As I dropped my daughter off to start school in the big city, I wondered if I had done enough to prepare her for this big change in her life? Did I maximize these 18 years with her, and will she be okay? These questions stirred deep within me in this season of transition.

The dance felt like a gracious opportunity for me to follow my daughter’s leading into the needed place of whimsy and light-hearted dance.

Amazingly he was able to shape up a ragtag group of underfed, underpaid and underarmed men into the fighting force that would defeat the most powerful military force the planet had seen.

Transitions are hard. Moving from one reality to a new one always involves a loss, or a letting go of something that was a more stable or known quantity for something that is less known. There is an inherent risk of failure involved in going to a new place or position. Sometimes those failures are minor, or more acceptable. Other times those failures can feel catastrophic.

Why expend the energy and to what end? At Restoration Project we ask men to reflect beyond the timeline diagram of their life. We believe the activity is not most important, but the significance within that experience. We follow the wisdom of the early Celtic Church who would ask travelers not what they did on their journey, but what their journey meant

It was good work, but it wasn’t easy. In fact, there were moments that were downright frustrating. There are some parallels with wood splitting and story-work counseling.

If you are still for enough time just about anywhere in Rochester and make any attempt to feel and discern the environment, you can feel the suffering. As I walked back to the hotel, I could easily sense the despair and weight of so many people being overwhelmed.

Just as easily as the sense of overwhelming engulfed me, the answer was right before me: fathers and brothers.

What my son wrote hit me on so many levels. Initially I felt like I had been exposed and sucker-punched. And quickly following that was the strong sense of heartbrokenness. And then pride and gratitude rushed over me like a wave.