Burn the Ship

Sometimes life doesn’t happen like the movies.

Sometimes the breakthrough never comes.
Sometimes the breakthrough is realizing there isn’t one coming.
Sometimes the addict never gets clean.
Sometimes the alcoholic wastes away on that worn-out barstool everyone so desperately tried to get them off of.

Sometimes family isn’t healthy.
Sometimes our very own parents aren’t healthy.
Sometimes the people we need healing from are some of the ones who were supposed to guide us, protect us, teach us how to be whole.

Sometimes there is no magic word or profound well-written paragraph that can stop someone’s train of chaos or will them into change.

Mental illness is real.
It doesn’t care if you’re a father, mother, sister, or son.
Sometimes instead of steady, solid pillars in our lives, we’re handed broken, sick, mentally ill people living in alternate realities.
And that’s our starting point.
Like being thrown into the deep end of the Bering Sea without a life jacket and told to swim.

Some people knew heartbreak before they could even talk.
Some people spend a lifetime seeing the good in everyone, praying for a movie-like redemption that never comes.
Sometimes someone gives so much of themselves to save others that all that’s left is a paper-thin, tissue-fragile version of who they once were—
So frail they disappear with a warm summer breeze.

I’m learning:
Sometimes, there is no breakthrough.
Sometimes there are just people—destructive people—whose hearts never soften, like Pharaoh.
The Red Sea parts… and then swallows them whole.
No epiphany. No miracle.
Sometimes the bottle wins.
And they stay there—pickled, unreachable.

You can’t reason with pickled people.

Sometimes their breakthrough… is your breakthrough.
When you finally step off the never-ending tornado of chaos.
When your mind clears.
When you see it all for what it really is.

And you walk away.
To a new place they can’t reach.
You burn the ship.
No going back.
No rearview mirror.

Just you.
On a porch.
Breathing fresh air.
Watching your children play.
Watching your plants grow.
The destruction stops here.

You’re the rarity—proof that something so pure, considerate, and humble can rise from something so chaotic, so deeply broken.

You walked through the valley of the shadow of death, took note of what you never wanted to become, and turned it into a map—not just for yourself, but for the generations coming after you.

Breakthrough. Miracle. Beauty from ashes. Roses from dirt. Diamond from the rough.

With every story read, every meal cooked, every shirt folded, and every act of quiet kindness…
Your humble life screams:
Breakthrough. Miraculous. God.