Where you stumble, dig for treasure 015
This was a week of amazing blessings and a week of reminders that we are still walking through the fire.
We got the best kind of news for Logan: the chemo worked, the blood is clear, and the leukemia is out. But we’re not naive — we know it’s temporary. The only path forward is transplant, and it has to happen fast. That’s the next mountain, and we’re climbing it one hopeful step at a time.
They found a 100% perfect match donor and everything should happen in the next four or five weeks.
He was discharged from the hospital this week — now back at the hotel on campus, smiling, surrounded by visitors and life. For the first time in a while, his spirit is lighter. And for the first time in the same while, I felt myself breathe again. Inhale… Hope, exhale…Fear.
And while all that was unfolding, I got a message from a brother going through hell at home. I could tell by his words that it was urgent and severe. We got on the phone — and for two and a half hours, we talked about his marriage, addiction, shame, powerlessness, and maybe most of all — the masks we wear to survive.
When I told him I had my own battle with alcohol, he said, “You?? No way.”
But that’s the thing, isn’t it? People don’t see it because we get good at hiding. But the substance isn’t the real problem — it’s just the mask. The real wound is deeper. And when you stop drinking, you don’t get healed by default. You just lose your favorite hiding place.
But here’s the beauty of it: the things I thought had disqualified me — my stumbles, sins, my secret shame — have become the very places God uses to reach other people.
What we go through isn’t just for us. When we let God in, even our wreckage becomes rescue for someone else.
That’s why we launched this Saint Michael’s Lent. That’s why we write these reflections. That’s why Formed to Serve exists.
Because there’s a better way to be a man. And it has nothing to do with looking good, winning arguments, or getting ahead. It has everything to do with telling the truth, walking with others, and becoming a man who builds, protects, and bleeds for something bigger than himself.
So before you slide into the weekend, take a breath.
Don’t let the week go to waste.
Reflection Questions
1. Where have you been wearing a mask — and why are you afraid to take it off?
2. Who in your life needs to hear your story of struggle… not the polished version, but the real one?
3. What “club” are you in that you never wanted to join — and could it be the place God wants to use you most?
Homework for the Weekend
Practice sacrificial presence.
That means this: Pick one person this weekend to show up for in a way that costs you something. Time, energy, convenience. Don’t make it about fixing. Just be there. Let your presence do the talking.
We do this so we don’t drift astray or trade our weekday momentum for weekend numbness.
So we become men (and women) who are formed to serve — not to escape.
See you in the fire,
— Weekend at the Workbench
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