Surrendering my life to God when choosing to join the military ended up giving me new perspectives, a new filter, and a new life in which to view the world, the media, and my future.

Reintegrating into society had me looking to how God had used video production, journalism, news, and social media from my childhood and young adulthood to build my God-given identity. He called me to be with my wife after returning from an Iraq deployment and blessed us with our son. He called me to the communities I have served since.

God had not punished me with constant movement, loss and media uncertainty but revealed His Truth in my weaknesses and suffering. I made choices, some wise, some naïve, and have been accountable for every one of them. He was pruning distractions and illusions I had built for protection, replacing gifts with purpose. I’m grateful to God for the institutions that fed me for a season, even when I eventually outgrew them.

It was said that if you don’t watch the news, you’re uninformed. If you do watch the news, you’re misinformed. I did not list every podcaster, every news anchor, every politician, social disruption, or personal event that shaped the season. The bird’s-eye-view I took with this memoir was from my point of view as a viewer turned content contributor, segmented with the twists and turns God uses in life, work and participation in society, to reveal to us who He made us to be.

God has revealed His Truth throughout my life through the Holy Spirit. If I wanted to talk to someone outside my personal circles, I was taught at an early age to pray on one hand, go to therapy on the other. Therapy helped me with naming patterns. Family gave me the strength to persevere. Faith helped me decide what to do about them. Now God was calling me to set video production down for a new season of pruning. This was not an exit from the world, but a clearing of space to re-enter it at God’s lead.

Propaganda is information, but information without discernment becomes manipulation. Discernment of the Holy Spirit is the heuristic I have used to follow certain information entertainers, reject others, peek in on opposing perspectives, and stop watching those I perceived as losing authenticity in exchange for group-think collaborations, wealth, and deception.

Charlie Kirk’s assassination re-awakened my spirit to the evils of this world, truth behind conspiracies, and the importance of open free-speech and conversation. God would use his death in my life as a springboard into a season of tremendous sorrow continuing with Ellie’s death and the passing of Scott Adams that would lead me to restored faith and future hope.

To clarify my position in the current culture debate at the time of writing. I didn’t think the State of Israel had anything to do with the Trump assassination attempts or Charlie Kirk’s. The American-Israel lobbyists in media repeating certain talking points, ignoring legitimate questions, and refusing good faith debate have me as an American military veteran skeptical of the relationship between the U.S. and the state of Israel, in media, in politics, in global conflicts.

I reject antisemitism as completely as I reject any ideology that reduces human beings to race, sex, groups or tribes rather than individual souls, worthy to be loved. My concern has been with corruption of power, death of innocents, and collaborative subjugation. The cost of refusing to tell the truth has made reconciliation without more disruption unforeseeable.

My voice is small. God is big. What Was Meant for Harm reflects my journey from seeking to being still for Him. For years I would be given words in my spirit of “patient endurance” and “don’t jump the gun” but would reach for the next thing without His confirmation. Roadblocks and dead-ends were God’s bowling bumpers, guiding me where He needed me to go, getting me to today.

As I end this series and look to the next, like the apostle Paul went to Tarsus for a time or like Jesus walking 40 days in the desert being tempted before starting their ministries, I feel led to fast during the season of Lent in 2026 in preparation of what comes next.

If anything in this journey speaks to you, let it be the reminder that God can turn even the hardest seasons into clarity, purpose, and hope for those willing to be still and wait on Him.

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