Diffusive Mercy

“So deeply inherent is it in this life of ours that men have to suffer for each other’s sins, so inevitably diffusive is human suffering, that even justice makes its victims, and we can conceive no retribution that does not spread beyond its mark in pulsations of unmerited pain.”

— George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss, Chapter 7

“Lawful mercy is nothing kin to foul redemption.”

— Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

Well the last month of summer is coming to a close and we have some large life changes on the horizon. I have always been somewhat calm in periods of transition, but I have begun to wonder whether a good deal of that calmness came from naivety. Now I can only think of what it will mean for my kids and our family and how on earth we will afford a house someday. And yet, when I survey my life, I see so much richness to be thankful for. My family is beautiful and our life is not easy but comfortable and meaningful.

I have also been thinking on mercy and justice, and cannot help but observe that we seem to have forgotten the lessons of history. I cannot help but think with some fear, that the violence wrought by the Trump administration will come back to harm us. Foreign aid is not only charity, it is also good policy. If we sow seeds of hate at home and abroad we should not be surprised when those seeds grow and attempt to choke us somehow. This is why justice and mercy must be mentioned in the same sentence. The justice we need is not merely concerned with “fairness,” but with intentional and proactive steps that not only punish wrongdoing, but strive to build a better future.

Writing

I started rewriting my novel, and discovered a new platform which has helped me get my writing habit back. It is called Koala Quill. It gives you one dollar per day that you show up and type for fifteen minutes. It works by measuring your active typing, so you can’t just copy and paste or leave the tab open, and I am almost ashamed to admit that it has been the most reliable way to get me back into a writing habit. The monthly subscription is less than $30, so if you manage to do it every day you end up making money. I’m going to do it for a year, and hopefully it will keep me typing and writing as my life changes.

I have now gotten through most of the rewrite of my new book, and it is now going to get harder because there are some new scenes I need to draft and add in. I am actually procrastinating from it by writing this update.

I did get a monthly supporter on Buy Me a Coffee, for which I am very grateful. It’s good to know that a real person out there appreciated some of my work. Thank you!

I have also gotten some nice comments on Medium with my Sonnets, which is a nice encouragement.

Music

I was able to record and mix another song for the Lit Songs demo album, so that is a win. (Supporters on Buy Me a Coffee of any amount can listen to the mixes as I get them done!) I ended up rerecording the acoustic guitar with a metronome. It helped me realize all the weird things I do with rhythm, and I don’t know whether I should lean into the weirdness or try to tone it down. I should probably meet in the middle. I’ve noticed that my guitar playing has gotten a little more schizophrenic. I think it is because I have been pushing so hard to get faster and ‘better.’ While I do think I have improved a lot, and have a lot more tools, I have been feeling kind of exhausted when I practice, and I think I need to go back to basics and just enjoy the power of a simple note. A good friend gifted me some classical guitar books that I want to work through.

Reading

My wife and I read The Mill on the Floss this summer. It was good to get back into some George Eliot. She is a very good novelist, which is good, but it is also a little demoralizing because it shows me a level of artistic achievement I am not sure I will ever reach. I am not a writer like George Eliot, and I don’t know if I will ever write such a chunky, cozy novel to sink into. I fly off the handle too much. But then, I’d rather find my own voice, and after reading the ending of Mill on the Floss I am unpleasantly surprised to see that finding a good ending is as hard for great writers as for the rest of us. The failings of our heroes are just as important to acknowledge as their strengths, just as it is important for aspiring writers to balance the inspirational work we read with some mediocre writing that shows us that getting our work published might not be so impossible after all.

We also saw Measure for Measure and Midsummer Night’s Dream by a favorite Shakespeare Company of ours and they were really great. There is no silence like theater silence, which we experienced as everyone watched Isabel deciding whether or not to offer Angelo mercy in Measure for Measure. I think Shakespeare externalizes those secret, passionate, battles that we have within ourselves. I wish I could tell you that my internal Isabel always chooses mercy, but she does not. Yet mercy is the only way we will ever see a cessation of violence on this earth, and God gave us the Cross as an example. Yet so strange is the turning of my life, that I find myself having to offer mercy more often to those who profess to follow It than those who do not.

---

#Update #August

Thank you for reading! I greatly regret that I will most likely never be able to meet you in person and shake your hand, but perhaps we can virtually shake hands via my newsletter, social media, or a cup of coffee sent over the wire. They are poor substitutes, but they can be a real grace in this intractable world.

---

Send me a kind word or a cup of coffee:

Buy Me a Coffee | Listen to My Music | Listen to My Podcast | Follow Me on Mastodon | Read With Me on Bookwyrm | Connect With Me on Substack

Chapter 1: The Car Stays Running

You pull into the driveway, put the car in park, and leave the engine running. The porch light is on. Someone inside is waiting for you, but you are not ready to open the door because opening the door means facing what happened. Maybe you lost your temper and said something you cannot take back. Maybe you made a choice that damaged trust. Maybe you promised God you would never return to an old habit, and then you returned to it anyway. The steering wheel feels easier to face than the people you love, and the silence inside the car feels safer than the questions waiting inside the house. You do not only feel sorry. You feel changed by what you did, as though the mistake has reached into your name and rewritten who you are.

That hidden moment is where many people begin to misunderstand Jesus. We know He forgives sin, but we quietly assume forgiveness is the last good thing He can offer us. We picture Jesus wiping away the record while still moving us to the edge of the room, where we can remain grateful but no longer useful. The message in this faith-based video about how Jesus restores purpose after failure reaches directly into that fear, because the deeper question is not always, “Will Jesus forgive me?” Sometimes the question we are afraid to ask is, “Could Jesus ever trust me with anything meaningful again?”

That question becomes even heavier when you remember the kind of person you hoped to be. You may have wanted to be patient with your children, honest in your work, faithful in your marriage, steady in prayer, dependable in friendship, or courageous when someone needed you. Then one bad decision, one weak season, or one public failure made the future feel smaller. You may still believe in grace while living as though your purpose has been canceled. The truth explored in the deeper Christian encouragement about finding hope after personal failure is that Jesus does not define restoration as permission to sit quietly with your shame. He comes near enough to call you forward again.

The painful part is that failure often changes the way we hear everything. A compliment sounds undeserved. An opportunity feels like a mistake. A request for help creates panic because we wonder what the other person would think if they knew the whole story. Even prayer can become uncomfortable. We may still speak to God, but we keep our distance inside the conversation. We confess what happened, ask for mercy, and then avoid any thought of calling, service, responsibility, or growth. We are willing to be forgiven, but we are not ready to believe we could be restored.

This is not always humility. Sometimes it is shame wearing the clothes of humility. Humility tells the truth about what happened. Shame takes what happened and turns it into a permanent identity. Humility says, “I failed, and I need grace.” Shame says, “I am a failure, and grace cannot make me useful.” Humility accepts correction. Shame builds a locked room and calls it repentance. The difference matters because Jesus never asks us to pretend our choices do not matter, but He also never asks us to make a home inside condemnation.

Peter knew what it was like to discover that courage could disappear in a single night. He had followed Jesus closely. He had seen miracles, heard truth, walked dusty roads beside Him, and declared that he would remain faithful even if others did not. Peter was not unfamiliar with Jesus. He was not a stranger making an uninformed decision. He loved Jesus, and he still failed Him at the exact moment when loyalty mattered most.

When Jesus was arrested, Peter followed at a distance. That distance tells its own story. He wanted to know what would happen, but he did not want to be recognized as someone who belonged to Jesus. In the courtyard, people noticed him. They asked whether he was one of the disciples. Peter denied it. Then he denied it again. Finally, he denied Jesus a third time, with growing force, as though stronger words could create a safer distance between himself and the Man he had promised never to abandon.

Then the rooster crowed. There are moments when one ordinary sound becomes attached to a memory forever. A phone notification can bring back the message that changed a family. A hospital elevator can return someone to the worst night of a loved one’s illness. A certain song can reopen a season of regret. For Peter, the sound of a rooster was no longer part of the morning. It was the sound of his own confidence collapsing. It told him that Jesus had known him better than he knew himself.

The Gospel of Luke tells us that Jesus turned and looked at Peter. We are not given a long description of that look, and perhaps that is mercy. Peter knew what he had done. He remembered what Jesus had said. He went outside and wept bitterly. He did not need anyone to explain the seriousness of the moment. His own tears showed that he understood.

Many of us know that kind of remembering. The argument ends, but the words remain. The money is spent, but the decision remains. The secret is exposed, but the damage remains. The opportunity passes, but the fear that stopped us remains. We replay the moment and imagine better words, a stronger response, a wiser choice, or a different version of ourselves. We think, “I should have known better.” That sentence can become a hammer we use against our own heart.

Peter really should have known better. He had been warned. He had insisted he was ready. He had been close to Jesus for years. The Bible does not soften his failure by pretending he lacked information. Yet the honesty of Scripture is part of what makes its hope trustworthy. The story does not need Peter to look innocent before grace can reach him. Jesus restores a man who is responsible for what he did.

That matters for the person sitting in the running car.

You may be able to explain why you acted as you did. You were tired, afraid, lonely, pressured, angry, grieving, or desperate. Those things may help you understand the moment, but they do not always remove responsibility. Real grace does not require you to invent an excuse. Jesus can meet you where the facts are fully known. He does not need a cleaned-up version of the story in order to love you.

We often imagine that being fully known is the greatest threat. We fear that if people knew the whole truth, their love would become smaller. That fear can shape the way we approach God. We speak carefully, confess generally, and avoid naming the details that embarrass us. Yet Jesus already knew Peter would deny Him. His knowledge did not cause Him to stop loving Peter before the failure, and Peter’s failure did not cause Him to abandon Peter afterward.

Jesus knew the denial was coming when He washed Peter’s feet. He knew it was coming when He shared the meal. He knew it was coming when Peter spoke with confidence about his loyalty. Jesus was not surprised by the weakness hidden beneath Peter’s sincerity. Peter’s love was real, but so was his fear. Jesus saw both.

That is one of the hardest truths to accept when you are disappointed in yourself. Jesus is not discovering your weakness at the same time you are. You may be shocked by what pressure revealed in you, but He is not shocked. You may be confused by how quickly you gave in, but He is not confused. He has always known the places where your confidence was stronger than your character, where your wounds affected your choices, and where your fear could overpower your intentions. His complete knowledge is not a reason to hide. It is the reason hiding is unnecessary.

After the resurrection, Jesus did not leave Peter with the courtyard as the final setting of their relationship. That alone should give hope to anyone who has allowed one terrible moment to become the permanent location of their identity. Jesus returned. He spoke to Peter. He made breakfast by the water. He created a place where failure could be faced without becoming the end of the story.

The detail about breakfast matters because restoration is often quieter than we expect. We imagine a dramatic announcement, a sudden feeling, or a perfect moment when all shame disappears. Instead, Jesus met Peter beside a charcoal fire with bread and fish. The scene was ordinary enough to be missed by anyone looking only for spectacle. The risen Christ was preparing food for tired men who had been fishing through the night.

Peter had denied Jesus near a charcoal fire. Now Jesus met him near another one. The smell may have returned Peter to the courtyard before any question was asked. Jesus did not avoid the place of memory, but He changed what could happen there. The fire that once belonged to fear became the setting for truth, love, and renewed purpose.

This is how Jesus often works in us. He does not always erase every reminder. Sometimes He meets us inside the reminder until it no longer controls us. The place where you once panicked can become the place where you learn peace. The conversation you once avoided can become the place where honesty begins. The weakness you once hid can become the reason you notice someone else who is struggling. Restoration does not pretend the wound never happened. It refuses to let the wound own the rest of your life.

There is a man who sits in the back row of church because he believes the front rows belong to people with cleaner histories. He arrives late enough to avoid conversation and leaves before anyone can ask how he is doing. Years earlier, he betrayed the trust of someone he loved. He apologized, accepted the consequences, and changed many parts of his life, but he still thinks distance is the proper price of repentance. When someone asks him to help set up chairs, greet people, or visit a lonely member, he says no. He does not refuse because he is unwilling. He refuses because he believes usefulness would be disrespectful to the seriousness of what he did.

Jesus does not honor shame by allowing it to waste a changed life. There are consequences that may remain. Trust may need time. Some roles may no longer be wise or available. Restoration is not the demand that every relationship return to exactly what it was. It is not permission to ignore boundaries, avoid accountability, or claim that forgiveness should remove every earthly result. Peter’s restoration did not make his denial unimportant. It revealed that failure, even serious failure, did not have authority to overrule the purpose Jesus still saw in him.

That distinction can save a person from two dangerous mistakes. One mistake is treating grace as though nothing matters. The other is treating failure as though nothing good can follow. Jesus leads us away from both. He tells the truth about sin, and He tells the truth about redemption. He does not flatter us into false innocence, and He does not crush us into permanent uselessness.

The engine is still running in the driveway because you are trying to decide which truth will define the next few minutes. You can walk inside believing the worst thing you did has become the truest thing about you. Or you can walk inside knowing that honesty may be painful, consequences may be real, and hard conversations may be necessary, but Jesus has not stepped away from your life.

You may not feel restored yet. Peter did not move from bitter tears to confident leadership in a single breath. There was grief, confusion, waiting, and the strange shock of seeing Jesus alive again. Restoration has a pace. It reaches into memory, identity, trust, and responsibility. Jesus does not rush the work, but He also does not abandon it.

Turn off the engine. Take one honest breath. Put your hand on the door. The next faithful step may be an apology, a confession, a phone call, a meeting, a boundary, a request for help, or a quiet prayer spoken without polished words. You do not need to solve the rest of your life before you leave the car. You only need to stop treating shame as though it has the authority to decide what Jesus can still do with you.

The porch light is still on. More importantly, Jesus has not left the place where your story continues.

Chapter 2: The Question Beneath the Failure

The kitchen is quiet except for the refrigerator and the soft buzz of a phone on the counter. A woman stands beside the sink reading the same message for the fourth time. Her sister has written, “I forgive you, but I need time.” The words are kinder than she expected, yet they do not bring relief. She sets the phone down, picks it up again, and wonders what she is supposed to do with herself now. The apology has been made. The truth has been admitted. Nothing can be forced. All she can hear inside is the question she has been carrying for weeks: “What does this say about who I really am?”

Failure does not only make us question our behavior. It makes us question our heart. We begin with what we did, but we quickly move toward what we believe it proves. If I lied, perhaps I am false all the way through. If I became angry, perhaps there is no gentleness in me. If I gave in to fear, perhaps my faith was never real. If I hurt someone I love, perhaps I am incapable of loving anyone well. The mind moves from one event to a total verdict, and the verdict usually sounds final.

Jesus met Peter in that exact place. Peter had not simply made an error in judgment. He had denied knowing Jesus. He had protected himself by separating his identity from the One he loved. When Jesus later spoke with him by the water, He could have begun with the denial. He could have asked Peter to explain what happened in the courtyard, account for every word, or describe why his courage failed. Instead, Jesus asked a question that reached deeper than the failure: “Do you love me?”

That question was not sentimental. Jesus was not pretending love made the denial harmless. He was going beneath the event to the relationship that still existed. Peter had acted against his love, but his failure had not erased it. Jesus made him face the painful difference between what he had done and what remained true in his heart.

Many of us do not know how to hold those two truths together. We assume sincere love should always produce perfect behavior. When our actions contradict our intentions, we begin to doubt every good thing we ever believed about ourselves. We forget that human beings can be sincere and weak at the same time. We can love God and still panic. We can care about another person and still speak selfishly. We can want to live honestly and still hide when truth feels costly. That does not excuse what happened, but it explains why restoration must reach deeper than behavior alone.

Peter answered, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He did not defend himself. He did not remind Jesus of the years he had followed faithfully. He did not blame exhaustion, confusion, the threat of arrest, or the pressure of the crowd. He simply appealed to what Jesus knew. Peter no longer trusted his own bold claims. Before the cross, he had been certain that his loyalty could survive anything. After the courtyard, he had learned that confidence and strength are not the same. All he could say was, “You know.”

There is a quiet honesty in that answer. Peter was no longer trying to manage Jesus’s opinion of him. He had no polished argument left. He could not point to a flawless record. He could only place the truth of his heart in the hands of the One who saw it completely.

That is a difficult place to reach because we often approach Jesus as though we are preparing a case. We gather our reasons, explain our stress, compare our failure to someone else’s, and remind ourselves of the good things we have done. At other times, we build the opposite case. We list every weakness, replay every mistake, and argue that we are beyond meaningful use. Both approaches keep the attention fixed on our ability to deliver a convincing verdict.

Jesus does not need us to prosecute or defend ourselves. He already knows the whole story. He knows where we chose wrongly. He knows what fear did inside us. He knows what we understood, what we ignored, and what we could not yet see. He also knows whether love remains beneath the wreckage. When He asks for honesty, He is not trying to discover information. He is bringing us out of hiding.

A father learns this after missing another school event because of work. He had promised his son he would be there. He meant it when he said it, but a meeting ran late, his phone stayed face down, and by the time he reached the parking lot, the gym was nearly empty. His son says, “It is okay,” in the flat voice children use when it is not okay. The father spends the drive home calling himself a bad parent. He does not only regret missing the event. He believes the missed event has exposed the truth that his family is not important enough to him.

Repentance may require him to change his calendar, protect family commitments, speak honestly with his employer, and rebuild trust with his son. Love should become visible in choices. Yet the path forward does not begin by declaring that he has never loved his child. It begins by admitting that his behavior did not match his love and allowing that painful truth to change how he lives.

This is the kind of honesty Jesus invited from Peter. “Do you love me?” was not an escape from responsibility. It was the foundation for responsibility. If Peter loved Jesus, that love would now have to take a new form. It could no longer live mainly in promises about what Peter would do under pressure. It would have to become patient care for other people.

Jesus told him, “Feed my lambs.” Then He asked again, “Do you love me?” Peter answered again, and Jesus said, “Tend my sheep.” A third time, Jesus asked the question. Peter was hurt because the question had been repeated, but the repetition was not cruelty. Peter had denied Jesus three times. Now, three times, he was given room to speak love where fear had once spoken denial.

Jesus did not merely cancel three failures with three correct answers. He was rebuilding Peter’s inner life around truth. Peter could not change what he had said in the courtyard, but he could answer differently now. He could stand in the presence of the One he had denied and stop running from the relationship. The past remained part of the story, but it was no longer the only voice in the story.

We sometimes think healing would mean never remembering what happened. We want the regret to disappear, the embarrassment to fade, and the memory to lose all emotional weight. That may happen gradually, but Jesus often does something more useful than erasing memory. He gives us a new way to stand inside it. We remember, but we are no longer trapped. We feel sorrow, but sorrow leads us toward faithfulness rather than self-hatred. We know what we are capable of, and that knowledge makes us more dependent on grace.

Peter’s confidence had once rested heavily on his own intensity. He was the disciple who spoke quickly, stepped forward, and made large promises. After his failure, his confidence had to rest somewhere else. He would lead, but not as a man impressed with his own loyalty. He would serve as someone who knew how badly a person could fail and still be met by Jesus.

That kind of person can become gentle in a way that the self-certain person cannot. Someone who has been restored is less likely to treat another person’s weakness as a surprise. He knows fear can make good people act badly. He knows shame can keep them hiding long after they have confessed. He knows correction matters, but he also knows that humiliation rarely produces holiness. He can tell the truth without enjoying someone else’s pain.

This may be one of the hidden ways Jesus redeems failure. He does not call evil good, and He does not rename sin as strength. He takes the humility formed through honest repentance and turns it into compassion. The person who once needed patience becomes capable of offering patience. The person who had to rebuild trust learns not to demand instant change from others. The person who has cried over a terrible decision can sit beside someone else without pretending the answer is easy.

The woman beside the kitchen sink cannot make her sister trust her again tonight. She cannot control how long healing will take. She can respect the distance, remain honest, and let changed behavior become visible over time. Yet she also does not need to stand in that kitchen and decide that one failure has revealed an empty heart. She can say, with no excuse and no performance, “Jesus, You know I love You. You know I love her. Teach me to live in a way that makes that love safer to receive.”

That prayer is more honest than self-condemnation because it accepts both love and responsibility. It does not use love to avoid consequences. It lets love become the reason for change. Shame says, “Because I failed, I should disappear.” Love says, “Because I failed, I must become more truthful, more careful, and more willing to repair what I can.”

There are times when people will not accept our efforts. A relationship may remain distant. An opportunity may not return. Someone may forgive us without inviting us back into the same place in their life. Jesus’s restoration does not give us permission to demand access from people we hurt. It gives us strength to honor their boundaries without turning their boundary into God’s final verdict over our future.

That can be painful. We may want restoration to mean getting everything back. Sometimes it does not. Peter was restored to purpose, but he was not returned to innocence. He would always know what happened in the courtyard. The goal was not to make him the man he had been before. The goal was to make him a truer man than he had been before.

There is an important difference between going backward and being restored. Going backward tries to recover the version of life that existed before the failure. Restoration moves forward with greater honesty. It carries lessons, accepts limits, and lets grace reshape the future. Jesus did not tell Peter to become the confident disciple who could not imagine denying Him. He called Peter to become a shepherd who understood weakness.

You may be asking Jesus to return you to a former version of yourself. You want the old confidence, the old reputation, the old ease in prayer, or the old sense that your future was uncomplicated. Jesus may give you something deeper than that. He may teach you to live without pretending you are beyond weakness. He may replace confidence in your own consistency with trust in His faithfulness. He may make you less impressive and more compassionate.

This is not a smaller life. It is a more honest one. It no longer depends on maintaining the image of a person who never fails. It depends on remaining close to Jesus when weakness is exposed.

The deepest question after failure is not whether you can prove that you are still good. It is whether you will let Jesus meet you without a defense. He may ask you to name what you love, not because words alone are enough, but because love can become the beginning of obedience. He may call you to repair what can be repaired, accept what cannot be recovered, and serve from a place that no longer needs to appear flawless.

Peter could not unsay his denials. He could answer the question in front of him. He could receive the next instruction. He could allow love to become care.

The phone on the kitchen counter buzzes again. This time there is no new message, only a reminder from tomorrow’s calendar. The woman wipes the water from her hands, turns off the light above the sink, and leaves the room without sending another explanation. She will give her sister time. She will keep becoming honest. She will not confuse waiting with worthlessness.

Jesus knows what failed in you, but He also knows what remains. When you cannot trust your own heart, you can still place it before Him and say, “You know.” That is not the end of restoration. It is where restoration begins.

Chapter 3: When Consequences Stay

The envelope is still on the table three days after it arrived. A man walks past it each morning while making coffee and each evening while turning off the kitchen light. He already knows what it says. The decision is final. The position he held for twelve years is gone, and the letter explains the terms in calm language that feels almost cruel because nothing about the situation feels calm to him. He admitted what he did. He apologized. He accepted responsibility. He has prayed until the words became tired. Still, the job is gone.

This is where many people become confused about restoration. We hear that Jesus forgives and begins to rebuild us, and part of us expects the visible damage to disappear. We hope the relationship will return, the opportunity will reopen, the reputation will recover, the money will come back, or the person we hurt will trust us again quickly. When those things do not happen, we wonder whether forgiveness was real. We start measuring grace by how much of the old life we get to keep.

Jesus never promised that grace would make consequences imaginary. He promised something stronger. He promised that consequences would not have the final authority to name us, own us, or prevent Him from creating a faithful future through us. That is harder to accept because it does not always feel like rescue. Sometimes it feels like learning to walk with less than we had before.

Peter was restored by Jesus, but the denial did not vanish from history. The Gospel writers still recorded it. Generations of people would read about his fear. Peter could not control the fact that his worst night became part of the public story of his life. Yet that public failure did not erase his calling. Jesus did not remove the truth. He changed what the truth would mean.

We often spend enormous energy trying to make the past disappear. We want to explain it until no one can criticize us, repair it until no one remembers it, or succeed so greatly afterward that the failure becomes a small footnote. Those desires are understandable, but they can keep us trapped. We remain tied to the old event because everything we do is still an attempt to defeat it.

Restoration begins to deepen when we stop asking, “How do I get back everything I lost?” and begin asking, “How do I live faithfully with what is true now?” That question is quieter. It does not offer control. It asks us to meet Jesus in the life we actually have rather than the life we wish had survived.

A woman can be forgiven for years of careless spending and still need to work through debt one payment at a time. A husband can repent after breaking trust and still need to understand why his wife checks details she once accepted without question. A parent can apologize for being emotionally absent and still discover that an adult child is not ready for closeness. A leader can change deeply and still be unqualified to return to a former role. Grace can be complete while repair remains slow.

The man at the kitchen table wants someone to tell him that because he is sorry, the company should reverse its decision. He has changed, at least in the ways he knows how to measure. He has admitted his dishonesty and started meeting with a counselor. He has stopped blaming the pressure he was under. Still, he cannot demand that people ignore the risk his actions created. His repentance is real, but so is the loss.

This is a painful form of humility. It asks him to let other people make decisions about their safety, trust, and responsibility without calling their caution unforgiving. He may believe Jesus has forgiven him fully while also respecting that an employer, spouse, friend, church, or family member may need boundaries. Restoration does not place us above those boundaries. It teaches us to live honestly within them.

There is a temptation to turn consequences into a second courtroom where we put God on trial. We say, “If I am forgiven, why am I still paying for this?” Beneath that question is often the belief that mercy should return us to our former position. But mercy is not always the restoration of status. Sometimes mercy is the presence of Jesus while status is gone.

Peter’s future was not built by pretending he had never denied Jesus. It was built by allowing his failure to become part of the man he was becoming. The memory could make him more careful with other people’s weakness. It could keep him from believing that bold words were the same as tested faithfulness. It could teach him to depend on God rather than on the image he had of himself.

The consequences in your life may contain lessons you would never have chosen. You may now have to explain your history when applying for work. You may need accountability in an area where you once expected privacy. You may have less money, less freedom, less influence, or less trust than before. None of that is easy. Some consequences are heavy enough to affect years, not weeks.

Jesus does not ask you to call those things pleasant. He asks you not to confuse pain with abandonment.

There is a difference between being punished by shame and being shaped by reality. Shame keeps repeating, “You deserve to suffer because you are worthless.” Reality says, “This choice mattered, and now you must learn how to live truthfully after it.” Shame has no purpose beyond crushing. Reality can become a teacher when it is held in the presence of grace.

This is why a person can feel sorrow and still move forward. Sorrow looks honestly at damage. It does not rush other people. It does not demand that everyone celebrate personal growth. It does not use Christian language to avoid practical responsibility. Yet sorrow does not have to become self-destruction. It can make room for patience, discipline, restitution, and a different kind of life.

A young woman learns this after a friendship ends. During a lonely season, she shared something private that her friend had trusted her to keep. She did not intend to cause harm, but the story traveled farther than she expected. When confronted, she admitted what she had done and apologized without excuses. Her friend said she forgave her, but she no longer wanted the friendship to continue.

For months, the young woman treats the loss as proof that she should never become close to anyone again. She avoids invitations, keeps conversations shallow, and refuses to trust herself with other people’s stories. She calls this caution, but it is really fear. She believes the only way to guarantee she will never betray anyone again is to make sure no one ever depends on her.

That is not restoration. It is exile.

A wiser path would allow the consequence to teach her without letting it define her entire future. She can accept that the friendship may not return. She can learn what loneliness did to her judgment. She can become more careful with private information. She can ask herself why being included in a conversation felt more important than protecting someone who trusted her. She can grow into a person who understands confidentiality not as a rule but as an act of love.

Her lost friendship may remain a source of sadness. It may always remind her that careless words can damage something valuable. Yet the same memory can help her become safe for someone else years later. The loss does not have to be wasted.

This is one of the mysteries of Jesus’s work in us. He can use what He did not approve. He can draw humility from failure, wisdom from consequences, and compassion from regret. That does not make the original wrong good. It reveals that evil, weakness, and poor choices do not have creative power equal to His. They can damage, but they cannot prevent Him from redeeming what remains.

We sometimes resist this because redemption may not look like replacement. We want Jesus to give us another version of exactly what we lost. He may instead lead us into something different. The person who can no longer hold a certain role may become someone who supports others quietly. The marriage that did not survive may still produce deeper honesty, healthier boundaries, and gentler parenting. The financial mistake may lead to a simpler life that is less impressive and more stable. The public failure may remove a platform while creating private integrity.

There is grief in becoming someone different from the person you expected to be. Peter likely imagined faithfulness as standing bravely beside Jesus during danger. He did not imagine that his calling would include being restored after cowardice. The story he wanted for himself was cleaner. The story Jesus redeemed was truer.

Your life may now contain a chapter you never wanted included. You may wish you could hand Jesus the pages and ask Him to remove them. Sometimes He does not remove them. He writes through them.

That does not mean every consequence is directly sent by God. People can be harsh. Institutions can be unfair. A mistake can be judged more severely than wisdom requires. Someone may keep punishing you long after a boundary has become cruelty. Grace does not require you to accept abuse or endless humiliation. There are times to seek counsel, appeal a decision, create distance, or refuse to remain in a relationship where repentance is used as permission to control you.

Yet even when consequences are fair, they can feel unbearable. That is where you need a deeper understanding of Jesus. He is not present only in the moment of forgiveness. He remains through the long rebuilding. He is there when you make the first payment, attend the counseling session, fill out the application, explain the gap in your history, keep the boundary, or sit alone after someone says they are not ready.

He is there when progress is too small for anyone else to notice.

The man with the envelope finally opens it, not because he expects different words, but because avoiding it has become another form of fear. He reads every page. He writes down the dates he needs to remember. He calculates what the family can afford. He tells his wife the full truth about what the loss may mean. Then he makes an appointment with someone who can help him search for work and rebuild his life honestly.

None of those steps feels dramatic. No music rises in the background. The letter is still final. But shame has lost one small piece of control because he has stopped hiding from the life in front of him.

This is often how Jesus restores purpose after failure. He does not always begin with a large assignment. He begins with the next honest act. Open the envelope. Tell the truth. Keep the appointment. Return the money. Respect the boundary. Show up on time. Let someone ask hard questions. Do not promise what you cannot yet sustain. Do the small thing that agrees with the person grace is helping you become.

Peter’s command was simple: care for the people Jesus loved. The future was not built through speeches about how much Peter had changed. It was built through service. Feed. Tend. Follow. These are ordinary words. They turn restoration away from image and toward responsibility.

A person restored by Jesus does not need to spend the rest of life proving that the failure was uncharacteristic. The better work is to build a new character slowly enough that proof is no longer needed. People may notice or they may not. Some may never change their opinion. Your peace cannot depend entirely on their verdict.

This is not permission to ignore the people you hurt. It is freedom from making their approval the final measure of whether Jesus can lead you forward. You can listen, apologize, repair, and accept boundaries without placing your soul in another person’s hands. They may decide what access you have to their life. They do not decide whether your life still has meaning.

Consequences may stay. Certain doors may remain closed. The old title may never return. The friendship may not be rebuilt. The family may remember. The story may still be told. Yet Jesus can meet you in the smaller room, the changed schedule, the restricted role, and the quiet work no one applauds.

The future may not look like the life you lost. It may become more honest than the life you lost.

The envelope remains on the table, but it is no longer unopened. Tomorrow will still be difficult. The man will wake without a job and with questions he cannot answer. He will also wake with one less lie between himself and reality. That is not everything, but it is not nothing.

Jesus can build with truth. He can build with humility. He can build with a person who no longer needs the old life to return before choosing faithfulness. When consequences stay, grace stays longer.

Chapter 4: The Work No One Sees

The alarm goes off at 5:40 in the morning, and a woman reaches across the nightstand before it wakes anyone else. She sits on the edge of the bed in the dark, listening to the heater click on and the house settle around her. In twenty minutes, she will make lunches, find a missing shoe, answer a work email, and drive through traffic with yesterday still sitting heavily in her mind. No one in the house knows that she spent part of the night asking Jesus whether she has anything left to offer.

Years ago, she believed purpose would feel obvious. She imagined that if God had meaningful work for her, it would come with confidence, clarity, and a sense that she was ready. Instead, she now feels most aware of the ways she has failed. She remembers the season when anger controlled the atmosphere of the home. She remembers promises she made and did not keep. She remembers how often the people closest to her received the least patient version of her. She has changed, but the memory of who she was makes every new responsibility feel undeserved.

This is another place where restoration can be misunderstood. We expect Jesus to restore purpose by giving us something large enough to prove that we are still useful. We look for a public opportunity, a new role, a dramatic sign, or a moment when other people recognize how much we have grown. Yet Jesus often restores us through work that looks almost too ordinary to count.

Peter was told to care for sheep. The language was simple, but the responsibility was not. Sheep need daily attention. They require patience, protection, direction, and food. Caring for them is not a single heroic act. It is repeated faithfulness. Jesus did not ask Peter to erase the memory of his denial by doing something impressive. He asked him to love people over time.

That kind of calling reaches into ordinary rooms. It appears in the way a parent speaks when everyone is late. It appears in the decision to listen instead of interrupting. It appears when someone who once used anger as control learns to pause, lower a voice, and admit, “I was wrong.” It appears in the quiet choice to be dependable after years of inconsistency. None of these actions attracts much attention, but they are not small to the person receiving them.

The woman turns on the kitchen light and begins packing lunches. Her daughter comes in worried about a test. In the past, the woman might have answered quickly, telling her not to worry and continuing with the morning routine. Today she stops cutting an apple, looks at her daughter, and asks what part feels hardest. The conversation lasts less than two minutes. The bus still needs to be caught. The test is still waiting. But the child leaves the kitchen knowing her fear was not an inconvenience.

This is how purpose can return without making an announcement.

We tend to think of purpose as the thing that makes our life look important. Jesus often treats purpose as the way His love reaches the person standing in front of us. The difference matters. If purpose is mainly about importance, failure seems to disqualify us because our image has been damaged. If purpose is about love, failure can make us more attentive to people who are carrying shame, fear, or weakness of their own.

Peter would spend the rest of his life caring for people who did not always get things right. He would lead communities filled with disagreement, immaturity, fear, and ordinary human failure. He would have to correct people without forgetting how Jesus corrected him. He would have to call others toward courage while remembering the night his own courage disappeared. His past did not make him less aware of weakness. It made weakness impossible for him to dismiss.

The parts of your story that embarrass you may have made you capable of seeing someone others overlook. You notice the person who stops coming to church after a divorce because you know what it is like to feel watched. You understand why someone avoids opening mail because you once feared every bill. You hear the strain beneath a friend’s joke because you remember how often you used humor to hide. You recognize the silence of a person who believes a mistake has removed the right to speak.

This does not mean you must tell everyone everything. Wisdom still matters. Some parts of your history may be private. Some stories involve other people and should not be shared carelessly. Restoration is not the pressure to turn every wound into public content. It is the freedom to let what you have learned shape how you treat others.

A man discovers this while volunteering at a community meal. He does not stand at the front or lead the prayer. He fills cups and wipes tables. Ten years earlier, alcohol had cost him a marriage and nearly cost him his life. He has been sober for several years, but he still carries regret over birthdays he missed and words his children remember. One evening, a guest arrives smelling strongly of alcohol. Other volunteers remain polite, but they keep the conversation short. The man brings him coffee and sits nearby.

He does not give a speech. He does not tell the guest to get his life together. He asks his name and listens. The guest admits that his daughter will no longer answer his calls. The volunteer knows the sharpness of that kind of silence. He cannot repair the stranger’s family, and he does not pretend that one conversation will change him. He simply refuses to treat him as a problem that entered the room.

No one applauds. Most people do not notice. Yet the love of Jesus is present in the space between two men, one of whom remembers what it was like to believe he had become impossible to respect.

The restored life is often built in moments like that. It is less interested in proving worth and more willing to offer presence. It does not need every act of service to become part of a larger success story. It can do good without demanding evidence that the good has worked.

That is difficult for people who are trying to recover from failure because we want visible results. We want to know that our changed life is making up for the damage. We want someone to say we are different now. We may even use service as a hidden form of repayment, hoping that enough good deeds will reduce the weight of the past.

Jesus does not restore us by putting us on a spiritual payment plan. We cannot purchase grace through usefulness. Peter did not feed the sheep to earn back the love of Jesus. He cared for them because he had already been loved in the place of his failure.

That order protects the heart. When service becomes payment, we eventually become tired, resentful, or desperate for recognition. Every unnoticed effort feels like a lost receipt. Every criticism feels unfair because we believe we have worked hard enough to deserve a better verdict. We begin helping people not because we love them, but because we need their gratitude to quiet our shame.

Grace changes the reason we serve. We no longer have to turn every good action into evidence for the defense. We can make the meal, answer the call, keep the promise, visit the lonely person, or show patience because love has somewhere to go. The act does not need to prove that we are good. It can simply be good for someone else.

The woman in the kitchen has spent years trying to become a different kind of mother. She once believed one perfect holiday, one long apology, or one carefully planned family trip might repair everything at once. Instead, trust returned through hundreds of smaller moments. She came home when she said she would. She stopped using guilt to control conversations. She apologized without adding, “But you also.” She learned to ask questions without forcing answers.

Her children may never understand how much effort those changes required. They should not have to. Children are not responsible for celebrating a parent’s growth. The work is still meaningful because it creates a safer home.

There is freedom in accepting that some of your most important restoration may be invisible to everyone except Jesus. The world may continue to know you by an old mistake. A relative may still speak about who you used to be. Someone who left your life may never see what changed. You may do faithful work for years without receiving the moment of public correction you once imagined, when everyone realizes they were wrong about you.

Jesus sees the work no one sees. That is not a weak substitute for human recognition. It is the place where a stable life can grow. When His knowledge becomes enough, you are no longer forced to perform healing for an audience.

This does not mean human encouragement is unimportant. We need people who can notice progress, speak truth, and remind us that change is real. Peter was restored within a community, not sent into isolation. Yet the deepest source of purpose cannot be the approval of people, because people do not always see clearly. Some remember only the failure. Others admire us without knowing how much help we still need. Neither opinion can carry the full weight of identity.

Jesus can.

He knew Peter’s weakness before Peter admitted it. He knew Peter’s love when Peter could barely trust his own words. He knew the future work Peter would do before anyone else could imagine following him. Jesus’s call did not depend on Peter’s ability to create a convincing new image. It depended on the wisdom of the One doing the calling.

This is why you may need to stop waiting to feel qualified before doing the next loving thing. Shame keeps asking whether you deserve a purpose. Jesus asks whether you will follow Him in the responsibility already near you.

The person near you may be a spouse who needs an honest conversation instead of another promise. It may be a coworker who needs patience during a difficult week. It may be an aging parent who repeats the same question. It may be a friend who has withdrawn because life became painful. It may be a child who needs you to put the phone down for ten minutes. Purpose does not always arrive as a new assignment. Sometimes it is hidden inside the way you handle the assignment you already have.

The quiet nature of this work can feel disappointing at first. We want something that matches the size of our regret. If the failure was public, we want restoration to be public. If the damage was serious, we want the redeemed future to feel equally dramatic. But Jesus is not creating a balanced picture for an audience. He is forming a person who can be trusted with love.

A restored person becomes dependable in places where no praise is available. He tells the truth when a lie would be easier. She keeps a boundary when no one would know it had been crossed. He speaks kindly to the person who cannot help his career. She chooses patience with a family member who may never thank her. These actions do not erase the past. They reveal that the past is no longer in control.

There may also be days when you fail again. Restoration does not make you incapable of weakness. Peter still made mistakes after the resurrection. He still needed correction. Growth did not turn him into a flawless man. It turned him into a man who could be corrected and continue following Jesus.

That may be part of the work no one sees. You recover more quickly from a bad moment. You admit it sooner. You stop building excuses. You recognize the old pattern before it becomes a season. You ask for help before everything falls apart. The victory may not be that you never struggle again. It may be that the struggle no longer gets to hide for years.

The woman returns to the bedroom after everyone has left. The bed is unmade. A damp towel is on the floor. Her coffee has gone cold beside the sink. Nothing about the morning looked important. Yet she listened to her daughter, answered her husband without the sharpness she once used, and admitted that she had forgotten to sign a school form instead of blaming the morning rush.

She sits on the edge of the bed where she had prayed before sunrise. She still does not feel impressive. She does not suddenly understand the full plan for her life. But the question has changed. She is no longer asking whether Jesus has anything left for her to do. She is beginning to see that He has already placed love within reach.

Purpose after failure is not always a new platform. Sometimes it is a new way of being present. It is the same kitchen, the same family, the same workday, and the same tired body, but shame is no longer deciding how much love you are allowed to give.

Jesus did not restore Peter so that Peter could spend the rest of his life talking about Peter. He restored him so that other people could be fed, protected, strengthened, and reminded that failure was not the end.

The same grace can move through your ordinary day. It can enter the room through your patience, your honesty, your attention, and your willingness to stay. The work may be quiet. It may never become a story anyone tells. It is still holy because love is reaching someone through a life Jesus refused to discard.

Chapter 5: Learning to Trust the Next Step

The pharmacy receipt is folded in the cup holder beside a half-empty bottle of water. A man sits in the parking lot with both hands resting on the steering wheel, not because he is afraid to drive home, but because he is afraid of what home will require. His wife has been ill for months. The appointments keep multiplying. The bills arrive faster than the answers. He has tried to be the calm one, the practical one, the person who knows what to do next. Last week, exhausted and frightened, he snapped at her during an argument over money. The words were cruel enough that he heard them again the moment the house became quiet.

He apologized. She accepted the apology, though the hurt did not disappear immediately. Since then, he has moved carefully through every conversation. He watches his tone, measures every word, and avoids making decisions unless someone else tells him what to do. He believes this caution is wisdom, but beneath it is a deeper fear. He no longer trusts himself. One failure under pressure has made him wonder whether every future moment will reveal the same weakness.

This is another burden people carry after Jesus has forgiven them. They may believe they are loved again, but they do not believe they can be trusted with a next step. They become suspicious of every desire, every decision, and every opportunity. They wait for perfect certainty because they are afraid that choosing wrongly would prove they have not changed. Their life becomes smaller, not because Jesus has stopped leading, but because fear has made movement feel dangerous.

Peter had reason to distrust himself. His own prediction about his courage had collapsed in a single night. Before the arrest, he believed he knew what he would do. After the denial, he knew that strong feelings were not enough. He had learned that confidence could speak loudly while fear remained hidden underneath. When Jesus told him to care for His sheep and follow Him, Peter had to move forward without the old kind of self-assurance.

Jesus did not rebuild Peter by teaching him to believe that he would never fail again. He rebuilt Peter by teaching him where to place his trust. Peter’s future could not rest on the promise, “I am strong enough now.” It had to rest on the call, “Follow me.” The difference is quiet but life-changing. One depends on perfect confidence in yourself. The other depends on staying close enough to Jesus to take the next faithful step.

Many people delay obedience because they are waiting to become certain of themselves. They want to know they will say the right thing, choose the right timing, and carry the responsibility without weakness. They imagine that restored people should feel steady before they act. Yet much of Christian faith is lived while our hands still tremble.

A mother feels this when her adult son calls after months of distance. Their relationship became strained during years when she used criticism to control him. She has apologized and started changing the way she speaks, but she still fears every conversation. When his name appears on the phone, she lets it ring twice while deciding whether answering will create another mistake. She wants a script. She wants assurance that he will not bring up the past. She wants to know she can handle whatever he says.

No such assurance comes. She answers anyway.

Her son does not call to discuss the relationship. He needs help understanding an insurance form. For twenty minutes, they read through the document together. She resists the urge to tell him what he should have done earlier. She asks questions. When she does not know an answer, she says so. The conversation ends without a breakthrough, but also without harm. It is only one call, yet one call becomes evidence that fear does not have to make every decision.

This is how trust often returns. Not in one emotional moment, but through small acts of obedience. You keep the conversation gentle. You make the appointment. You show up where you said you would. You ask before assuming. You pause before answering. You let someone disagree without using force. Each choice becomes a stone in a new foundation.

The foundation is not the belief that you are incapable of failure. It is the knowledge that Jesus can correct, guide, and sustain you as you move. The restored life is not a life without risk. Love always involves risk because people are not machines and choices do not come with guaranteed outcomes. The goal is not to remove every possibility of getting something wrong. The goal is to become teachable enough that a mistake no longer becomes a hidden pattern.

Shame tells us that safety is found in doing nothing. If we never lead, we cannot misuse authority. If we never speak, we cannot say the wrong thing. If we never love deeply, we cannot hurt someone. If we never try again, we cannot fail again. This logic sounds protective, but it slowly turns regret into a prison.

Jesus did not tell Peter to avoid responsibility because he had once handled pressure badly. He gave Peter responsibility that would require greater dependence than before. Peter would have to speak, lead, decide, confront, comfort, and serve. He would sometimes be misunderstood. He would not do everything perfectly. Yet Jesus’s answer to Peter’s failure was not permanent inactivity. It was a different way of moving.

There is wisdom in slowing down after failure. Some decisions should not be made quickly. Counseling, accountability, rest, restitution, and healthy limits may be necessary. A person who has misused money may need another person involved in financial decisions. Someone who has broken trust may need to accept more transparency than before. A leader who has harmed people may need to step away from authority. Caution can be part of repentance.

But caution becomes fear when no amount of growth is ever considered enough to take another faithful step. The person keeps moving the finish line. First, he says he will serve again after six months. Then he decides he needs a year. Then he says he should wait until everyone has forgotten. The real requirement is impossible because what he wants is a future in which no one, including himself, can ever doubt him again.

Jesus does not offer that future. He offers His presence.

The man in the pharmacy parking lot finally starts the car. Before driving home, he calls a friend from church and tells him what happened during the argument. He does not give a softened version. He admits the fear, the anger, and the words he used. The friend listens and asks whether he has apologized. Then he asks what kind of help would make the next difficult conversation safer.

The man wants to say he is fine now. Instead, he admits he needs someone to call twice a week. He needs help looking at the medical bills. He needs a place to speak honestly before pressure becomes anger. This is not the strong role he imagined for himself, but it may be the first dependable choice he has made in days.

We often think trusting ourselves means needing less help. In reality, restored trust may include knowing when not to stand alone. Peter’s early confidence made isolation seem possible. He believed he could remain faithful even if everyone else fell away. His failure taught him that love for Jesus did not remove his need for prayer, community, and grace.

There is no shame in building support around a weak place. A railing does not insult a staircase. It makes the staircase safer to use. Accountability does not always mean you are less mature. It may mean you have become honest enough to stop pretending maturity is independence.

Some people resist help because they are afraid it will keep the failure alive. They want to prove they have moved beyond the need for questions. Yet secrecy is often where old patterns regain strength. A restored person can say, “This area is still vulnerable, so I will not protect it with silence.”

That kind of honesty is not fear. It is courage without performance.

A nurse learns this after making a documentation error during a difficult shift. No patient was harmed, but the mistake frightened her. She had been distracted by exhaustion and family stress. After reporting the error, she began checking every entry so many times that she could barely finish her work. She stopped trusting her training. Every blank field felt like a threat.

Her supervisor did not tell her to ignore the mistake. They reviewed what happened, changed part of the workflow, and created a simple double-check process for the busiest hours. Over time, the nurse stopped trying to achieve safety through panic. She learned that careful work and anxious work are not the same. Care pays attention to what matters. Anxiety tries to control every possibility.

This distinction is important in spiritual life too. A person who has failed may become so focused on avoiding another mistake that he no longer listens for the good he is being called to do. He spends every day looking backward over his shoulder. He measures faithfulness only by what he did not do wrong.

Jesus calls us toward more than avoidance. Peter was not restored merely to stop denying. He was restored to feed, tend, strengthen, and follow. His future was not defined by the absence of one sin. It was filled with active love.

You may need to ask yourself whether your current caution is helping you love more faithfully or simply helping you avoid feeling vulnerable. Are you refusing to lead because the role is unwise, or because you cannot bear the thought of being imperfect in front of others? Are you staying silent because someone needs space, or because shame has convinced you that your voice can never carry anything good? Are you waiting for God’s direction, or waiting for the impossible moment when you no longer feel afraid?

These questions should not be used to pressure yourself into action. They are invitations to honesty. Sometimes the faithful next step is to wait. Sometimes it is to step back. Sometimes it is to seek professional help, submit to a boundary, or remain out of a role. But sometimes the next step is already clear, and fear is asking for certainty Jesus never promised.

The way forward may be simple enough to feel disappointing. Return the call. Apply for the job. Join the support group. Volunteer where no title is involved. Ask your spouse what would help rebuild trust. Tell a friend where you are struggling. Pray with someone even though your voice feels unsteady. Choose one responsibility that matches the person you are becoming, not the image you are trying to recover.

You do not need to trust every feeling that passes through you. You do not need to believe every thought is wise. You do not need to assume that because you want something, God must be leading you toward it. Discernment still matters. Scripture matters. Counsel matters. Time matters. Yet you can trust that Jesus is able to guide a person who is willing to listen and be corrected.

That may be the trust you need most. Not trust in your ability to predict your own behavior perfectly, but trust in His willingness to remain involved. Jesus is not standing at a distance, waiting to see whether you fail the test. He is the Shepherd leading you while He teaches you how to care for others.

Peter’s restored purpose began with a command that did not guarantee comfort. Jesus told him that following would eventually cost him deeply. Restoration did not mean an easier future. It meant a meaningful one. Peter could move toward it because the center of his life was no longer the question, “Can I prove I will never be weak again?” The center was the person who said, “Follow me.”

The man drives home with the pharmacy bag on the passenger seat. The medical bills will still be on the table. His wife may still be guarded. He will need to apologize through changed behavior, not just words. He does not know whether the next months will be better or harder. Yet he has made one decision differently. He has asked for help before fear turned into anger again.

When he enters the house, he does not promise that he will never lose patience. He says, “I told someone the truth today, and I asked him to help me handle this better.” His wife looks at him for a long moment. She does not praise him. She nods, and the two of them begin sorting the bills.

The next step is rarely large enough to erase the past. It is often small enough to be taken while you still feel uncertain. Jesus can work with that. He can lead the person who no longer trusts grand promises but is willing to practice quiet obedience.

You may never again feel the careless confidence you had before failure. That may not be a loss. You may gain something steadier: a willingness to move with humility, ask for help, accept correction, and keep your eyes on Jesus rather than on the image of yourself you are trying to protect.

You do not have to know that you will perform perfectly. You only need to know who is calling you forward. The next step does not ask you to prove your strength. It asks you to follow.

Chapter 6: The Shore You Thought You Lost

The house is quiet after midnight, but a small lamp is still on beside the couch. A man sits with a Bible open on his lap and a notebook beside him. He has written the same sentence three times and crossed it out each time: “I do not know what Jesus could still want from me.” The room holds no dramatic crisis. The children are asleep. The dishes are done. Tomorrow’s clothes are folded over the back of a chair. Yet inside him, an old failure is still speaking as though it happened this morning.

For years, he has treated his life with Jesus as something that ended when he disappointed Him. He still believes. He still prays. He still listens when Scripture is read. But he has quietly moved from relationship to observation. He watches other people serve, grow, speak, lead, and take risks while he remains near enough to see Jesus but too ashamed to imagine being called by Him again.

This is where the story of Peter becomes more than a lesson about forgiveness. It becomes a doorway back into relationship.

Peter did not only lose confidence in himself. He likely wondered whether he had lost his place with Jesus. The denial was personal. He had not merely broken a rule. He had said, in effect, “I do not belong to Him.” The words created distance between Peter and the identity he had once carried openly.

Then Jesus met him on the shore.

There is tenderness in the fact that Jesus did not wait for Peter to find the right words first. Peter had returned to fishing. The night had produced empty nets, tired muscles, and the familiar frustration of effort without results. At dawn, a figure stood on the shore and called to them. When the net filled and Peter realized it was Jesus, he did not stay in the boat and prepare an explanation. He jumped into the water.

That movement tells us something Peter’s shame had not destroyed. Beneath the regret, he still wanted Jesus.

Many people carry the same hidden desire. They may feel unworthy to pray, but they still miss the closeness they once knew. They may avoid church, Scripture, or quiet reflection because those places remind them of promises they broke, yet part of them still listens for the voice of Jesus. They may say they have moved on, but their heart still turns whenever grace is mentioned.

Shame tries to convince us that wanting Jesus is not enough. It says we must first become less disappointing, less complicated, and less aware of our history. It tells us to clean ourselves up before moving toward the shore. Peter did not have time to build a better record before he entered the water. He came as the man who had denied Jesus.

Jesus received him as that man.

This does not mean Jesus ignored the denial. The conversation by the fire brought it close. Love was named. Responsibility was given. The future was clarified. But the order matters. Peter was already sitting near Jesus, eating food Jesus had prepared, before he had demonstrated years of improved behavior.

Grace made the conversation possible.

You may have been trying to reverse that order. You may believe you must prove your change before you can come near. You tell yourself you will pray more honestly after you have been consistent for a month. You will return to Christian community after you feel less embarrassed. You will believe Jesus has purpose for you after you have done enough good to balance the past. Until then, you stay in the boat, working through the night and calling the emptiness responsibility.

Jesus is already on the shore.

He is not asking you to pretend the night was successful. He knows the nets are empty. He knows what you said, what you hid, what you damaged, and what you still do not understand about yourself. He also knows that hunger has brought you to the edge of another morning.

The man on the couch closes his eyes and remembers the season when faith felt simpler. He remembers praying without evaluating every sentence. He remembers opening Scripture without immediately thinking about the gap between the words and his life. He wants to return to that earlier innocence, but perhaps innocence is not what Jesus is offering.

Peter did not return to the relationship as the man who had never failed. He entered a deeper relationship as a man who had been fully exposed and still loved.

That kind of closeness is different. It is less polished and more honest. It does not depend on maintaining the illusion that you are always stronger than temptation, fear, or pressure. It lets you come to Jesus without hiding the places where your intentions and actions separated.

The person who knows he has been loved after failure can stop performing in prayer. He can say, “I am afraid I will do this again.” She can say, “I am still angry that the consequences remain.” He can admit, “Part of me wants restoration mainly because I want people to respect me again.” She can confess, “I do not know whether I miss You or only miss the person I used to believe I was.”

Jesus is not threatened by that honesty. Truth is where relationship becomes real.

A woman learns this while sitting alone in her car outside a church building. She has not entered in almost a year. A painful conflict ended with harsh words on all sides, including words she now regrets. She told herself she stopped attending because the people were judgmental, and some of them may have been. But another reason has become harder to avoid: she does not want to face the version of herself that appeared during the conflict.

She has visited other churches, watched services online, and tried to rebuild faith at a safe distance. Still, every place feels temporary. One Sunday morning, she drives to the old building and parks across the street. She does not know whether returning is wise. She does not know whether anyone will welcome her. She only knows that she is tired of pretending Jesus is present everywhere except the places connected to her regret.

She does not enter that day. Instead, she sits in the car and prays one honest sentence: “Jesus, I want to stop hiding from You.”

That prayer does not solve the church conflict. It does not decide whether reconciliation is possible or whether another community would be healthier. It does something more basic. It separates Jesus from the fear that has surrounded the situation. She begins to understand that people may misunderstand her, boundaries may still be needed, and the old church may not become home again, but none of those things can remove her from Christ.

Sometimes shame attaches Jesus to every painful human verdict. If someone rejects us, we assume He does too. If a church handled our failure badly, we begin to believe Jesus has become unsafe. If a family member refuses contact, we imagine heaven has closed the same door. We take a real human response and give it divine authority.

People matter. Their pain matters. Their boundaries matter. Their wisdom should not be dismissed. But no person sees the whole heart as Jesus does. No institution owns grace. No former role, lost relationship, or damaged reputation is the final location of your identity.

Peter’s identity was not decided by the servant girl in the courtyard, the disciples who knew he had denied Jesus, or even by Peter’s own bitter opinion of himself. Jesus spoke the final word: “Follow me.”

Those two words are not an invitation to forget. They are an invitation to move while remembering differently.

Memory can become a chain or a compass. As a chain, it keeps pulling you back to the same moment and insisting nothing after it can be trusted. As a compass, it warns you where fear can lead, reminds you where grace found you, and points you toward a more honest way of living.

Peter’s memory of denial could have kept him silent forever. Instead, it became part of the courage with which he later spoke. He was no longer a man protecting the image of his own strength. He was a witness to what Jesus could do with someone who had failed publicly and personally.

Your history may not become a public testimony, and it does not have to. Some redemption is quiet. It may appear in the way you speak to one child, care for one parent, keep one promise, or sit beside one person who thinks life is over. The value of restoration is not measured by the size of the audience.

It is measured by the freedom to love without being ruled by shame.

A retired teacher understands this after receiving a letter from a former student. Decades earlier, during a hard year in her own life, she had embarrassed that student in front of a class. She remembered the moment often but had never known how deeply it affected him. The letter was not angry. It simply explained that the humiliation stayed with him and shaped the way he viewed himself for years.

Her first instinct is to defend the context. She had been exhausted, recently divorced, and overwhelmed by a classroom she struggled to manage. None of that changes what the boy experienced. Her second instinct is to collapse under the thought that one careless moment had caused so much harm.

Instead, she writes back. She does not explain herself. She thanks him for telling the truth, names what she did, and apologizes without asking him to comfort her. She tells him that he deserved dignity and that she is sorry she failed to give it.

After mailing the letter, she cannot control what happens next. He may reply or remain silent. He may forgive her or decide that the apology came too late. Yet something in her has changed. She has stopped using shame as a substitute for responsibility. For years, feeling terrible had seemed like proof that she cared. Now care has become action.

This is another way Jesus restores purpose. He teaches us that regret is not the same as repair. Feeling bad may be sincere, but love asks what truth can still be spoken and what good can still be done. Sometimes the answer is an apology. Sometimes it is restitution. Sometimes it is respecting silence. Sometimes it is changing the way we treat the next person.

You may not be able to repair the original situation. The person may be gone. The opportunity may have passed. The damage may be beyond your reach. Even then, repentance can become a new way of living. You can stop repeating the pattern. You can offer someone else the patience you once withheld. You can become truthful where you once hid.

Jesus does not waste changed behavior because the original wound cannot be fully repaired.

The man on the couch opens his eyes and looks again at the sentence in his notebook. “I do not know what Jesus could still want from me.” He realizes the sentence assumes purpose must be large enough to be known in advance. Peter was not given a detailed map of every future day. He was given a direction: care for people and follow Jesus.

The man turns to a clean page and writes something smaller: “What is the next loving thing in front of me?”

His wife has been carrying more of the family strain than he has admitted. His brother has called twice, and he has not answered because the relationship feels awkward. A younger coworker has been asking questions about faith, and he keeps changing the subject because he feels like a hypocrite. None of these situations requires him to present himself as a finished person.

He can begin with honesty.

The next morning, he tells his wife he has been distant because shame has made him afraid of being known. He does not ask her to fix the feeling. He listens when she explains how his distance has affected her. Later, he returns his brother’s call. At work, when the younger man asks how faith survives failure, he says, “I am still learning that myself, but I have learned that Jesus does not leave when the truth comes out.”

That answer is not impressive. It is real.

There is a point in restoration when you stop trying to recover the person you were before failure and begin receiving the person Jesus is forming now. The old person may have been more confident, but the new person may be more compassionate. The old person may have moved quickly, but the new person listens. The old person may have needed to appear strong, while the new person knows how to ask for help.

You may miss the ease you once had. You may grieve what was lost. Yet deeper faith is not always easier faith. Sometimes it is faith that has survived the discovery that you are weaker than you believed and that Jesus is more faithful than you understood.

That discovery changes the way you see other people too. You become slower to label them by one moment. You do not call every struggle rebellion or every hesitation unbelief. You can hold truth and mercy together because Jesus held them together with you. You learn that a person can need correction without needing rejection.

This does not make you soft about harm. Peter’s restoration included responsibility, not excuses. Love protects people. It respects boundaries. It tells the truth. It refuses to use grace as permission to repeat what wounded others. But love also refuses to turn accountability into destruction.

Jesus did not humiliate Peter in front of an audience for the pleasure of balancing the scales. He restored him in a way that made future service possible. Correction pointed toward life.

That is how you can recognize the voice of Jesus among the many voices speaking after failure. Shame says, “Stay where you fell.” Pride says, “Pretend you never fell.” Jesus says, “Tell the truth, receive grace, and follow me from here.”

From here may not be where you expected to begin.

It may be a smaller house, a different job, a damaged relationship, an accountability meeting, or a quiet morning when no one else knows you have decided to live honestly. It may include medication, counseling, financial repair, or a support group. It may include letting go of a role you once believed defined your purpose.

Jesus can begin from here.

The shore you thought you lost was never the shore of your own innocence. It was the place where Jesus stood. You may have drifted, denied, hidden, or returned to old habits because you did not know what else to do. He remains the One who calls across the water, prepares food for tired people, faces the truth, and gives a future.

You do not have to climb back into the life you had before. You do not have to convince everyone that you are different now. You do not have to erase every reminder before you can serve, love, pray, or hope again.

You do need to come near.

Come near with the consequences that stayed. Come near with the apology that was not accepted, the trust that has not returned, and the fear that you may still be weak. Come near without a speech about what you deserve. Come near because Jesus already knows, and He has not confused your worst moment with the whole of who you can become in His hands.

There may be people reading your life who remember the courtyard. Let them remember. Your task is not to control every version of your story. Your task is to follow Jesus in the life that remains.

There will be ordinary mornings. Nets will sometimes feel empty. Old memories will return without warning. You may hear a sound, see a place, or read a message that brings the shame close again. When that happens, remember that the story did not end with the rooster.

There was also a shore.

There was a fire where fear no longer had the final word. There was bread. There was a question about love. There was work still worth doing. There was a command to follow.

Your life may contain a courtyard you wish had never existed. It can also contain a shore you never thought you would see again.

Jesus does more than forgive your failure. He meets you inside the truth of it, restores your ability to love, and calls you into a future that does not depend on pretending the past never happened. He does not ask you to become useful enough to earn His trust. He asks you to stay close enough to receive His direction.

The lamp beside the couch is still on. The man closes the notebook and leaves the Bible open. Nothing outside the room has changed, but he is no longer sitting there as someone whose purpose ended years ago. He is a man with one honest conversation to have in the morning.

That is enough for tonight.

Your friend, Douglas Vandergraph

Explore the complete Douglas Vandergraph Master Index: https://douglasvandergraph.com/douglas-vandergraph-master-index/

Watch Douglas Vandergraph’s faith-based videos on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@douglasvandergraph

I was in such a mood today. I have not been sleeping well. I still feel some phlegm that wants to come out but just isn’t. I have mounds of ~clean~ laundry to put away, a cluttered desk that makes me dizzy, and what feels like a thousand things to get done. I also feel overweight and struggling really hard to lose weight or get in shape.

Yet, I have no energy, motivation, or strength to do anything about it.

Maybe tomorrow will be better.

Thank you for your message. I am currently out of office with no set return date. I will get back to you when the time is right.

Come sit in uncertainty with me. Let us open the door of wonder and dare to welcome what greets us across that threshold. Let's embrace our lack of understanding with a curious awe, and delve into the probability that all we assume to be true is either incomplete or wrong. Unwrap the definition we've limited consciousness to and expand in the glory of our lack of specialness. Are we able to step into the unknown and meet it without terms, and without feeling the need to conquer it. Can we accept that our own definitions are the heavy chains that shackle us in place? Are we able to rise without trampling upon all that has allowed that flight to occur? Dare we to see ourselves less clearly, but with more awareness? Come sit in uncertainty with me... Let's explore.

Written August 2, 2026. © 2026 AnOublietteofThought.

Today was weird. I woke up not feeling super positive, and then ended up getting upset with my parents. I went to pottery for a little bit, but didn't enjoy what I made. I think I need to go back and redo it soon.

Then the day got gray and rainy but ironically my feelings cleared up and uplifted. We ended up going to some stores and doing some shopping for the rest of the day. It was nice.

My dog is still doing well. She only has a few days left with us. I think I am ready, but I want to write her a letter to be buried with. Maybe tomorrow I will tackle that task. My room is a mess and I don’t even know where or how to start decluttering or cleaning it.

I hope someday everything becomes clear and I find a job that I love. I have enough free time for my hobbies. I have money flowing into my bank account. I have a clear room, clear house and clear mind. A time where I can just enjoy and be carefree. I feel so removed from that right now… does it even exist?

Thank you for your message. I am currently out of office with no set return date. I will get back to you when the time is right.

In Summary: * This evening finds me surprisingly tired. I've done nothing strenuous today. Maybe I'm confusing relaxation with fatigue. Could be. At any rate, I'm listening now to quiet jazz. And all that stands between me and an early bedtime are the night prayers, and I'll tend to them shortly.

Prayers, etc.: * I have a daily prayer regimen I try to follow throughout the day from early morning, as soon as I roll out of bed, until head hits pillow at night.

Health Metrics: * bw= 226.86 lbs. * bp= 143/85 (63)

Exercise: * morning stretches, balance exercises, kegel pelvic floor exercises, half squats, calf raises, wall push-ups, BP breathing exercises, pilates

Diet: * 05:45 – 1 banana, nacho chips with cheese sauce and chili * 13:00 – 1 peanut butter sandwich * 14:45 – 3 hamburger patties, mashed potatoes, mushroom gravy
* 18:00 – a bowl of ice cream

Activities, Chores, etc.: * 04:45 – bank accounts activity monitored. * 04:50 – read, write, pray, follow news reports from various sources, surf the socials, nap * 10:00 – watching Recap / Rundown on MLB Network * 11:30 – watching a Minor League Baseball Game on MLB Network * 13:00 – the TV is still showing the Minor league game, (Tincaps are leading 11 to 4 in the 9th inning), but the Chromebook is showing the active Gameday Screen for this afternoon's MLB Rangers / Astros game, and I'm listening to the radio-call of that game from the Rangers Radio network. * 13:30 – Final score: Tincaps 12, Loons 5. * 16:10 – Final Score: Astros 7, Rangers 3. * 16:20 – follow news reports from various sources * 17:30 – listening to relaxing music

Chess: * 14:00 – moved in all pending CC games

We could not saver her, but we can savor the memory.

“Let her go” Was belting up to The mezzanine When you, swaying To the rhythm, Asked me to dance.

Every time with you Felt like the first— You made me laugh And I lived there, Out of time, Whenever I got the chance.

Long draws After long days— Made our hearts light, And laughter easy, And everything Felt twenty-five again.

Little sister’s eyes glistened Against the album wall, Setting that burden down Just for a night.

And maybe that's Your special gift: This spell of happiness That opens doorways in the air.

Another day.

Life moved faster than any of use guessed, But never so fast we couldn't find Joy, delight and a little rest.

One night in amber and it won't ever be the same— Pouring into memory, all joy that tempers pain.

——————————————————

May 2024.

The night felt special, but not especially so. Not like it would be the last time we'd all sit around, laugh, drink, and dance. She had cancer then, but we were so sure she was going to beat it. We never really entertained any other possibility. She was going to be fine.

Maybe that's what happens when you tell yourself that over a long enough timeline, 'everything is going to be fine'. You come to expect that things won't get as bad as they can. That somehow life will stop short of the worst. Save you from the absolute longing of real absence.

Then you wake up at six in the morning, and she's gone.

The real kind of gone.

Not the kind where you wait two months and, poof, there she is again—a visage of loveliness. Trouble squared.

All you're left with is the memory.

And the hope.

The hope.

Hope springs eternal, they say, and you pick yourself up and count on your friends to help you through. Only it turns out you don't really have that component the way you thought you did. It turns out you're the one helping everyone else get through, and suddenly you can't pull the wagon anymore.

So, you sit in the shade and sip lukewarm water, waiting for the inevitable.

And you remember.

---

Being alone is unkind to memory.

By Roger Young City Press — 1 February 2015

Recovery note: Complete text transcribed from the 12 August 2015 Wayback Machine capture of the original News24/City Press page. The Write.as mirror contains only the opening section.

---

It’s like a game of shongololo Tetris, the car zigzagging between the crawlies and the curved cracks in the long straight concrete road, as we head towards a silhouette of giraffes. It’s been five hours of driving from Joburg, but here at the Kruger Park’s Timbavati gate just outside Hoedspruit, we have less than 17km to go to nThambo Tree Camp, a name conjuring up images of, well, dwellings in trees.

Arriving at nThambo bursts this romantic bubble. What the lodge does have is max luxe bungalows on stilts, writing tables, complicated mosquito nets, showers full of moths, a balcony on which at night you may drink G&Ts while elephants graze and snort in the darkness below.

The proximity of the animals means you need a ranger to walk you between the bar and the rooms – ideal for couples who want isolation; bad for people who want to hang out at the bar.

nThambo is of the rigorous school of safari camps; up at 4am for a game drive, back at 9am, breakfast, safari walk, lunch, nap, sunset drive, early to bed, repeat – which is perfect for the guests, all foreign and armed with check lists of animals to see, and hastily memorised facts about political affairs and poverty.

My companion and I sit out the first morning game drive to test out the splash pool, try to stop looking at our phones, try to arrive. And to fantasise about crocodiles.

nThambo is actually not quite in the Kruger, but rather in an area, called the Klaserie Game Reserve, of private property and ex-farms that removed their fences about 20 years ago in an attempt to let the land return to nature, and to enable conservation with tourist dollars.

As a result, it’s cut up with dirt access roads to various properties and arcane laws about who can cross whose property to look at which animals.

We would be bounding along on what often felt like a really big paintball range and encounter groups from other lodges parked just on the other side of a boundary road trying to get a glimpse of lions, fresh from a kill, which we are just metres away from them.

Our guides make jokes sotto voce about the other rangers’ epaulettes.

We watch these two lions doze until our guide whispers: “Has everyone had a proper look? Should we move on to see something else?”

The radio crackles with the names of animals in Shona, used as codewords to belay tourist expectations. Our guide and his co-spotter drift the vehicle into a grove and the smell of pachyderms hits us, overpowering the aroma of decaying trees.

Suddenly, we are engulfed in elephants; ripping tree branches, yanking roots out the ground, bathing in mud, tiny babies bumping up against our vehicle. Our guide hushes us and whispers through a series of facts, enraptured.

The guide reacts to a radioed word and we scoot off through the short-treed brush, finding another vehicle full of rapt game viewers from another lodge perched on the edge of a small water hole. Two rhinos snort at our arrival and, like giant dangerous beetles, vanish into the bush.

We give chase, heading them off road after road, clambering ill-wheeled as they outwit us again, and again, and again, until we see the baby, spooked and leading the mother and male away from us continuously.

We give chase one last time, then: “Have you seen enough?” asks our guide. “Shall we try get a look at something else?”

We drink in a clearing, gin and tonics against the smell of incoming rain and the gentle pitter-patter of a Scandinavian complaining that we saw no leopards today. We drive through the nagapie darkness to dinner.

The most interesting animals on a game drive are the humans; the Europeans at the long table comparing lifestyles, taxes, civilisations. The conversation turns to townships, electricity, shack floods, township tours.

A German, a seasoned traveller, faux pas’ with “Africa is such a wonderful country…” I shoot him a glance and he quickly corrects to “…continent that I will never stop coming here on holiday.”

He loves the animals; we don’t know how lucky we are. An American, who has confessed like a cliché to be a salesman of military hardware, is eager to move to another camp, where he has bought the right to shoot an animal – just a buffalo, there are so many of them.

It means they have to make some financial sacrifices, but the trophy, the prestige...

Clutching another gin, away from the table, I get into a conversation about conservation with our guide. This is where he explains the codewords to me. If you’re heading into camp from a drive and the word ‘leopard’ crackles over the radio, then the guests are gonna want to turn around.

Doesn’t it get boring, seeing the same animals day after day, spilling the same facts? “It’s a performance,” he tells me, “and I feed off their awe.

As South Africans, we tend to be quite blasé about what we have here. When a Scandinavian loses their shit over a giraffe, it makes me really appreciate that giraffe.”

“Has everyone looked enough?” asks our guide in the predawn light. We are surrounded by a clump of buffaloes, snorting and lazing, even the clicking cameras unenthusiastic. Everyone nods, buffaloes are unphotogenic – besides their lack of majesty, their dark hides against the dust make for shitty exposure.

Today, the elephants look sad, constantly harried by a never-ending stream of vehicles, swarms of clicking cameras, just trying to uproot a tree in peace, unaware that the intrusions are what keeps them alive, but also sometimes culled.

We stare at the same lions again, they are less languid today and on the radio the guides chatter, hoping to witness a kill. I’m part of this, on the back of the jeep, ruminating over the fact that I am heartsore because the universe is a tricky place.

On the way back, in an open stretch of land, is a gnu, freestanding, the forever-alone gnu, he ambles away, the forever-alone gnu.

On our last drive at nThambo, we come across a small pack of African wild dogs. Rapidly edging towards extinction, there are apparently only about 250 of this seldom-seen hypercarnivore in the greater Kruger area.

They lope about, with pups gamboling, unconcerned on the roadway, our guide in ecstasy, constantly forgetting to talk us through it all. But the painted dog is not majestic enough, does not carry the weight of a million fictions such as the lion, the elephant, the crocodile, and so the cameras soon wind down.

A Scandinavian asks what the chances are of seeing a leopard today.

At nThambo’s sister camp, the more family-oriented Africa On Foot, we discover a pool far superior and are anxious to relax after all the desperate seeing.

It is here, replete with pink gins, that we meet a Dutch couple who are trying to work out whether to move to Cape Town or Sydney. It is also here that we decide to take psychedelics for our last evening drive.

Our new guide is less in awe of our surroundings than overwhelmed by them, his lead guide is chiding him for wrong turns, missed opportunities. We drift aimlessly, coming across a few pockets of buck, the shrooms have kicked in and everything is lush and in reach, full of goddamn nuance.

The jeep breaks through a beyoncé of impala as we rush to our prize. The impala shimmy and ass waggle and jump alongside us and vanish into the brush and we lurch around a new section of the property, into an open savannah, and then into some shrub and there, below a tree, are the two lions.

It’s the fourth or fifth time we’ve seen them and they’re just as docile as before; the psychedelics make me start to suspect that they are somehow actors in this whole debacle. Their fur, however, looks invitingly soft and I imagine touching it, I can see myself reaching out, we are but metres away.

My companion beats me to it, leaning out the vehicle to try a selfie with the lion. Our lead ranger loses his shit and dresses us down for nearly dying. While the lecture continues, I calmly visualise the vivid colours of a fresh kill.

The best way to judge a resort is through its opportunities for art photography. Africa On Foot’s rondavels, while closely packed, non-isolated, a short safe walk to the bar, lack the elegance and colonial pretension of nThambo, which at this point I am beginning to dearly miss. We dine with the surly ranger who knows just what to say to get his tips from the Americans.

Late night at the bar, tragedies of tourist folly are traded. The reason guests are not allowed to walk alone at night at nThambo, apparently, is because once a Scandinavian did in fact see a leopard. We retreat to the rondavel across lawns imagined with scorpions.

We leave in the early light. Passing, in the distance, our former guide transferring awe to a new group of Scandinavians. On the road ahead of us is a silhouette.

We draw closer, speculating leopard, but it is a far more elegant beast – the hyena. He stares us down, shrugs and heads off. As we turn on to the tar road, we are irritated with a clutch of zebras. We saw no crocodiles.

Young was a guest of nThambo Tree Camp and Africa On Foot. Rates at nThambo are R2?650 per person per night (including meals and activities), or R2?950 (fully inclusive). Africa On Foot charges R2?195 per person per night, including all meals and activities. Children 12 and under get a 50% discount

.?For more information, visit nthambo.com and africaonfoot.com

“After gazing at the sky for some time, I came to the conclusion that such beauty had been reserved for remote and dangerous places, and that nature has good reasons for demanding special sacrifices from those who dare to contemplate it.”
 Richard E Byrd (1938)

The build up

One summer, years ago, I was backpacking with friends in the Peak District. We stopped for lunch in the dappled shade of some trees. I sat next to an elderly park volunteer taking a moment to enjoy his sandwiches from a satchel as weatherbeaten as he was. As we chatted, he mentioned in passing that as a young boy he had taken part in the 1932 Kinder Trespass with his father. Later, as we made our way towards our wild camp, the hot afternoon sun on our backs, I reflected on how much we take for granted. Just a generation and a half ago, our rights and freedoms were far from secure.

I can’t exactly remember when the conversations about the Spine Race began. Having completed the Lakeland 100 in 2013, I was looking for another challenge. By the time I was back at the 2014 Lakeland race volunteering, the Spine deposit had already been paid. I ran the majority of the 2013 Lakeland with Steve Jefferson. We formed a strong bond that got us to the end of one of the most arduous runnings of that brutal course. We both maintain that it was the other person who had the idea to enter the Spine. That probably says more about our mental stubbornness than anything else.

Nevertheless, we found ourselves poring over massive route print outs in the sun-drenched fields of the John Ruskin school. The winter race seemed a very long way away. We also met Emiko, another Lakeland volunteer, who was taking part in the Spine Challenger (a shorter, 100 mile version of the race)

The months from July onwards passed quickly. A one year old son, demanding job and study for a postgraduate degree left little time for training. Everyone I mentioned the race to asked “how do you train for that?”. For a long period of time, I didn’t really have an answer. I’d prepared for the Lakeland using an ultra marathon training plan of high weekly mileages with regular long, 30 mile plus runs. It was clear that the Spine would require a different approach that wasn’t immediately apparent.

In the end my training plan was mostly dictated by the limited time I had available. I tried to do whatever shorter, higher tempo runs I could during the week (a 6 mile dash up the hill behind my house was a favourite on summer evenings), but focused on trying to do a 30 mile plus run with full Spine kit at least once a fortnight. Steve and I had also scheduled a couple of training races. We ran the OMM in October. Unfortunately I dropped a horrendous navigational clanger (pretty sure I took a bearing with the map upside down) which resulted in us having a 14 hour first day and camping short of the overnight stop.

The Tour de Helvellyn in December went more smoothly and was a final chance to stretch the legs with full Spine kit. At 42 miles it’s about the same length as some of the Spine legs, with more ascent and descent. We both came away from the TdH feeling reasonably confident.

I originally got into ultra running via “extreme backpacking”. It seemed like a natural extension. During the research of my guide book to the Cape Wrath Trail, I made a couple of mid-winter expeditions to the Northwest Scottish highlands. Both trips featured extreme weather and remote, rough country. This and my other wilderness backpacking experiences meant that I already had most of the kit required for the race. It also meant that it was tried and tested in severe winter conditions. I’ll cover the kit in a separate post, but the right choices and familiarity with your equipment play a big role in race success.

The week before the race was not relaxing. Work was hectic and unrelenting, my young son was going through a not sleeping phase. Two nights before the race, my wife appeared next to me in the early hours with a screaming child and the words “I need your help, he won’t go back to sleep”. As I tried to console him in his cot, I remember feeling an overwhelming burden of the scale of the challenge and feeling devastatingly under prepared.

Grey sheets of rain lashed the narrow country roads as we arrived in Edale. Saying goodbye to my wife Kay and my son Innes, sleeping contentedly in the back of the car, was very hard. My guilt at an ongoing absence in their lives to undertake this selfish activity sat in my gut as I listened to the safety briefing.

Friday night was mainly occupied with registration and kit check. Steve and I saw a few familiar faces (Emiko, our friend from the Lakeland and Damian Hall who had been incredibly generous with pre-race advice). We grabbed a meal at the pub which was packed with Spine racers and Challengers. The warmth and camaraderie was hard to enjoy and I was glad to get a lift to the Youth hostel for an early night.

The next morning we chatted to Pavel Paloncy, last year’s winner, over breakfast and generally faffed about with kit. As we were lugging our bulging drop bags down to reception, word went around that the start of race had been delayed from 0930 until 1130 because of the high winds we could hear whistling around the hostel. By this stage, I just wanted to get going, but apparently the Challengers who had set off earlier were taking a pummelling on top of Kinder Scout and being blown over. We eventually got a lift up to the race start in the hostel minibuses. My makeshift drop bag (my wife’s massive flowery suitcase) had already been the source of much hilarity. This continued when I offered the lady packing the minibuses a hand. “It’s all right, I’m used to it”, she replied, “we get a lot of teenage girls staying here”. I hoped that Steve had missed this comment. Unfortunately he hadn’t.

There was much nervous milling at the start. As we clustered in the muddy field under the gantry, we must have resembled a strange mass of human jelly beans, the multi coloured hues of our waterproofs sticking out discordantly against the muted winter tones of the hills and the regular flurries of sleet. I didn’t much care about the weather, I was just delighted to get moving after a year of training.

The race

The first few hours of the race had a  surreal feel. The sheer amount of pent up nervousness and energy released made the situation hard to comprehend. The wind buffeted us as we contoured and started to climb to Kinder Downfall. As we approached the waterfall it was apparent that the wind was blowing it back up hill and over the path. Some competitors were making fairly lengthy detours to avoid the spray. As it was so early in the race we decided to brave it. We crossed the top of the waterfall, with gusts of wind blowing freezing sheets of spray over us. My gloves got soaked through, but I resisted stopping to put on my mitts as they were stashed in the top of my rucksack. Half an hour later my hands were so cold I was struggling to open a Mars Bar. I shouted to Steve and got him to dig out my mitts. An early and important lesson to have all my gear close to hand.

As we crossed the road at Snake Pass the late afternoon sun bathed the moorland in a weak orange glow and even Bleaklow Head seemed quiet and benign. That soon changed as we descended Clough Edge towards Torside reservoir. The skies turned a foreboding slate grey and a much lengthier sleet blizzard blew in, forcing hoods up and heads down.

The resevoir offered some shelter and not for the first time I felt a pang of jealousy at the supported runners that were being met there. Steve and I were running unsupported until the last couple of days when my friend Simon joined us.

Darkness fell quickly at 5pm as we climbed towards Laddow rocks and we summited Black Hill in darkness. I’d last been here twenty years earlier on a Duke of Edinburgh expedition, and the neatly paved slabs were a welcome addition to the interminable peat bogs of yore. The next section is a bit of a blur. I remember the wind picking up and hail sweeping in with increasing regularity. This section was bleak, dark moorland punctuated by a number of road crossings. In the dark and with the weather closing in around us, I felt a real sense of isolation and foreboding. This definitely was no place to mess around. I remember looking towards the distant glow of red lights on the hill top aerials and taking some solace that we were not completely alone. At the road crossing before the M62 we were met by one of the Mountain Safety Teams and Steve’s friend Matt who was volunteering for the week.

Their smiles and words of encouragement were a godsend after the previous stretch we even got a cup of tea. It was at this point that I started to appreciate just how much we take for granted in life. That solitary cup of tea meant everything at that moment.

We grabbed some food and crossed the motorway. I remember looking down at the cars whipping by below, wondering where their drivers were going. I thought of the warm beds they’d be sleeping in and the families they’d be returning to. As we climbed Blackstone Edge, the weather intensified again. The wind was gusting up towards 80 mph and blowing intense hail directly in our faces. I found out later that several racers had to retire at checkpoint one due to eye injuries caused by the hail. In 25 years of winter mountain experience, it was as severe as I’ve experienced. The intense hail blizzard continued as we wound around the reservoirs. It was not until Stoodley Pike Monument that we found a corner of shelter to eat some food. There were three other runners huddling at the base of the looming monument and we teamed up with them to the checkpoint.

On the descent, I realised to my horror that I had dropped my GPS somewhere further up the trail. I stopped for a moment in the driving hail, unable to believe my stupidity. I knew straight away there was no point in going back, I’d last used it about half an hour before and it could be anywhere. I got the impression from one or two other competitors that they were slightly sniffy about the use of GPS (despite it being a required kit item). Clearly, you shouldn’t enter the race without being a very competent and experienced navigator. If your GPS packs up or you drop it and you can’t read a map properly, you could easily get into a life threatening situation . That said, when you’re tired and the weather is horrendous, being able to have a piece of technology that cuts down the amount of time spent standing around looking at flapping maps, is a huge benefit.

I pressed on down the hill into Hebden Bridge. One of the two guys we were with had recce’d the route and led the way. With time at a premium before the race, I hadn’t been able to run any of the route. I’d spent hours poring over the maps, but I knew from previous races that there’s no substitute for experience on the ground, especially when you’re cold and tired as we now were. In my head I’d remembered the section beyond the motorway looking relatively short, but it was a good five hours.

Even at the monument the first checkpoint felt within reach. Fortunately our better prepared companion warned that it was still well over an hour away.

As it turned out, it took nearer two. The descent to the A6033 was relatively easy and the fierce weather started to subside. Reaching the road, deserted and bathed in the cold orange glow of the street lamps, we took a moment to adjust to the sudden incongruousness of the urban environment. A car full of teenagers sped by hooting and jeering. We climbed a painfully steep road before descending across sodden, slippery fields to a river before another log slog up through dark muddy farmland to a road that took us most of the way to the checkpoint. We passed a couple of well appointed camper vans and I looked enviously at their their windscreens imagining cosy runners tucked up asleep having enjoyed a home cooked dinner.

The descent to checkpoint was the crowning turd on what had been an exceptionally hard first day. A narrow, hideously muddy track descended steeply making staying upright almost impossible. We all fell at least once, muttered curses ringing out through the pitch black woods. Eventually we came out at Hebden Hey, a scout centre. It was 03:30 on Sunday morning and we had covered more than 40 miles in 16 hours.

We were welcomed in the porch by a remarkably cheery bloke who took our details and arranged for our drop bags to be brought over. The porch was an explosion of wet, muddy footwear and moving inside it was even more chaotic. Every spare inch of space was taken up with kit or tired runners. Even moving along the corridors was a challenge. Eventually Steve and I shoe horned ourselves into a space in the toilets and started to sort our gear out.

Our pre-race strategy was to use the checkpoints to sleep and re-group, trying to get at least four hours sleep every time we stopped (the logic being that any less has very little recuperative effect). Many pressed on through the night, but we stuck to our plan. I grabbed a quick shower, deciding to make use of comfort as and when it was available and we scarfed a baked potato with chilli before hunting down a bed. There was very little room at the inn.

The idea of trying to get a decent amount of sleep each night was sound. But even with earplugs and an eye mask I struggled. CP1 & 2 are always going to be the busiest, but I found it difficult to sleep all the way through as the stoppages caused congestion at the normally quieter checkpoints 4 & 5. The options for sleeping are perhaps the biggest race strategy call. Bivvying (tough in bad weather) or camping (extra weight) have their disadvantages too. There’s definitely a psychological benefit of having somewhere warm and dry to sleep.

After trying a few packed dorms, I eventually found a spare bed. It was probably spare for a reason. Light from the corridor shone directly in and the door seemed to open every five minutes as other bed hunters sought a place to rest. I slept fitfully, dark thoughts flowing through my mind. After such a hard day the prospect of going on seemed ridiculous. I can understand why so many people decided to stop. I pushed the thoughts away and repeated my race mantra “I’m only stopping if I physically can’t go a step further or a medical professional advises me not to continue”. It helped, but the prospect of another 228 miles after the day we’d had felt terrifying.

“If you start, don’t give up, or you will be giving up at difficulties all your life.”


Alfred Wainwright, Pennine Way Companion (1968)

I got about an hour of partial rest before giving up and going downstairs to sort out my kit for the long leg ahead. Steve slept a bit longer giving me the chance to have a couple of breakfasts and a few coffees before he appeared. The relentlessly cheery and efficient guy that had met us was still on duty. I asked him whether anyone had handed in a GPS, more in hope than expectation. I doubted anyone braving the hail storms would have noticed a GPS lying in the snow. To my amazement, someone had handed it in. This gave me a huge mental boost. It wasn’t so much that I was relying on it (I’m a reasonable map reader and navigator), it was more the psychological blow of having lost it so stupidly, so early in the race.

In the end we spent about 6 hours at checkpoint one. Given the little sleep I got, this felt like slightly wasted time. As we set off into the first light, I did feel mostly recuperated and the ascent of the hideously muddy gully leading to the checkpoint didn’t seem quite so bad in daylight. The day was blustery and fresh, the rain holding off as we wound through the unremarkable flat section towards Cowling.

Here, it started to rain in earnest. Cold grey streaks forcing up our hoods and casting our eyes down into a muddy trudge across sodden fields. We were glad to reach the pub at Lothersadale. A roaring log burner welcomed us and a jovial landlord had turned the pool room into a makeshift checkpoint for muddy Spiners. Rounds of tea and hot food were ferried in as our kit steamed gently on any available radiator.

Leaving this warm sanctuary was hard. So much so that we stopped at the next pub in East Marton too. A small Sunday evening crowd of locals looked on in bemusement as Steve, myself and Jim Tinnion who we’d teamed up with shed our kit. We explained what we were doing and the landlady made a donation to Steve’s Justgiving page on the spot. They sent us on our way with warm wishes, encouragement and crisps. Leaving East Marton, we caught up with another runner who stayed with us until Gargrave before peeling off to bivvy at a spot he knew at the train station. Deciding that a stop at the hostelry in Gargrave would constitute a pub crawl, our plan was to press on to checkpoint 1.5 and bivvy near there. The section after Gargrave was horrendous. Field after field of sodden, cow churned bog sapped our spirits and the rain returned to torment us with squally showers. By the time we reached Malham village at around 2am, we had all reached our limits and knew we had to stop. Still an awful long way to go

We scouted a few bivvy spots before deciding to use the public toilets. Jim slept with a couple of german competitors in the ladies and Steve and I bagged the gents. I drew the short straw and got the urinal end. Utterly exhausted I crawled into my bivvy bag and pretty much passed out. We’d agreed two hours sleep, but it seemed like 10 minutes later when Jim appeared at the door. Steve and I blundered blearily about pulling cold wet kit onto our tired, complaining bodies.

Setting off into the dark and rain again was one of the lowest moments of my race. More dank, boggy fields led to slippery treacherous limestone before we eventually hit a road up to the field centre and checkpoint 1.5. Dawn was starting to break as we stepped into the main room at Malham Field Centre. We were surprised to see a large group of runners trying to sleep with their heads down on the tables.

We were told that the race was being held due to bad weather. Not knowing how long we’d be stopped, I pulled on a dry top and found a fragment of space on a heaving radiator for my sodden jacket. Steve and I quaffed tea and ferreted around for food. Biscuits seemed to be the only fare on offer. Our friend Emiko was fast asleep at one of the tables. After a while she awoke and looked around sleepily. Steve had a brief chat. I think she’d taken a wrong turn at some stage and this had set her back.

In future races, Checkpoint 1.5 could potentially be opened up as a proper checkpoint with sleeping areas. It has these facilities already and Spine racers can be found sprouting out of almost every bush and barn around it. Maybe the 60 mile second “day” is just part of the challenge though.

After about an hour we were released from the checkpoint and made our way around the tarn, framed in the bleak winter dawn. As we started our ascent of Fountains Fell the wind harried us from all sides, but I enjoyed the climb. It kept me warm and the gradient never got so steep it became uncomfortable exertion. My reality for hours on end was a tiny cleft between the top of my balaclava and my hood. A small letterbox out into the world beyond.

Descending to a road there were times the wind would support our entire pack and body weight. We were met by a Mountain Safety Team who confirmed what we’d heard at the Malham checkpoint. Pen Y Ghent was off limits due to the high winds and we were diverted at lower level to Horton in Ribblesdale. I can’t honestly remember feeling disappointed. I was tired, hungry and sick of the relentless wind. I simply accepted the instructions.

The cafe in Horton was packed with Spiners and support teams. It was warm and steamy with drying kit. After doing damage to a huge mug of tea and a bacon sandwich, I chatted briefly to a producer from the BBC who was making a documentary about the race. I was quite glad she didn’t try to interview me as I was not feeling very coherent.

Setting off from Horton, Hawes felt within reach. It’s a psychologically important milestone for the Spine Race. Passing through Hawes means that you’re into the race proper. Our plan was to try to sleep at the checkpoint even though there were no beds. We knew that the majority of Challengers would have finished and the noise levels from applause and general hubbub would have subsided.

Our spirits lifted when one of Steve’s friends met us at Cam End with a flask of coffee and walked with us for a few miles. A beautiful magenta sunset picked out the rugged folds of Pen Y Ghent as we climbed over Dodd Fell. Arriving into Hawes and the checkpoint was disorientating. The bright lights of the busy hall were hard to adjust to and I sat for ten minutes on a chair drinking tea and trying to take it all in.

Sunset after Pen Y Ghent

The volunteers at Hawes, and throughout the race, were superb. Nothing was too much trouble and my drop bag was brought over to me along with more tea and food. I fumbled around in my drop bag for ages, my brain unable to deal with the logistical task of gathering what I needed for the next leg. Another of Steve’s friends arrived with fish and chips. The hardship of the race seems to enhance your enjoyment of otherwise everyday pleasures. I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed a chip quite as much. Having eaten, I decided to sleep before any more kit faffing and found a cupboard off the main room and laid out my Thermarest. I was asleep almost instantly.

I slept fitfully for three hours. Stumbling back into the main hall, Steve was still sound asleep. I also noticed some fairly severe chafing in my arse region that I sheepishly had checked out and taped up by one of the medics (well above and beyond the call of duty). At this point I inexplicably started to become concerned about the cut off times for the race. We’d deliberately taken a fairly steady pace so far. I collared one of the volunteers and together we tried to work out the cut offs, factoring in the complications of the late start and enforced stop. I’m not sure I was much clearer by the end of it, both our sleep deprived brains refusing to do simple arithmetic.

The upshot was that as we prepared to leave I got Steve worried and he set off up Great Shunner Fell like a stabbed rat. It was all I could do to keep his torchlight in view in the distance and I quickly realised that we’d lost touch with Jim Tinnion who had been with us for the previous day or so. I didn’t have too much time to worry about it as I was too busy trying to stay with Steve. When we caught up with Jim later in the race he said he’d stopped to sort out a bit of kit and the next minute we were gone. Sorry, Jim.

As we topped Great Shunner and started to descend, I finally caught up with Steve. It was now snowing heavily and after a short scramble over icy slabs we put on our spikes for the first time and made the long descent to Thwaite. At Thwaite we passed a couple of the safety team checking runners through and caught up with another small group of runners. Not long after leaving Thwaite one of the runners decided to return, saying he wasn’t feeling well.

The GPS came in handy for the next section of fields before we started the long ascent over the boggy black moor towards Tan Hill Inn. Steve was off in front again, obviously having a good patch and heading for the place where, in a strange coincidence, he had got married. I dug in and slogged up the hill. Another blizzard blew in reducing visibility to almost nil as I approached the pub.

Prior to the race I’d voraciously read blogs from previous competitors, desperate to gain insight into the race. Several had mentioned The Tan Hill Inn as a warm oasis open all hours during the Spine. As I leaned into the driving snow my mind conjured images of warm fires and the possibility of hot food. When I eventually arrived at about 5am the reality was different. The pub was shut tight and we crowded into a cramped porch to get out of the snow. I tried to eat a bit, but started to get cold quickly. We set off at a real lick, stomping through the sloshy bogs that led down to a road. OS maps describe an area near here as simply “The Bog”, and they’re not wrong.

The skies cleared and a cold, sharp dawn broke over the blue brown moors as we crossed the busy A67 road. Continuing over Cotherstone Moor to Balderhead reservoir the sun came out and bathed us in a milky winter glow for the first time since the start of the race. The next section to Middleton in Teasdale is a bit of a blur, my mind was already thinking of the beds and food there.

A cold start to the day

We arrived at the checkpoint in the early afternoon. We got a warm welcome from Matt, Steve’s mate from the Mountain Safety Team and goofed around in the car park posing for photos. It felt great to be at the first “proper” Spine checkpoint, about half way through the race. There was lots of space in the checkpoint and we lounged about chatting to Matt. Steve was starving and frustrated that the only food he could get hold of was scrambled eggs. Clearly we’d timed our arrival badly. Matt offered us his room which had an en suite shower. I dived in and spent ages luxuriating in the hot flow of water. Having slept much less well than Steve during the race to date, I was spark out for five hours and generating some serious snores (apparently). Although we stayed at the checkpoint for nearly seven hours in total, it didn’t feel like time wasted.

Arsing about at CP3

As we were leaving the checkpoint we were told by the Mountain Safety Team that we had missed the cut off for the route via High Cup Nick, Dufton and Cross Fell.

Retrospectively, part of me regrets the fact that we didn’t go via these beautiful and rugged parts. At the time I can honestly say that a shorter and easier alternative didn’t bother me in the slightest.

We set off in darkness across the fields that apron the River Tees, the path obscured by ankle deep snow. During the preceding days we’d often talked about how strange it was having the GPS tracker taped to our shoulders. We knew that there were a bunch of people at home staring at the orange dots on the screen as they progressed across the map. At that moment we must have hit an area of cellular coverage because my phone started pinging with texts. One was from a work colleague with a screenshot of the tracker telling me off for going wrong! I looked at the GPS and realised she was right. It was a surreal moment in the middle of the night, alone, but at the same time connected with the outside world. There will be those who would see this as a negative, but I drew solace from knowing that people were thinking about me as I went through this journey.

We passed Low and High Force, the river in spate because of the recent rainfall, before crossing and beginning the detour via Cow Green reservoir. It was here that things started to unravel. Looking back, I put it down to the fact that I was mentally prepared for the tougher route and let my guard down when I looked at the alternative route. It felt straightforward with good tracks most of the way. As we passed another Mountain Safety Team in their bus at the reservoir, the wind whipped up and it started to blizzard again. The climb around Herdship Fell was cold and monotonous. I stopped eating enough and at one stage experimented with trying to sleep whilst walking.

The descent to Garrigill was long, icy and unenjoyable. As we passed through Garrigill there were lots of rabbits hopping about on the village green. Neither Steve nor I mentioned them at the time for fear that we were hallucinating. It was only much later we admitted we’d both seen them. The remainder of the path to Alston is a tired, hungry, exhausted blur. We arrived at the checkpoint in “rag order” as Steve put it. Our drop bags had been held up by the weather, so we sat down to a plate of tuna pasta at 4am. Our bags soon turned up, and as we were faffing with kit the checkpoint staff told us the race was likely to be paused because of an incoming weather system that would bring 100mph winds. I found a bed in one of the dorms and flaked out.

I was woken a few hours later by someone talking loudly on a mobile phone from the adjoining bunk. She was complaining that she’d been forced to withdraw from the race because she’d called out mountain rescue (I later found out that she’d got into difficulty on Cross Fell in the night). I stared at her in exhausted disbelief. All around me tired runners were trying to sleep and she was ranting on the phone obliviously. Everyone else I met on the race was amazingly kind and gracious. There is always an exception.

Heading downstairs for breakfast, the wind was rattling the lintels of the windows. Outside, I could see a bleak brown and white landscape. It made me feel cold just looking at it. The checkpoint was now a very different place. It had become a marshalling point for most runners still in the race. Every available space was crammed with a person or their kit. It was claustrophobic after the days of solitude we’d had so far. Bleak view from Alston CP4 The race was paused until 6am the following morning giving me almost 24 hours of rest. This had positives and negatives. Having bagged a bunk I was able to catch up on some sleep. However, the break made the damage to my body more apparent. My feet swelled up and my arse chaffing hadn’t got any better. By the end of the enforced stop cabin fever was setting in and I couldn’t face another conversation about race strategy or equipment choice. Food was running short and runners were roaming the checkpoint like hungry jackals.

It was with great relief that we set off again, heading for Greenhead. Another psychological boost was that for the rest of the race we would be supported. Being unsupported definitely adds an extra level of challenge. You can only fit so much in a drop bag and having a friendly face and a warm drink along the way makes a big difference.

The trail started out innocuously enough over rolling fields and was unremarkable all the way to Greenhead. Here we caught up with Simon, our support, and stopped briefly at the Youth Hostel mini checkpoint which was large and well equipped. Simon grabbed some teas from the nearby cafe (doing a roaring trade in January with racers and support crews – these guys must love the race). After a short stop we climbed up and onto Hadrian’s Wall. I’d been particularly looking forward to this section. The ancient green sward of turf that stretched out in front of us belied the history of the place. There was a special feeling looking down over jutting stone abutments, sharing the same view as those here thousands of year before.

The Spine Race induced its own sense of timelessness. Day merged into night into day. The only constants were moving forward and surviving the landscape and weather. Here, the huge span of history made the experience even more other worldly.

Hadrian’s Wall

We didn’t have long to ruminate. Half way along the wall, the next weather front swept in and driving rain and wind chased us along the remainder of the wall and down into the horrendous bogs between Greenly and Broomlee Lough. We made the mistake of pressing on and not eating enough, knowing that we had a warm car waiting for us at the next road junction.

When we arrived there, I was again in “rag order” and starting to border on hypothermia. Si had the heating on full blast and had raided a local shop of all of its pork products. Gorging on scratchings and Pepperami, I warmed up. I’d have been in real trouble if he hadn’t been there. The rest of the trail to Bellingham was a dark, boggy soul destroying mess and we arrived at the checkpoint in low spirits just after midnight. I didn’t want to go a step further. Finishing seemed an impossibility.

A port in a storm

“When we walk to the edge of all the light we have and take the step into the darkness of the unknown, we must believe that one of two things will happen. There will be something solid for us to stand on, or we will be taught to fly.”

Patrick Overton

Normally, the race is strung out by Bellingham, but the enforced stop had bunched everyone up and it felt like the checkpoint staff were struggling to cope. By this stage they were probably as exhausted as we were. The sleeping hall was cold and I crammed a few cereal bars down rather than walking out and over the car park to the food area. I hunkered down under a table and tried to get some sleep. This was the last checkpoint before the long push to the finish.

When I woke up a few short hours later, I didn’t feel any better. Everything hurt and it seemed to take double the time to assemble my kit. Fortunately the day outside was a beautiful; cold, but with bright, dazzling sunshine. The first section was extensively flag stoned. Although this made the route obvious, a thick rime of ice made the slabs treacherous.

Sunrise, final day

Simon met us with tea at a road crossing and before long we hit the forested section to Byrness. Apart from a few boggy sections, the paths here were mainly wide clear forest trails. We walked for a while with a couple (I’m really sorry, I can’t recall your names). I do remember talking about particle physics and the Large Hadron Collider, about which I know surprisingly little. We were met outside Byrness by another of Steve’s entourage, and again it gave us a real lift to see a friendly face. The hostel at Byrness had been transformed into a mini checkpoint and was serving hot food. I arrived feeling shoddy but left with a spring in my step and sausages and mash in my stomach.

Approaching Byrness

From Byrness it’s 27 miles to the finish. It feels within your grasp, but as several racers have found out it’s far from in the bag. The sun was almost hot on our backs as we slogged up to Windy Crag and the ridge that we would follow home. On the ridge, the ground under foot was frozen hard saving us from the bogs and allowing fast progress. We delayed putting on head torches for as long as possible to enjoy every last gasp of the wispy pink sunset. As soon as the sun dropped below the horizon, the temperature plummeted and the wind picked up. Any thoughts of an easy stretch to the finish were gone.

Mentally I’d divided the ridge into three sections, with the two mountain refuge huts as beacons along the way. At the first hut we found Matt and his Mountain Safety Teams. We ate a bit of food and left quickly as we got cold. I badly underestimated the time it would take us to reach the second hut. Feeling reasonably good as I left hut one, I started to feel cold and tired after an hour and had to force myself to eat. I ran out of water and everything around us was frozen. Steve had arrived at the Alston checkpoint with his micro spikes, and left without them, despite them being securely stowed in his bag. How he negotiated the icy ridge I’ll never know. The descent to hut two was steep and hazardous. There were three other runners at the hut. One decided he needed to sleep for a few hours to recuperate. Another made hot chocolate using the only liquid he had with him, orange water. An interesting concoction worthy of the final night of the race.

As we left, I made a serious navigational error, getting disorientated and leading us in the wrong direction. Fortunately Matt and the MST were sweeping along the ridge behind us and shouted us back. We continued up the Schil, the last climb of the race. The icy descent provided no respite for Steve. For the first time in the race he started to lose his sense of humour. The amount of extra energy needed to stay upright without micro spikes must have been phenomenal. I stopped at the first unfrozen rivulet and gulped water like a desert wanderer arriving at an oasis.

In a semi-delirious state I thought I was having a heart attack on the final climb into Kirk Yetholm. I remember trying to calculate whether an aneurysm would prevent me from crawling the last mile to the Border Inn. That’s what this race does to you. As we entered the town, the incongruently bright sodium street lamps lit up the village green and we could see a small clump of figures beckoning us over to the pub. We broke into a pained lope and had our photographs taken touching the wall. We’d finished The Spine, Britain’s most brutal race.

“We had done this thing we had set out to do, and instead of becoming larger because of the experience, we became smaller, more humble, more aware of how little we know: about the world in general, about ourselves specifically.”

Richard Benyo, The Death Valley 300

The aftermath

Although the physical toll on my body was less than after tough 100 milers like the Lakeland, my feet swelled massively and I had a couple of blisters. I’d developed ulcers on my tongue and sores on my fingers towards the end of the race. It seemed as though my the body had been prioritising its core over the extremities. Focusing on what was essential for survival. That’s just how far we pushed it. To finish I had to delve more deeply into my mental and physical reserves than I have ever done before.

A deep fatigue took several weeks to pass. My wife said “I’m not expecting you back until the end of January” and she was right. I felt like a shell, a hollowed out husk without life or energy. I was banished to the spare room due to heavy night time sweating as my body repaired itself.

The weight fell off me and looking in the mirror I struggled to recognise the gaunt face staring back. Going back to work, the back slaps and congratulations were welcome but somehow hollow. I felt alone with my experience. No one could understand what I’d been through, the things I’d experienced, the amount I’d endured.

Reading the blogs that emerged after the race made me feel better. The band of crazy brothers were starting to speak at last. It was good to hear from that infinitesimally small group of people that would countenance such an undertaking.

The scale of the race makes it very hard to process mentally. Breaking the race down into micro-sections avoids thinking about the vast overall scale. This can short circuit even the toughest of minds. But little by little I started to piece the race back together. Hour by hour, step by step it became a coherent whole. A body of memory that will abide with me for the rest of my life. An experience so much more precious than any material possession.

I started to write those thoughts down. Eventually they turned into this, a way for me to codify the experience so it doesn’t slip away. For we were there that wild week in January when the Pennine Way turned 50. And we did something that few others will ever do and that only we will ever fully understand.

“What they had done, what they had seen, heard, felt, feared – the places, the sounds, the colours, the cold, the darkness, the emptiness, the bleakness, the beauty. ‘Til they died, this stream of memory would set them apart, if imperceptibly to anyone but themselves, from everyone else. For they had crossed the mountains…“
 Bernard DeVoto, The Course of Empire (1952)

The $10K Nudge: What Orlando’s New ADU Program Gets Right About Workforce Housing

Orlando just did something most cities talk about and never actually fund. The City Council approved an Accessory Dwelling Unit Incentive Program that pays homeowners real money to build small rental units on their existing property, as long as those units go to workforce and moderate income renters.

I spend most of my time on employer anchored workforce housing at scale, so a program like this catches my attention for a different reason than most people reading about it. It is not a development deal. It is a supply tool. And supply tools that do not require a rezoning fight or a three year entitlement process are rare. What the city is actually offering Homeowners who build an ADU and rent it at an affordable rate get three things stacked together. A build out rebate of up to $10,000 toward construction costs. A full rebate on park, transportation, and sewer impact fees, which typically run $1,300 to $3,100. And a full rebate on building permit fees, usually $450 to $1,050.

Add it up and the city is covering somewhere between $11,750 and $14,150 of the cost to add a unit, before a homeowner spends a dollar of their own construction budget. That is a meaningful dent in a project that might otherwise run well into six figures.

The city is also building a library of pre approved ADU plans, reviewed in advance for code compliance, so homeowners are not starting from a blank sheet with an architect. New York has done something similar with its ADU for You program, a set of pre vetted designs that skip a lot of the early back and forth with planning departments. If Orlando executes on this the way it is described, it should cut real time out of the permitting process, which is usually where these projects die of a thousand small delays.

The strings attached

To actually collect the rebates, the unit has to be leased to someone earning at or below 120 percent of area median income, for 12 of the first 24 months after the certificate of occupancy is issued. That requirement is waived if the tenant is 62 or older, which is a smart carve out given how much senior housing demand overlaps with small, single level units like these.

There are physical limits too. The ADU, plus any new driveway, patio, or walkway tied to it, cannot exceed 500 total square feet. The house, the ADU, and all paved surfaces on the lot combined cannot cover more than 55 percent of the property. No building in the front yard, no building on an easement, and a 10 foot setback from every property line.

The program runs through the end of 2027 or until the city’s allocated funds run out, whichever comes first. Why this matters more in Orlando than most cities

Orlando’s housing problem is not generic. It is a tourism and hospitality economy, which means a large share of the workforce is service sector, often on non traditional schedules, and often looking for something shorter term or more flexible than a standard 12 month apartment lease. Standard multifamily supply has never been built with that renter in mind. A backyard unit, owned by a neighbor rather than a REIT, fits that gap better than people give it credit for.

I have seen this dynamic up close in the markets I work in, where the workforce housing problem looks different but rhymes with Orlando’s. Employer anchored and community scale housing solves the volume problem. Small infill tools like ADUs solve the distribution problem, getting units into neighborhoods near where the jobs actually are, without waiting on a 200 unit project to clear entitlements.

The honest limitation

A 500 square foot cap means this program is not solving for families. It is solving for single renters, couples, and seniors, which is a real segment of the affordable housing shortfall but not all of it. And the program only works at the pace homeowners choose to participate, there is no way to force adoption the way a city can mandate density on a rezoned parcel.

None of that makes it a bad program. It makes it what it is, one tool in a toolbox that has been short on fast, cheap options for a long time.

Programs like this will not solve Orlando’s affordability crisis by themselves. But paired with larger scale workforce housing development, they add supply in places large scale development cannot reach, on a timeline large scale development cannot match.

That combination, small fast wins alongside the big anchored projects, is usually how these problems actually get solved. Not with one silver bullet, with a dozen tools all pulling in the same direction.

If you’re working through ADU policy in your own market, thinking about workforce housing solutions, or just have thoughts on programs like this one, I’d like to hear them. Email me directly at danielk@outlook.com.

COVID-19 Retrospective: Epistemic Failure, Institutional Self-Protection, and the Lessons We Still Refuse to Learn

By Publius (of the 21st Century) — No. 10

August 2, 2026

On July 29, 2026, Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, appeared before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The hearing should have examined what the United States got wrong during COVID-19 and what must change before the next pandemic. Instead, it produced the same reflex that distorted the pandemic itself: convert institutional uncertainty into a referendum on one man's guilt. Call it the Verdict Reflex — the habit of treating a systems failure as a trial, because a trial has a verdict and a systems failure only has a diagnosis.

A Hearing Built for a Verdict, Not a Record

Chairman Rand Paul framed his questions as long, prosecutorial statements, repeatedly interrupted Fauci, and treated disputed propositions as settled fact. Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment 111 times, telling the committee: “Although it pains me to do so, because of the respect I have for the legislative branch of government, and my decades-long record of cooperating with Congress, under the advice of my attorneys, I will invoke my right under the Fifth Amendment.” He supplied almost no substantive testimony. Paul seemed more interested in staging a verdict than discovering facts. Yet Fauci's silence was also troubling, especially given that President Biden had granted him a pardon covering federal offenses connected to his official service from January 1, 2014, through January 19, 2025 — protection that, on its face, left little for a Fifth Amendment claim to guard against. A serious inquiry would have tested the privilege question by question, followed the documentary record, and separated proven fact from insinuation. Instead, uncertainty became certainty, disagreement became disloyalty, and an institutional question became a struggle over one man's innocence.

What the Diary Actually Says

The lab-origin debate shows how fast scientific uncertainty politicized. In January 2021, Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying argued on Real Time with Bill Maher that accidental laboratory origin had been dismissed too quickly, pointing to efficient transmission, the unusual furin cleavage site, and Wuhan's bat-coronavirus research. Their strongest point was not that these features proved manipulation — they did not — but that the hypothesis was scientifically plausible and should not have been rejected because President Trump promoted it. Hypotheses are not validated or invalidated by their political sponsors. Some of their claims did exceed the evidence; later epidemiological work strengthened the case for a Huanan market outbreak. The honest conclusion was never “proved” or “debunked,” but provisional.

Fauci's own diary confirms the origin question was never merely an internet theory — and it says more than a gentler paraphrase would suggest. On January 31, 2020, Jeremy Farrar conferenced Kristian Andersen into a call with Fauci; Andersen and Edward Holmes had seen the sequence and flagged the furin cleavage site. The next day, Farrar convened a larger call — Andersen, Holmes, Robert Garry, Andrew Rambaut, Francis Collins, Patrick Vallance, Ron Fouchier. Fauci's notes recorded that the site “could not have occurred naturally, since it would require an evolutionary jump they found nowhere in bat isolates,” and that all but two of the scientists on the call “felt that deliberate insertion was possible.” Fauci wrote that the group raised “the possibility that this could have been deliberately inserted and either accidentally released or deliberately released by a crazy person in the lab, the former being the most likely.” That is a stronger private assessment than the public “circular arguments” dismissal Fauci offered by May 2020 — a real gap between private uncertainty and public confidence. It does not prove a cover-up: proposing an international review is not concealment, and Andersen has since called the episode “a clear example of the scientific process,” in which new data shifted the group's conclusions. Both things are true at once, and the piece should hold them together rather than picking one.

An Interested Party Grading Its Own Homework

NIAID was not a disinterested referee. American funds passed through EcoHealth Alliance to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for bat-coronavirus research. The HHS Inspector General later found NIH had failed to monitor the awards effectively, missing EcoHealth's own reporting failures for nearly two years. None of this proves NIAID-funded research produced SARS-CoV-2 — the known grant-linked viruses are not shown to be direct progenitors — but the funding relationship created a real conflict: the agency exposed to criticism over its own oversight was also helping interpret the origin question. That called for an investigation independent of NIAID, not an assumption of Fauci's guilt, and not reliance on his institutional circle to certify its own innocence.

Paul's parallel inquiry into Fauci's private prizes and the use of government staff on nomination materials raises real ethical questions — who initiated them, whether recipients expected favors, whether funding decisions were touched. Legitimate, but it does not explain the pandemic, and folding it into the same hearing let process questions and origin questions contaminate each other.

What the Rest of the World Actually Tried

The international record is more instructive than another Fauci-Paul round. Sweden leaned on voluntary distancing; its outcome was neither triumph nor catastrophe — better than the US, Italy, Brazil, and Peru, worse than Norway, Denmark, and Finland, with a real mortality cost concentrated in elder care. New Zealand, Australia, and Taiwan did not defeat the virus; they bought time with border controls and quarantine until vaccines and better treatment arrived. Peru showed what legal commands do without institutional capacity — a strict lockdown collided with informal labor, crowded housing, and an oxygen supply chain that couldn't meet demand, producing the world's highest excess-mortality rate. And the age gradient was stark almost everywhere: in wave one, deaths under 50 were rarely more than 1–2% of the total in wealthy countries. Policy should have concentrated on nursing homes, hospital infection control, and rapid treatment for the old, and had far less justification for prolonged blanket restriction of the young once that gradient was clear.

The Question That Actually Matters

Origin is not a side issue, because it determines the prevention regime. Zoonotic spillover points toward wildlife surveillance and market regulation. A lab accident demands rethinking gain-of-function research, biosafety, and independent inspection. The real question is larger than whether Fauci lied or Paul behaved badly: should humanity keep running experiments whose upside is speculative and whose worst case is global? Three changes would follow if the answer is taken seriously:

1. Independent risk-benefit review for any research that could create a pandemic-capable pathogen, sited outside the agencies that fund the work — so the reviewer and the grantee are never the same institution.

2. International registration and enforceable reporting for high-risk projects, with real penalties for the kind of multi-year reporting lapse the HHS IG found at EcoHealth.

3. Mandatory, external, timely disclosure of laboratory incidents — not investigations that begin only after a subpoena.

None of that requires knowing, today, whether SARS-CoV-2 came from a market or a lab.

What to take from this?

The hearing pointed in the wrong direction because it treated the pandemic as a morality play between prosecutor and defendant. The questions are legitimate — Fauci's pardon and silence deserve scrutiny, Paul's methods deserve criticism, Wuhan-related funding requires independent examination, and so do the failures of the CDC, Congress, state governments, and the scientific press. But the lesson of COVID-19 is not that one man betrayed the country. It is that institutions protect themselves, political camps simplify uncertainty into loyalty tests, and societies mistake a verdict for an inquiry.

Senator Rand Paul got his scalp. Nobody got a safeguard.

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) at Center for American Progress, 29 July 2026

Catherine Herridge speaking at the National Press Club, 21 July 2026

The Technology News & Literature portfolio at the Alamy photo agency has new images of political and media figures available for download. Photos of Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) and television journalist Catherine Herridge were captured and added to our collections in late July 2026.

Sen. Cortez Masto spoke on 29 July at the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C. about legislation she introduced to address the needs of long-term undocumented residents of the U.S. Cortez Masto said the proposed Fairness for Immigrant Families Act provides a pathway to citizenship for long-term undocumented residents, limits their detention time for immigration infractions, and cracks down on fraudulent immigration law representatives called notarios.

Herridge — who reported on national security and intelligence matters for ABC News, Fox News, and CBS News — read a statement at a 21 July National Press Club event on press freedom about her pending Federal civil contempt case. In that case, she refuses to disclose sources of her reporting at Fox News in 2017, for which a Federal court imposes fines of $800 a day. Herridge says her legal team plans to appeal the case, with its First Amendment implications, to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The new photos of Sen. Cortez Masto and Herridge are found in the TechNewsLit portfolio at the Alamy photo agency. That portfolio also has separate collections for recent photos of government and political leaders, as well as media and business notables.

Copyright © Technology News and Literature. All rights reserved.

Oh! What a Lonely Boy

It's been a helluva week. This client project was exactly what they always are: crazy. But, I'm getting them work they want to see and by week's end, we should have happy client and I'll be up 15K. Which is CRITICAL since I traipsed all over Europe for 3 months and spent a 4th in Florida.

In truth, I'd like to take that 15k and just drive into the wilderness. I'm hungry for new horizons again. New adventures.... while I'm busy writing about Europe, all I can do is think about what comes next.

I want to find another roasted chicken lunch on the Seinne, another Shakespeare and company. More naked swimming in Antibes, sleeping over the Picasso museum. Listening to the waves rake over pebble beaches, dodging hawkers in Barcelona, weeping at the top of the world in Switzerland... sleepless walks on Lake Como.

God, i LOVE getting lost in old European towns!!

BUT, today, reality insists I keep grinding.

I just packed my wife into the car for a week of education a few hours from here. She and her sister will be in class Monday-Saturday getting reinforced, edified, built up and made better.

Which is good. I know Ng hasn't been the same since her sister and dad died 18 months ago. And I've been a mess since long before that. I definitely don't know how to fix her.

My heart and mind are both a mess. And I think a big part of it is where I live. Dust Meridian isn't kind to tender souls. It's not welcoming to artists. But then again, I don't know that anyplace really is.

Ironically, art is what keeps me tethered to sanity, however tenuous it may be.

Currently listening to Andrew Gold. Love his song 'Lonely Boy' Feels very very apropos for this strange soul.

https://open.spotify.com/track/6wGMLoEqD2k3RBXFHD0yUp?si=e342c9ca35ae4050

I'm working through my list of songs from my... not sure how to define someone who became part of my mortar... I'll just say from one of the kindest and most loving souls I ever met. My DJ.

I haven't been listening to a lot of music lately. It's been to hard. But reality is I have to find a way to move forward knowing that she's out there and doing fine. Or at least existing. Well cared for and healing.

I want to tell you all the story. But I'm not there yet. For now, I'll keep opening my heart a little at a time and telling you and me about the way of things in a complicated mind.

For sure: This will be a very hard week for me. I like to be alone, but right now, it's not good timing. Right now I need friends. I need to be reminded that I am valuable and loved.

Knowing a thing and feeling a thing are VERY different.

---

He has an enormous , giving heart. He is open to exploring new ideas, particularly in literature and the arts. He is whole souled in his devotion to his Creator and god. He self sacrificingly serves his congregation and his wife of 30 years, although it feels like love going down a drain .

Wolf is a passionate Scot who thinks critically. He is largely misunderstood by those in his milieu, which is Nowhere, Texas. Folks around him think small, live small, don't travel, and drink for entertainment.

Wolf has manic depressive disorder, but is trying to be faithful about medicating. He has developed high blood pressure as well, most likely from the strain of his personal relationships.

Recently, wolf has discovered new things about himself. He would like the people around him to know him better, but this comes at a price. He has been over compliant in the past and would like to be more assertive. This confuses some people, and wolf is sensitive to their perceived disapproval. ( He ought to just say, Too bad) His second wife is supportive but asks unvarnished honesty from him. His self preservation has left him wary of letting his defenses down at the risk of exposure and hurt. This is very deep is his psyche, having been abused as a child, and a victim of unscrupulous family members who ought to have cherished him. This causes much sadness to both him and wife 2.

Wolf is a wonderful man. He is joyful, cries easily, and has a contagious joie de vivre. He is improving his Scrabble game. He is finishing books he started. He loves novelty and surprises. He goes deep in his research. A good public speaker, he will be giving the talk one day. Go see it💙👀

---

I come back to this with frequency. I get a lot of praise, but it's generally pretty vague or related to 'thank you for this task'.

That's likely a truism of most people.

---

12/12/25

From the park of the National Palace in Madrid, Spain

Out for a walk this evening it's 5 PM sun is setting. We are at the What is this? It's the National Palace. kind of swanky up the hill. The garden is gorgeous. Even in wintertime, the grass is bright green. The trees are all amber. The ones that still have leaves. Most of them have carpets of amber under them, but most of the leaves have fallen off. And I am drawing a fountain. It is looks like some Neptune guys with some baskets of fruits on their hand. And, uh, yeah. Let's see. No water, though. Turned off for the winter. Guess that makes sense, so they don't want to freeze. It's very, it's a very winter day, but not unpleasant. It's cold. Cool, but not cold, I guess. Not uncomfortable. You know, that painful cold that comes, I bet you do I'll bet you do. I love the way people's feet crunch on the gravel.. And everyone's so happy, they're all super upbeat. It's funny he doesn't sound the same when I walk on it. Because the sound comes to you is different (reflected) than the sound of others (direct). There are couples and families.

HEY!, there's naked ladies up there. I miss that. God, I miss drawing the naked ladies. I was busy drawing the naked men. That's all right. They have good musculature. All they have these weird fish legs that curl around, like octopus tentacles, which is very interesting to draw and look at. I don't think I'd want to have to ambulate with them.

The rows here are lined with roses, which are all crunchy and faded. Oh, they're damp. You can't hear the birds. The bird, I guess, there's only one. What a pleasant evening.

Our flight was not even full. But we were crammed into two middle seats. On a flight, there were eight rows across. It was a big plane. I was really envying those people in business in first class. But I turned up my music up and managed my little sardine seat. Nine hours, I slept about three and a half. And I couldn't do much writing. I just made notes, like I just was too tired, too stressed.

I'm glad we ended up taking the different flight instead of going to Morocco, though, because I don't know, it was nice to get on a plane and get off. instead of getting on a plane, getting off a plane, get it on a plane, get it off a plane.

Okay. Ooh, this is beautiful, the Palace. The leaves are all yellow and brown. What a great palette. Ah, yeah. Now, THIS is a walk in the park. I've walked into a lot of parks. There is something about European parks that's different. This really puts me in the mind of the last time I was in Rome. in November, let's see, what day is this? December, so pretty close to the same time of year. It was very much like this. Trees, some leaves on the ground, damp and cool, comfortable, just refreshing, relaxing. I feel like if I'd tried a little harder, I could already be on this timetable. But I didn't quite make it, so. I will go to bed tonight. early, and sleep long and hard, and get up tomorrow, early and make a day of it. Ng's ready to get on the road. I think she wants a hotel. I think she's never really been a fan of staying with friends. So we'll probably jet out of Jorge's I think Saturday morning. and get on a train, stop someplace in the middle of Spain. Spend the night in the hotel. Maybe we'll do that Sunday night, too, in Lisbon, and then show up for Rob and Laurie in Porto on Monday like we originally planned. Then again, we could just buy a plane ticket on Saturday and be there in like an hour.

Here she comes. She's looking for me. I'm probably in trouble. I usually am.

---

“Lonely Boy”

He was born on a summer day, 1951 And with a slap of a hand, he had landed as an only son His mother and father said, “What a lovely boy We'll teach him what we learned, ah, yes, just what we learned We'll dress him up warmly, and we'll send him to school It'll teach him how to fight, to be nobody's fool”

Oh, oh, what a lonely boy Oh, what a lonely boy Oh, what a lonely boy

In the summer of '53, his mother brought him a sister And she told him, “We must attend to her needs She's so much younger than you” Well, he ran down the hall and he cried Oh, how could his parents have lied? When they said he was their only son He thought he was their only one

Oh, oh, what a lonely boy Oh, what a lonely boy Oh, what a lonely boy

He left home on a winter day, 1969 And he hoped to find all the love he had lost in that earlier time Well, his sister grew up, and she married a man He gave her a son, ah, yes, a lovely son They dressed him up warmly, they sent him to school It taught him how to fight, to be nobody's fool

Oh, oh, what a lonely boy Oh, what a lonely boy Oh, what a lonely boy

Whoa-whoa-whoa, oh, what a lonely boy Oh, what a lonely boy Oh, what a lonely boy