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.
There are days when this work feels quiet in all the wrong ways. It’s dial after dial after dial, and no one answers. Voicemail after voicemail that never gets returned. Texts that get sent carefully, kindly, without pressure. And the hardest part is this: I can see that the texts are read. They don’t go unopened. They don’t disappear into the void. They are delivered. They’re seen and read. And then there’s…silence. And that silence is heavy in its own way. The calls we make aren't cold calls. We pay money for the leads - - leads that are people who filled out a form and asked for information. They raised their hand and said, “Yes, I want to know more.” And then life happens. Or fear does. Or denial. Or exhaustion. Or maybe just the hope that there would always be more time. I don’t know the true answer. But what I do know is that sometimes, when I circle back and try again, I discover that a couple of those names now belong to people who have died. No conversation ever took place. No plan was ever made. Just a request for information, followed by silence, followed by an ending that came sooner than anyone expected. That’s when the questions show up in my head and my heart. What would have been different if I had persisted a bit more? If I had called one more time? If I hadn’t worried so much about being a bother? I know the answers I’m supposed to give myself. I know I can’t control outcomes. I know people get to decide when they engage. I know all of that. And still. This work has a way of slipping past what you know and settling into what you carry. I recently spoke with a widow who told me she waited too long. She managed to scrape together enough to bury her husband, but just barely. The funeral happened. The casseroles came. And then the bills arrived, and they didn’t care that her world had just fallen apart. Months later, she was still struggling to catch up, still paying for decisions she never thought she’d have to make alone. That conversation sits with me when I see a text marked “read” with no reply. It sits with me when someone tells me off for calling again. It sits with me when I’m tempted to believe that silence means disinterest. Because here’s the truth I’ve learned the hard way. I don’t know which call is an interruption and which one is a lifeline. I don’t know which family is one conversation away from relief. And I don’t know which silence will eventually turn into regret. So when someone cusses me out, I try to remember that anger is often fear wearing armor. It’s discomfort. It’s denial. It’s the ache of not wanting to look too closely at something that feels overwhelming. And when I keep calling, even after being ignored, it isn’t stubbornness. It isn’t pressure. It’s love. This work has become my calling, not because it’s easy, but because it matters . Because maybe, just maybe, one more dial leads to one family who doesn’t have to sit in a funeral home office wondering how they’re going to pay before they can say goodbye. Maybe one more conversation spares a widow from having to choose between burying her husband and paying her bills afterward. I can live with being misunderstood. I can live with being told to stop calling. What I don’t want to live with is knowing I stayed quiet when my voice might have helped. So I keep dialing. Not relentlessly, and not without care, but faithfully. With humor when I can. With humility always. And with the hope that somewhere on the other end of the line is a family who will never know how close they came to needing this conversation far too late. If you’ve ever wondered why someone like me keeps calling, even when it would be easier not to, this is why. Grief is heavy enough. And if love sometimes sounds like a ringing phone, I’m okay with that.
I didn’t make a New Year’s resolution list this year. Over time, I’ve noticed that my resolutions tend to come out sounding like demands. They’re usually written in a tone I would never use with another human being, and yet somehow, I think it’s reasonable to use it on myself. I’ve lived that story before. It usually goes strong for a few weeks and then fades into a quiet, half-hearted apology to myself somewhere around Valentine’s Day. So instead of resolutions, I made a Bingo Board. It’s simple, really. Twenty-five squares laid out in a 5×5 grid. Some are practical. Some are playful. And some are closer to the heart and ask for more presence than planning. For me, it’s an honest mix of things like writing more, moving my body, trying something new, showing up for people I love, and paying attention while I’m doing it. It feels truer to me than a list of resolutions ever has. A Bingo Board doesn’t bark orders. It doesn’t shame you for unfinished squares. It doesn’t pretend that life moves in straight lines or that effort always leads to neat outcomes. It simply sits there and invites you to notice what happens as the year unfolds. And that’s really the point. You don’t conquer a square. You encounter it. An encounter is slower than an achievement. It leaves room for surprise. You might come to a square feeling ready and confident, or arrive tired, distracted, and unsure. You might step into it intentionally, or stumble into it because the day took an unexpected turn. Either way, the square meets you where you are. When you truly encounter something, it tends to change you, even if only a little. A conversation lasts longer than expected. A moment asks more of you than you thought you had to give. A simple goal opens into a deeper story. What looked like a box to check becomes a place where you slow down and notice what’s stirring just beneath the surface. That’s usually where the sacred shows up. As I stared at the grid, I realized something else too. Almost every square wasn’t really about an accomplishment at all, but about a place or moment where life has already taught me that grace tends to show up - - an Unlikely Altar. Those ordinary places where grace shows up without fanfare. Waiting rooms. Kitchen tables. Bar stools. The quiet space after a hard conversation. The pause before a decision. The breath you didn’t know you were holding until it finally lets go. They aren’t polished. They don’t announce themselves. Most of the time you don’t even recognize them while you’re standing there. It’s only later that you realize something holy happened in a place that didn’t look holy at all. Grace keeps showing up in the middle of things. In the trying. In the waiting. In the ordinary, imperfect act of showing up again and again with whatever attention and honesty we can manage that day. That’s what this Bingo Board is really about. Each square isn’t something to accomplish so much as a place to stand still long enough to notice what’s happening. Some squares will get checked off neatly. Some will stay open longer than I expected. And some will crack open into stories I never planned to write. This year, I’m going to write my way through the board. Not as a scorecard and not as instruction, but simply as a way of paying attention to what actually happens inside the squares. The interruptions. The conversations. The resistance. And always, the grace that shows up, because I’ve come to believe that grace always does, even when it arrives a little sideways. If this idea resonates with you, you’re welcome to make your own version of a Bingo Board. Not as a productivity tool or a list of things to prove, but as a way of paying attention. Your squares don’t need to look like mine. They can be as simple or as tender as you want. And if you do end up sketching something and feel like sharing it, you can always reach me at martyvershel@gmail.com You don’t need your own board to follow along. You just need a little curiosity about where the sacred might be hiding in your everyday life. Because chances are, you’ve already been standing on an Unlikely Altar. You just didn’t know to call it that yet.
Some days in this work end with a policy. Some days end with silence. And some days end with 343 dials , 6 total contacts , 2 people who had already died, 2 who swear they never filled out a form , and 1 very clear message that included the f-bomb and instructions to leave them alone. After a day like that, I had choices. I could have written Lauryn a letter of resignation. I could have poured something strong and kept pouring, purely for medicinal reasons. Or I could do what I’ve learned to do over a lifetime — look for God, and for the Unlikely Altar , even on days like this. So I made an Old Fashioned , sat with the frustration, and went looking for meaning instead of escape. This is what I found. Most days, this work doesn’t feel like selling anything at all. It feels like waiting and hoping. Waiting and hoping for someone to answer a call. Waiting and hoping for a text that rarely comes. Waiting and hoping through long pauses where you don’t know if you helped, were annoyed, or simply disappeared into someone else’s already-full life. Those days get under your skin. They make you second-guess your timing, your tone, your calling. They whisper that maybe you’re bothering people. That maybe this work is foolish. That maybe you should find something easier, something cleaner, something with clearer wins. But I’ve seen what happens when no one shows up early. I’ve seen families blindsided, not just by grief but by decisions they didn’t know they’d have to make so fast. I’ve watched love get tangled up with panic, debt, and shame. I’ve seen people try to say goodbye while also figuring out how to pay for it. Final expense work lets us step into the story before the crisis. Not to scare people. Not to pressure them. Just to slow things down. To give them room. To give love a little help before it’s exhausted. It’s not flashy work. It’s quiet. Sometimes awkward. Often resisted. And a lot of it never shows up on a spreadsheet. Some conversations end with a policy. Many don’t. Some end with “not now.” Some end with silence. Some end because the person dies before anything can be done at all. Those are the ones that hurt the most, because you know exactly how the story will go from there. Still, we show up. Somewhere between the last unanswered call and the first honest breath of the evening, I realized that this too was an altar. Not a sanctuary. Not a success story. Just a kitchen counter, a half-finished drink, and the choice to stay present instead of walking away. That’s the Unlikely Altar . The place where frustration and care sit side by side. Where you tell the truth about how hard the day was and still decide not to quit. We show up because kindness done in advance still counts, even when it’s invisible. We show up because being honest and steady with someone who’s afraid is never wasted. We show up because preparation is one of the most underrated forms of love. I don’t know what your “why” is. Maybe it’s mostly financial. Maybe this work just fits your season right now. That’s okay. There’s no purity test for why we do this. I only know mine. Mine comes from seeing families who couldn’t afford even a simple cremation. Mine comes from watching grief get heavier than it ever needed to be. Mine comes from knowing that a little planning can spare the people you love from a very hard day. Hope doesn’t always look like a win. Sometimes it looks like not quitting. Sometimes it looks like making the next call with the same care as the first. Sometimes it looks like an Old Fashioned on the counter and the decision to look for meaning instead of escape. So we keep showing up. And day after day, I have to remind myself of this simple truth: nothing done with love and honesty is ever wasted.