Chapter XXII: The Letter That Undid Me
A question about evolution leads to a moment I could not dismiss, and to the words that finally broke me.
When Recognition Stops Being Theoretical
What remained was not another idea to refine or defend, but the personal cost of recognition itself—what it demands once it stops living in theory and begins to take hold in the body and the life of the one who sees it.I thought the next step would be deeper interpretation.
I was wrong.
Earlier in this book, I wrote about how The Blueprint of Life was born out of my relationship with MB, and how so much of what then shaped this work arrived unbidden - the unending stream of ideas, insights, and connections that appeared every single time I thought the book was finished, each time forcing me to stop, reconsider, and revise. The pattern became so consistent that I began joking about it. Another message. Another addition. Another interruption that turned out not to be an interruption at all.
By the time most of this book was written, my understanding of God had changed, but mostly in my head. I recognized what was happening intellectually. I could see the pattern clearly. But it still felt observational, almost external, like watching something meaningful unfold without fully inhabiting it.
This changed late in the process (actually, it produced the very last addition to the creations of the entirety of the two books, which in retrospect, gives it even more significance (that is if it turns out to be true, but I already think that it is).
It was a Saturday morning. I was alone at the cabin in Montana that I had rented for 7 weeks to remove myself from society in order to write. Lisa was already back in Florida at that time. I had the day to myself. I was thinking about the book, about what still felt unfinished, and I realized I wanted to address evolution—specifically how it is used, often reflexively, to dismiss the possibility of a Creator. I thought of conversations I’d had with Matt about this and decided to call him, asking if he could sketch something I could work from.
He didn’t answer.
I hung up, glanced at my phone, and saw a tweet a friend had just sent me. I opened it. It was about breast milk, about research showing that the milk produced by mothers of boys differs from that of mothers of girls, and that information from an infant’s saliva is absorbed by the mother’s body and alters milk composition when the child is sick. The intelligence of it stopped me cold.
I began scrolling the comments underneath, as I was intrigued (I had not spent more than 5 minutes on Twitter in months by the way). Within a few comments, I landed on an account called Divinely Designed, which had dropped a thread that was deeply engaged with intelligent design and evolution. The arguments were sharp. Thoughtful. Exactly what I had been looking for.
I spent the entire bath reading.
It wasn’t until afterward, standing in the shower, that it hit me what had just happened. I had formed a question. I had reached for Matt. He didn’t answer. As I hung up the phone, the screen showed a tweet a friend had just sent. I then scrolled two comments down. Meaning that, within seconds of my original thought, unplanned, unprompted, a sustained answer was delivered to me.
The speed of it. The specificity. The timing.
I knew what had happened.
And at that moment, almost like a film cutting through a series of scenes, a few memories surfaced: specific events I had been called to, and a handful of people who had appeared and remained in my life during my work throughout COVID. People I had connected with, then collaborated with, without ever understanding why those particular paths had converged when they did.
I suddenly understood it. Clearly. But the understanding did not arrive with urgency or adrenaline. My heart was not racing. I did not jump out of the shower to tell Lisa about the Twitter thread and this realization. Instead, I just sat there, unusually calm, grounded, contemplative. Those events were not random. Those relationships had not formed organically by chance. They had been placed in my path, and I had been guided down it without knowing. At that moment, the word coincidence disappeared from my vocabulary.
That was the moment I was convinced.
And I’ll leave it there.
When Conviction Finds Its Cost: Hearing His Voice
