Faith at Three in the Morning

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

But 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 wondering what the hell he is supposed to do next.

Sometimes it looks like me.

I am writing blogs, chapters, speeches, and lesson plans. I am building Just Call Me Ross into something that can help people and support my family. I am working toward a grant, building a speaking business, surviving my own custody bullshit, and helping my daughter navigate a case of her own.

I help people organize their court mess, ask better questions, and understand what they need to research. I am not their lawyer. I am a guy who knows how overwhelming it feels to walk into a fight without understanding the rules.

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

That part does not exactly look like a Rocky montage.

My body has been cut open, screwed together, fused, broken, repaired, and thrown back into service. Some mornings, everything hurts before my feet touch the floor. Some evenings, ten minutes of exercise feels like a personal insult.

I do not need to be twenty again. I just want to be stronger than I was yesterday.

But I am already exhausted before I touch the heavy bag.

Then there is my daughter.

I know how to take a hit when life comes after me. When it comes after one of my girls, I want to fix everything immediately. Find the right form, the right words, the magical piece of information that makes everybody start acting like reasonable adults.

Apparently, that magical piece of information does not fucking exist.

So I read. Research. Organize. Write. Then worry that I missed something and read again.

Meanwhile, I am trying to convince grant judges—and sometimes myself—that Just Call Me Ross is more than the ramblings of a stubborn biker-looking bastard with a laptop and a complicated history.

I am working my ass off to make it.

And sometimes I have no fucking idea how.

That is the stretch motivational speeches tend to skip: you are doing the work, sacrificing sleep, pouring yourself into the plan, and still cannot see the road more than ten feet ahead.

Are you building something? Digging an expensive hole? Is the breakthrough close, or have you misunderstood the whole damned thing?

Yes, I wonder whether I can do this.

But I also know the man asking that question.

I know where he started. I know what he survived. Poverty. Prison. Bad decisions. Broken bones. Lost opportunities. People he loved wiping their asses with everything he tried to do for them.

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

But I am still here.

That counts.

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 have to know how everything ends. I need to figure out what I can do next.

Write the page. Make the call. Submit the application. Help my daughter take the next step. Do the ten-minute workout. Rest when rest is necessary.

Then get back up.

That is faith as I understand it: commitment when certainty is unavailable.

I am scared sometimes. I keep moving anyway. I also have to recognize when moving means shutting the laptop and getting some sleep.

My family does not need a martyr. My daughters need their dad—alive, present, still laughing, and still being an irritating pain in the ass when they need one.

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

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

Maybe the grant comes through. Maybe I find another way. Maybe the blogs become a book, the book becomes a workshop, and the workshop becomes a speaking career.

Maybe I help a thousand people. Maybe I help one tired father walk into court with organized papers and his head held a little higher.

That would still matter.

I do not have a guaranteed outcome. If I had the map, the money, and all the answers, this would just be scheduling.

Real faith begins when the guarantees end.

It is three in the morning. The house is quiet. My body hurts. The bills and court mess are still waiting.

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

I tell him the truth.

“I don’t know.”

Then I tell him something else.

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

I have already been through hell. I decided it was not where I intended to stay.

Everything may not work the way I planned.

But I will keep working until something does.

And for tonight, that is enough.