Entry 1 – 04/20/24

“He is risen” plays in my mind as I think about things — the journey, the bad things I’ve done, and the redemption. How I don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell if Yeshua isn’t risen. Yeshua is the Hebrew word for Jesus, if you didn’t know.

I know you see me as the guy that plays songs and bangs a guitar, but who I really am is someone born just 15 minutes south of the red clay council grounds in northwest Georgia — one of the last strongholds of the Cherokee Nation before Old Hickory, President Andrew Jackson, kicked them out. I was cut from clay.

I was born to an addict father and an enabling mother. I lost both of them by the time I was six. Life’s taken me through church pews, bar rooms, and bedrooms. Now I find myself turning back to Yeshua in a world gone mad.

I’ve always been a writer. I’ve always been tough as leather. Grew up in a cotton mill town where generations worked the same job. My great-great-great uncle David Montgomery? They said when he got a whiff of perfume, he was gone. Same goes for me.

Six months in that mill and I was done. Took a Greyhound out with a backpack and a lot of leaving in my mind. I’ve met friends, had lovers, and have three beautiful kids to show for it.

So who am I? I don’t fully know — because like the universe, I’m still expanding. But I do know this: I am the son of a cotton seed. I am cut from the clay of northwest Georgia. And no amount of Texas caliche or Missouri mud will ever wash that away.