"You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts you."
"I will never forget the journal entry. Big, bold letters: 'I CAN'T DO THIS ANYMORE! I KNOW YOU CAN'T BUT I CAN!' Those words weren't really mine. I believe God wrote them through me. A few days later, my wife came home and we have never looked back."
I grew up in a close family. Two sets of grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, holidays, traditions. I played soccer and hockey; my father took me everywhere. From the outside it looked good. From the inside, we were rarely shown love and affection — and I think I grew up assuming that the absence of dysfunction was the same as love. I'd learn it wasn't.
When I was a teenager, my father took me on a ride to tell me he was leaving — that he needed to become a better father and husband. My parents divorced. I got angry. I got bitter. I decided I'd control my own happiness from then on by working harder for acceptance. I put up walls. I let people see a hard outer shell. Inside, I had real questions about my worth — and I made sure no one ever saw those.
I met Kim my senior year of high school at a Friday-night party. I told her she was going to prom with me. What started as a drunken gesture turned into the love of my life. I'd been accepted to Maine Maritime Academy — something I'd had my sights on for years — but I lasted one semester. I remember standing on the ship one moonlit night, telling God I wanted to choose her over this. I dropped out, told my dad (the hardest conversation of my life up to that point), and a year later Kim and I were married at 19 and 20, expecting our first daughter. Nobody gave us a chance.
Several years in, our marriage suffered a significant breach in trust and my wife wanted out. She asked me to leave the house, but we had two young daughters and I couldn't do that to them. So I came home every night, helped put the girls to bed, and left after they were asleep. I cannot describe what those months did to me. No eye contact. No touch. The thing I had sworn would never happen to me was happening, and I had no way to stop it.
I got pastoral counseling. I prayed. I journaled. One night — alone, exhausted — I wrote those words in big bold letters. "I CAN'T DO THIS ANYMORE! I KNOW YOU CAN'T BUT I CAN!" I still have that journal. A few days later my wife was going out for the night and I was staying home with the girls. Before she left, I asked if I could pray with her. She reluctantly agreed. I knelt down. I don't remember exactly what I said — but the Holy Spirit took over. When I stood up, I had a peace I hadn't felt in months.
The next morning she pulled into the driveway. She walked through the door, sat on my lap, threw her arms around my neck, and said, "I want you to come home." We have never looked back. We will celebrate 39 years of marriage this year. Restored. By the sheer grace and mercy of God.
For the last thirty years, God has been doing the deeper work — undoing the performance and control I had built around my parents' divorce and around almost losing my own marriage, and teaching me that what He has always been after is my heart. He blessed my career: I spent almost twenty-five years in manufacturing, worked my way up to plant manager of a large facility, and at the top of that climb I came home one day and told my wife I didn't want to be "the guy" anymore. I wanted to go punch a clock. I was at the top of my career and tremendously blessed — and I couldn't figure out what was happening to me. I was tired of performing.
Soon after, my pastor — a close friend — asked me to consider running the church school. I almost spit out my coffee. Seven years there reshaped me again. God kept moving me out of my head and into my heart, kept teaching me about Shalom-Shalom peace, kept showing me my worth was never in what I did. People started asking me, "How do you stay so solid?" The honest answer was always the same: I'm not. He is.
Head to Heart LLC exists for the person tired of performing — who is stuck in their head — who knows what the Bible says and can't figure out why they're not living it out. My heart breaks for people who have a wall between their head and their heart, who are living from their thoughts instead of their hearts. I've been on both sides of that wall.
I'm not too late. Neither are you.
Rock bottom, the journal entry, and the morning Kim pulled back into the driveway. A few minutes, straight from the heart.
High invitation. Honest expectation. Real transformation. Every conversation I have is built on these three convictions about people, hearts, and what it means to come home to who God says we are.
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Three decades of lived restoration, a long career in leadership, and a steady diet of Scripture and Christ-centered teachers. I don't bring theory. I bring the road.
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