When Life Moves Beyond My Control

Personal Journal — October 30, 2026

Over the past several days, I have been thinking about my life, the circumstances of 2026, and how I have responded when things began moving beyond my ability to control them.

The song “Trigger,” from The Terminal List, has a dark, driving rhythm. There is a sense of danger, urgency, anger, and events moving toward a breaking point. Something about that seems to fit the experience of this year. Not the violence or revenge, but the feeling of watching circumstances accelerate while trying desperately to get ahead of them.

As I look back over nearly 69 years, I wonder if this has been a recurring theme in my life.

I have spent much of my life learning how to understand things, solve problems, build systems, and make things work. I became an engineer, started businesses, accepted leadership responsibilities, and tried to help people along the way.

Much of that has been good. God has given me abilities, opportunities, and experiences for which I am grateful.

But I am beginning to question whether some of that activity has also been a way of dealing with things I did not know how to face.

Perhaps I have sometimes confused being capable with being secure, being needed with being loved, and being useful with being faithful.

That is not a particularly comfortable thought.

Childhood — The 1950s and 1960s

I was born in 1958 into a family and community where there was a recognizable order to life.

Family, church, school, work, and responsibility were important. I had people who loved me, cared for me, taught me right from wrong, and provided a foundation for life.

I am grateful for that.

Looking back, I do not see an abusive childhood. I see a family doing what families of that generation generally knew to do. There was discipline, there were expectations, and there was a moral framework.

But there were also things we did not talk about.

We knew what was right and wrong, but we did not necessarily talk about what was going on inside us. Fear, shame, loneliness, insecurity, and difficult emotions were not subjects we explored very deeply.

I knew how I was supposed to behave. I am not sure I always knew what to do with how I felt.

Maybe that is where part of the pattern began.

I learned about the world around me, but I did not learn nearly as much about the world within me.

I became fascinated with science, technology, space exploration, and understanding how things worked. Those interests were genuine, and they remain with me today.

There was something reassuring about a world where things followed laws and principles. Problems had explanations. Systems could be understood.

But people, emotions, and relationships were not nearly so predictable.

I wonder if I began learning to trust what I could understand while avoiding some things I could not.

The 1970s — Learning to Be Someone

The teenage years and transition into adulthood brought another set of challenges.

I have reflected before on the sense of inadequacy that developed somewhere around age thirteen. The feeling that perhaps I was not good enough or not quite lovable as I was.

I cannot identify one single event that explains that feeling. It may have been a combination of ordinary growing pains, personality, expectations, and things I did not know how to process.

There were difficult experiences, including the house fire, but there were also accomplishments and opportunities.

I earned Eagle Scout, finished high school, went to Lamar University, and began pursuing engineering.

And in 1975, Leisa came into my life.

That relationship would become one of the most important gifts God has given me, although I certainly did not understand then how much growing up I still had to do.

As I think about those years, I suspect I was developing two different versions of myself.

There was the outward person who could achieve things, meet expectations, and appear capable.

And there was the inward person who struggled with insecurity, feelings, and things I preferred to keep hidden.

I learned to blend in. I learned to appear as though everything was all right.

Somewhere along the way, pretending became easier than being known.

I did not recognize how costly that would become.

The 1980s — Responsibility Without Understanding

Leisa and I married in 1980. I graduated from Lamar in 1981, and Joshua came into our lives in 1984.

Marriage, career, fatherhood, and the responsibilities of adulthood came quickly.

I knew I was supposed to work, provide, protect, and take care of my family. Those were responsibilities I took seriously.

But I was not nearly as prepared for the emotional responsibilities.

Marriage was hard, and much of that difficulty was connected to my inability or unwillingness to deal honestly with feelings.

I could become angry or frustrated. I could withdraw. I could bury myself in work.

Leisa carried burdens that I should have shared.

Her love, grace, patience, and wounds were part of what held our marriage together. She gave Joshua emotional care and understanding that I often struggled to provide.

That is difficult to acknowledge, but it is part of the truth.

I loved them. I do not doubt that. But loving someone and knowing how to express that love faithfully are not always the same thing.

I was becoming a competent engineer while remaining emotionally immature in important areas of my life.

Perhaps work became a place where I could succeed when other parts of life felt uncertain.

I knew how to solve technical problems. I knew how to finish projects. I knew how to make decisions based on facts and calculations.

But when the problem was an emotion, a relationship, or something within myself, I often did not know what to do.

So I retreated.

And I suspect that retreat became a habit.

The 1990s — Building a Life While Hiding Part of It

The 1990s brought growing professional responsibility and eventually the creation of New Signals Engineering in 1995.

I was developing a career, building a business, and gaining experience that would serve me for decades.

There were many opportunities to do meaningful work. I remain grateful for the people who trusted me and the doors that opened.

But I was also continuing to live with the contradictions within myself.

I was involved in church, but my spiritual life was inconsistent.

I knew Scripture and understood much of what I should be doing, yet there were parts of my life I kept in the shadows.

My public life and private life were not always the same.

In 1993, I was terrified of being asked to speak or pray in an adult Bible class. That memory still stands out to me.

It was not simply a fear of public speaking. I wonder if there was something deeper in my reluctance to be exposed, to be seen, or to reveal what was happening inside me.

Professionally, I could stand before people and explain complicated engineering issues.

Spiritually and emotionally, I was often afraid to be vulnerable.

That contradiction seems obvious now.

But at the time, I simply kept moving.

Work was available. There were projects to complete, customers to serve, and responsibilities to manage.

And as long as I was moving, perhaps I did not have to examine myself too closely.

The 2000s — When the World Stopped

The fall of 2000 marked an important change in my spiritual life.

The Emmaus experience and renewed involvement in worship and Bible study began opening doors that I had resisted for years.

I was becoming more willing to serve publicly in the church.

Yet I was still a man with unresolved struggles.

Then came June 22, 2002.

Joshua died.

There are events in life that divide everything into before and after. His death was one of those events.

Nothing I had learned, accomplished, or built could change what happened.

There was no engineering solution.

No procedure to reverse the loss.

No amount of work that could bring him home.

For a man who had spent much of his life learning how to fix things, this was a reality beyond anything I had experienced.

I was angry. I was confused. I struggled with God.

And I grieved.

I still grieve.

Joshua had told me shortly before his death, “I love you. You just need to let love guide you.”

Those words have stayed with me.

I wonder how much he understood about his father that I was unwilling or unable to see about myself.

Perhaps he saw the distance between the love I felt and the love I knew how to express.

I cannot know everything he meant, and I do not want to put words into his mouth.

But I do know those words still speak to me.

His death was not something good that needed to happen. I would never describe it that way.

But God’s grace remained present through the grief.

The Bible study Joshua began continued. My involvement in ministry deepened. I began to understand more about suffering, hope, and depending on Christ.

Still, I wonder how much of my old way of coping remained.

Perhaps I learned to carry the grief without fully learning how to stop hiding.

The 2010s — Learning to Endure

As the years passed, life continued.

There was meaningful work, ministry, family, community involvement, and the ongoing responsibilities of adulthood.

There were also more losses.

Dad died in 2013. Other family members and people I had known throughout life passed away.

I began seeing more clearly how quickly time moves.

People who had always been part of the landscape of life were no longer there.

I had already learned that life could change in an instant. Now I was increasingly aware that it was also passing one day at a time.

I continued working, solving problems, helping people, and accepting responsibilities.

I had developed a capacity to endure.

But I am beginning to wonder whether endurance sometimes became another way of avoiding the deeper questions.

I could keep going.

I could shoulder another responsibility.

I could help another organization.

I could solve another problem.

Those were often good things.

But was I spending enough time with God?

Was I being the husband Leisa needed?

Was I learning to be honest about what was happening inside me?

Or was I simply becoming better at carrying the weight without letting anyone see how heavy it had become?

I do not have complete answers.

But I think those questions deserve more attention than I gave them at the time.

The 2020s — When Everything Began Moving Too Fast

This decade has brought another extraordinary accumulation of responsibilities.

Evergreen, broadband systems, consulting, engineering projects, community service, economic development, library work, and church leadership have all occupied significant parts of my life.

There has been good work in all those areas.

People have been helped. Systems have been built. Problems have been solved. Communities have benefited.

But there has also been a cost.

And then came 2026.

The Cambium problems, the failure and departure of a key employee, lost revenue, lost customers, mounting obligations, and the difficult realities of keeping Evergreen operating became more than I could manage through ordinary problem-solving.

One event led to another.

There were days when I could barely get ahead of the next problem before another one arrived.

I made mistakes. I trusted people and assumptions that deserved closer examination. I continued trying to make things work when perhaps I should have recognized earlier that fundamental changes were necessary.

There were also circumstances beyond my control.

I need to be honest about both.

It would be easy to blame others for everything that happened. That would not be truthful.

It would also be easy to place the entire failure on myself. That would not be truthful either.

I have responsibilities to address, and some consequences will remain for years.

This week, we have been emptying the office at 844 Texas 62.

Furniture, desks, equipment, shelves, and the remnants of another business chapter are being sold or moved.

It is a strange feeling.

So many years of effort, plans, investments, and hopes represented by things that now need to be carried away.

And yet life continues.

There are still customers who need help, projects that need attention, obligations to manage, and opportunities for consulting and engineering work.

I am working toward a new professional direction through John Hargrove Consulting and Neches Infrastructure Technologies.

But I am beginning to recognize something important.

I do not want to rebuild the same patterns under a different business name.

I do not want to spend the remaining years of my life proving that I can still make things work while neglecting the people and spiritual responsibilities that matter most.

And I do not want to use work as a hiding place anymore.

The Pattern I Am Beginning to See

When I look across these decades, I see something that troubles me.

When life becomes uncertain, I tend to reach for what I know.

I analyze.

I work.

I take responsibility.

I look for solutions.

I try to restore order.

Those responses are not necessarily wrong. In fact, much of my professional life has been built on those abilities.

But somewhere along the way, I may have begun treating responsibility as though it meant control.

And when I could not control the outcome, I often felt that I had failed.

Sometimes I responded with anger or frustration.

Sometimes I withdrew.

Sometimes I retreated into shame.

And sometimes I simply worked harder.

I wonder if the real pattern has been that I am uncomfortable with helplessness.

I do not like being unable to fix something.

I do not like admitting that I do not know what to do.

I do not like disappointing people.

And perhaps I have been afraid that if I am no longer useful, I will somehow be worth less.

That is something I need to examine honestly before God.

Because my worth as a person does not come from being an engineer, businessman, pastor, or community leader.

I was created in the image of God.

I am also a sinner in need of grace.

Romans 3:23 applies to me as surely as anyone else.

My accomplishments do not make me righteous, and my failures do not place me beyond the mercy of Christ.

I know that theologically.

The question is whether I have really learned to live as though it is true.

Light and Darkness

There is a reason the theme of light and darkness has been on my mind.

Looking back, I can see both throughout my life.

There has been love, opportunity, accomplishment, service, family, friendship, and the presence of God’s grace.

There has also been fear, shame, pride, anger, concealment, grief, disappointment, and sin.

I cannot blame every dark season on someone else or on circumstances beyond my control.

Some of the darkness came from my own choices.

Some came from living with things hidden that should have been brought into the light.

Some came from allowing fear to shape my decisions.

And some came simply from the painful reality of living in a fallen world where people suffer and die.

I need to distinguish those things.

I cannot repent of being unable to save Joshua.

I can repent of the ways I failed to love, listen, and be present with my family.

I cannot control the decisions other people made in Evergreen.

I can acknowledge where my judgment, oversight, or leadership fell short.

I cannot guarantee that the new business direction will succeed.

I can make honest decisions, fulfill my responsibilities as best I can, and refuse to let fear govern me.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that the darkness is not always the circumstance itself.

Sometimes it is what I allow the circumstance to produce within me.

Bitterness.

Resentment.

Pride.

Despair.

A desire to control everything.

Or the familiar retreat into shame.

Those are the things I need to bring before God.

What Am I Really Afraid Of?

This may be the hardest part of the reflection.

I wonder whether I have spent much of my life trying to become the kind of man who would never again feel helpless.

I developed knowledge and technical ability.

I earned professional credentials.

I built businesses.

I accepted leadership positions.

I became someone people called when they needed a problem solved.

There is genuine satisfaction in that, and I believe God has used those abilities for good purposes.

But perhaps there has also been a deeper motive.

Perhaps being capable made me feel secure.

Perhaps being needed made me feel valued.

Perhaps staying busy kept me from having to face things I did not know how to handle.

I do not want to overstate that. I have genuinely enjoyed my work and the opportunities to serve others.

But I cannot dismiss the possibility that good activities sometimes concealed unhealthy motives.

And now, at this stage of life, I am confronted with a difficult question.

What happens when I cannot fix the problem?

What happens when the business fails, the money is not there, the people I depended upon disappoint me, or circumstances move faster than I can respond?

Do I still know who I am?

More importantly, do I still know whose I am?

The Difference Between Being Useful and Being Faithful

This question keeps returning.

I have sometimes confused being useful with being faithful.

They are not the same.

A person can be extremely useful and still neglect his relationship with God.

He can serve organizations, solve problems, lead people, and accomplish meaningful work while his own heart remains distant.

I know that because I have lived parts of my life that way.

It is possible to be busy doing good things and still avoid the things God is actually asking of me.

Perhaps He is calling me to listen more.

To pray rather than simply plan.

To spend time with Leisa without my mind being occupied by another problem.

To acknowledge mistakes without retreating into shame.

To be honest with people about my limitations.

To stop accepting responsibilities simply because I know I can perform them.

To learn that faithfulness is not measured by how much I accomplish.

Psalm 127:1 reminds me that unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.

I have spent much of my life building.

I need to be more careful about whose purposes I am actually serving.

The Years Ahead

I am 68 years old, approaching 69.

That realization carries a different weight than it once did.

I have already lived most of the years I am likely to be given on this earth.

I do not know how many remain.

I still enjoy engineering, technology, astronomy, learning, and helping people. I still have ideas and ambitions. I would like to rebuild a sustainable consulting practice and continue contributing to the communities and organizations I care about.

There is nothing wrong with those desires.

But I do not want them to become another attempt to establish my worth through achievement.

I want to be a better husband to Leisa.

I want to become more honest and open in my relationships.

I want to grow in prayer and Scripture, not simply in my ability to teach them.

I want to serve others without needing to be indispensable.

I want to acknowledge sin without allowing shame to become my identity.

And I want to face the uncertainty of the years ahead with greater trust in Christ.

That does not mean I will suddenly become fearless.

I know myself better than that.

There will still be difficult mornings, unpaid obligations, disappointments, and decisions I wish I did not have to make.

There will still be times when I want to retreat.

But perhaps I can begin responding differently.

Perhaps I can recognize that familiar impulse to take control and ask whether I am acting from wisdom or fear.

Perhaps I can recognize when work is becoming an escape.

Perhaps I can acknowledge that I am tired without seeing it as weakness.

Perhaps I can be honest before God without feeling that I must first repair everything.

Where I Am Tonight

Tonight, I look back across these decades with gratitude, sorrow, regret, and hope.

There are things I would change if I could.

Words I wish I had spoken.

Words I wish I had never said.

Times I should have listened.

Times I should have prayed.

Times I should have been home rather than working.

Times I should have faced the truth rather than hiding from it.

But I cannot go back and rewrite those years.

I can learn from them.

I can confess what needs to be confessed, seek forgiveness where that is appropriate, and make changes in how I live today.

I also need to remember the good.

I have been blessed with Leisa’s love and faithfulness.

I had eighteen years with Joshua that I treasure.

I was given parents, grandparents, family, friends, mentors, and opportunities that helped shape my life.

I have been able to do meaningful work, serve people, and experience the privilege of Christian fellowship and ministry.

God’s grace has been present through far more of my life than I recognized at the time.

And His grace is still sufficient today.

I am beginning to understand that the real question is not whether I can regain control of everything that has happened.

I cannot.

The question is whether I can respond faithfully when life moves beyond my control.

I still have work to do and obligations to address. I cannot simply walk away from those responsibilities and call it trusting God.

But neither can I continue carrying them as though the entire outcome depends upon me.

Jesus said, “Abide in me, and I in you.” — John 15:4.

For years, I have concentrated on what I could do.

Perhaps I need to spend more time learning what it means simply to abide in Christ.

Not as another task to accomplish.

Not as another measure of success.

But as the foundation of life itself.

The music of this season may be dark and urgent. The circumstances may still be difficult. There may be consequences that follow me for years.

But darkness does not have to determine the ending.

I do not have to keep my finger on the trigger, ready to react to every new threat.

I can stop.

I can pray.

I can tell the truth.

I can do the next responsible thing.

I can love the people God has placed in my life.

And I can leave the things beyond my control in His hands.

I do not know what the next decade will bring, or whether I will even be given another full decade.

But I know what I want to be different.

I do not want to spend the rest of my life becoming more accomplished while remaining emotionally and spiritually distant.

I want to become more faithful.

More truthful.

More loving.

More humble.

More willing to be known.

And more dependent upon Jesus Christ.

There is still much within me that needs His grace.

Perhaps that has been true in every decade.

Perhaps the difference now is that I am finally becoming more willing to admit it.

Lord, help me stop hiding behind what I can do and learn to live honestly before You. Help me accept responsibility without trying to control everything. Teach me to love well, to repent sincerely, and to trust You when I cannot see what comes next.

Whatever years remain, let them be lived closer to You.

“So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.” — Psalm 90:12 (KJV)