YONDER BREAKS

I mentioned a few posts ago about a book announcement and I am excited to relay that the day has finally come to launch the project! It's called All Roads Lead to Dockweiler: Devotions from the Ocean in the City of Angels , and it was one of the most fun things I've ever written.  Here is the story. I used to blog quite a bit about surfing. In fact, my first paid writing gig was to blog for StoreYourBoard.com , where my job was to make board storage interesting enough to read about. True to form, I wasn't content writing "Top 5 Surf Racks" and "Best Surfboard Rack for Shortboards" pieces (though I certainly wrote my share), so I always tried to tell stories alongside the content, incorporating truth and comedy with the important information. The exercise was fun, and at the time (2013-2014), surfing had become a full-blown passion of mine.  In fact, I was having so much fun writing about surfing and all of the stories and ideas that went along with it t

A few weeks ago I went to a men's retreat for our church. Now I've been involved in men's ministries for years, and even was partially in charge of events for one of them, but it's been quite awhile since I've done something like this. The last several years or so, I seem to have developed a "too cool for school" attitude towards them. I missed the one last year and I even sort of tried not  to go to this one, having scheduled plans on the other side of the country to see some family and friends and catch an old bandmate's 40th birthday show. But when everything I had planned kept not working out, I thought maybe that was God's way of telling me He might have something for me at this retreat. If you're not familiar, men's retreats are usually when a bunch of guys go out into the woods or mountains to a retreat center to study scripture, worship God and usually do some sort of manly, rustic or extreme activity. There are usually a healthy d