Faith at 3 A.M.

Faith sounds beautiful when people talk about it on Sunday morning.

It sounds peaceful. Certain. Clean.

But faith does not always look like somebody sitting quietly in church while sunlight shines through a stained-glass window.

Sometimes faith looks like a tired old bastard sitting at a computer at three in the morning, rubbing his eyes, stretching his aching back, and trying to figure out what the hell he is supposed to do next.

Sometimes it looks like me.

I stay up late working on blogs, chapters, speeches, and ideas for Just Call Me Ross. I research court procedures and try to help people make sense of their cases—not by pretending to be their lawyer, but by helping them organize the mess, understand the process, and ask better questions.

Now my daughter has a case, and I am trying to help her through that.

At the same time, I am dealing with my own custody bullshit. There are papers, deadlines, allegations, stupid games, and procedural landmines. I keep looking for the right words, the right evidence, and the one piece of information that will finally make everybody start acting like reasonable adults.

That magical piece of information apparently does not fucking exist.

So I keep reading.

I keep researching.

I keep organizing.

I keep writing.

Meanwhile, I am trying to win a grant competition and turn Just Call Me Ross into something real—something that can help people, support my family, and prove that everything I have survived can still be turned into something useful.

And somewhere in the middle of all this, I am trying to get physically stronger again.

I am tired. I am sore. My body has been broken, cut open, fused, screwed together, and thrown back into service more times than I care to count.

Some days, ten minutes of exercise feels like a personal insult.

But I hit the bag. I work the bands. I do what I can.

Not because I believe I can magically become twenty years old again, but because I want to be stronger tomorrow than I am today.

The truth is, I am working my ass off to make all of this happen—and I have no fucking idea how.

That is the part most motivational bullshit leaves out.

Everybody likes talking about having a dream. Nobody talks enough about the part where you are sacrificing sleep, pouring effort into the plan, and still cannot see the road more than ten feet in front of you.

You do not know whether you are building something or digging an expensive hole.

You do not know whether the breakthrough is a month away or whether you misunderstood the whole damned thing.

Sometimes I wonder whether I can do this.

Then I get pissed at myself for wondering.

Because who the hell am I to doubt the man who got me here?

I know where I started. I know what I survived. I know how many times I had every excuse to lie down and stay there.

I have been poor. Angry. Locked up. Broken. Betrayed. Beaten down.

I have sweated, bled, cried, crawled, and occasionally dragged myself forward using nothing but spite and bad language.

But I am still here.

Doubt does not erase any of that.

Doubt is what happens when an exhausted brain tries to calculate an uncertain future at three in the morning.

It is a feeling.

It is not a verdict.

I do not need to know exactly how everything will work. I only need to know what I can do next.

Write the next page.

Make the next call.

Submit the application.

Read the next rule.

Help my daughter take the next step.

Do the ten-minute workout instead of complaining that I cannot do thirty.

Rest when rest is necessary.

Then get back up.

That is faith as I understand it.

Not certainty.

Commitment.

Faith is not pretending that I am not scared. It is admitting that I am scared and moving anyway.

Faith is not refusing to rest. It is refusing to surrender.

And when I say, “This is going to work or I am going to die trying,” what I really mean is that I am done negotiating with surrender.

My family does not need a martyr. My daughters do not need a dramatic story about how hard their father tried.

They need their dad.

Alive. Present. Still fighting. Still laughing. Still being an irritating pain in the ass when they need one.

So I am going to give this everything I have—and I am going to survive long enough to see what it becomes.

Maybe I win the grant.

Maybe I do not, and I find another way.

Maybe Just Call Me Ross becomes exactly what I imagine. Maybe it becomes something completely different.

Maybe the blogs become a book. Maybe the book becomes a workshop. Maybe the workshop becomes a speaking career.

Maybe all these scattered pieces finally lock together and reveal that there was a plan hiding inside the chaos.

I do not know.

That is why they call it faith.

If I already had the map, the money, the answers, and a guaranteed outcome, faith would not be necessary.

It would just be scheduling.

Real faith begins when the guarantees end.

It is three in the morning.

My body hurts. The court mess is still waiting. My daughter still needs help. The grant is not guaranteed. The business has not made it yet.

And the tired bastard in the reflection still wonders whether he can pull this off.

I look at him and tell him the truth:

“I don’t know.”

Then I tell him something even more important:

“But we are going to get up tomorrow and keep working.”

Everything may not work exactly the way I planned.

But I will keep working until something does.

And tonight, that is enough.

Just Call Me RossToo Stubborn to Stay Downjustcallmeross.net