Tonight my heart is heavy.
After more than 190 days of walking across America through heat and cold, through cities and forgotten highways, through moments of extraordinary grace and moments of bone-deep exhaustion, the doctors have told me I need to take a break. The operation on my heel is scheduled for March 30 and next Thursday I also have to see a cardiologist.
I didn’t plan this. I wanted to keep walking.
FROM NASHVILLE TO THE SOUTH SIDE OF CHICAGO, FATHERLESSNESS EIGHT AMERICA
But I’d be lying to you if I stood here and pretended I wasn’t emotionally broken tonight. This trip has gotten the most out of me on a physical, spiritual and emotional level. I spent every reserve I had when I started this walk. There is nothing left in the tank that I put there myself.
I know I will keep running because I keep thinking about the kids on the South Side of Chicago for whom we are building a Leadership and Economic Opportunity Center. Every kilometer is for them. Every step is for the opportunities we create.
And yet I know I can’t stop. I know I can’t go home to the South Side of Chicago as a quitter. I keep coming back to a verse I’ve leaned on before: Philippians 4:13: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Not because of my own conditioning, not because of willpower or toughness or sheer stubbornness, but because of Him. Because if this walk depended on what I had left in me tonight, it would be over already.
STOP TRUSTING POLITICAL PARTIES TO SAVE URBAN AMERICA. It is time for us to rise and rebuild
The pain started at my heel, a pyogenic granuloma. It’s the name for the painful growth that I had previously cut off, only to wake up recently to find that it had grown back. The pain was unbearable with every step. It’s the kind of pain that makes you question everything. Pain has a funny way of doing that. It makes you wonder why you do what you do. It makes you wonder if what you are doing is worth it.
But I know I will keep walking because I keep thinking about the kids on the South Side of Chicago for whom we are building a Leadership and Economic Opportunity Center. Every kilometer is for them. Every step is for the opportunities we create. My purpose is stronger than my pain and I believe that now more than ever before.
But the body has its own accounting and ultimately it submits the bill.
I think of the apostle Paul, who wrote from prison. He had been beaten, shipwrecked and left to die. He said in 2 Corinthians 4:8 that we are “pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; crushed, but not destroyed.” I admit that this is not poetry for me tonight. But it describes my situation, the path I am on. I have been pressured on all sides. I’m knocked down. But I am not destroyed.
THE CHURCH IS HOLY GROUND, NOT A PLACE FOR THE POLITICAL RAGE OF THE LEFT
God didn’t give me 190 days and 2,500 miles to leave me on the side of a highway in Louisiana.
I have to believe that. I believe so. Even tonight, when faith costs more than ever before.
The walk will pause for surgery, for healing, for whatever the cardiologist finds next week when he looks at my heart.
WHY WOULD A MAYOR DEFEND A DICTATOR WHILE HIS OWN STREETS CONTINUE TO BURN?
I won’t pretend I’m not afraid. I won’t put on a strength performance that I don’t 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. From where I stand now, I can’t see the finish line. But I’ve walked for 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 doesn’t interest my heel. Those children are not given a pause button about the circumstances in which they were born. The need does not rest while I recover.
So, here’s what I’m asking.
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Pray for me. I believe in the power of prayer, just as I believe in breathing. I need it now. And if you believe in what we’re building, support us. Share the mission. Let the people in your life know that somewhere in Louisiana there is a pastor who is broken, hurting, and trusting in God, and who will be back on that path as soon as the Lord allows it.
The walk may pause, but the goal cannot. The kids from the South Side are waiting and I’m still coming.
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