Your Impact Reaches Beyond What You See. I have had an amazing journey through mountaintops and the deepest valleys. Through it all, God kept investing in me in ways I didn’t always understand, and for a purpose I couldn’t always see. I wanted to share that journey with you.
We are each incredible creatures, designed by a God who loves us unconditionally, each with unique talents and purpose. In our own way, each of us can change the world around us. That may sound like an overstatement, but it is true. Not just the world around us, but the world that has yet to be. A future we will never experience.
You may never know how much your life mattered to someone else.
A conversation you barely remember. Encouragement you offered when someone was ready to quit. A moment when you paused, listened, and helped someone feel less alone. We must acknowledge not the life we planned, but the life we received. We plan in straight lines, but we live in detours.
“The Life I Received” – Chapter 3
What if those moments reach further than you will ever see?
Each Life Has a Sound
However, every life makes a sound.
The sound may not be loud. You may not recognize it at the time. It may be nothing more than a sentence spoken to a discouraged person, a meal shared with someone who felt invisible, a lesson passed to a student, a business skill taught to someone trying to survive, or a stubborn decision to keep loving after loss.
But that sound moves outward. It touches people. Those people touch others. An ordinary action becomes a seed. A seed becomes a tree. A tree drops fruit. Fruit carries more seeds. Long after the original act is forgotten, the echo continues.” – Introduction
That question is at the heart of my book, Echoes Through Eternity: Lessons from an Ordinary Life, now available through Amazon.
Many of you have walked alongside me on this blog. This book brings together years of those reflections into a broader conversation about faith, purpose, grief, courage, and the influence we have on other people’s lives.
“A Tree Does not Hear Its Own Growth” – Chapter 6
Inside, I share lessons from business, service in developing countries, personal loss, and the everyday work of following Christ. Stories of people whose determination reshaped my understanding of purpose, and encounters that taught me how easily we can walk past an opportunity to make a difference.
That Sound Has an Echo
If you have ever wondered whether your work matters, how to move forward after loss, or what God might still have for you in this season of life, I wrote these pages with you in mind.
“Whose Life Are You Going to Change?” – Chapter 12
My hope is that you will recognize your story here—and find encouragement to love well, act courageously, and use what God has placed in your hands today. God lives in the moments. Dramatic moments don’t change lives; the steady drumbeat of a life well lived does.
What echo will your life leave behind?
I invite you to explore Echoes Through Eternity: Lessons from an Ordinary Life. Read the description, try a sample if available, and see whether these pages speak to the questions you carry.
My goal in life, and yours, should be to enrich the life of those we touch. Not through money, power, and fame, but through compassion, love, and grace.
“Echo Through Eternity” – Chapter 20
Find it on Amazon – for a limited time the Kindle version is free.
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In my more than seventy-five years, I find it interesting that I spent fifty years doing what I love, for the most part, yet I remember data points but not the effort it took to achieve them. I have spent over thirteen thousand days perfecting my craft, and I recall facts, but most of the emotion has been lost to time. Yet a chance meeting with a stranger decades ago remains vivid in my mind. His need outweighed my inconvenience. The emotion of that encounter is real, as if it happened yesterday. I can still see his eyes. The pain in them was deeper than anything I had experienced. Later in life, I, too, would have his eyes. I, too, would know what it is like to feel emotional pain that defies words.
Buried but not forgotten, I was asked today to join a panel to discuss one of the most painful events of my life. The purpose is noble: to help others understand pain, survival, and the hidden struggles people carry. We go through these stages to refine ourselves and become more human in our interactions with others.
I see Paul as a role model for living. Not just because he’s passionate about sharing the gospel, but in how he lived his everyday life. It’s easy for me to depend on my past as a guide for my future. This way of thinking assumes there’s a fixed trait or unchanging characteristic in who I was that determines who I can become. It’s the old nature-versus-nurture debate. But look at Paul as an example.
Have you ever felt like your plans were crushed, only to realize they weren’t broken but simply redirected for God’s purpose? Sometimes, God uses minor setbacks to teach us. This is a story of one such experience. Traveling internationally is always challenging. It’s not just about different languages and cultures; it’s also about everyday things like water and electricity. I was telling a friend the other day that I’ve never felt more entitled than when I stepped outside my environment into someone else’s.
Did God turn to Esther to finish what Joshua and Saul left undone? I love the story of Esther. Mordecai’s exhortation to Esther, “Who knows—perhaps it was for a time like this…” is one of my favorite verses. It reminds me to act even when the outcome is uncertain, as evidenced by his other statement, “Even if you now remain silent, relief and deliverance will come from another source.” I know I can either be a part of God’s plan for another, or God will choose someone else.
The Trap of a Single Story
There is a risk in forming a narrative from a single story. But we do it all the time.
You were chosen to bear fruit that lasts. Your existence is not temporal; it is eternal. Your actions are not of someone who passes through, but of someone who is sent.