Altars Built from Honesty, Not Perfection
Strength Built One Honest Day at a Time.
Some of the strongest people I know are on my team. More than being on my team, many of them have become my friends. And the one who taught me the most is my fraternity little brother. But you wouldn’t necessarily spot them right away. No capes. No podiums. No dramatic backstories offered up over morning coffee.
What you might notice first is how steady they are. They show up. They listen well. They tell the truth. They laugh, sometimes loudly, sometimes at themselves. They know how to sit with another human being without trying to fix them too fast. They know how to stay.
Many of them are in recovery.
That sentence alone carries more weight than it looks like. Recovery isn’t a chapter you finish and put back on the shelf. It’s a daily practice. A way of walking through the world with your eyes open and your defenses down. It’s choosing honesty over hiding, one ordinary Tuesday at a time.
I’ve watched these folks do hard things quietly.
They answer phones. They make follow-up calls. They hear grief stories and financial fears and family tensions and don’t flinch. They know what it’s like to rebuild a life one small decision at a time, so they don’t rush anyone else through theirs.
That kind of strength doesn’t shout. It hums. It sounds like showing up on ordinary days. It sounds like listening more than talking and like staying when it would be easier to disappear.
What amazes me is not just that they are sober or clean or in recovery. It’s how they live because of it.
They know the cost of avoidance, so they lean into conversations most people would rather dodge. They know what denial sounds like because they once spoke it fluently. They know the danger of “I’ll deal with it later.” Later has taught them its limits.
Recovery hasn’t made them perfect. It has given them direction and purpose.
It looks like answering the phone honestly, keeping the next appointment, and doing the work in front of them with care. They know that showing up matters. That today counts. That people don’t need to be perfect or polished nearly as much as they need someone to be present.
I hear it when they talk with families who are scared and overwhelmed. There’s no judgment in their voice. No impatience. Just a steady kindness that says, “You’re not alone, and you don’t have to carry this by yourself.”
That’s not a sales skill. That’s a soul skill.
Some days they’ll tell you recovery is about routines. It is about meetings and boundaries. And it is. But it’s also about learning how to live honestly in your own skin. It is about discovering that your story doesn’t disqualify you. They will tell you that your actually qualifies you.
If you listen closely, you’ll hear it in the way they talk about time. They don’t waste it. They respect it. They know how quickly things can unravel and how slowly they are rebuilt.
Recovery teaches you patience, but not passivity. It teaches you urgency without panic.
That’s holy ground.
The Unlikely Altar
isn’t in the meeting room or the certificate or the anniversary chip. The Unlikely Altar
is built in the daily choice to live with your eyes open. To be accountable. To be kind even when kindness costs something.
The Unlikely Altar
is in the courage it takes to say, “This is who I am, and I’m still standing.”
I don’t put these folks on a pedestal. Pedestals are lonely places. But I do learn from them. Every day. They remind me that grace isn’t a one time thing. Grace keeps knocking. And sometimes it knocks through another human being who knows what it means to be rescued and responsible at the same time.
If you’re in recovery and reading this, know this: your strength shows. Even when you think it doesn’t. Maybe it shows even more in those times. You are doing sacred work in ordinary moments. You are building Unlikely Altars just by showing up as yourself.
And some of us are watching, grateful, steadying our own steps because of yours. To my friends, and to the people I love in recovery, thank you. Truly.
I could write about Cherie DeVaux, and honestly, I probably should. She made history Saturday at Churchill Downs — the first woman ever to train a Kentucky Derby winner in 152 years of trying. Golden Tempo came from dead last with 23-1 odds and crossed the finish line while Cherie stood in the winner's circle holding her nephew and crying the kind of tears you simply cannot manufacture. That's a real story, a genuinely good one, and it deserves its own altar. But I keep thinking about something else entirely. Every year, the Kentucky Derby does something to me that has nothing to do with the race itself. It's the pageantry. The hats that took three weeks to find. The mint juleps, the singing of My Old Kentucky Home , the roses, the trumpet call, the way a hundred thousand people dress up and gather and hold their breath together for exactly two minutes. There is something deeply human about all of that — something that looks, if you squint a little, like worship. I have come to believe that we need ritual; we always have and probably always will. We mark things with ceremony because some moments are simply too large to let pass without acknowledgment, and Churchill Downs on the first Saturday in May is one of the last places in America where everybody agrees, without argument, without explanation, to stop, dress up, and pay attention together. And then on Saturday, just before the gates opened, a horse named Great White reared up, fell backward, and flipped. He wasn't even supposed to be there. Great White got into the Derby field on Wednesday, just three days before the race, as a late entry after another horse was injured. A door opened that wasn't supposed to open. An unexpected chance, the kind that doesn't come looking for you twice. His trainer had him ready, and his jockey was up. The roses were on the table, the crowd was holding its breath, and the pageantry was in full, glorious swing. And right there at the threshold of the gate, not inside it, not pointed toward the finish line, but right there at the edge of the only moment his entire life had been building toward - - something spooked him. His body said no. He weighs 1,370 pounds. And fear? Fear stopped him cold. The chance of a lifetime was gone before it ever began. “It’s the chance of a lifetime in a lifetime of chance.” One chance. One Saturday. One gate. And just like that, it was over before it ever began. I’ve loved that line from Dan Fogelberg for years, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt it quite like I did on Saturday evening. The jockey walked away unhurt, which matters more than the race ever could. And Great White was reported to be perfectly fine afterward, unaware of what the moment had cost him, which is either mercy or heartbreak, depending on how you look at it. He will never know what he missed. He will never carry the weight of that threshold. He just is, somewhere in a stall right now, exactly the horse he was on Friday - - ready, capable, and unaware. I couldn't stop thinking about him. Not because it's a clean tragedy with a tidy moral, but because I have stood at enough gravesides to recognize that story. I officiate funerals, and I have sat with enough families to have lost count of the ones where fear made the call at the gate. It wasn't made by a failure or by lack of preparation. It wasn’t even bad luck, not exactly. Just fear, arriving at the worst possible moment, at the threshold of the thing they'd been pointed toward their whole life. The conversation they kept meaning to have. The relationship they almost repaired. The door that opened unexpectedly on a Wednesday and closed forever by Saturday. The pageantry of the world rolled on without them, the way it always does, and they never got their two minutes. Here is what I want to say to you today, and I want to say it as someone who has stood in those rooms and felt that grief: some of you still have your gate in front of you. The unexpected door is still open. The chance you didn't see coming is still there, waiting for you to stop letting fear make the call. Because fear will always find something to spook at. It will find a reason why this isn't the right moment, why you aren't quite ready, why it would be better to wait for a Saturday with better conditions, calmer nerves, and more certainty. Fear is patient and persuasive , and it knows exactly where to find you — right there at the threshold, when the gate is finally close enough to touch. But the roses don't wait. The trumpet doesn't play twice. And I have sat with too many people in too much grief over unlived moments to let this Derby pass without saying it plainly. Whatever is waiting on the other side of your gate — run toward it. Not because the fear goes away. It probably won't. But because the chance of a lifetime doesn't come back around, and somewhere on the other side of that threshold is the thing you were made for. God meets you there, at the gate, in the fear, in the unexpected chance you didn't see coming. That's where He does some of His best work — not in the winner's circle, not in the pageantry, but right there in the trembling, terrifying, holy threshold moment. That's an Unlikely Altar if I've ever seen one. Not the winner's circle. Not the roses. Not the pageantry. Just a trembling creature at a threshold, and a God who showed up anyway. If that's where you are today, standing at the gate, heart pounding, door open, fear loud - - May you know, may you remember, may you never forget: you were made for this moment. And you are not alone in it.
There is a word in the Hebrew Bible that appears more than 150 times, and we have never found an adequate way to translate it into English. The word is chesedh . We try. We use mercy, lovingkindness, steadfast love, and compassion. And every translation captures something true. But none of them capture everything. Because chesedh isn't just a feeling, an attitude, or even a virtue, it's the word the writers of Scripture used over and over again to describe the defining characteristic of God — the way God moves toward people, especially people who have no reason to expect it. And there is a related word, rahamim , which means something even more visceral. It comes from the Hebrew word for womb . It's the kind of love a mother has for the child she carried — not distant, or theoretical, but rather physical and active. It is a love that cannot stay still when the one it loves is suffering. That's what Jesus was talking about when He said, " Blessed are the merciful. " It’s not pity, and it’s more than just feeling sorry for someone from a safe distance. And it surely isn't just some kind thought sent in the general direction of someone's pain. Chesedh . Rahamim . It is a love that gets up and moves. Now imagine you are sitting on that hillside, the day Jesus said those words. You are not there because life is going well. You are there because you are out of other options, and something about this carpenter from Nazareth made you think — maybe. Just maybe He is the One. You are a fisherman with calloused hands who has been told your whole life that God is for the educated and the clean. You are a woman who has been publicly shamed and hasn't forgotten the faces of the people who did it. You are a tax collector who knows exactly what your neighbors think of you. You are a mother whose child is sick and who has been told, quietly and not so quietly, that this is what you deserve. You have heard religious teachers your whole life. You know how this usually goes. They tell you what God requires. But more than that, they like to remind you that you fall short. And they remind you again and again and again. So when Jesus says, " Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy, " what runs through your heart? Probably not faith; at least not yet. Probably something closer to — so what? Nobody has ever shown me that. Why would I believe it now? And yet you stay. Something keeps you on that hillside. Maybe it's hunger. The rahamim kind — deep, desperate, from somewhere in your core. The longing for someone to finally mean it. In November 2008, a high school football team from Gainesville, Texas, took the field for what should have been just another road game. Gainesville State had fourteen players, wore seven-year-old pads and hand-me-down helmets. And they were winless with a 0-8 record. When Gainesville State arrived at games, they were escorted by security guards who removed their handcuffs before kickoff. You see, Gainesville State is a juvenile correctional facility. Their players are there by court order — drugs, assaults, robberies. Many of their families have disowned them. They play every game on the road, so there are no home crowds and no one is cheering their names. Their opponent that night was Faith Christian School — seventy players, eleven coaches, the latest equipment, and hundreds of involved parents. Before the game, Faith's head coach, Kris Hogan, sent an email to his fans. He asked them to do something unusual. Half of them, he said, would sit on the visiting side. They would learn the names of the Gainesville players. And they would cheer for them. When the Gainesville Tornados took the field, they ran through a banner that read Go Tornados. Two hundred strangers cheered their names. Faith's own cheerleaders led cheers for the opposing team. One Gainesville player said, “ We can tell people are a little afraid of us when we come to games. But these people, they were yellin' for us. By our names. ” Faith won 33 to 14. It didn't matter. Because at the end of the game, when the teams gathered to pray, a Gainesville player named Isaiah asked to lead. And this is what he prayed: “ Lord, I don't know how this happened, so I don't know how to say thank You, but I never would've known there were so many people in the world that cared about us. ” That is chesedh. You see, it’s not just feeling sorry for kids in a hard situation. It’s not writing a check from a comfortable distance. But it is about a large group of people who chose to get into the skin of fourteen young men who had never been cheered for and cheered for them anyway. And it changed Isaiah. You can hear it in his prayer. Something broke open in him that night that had never been open before. That is what mercy does when it is real. Isaiah didn't just feel better that night. For maybe the first time in his life, he felt what grace actually feels like, with skin on it. And you don't walk away from that as the same person. They will receive mercy. That crowd on the hillside didn't know what to do with that promise yet. But maybe — just maybe — some of them had felt something like what that young man Isaiah felt. The shock of being cheered for by people who had no reason to cheer. The disorientation of being treated like you matter by people who didn't have to. And maybe that's what finally made them believe it was possible. Chesedh doesn't always look like 200 fans on the bleachers. Sometimes it looks like a cup of cold water handed to a stranger who is thirsty. Doesn't seem like much and is often barely worth mentioning. But to the one drinking it — standing there parched, overlooked, and not expecting anything from anyone — that cup is the whole character of God made visible in one ordinary moment. That's the Unlikely Altar for this one. It isn’t some grand gesture or a stadium full of people. It is the moment when someone who has never been shown mercy receives it — and something in them shifts permanently. Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. Not because mercy is a transaction. Not because you give it and get it back like change. But because when you live chesedh — when you get into someone's skin and choose to move toward them instead of away — you find yourself swimming in the same love that has been moving toward you your whole life. Even when you didn't know it. Even when you were the one on the visiting side, wondering if anyone would ever cheer your name. May we know, may we remember, may we never forget — there is a love that will not stay at a distance. It has a Hebrew name we cannot fully translate. It comes from the womb. It moves toward the ones everyone else has written off. And somewhere today, in the most ordinary and unexpected moment, it is looking for a way to show up through you. Blessed are the merciful. Go cheer somebody's name.
You weren't thinking about death. You were scrolling. Maybe it was late, and the TV was on in the background, but you were only half watching. Or maybe you were looking at pictures of the grandkids, or a video somebody shared, or just moving your thumb out of habit the way most of us do when the day gets quiet. And then the ad appeared. You could have kept scrolling. And to be honest, most people do. But there was something about the ad that made you stop. Maybe it was the word family or the word burden. Maybe it was a face that showed up uninvited in the back of your mind — someone you love, someone you'd do almost anything for — and for just a moment, you let yourself think about what you might be leaving them to carry. So you filled out the form. Now here's what I've learned after months of calling the names on that list: most people can't tell you exactly why they stopped. Some stopped out of fear. The fear of dying before things are in order, or the moment they realize what a funeral actually costs. Fear has a way of moving us before we fully understand what we're doing. Others stopped out of love. They see something like that and think of their spouse, or their kids, or a grandchild who would be left to figure things out on a day when thinking clearly isn't exactly easy. And some stopped because the form was there and it was simple, and maybe it passed a quiet moment without asking too much in return. I don't know which one you were. Maybe all, or perhaps none of the above. But I do know this: you typed your name, filled in the numbers, named someone you care about, and hit submit. And whatever was behind that — fear, love, or just a quiet Tuesday afternoon — something in you moved. And I want to be honest with you about something. I'm not calling because I need the commission to survive. I don't. I'm calling because I officiate funerals, and I stand with grieving families several times a week. I've seen what happens when nothing is in place. I've watched the frustration, the stress, the quiet panic behind the decisions that have to be made quickly and paid for just as fast. And once you've seen that up close, you don't really get to unsee it. Now, I might be wrong, but I don't think that form was just about information. I think somewhere along the way, you've seen a GoFundMe for a funeral. Maybe you shared it. Maybe you gave five or ten dollars because you knew the family and it felt like the least you could do. And somewhere in that moment, without even putting it into words, you thought: I don't want that to be my people. I don't want my kids passing the digital hat while they're still trying to figure out how to get through the week without me. I don't want my spouse choosing between burying me with dignity and keeping the lights on. I don't want the people I love most asking strangers for help on the worst day of their lives. Just so you know, that isn't fear talking. That's love — the kind of love that thinks ahead. And a love like that is quietly one of the most faithful things a person can do. So here's where I come in. I'm the guy who calls. You may have seen my number and let it go to voicemail. You may have read my text and meant to respond. You may have genuinely forgotten you ever filled out the form in the first place, because life got loud again the moment you put your phone down, and the stillness disappeared. I understand all of that. I really do. But I keep calling. Not to pressure you or hit some quota. I keep calling because I've stood at too many gravesides and sat with too many families trying to figure things out in real time. And there is a difference when things have been taken care of. Love will always make grief heavy — nothing changes that — but when the practical pieces are already in place, there's a little more room to breathe. And I wonder if part of you already knows that. Here's the question I keep coming back to, and I ask it with nothing but care and concern: when your loved ones are sitting in the funeral home, what will you have left them to carry? Not your furniture. I mean the practical weight of your absence. The bills that still arrive. The funeral that still has to happen. The decisions that still have to be made by people who are already carrying more than they know how to hold. You had a moment — maybe just thirty seconds on a Tuesday night — when you let yourself think about that. When love or fear or something that felt like both moved your hand and you filled out a form. That moment was worth something. It still is. The form was just the beginning. The conversation is where it becomes real. And whenever you're ready for that conversation — unhurried, no pressure, just honest — I'll be here.