Fruit After The Fire
When the
End Is Not an Ending
Well, folks, if you have made it this far, you
already know something important: you do not finish a journey like this
unchanged. Books, like lives, have beginnings and endings, but the truth is
that endings are rarely about closure alone. More often, they are thresholds.
They are doors disguised as walls. They are God’s quiet way of saying, Now
watch what I can do with what you thought was finished.
This final reflection is not a victory lap,
nor is it a tidy bow tied around a messy story. It is, instead, a witness. A
witness to what happens when small, costly, obedient choices are made not for
applause, not for approval, but simply to remain faithful to Jesus when the
ground beneath you feels unstable.
Recently, a significant chapter of my life
came to an end. After much prayer, wrestling, and long nights of reflection, I
made the difficult decision to leave a church community that had once been
home. That decision was not made lightly, nor was it made in anger. It came
after a season of testing that required more endurance than I thought I had.
But this reflection is not about that departure. It is not about buildings,
leadership structures, or church culture. Those details, while real, are not
the point.
The point is what came after obedience.
For much of my life, personal growth meant
learning how to survive quietly. I learned how to adapt. I learned how to stay
agreeable. I learned how to endure discomfort with a smile, believing that
silence was the price of faithfulness. Somewhere along the way, I confused
humility with disappearance. I mistook endurance for compliance. And I
believed—wrongly—that having a voice was somehow a threat to unity rather than
a gift to the body.
But growth has a way of confronting our
misunderstandings.
There came a moment—slow in arrival but sudden
in clarity—when I realized that my voice mattered. Not because it was loud. Not
because it demanded agreement. But because it was honest. And honesty, when
anchored in Christ, is never rebellion. It is obedience.
I no longer believed that silence was holy
when it produced inner death. I no longer believed that enduring harm without
truth was Christlike. Jesus did not remain silent when silence distorted the
heart of God. He spoke with clarity, love, and authority—sometimes gently,
sometimes directly—but always truthfully.
And so I began to speak.
Not recklessly. Not defensively. But
faithfully.
What followed was something I did not expect.
Healing came quickly.
That sentence still catches me off guard when
I write it. Healing—real healing—within my small family came far faster than I
had dared to hope. For years, I had prayed for change. I had hoped for
restoration. But if I am honest, I had quietly accepted the status quo. I
believed healing would be slow, incremental, and maybe incomplete. I believed
we would learn to manage wounds rather than see them fully addressed.
But God had other plans.
What I began to see was not merely emotional
improvement, but spiritual release. Patterns that had existed for generations
began to lose their grip. Conversations changed. Tone shifted. Support replaced
pressure. Love became explicit rather than implied.
Scripture tells us, “So if the Son sets you
free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36, NIV). I had read those words many
times, but now I was watching them unfold in real time.
Intergenerational burdens—those invisible
expectations passed quietly from parent to child—were being dismantled.
For much of my life, my dad carried a weight
that was never meant to be his alone. He felt responsible to uphold an unspoken
code of conduct—a version of faith shaped more by group expectations than by
the written Word. It was not announced from a pulpit, yet it was loudly
enforced through tone, posture, and non-verbal compliance. And without malice,
he passed that burden to me.
When I struggled, his instinct was not cruelty
but caution. He encouraged compliance. Keep the peace. Don’t rock the boat.
Follow the pattern. Yet each time I did, something inside me diminished.
Obedience without conviction became a slow erosion of joy.
Then something remarkable happened.
Almost in a single breath, that pattern broke.
Where there had once been pressure, there was
now verbal support. Where there had been caution, there was now affirmation. My
dad shifted from encouraging conformity to encouraging
faithfulness—faithfulness not to a subculture, but to Scripture itself.
“Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves
be burdened again by a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1, NIV).
Those words moved from theory to practice.
And the ripple effect was immediate.
When Curses
Break and Joy Returns
There is a truth we rarely say out loud
because it feels too mystical, too weighty, or too confrontational: what walks
in your life often runs in the lives of your children. Patterns left
unchallenged do not remain neutral. They gain speed. Fear becomes anxiety.
Silence becomes distance. Compliance becomes resentment.
But the opposite is also true.
When a generational curse is broken, freedom
does not trickle—it rushes.
As the burden lifted between my dad and me,
something else began to shift: my relationships with my children and
grandchildren. During a previous season of struggle, my availability had
diminished. I was present, but not fully. Time existed, but energy was thin.
Love was there, but it was constrained by exhaustion and inner conflict.
Now, something has changed.
The frequency of time together has
increased—but more importantly, the quality of that time has transformed.
Conversations are lighter. Laughter is louder. Joy feels unchecked. There is a
richness now that goes beyond obligation or routine. It feels like heaven
brushing against earth.
To hear sincere, unfiltered laughter from your
children—laughter not filtered through stress or survival—is a gift that cannot
be manufactured. It can only be received.
"The joy of the Lord is your
strength" (Nehemiah 8:10, NIV).
For years, I read that verse as encouragement
to endure hardship. Now I read it as a description. Joy is no longer something
I must summon; it is something that arrives naturally when burdens are removed.
I trace this directly back to the breaking of
an intergenerational pattern. Once the curse stopped walking in my life, it no
longer ran in theirs. Freedom multiplied.
Serving Jesus now feels different. Lighter.
Clearer. More honest.
The reward for obedience in this season was
not delayed. It was immediate.
That does not mean the road was short. The
season of testing was long. The cost was real. There were moments when
endurance felt indistinguishable from defeat. I often related deeply to Job—not
because I believed myself righteous, but because I understood confusion.
Job’s story is unsettling because it refuses
tidy explanations. Yet buried within it is a promise that remains alive today:
God does not waste suffering.
"And we know that in all things God works
for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his
purpose" (Romans 8:28, NIV).
At the time, I did not believe that promise
applied to my situation. The accusations were loud. The confusion was heavy.
The spiritual weight of being falsely accused—especially within the house of
God—cuts deeper than most wounds. Words spoken in those spaces carry unusual
power. They echo. They linger.
For the first time in my life, instead of
retreating into silence, I prayed for the strength to address the accusation
directly. Not to defend myself aggressively, but to stand in truth. That prayer
marked a turning point.
What I did not realize then was that in
confronting the lie, a curse was being broken—not just in me, but in my family
line. Silence had been the pattern. Endurance without truth had been the norm.
But in that moment, something shifted.
"For God has not given us a spirit of
fear, but of power, love and self-discipline" (2 Timothy 1:7, NIV).
Power replaced paralysis. Love replaced
resentment. Discipline replaced avoidance.
And the fruit appeared quickly.
Quiet Rooms
and Sacred Gratitude
As I write these final words of this entry,
the house is still. The kind of stillness that feels earned. The kind that
arrives after storms have passed and questions no longer demand immediate
answers.
My adult son is sleeping peacefully in his old
room. The same room that once held childhood dreams, late-night conversations,
and growing pains. He chose to stay a little longer. Not out of need, but out
of desire. To be together. To share time that is no longer rushed or strained.
That simple image carries more weight than I
can fully express.
There were seasons when I wondered if this
kind of closeness would ever return. Seasons when regret whispered that
opportunities had passed. Seasons when faith felt more like survival than hope.
Yet here we are.
"The Lord is close to the brokenhearted
and saves those who are crushed in spirit" (Psalm 34:18, NIV).
I am overwhelmed not by what was lost, but by
what has been restored.
Healing did not come because I worked harder.
It came because I stepped out of comfort and into obedience. I chose truth over
silence. Faith over fear. Scripture over subculture.
Once that dam broke, grace rushed in.
The reward was not fame. It was peace. The
reward was not validation. It was a connection. The reward was not being proven
right. It was being made free.
I write these words with tears and gratitude.
Thank you, Lord. Thank you for meeting me in endurance. Thank you for using
what felt like injustice to bring about freedom. Thank you for restoring
relationships I quietly feared were beyond repair.
If these words reach even one of Your children
who feels exhausted, accused, or on the edge of giving up, may they serve as a
gentle reminder: endurance is not wasted. Faith is not ignored. Truth spoken in
love always bears fruit.
"Let us not become weary in doing good,
for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up"
(Galatians 6:9, NIV).
Tonight, that harvest feels tangible.
A quiet house. A peaceful room. A restored
heart.
This is not the end of the story.
It is the evidence that God is faithful—still
working, still healing, still bringing life where we least expected it.
