And that guilt makes you numb yourself more. It’s a cycle.

And the whole time, I would have told you I was a good person. That’s what I told Rodney when he first talked to me about faith. “Rodney, I’m a good person. I help people.”

No, I didn’t. I was destroying everything around me without realizing it. That’s the scariest kind of broken — the kind that thinks it’s fine.

back to the closet

So that brings us back to the closet.

I remember fighting with my wife, the kids crying, upset about something like always. And I needed to get away. I escaped. But not to alcohol this time. Bedroom door. Bathroom door. Shower on. Closet door. Finally a little silence.

I sat on the carpet and I talked first. Out loud. Asked God if He was there. If maybe He’d hear me. Nothing. So I stopped talking and just sat. Focused on my breath. Tried to let my mind settle. I could feel the carpet on my bare legs. I could hear the muffled sounds of my boys, far away, past all those doors.

At some point, something changed. A warmth in my chest. I felt like I was falling, but I wasn’t afraid. It was strangely comforting. No voice. No vision. But a knowing — an intuition I can’t explain — that things would be okay. That I just needed to trust in what was coming.

I didn’t walk out of my bedroom a Christian. I walked out a man who thought maybe he wasn’t completely alone. That was enough to crack the door open. I’d spent all night closing doors. And God opened one anyway.

the surrender

2017. Fired in Houston. Nowhere to go. I left my wife and kids behind while I moved to Burnet, Texas — three hours away — to live with Rodney. I visited them on the weekends, leaving Friday nights late and getting in after the kids were asleep. Leaving Sunday afternoons after lunch so I could be back at Rodney’s at a decent time, get some rest, and do it all over again on Monday. It would be nearly six months before they’d move to Austin and we’d squeeze into a tiny two-bedroom apartment — two kids, three dogs, my wife, and me.

I told you who Rodney is. Now let me tell you what he did. He let me into his home. Fed me. Talked to me. Didn’t shame me. Just loved me. Day after day.

And Bill Neusch — the man who built this company, this shop — gave me a job when nobody else would. But there was a condition. If I was going to work for Bill and live with Rodney, I had to give up drinking.

That was the hardest part. Sitting with all those emotions I’d been numbing for a reason. The numbing led to more mistakes, which made me numb more. As long as I wasn’t present, I could pretend I wasn’t the villain I’d become.

But here’s what those two men showed me. Rodney showed me love — unconditional, patient, steady love. The kind I’d never seen from a father figure. And Bill showed me the practical side — how to actually walk it out daily. How to put faith into practice. Not as a Sunday thing. As a way of life.

November 13th, 2017. Monday night. Rodney’s living room. I was on my knees, trying to ask Jesus into my life. I leaned on Rodney for the words because I didn’t have the courage to step into this new world on my own.

I reached the end of myself. I had nothing left. And for the first time in my life, I stopped running.

the daily work

Now — accepting Christ isn’t the finish line. It’s the starting line. I’ve heard that some people have an instant awakening, but it wasn’t like that for me. Nothing magically changed overnight. What changed was that I started doing the work. I started picking up my own cross daily and doing the hard work it takes to build a better version of myself for my family — and started leaning into becoming a better man.

I used to think the Bible was full of lies about perfect people.

It’s not. It’s a book about failed men and the mistakes that took them away from God. How when they lived as if the knowledge was theirs alone — like they’d eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and didn’t need Him anymore — everything fell apart. That knowledge is God’s. And you receive it through a relationship with Him. By asking questions, praying for answers, and then sitting. Patiently. Waiting.

I never wanted to believe in God. Partially because of what I’d seen growing up, and partially because waiting until I died to find out the truth seemed like pure manipulation by the powerful. I refused to fall for it.

But once you accept Him, you find out the magic is real. And the lie that He’s NOT real — that comes from the world trying to hold you back. Trying to keep you in the prison of your own mind.

The shackles and prisons of this world are very real. But they started long before any cell door closed. They were the lack of any kind of model for unconditional love in your life. The lack of the right model. Jesus came to give you that blueprint. And it’s all right here in this book.

Let me tell you what the work looks like. Every day, my day starts between four and five in the morning while the house is still quiet and asleep. I grab my book, my coffee, a candle, and I sit outside. Every. Single. Day. No excuses. Nothing interrupts that time if I can help it. That’s sacred.

I read a chapter. Then I sit and close my eyes. I reach with my mind for Him and silently tell Him I’m here. And I wait.

Here’s what I’ve learned about that waiting. God takes His time. You might sit there for thirty minutes before your mind even settles. If you’ve never sat alone with your thoughts, they’ve built up into a web of lies.

Think of it this way. Take a glass of water, fill it with dirt, and shake it. That dirty water is your mind. All those memories and thoughts and feelings of hurt and pain — they’re swirling. You have to let them settle. Let the clouds pass by. They’re the distractions holding you back.

You know the blue sky and the sun are out there. You just can’t see them yet. When you accept Christ and sit with Him consistently, those clouds will part. But you have to be patient. You have to show up. Day after day.

I might have a college degree. But the man who taught me how to do this — Bill Neusch — has a high school diploma. And he is one of the most successful men I’ve ever known. Not because of money or titles. Because he has love. He built a family around it. He’s the patriarch who built a legacy because he believed.

You might think Bill had some special gift you don’t have. He doesn’t — he has Jesus. He shows up and sits with Him in the silence every morning. Every. Single. Day. And he helped me find my faith by letting me watch him live his.

When we worked together on a project in San Diego, we were all early risers. And I got to see it up close — the discipline, the consistency, the peace that comes from a man who starts his day with God before he starts it with the world.

That meditation practice I started in that dark closet? I haven’t missed a day in over 1,400 days. Almost four years straight.

If something had the power to change your life — to take you from where you are right now to somewhere you can’t even imagine next year — could you sit in the silence for an hour? Are you willing to make the hard sacrifices it takes to be a completely different man twelve months from today?

the miracles

The miracles started coming. In July of 2022, after divorcing Rodney’s daughter, I rolled my Jeep three times. When we landed — wheels down in an empty field surrounded by rocky cliffs and trees in every direction — I realized we had landed in the only patch of land we could have survived.

Worse yet, when I looked in the backseat, my youngest son was bleeding from his head pretty badly. But worse than that — my oldest son was gone. He’d taken his seatbelt off at some point during the drive and I had no idea where he was. Instantly I panicked. My worst fears swirled in my head.

Then I heard his voice. “My back!” he screamed. Thank you, Lord, that he’s still alive — that was my first thought. I ran to find him, told him to stay still. Thankfully some good Samaritans stopped to help us. When the ambulance finally took us to the hospital, the MRIs and X-rays confirmed the miracle. Two broken ribs was the extent of the damage.

We got a house loan we had no business getting. During COVID, checks showed up when we had nothing and we were about to lose that house. Bill was feeding us at the office when everything was closed.

And then, after Biden was elected and the border wall work disappeared in the stroke of a pen, I was praying about what was next. That same week, an old friend reached out — someone I hadn’t heard from in nearly a decade. She offered me a job in construction technology, selling software. After all the miracles I’d just witnessed since accepting Christ, was I really going to abandon Bill and leave Gibraltar?

I was interviewing with a company called Constru, asking God for a sign — and I look up:

CONSTRU AHEAD

That job didn’t work out. But it led me to the largest construction technology platform in the world, where I became the top enterprise sales rep. None of it happens without the wrong turns. None of it happens without Bill. None of it happens without Rodney.

the good samaritan

Would you stop what you’re doing today and save your mortal enemy’s life? Be honest. I barely stop to help someone on the side of the road because I’m too worried about where I need to be. I’ve driven by accidents like the one my boys and I were in — the one where strangers stopped and saved us — without even slowing down. Shame on me.

This world separates us. Demonizes us to each other. Keeps us feeling like enemies instead of brothers. Jesus came to undo that. To humanize us to each other.

“Whatever you’ve done for the least of these, you’ve done for Me.”

I’ve been the least. I know what it feels like to be unseen. But I’ve also been the one walking and driving by. Those are the things that convict me today that I never saw before.

the lobby

This past February, I was standing in a lobby at a church in Austin. My three boys in front of me — Brock, Jack, George. All of us in our “ALL IN” t-shirts and bathing suits. Nobody cutting up. Just a quiet peace. An acceptance of what we’d decided to do.

To be honest, my boys were the ones who finally convinced me to do it. They were ready. They’d seen me awake and in the Word, just like I had learned from Rodney. They had their grandfather’s influence long before they had mine. They had an advantage over me — they’ve known Rodney McGee their whole lives. I met him in 2010, but I hadn’t actually taken the time to know him until probably 2020 or 2021. Long after I’d been on my knees in his living room. It took a long while for God to take out my stony, stubborn heart and give me a tender, responsive one. But I’m glad He finally did.

I was standing behind them feeling something I’d chased my whole life without knowing it. Not success. Not money. Peace.

My three boys and I — Brock and Jack along with my stepson George — walked out into the congregation together. I was baptized at forty-nine, with my sons beside me in the water. And the man who baptized me? The man who just introduced me. Rodney McGee.

If that’s not grace, I don’t know what is.

the prayer

I want to close by showing you how I start every single day. Because I don’t want any of this to be theory — I want you to walk away from this with something you can actually use.

My pastor Randy Phillips at LifeFamily told us something that blew my mind. He said the Lord’s Prayer was never meant to be a script. It’s a model. A structure for how you pray — not what you say every single time like a spell or an incantation. Jesus wasn’t giving us magic words to repeat. He was teaching us how to talk to God. Some Christians pray for one to two hours a day. I couldn’t believe that when I first heard it. But once you understand the concepts behind each line, you realize the prayer isn’t seven sentences — it’s seven doors into a conversation that could last all morning.

That idea changed everything for me. And it’s been deepened through two groups of men I couldn’t imagine my life without these days — a Thursday lunch Bible study led by my friend Joseph Hauss with men from LifeFamily, and a Friday morning men’s group at Lake Hills Church led by my friend Brian Trzupek. Those men have shaped my faith more than almost anything else in my life. We typically read from the NLT or NIV, occasionally peeking back at the King James, but more often than not we find ourselves digging into the original Greek — like we’re about to do right here — because that’s where the deeper meaning lives.

I think my dad struggled with this his entire life. He went to churches that said different versions — one said “debts,” another said “trespasses” — and I think it confused him. I think he memorized the words like they held some kind of magic power. Like if you got the words right, God would hear you. If you got them wrong, maybe He wouldn’t.

But that’s not how any of this works. The words aren’t the point. The concepts are. That’s where the peace is actually found. At least that’s been my experience.

Even though I read the NLT Bible, I still say the Lord’s Prayer in the old King James in my head. It’s the version I memorized. But I don’t just recite it anymore. I live inside it. Let me show you what I mean.

Line 1: “Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.”

The concept: You’re not opening a business meeting. You’re talking to your Father. The Greek word here is Patēr — and in Jesus’s time, that was intimate. This wasn’t the formal, distant “God of the universe.” This was relational. Personal. The kind of father who knows your name.

And then hagiazō — “hallowed.” It means to set apart as sacred, to treat as holy. Not just respected. Not just honored. In a category by itself. You’re starting your prayer by saying: I recognize who You are, and I recognize that You are above everything else in my life.

How I pray it: Our Father, in heaven — I want to honor your name. Always. Help me honor your name today, in how I treat people, how I speak, how I show up.

This is where I set my intention. Before I ask for a single thing, I acknowledge who I’m talking to. Not a vending machine. Not a wish-granting genie. A Father.

If you grew up in a home where your father wasn’t able to show you what that kind of love looked like — and mine wasn’t, not because he didn’t love me, but because nobody showed him — this line is where it all starts to heal. My dad did the best he could with the tools he was given. I believe that. And I’ve forgiven him for the rest. But when I pray “Our Father,” I’m not talking to the father I grew up with. I’m talking to the Father I was always supposed to have. And through that relationship, I’ve found a kind of love I can now bring back to my own dad — and to my own kids — that breaks the cycle instead of continuing it.

Line 2: “Thy kingdom come.”

The concept: The Greek is basileia — kingdom, reign, rule. But this isn’t about a geographic place. Jesus is asking us to pray that God’s way of doing things would spread. That His values — love, mercy, justice, peace — would take root here, now, in our actual lives. Not someday. Not in the afterlife. Today.

How I pray it: Help me grow your Kingdom and find others that I can help save from the darkness of this world. Help me bring a new generation of people closer to You — not through arguments, but through how I live.

This is the mission line. It’s not about building my kingdom — my brand, my reputation, my portfolio. It’s about building His. And the way you do that isn’t by preaching at people. It’s by living differently enough that they start asking questions.

Line 3: “Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.”

The concept: Thelēma — God’s will, desire, purpose. Jesus is teaching us to surrender. To say: what You want matters more than what I want. And not just when I die — right now. On this job site. In this marriage. At this dinner table. In this conversation with my brother.

“As it is in heaven” means: the same way things work perfectly in God’s presence, let them work that way here. Through me.

How I pray it: Tell me what I need to do today to show everyone around me that I’m a Christian and true to your word — not when I die, but here on Earth while I’m still alive. Help me bring peace to this world and a little piece of heaven to this broken world so that others can see the light you brought.

That’s surrender. Every morning. Thy will, not mine. And if you’ve ever tried to actually live that out for one full day, you know how hard it is. Your will is loud. His is quiet. You have to be still enough to hear it.

Line 4: “Give us this day our daily bread.”

The concept: Epiousios — this is one of the most mysterious words in the entire New Testament. It appears only here, in this prayer. Scholars have debated its exact meaning for two thousand years. It could mean “necessary for existence,” “for the coming day,” or “beyond substance.” But the simplest reading is this: God, give me what I need to get through today. Not next year. Not my five-year plan. Today.

Notice it says “give us” — not “give me.” Even in your most personal prayer, Jesus is teaching you to think beyond yourself.

How I pray it: This is where I ask for His help. Where I tell Him what I need. The deals I need to close. The conversations I need to have. The wisdom I need to help others understand where I’m coming from. The relationships I need to repair.

And more importantly — this is where I listen for what He needs from me.

This is the most practical line in the whole prayer. You’re not just asking for food on the table — although you can. You’re asking for whatever you need to serve the people in your life today. And you’re pausing long enough to hear the answer.

Line 5: “And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”

The concept: This is the one that trips people up. And I think it’s the one that tripped up my dad his entire life.

Here’s why: depending on which church you walked into, you heard a different word. The KJV says “debts” — opheilēma in Greek, which literally means something owed. A deficit. A hole you’ve dug. The Book of Common Prayer, which is where millions of people actually memorized this prayer from — not from the Bible itself, but from church liturgy — uses “trespasses.” And the NLT just says “sins” — the Greek hamartia, which comes from archery and means “missing the mark.”

He wasn’t wrong to be confused. He was hearing three different metaphors for the same reality, and nobody ever explained to him that they’re all pointing at the same thing:

Debts says: you took something. You owe someone. You’re in deficit with the people around you.

Trespasses says: you crossed a line. You violated someone’s space, their trust, their dignity. I’ve done that too. I’ve stepped on people’s toes and said things that violated their personal territory.

Sins says: you missed the mark. The target was love, and your arrow went somewhere else.

They’re all true. They’re all pointing at the same gap between who you are and who God made you to be.

Here’s why the word doesn’t matter as much as the concept: Jesus covered all three on the cross.

This past Easter at Lake Hills Church in Austin, Pastor Mac Richard put something on screen that brought this specific question — debts vs. trespasses vs. sins — into focus. When Jesus said “It is finished” — tetelestai in Greek — that single word carried three meanings from the ancient world:

Financial: Paid in full. It was stamped on receipts when a debt was settled. Nothing left to owe.

Military: Mission accomplished. It was the report delivered when the objective was complete.

Legal: Sentence served. It was written on a prisoner’s certificate when they’d done their time. You’re free to go.

Jesus wasn’t picking one metaphor. He was settling all of them at once. Your debts? Paid. Your trespasses? Pardoned. Your sins? Covered. The question isn’t which word your church uses. The question is whether you believe it’s already been handled — and whether you’re willing to extend that same grace to the people who owe you.

And that brings us to the part most people miss — the most important part of this entire prayer: “as we forgive our debtors.”

This isn’t optional. This isn’t a suggestion. Jesus is saying: the forgiveness you’re asking for? You only receive it to the degree that you give it. You want God to forgive the holes you’ve dug? Then you have to forgive the people who dug holes in your life. You want God to overlook your trespasses? You have to stop holding other people’s trespasses over their heads.

Think about that. Rodney McGee’s daughter — my ex-wife. I hurt her. I hurt their family. And the man who had every right to hold that debt over my head for the rest of my life… forgave it. Took me in. Led me to Christ. Baptized me. That’s what this line looks like when someone actually lives it out.

How I pray it: Forgive us our debts and trespasses, as I have been forgiven my own mistakes and sins and the evil I’ve put into this world. Because that’s what those debts are — they’re the holes I’ve dug in the relationships around me. The beliefs others have of me that I need to overcome. And the only way to overcome them is through new actions and a returning to Him. Begging for forgiveness once you realize how badly you’ve strayed from His perfect plan for you. The same way you hope for that for your own children.

Line 6: “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

The concept: Peirasmos — temptation, trial, testing. And ponēros — evil, the evil one. Jesus wraps these together because they work together. Temptation is the doorway. Evil is what’s on the other side.

This is the line where you get brutally honest with God about the things you’re still fighting. The habits you haven’t beaten yet. The patterns that pull you away from the man you’re trying to become. The ways you still fall short as a husband, a father, a friend. Everyone’s list is different. God already knows yours. This is where you say it out loud — not because He needs to hear it, but because you need to hear yourself say it.

How I pray it: Help me resist the things that pull me away from my family. Help me focus my heart on my wife. Help me stay present — not numbed out, not checked out, not hiding behind habits that make me feel better for five minutes and worse for five days. Protect me from the darkness I already know is out there — because I’ve been that darkness before.

Well — maybe Rodney doesn’t need this one. But the rest of us humans sure do.

Line 7: “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.”

The concept: This closing line — called the doxology — doesn’t appear in all ancient manuscripts. Some Bibles include it, some put it in a footnote, and the NLT usually leaves it out of the main text. But most of us who memorized the prayer in church grew up saying it.

And I think it matters. Because after six lines of petition — after asking, surrendering, confessing, begging for protection — you end by giving it all back. Yours is the kingdom. Yours is the power. Yours is the glory. Not mine. Not ever.

It’s the closing that puts everything back in perspective. You started by acknowledging who God is. You end by acknowledging who you’re not.

How I pray it: Because at the end of all of it — the asking, the confessing, the surrendering — none of this is about me. It’s all Yours. The kingdom I’m trying to help build is Yours. The power to change my life comes from You. And whatever good comes from any of this — the glory belongs to You. Forever.

Amen.

I’ve been that evil before. Let me let you in on something in case you haven’t already figured it out. There aren’t good people and bad people in this world. Good and evil runs through the center of every human heart. And He has given us the free will to choose — whether we seek a relationship with Him, and peace and love, or whether we push Him away and live life on our own terms and our own selfish ways.

I used to think selfishness was only when you had a lot and didn’t use it to help others. But it also shows up when you have nothing and you pretend your life is all about poor little you and your victimhood. Stop playing the victim and start playing the survivor instead — and watch how your life changes.

I don’t ever understand why people get all hung up on reciting the same words over and over again. No amount of chanting or repeated phrases will help you find God. You have to learn the concepts, not the words. Understand the meaning and the intent — and not just spit out verses to make someone feel small. The whole point of the book is to show you how to have better relationships with other humans, and that through helping others, you will have a better life.

There are a couple different translations that we read in my men’s group — usually NLT or NIV, occasionally peeking back at the King James, and more often than we probably expected, looking at the original Greek. And each man has a different version of Jesus that he has his relationship with — because they each have a different personal relationship with Him that only comes from spending time with Him daily.

When you only search for God on Sundays when you have a break in your busy schedule to make it to church, you’ll miss the entire point of what He came to preach.

Take the lessons that God has given you. Because that’s what they are, believe it or not. They’re a gift. They’re how you help others in this world — by reaching out and helping them not fall into the same holes you fell into. Be a mentor. Be a Samaritan to your neighbor. Love others as yourself.

iron sharpens iron

I started this story in a closet. And I’ll tell you what — it feels pretty good to have finally come out of it.

Three doors closed. Shower running. A man trying to put as much distance as possible between himself and his own life.

I’m standing here today because two men opened the door instead.

Rodney didn’t use a computer to save my life — I don’t think he really even knows how to turn his on. Bill certainly didn’t use software to put food on my table — although in a way, he does today. But they started by using their hands. They laid them on me and prayed for me. They gave me their time and more importantly, their presence, when no one else would. Their patience — dealing with my hubris, my arrogance, my ‘knowledge.’ They showed me what love truly looks like between men. Brotherly love. The way iron sharpens iron. That’s what grace looks like when it puts on work boots.

You’re not a burden to anyone. You never were. You’re a man in the middle of becoming.

The hardest thing you’ll ever build is inside of you. And that’s the thing your family, your friends, your kids and grandkids and everyone in your personal orbit inherits. That’s the thing that lasts.

You might be the Rodney in someone’s life and not even know it. Don’t walk by.

Thank you. God bless you guys.

Related: Starting Over: A Letter to the Man I Was in 2017

Generational Curses

I’m almost fifty years old, and I just figured this out.

Not the surface stuff — I’ve known for a long time that my family was complicated, that I carried things I didn’t choose, that I repeated patterns I swore I’d never repeat. That part isn’t news to anyone who’s been paying attention, least of all me.

What took me this long to understand is why. Where it started. How two men who both survived a World War and both believed in God could come home and build two completely different kinds of families — and how those two families collided when my parents got married and created the house I grew up in.

I’m still figuring most of this out. But I’ve learned enough to know that when you finally see a pattern clearly — really see it — you can’t unsee it. And I wonder if you might recognize some of this in your own family. I did, and it took me forty-nine years.

Stay with me. Even if it’s 2 AM and you can’t sleep and something is pulling at you that you can’t quite name. Especially if that’s where you are.

Two Houses

I had two grandfathers. They couldn’t have been designed more differently if someone had done it on purpose.

Maybe someone did.

Pop’s house smelled like aftershave and my grandmother’s perfume. Saturday mornings, I’d wake up wedged between them in their bed — a six-year-old sardine crammed between his two favorite people on the planet. They didn’t want me there. What grandparents want an elbow in their ribs at 5 AM? But I wanted to be there, and they made room. That’s what love looks like when it’s done right. You make room even when there isn’t any.

Before anyone was awake, I’d sneak into the kitchen and pull down the Cocoa Krispies — the good cereal. One morning, we’d run out of milk and I didn’t want to wake anyone, so I grabbed the heavy cream from the fridge and poured it over the top. I’m pretty sure I found a piece of heaven for the first time that morning. Mere was a little upset that I’d used up all the creamer for her coffee — but not upset enough that I didn’t do it almost every time after that. And most mornings, they’d just come downstairs and find me at the dining room table, chocolate milk dripping down my chin, watching cartoons like I hadn’t just committed a felony against their groceries.

They just shook their heads and gave me grace.

That’s the word. Not permission. Not approval. Grace. They didn’t condone the Cocoa Krispies heist. They just loved me more than they loved being right about breakfast. I looked forward to it every single weekend. Just thinking back to it gives me diabetes.

Pop owned Farrow’s of Haddonfield, a gift shop on King’s Highway in Haddonfield, New Jersey. He served in the South Pacific as a Navy SeaBee during World War II, and when he came home from whatever he saw over there, he decided to spend the rest of his life doing anything he could to put a smile on people’s faces. Through the various gifts and cards in his shop, he’d bring people happiness. We’d walk up and down King’s Highway together — from Farrow’s to the bank, to the barber, stopping at The Happy Hippo toy store where the LGB trains always caught my eye. Or maybe they caught Pop’s eye first. I’m still not sure. But on every walk, no matter how short or how long, he would get stopped by dozens of people. He seemed to know and love everyone, and everyone knew and loved him. But man, did it take forever to get anywhere with all that stopping and talking — how were we EVER going to get to the toy store? He loved people and people adored him.

Before I knew it, we had a small train setup in the basement that would grow over the years into one of my favorite places on earth. He didn’t build that train set to keep us busy. He built it to keep us close. He craved time with us, and even as a little boy, I could feel that — the weight of a man’s genuine desire to simply know his grandchildren.

Every December, he’d dress up as Santa Claus. One Christmas, when we were living in Wilmington, Delaware, Pop drove down to surprise my brothers and me. But there was no fooling me. Santa was wearing Pop’s shoes. Santa smelled exactly like Pop’s aftershave. And finding out the truth that way almost didn’t hurt — because I couldn’t have imagined Santa being a better man than my Pop anyway.

He was taken from me far too soon. I never got the chance to say a proper goodbye. Throwing his ashes into the bay at Stone Harbor was the first time I ever had to say goodbye to someone I loved. Nearly forty years later, I still feel it.

My Mere tried to fill the gap after he was gone. She did her best. It was never quite the same — the man who held it all together had left, and the rest of us had to figure out how to carry what he left behind. That said, I probably never would have gotten to travel with my Mere if Pop was still around. Life’s ups and downs present all kinds of new and different opportunities if you’re open to them.

The Voice in the Water

There was a summer at Pop’s house — I couldn’t have been older than eight or nine — when I was swimming alone in the backyard pool. Diving to the bottom the way kids do, trying to hold my breath as long as possible, playing whatever game you play when you’re small and the water is warm and there’s nowhere you need to be.

I remember going under and hearing something. Not a sound, exactly. More like a pull. A voice that wasn’t a voice, calling me toward the surface.

When I came up, there was nobody there.

I called out to Mere and Pop. They finally came outside, but they told me they hadn’t been calling. I was sure I’d heard that voice. To this day, I wonder who that guardian angel must have been.

I tucked it away the way kids tuck things away — in that drawer in the back of your mind where the things you can’t explain go to wait. I would not think about it clearly for another forty years. But it never left. It was always there, waiting for me to be ready to hear it again. I just didn’t know yet that the voice calling me toward the surface was the same one that would eventually call me out of a much deeper kind of water — the kind where you’re drowning and don’t even realize it because you’ve been under so long that it feels normal.

Grandfather Kelly’s House

Grandfather Kelly’s house smelled like mothballs and old wood. But it also smelled like my grandmother’s cooking — rhubarb pie with vanilla ice cream is a dish I can still taste if I close my eyes long enough.

His name was Lloyd. Very proper. During the war, he was stationed in England as a sergeant — some kind of advanced mechanic, my Dad thinks, though he couldn’t give me many details beyond that. What we know is that he served his country faithfully, he came home, and he built a life the only way he knew how to build one.

With rules.

We called them Grandmother and Grandfather Kelly. Never anything warmer. You sat at the table and you did not participate in adult conversation. You ate what you were given. You said grace before every meal — “God our Father, we thank you for the food we eat and loving care. Be with us here and everywhere. Amen.” — in exactly the same voice every time. My brother actually had to remind me of that last line. The toys were my father’s old toys, like we were an afterthought to a house that had already moved on.

I don’t want to paint it all as darkness. It wasn’t. There were lessons in that house that I carry today — discipline, respect, the understanding that showing up matters whether you feel like it or not. Those aren’t small gifts. But the feeling in the house was heavy. And a child feels heaviness before he can name it.

There’s a story I carry from that house that I’m not proud of, but it’s honest, and honest is what I promised.

One Sunday morning, we were running late for church. I was six, maybe seven. I needed to use the bathroom and my grandmother said we couldn’t be late. I couldn’t hold it. Pee started running down my leg, and in that instant — out of pure reflex and terror — I screamed two words that a six-year-old probably shouldn’t know how to deploy so effectively: Jesus Christ.

She slapped me across the face. Shoved a bar of Dove soap in my mouth. And told me I was going to hell.

I am approaching fifty years old. I still cannot use Dove soap.

For most of my life, I held that memory with nothing but hurt. I understand that hurt. A scared six-year-old doesn’t need rules. He needs comfort. But I’ve sat with it long enough now to see something else behind it — something I couldn’t have seen as a child.

My grandmother didn’t go to war. She never saw what my grandfather saw overseas. But she lived with a man who did — who came home carrying something that had no name in 1945. We’d call it trauma now, but they didn’t have that word then. What they had was: get up, go to work, join the pipefitters union outside Philadelphia, don’t fall apart. He built a world of walls because walls were what had kept him alive. And she lived inside those walls with him. She raised children inside them. She ran a household by the only rules that house had available. I think she absorbed his rigidity the way a person absorbs the weather of the house they live in — not because it was her nature, but because it was what surrounded her.

That doesn’t make what happened to me okay. A six-year-old in a puddle of his own fear doesn’t need theology. He needs someone to kneel down and say it’s going to be alright. But I can hold both things now — the hurt of that moment and the understanding that my grandmother was doing her best inside a structure she didn’t design. She was carrying his war too, even if she never knew it.

And if that’s what religion looked like — if that’s what God looked like — I didn’t want any part of it. I carried that conclusion for a very long time. It would take decades and a very patient man to show me that what I experienced that morning had nothing to do with God. It had everything to do with what happens when love gets buried under rules so deep that nobody in the house can find it anymore.

The rules weren’t the absence of love. They were love wearing the only armor that house knew how to put on.

The Grandmother My Cousins Knew

I need to say this, because this story isn’t only mine.

My cousins loved their grandmother. Deeply and without reservation. The woman they describe is not the woman I experienced on that cold Sunday morning. Through their eyes, she was warm. She was present. She was the matriarch who held their world together, and their grief when she died was real and earned, and I have no right to take that from them.

My aunt — Judy Poole, my Dad’s sister — went on to become the headmistress of Abbotsleigh, an all-girls school in Sydney, Australia. She built a life of leadership and education on the other side of the world, and through her and through my cousins, I’ve been fortunate to understand that my grandmother was a different woman to them. She was capable of a tenderness that I didn’t get to see enough of — or maybe that I wasn’t in a position to receive at the time.

I remember stopping through Sydney in December of 2011 on my way to see my friend Kate, who I had met at my cousin’s wedding the year prior, in New Zealand for three weeks. I was looking forward to traveling and seeing both the North and the South Islands. But I had a connection in Sydney and took advantage of a quick trip to Abbotsleigh between my flights for a meal. My Grandmother Kelly was in town, in fact, and we hadn’t talked in quite a while. It was so nice to hear of her travels to India and hear stories I had never heard before. I think that was one of the last times I saw her before she died.

I wish I’d had more moments like that one. Sitting across from her without the weight of the house between us, just two people sharing a meal and stories. I caught a glimpse that day of the woman my cousins knew — curious, traveled, full of life. And I’m grateful I got that glimpse, even if it came late.

I want to honor her. Whatever happened between her and me, she was still someone’s beloved grandmother. She was still a woman who raised children and kept a home and did the best she could with whatever she and my grandfather were carrying together. Both things can be true. A person can be hard in one room and gentle in another. That doesn’t make either version a lie. It makes them human.

When Grace Married Rules

My mother came from Pop’s house. My father came from Grandfather Kelly’s house. When they got married, grace married rules. And what you get when those two things collide — at least in my family’s case — was always a little tension and never quite enough of the open, easy kind of love.

They worked constantly. We had a four-bedroom house with a pool, a hot tub, a beach house in Cedar Key. On paper, it looked like the dream. And in a lot of ways it was — my parents had drive and work ethic and they provided. I can never complain about what they taught me about showing up and getting things done. But there was a distance in that house. Avoidance. My parents smoked and drank and argued many nights. But... they made up and always slept in the same bed. I told myself that other people had it much worse and that this was what a normal marriage looked like.

My father ran his world by his father’s tools — not because he was a villain, but because that was the only model he’d ever been given for how a man leads a family. Nobody handed him a different one. And nobody told me why our family was the way it was.

We weren’t raised. We were enlisted... or maybe enslaved. I used to complain, but this is where the work ethic came from. I never saw a repair man at our house growing up. I was the official flashlight holder — the kid who could never find the right tool in the right amount of time. But just that alone gave me the confidence to take apart things that I never quite got back together the same way. Knowing that my Dad could do it gave me the confidence to know that I could too. And all those endless weekend projects were important lessons that gave me agency in many areas of my life that I’m grateful for today. I remember my Dad giving me copies of Computer Science magazine — they had a copy of the game “Snake” in BASIC, and I remember typing for days after school trying to get that code to work. When I finally did, I thought it was magic. Forty years later, I’m diving head first into the AI agentic world trying to figure these things out — thanks to my Dad helping me feel confident in computers while I was only in second or third grade.

I left home at seventeen. It happened the way these things happen: gradually and then all at once. Rules had been accumulating for years without the relationship that makes rules feel like love instead of control. I left in silence. It was a long time before we really talked again.

But here’s the thing I can see now that I couldn’t see then: my father wasn’t trying to push me away. He was trying to hold everything together with the only tools he had — his father’s tools. And his father’s tools came from a man who had brought them home from the war. The pattern goes back further than any of us can see clearly. That’s not an excuse for any of it. But it is the truth of it.

The Curse Named

Here’s where I’m supposed to tell you I broke the cycle when my kids were born. I didn’t.

I got married. I had children. And one night in Dallas, I found myself standing in a room with my kids, and I heard a voice coming out of my mouth that I recognized from somewhere I never wanted to hear it again.

I was yelling. Loud and angry the way men sound when they have nowhere to put what’s been building inside them since they were kids in someone else’s house. My children started crying. And in that moment — it hit me like something physical, like a wall coming down — I realized I had become exactly what I had sworn I would never become.

My father’s voice was coming through me. Grandfather Kelly’s voice had once come through my father. I had watched that pattern my entire life. I had named it and hated it and sworn to God I would be different. And there I was. Same room. Different generation. Same voice.

For a long time, I thought the curse was the specific behaviors — the drinking, the fighting, the dysfunction I could point at and say “I won’t do those things.” I thought if I avoided the specific symptoms, I’d escape the disease.

That’s not the curse.

The curse is the absence of a model for unconditional love. If no one ever showed you what it looks like to love someone without a performance review — without withdrawal when they disappoint you, without punishment for the wrong word at the wrong moment — then you don’t know how to do it. You may want to desperately. But wanting and knowing are not the same thing.

That’s not a character flaw. That’s a wound being passed forward. It doesn’t make you a bad person. It makes you a person who needed something they never received, reaching into the next generation with empty hands.

We can either use our pain to help others or to make others feel what we felt. I’ve done both. I have only regretted the latter.

The Breaking

I was sitting alone in my bedroom in Houston.

I had started sitting in the quiet every night because something in me knew I needed the kind of silence that doesn’t come from just turning off the television. Real quiet — the kind where there’s nowhere left to go and nothing left to hide behind.

Something happened in that room. I can’t give you a clean theological explanation for it. The only way I know how to describe it is: warmth. Brightness. A knowing that arrived the way the sun arrives — you don’t argue with the sun. You don’t have to decide whether to believe in it. You just feel it.

I met a man named Rodney McGee around the holidays of 2010 after I’d been dating his daughter for several months. He had a way about him that I couldn’t quite place at first — a steadiness, a warmth that didn’t seem to need anything from you. He’s famous among the people who know him for threading truth and love together in a way that somehow gets through the thickest walls. I didn’t know yet how much I’d need that.

Years later, after I’d moved to Houston following my bankruptcy, he came down to check on me. He’d seen the signs that I hadn’t been well. He came to pray with me, to tell me he was there for me, to make sure I was present as a capable Dad and a decent husband to his daughter. After his visit, he left, the way people do. And then he turned around and came back. There’s nothing logical about turning the car around and going back to a place you’ve already left. But Rodney felt God tugging at him, and he turned back around. In 2017, when everything around me was collapsing — after I’d been fired, when I was terrified I’d end up under a bridge somewhere, when part of me felt like I deserved exactly that for the decisions I’d made — he was there. Not because he had to be. Because something in him made him turn around and show his love and compassion for a man that didn’t deserve it one bit.

He didn’t fix me. He sat with me. He helped me feel seen and heard and valued at the exact moment I was most convinced I was worth nothing. And somewhere in that season, he got through the walls I’d spent a lifetime building.

He showed me what the Gospel actually is. Not the version I’d encountered as a terrified six-year-old with soap in his mouth — not the threat of hell and the language of punishment. Something completely different. Something I hadn’t known was available.

“I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart.” — Ezekiel 36:26

I fought that man for years before I broke. I’m grateful every day that he was stubborn enough to outlast me.

The Law That Love Replaces

I published this essay for the first time a week before Easter. I thought it was finished.

Then Holy Week happened.

I’ve been reading through 1 John as part of my daily Scripture practice, and during Holy Week, chapter 3 stopped me cold. The whole chapter is about love — real love, not the performative kind. Not love as a feeling. Love as a decision to lay down your life for your brothers and sisters. And tucked inside it is a warning that hit me harder than I expected: “We must not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and killed his brother.”

Cain and Abel. Brother against brother. The oldest pattern in the Bible.

I sat with that for a long time. Because I know what it looks like when brothers turn against each other. I’ve watched it in my own family. I haven’t had a real conversation with one of my brothers in almost ten years. We saw each other briefly at a cousin’s wedding in Key West in January of 2025, but that’s not the same thing as talking — not really. My other brother and I, who normally speak nearly every day, had also hit a rough patch. And my own sons — who aren’t small anymore, these are tackle football players who love to hit — had been going at each other that very weekend. They learned to read 1 John 3 for themselves that night.

The pattern was everywhere I looked. Brothers fighting. In the Bible. In my family. In my living room.

Then Matthew 22:37-40 tied everything together. Jesus was asked which commandment was the greatest. His answer was simple: Love God. Love others as yourself. And then He said the thing that changed everything for me — all of the law and all of the demands of the prophets hang on those two commands.

All of them. Every rule. Every commandment. Every standard my grandfather enforced. Every expectation my father inherited. Fulfilled by love.

Jesus didn’t come to add more rules to the pile. He came to show us that if we get love right, the rules become unnecessary. Not because consequences don’t matter — they do. But because when you discipline with a heart of compassion and teaching instead of control and suffering, something different happens. People grow closer to each other. And closer to God.

I think about the people Jesus encountered during His time here. He was betrayed by one of His closest friends for thirty pieces of silver. His own people turned against Him because they wanted a warrior and He offered them a servant. He went to the cross for people who didn’t believe in Him — not to prove them wrong, but to show them The Way.

I think about how hard it is, even as a new Christian, to wrap my mind around someone so perfect that He never made a mistake. He loved everyone, regardless of how He was treated. The only time He truly got upset was when religious leaders were warping and using the law to control people, when the temple had become a marketplace instead of a house of prayer. He wasn’t angry about sin the way most of us think. He was angry about the weaponization of His Father’s love.

That’s the difference between Pop’s house and Grandfather Kelly’s house. Pop’s house ran on the principle of Matthew 22 without ever naming it — love first, and the rest follows. Grandfather Kelly’s house ran on the law without the love underneath it. Both men believed in God. Both men served their country. But one came home and built warmth, and the other came home and built walls.

The curse was never the rules themselves. The curse was rules without love. Law without grace. Structure without tenderness.

And Jesus came to end that curse.

“So it is clear that no one can be made right with God by trying to keep the law... But Christ has rescued us from the curse pronounced by the law. When he was hung on the cross, he took upon himself the curse for our wrongdoing.” — Galatians 3:11-13 (NLT)

The Voice Returns

He baptized me. Six weeks ago. I was forty-nine years old, and when my three sons told me they were ready, I decided it was my time too.

I remember going under the water. The sound of everything becoming muffled — but I could still hear the applause from the people standing around that pool. The water was warmer than I expected. And the first face I saw when I came up was Rodney McGee. Smiling.

There was a morning, not long after the baptism, sitting in the quiet I’d been slowly learning to find — before the house woke up, before the day started pulling in every direction — when something came back to me.

A backyard pool in Haddonfield. Going underwater as a kid and feeling that pull toward the surface. That voice that wasn’t a voice. Coming up and finding nobody there.

I sat in the silence for a long time.

The voice didn’t leave. I just forgot how to listen. It had been calling me toward the surface my whole life — through the quiet in Houston, through Rodney turning the car around, through the water at the baptism. The same voice. Patient enough to wait forty years for me to stop swimming away from it.

The Pattern Still Speaking

If my brother reads this — I love you and I miss you. That’s it. No conditions. No agenda. Just call me.

That’s what Easter is, isn’t it? An open door. A table set for people who don’t deserve to sit at it. A God who doesn’t wait for you to get it right before He offers you everything.

What You Don’t Have to Keep Carrying

I have four kids who are watching me the same way I watched my grandfathers. They’re forming their own blueprints right now, based on what they see me do — not what I tell them to do. I’ve been both men. I’ve been the grandfather who raises his voice and demands compliance. And I’ve been the grandfather who builds a train set in the basement because he wants his people close.

The curse doesn’t end when you fix everything. You never fully fix it. The voice still shows up. My Dad’s voice still lives in my head daily. It even still comes out of my mouth sometimes, and when I catch it, I still hate it and swear not to do it again. Maybe next time I won’t have to ask for forgiveness.

But the difference between a curse and a legacy is awareness. It’s the willingness to name what was passed down, to honor the men who passed it down without pretending it didn’t cause damage, and to choose — every single day — to build a different house.

You don’t help your children by keeping the worst parts of yourself from them. You help them by healing yourself so they won’t need to.

My grandfathers both survived things I cannot imagine. They came home and built lives and did the best they could with what the war and the world had left them. I’ve made my peace with both of them.

Pop’s warmth wasn’t an accident of personality. It was a choice he made every day — to come home from the South Pacific and fill a house with aftershave and heavy cream and train sets in the basement and show up as Santa Claus every December because his grandchildren deserved to feel like the world was full of magic. That is an act of will. That is a man choosing love on purpose.

And Grandfather Kelly’s rules weren’t the absence of love. They were the language of love that a wartime veteran had available to him. He gave what he had. I honor him for that.

What I choose to carry forward is the gift in both of them. Not the wound.

“Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.” — Romans 12:2

The renewal has to come from somewhere outside the pattern. You cannot think your way out of a system you were born into. Willpower won’t get you there. Something has to enter from outside. That’s what the man who turned the car around was for me. That’s what going under the water was for me. That’s what the voice at the bottom of the pool was, forty years before I understood it.

And that’s what Easter morning is. The promise that every dead thing — every broken relationship, every inherited wound, every pattern you thought was permanent — can come back to life. Not because you earned it. Because it was given to you before you ever asked.

For the Man Reading This at 2 AM

If you’re still here — and I mean that literally, something pulling at you that you can’t quite name — here’s what I want you to do. Not tomorrow. Tonight.

Find somewhere quiet. Turn off the phone screen. Close your eyes. Set a timer for two minutes. Just two.

Watch your thoughts the way you’d watch clouds moving across a sky. Don’t chase them. Don’t fight them. Don’t try to solve them. Just watch them pass.

Here’s the thing I needed someone to tell me for thirty years:

You are not those thoughts.

The voice that says you’re failing. The voice that sounds like your father, or your grandfather, or the version of yourself you’re most ashamed of — that voice is not you. It’s weather. It passes. The thing underneath it — the one that’s still there when everything goes quiet — that’s the one I’m writing to right now.

Somewhere along the way, probably a long time ago, someone handed you a wound and called it a worldview. You carried it because you didn’t know you had a choice. You passed parts of it on because that’s what unhealed things do — they move through us into the people we love most.

But here’s the truth about a pattern: it ends the moment someone decides it ends. Not through gritting your teeth. Not through trying to outwork the damage. Through something entering that the pattern never had an answer for. Through a man who turns his car around. Through water warmer than you expected. Through a voice calling you toward the surface when you didn’t know you were going under.

The first thing you need to do is forgive. Forgive yourself for not being the man you needed to be at the time. And love yourself enough to put in the discipline to get better. Forgiveness isn’t a feeling. It’s a release. It’s setting down the weight that was never yours to carry in the first place.

You can let go. You can surrender. You can stop trying to earn being loved — because you already are. That is the best news I have ever heard in my life. And I spent way too long not believing it was meant for me.

It’s meant for you.

The rebuild is always available.

A note: I’ve heard that sometimes, putting the wrong version of a story on the internet is the best way to get it corrected. Part of my prayer with this piece is that if any family member reads this and finds something I’ve misremembered or gotten wrong, they’ll reach out. Not to fight about it — to help me get the record right. For my kids. For their kids. I’m almost fifty and still piecing together parts of my own history. If you have a different version of these stories, I want to hear it. I’m not trying to expose anyone. I’m trying to prevent the same pain from being passed down to one more generation.

We owe that to ourselves. We owe it to our children. And we owe it to two men who carried something home from the war that they never learned how to put down.

If you’re reading this at 2 AM — I see you. Read the full version with resources at mattshawnkelly.com

Hey man.

I know where you are right now. You’re in Houston. You’re running hard — from job sites to happy hours to whatever else numbs the noise. The boys are little. Brock is five. Jack is four. They need you. And you’re there, but you’re not there. You know the difference. You just can’t fix it yet.

I’m writing this from 2026. I’m 49. And I need you to hear some things that nobody is going to tell you — because the people around you right now are either tempting you to continue making bad decisions with them, can’t see it, or are too afraid to say it. The friends you think are friends are destroying you — not by evil intent. They were, and are, good people. They were broken yet successful too, and you bonded over that in one way or another.

Or maybe that’s the story you tell yourself. Maybe it was just you the entire time, projecting your own failures and doubts onto others.

Either way, nobody said it. So I will.

You’re Not Fine

I know you think you are. You’ve got the job, the truck, the story. You’re proud of being the guy who figured it out — left the house at 17 on your own, without a safety net, without a father who showed you how. Street smart. Self-made. That’s the mask you built, and it’s a good one.

You even put yourself through the University of Florida and came out with an engineering degree — Material Science, after you swore off construction and then failed enough chemistry to realize you should study something you actually enjoyed. Steel. And the irony is, that’s exactly what led you right back to construction. All that work, and you still couldn’t outrun who you were.

But here’s what that therapist told you — the one you’ll find in 2014, after everything falls apart. Your mother dies on New Year’s Eve 2013 — the same year Jack is born. Life gives and takes in the same breath. The next year, on Christmas Day, you’ll lose her mother too — your precious Mere, the other half of the world she shared with Pop, who’d already been gone since you were in the eighth grade. Two Christmases. Two losses. And somewhere in the middle of that grief, a therapist names the feeling you’ve been carrying your whole life. She calls it anxiety.

You almost laugh. Anxiety is for people who can’t hack it. Not you.

And then she says something that scares you more than anything anyone has ever said: “It’s going to have to get much, much worse before it gets better.”

She was right. You’re in the “worse” part now. Bankruptcy is coming in 2016. Houston is coming. In 2017, you’ll lose your job and end up on Rodney’s doorstep in Austin with nothing left. That’s where “better” starts — but you can’t see it from here.

You’ve been under the influence of something — anything — almost continuously since you landed in Dallas in 2009. You were trying to forget. You’d fallen in love with a whole life down in São Paulo — the country, the culture, the food, and one girl you would have stayed behind for if she’d been interested. Instead, the 2008-2009 financial crisis canceled the project you were working on and your whole world crashed around you in an instant. You were left trying to pick up the pieces and figure out what happened, in a town where you knew virtually no one, trying to fit in. Again. Eight years of numbing followed. The substances changed, but the pattern didn’t.

And the worst part isn’t what you’re doing to yourself. It’s what you’re missing with those boys while you do it.

Years from now, you’ll look back and call 2012 to 2017 the worst years of your life. Not the divorce years. These years. Dallas, Wichita Falls, Houston — while your sons were babies and toddlers and needed a father who was fully present. That’s going to haunt you. I won’t lie about that.

But it won’t destroy you. Because something is about to happen.

The Stillness and The Darkness

Sometime soon — maybe you’ve already done it, or maybe it’s a few months away — you’re going to download an app called Headspace. You’re going to walk into your bedroom, close the door, sit cross-legged in the pitch dark, and try to be still for twenty minutes.

You’re going to feel ridiculous.

And then something is going to happen that you can’t explain. A brightness that overtakes you. A warmth that holds you. A knowing — deep, quiet, certain — that you’re going to be okay. That there might actually be something more out there than all this worthless pleasure you’ve been chasing.

Don’t run from that. For once in your life, chase that feeling. It’s the truest thing you’ve ever felt.

You didn’t grow up believing a loving father existed — because you never experienced one. Pop came closest. He was the first man who made you feel loved, who always knew the right things to say, who made you feel like you mattered. But Pop couldn’t fill the hole your father left. Nobody could. And so you stopped believing that kind of love was real.

What I need you to know is this: you were wrong. Not wrong for feeling it. Wrong about the conclusion. A loving Father does exist. And by the time you trust Him — really trust Him — you’re going to find a peace and a joy you didn’t even realize you’d lost.

The Surrender

In November 2017, you’re going to reach the end of yourself. I’m not going to tell you exactly how it happens because you need to walk through it. But you’re going to end up on your knees in Rodney McGee’s house.

Yes — Rodney. Your ex-wife’s father. The man whose daughter you’ll eventually divorce. And here’s the part that will wreck you in the best possible way: that man will forgive you. He’ll house you when you have nowhere to go. He’ll walk with you. He’ll lead you to Christ. And nine years later, he’ll baptize you.

Let that sink in. The man you will hurt the most — through his daughter — will become the instrument of your salvation. If that’s not grace, I don’t know what is.

Starting Over: What Faith and Fatherhood Will Build

I’m not going to spoil everything. You deserve to live it. But here’s the outline, because you need hope right now more than you need details.

You’re going to get sober. Not overnight — it’s a process, and you’ll stumble. But you’ll get there.

You’re going to start sitting in silence every single day. As I write this, you’ll have meditated for over 1,300 consecutive days. More than 64,000 minutes. That dark room in Houston was just the beginning.

You’re going to walk into a church — LifeFamily Church, at 8901 State Hwy 71 on the west side of Austin. A guy named Joseph Hauss is going to lead a men’s Bible study that changes how you think about fatherhood and Jesus. A book called Play the Man is going to give you a framework for raising your boys with intention, not just instinct. And you’ll still be breaking bread with Joseph every Thursday at the Galleria years later — iron sharpening iron over lunch.

You’re going to take Brock down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. Three days, two nights, sleeping on the riverbank. You’ll set one rule: “You can ask me any question about my life and my marriage to your Mom.” And he will. And those conversations will be the most important ones you’ve ever had.

You’re going to take Jack to Jackson Hole for his manhood adventure. He’s loved snowboarding ever since your first trip to Steamboat in December 2024 — you both learned together back then. And you’ll teach him the rest: to look a man in the eye, to shake a hand, to lift weights and eat right and fear God and surround himself with strong men. Because iron sharpens iron.

You’re going to marry a woman named Lynette. She’s a Proverbs 31 woman — the real thing. She’ll see through your armor. She’ll be the first person since Pop who makes you believe you’re worth loving exactly as you are. You’ll commit to each other in a way you’ve never committed to anything: “We’re going to stick this one out, no matter what.”

You’ll blend a family — her kids, your kids, four total — and it’ll be harder and more beautiful than anything you’ve imagined.

And on February 22, 2026, you’ll stand in front of everyone who matters — your boys, your wife, your brothers, your ex-wife, the man who baptized you — and you’ll go ALL IN. Publicly. In the water at Lake Hills Church. With your sons beside you.

What I’d Tell You If I Could Sit Across From You Right Now

You’re loved. It’s not your fault.

Let go and trust in God’s perfect plan.

When you finally learn what it means to abide in Him, it’s better than any drug you’ve ever tried.

Here’s the hard truth: you already married the wrong woman. You got her pregnant because you were blind drunk, using drugs, and making bad decisions all around. I can’t change that for you. And I wouldn’t — because without her, there’s no Brock. Without Brock, there’s no Jack. Without those boys, you never find the willpower to heal and find Christ. But there’s an amazing woman waiting for you on the other side of the fire. You just have to walk through it first.

And stop leading with your worst qualities as a shield. I know you think you’re being honest. I know you think you’re protecting yourself by letting people see the ugly stuff first, so they can’t be disappointed later. But that’s fear, not honesty. Lynette is going to teach you the difference.

The Voice

That voice in your head — the one that says “You’re not interesting. Nobody cares what you have to say. Who do YOU think you are? Just shut up already” — that voice is a liar. It fed you your first beer before a Friday night football game in high school because you just wanted to connect with someone. It told you that numbing was the same as healing. It told you that you were a burden.

You’re not a burden. You never were.

You’re a man in the middle of becoming. And the hardest things you’ll ever build won’t be on a job site. They’ll be inside you.

Why I’m Writing This

I’m building something called The Rebuild. It’s a website, a newsletter, a living record of who I am — who you’ll become — so that our children can understand us. Really understand us. Not the highlight reel. Not the résumé version. The real thing, unfiltered.

I’m tearing it all down to the foundation. Back to when I was as young as I can remember, before the yelling started. And I’m building something new. A dynasty for our children — one they’ll be proud to call their own.

I’m also writing this for the man reading it at 2 AM. The one who loves to hunt and fish and build stuff with his hands, but who’s struggling with life. Maybe he’s not connecting with his kids. Maybe he’s drowning in something he can’t name. Maybe a therapist once told him it was going to get worse before it got better, and he’s wondering when “better” starts.

It starts when you stop running.

It starts when you sit in the dark and let the silence find you.

It starts when you reach the end of yourself and discover that Someone was waiting there all along.

I became everything I hated about others. How ironic. But I’m not that man anymore. And neither are you — not for long.

Sit and search for God. He’s waiting for you to find Him. In the still mornings. In your breath. In that same wind.

You’re not a victim. You’re a survivor. You’re still living. Now go live.

The hardest things we build are ourselves.

— Matt

If you’re the man reading this at 2 AM, I see you. Start here. And if you want to talk, I’m not hard to find.

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I’m 49 years old and I just got baptized.

If you’d told me five years ago that I’d be standing in front of a church, publicly declaring my faith, I would’ve said you had the wrong guy. Five years ago I was in the middle of a divorce, trying to figure out how to keep my career together while my personal life was falling apart, and “church” was pretty far down the priority list.

But here’s the thing about starting over — you don’t get to pick what it looks like.

The Unraveling

I’m not going to go into all the details of my divorce. That story has more than one side, and the people involved deserve their privacy. What I will tell you is this: divorce, at any age, is a demolition project.

Everything you thought was permanent gets torn down. Your daily routine. Your identity as a family unit. Your confidence that you’ve got life figured out. Even your friend group shifts — people don’t always know which side of the wall to stand on when a marriage comes apart.

I was in my mid-40s with nearly two decades in steel fabrication and four years in civil construction. I was working alongside Bill Neusch and Rodney McGee — men who leaned into my brokenness and offered me a place to live and work when I needed it most. I was grateful for their kindness, but I couldn’t have imagined the impact those men would have on my life — or that God was already arranging the pieces for a family I didn’t yet know I’d have. At the time, I hadn’t even started thinking about technology or software. I understood construction. I understood steel. But my personal life? I was starting from zero.

Not just emotionally — financially too. I’d declared bankruptcy after shutting down my steel fabrication company in 2016. There wasn’t much left. Not in the bank account, not in the tank. I was gutted. Bare concrete. No framing. No roof. And underneath all of it, something I couldn’t name yet: I had no joy. Not sadness exactly — I’d been sad before and bounced back. This was different. This was an emptiness I didn’t even realize was there until everything else got stripped away. Like discovering the subgrade was never compacted — the whole thing had been settling for years and I just couldn’t feel it.

The Rebuild

Here’s what nobody tells you about starting over in your 40s: it’s not romantic. There’s no montage. It’s slow, unglamorous, and most of the progress happens in the dark.

But it does happen.

I threw myself into my work — not to avoid the pain, but because my work gave me purpose. Every project I touched, every problem I solved, every day I showed up — it reminded me that I was still good at something. That I still had value to offer.

And that mattered. It kept me moving. But if I’m being honest — and I’m trying to be — work filled the calendar, not the void. I’d come home to the house I’d bought with my ex-wife — the same house, but emptier now. She’d moved just down the road, and we’d agreed on a true 50/50 split — week on, week off — because that’s what was best for the boys. The weeks they were with me, I had purpose. The weeks they weren’t, I had silence. And in that silence, I started wondering if this was just… it. Purpose, sure. But peace? Joy? Those weren’t even in the blueprint.

I started running again. Not because I’m a runner — I’m just a guy who runs. There’s a difference. Runners have gear and training plans. I had a pair of shoes and a need to be alone with my thoughts for 45 minutes. Running became the place where I processed things I couldn’t say out loud yet.

Eventually, I made a career leap that scared me. I joined a construction tech startup called Constru, working alongside my lifelong friend and mentor Jessica Herrala and the wonderfully talented Meredith Tripp, who introduced me to the world of enterprise software sales. If I’m being honest, Meredith probably thought Jessica was crazy for even considering hiring a guy who’d never sold software in his life. But I loved the technology and I believed in the mission. After a year and three missed payrolls, though, I knew I needed something more stable.

That’s when Procore came calling. It was the perfect marriage of my love for technology and my love of construction. After twenty years of understanding how buildings go up, I was learning to sell the software that helps run them. It wasn’t easy. But all those years on jobsites, in fabrication shops, and in the field gave me something most tech salespeople don’t have: I actually understood the people I was selling to. I’d been them.

The Plot Twist

I’d first met Lynette years earlier, through Cub Scouts. We were both married to other people at the time — just two parents out of nearly a hundred families camping together while our boys ran around. We joke today that there was always a little spark between us, but thankfully, no funny business. We did it right.

She was actually friends with my ex-wife, so when she heard I’d filed for divorce, we caught up. I didn’t know anyone else who’d been through it, and neither did she — her own marriage was ending too. We talked. We commiserated. We helped each other navigate a process that nobody prepares you for. It wasn’t romantic at first. It was just two people trying to figure out the same impossible thing at the same time.

And then, somewhere along the way, it became more.

Lynette is, to put it simply, the person I didn’t know I was looking for. We got married in May 2024 and blended our families — four kids between us. If you’ve never done the blended family thing, imagine a really complex construction project where the blueprints keep changing and half the crew didn’t sign up for this particular job. It requires patience, humility, and the ability to admit you don’t have all the answers.

Sound familiar? It should. That’s basically every major technology implementation I’ve ever worked on.

Finding Faith

I grew up around faith but didn’t own it. Not really. We attended our Methodist church infrequently — Easter, Christmas, whenever we were with our grandparents. Every night at dinner we’d repeat the same prayer: “God our Father, we thank you. For the food we eat and the loving care. Be with us here and everywhere. Amen.” Word for word, every night, without any real understanding of what we were saying or why. It was inherited, not chosen.

I actually got that prayer wrong in the first draft of this essay. I wrote it as “God our Father, we thank you for the food we eat and loving care” — and left out the rest. My brother Ben corrected me within hours of posting: “You don’t remember that part because you never believed that part.”

He was right. But it wasn’t just the “here and everywhere” part I struggled with. “Gratitude” and “loving care” didn’t match what I saw around the dinner table either. The love in our house came mostly in the form of discipline — and while I’m grateful for it now, at twelve years old it made the whole prayer feel hollow. How do you thank God for loving care when care looks like correction and the warmth feels conditional?

I want to be clear: I’ve forgiven my dad, and there’s a lot I’m grateful for. He taught me work ethic and drive — and that has made all the difference in my ability to take on the world with confidence. There’s a paradox there that I’m still sitting with. I’m not opposed to putting my kids through hard things — I think suffering with purpose builds character. But the key word is “with.” If I’d had a father who leaned in, who helped me navigate the awkwardness of middle school, who showed me how to fit in, how to fight, how to be a man — I might not have spent so many years trying to figure it out on my own through drinking and partying, looking for acceptance wherever I could find it.

That’s why I’ve taught my boys how to camp, start a fire, handle a firearm, fish, harvest and process a deer. I took Brock through the Grand Canyon last year, and next week I’m taking Jack to climb in the Grand Tetons over spring break. I want my kids to choose hard things — not because they have to survive them alone, but because they have a dad who’s leaning in and giving them the tools I never had.

Thirty-seven years later, I’m finally learning what that prayer means. All of it.

I remember being twelve years old, sitting through confirmation classes, thinking: I don’t know the first thing about any of this. None of it made sense. And I didn’t have anyone who seemed interested in helping me understand it.

After the divorce, I started attending church more regularly. While I was still married, we’d tried First Baptist in Wichita Falls, then Second Baptist in Houston. I remember seeing Lee Strobel speak at Second Baptist — the author of A Case for Christ, a movie I’d recently watched. Here was another atheist who had found God. Why did he change his mind? That question was a crack in the wall, and I dove into it. The frequency of attending was increasing, but church still wasn’t something I looked forward to on Sunday mornings.

Then in 2018, something shifted. We started attending LifeFamily Church, and for the first time, faith started feeling less like an obligation and more like an invitation. I was looking for something I couldn’t quite name — a foundation that wasn’t dependent on my performance. A love that didn’t require me to earn it.

If I’m being totally honest, it was the worship music that got me first. Every time I’d find myself in church, the words of the songs would hit me — hard. The message was just so spot-on that it was almost creepy. Like someone had been reading my journal and set it to music.

Here’s the honest truth: I still didn’t believe. He promised that by following Him I’d find peace through a loving Father — and I didn’t believe a loving father even existed. I’d never experienced one. That concept was as foreign to me as a clean punch list on a fast-track project.

But I kept showing up. And slowly — imperfectly, with a lot of doubt along the way — something shifted. By trusting in Him, I found a path to peace. And I discovered a joy I didn’t even realize I had lost. Not happiness — joy. The kind that doesn’t depend on circumstances. The kind that sits underneath everything else and holds you up when the rest of it falls apart.

That joy — I want to sit with that word for a second. Because I’d been chasing happiness for years. Happiness is a closed deal. Happiness is a good run time. Happiness is your kid laughing at dinner. Those things are real and they matter. But they come and go. Joy is the thing underneath. The quiet certainty that you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be, even when nothing around you confirms it. I didn’t know that existed until I found it. And I didn’t find it until I stopped trying to build it myself.

The Water

The decision to get baptized wasn’t mine — at least, not at first.

My two oldest boys came to me and said they were ready. When they declared they wanted to be baptized, my stepson said he wanted to accept Christ too. Something about watching all three of them step forward — without anyone pushing them — made me realize I couldn’t just stand on the shore and watch. They led me to the water as much as I led them.

We started planning it together toward the end of last year, and on February 22, 2026, we made it happen. We worked with our church to arrange for Rodney McGee — the man who first showed me what a godly father looks like — to baptize all three boys and me, one right after another, during the Sunday morning service.

I need to stop here for a moment because the Rodney part of this story still takes my breath away.

Rodney was my father-in-law during my first marriage. He leaned into my brokenness when I had nothing. He helped me find Christ. And years later, after the divorce, after the rebuilding, after Lynette and I blended our families — it was Rodney who stood in the water and baptized my sons, my stepson, and me. A man who has been a father and grandfather to people who aren’t his by blood. That’s the kind of man I want to be. That’s the kind of men I want to surround myself with every day.

I poured my heart out during my speech that day. Preparing it wasn’t easy — reliving all the moments I’d lived only for myself, all the years I’d carried the weight alone. But when your family stands with you in that moment — your wife, your kids, your ex-wife and her family, old friends you haven’t caught up with in decades, and new friends who only know the rebuilt version of you — you can’t help but talk about it. You can’t help but share how it all came to be.

What It Taught Me About Starting Over

Here’s what I know now that I didn’t know five years ago:

“Starting over is not failure. It’s the opposite.”

1. Starting over is not failure. It’s the opposite. It takes more courage to tear down something that isn’t working and rebuild than to keep patching a broken foundation. In construction, you’d never build on a compromised subgrade. In life, we do it all the time because we’re scared of the demo.

2. You don’t have to have it figured out to begin. I didn’t get baptized because I had all the answers. I got baptized because I finally accepted that I didn’t need them. I didn’t even fully believe when I started showing up to church — and that turned out to be okay. Faith isn’t a prerequisite for walking through the door. Sometimes you just walk through and see what happens. That’s true in faith, in career moves, and in adopting new technology on a jobsite.

3. The people who matter will show up. When I was going through the worst of it, I learned who my real people were. Not the ones who had advice — the ones who just sat with me. Bill. Rodney. Jessica. Eventually, Lynette. In business, in life, in faith — find those people and hold on.

4. Vulnerability is not weakness. I spent most of my career thinking I had to project strength. Confidence. Control. Turns out, the moments that connected me most deeply to other people — customers, friends, family — were the moments I was honest about what I didn’t know and where I was struggling.

5. It’s never too late. I was 49 years old, standing in a church, doing something I should have done 20 years ago. But the timing was right because I was finally ready. If you’re 30 or 50 or 65 and thinking “it’s too late to start over” — it’s not. It’s just a different starting line.

The Professional Parallel

I see this in my work every single day. Contractors who’ve been doing things the same way for decades, who know deep down that something needs to change, but who are terrified of the demolition phase. They can see the problems. They can feel the cracks. But they can’t see what’s on the other side — and that’s what keeps them stuck.

I get it. I lived it. I spent years not believing that peace or joy were even possible for me. That something better existed on the other side of tearing it all down. But it does.

I’ll tell you the same thing I tell my contractors: the rebuild is worth it. The new foundation is stronger. And you don’t have to do it alone.

In October, I’m planning to walk the Camino Frances in Spain — 200 miles — for my 50th birthday. Another starting line. Another act of faith. Another step into something I can’t fully control.

That’s the pattern now. Keep starting over. Keep walking. Keep building.

Hope to see you on the trail.

On February 22nd, I went under the water with my three sons.

Brock, Jack, and George — all of us, together. If you’d told me five years ago that would happen, I would have laughed. Or cried. Probably both.

That moment didn’t come from technology. I made the decision to get baptized with my boys back in August. It came from years of wrestling, failing, getting back up, and finally surrendering. It came from a man named Rodney McGee who showed me what a loving father actually looks like. From Bill Neusch and the men in my Bible studies who walked with me when I couldn’t walk straight. Finding the right time to celebrate it — navigating the difficult waters of having my ex-wife’s family there, coordinating Rodney’s and Bill’s schedules, and gathering 60-70 of our closest friends and family who came to witness the guy they knew as the devil get baptized into new life — that was its own journey.

But I want to tell you about what’s happening after the baptism — because that’s where most guys lose the thread, and it’s where something unexpected is helping me hold on.

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Here’s the part nobody talks about in faith: the showing up.

Not the big moments — the baptism, the altar call, the retreat where everything clicked. Those are real. But they’re not the hard part.

The hard part is Wednesday at 6 AM when your alarm goes off and you’d rather scroll your phone than open Proverbs. It’s Friday afternoon when you’re tired and your kid pushes your last button and you snap instead of leading. It’s the slow, invisible erosion of saying “I’ll get back on track next week” until next week is six months ago.

I know this because I lived it for years. Bursts of intensity followed by long stretches of nothing. My spiritual life looked like my gym routine — passionate on Monday, ghosting by Thursday.

The intention was always there. The consistency wasn’t.

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I work in construction technology — enterprise sales at Procore. I was feeling overwhelmed with the mountain of information I needed to move to help my customers the right way. So in January, I built a personal AI agent — I call him Ace — as a productivity experiment. Help me manage emails, research accounts, prep for meetings, organize the chaos.

But when I started looking at my personal productivity and habits, journaling and Bible study naturally became part of the conversation. And at some point I asked Ace to do something different: look at everything happening in my life and show me where scripture speaks into it.

Not generic devotional prompts. Specific, uncomfortable questions drawn from my actual journal entries, my calendar, my conversations. Questions like:

“You said you wanted to be more patient with your son this week. Proverbs 15:1 says a gentle answer turns away wrath. What does a gentle answer look like at the dinner table tonight?”

Or before a tough customer conversation:

“How does ‘faithful are the wounds of a friend’ apply to telling this customer the truth they need to hear? And did you deliver it with the gentleness of Galatians 6:1 — or did your ego slip in?”

I never would have made those connections on my own. Not that fast, not that specifically.

Here’s what shifted: I stopped being able to hide from myself.

The AI doesn’t pray for me. It doesn’t believe for me. But it holds up a mirror between who I say I want to be and how I actually showed up yesterday. Every single morning. Without getting tired, without forgetting what I wrote last Tuesday, without letting me off the hook.

It’s like having a spiritual mirror that never fogs over.

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After weeks of this, Ace started surfacing patterns I couldn’t see. “You’ve mentioned feeling behind schedule three times this week. Last time that happened, you pulled back from your morning routine. What would it look like to protect this time even when the game clock is ticking?”

No accountability partner has the bandwidth for that — to read every journal entry, cross-reference it with scripture, and connect the dots in real time. My pastor can’t read my Tuesday email and text me Wednesday morning with James 2:15-16. But this system can.

And something started changing in me:

- I started seeing my work — helping contractors in the mud on freezing jobsites — as service, not sales

- I stopped separating “faith time” from “real life” and started carrying the morning’s questions into afternoon meetings

- I got honest about the days my affirmations were just words and asked what surrendering would actually look like today

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If you’re thinking “using AI for faith feels weird” — yeah. It felt weird to me too.

But is using a devotional book cheating? Is a prayer journal? Is calling your pastor when you’re struggling?

Tools don’t replace faith. They reveal it.

And honestly, the same God who reached me through a broken marriage, two little boys, and a man named Rodney McGee — I don’t think He’s above using a chatbot to get me to open Proverbs at 6 AM.

An AI accountability partner won’t replace a human version. But it can help us all live our lives with more intentionality — if we’re open to it. The question isn’t whether AI is scary. The question is: how will you use it to benefit your fellow neighbor and friend instead of just fearing it?

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I wrote a deeper version of this story on my blog — with more specifics about how the system works, what my morning routine looks like, and the journal entries that surprised me most. If this resonated, go read that one too:

How an AI Agent is Helping me Become a Better Christian

But whether you use AI or a notebook or a 3x5 card taped to your bathroom mirror — whatever gets you in the chair, opening the Book, and telling the truth about your life — that’s not cheating. That’s obedience.

If you’re a guy who believes in God but can’t seem to show up consistently, hit reply and tell me about it. I’ve been there. I’m still there most days. That’s kind of the point.

—Matt

I pulled into a specialty contractor’s parking lot outside Dallas last year. Fourth-generation family business. $80M revenue. 300 people on payroll.

Running their entire operation on spreadsheets, texts, and a whiteboard in the front office.

The first thing the owner said: “Matt, I already know what Procore does. That’s not the problem.”

He was right. After visiting hundreds of specialty contractors, I can tell you — the resistance is never about the technology. It’s about trust.

In this week’s post, I break down the three kinds of trust that matter, what actually works to earn them, and why the hardest part of transformation isn’t the software — it’s admitting that where you are isn’t where you’re meant to stay.

Read the full post on my blog →

— Matt

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