Tonight, my heart is heavy.

After over 190 days of walking across America through heat and cold, through towns and forgotten highways, through moments of extraordinary grace and moments of bone-deep exhaustion, the doctors have told me I must pause. Surgery on my heel is scheduled for March 30, and next Thursday, I must see a cardiologist as well.

I did not plan for this. I wanted to keep walking.

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But I would be lying to you if I stood here and pretended I was not emotionally broken tonight. This journey has taken everything out of me on a physical, spiritual, and emotional level. Every reserve I had when I started this walk, I have spent. There is nothing left in the tank that I put there myself.

I know I will keep walking, because I keep thinking about the children on the South Side of Chicago for whom we are building a Leadership and Economic Opportunity Center. Every mile is for them. Every step is for the opportunities we are creating. 

And yet, I know I cannot quit. I know I cannot go back home to the South Side of Chicago as a quitter. I keep coming back to a verse I’ve leaned on many times before: Philippians 4:13: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Not through my own conditioning, not through willpower or toughness or sheer stubbornness, but through Him. Because if this walk depended on what I had left in me tonight, it would already be over.

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The pain started with my heel, a pyogenic granuloma. It is the name for the painful growth I had cut off before, only to wake up recently and find that it had grown back. The pain was excruciating with every step. It is the kind of pain that makes you question everything. Pain has a funny way of doing that. It makes you ask why you are doing what you are doing. It makes you ask if what you are doing is worth it.

But I know I will keep walking, because I keep thinking about the children on the South Side of Chicago for whom we are building a Leadership and Economic Opportunity Center. Every mile is for them. Every step is for the opportunities we are creating. My purpose is stronger than my pain and I believe that now more than I ever have before.

But the body has its own accounting, and eventually it presents the bill.

I think about the Apostle Paul, who wrote from prison. He had been beaten, shipwrecked, and left for the dead. He said in 2 Corinthians 4:8 that we are “hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.” I admit this is not poetry to me tonight. But it describes my situation, the road that I am on.  I have been pressed on every side. I have been struck down. But I am not destroyed.

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God did not bring me 190 days and 3,000 miles to leave me on the side of a Louisiana highway.

I have to believe that. I do believe that. Even tonight, when belief costs more than it ever has.

The walk will pause for surgery, for healing, for whatever the cardiologist finds when he looks at my heart next week.

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I will not pretend I am not scared. I will not put on a performance of strength that I do not have tonight. What I have instead is faith. Hebrews 11:1 reminds us that faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. I cannot see the finish line from where I am standing right now. But I have walked 190 days on the evidence that it is there.

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The mission is to build a $25 million community center on the South Side of Chicago, a place where young men and women can learn trades, find mentors, and discover that their lives have direction and value. That building does not care about my heel. Those children do not get a pause button on the circumstances they were born into. The need does not rest while I recover.

So, here is what I am asking.

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Pray for me. I believe in the power of prayer the way I believe in breathing. I need it right now. And if you believe in what we are building, stand with us. Share the mission. Let the people in your life know that there is a pastor somewhere in Louisiana who is broken and hurting and trusting God, and who will be back on that road as soon as the Lord allows.

The walk may pause, but the purpose cannot. The children of the South Side are waiting and I am still coming.

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