What I Do and Why

The Work

I’ve spent most of my career designing infrastructure systems—broadband networks, power grid communications, microwave backhaul, cybersecurity. Over four decades, I’ve worked for utilities, cooperatives, and municipalities. Honestly, it’s been more a series of opportunities that opened up than any grand master plan on my part.

During COVID—2020-2022—I worked 3,900+ hours of overtime helping launch a wireless internet service provider in rural Southeast Texas. We ended up covering about 20K households for a time. Families needed connectivity for school and work, and I had skills that could help. So I showed up. That part wasn’t heroic; it was just the next right thing.

Now I serve as COO at Evergreen Technology Solutions, still working on broadband expansion in overlooked rural areas. And I’m on a couple of boards—the library, economic development—trying to help my small hometown figure out how to grow without losing itself.

I also lead Bible studies and write about faith, grief, and what it means to show up when life feels scattered.

The Foundation

None of this makes sense without Leisa. We’ve been married forty-five years—high school sweethearts who somehow stayed in love through everything life threw at us. She’s been steady when I’ve been scattered, faithful when I’ve been foolish, present when I’ve been absent. She’s the actual backbone of everything I’ve managed to do. I mean that without exaggeration.

My parents shaped me too. My father, Robert, was a Korean War veteran who worked thirty-five years at DuPont. He didn’t talk much about work ethic or responsibility—he just lived it. Showed up, did the work with integrity, took care of his family. My mother, Lavee, brought creativity and faith into everything. They gave me roots in a small East Texas town and a sense that faithful work—unglamorous, steady, consistent—was how you lived out what you believed.

The Grief That Changed Everything

In 2002, our son Joshua died. He was eighteen. Bright, kind, sincere. He was our greatest joy and our deepest investment.

I don’t have words adequate to describe that loss. It still aches, twenty-plus years later. But grief, I’ve learned, is just love with nowhere to go. And that loss did something to us—to me, especially. It cracked me open. Made me less interested in advancement and more interested in presence. Less focused on my own achievement and more attuned to the pain of others.

After Joshua died, Leisa and I opened our home. We started leading Bible studies. We made our house a refuge for teenagers who were carrying their own wounds, searching for truth, needing to know that adults cared about them. That loss became the occasion for a different kind of work—the work of walking beside people in their pain.

It’s still the source of everything I do that matters.

Why I Do It

When you’ve buried a child, your priorities get sorted pretty quickly. What seemed important doesn’t anymore. What always mattered finally gets your full attention.

I’m hesitant to speak about purpose too boldly, but if I’m honest: I believe rural places and the people in them matter. They get overlooked. They deserve better. And I’ve been given some skills, some opportunities, and—most importantly—a wake-up call through grief that tells me this work is worth doing.

I don’t pretend the motivation is pure. Pride is mixed in there. Ambition too. But underneath it all is something simpler: when you see something broken and you have the tools to help fix it, when you’ve experienced loss deep enough to know what matters, and when you believe in God, you kind of have to try.

Small acts matter. One connection, one person, one conversation at a time. Leisa has taught me that by example. She’s been doing that kind of faithful, invisible work our entire marriage—showing up, staying present, loving people one at a time.

The Honest Part

The honest truth is I scatter myself across too many things. I take on too much. Leisa has had to remind me more times than I can count that I can’t do everything, that rest is not laziness, that presence at home matters more than one more project completed.

I’m still learning to say no. Still learning to ask for help. Still struggling with the burden-bearing that became my default way of operating. But the work—the broadband, the community service, the faith-building—it’s all pointing the same direction: toward people. Toward love made visible. Toward showing up for the overlooked, the grieving, the forgotten.

Leisa walks beside me in all of it. She’s the one who keeps me honest about what matters. She’s the one who’s loved me through seasons when I was too busy, too tired, or too stuck in my own head to deserve it.

Joshua’s memory is woven through it all too—a reminder that life is short, that presence is everything, that the work that lasts is the work done out of love, not ambition.

That’s what I try to do. Imperfectly. With a wife who’s far better at it than I am. And with the grace that meets us when we’re willing to be broken open by loss and built back up by faith.

Grief Is Just Love With Nowhere to Go

I didn’t come up with that phrase on my own. I’ve heard it before, but I can’t quite remember where. The first time I really understood it, though, was because I was living it.

Joshua died on a summer night in June 2002. He was eighteen years old. Smart, kind, sincere—the kind of young man who made you believe the world might actually be okay because people like him existed in it. Leisa and I had invested eighteen years into loving that boy, shaping him, praying for him, believing in who he was becoming.

And then he was gone.

For a long time after, I didn’t understand what to do with the love. That’s the part nobody tells you about grief. They tell you it gets easier with time, or that you learn to live with it, or that you find closure. But what they don’t say is that the love doesn’t go anywhere. It doesn’t diminish or fade or resolve itself into acceptance. It just stops having an obvious place to go.

I remember the first few weeks after Joshua died. The love was still there—urgent, real, physical almost. I wanted to do things for him, be present in his life, shepherd him forward. And I couldn’t. There was no object for all that love anymore. It had nowhere to attach itself.

That’s what grief is.

The Redirection

In August of that year, just a couple of months after we buried our son, Leisa and I made a decision. We reopened our home. We invited young people who wanted to honor Joshua and continue the Bible study he had been part of to come together. The loss was still raw—it’s still raw now, more than twenty years later. But we couldn’t sit with that love alone. It was too big. It needed to move.

So we created a space for it to move into. Teenagers came—kids who were grieving too, kids who wanted to remember Joshua, kids who were searching for truth and needed to know that adults cared about them. The love we couldn’t pour into Joshua anymore, we poured into them. Not as replacements—no one could replace Joshua. But as a direction for love that needed a direction.

Leisa was the visionary in this. I was still in the fog of it, still trying to figure out how to keep breathing. But she saw what needed to happen, and she stepped into it with a kind of grace I’m still learning from.

What It Means to Love the Dead

There’s a misconception that when you grieve well, the grief goes away. That’s not true. What happens instead is that the love finds new expression. The relationship doesn’t end—it transforms.

I still love Joshua. That love doesn’t leave just because he’s gone. It can’t. Love that deep doesn’t work that way. But I can’t call him, can’t teach him, can’t watch him grow. So the love has to take other shapes.

It takes the shape of opening our home to young people. It takes the shape of working 3,900 hours of overtime to connect rural families to broadband because I know—viscerally know—how precious connection is, how short life is, how much it matters to be present for the people in front of you while you have them.

When I sit with someone who’s grieving, I’m not sitting with them as a neutral party. I’m sitting with someone who loves someone they can’t reach anymore. And I know that place. I live in that place. I’ve made a home in it.

The Love Stays

Here’s what I’ve learned: grief doesn’t mean you stop loving. It means your love has to find new terrain. It means the person you love isn’t physically present anymore, but the love is still very much alive in you, looking for somewhere to land.

Some days I feel Joshua’s absence acutely—a birthday, a milestone, a moment when I think “he would have loved this.” Those days, the grief is sharp. The love has nowhere to go and it just sits in my chest like a stone.

But most days, I experience his love as directional. It moves through me toward other people. Toward Leisa, who has stood beside me through everything. Toward the young people who’ve walked through our home looking for sanctuary. Toward the rural communities that deserve dignity and connection. Toward the work that keeps me up at night because it matters, because lives depend on it, because someone’s son or daughter is on the other end of that broadband connection.

I’m not trying to say grief is good or that losing a child is anything other than devastating. It’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. And I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

But I’m trying to say this: the love you have for someone doesn’t disappear when they do. It just demands a new expression. And if you’re willing to let it, if you’re willing to redirect all that urgent, desperate love toward the living world in front of you, it can become something redemptive.

Not healed. Not resolved. But purposeful.

A Different Kind of Presence

Leisa and I haven’t moved on from Joshua’s death. We’ve moved forward with it. We carry him with us. His memory shapes decisions we make, values we prioritize, people we’re called to serve.

When I’m working on bringing broadband to rural families, Joshua is there—in the urgency I feel, in the refusal to give up when systems are complicated, in the belief that every person deserves connection. When I’m sitting with a teenager who’s hurting, Joshua is there—in the patience I have, in the willingness to listen, in the knowledge that their pain matters.

The love I have for my son hasn’t been redirected away from him. It’s been integrated into a larger love—a love for the world he would have inhabited, for the people he would have cared about, for the work that needs doing while we’re still here.

That’s what grief is: love with nowhere to go, until you make it go somewhere. Until you let it reshape your life, your priorities, your work. Until you understand that the people you’ve lost aren’t actually gone—they’re woven through everything you do, everyone you serve, every moment you choose presence over ambition.

I still miss him. Every single day. But I’m grateful, too—grateful that the love we had doesn’t end at death. Grateful that I get to express it here, now, toward the people and the work in front of me.

That’s how Joshua still shapes the world. Not in the ways we planned. Not in the ways he would have chosen. But in real, concrete ways—in lives touched, in communities connected, in young people loved because his parents learned that grief is just love refusing to die.

The Long Road Between Pain and Peace

Life moves like that song from Bosch—slow, deliberate, a little haunted, and honest enough not to pretend things are fine when they aren’t.

Photo by Elu012bna Aru0101ja on Pexels.com

You wake up carrying yesterday with you. Some memories refuse to loosen their grip. Loss. Regret. Questions that never quite resolve. You learn early that life does not hand out clean endings, only long roads and unfinished conversations. Still, you get up. Not because it’s easy, but because something inside you says you must.

You do your work quietly. You try to do it right. You learn that integrity costs more than compromise, but you pay it anyway. You discover that justice, truth, and love are rarely loud. Most of the time, they show up as persistence—showing up again when walking away would be simpler.

There are nights when the weight presses down hard. You replay moments you wish you could change. You hear echoes of people you loved and lost. You wonder whether holding on is strength or stubbornness. And yet, letting go feels like erasing part of who you are.

So you keep walking. Not because you have all the answers, but because you believe life has meaning even when it’s cracked. Somewhere along the way, you realize you are not carrying everything alone. There is a quiet presence beside you—steady, patient, faithful—bearing the heavier part of the load. The kind of presence that doesn’t rush you, doesn’t condemn you, and doesn’t leave when things get dark.

You learn that redemption is not sudden. It’s slow. It’s daily. It’s choosing truth over comfort, mercy over bitterness, and hope over despair. It’s discovering that love can meet you in broken places and still call you forward.

In the end, life is not about forgetting what shaped you. It’s about letting it refine you. You don’t let go of what matters. You carry it—transformed—into something truer.

And you keep going.

#LifeStory
#StillStanding
#RedemptionRoad
#FaithInTheQuiet
#HopeThatEndures

Note on the spiritual undertones in “Can’t Let Go”

Beneath its noir tone, the song carries quiet traces of spirituality. The repeated tension between holding on and releasing mirrors a deeply human struggle found throughout Scripture—the desire to control the past versus the invitation to trust something greater than ourselves. “Can’t let go” is not just emotional attachment; it sounds like the soul wrestling with surrender.

There is an unspoken confession in the lyrics: acknowledgment of brokenness without denial, longing without easy resolution. That honesty echoes the psalms of lament, where faith is not polished but real. The song never preaches, yet it gestures toward the idea that healing does not come from erasing pain, but from being carried through it.

What makes the spirituality subtle—but powerful—is that the answer is not self-mastery. The weight feels too heavy to bear alone. That quiet recognition opens the door to grace. In Christian language, it resembles the moment before surrender, when the heart realizes it cannot save itself and must be held.

In that sense, Can’t Let Go becomes a prayer without religious language—a reminder that even in shadowed places, the struggle itself can be sacred, and that letting go is often less about loss and more about learning who is truly strong enough to hold us.

#SpiritualUndertones
#CantLetGo
#QuietFaith
#GraceInTheStruggle
#HopeInTheDark

December 5, 1927 – September 6, 2013

🎂 Happy Birthday, Dad

Today we celebrate Robert E. Hargrove—a man who showed us that the greatest gifts aren’t found in stores, but on the banks of the Neches River.

Dad gave us something precious: a love of the outdoors and the simple joys of being together. Camp Hargrove was his classroom, and we were his eager students. We learned patience waiting for the channel cats and blue cats to bite. We felt the thrill when the ops latched onto the trotline bait and swam into view as we pulled the line from the depths. We waded through sandbars, filled minnow jars with bait, seined the shallows, and floated lazy afternoons in inner tubes, letting the river carry us.

We remember the ritual of it all—Dad pumping water from the river, later from the well he drilled with his own hands. The smell of bacon and scrambled eggs sizzling in cast iron. Biscuits that tasted like only the camp did. Coffee brewed strong in that old pot, grounds settling at the bottom, sipped slowly by the campfire as fog drifted across the water at dawn. The soft sounds of the river greeting us awake.

And every Fourth of July, Dad’s fishing became a gift to us all—fish fries for the extended family, gathered together, fed by what his hands and the river had provided.

In those moments—before the day rushed in, surrounded by sons, nephews, and grandchildren—Dad was teaching us how to live. How to slow down. How to appreciate what matters. How to pass love down through generations.

Those riverside mornings and summer days shaped who we became. Dad’s love for nature, his steady presence, his generosity of spirit—these are the catches we keep forever.

Happy Birthday, Dad. We’re still there by the river with you. 🐟🏕️💙

December 5, 1927 – September 6, 2013

ON THIS DAY

8 years ago

Glen Richbourg is feeling blessed with L.v. Hargrove and 2 others. wrote in 2013

September 6, 2013 • ©

Uncle Bob taught me the difference between a blue cat, channel cat and a mud cat. He could scull all the way around Mud Lake and not make a single splash. Made the best camp breakfasts ever and I’ve never had even a Starbucks that could match his river water coffee. Some of the best memories of my life were out in the Neches River bottom being a kid with the Hargrove boys and Uncle Bob. I learned life lessons from him about respecting the land, nature and fellow human beings that l’ve carried my entire life. He also raised the three best men you’ll ever meet. I will forever miss him.

Standing Between Darkness and Light: Reflections at Sixty-Seven

There are moments in life when movies, memories, and years of lived experience weave themselves into a single thread. Looking back from sixty-seven, I can see how the stories that once entertained me now speak with deeper meaning. They shine a quiet light on what I have carried, what I have learned, and who I have become.

Two films from late 2001 come to mind—stories set in the shadows of espionage and conflict, filled with characters wrestling with impossible choices. On the surface, they were thrillers. Beneath the surface, they were studies in darkness, loyalty, and the long, hard road toward redemption. Only now do I see why they left such a mark.

Both narratives followed men who lived in the shadows—first as soldiers, then as operatives shaped by ambiguity. Each learned to navigate life with precision, endurance, and a sense of duty that often required more than most people ever see. They carried weight—emotional, moral, and sometimes spiritual. They worked under pressure, made decisions that others would never know about, and shouldered consequences that rarely made headlines.

Yet in the end, their defining moments weren’t the missions they completed or the dangers they survived. Their defining moments were the ones where they chose love over protocol, compassion over convenience, and human life over institutional safety. In those choices, we see how men shaped by darkness still gravitated toward the light.

At sixty-seven, I understand that more deeply than I once did.

Life has a way of testing every belief we have about ourselves. There are seasons when the weight feels unbearable—years of responsibility, the losses that accumulate, the roles we never asked for but stepped into anyway. There are moments when duty seems to conflict with compassion, when institutions fail the people in them, and when the world asks us to harden our hearts just to stay afloat.

But there is another story running underneath all of that. A quieter one.

The older I get, the more convinced I am that light has a way of finding its way into even the darkest corners. Faith becomes less about having every answer and more about trusting that God meets us in the places where our strength wears thin. Love becomes less of a feeling and more of a choice—a decision to stand with people, protect them, guide them, or rescue them when the world turns away.

Redemption, too, looks different with time. It is not a sudden, dramatic reversal. It is slow, steady restoration. It is the grace that holds you together when you have carried too much for too long. It is the courage to step toward the light even after walking through shadows.

When I look back, I see how many moments were shaped by these themes. Times of crisis where clarity finally emerged. Seasons of confusion that eventually revealed deeper purpose. Relationships tested but made stronger by truth. Leadership forged in hard places. And always, the gentle hand of God pulling me back toward the light when the world felt heavy.

Those old movie stories were fiction, but the truths inside them are not. We all stand at the crossroads between darkness and light more often than we admit. We all feel the strain of choices that have no easy answers. And all of us, if we are honest, long for redemption—something that tells us our struggles were not wasted and our sacrifices were not in vain.

At sixty-seven, this is the lesson that rings truest:
the weight we carry does not define us. What defines us is the love we choose, the faith we hold, the light we walk toward, and the redemption that meets us along the way.

#LightInTheDarkness
#FaithInTheJourney
#RedemptionStory
#LessonsAt67
#HopeThatHolds

Carrying Weight, Seeking Light

Photo by eberhard grossgasteiger on Pexels.com

Over the past several weeks, I’ve noticed a pattern rising in my heart—a mix of heaviness and hope, grief and gratitude, pressure and purpose. The holiday season always magnifies what is present in the soul, and this year is no different. I find myself remembering the people who shaped me, the stories that anchor me, and the losses that still echo in quiet moments.

At the same time, my days are full of responsibilities—engineering projects, community work, pastoral care, business decisions, family needs. I feel the pull from every direction, not because any of it is unworthy, but because all of it matters. Leadership in any form carries an invisible weight. And sometimes that weight presses harder in November and December.

Yet beneath all of this, something steady keeps tugging me forward: hope.

Not the thin kind that ignores reality or paints over pain. But the kind that believes God is present even in the unanswered questions. The kind that remembers that Jesus steps into weary places, not polished ones. The kind that says, “You don’t have to carry this alone.”

As I look back at conversations, projects, and prayers from the last week, I see the same thread weaving through everything: healing. Healing for myself. Healing for others. Healing for the places in our community that feel stretched or wounded. Healing for the dreams that feel fragile but not extinguished.

And the truth is, hope and healing aren’t found by escaping life—they grow right in the middle of it.

Every memory that stings reminds me there was love.
Every responsibility that feels heavy reminds me there is purpose.
Every moment of fatigue reminds me I need grace beyond myself.

And grace keeps showing up.

So I’m choosing to keep walking—one step at a time, one day at a time—trusting that the God who has carried me this far will carry me further still. My prayer is simple:

“Lord, meet me here. Make something good out of the weight I’m carrying. Let Your light break through.”

Because even in the heaviness, hope is rising.
#HopeInTheJourney
#JesusHeals
#GraceInRealLife

What I Would Tell You Now

For Joshua Blake Hargrove from John Hagrove his dad June 2025
1984–2002

My son,

If I could sit across from you today—twenty-three years after you left this world—I would begin with the words that still rise unbidden in my heart: I miss you. Every day. Not with the same sharp ache as before, but with a quiet, steady presence that stays with me like breath. You are never far from my thoughts, never absent from my soul.

I would tell you honestly: a piece of me went quiet the day you died—and another part went angry. I wasn’t just broken. I was furious. Angry at the unfairness, the helplessness, the fact that the world kept spinning without you in it. I didn’t know how to carry the weight of that kind of grief, so I buried it. I buried the part of me that laughed freely, dreamed boldly, and felt things too deeply.

And in its place, I went to work. I built things. I solved problems. I became dependable and productive. But underneath it all, I was still just a father who had lost his son. The music stopped. The prayers faded. I kept going because I didn’t know how to stop—but I also didn’t know how to live fully anymore.

If I could tell you anything now, it would be this: Your death didn’t end me—but it did remake me. And over time, with grace and patience, something inside me began to stir again.

I would tell you that God didn’t abandon me. He held me through it all, though I didn’t always recognize His presence. And in the years that followed, a few key people—some family, some unexpected friends—entered my life and helped awaken parts of me I thought were gone forever. None of them replaced you. They couldn’t. But somehow, through their kindness, gentleness, and love, I began to feel again. I began to believe that I could be fully alive, even while still carrying your absence. I hold those relationships with reverence. They brought back to life the part of me that knows how to love without fear.

I would tell you about your mama. She’s still the strongest woman I’ve ever known. Her grief was quiet, but it ran deep. We’ve grown older together, and we still speak your name. Sometimes in words, sometimes in silence. You are still part of our home, our hearts, our story.

I’d tell you about the little ones in our family—your cousins’ children, great-nieces and nephews you never got to meet. I watch them play, laugh, stumble and grow, and I see glimpses of you. Their lives are full of light, and I imagine the kind of uncle you would have been—funny, kind, full of mischief and wisdom. Your absence in those moments is a presence all its own.

I’d tell you that I’ve come to believe in resurrection—not just of bodies, but of broken hearts, of joy, of purpose. I’ve come to believe that the deepest love isn’t erased by death. It changes form, but it remains. And I carry you as part of that resurrection. You are part of what brought me back to life.

Most of all, I would tell you that you are still my son. Nothing—not time, not distance, not death—can ever take that from us. You made me a father. You taught me the kind of love that doesn’t fade. And though I never got to watch you grow old, you’ve shaped the man I’ve become more than anyone else ever could.

If I could hold your face in my hands one more time, I would say what I still say in the silence of prayer:

You are my boy. I love you. And I will carry you until the day I see you again.

With all I am,
Dad

And I would tell you—humbly—that someone came into my life many years later who helped awaken something that had gone dormant inside me. That I could still feel. Maybe I was allowed to be fully alive again. I hold that chapter of my life with reverence. As strange and sacred as it was, it brought something back to me I thought was lost forever: the part of me that knows how to love without fear.

The quiet time

As I sit here on a quiet November evening in 2025, sixty-seven years after that January night in Kirbyville, I find myself doing what old engineers do best: tracing the signal all the way back to its source.

It started with a curious boy in Buna who followed a dog named Brownie too far into the pasture and had to be rescued by the fire department, milk and cookies waiting with Ms. James. That same boy took apart radios just to watch the voices spill out, swam a mile for a merit badge at thirteen, and somehow earned the rank of Eagle Scout before most kids earn a driver’s license. He learned drafting at his grandfather Truman’s knee, watched his dad Robert come home from Dupont with plastic under his nails and quiet integrity in his eyes, and felt his mom Lavee’s faith wrap around the house like the smell of coffee and bacon on Sunday mornings.

That boy met a girl named Leisa at a graduation ceremony in 1975, and something silent and certain took root. We married in 1980 while I was still failing (and then passing) calculus at Lamar, barely scraping together rent, nearly losing each other in the exhaustion and anger of those lean years. But grace is stubborn, and we stayed. In 1984 God gave us Joshua—our Disney World miracle—and for eighteen bright years the three of us were a complete world.

Then came a season of wandering in the wilderness of my own making. Through the late 1980s and most of the 1990s—while on the outside I was climbing towers, building companies, and looking like the picture of success—inside I was coming undone. I wore a faith mask on Sundays and a competent-engineer mask on weekdays, but underneath I was angry, blind, and selfish. I kicked walls, punched doors, tore things apart with my hands when I couldn’t fix what was breaking in my soul. I hurt Leisa and Joshua with fits of rage I still regret, and toward the end I tried to fill the God-shaped hole with every wrong thing I could find. I was lost and didn’t even know how lost.

But on an October night in Orange, Texas, in 2000—two years before the worst day of my life—Jesus found me anyway. I was on my knees at a simple prayer rail, surrounded by other broken men unloading their souls, tears soaking a box of Kleenex. It wasn’t a dramatic revival; it was gentle, forceful, prevenient grace pulling me home before I had earned a single step. That night the signal broke through the noise, and I came back to the Father who had never stopped chasing me.

Two years later, when the valley came and losing Joshua in 2002 broke things in me I didn’t know could break, I discovered that God had already been rebuilding the foundation. The rage was quieter, the mask no longer fit, and though the grief was deeper than any ocean, I now had an Anchor. For a long time I still wore a limp and carried the ache, but I no longer carried it alone. Grief taught me that the capacity to ache is the capacity to love, and love, it turns out, is the only thing that outlasts death. Leisa and I opened our home, led youth groups, hosted Bible studies, and tried—imperfectly—to turn sorrow into sanctuary for others walking the same road.

Photo by Christopher Politano on Pexels.com

The years after Joshua are marked by a limp I will carry to my grave, but also by a clarity I never had before. Grief taught me that the capacity to ache is the capacity to love, and love, it turns out, is the only thing that outlasts death. Leisa and I opened our home, led youth groups, hosted Bible studies, and tried—imperfectly—to turn sorrow into sanctuary for others walking the same road.

Meanwhile the work kept calling. From student engineer at Gulf States Utilities to supervising microwave networks that spanned half of Texas; from founding New Signals Engineering on a wing and a prayer to watching it grow into two decades of service; from climbing towers in the rain to keep the lights on in rural counties, to standing up a wireless internet company in the middle of a pandemic so kids in Buna could go to school online—none of it was glamorous. Most of it was midnight pages, impossible budgets, and prayers whispered over schematics. But it mattered. Lights stayed on. People stayed connected. Grace snuck in through fiber and radio waves.

Looking back, I see the thread God was weaving when I could only see tangles: every tower I climbed, every co-op boardroom where I fought for resilience, every late-night text to a grieving parent, every tower hand-off that brought broadband to a forgotten corner of East Texas—it was all the same calling dressed in different clothes. Build. Repair. Connect. Stand in the gap.

I am not the man I planned to be. Thank God. I am the man grief refined, grace pursued, and Leisa loved into existence. Joshua is waiting (I know this in my bones), my dad and grandparents have gone ahead, and one day soon the final signal will come through clear: “Well done.”

Until then, I keep showing up—still curious, still learning, still building, still surrendering. The quiet work goes on.

And by the mercy that has chased me across six decades of East Texas pine and microwave paths, I can say with all my heart: I had a great life. Because He did.

My Epitath

Here lies John E. Hargrove January 24, 1958 – [date yet to be written]

A boy from Buna who never stopped wondering how things worked and never stopped trying to make them work for others.

He chased signals across microwave towers and fiber miles, built networks that carried light to forgotten places, and in the darkest valleys carried the light of Christ to broken hearts.

Husband to Leisa for a lifetime and beyond, father to Joshua—whose brief life taught him how to love forever, son of Robert and Lavee, brother, friend, mentor, builder.

He knew grief intimately, yet chose every morning to show up, to do the quiet work that lasts when applause has long faded.

He was not perfect. He was faithful.

Still learning. Still building. Still becoming. Now, at last, fully known and fully home.

“Have a great life. If I can, I can too.” (He did.)

Soli Deo Gloria

Keeping Going When No One’s Listening?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to do work that matters when it feels like no one cares.

For the past few years, I’ve been advocating for rural East Texas communities—places like Buna, Newton, San Augustine. I’ve built communication frameworks, written strategic plans, installed digital kiosks, organized meetings, drafted policy briefs. I’ve tried to give voice to communities that have been systematically left out of planning conversations, to help people shape their own futures instead of having decisions made for them from far away.

Most days, it feels like pushing a boulder uphill alone.

The Generational Game

I’m starting to realize this work isn’t measured in months or even years—it’s generational. The infrastructure I’m building, these communication frameworks and pilot models and community briefs, they’re seeds that may not fully mature in my lifetime. And I think I’ve been measuring success wrong.

Maybe success isn’t getting county commissioners to read every brief I send. Maybe it’s that one local leader who picks up this work five years from now and has a template to start from. Maybe it’s just that these documents exist at all—proof that someone saw what was happening, cared enough to name it, and offered solutions.

That’s not failure. That’s foundation-building.

Celebrating What’s Actually There

When the big wins feel impossible, I’m learning to notice the small ones:

A county commissioner who actually responded to a community brief
A kiosk that’s been running for six months without breaking down
One new business owner who showed up to learn about the community
The fact that I’ve created templates other rural organizers can use

These aren’t nothing. They’re evidence of progress, even if they’re not transformation yet.

Finding My People

The San Augustine meeting this year reminded me of something important. Sitting around that table with Eddie, Nancy, Tania, and Marianne—people doing similar work in their own communities—I didn’t feel alone. We shared frustrations, traded contacts, problem-solved together.

I’ve been spending too much energy seeking alignment “up”—with county officials, state agencies, foundations—and not enough building lateral relationships with peers. Those relationships aren’t just strategic. They’re sanity-preserving. They remind me I’m not crazy for thinking this work matters.

The Documentation Matters

Even when nothing changes immediately, these reports I’m writing serve a purpose:

They validate what communities are experiencing
They create a record for future organizers
They protect against institutional amnesia (“we didn’t know there was a problem”)

I need to remember that documentation is activism. Recording what’s happening, naming the gaps, proposing solutions—that’s meaningful work even when it doesn’t produce immediate results.

Letting Go of Universal Buy-In

Not everyone is going to get it. Some officials will remain indifferent. Some developers will keep ignoring community input. Some residents will stay skeptical of any change.

That’s okay. The goal isn’t to convince everyone—it’s to build enough of a coalition to create momentum. I don’t need universal support for this work to matter.

Taking Real Breaks

I’m bad at this one. I need to take actual breaks—not performative self-care, but real disengagement. Days where I don’t mention rural development. Weeks where the kiosks can wait.

This work will always be there. It’s generational, remember? Burning out doesn’t serve anyone.

What Does “Enough” Look Like?

I’m trying to get more specific about what meaningful progress would look like in the next year. Not transformation—just progress:

Three communities actually using the communication framework I built
One successful regional roundtable where rural leaders are at the table
Maybe a single rural navigator position gets funded somewhere

When I make it concrete like that, I can tell the difference between “not enough impact yet” and “actually making progress.” They’re not the same thing.

Why I Keep Going

Buna, Newton, San Augustine—these aren’t abstractions to me. They’re people who deserve to shape their own futures. The work I’m doing affirms their dignity and their right to be heard.

That has value independent of whether it produces immediate systemic change.

The fact that I keep showing up, keep documenting, keep building frameworks when no one asked me to—I don’t think that’s naivete anymore. I think it’s moral courage. Or stubbornness. Maybe both.

The question isn’t whether to keep going. It’s how to keep going sustainably, strategically, with enough support to avoid burning out completely.

I don’t have all the answers yet. But writing this helps. Naming what’s hard helps. Remembering I’m building foundations, not finished structures—that helps too.

If you’re doing similar work somewhere else—advocating for a place everyone else overlooks, building infrastructure no one asked for, showing up when it feels pointless—you’re not alone. And you’re not crazy.

Keep going. The work matters.

Let My Love Open the Door

(inspired by Pete Townshend’s song and the words of Jesus in Matthew 22:37–40)

When Pete Townshend sang, “Let my love open the door to your heart,” he probably wasn’t trying to preach a sermon—but he touched on something deeply spiritual. Love is the master key. Jesus said it even more plainly:

“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’

This is the first and greatest commandment.

And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

—Matthew 22:37–40

Everything—every rule, every teaching, every act of faith—hinges on love. When Jesus boiled down the whole of Scripture into two laws, He was saying that religion isn’t about gates and guards; it’s about open doors.

When we love God fully, our hearts unlock to His presence. When we love others sincerely, their hearts begin to open too. The power that heals, restores, and reconciles begins to flow freely—because love always finds a way through.

So maybe today the invitation is simple:

Let His love open the door.

Let it unlock your fears, your grudges, your guarded places.

Let it swing wide the door of compassion for your neighbor, the one who’s hard to love, the one who doesn’t love you back.

The song says, “When people keep repeating that you’ll never fall in love… let my love open the door.”

Jesus says the same, only deeper. His love isn’t just romantic—it’s redemptive. It doesn’t just make life better; it makes life new.

#LoveGod #LovePeople #LetHisLoveOpenTheDoor #FaithInAction #HopeLivesHere #JesusChangesEverything