Wayward Flame
Designing a Life Worth Following. The Story Inside the Symbol.
Welcome to issue #2 of Wayward Purpose. This week’s personal essay.
Wayward Purpose exists to rebuild what breaks along the way; through faith, discipline, and direction. It’s about turning moral injury into moral leadership. This space is growing into a home for veterans, leaders, and wayward minds. For those who gave everything to a mission and lost themselves somewhere along the way.
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I can still smell that German hospital room. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, their sterile flicker bouncing off white tile floors and pale green walls that already made me uneasy. My wife swung her legs nervously on the exam table, the paper beneath her crinkling with every shift of weight. We were supposed to be in and out. A routine checkup, meant to quiet her worry, not confirm it. The doctor frowned, just a flicker, barely a twitch; and everything changed. A nurse slipped out without a word. Minutes later, she returned with someone who could speak English. My stomach dropped. I’ve been through plenty of briefings where the room’s mood turned like that, when the smiles vanish and you suddenly understand you’re in trouble. But this time, I wasn’t the one being briefed. I was the one about to lose everything.
We were in a clinic miles from base, in a country that still felt foreign no matter how long we’d lived there. The translator’s voice trembled slightly, even as she tried to sound calm. “Your wife… she’s going into labor.” My wife wasn’t due for months. She was only barely twenty-three weeks. The number hung in the air like a sentence. Then chaos. The room filled with motion; rubber soles squeaking, gloves snapping, metal trays clattering. Nurses spoke rapid German I couldn’t follow. Needles and shot entered my wife. Be calm, we were told. I caught fragments, “schnell,” “Transport.” Words I didn’t need translated. Someone grabbed a wheelchair. Another shouted for an ambulance. My wife’s hand shook in mine. “What’s happening?” she whispered. No good answer from me. My pulse was a hammer in my throat.
They pushed her toward the hallway, monitors beeping, IV bags swinging. A nurse thrust a slip of paper into my hand, an address scrawled in black ink, directions in broken English. A hospital farther away that could help. I had to drive. Fast. And then she was gone, wheeled through swinging doors, out of sight, until hours later. The rest blurred. The sound of my shoes on tile. My breath echoing in the corridor. I stumbled into the cold air with that scrap of paper clenched in my fist. I lit a cigarette, then another. And another. By the time I reached the car, my hands smelled like smoke and fear. The address might as well have been another planet. I just drove.
So I did. As fast as I could on the German autobahn, knuckles white, headlights carving tunnels through the now normal German fog. The autobahn stretched endless and empty, every mile heavier than the last. I chain-smoked until the pack was gone, each drag a countdown I didn’t want to finish. The closer I got, the louder the questions: What if I’m too late? What if she’s gone? What if our baby doesn’t make it?
When I finally pulled into the hospital lot, a younger not even twenty something Airman in another country, far from home and family. I wasn’t sure how I got there. The engine still running. Pretty sure I broke some speed limit laws, or at least a parking violation. A military patient liaison met me in the lobby, polished shoes, a packet of forms; the wrong kind of calm. “Your wife is in a room.” His voice was muffled, like I was underwater. A small breath of relief in a small moment. I stood there, drenched in cold air and cigarette smoke stench, hands still shaking so hard I shoved them in my pockets. Hours had passed since I’d last seen her. Every thought possible racing through my mind. I had no idea what was happening. Panic, adrenaline, and sheer purpose kept me upright. All I could do was pace, and pray to a God I wasn’t even sure existed: Please…not like this.
Inside this new hospital, everything felt louder. The hum of lights, the shuffle of nurses’ shoes, the steady chorus of monitors, beeping heartbeats that weren’t hers, weren’t ours. My wife shared a small room with another expectant mother, separated by a thin curtain that did nothing to muffle prayers or pain. Hours passed in fragments; whispers, footsteps, the scrape of a metal cart. Eventually they gave us our own room. I don’t remember asking; maybe someone just saw my face and made it happen. People showing up and seeing us as humans, was all that was needed.
That night, I refused to leave. Visiting hours meant nothing. I slept, or rather didn’t, on a small couch down the hall from her door, pacing between bouts of exhaustion, the linoleum cold made its way through my shoes. I prayed in circles under my breath, bargaining like a desperate man: if I stay awake, if I stay close, maybe I can keep them safe. Standing guard against invisible threats I had no control over. This two-seat relic near the vending machines I found, a cracked faux-leather sofa that hissed when you sat. Similar to the one many years later I slept on beside my mother in her hospital room. Beside it though on this night, a vending machine hummed like a heartbeat in the dark. I can still hear it. The most annoying damn vending machine in the world. I am sure it still haunts those hallways with his hum. I sat there for hours, head in my hands, watching the red glow of the logo reflect off the tile. Surrounded by people, utterly alone.
Outside, near the front, a payphone hung inside a cold glass box. I fed it coins and dialed anyone who might answer after first letting my in-laws know, then family back home who didn’t know what to say but said they were praying anyway. Each call was a fraying lifeline. I chain-smoked between calls, ash scattering in the wind. Please, God, please…whispered to a God I wasn’t sure was listening. Ending with a call to my father, who scolded me for not calling him first, and making the situation about himself. A conversation I will never forget, but have since forgave.
Nearly a day later, when things “stabilized,” for the time being if you can call it that; my wife insisted I go home. “You look like hell. Sleep.” I think she needed a moment without my pacing shadow. The drive back to our German rented house was silent. No radio. A new pack of cigarettes just bought. Just tires on wet pavement and a hollow ache.
The second the door closed behind me, the weight of it all crashed down. My knees gave out. I dropped in the entryway, palms flat on the cold tile, gasping like the air had been punched out of me. For the first time, I let myself sob. The only living thing that noticed was our cat, Snowball, pure white still at this time, soft as a ghost, who rubbed against my arm like he understood. Absurd or not, I talked to him. He blinked, sat, and stayed.
In the days that followed, while my wife fought for every minute with keeping our daughter inside her before it eventually led to the NICU. During that time, I taught that damn cat how to sit too. No idea why. Control, distraction, an ADHD brain clawing for order. Either way, it worked, he learned. In the smallest way, so did I. A little side quest achieved while I waited for the main story line to continue.
A few days later, many emotions, lots of tears, and a few laughs; everything we feared came rushing to meet us. I became a father, and my wife a mother. Not with soft edges and joyful tears, but in a storm of alarms and civilian clothes turned to white coats. Our daughter arrived dangerously early, weighing less than a pound. Her arm was the size of a Q-tip; her fingers thin. He skin see-through. She was a tiny, fierce spark swaddled in wires before a blanket ever touched her. Doctors whisked her into an incubator, more spaceship than crib, glass humming with heat and machines. Just days earlier we’d signed a form no parents should see. In Germany, before 24 weeks, parents decide whether doctors intervene to save a premature infant. After 24, doctors must do everything. Our baby was 23 weeks when the contractions started. Nineteen years old, side by side on a hospital cot, pens trembling as we signed: God, don’t make us choose. A prayer answered shortly after entering into week 24.
The choice was ripped from our hands anyway, a silent prayer answered. My wife began to fade. One moment we were laughing and joking, and I was helping put a metal pan under her as she was bed-ridden; the next it was emergency, color draining. I bolted into the hallway, down the hall, tunnel vision as I ran, pounding on the nurses’ waiting room glass, shouting in English; them listening in German. By the time they reached us, I was already unlocking the bed wheels, ready to push. We barreled through corridors to the basement surgical ward, our makeshift gurney clattering against doorframes. Doctors appeared from nowhere, pulling scrubs over civilian clothes, hair damp, eyes urgent. A nurse clipped a tag to my wife’s wrist, another placed a mask. They told me nothing, only moved. The clock read 6:15. It ticked louder than the monitors.
I wasn’t allowed in the OR. I stood outside, palms on cold metal, listening. Feeling more useless than I ever have. All I could do was pace and pray, jagged prayers to a God I barely believed in but couldn’t stop reaching for. And then, through the hum and the muffled voices, I heard it: a cry. Thin, defiant, impossible. Later they told me a baby that small couldn’t cry like that. I know what I heard. That sound carved itself into me like a brand on my soul and mind forever.
Later, in recovery, I sat by my unconscious wife and whispered, “I heard her cry. I’m sure of it.” She didn’t stir. By some mix of medical skill and divine mercy, both my wife and our daughter survived. We made it through the fire. I told my wife I named our daughter, and joked that I picked Optimus Prime. She smile, and fell back asleep. Within a few hours, I was pushing her down the hall. Annoying her while popping wheelies for her in her wheel chair. Trying to break the pain with humor, as we got lost in the German hospital trying to find where our daughter was. To see her for the first time.
For the next four-and-a-half months, the NICU became our whole world. Mornings bled into nights, days counted not by calendars but by heart-monitor rhythms and oxygen stats. Balloons, when new weights were achieved. We scrubbed our hands raw, slipped on sterile gowns, whispered “hey, Optimus Prime (the joking alias we had picked out before she actually arrived)” through plastic walls. Those days turned into being able to touch her, then able to hold her. The room smelled like antiseptic and latex, the kind of smell that follows you home.
Our daughter fought for every breath. Alarms blaring, nurses swooping in, our hearts stopping each time she moved, or we received an update. Between crises we practiced kangaroo care, laying her one-pound, and growing body, against our chests, skin to skin, warm as candle wax, heartbeat a faint tap against my ribs. We read to her through the incubator walls, books she wouldn’t remember, words that were really prayers in disguise. Hummed songs I won’t repeat here, or ever tell her. We waited. We hoped. We learned a patience that breaks and rebuilds you from the inside out.
And through it all, we could only show up for our daughter like we did because of Christopher Shaver. A friend now; a flight chief and Master Sergeant then. He didn’t just give me time off, he didn’t make me create a family care plan, or force me to make me have to figure out anything. He stepped in. He moved mountains quietly. He did more for me during this time, then both parents did for my daughter their entire lives. He told the squadron the hospital was my alternate duty location, half days, every day, until we brought our daughter home. He gave me hope. He found ways to get a young, broke, Airmen resources to afford gas. He gave my daughter parents who could show up. He gave me something no manual mentions: time. Space to be a father. Permission to be human. Thank you, and I will forever be grateful.
Back then I didn’t have language for what he did. I only knew that when my world collapsed, he didn’t flinch. He didn’t send “thoughts and prayers” by email; he showed up. Years later I realized what he’d given me wasn’t just support. It was a creed: No matter what, I’ve got you.
There’s a plaque on my wall. I don’t hang many things, most awards and going-away gifts got boxed, tossed, or quietly left behind. If I didn’t feel like I mattered to the team, I didn’t want their tokens. But this plaque is different. No fancy script, no leadership clichés. Just six (well seven if you count I’ve as two) words carved into wood at the bottom: No matter what, I’ve got you.
I didn’t feel the full weight of it until recently. The phrase I learned from Shaver in the worst storm of my life had become how others described me. Somehow, without trying to brand it, I’d spent years giving others what he gave me; presence, steadiness, proof someone would hold the line when the bottom dropped out. Someone that would just step up and make a decision, when that decision was something I could make. That plaque isn’t recognition; it’s a mirror. It reminds me who I am when I forget.
Weeks bled into months in that NICU. Every ounce gained was a victory; every beep sent my heart lurching. Shaver’s calm and leadership became the template for how I wanted to lead as a young Airmen. In the quiet hours of kangaroo care, I hummed songs that had no business in a nursery; lyrics from bands teenage me loved. My wife laughed. We were so young, learning parenthood and prayer at the same time. Months later entering into our first round of marriage counseling, a story for another time. But in those quite moments, in the in between, those songs hummed became our secret lullabies. The world finally stopped spinning for a moment.
Shaver showed me presence in chaos. I wanted to offer that same calm to others; my family, my Airmen and now my Guardians, strangers barely holding it together. That’s when I learned what leadership really is: spiritual service. Not the loudest voice or the sharpest uniform, but quiet assurance. Looking someone in the eye when their world is falling apart and saying, “I’m here. You’re not alone.” When everything collapses, you show up. You don’t flinch. Presence beats performance every time.
In this new season, without a Shaver in my formation, it’s my church and community who carry that mantle. They show up when I can’t stand. So, I’ve learned to be that person now. If I’ve been shown grace like that, I have to extend it. My path wandered through atheism, war, trauma, and eventually faith as I build a relationship with God. Each trial burned away a little more of who I thought I was, refining something truer underneath. I became obsessed, ADHD-style, with capturing that purpose in something tangible. Something my kids could point to and say, “That’s Dad.” So, I’ve started writing.
For these past three years I sat with a question, not a logo:
What do I stand for when everything burns?
I filled notebooks with sketches, coffee rings, and more deleted Photoshop files and Word documents than I’ll admit. Every version felt too clean. Not enough. To fake. I didn’t want to talk at anyone, and I didn’t just want a design; I wanted meaning. Every shape, line, and color had to say something true. What finally stuck for a logo is what you see now; a symbol built from faith, neurodivergence, leadership, and survival. A logo built through years of reflection.
The Hexagon. Six sides of sacred geometry, structure and symmetry wrapped around chaos. It shows up in creation everywhere: snowflakes, honeycombs, the molecules of life. And it’s the same six-sided ring chemists sketch when they draw dopamine, the spark ADHD brains chase. The small lines on three corners echo those chemical bonds. It reminds me the wandering mind still has design. What once felt like flaw, distraction and restlessness, I now see as frame: a way to channel energy into purpose. The gray outline nods to grit and the truth that iron may sharpen iron, but it rusts if you stop tending it. The frame holds the fire, but it also depends on it.
The Golden Flame. Inside the hexagon burns a yellow-gold flame; bright, imperfect, alive. I didn’t want the kind that destroys; I wanted the kind that refines. Gold is tested by fire and made pure. Every loss, every mistake, every time I thought I was done…God was tempering me. The flame says, I’m still here, but not the same. A defiant and wayward life against the odds.
The White Core Flame. Look closer and you’ll see a sliver of white; the Holy Spirit, the still center. The calm that showed up for me when people like Shaver said, “I’ve got you.” White isn’t absence; it’s presence. For me it means surrender, the peace in the eye of the storm, the whisper: Be still. Faith isn’t control; it’s trust. It’s the walking out of the boat (the one David Goggins probably convinced me to carry in the first place). That core keeps me grounded in prayer so the fire gives light instead of consuming everything.
The Blue Field. Behind it all is deep blue, eternity, calm seas, open skies. It’s heaven’s canvas behind the flame and the color I see when I finally exhale. Blue also runs through the uniform I’ve worn most of my adult life: loyalty, integrity, perseverance; not as slogans, but as disciplines. When I see that blue, I hear the same answer that’s met me on too many late nights: Serve. Love. Keep the fire alive.
Designing this emblem wasn’t branding. It was confession, therapy, worship, stubborn hope. The Wayward Flame is about more than belonging, its about mattering. It is faith forged through fire, discipline built through pain, meaning found in the messy middle. It’s a mirror of my soul and a map for anyone who’s wandered, doubted, or burned out and still found a reason to rise.
The logo isn’t the point. The life behind it is.
But even though fire taught me how to stand. Water taught me how to stay.
This week my wife drew two cupped hands holding a small pool of water. Simple. Still. Look closer and it’s time itself for me; the water shimmering, slipping between fingers, catching light as it falls.
That’s time. That’s my time. Slipping through. Always has been.
With ADHD, time is a magician; appearing, vanishing, bending around distraction and hyperfocus. Hours disappear into rabbit holes; minutes stretch into small eternities. Appointments sneak up; deadlines mock you. I wore the shame like a name tag for years. But time isn’t meant to be held. It’s meant to be honored. And if you ever had the chance to asked George Carlin, he would tell you the Navy has the time.
I’m sure at this point my wife is tired of hearing my old line about how we all have the same 24 hours in a day, it’s how you prioritize them that shows what matters. She would most likely just smirk that signature smirk of hers, the one that says oh, you sweet idiot I love you, and come back with something like, “The universe is vast, time is fleeting, and this ranks exactly nowhere.”
That’s her new poetic way of telling me to politely shut up, emphasis on politely. Another favorite new comeback of hers: “This ripples across the surface of my mind without reaching its depths.” Translation: I heard you, but I’ve already decided not to care.
Basically, she’s mastered the art of roasting me in iambic pentameter.
Jokes aside, she’s right…sometimes (snuck this one in after she read through the draft). Let’s be honest though, time isn’t ours to control. We’re entrusted with it, briefly. Those hands can’t hold the water forever. It’s enough to refresh, not to hoard. Each drop a gift, not a guarantee. Faith reframed it for me. We talk about “redeeming the time” and “numbering our days.” Sounds like accounting, but it’s awareness. Every day a grace note, an undeserved second chance. If each day is a gift from God, it isn’t meant to be managed; it’s meant to be lived.
I used to swing between overcommitment and avoidance. Yes to everything until I crashed, or procrastination into paralysis. My calendar looked full; my soul was empty. Now I try to treat the present as holy ground. Instead of cursing spilled water; regrets, lost hours, or straining to hold more than I can carry. Future anxieties and false urgencies. I focus on what’s in my hands. One drop. Cold. Clear. Alive. Living it is the hard part. That’s where I have found personal cadence comes in; rhythm stolen from the military and my healing. Left-right-left that keeps you steady, whether you’re marching through mud or dragging yourself through another Monday (damn TPS reports). Discipline disguised as music.
In the service we sang cadences, part motivation, part defiance. In recovery and ADHD management I needed one again; not the drill-sergeant kind, a personal cadence. Not balance. Balance is a lie that turns “work” and “life” into enemies. Cadence is different: knowing your rhythm; when to push, when to pause, when to breathe. Not perfection…presence.
For me, that means slow mornings: coffee, prayer, a few lines in a journal before the world starts shouting. Short walks with my wife at night. Weekly therapy. Building a stronger relationship with God. Exercise. Saying no more often. Protecting my time like the sacred thing it is, because I know what it’s like to almost lose it. These small rituals give shape to the water in my hands. Enough form to drink, not to drown. Enough rhythm to stay present. Time.
It’s strange how the moments that nearly broke me in my life end up shaping the map I live by. Chaos isn’t always a curse, sometimes it’s a GPS. Sometimes it’s the crucible. A broken compass. A sextant no one knows how to use. Meaning doesn’t arrive neat; it rises from ashes if you’re willing to dig with bare hands and get burned finding it.
My digging started with moral injury; wounds that don’t bleed but still scar. Not from bullets, but from silence, shame, and betrayal. From watching war through a screen and being told to smile for a photo. From giving everything to an institution and learning it can’t and never will love you back. The anger, guilt, hollow ache; heavy for years. It twisted my faith and warped my worth.
Naming the pain is how you reclaim your soul. When I dragged those shadows into the light, I found others standing there too. People with their own stories of disillusionment. I didn’t have to fix the world; I just had to tell the truth about mine. And the truth is presence heals more than any program, pill, or PowerPoint. Systems didn’t save me; people did. The chaplain who sat in silence when words failed. The friend who answered at 2 a.m. and didn’t try to fix me. My wife, who held the line when I’d dropped it more than once. Their presence was holy ground. The ground I invite others onto now. The ground I continue to lead on, for the ones who are still counting on it.
So leadership, for me, isn’t ribbons or suits. It’s the then Master Sergeant Shavers of the world, calm in the chaos: “I’ve got you.” Even though learning years later the storm he was going through as well; it’s still the mentors, peers, strangers who showed up, not because they had to, but because that’s who they were. Leadership that leads alongside, not from above. Meets people in their mess, not after they clean up. Spiritual service with dirty hands and tired eyes. The kind of discipline that isn’t taught in a classroom, because it’s written in blood, sweat, and faith.
I used to measure worth by paper polish; awards, promotions, how “squared away” my team looked. Performance is a fickle god. It will chew you up, spit you out, and ask why you’re not smiling.
Presence is different. Presence says, You matter right now. No need to prove it. It’s muddy boots and late nights, not shiny plaques and buzzwords. And lately it’s Crocs…never in sport mode; if I’m running, it’s already too late. Presence laughs when life falls apart because humor is how you breathe in hell. Presence cries without shame. It’s real. It’s gritty. It doesn’t care about optics.
Broadcasting achievements is ego; vulnerability is connection. One makes you look strong. The other makes you human.
I’ll take human.
These last four years have been the heaviest of my life. I’ve buried people I love. I’ve lost friends. I almost lost the love of my life. So I keep a flame lit. My wayward flame. Inside this emblem and inside my chest where the real work happens.
It’s borrowed from the Easter Vigil. The candle I carried the night I stepped into the Catholic Church with shaking hands and stubborn hope. I keep it like a lighter in my pocket, not for smoke breaks anymore, but for relights. For the person whose wick has gone cold. For the one flicking a cheap lighter that belongs to an old version of themselves. Here…take mine. Borrow the heat until you find your own fuel.
This Substack; this Wayward thing we’re building, is how I use that flame to light the path for anyone wandering without a map. If you’re here, maybe you see yourself in these pages. Maybe you’re a veteran carrying moral injury that doesn’t show up on X-rays. Maybe you’re a neurodivergent mind trying to find a personal cadence not dictated by alarms and other people’s urgency. Maybe you’re just a fellow human who’s walked through your own fire and needs somewhere to set the weight down for a minute.
Whoever you are, thanks for your time and your trust. I don’t take either lightly.
Let me leave you with the promise that’s become my North Star; the line that steadied me in a fluorescent hallway, the words I want my kids to feel in their bones, the sentence I’m trying to live in every room I enter:
No matter what, I’ve got you.
It doesn’t mean I can fix everything. It doesn’t mean I can solve what’s breaking your heart. It means I see you as a person, not a problem. I’ll stand beside you while the wind howls. We’ll refuse the masks and the performance and choose presence instead together.
This is a place for wayward souls and minds; service members and veterans, faith-driven misfits, neurodivergent minds done apologizing for not fitting the mold. This is my “Do One” phase. In medicine they say see one, do one, teach one. I’ve seen enough pain and grace to fill a lifetime. Now I’m doing my best to live what I’ve learned; messy, unpolished, real. The teaching and building will come. For now, we walk.
If this resonated, please subscribe for free and continue to walk with us. Step by step, story by story, week by week, and day by day. Support if you feel called to, if not; I’ll keep showing up with mud on my boots and honesty in my heart. We don’t need a perfect map; we need each other and a little faith for the next step.
No matter what, I’ve got you. I’ll carry this creed forward, and we will see where this wayward flame leads us next.
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If you’d like to learn more about what my friend Christopher Shaver is doing now, connect with him here at his LinkedIn. He currently serves as Community Director for Young Life at Camp Pendleton, CA, leading youth outreach and mentorship that bridges faith and community for both churched and unchurched teens. His work unites spiritual formation, mentorship, and community impact; rooted in the belief that every young person deserves to be known, valued, and loved. If you feel called to support him, he continues to shape the lives of many.