Category: reflect

We are twelve people on a pontoon made for maybe half that.There are tangled lines everywhere, someone is already crying, and the only quiet thing on Huzzy Lake this Father’s Day is the water itself.

For the past few years, this has been our tradition.
My dad, my brothers, and all our sons meet up at my brother’s place on Huzzy Lake in Lawton, Michigan.
We pile onto his pontoon boat and launch ourselves into a few hours of “fishing” together.

It is loud.
It is messy.
And I hate it.

I don’t hate the people, of course.
I love my dad.
I love my brothers.
I love watching my boys light up when Grandpa gets excited.
But if I were designing my perfect Father’s Day, it would not look like twelve humans and a cooler on aluminum flooring, hooks flying past ears while someone drops a bag of chips into the live well.

If I’m honest, it would look almost like the opposite.

In my head, fishing is supposed to be quiet.
A dock at sunrise.
A small boat with one or two people who understand that silence is a kind of reverence.
You cast.
You wait.
You listen to the birds and the faint whine of the line in the wind.
You think your own thoughts and, every once in a while, you share a few with the person next to you.

That is fishing, as I believe it should be.

And every year, instead, I find myself on the loudest boat on the quietest lake.

So why do I keep saying yes?

Because my dad loves it.
Because my boys love it.
Because, against my preferences, I’m starting to suspect this noisy ritual might be doing something important in me.

This year, my brother showed up wearing a white t‑shirt with black letters across the sleeve: LIVE LOUD.

The shirt looked like something from a Christian clothing line or a conference merch table—the kind of thing meant to encourage you to be bold in your faith, to stand out, to make noise for Jesus.

As I watched my sons cast into the same patch of water for the tenth time, the shirt felt like a caption for our boat.
We were, without question, living loud.

Kids were shouting.
Uncles were telling stories at full volume.
My dad was calling out instructions.
Something was always being spilled or dropped or accidentally hooked.

And yet, at the same time, I couldn’t shake how strange that phrase sounded to me as a Christian.

Live loud.

I’ve sat in church my whole life, and I couldn’t think of a single place in Scripture where we’re called to live loudly.
I could, however, think of several that call us to something very different.

The apostle Paul tells a young church to make it their ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind their own business and work with their hands so that their everyday life would win the respect of outsiders.
He urges believers to pray for those in authority “that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.”
Peter writes about the “hidden person of the heart,” the beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit that is precious in God’s sight.

Quiet life.
Peaceful and quiet life.
Gentle and quiet spirit.

The more I sat with those words, the stranger “live loud” sounded as a banner for Christian faith.

Of course, those passages aren’t telling us never to speak, never to protest, never to sing loudly or laugh hard or shout for joy.
But they do point toward a particular kind of posture—a way of being in the world that is unhurried, non‑anxious, and deeply rooted.

To “lead a quiet life” is to live free from meddling and constant disruption, to stay busy with the work God has given you instead of being busybodies in everyone else’s business.
It is about a settled, ordinary faithfulness that, over time, wins the respect of those outside the church not because it is flashy, but because it is stable and good.

That vision feels especially important in American Christianity, where faithfulness is often confused with visibility.
We live in a culture that rewards volume—followers, platforms, strong takes, going viral.
It’s not surprising that Christian subculture has often baptized that logic: boldness becomes a brand, and “live loud” turns into a slogan we can sell.

I’m not immune to any of that.
I write.
I teach.
I like ideas and conversations and, yes, sometimes microphones.

But God keeps bringing me back to this quieter call: aspire to live quietly, to be faithful in the small place right in front of you.

And on Father’s Day, that place looked like a pontoon full of people I love, making way more noise than I would ever choose.

Here’s what I’m coming to see:
Sometimes the most faithful thing we can do is live quietly on the inside while the world—and the pontoon—are loud on the outside.

I do not control the volume of my extended family.
I cannot make my dad prefer contemplative fly fishing at dawn.
I cannot convince my sons that the “right” way to fish is to whisper and watch the water for hours.

What I can do is choose how I show up.

I can choose to drive to Lawton even when every introverted cell in my body wants a solo morning with a book and a quiet shoreline.
I can choose to untangle lines without sighing.
I can choose to listen to my dad’s stories and my boys’ excited nonsense without constantly calculating how much more peaceful the day could have been if we’d done it my way.

I can choose, in other words, to let my preferences die a little bit for the sake of love.

It is not glamorous.
It does not make for an inspiring t‑shirt.
It is, however, a very quiet kind of obedience.

Philippians talks about considering others more significant than ourselves, looking not only to our own interests but also to the interests of others.
On the boat, that doesn’t look like a profound spiritual moment.
It looks like moving so my nephew has space to fish off the side, or sitting in the hot sun longer than I’d like because my dad is still talking to one of my boys about the best bait for bluegill.

None of that changes the fact that I still don’t enjoy the chaos.
I don’t think I ever will.

But I’m starting to see that sometimes a “quiet life” doesn’t mean a quiet environment.
Sometimes it means a quiet heart in a loud environment—a heart that is not resentful, not sulking, not silently keeping score, but present and willing to love in the noise.

As I’ve thought about this, I’ve started to wonder: where is the loud boat in your life?

Maybe it’s an aging parent who repeats the same stories.
Maybe it’s a church service that is nothing like your ideal.
Maybe it’s a workplace, a neighborhood, a classroom, a family gathering where the volume (literal or metaphorical) is always higher than you’d prefer.

There is a place you keep showing up to, mostly out of love or commitment, where part of you would rather be anywhere else.

What would it look like to receive that place as one of the ways God is teaching you a quiet life?
Not a life of withdrawal or resentment, but a life where your soul learns how to be at rest in Him even when the circumstances are restless.

Later in the morning, after a few hours of noise and sun and snacks, my youngest hooked a bluegill.

The boat erupted.
Everyone shouted.
The pontoon rocked as twelve people leaned toward the same small moment.
My dad grinned like he used to when we were small and he was the one unhooking fish for us.

The lake, somehow, stayed quiet.
The distant shorelines did not care that we had disturbed the air again.

Standing back on shore, watching my boy beam and my dad’s eyes crinkle at the edges, I felt something shift—not in the volume around me, but in the volume inside me.

Somewhere under the surface, in a place too deep for slogans, I sensed a small, stubborn yes.
Not a yes to “living loud,” but a yes to loving well in the noise.
A yes to the quiet work of showing up again next year, and the year after that, and the year after that, to the loudest boat on the quietest lake.

And maybe that is one of the ways God is teaching me what a quiet life really means.

I pulled up Perplexity and started digging. Within a few minutes, I had an approximate address and satellite imagery for the old Jackson Motor Speedway: a ghost track sitting just west of US‑127, about two miles north of downtown, tucked back in the trees near Clinton Way. When I realized that this legendary racetrack had been sitting literally a couple miles from my house in Jackson, I just sat back in my chair, stunned. Somehow, a piece of Michigan’s racing heritage—and my own family story—had been hiding in plain sight.

Racing in the Family

To be clear: I’m not a “car guy” in the way my grandfather, my dad, and my uncle were. I can appreciate a beautiful machine, but I don’t live for horsepower specs or race schedules. Still, racing runs deep in my family’s bloodstream.

My grandfather and my dad grew up in the era when Jackson Motor Speedway was in its prime—late 1940s through the 1960s—when the half‑mile high‑banked dirt oval and later its shorter, unusual paved configuration drew huge crowds on summer nights. Back then, this wasn’t just local entertainment; it was part of a broader outgrowth of Michigan’s automotive story. The industrial genius that put the world on wheels also gave rise to a culture of speed, risk, and competition, and small tracks like Jackson became breeding grounds for drivers who would go on to run at places like the Indy 500.

So when I realized that this “legendary racetrack hidden in the woods” was not just somewhere in mid‑Michigan but essentially in my neighborhood, it felt strangely personal—like discovering a forgotten chapter of my family’s biography carved into the landscape.

From Screen to Soil

The more I watched, the more I wanted to go see it for myself. History Mystery Man’s YouTube video on Jackson Motor Speedway gives a haunting, detail‑rich walk‑through: the opening in 1948 under the Stull family, the later paving that changed the character of the track, the slow decline amid competition from Michigan International Speedway, and the sobering tally of seven lives lost on those high banks.

This morning, curiosity got the better of me. I drove up 127, turned off near the old address, and circled around until I found a spot that looked like a reasonable point of entry—no “No Trespassing” signs, just a quiet stretch of woods. I parked, stepped into the trees, and followed a faint path. Within minutes, the forest opened up, and there it was.

The oval was still there: cracked pavement, weeds and saplings pushing through, berms softened by decades of weather. I walked up onto the banking and started around the track. It’s surreal to stand on asphalt that once carried roaring fields of stock cars and open‑wheel machines, now silenced except for birds and wind. Knowing that thousands of people once filled the stands and that some never came home from this place made the quiet feel thick, almost reverent.

Appreciating What I Don’t “Do”

Even though I’m not personally immersed in motorsports, walking that track crystallized something for me about appreciating what others love. I don’t have memories of Saturday nights at Jackson Motor Speedway, but my father and grandfather did. For them—and for countless families across mid‑Michigan—this was more than a hobby. It was community, ritual, and identity.

As someone who spends his days thinking about learning, narrative, and human flourishing, I find it moving that a seemingly niche interest like local auto racing can be a deep well of meaning: shared risk, craftsmanship, camaraderie, and the simple joy of speed. Finding this ghost track reminded me that honoring the passions of the people we love is one way we honor them—and that the landscapes around us are often holding our stories long after we’ve forgotten where they were written.

A Hidden Classroom

From an educator’s perspective, Jackson Motor Speedway is a ready‑made “hidden classroom.” It’s a site where you can talk about:

• The history of the automobile industry and its cultural outgrowths.
• Risk, safety, and community memory, including the very real lives lost here.
• How places transition from hubs of activity to abandoned sites, and how narratives like History Mystery Man’s help keep them from disappearing entirely.

Last night, a TikTok nudge and an AI search turned into a short pilgrimage: from a glowing screen, to a map, to a quiet walk on an overgrown oval hidden in the woods. It left me grateful—not just for the tools that helped me find it, but for the invisible threads that tie global histories, local landscapes, and family stories together in ways we often only notice by accident.

I noticed how small the chapter is.

And how exposed it feels.

Chapter 2 sits right at the hinge.

Before technique.

Before confidence.

Before success stories.

It asks a quieter question.

Why do you hesitate when you know what to do?

That question stays with me.

The chapter names hesitation as a habit.

Not a flaw.

Not a lack of character.

That matters.

In psychology, habits form where effort feels costly.

Your brain learns to delay to protect energy.

It rewards comfort.

It avoids uncertainty.

This chapter does not argue with that system.

It sidesteps it.

The central claim is simple.

If you wait to feel ready, you will not move.

Readiness follows action, not the other way around.

I see this pattern everywhere in education.

• Students wait to feel confident before starting.
• Faculty wait to feel prepared before redesigning.
• Leaders wait to feel certain before naming tension.

The wait becomes the blocker.

What struck me most is how the rule reframes responsibility.

You are not asked to fix your mindset.

You are asked to interrupt a moment.

That is a design move.

Not a moral one.

Design beats intention.

Every time.

The chapter also names something uncomfortable.

Your mind is not always on your side.

It tells stories that feel protective.

They sound reasonable.

They arrive fast.

If you give them time, they win.

The countdown is not magic.

It is a boundary.

It says:

This thought does not get the floor right now.

Pause here.

Where in your day do you sense the delay creeping in?

Not the big life choices.

The small ones.

• Sending the message.
• Opening the document.
• Standing up when you want to sit.

This chapter does not change your life.

It changes the first five seconds.

That is its honesty.

And maybe its risk.

If change is small and repeatable,

you cannot blame complexity anymore.

You either move.

Or you notice yourself not moving.

That awareness alone feels like the work.

I keep noticing a pattern.

I read books alone.

I underline.

I nod.

I change very little.

This year, I want to try something different.

I am starting a public reading series called Reading The 5 Second Rule in Public.

The book is The 5 Second Rule by Mel Robbins.

I have owned it for years.

I have started it more than once.

I have never finished it.

That matters.

I work in higher education.

I study motivation, learning, and behavior change.

I teach people how learning moves from insight to action.

And yet.

I still avoid small, obvious steps when they feel exposed.

I still wait for clarity instead of choosing movement.

I still confuse thinking with doing.

This series is an experiment.

Not in productivity.

Not in self-improvement theater.

In accountability.

Here is the plan.

• I will read slowly.
• I will write honestly.
• I will name resistance when it shows up.
• I will not pretend the ideas are new if they are not.
• I will not rush to apply or defend them.

Each post will do one thing.

It will ask:

What happens when you stop reading for insight and start reading for movement?

I am not sure what will happen.

I do know this.

Private resolve is cheap.

Public practice costs something.

That cost is the point.

If you read along, you are welcome.

If you try the rule yourself, even once, notice what you feel in your body when the countdown starts.

What do you protect by waiting?

What do you risk by moving?

I am starting with the first page.

I am starting without a guarantee.

I am starting now.