Last week Samson and I took off on a country-wide road tour.

We’re doing book signings and dropping by bookstores along the way, but our first intention is to share the theme of the Refuge trilogy. We want to encourage people to have the wisdom to listen and the courage to act.

We’ve served dinner at a rescue mission, done therapy dog work with men in recovery, signed books, made new friends, hiked a mountain, stood under the world’s largest buffalo statue, made our vote for Chicago’s best deep-dish pizza, and slept under the stars in Montana. Tomorrow, we’ll swim in the Flathead River and I’ll continue to write as it’s given to me.

With several days behind us and many more on the road to go, the overwhelming impression I have is of the goodness of people. We’ve come across so many kind hearts. So many unique life stories. So many broken hearts still fighting and disappointments that haven’t overcome their recipients. The defiant resilience of the human race is a thing of unmatched beauty and as I continue to fight for my own spark of of hope while I wait for my long-awaited good news, I can’t help but be encouraged by the resolve I find in peoples’ eyes.

And I think I’ve seen it most in my first two outriders.

Along the journey, I have eight friends who have been brave enough to volunteer for legs of the journey with me. They’re rolling up their sleeves, jumping into the car and serving me, among others, because of their kind, open, and adventurous hearts. Gina and Heather were my first two outriders and they have left an irremediable impression on me.

Both of these women have been asked to do hard things. And both of them have had to set their jaws and face directly into things most people won’t have to do in this life. Both have things in their stories they wouldn’t have chosen, but I think if you asked either one of them, they wouldn’t rewrite their stories now even if they could.

Gina, who has every reason to choose bitterness, exudes joy. She has chosen to be a source of light instead of walking around carrying her darkness. She defiantly chooses gratitude instead of resentment. She continually checks the broken parts of her nature at the door for a greater mission – to serve, lead, and help others not to experience what she has. And now she’s pursuing a career that will do the same. Gina is a truth teller. She’s a prayer warrior. And she’s a stone-cold killer when it comes to denying herself the position of a victim.

Heather is a startling combination of a goodness-loving Disney princess and an all-out warrior. The things that formed her came early and often, unwelcomed, uninvited, and unjust. But again, instead of pitying herself a victim, she fights – even still – to manage her relationship with the world and the people in it to bring goodness into places she wasn’t offered it. She rewrites the story she was given by the way she chooses to interact with people. She’s a mom who’s not a mom. Taking care, double checking, driving people home, checking in on hearts, minding her tone, wiping the tables, and sweeping the floors. When given a chance to serve, she snatches it. When given the time to be grateful, she welcomes it. When shoved into the dark, she scrapes the bottom of the cave until she finds a spark.

Along this road we’ve met so many people with so many stories and though there seems to be an abundance of hardship and brokenness in this world, there arises from beneath it a superabundance of resilience. Fight. Resolve. I’m seeing the unquivering eyes of the people who created this country. Dreamers. Explorers. Trail blazers. Risk takers. People willing to put everything on the line to write a story better than the one dealt to them. People willing to travel into the unknown. To dare to pursue something that mattered to them.

I see that in the young woman behind the register who’s still figuring life out. I see it in the mom managing a ranch and three Airbnb’s she didn’t ask for. I see it in the man in recovery for the third time who will still smile when a stranger walks into the room. I see it in the young man who was kicked out of his home because of who he loves and who has chosen to spend his life not in bitterness, but in serving the homeless. I see it in Gina, who boldly chooses to offer the world joy instead of bitterness; and in Heather, who creates a rebellious and outrageous goodness in places that are designed to war against it.

I think deep down I knew that when I made a slow enough sojourn across the roads paved through our country, I was sure to unearth the spirit that created it. What has surprised me is that I’ve found it most in the two people who have filled the seat next to me. The outriders. The ones who raised their hands and said, “Yeah, I want to go too. I want to serve too. I want to drive miles to mop floors and give money to strangers and serve dinner to the homeless and sit with men in recovery. I want to sweat and cry and laugh with you.”

As it turns out, the resilience that made this country what it is in the outriders sitting right beside me – right beside you.

I am the resilience. You are the resilience.

So, I must ask – as I often do – what are you doing here?

You are the only one who can do exactly what you were made to do in just the way you were made to do it. Encoded perfectly to communicate, achieve, create, and deliver exactly what you were made for. As long as the journey is, I expect it our callings to change some along the way. They will evolve as we do, and as the world does, but I believe with everything in me that you have a skill set that we need. That you, and only you, can do the things that only you were made for in only the way you can do it.

What I’ve come to see in these first days on the road is that the resilience needed to do what may feel unreachable or impossible is in your blood and in mine. It dripped from the dipped chins of our predecessors as they charged into the great and wild unknown and fell into the earth we now walk upon. It’s in every detail, every turn in the road, every derailment along the way. And they all, gloriously, somehow form the perfect path. And that path is indeed the destination. These things make the journey. And the journey forms the broken and beautiful person who’s willing to drive miles to mop floors for the sheer pleasure of seeing a stranger smile.

I don’t know what awaits on the road ahead.

And I’m still working and waiting for the dawn in my own seemingly endless midnight, but I’m strengthened by the resilience I’ve found out here in this open land… and in the quietly determined seat right beside me.

I wonder what you find in the seat next to you and how it could help you move into your next right step. We need what only you can create. We need your story – every broken, beautiful, complicated piece of it. We need you and the resilience that lives inside you to drive us all to keep going.

Keep going.

So once again, from the road and everything that will come with it…

Here’s to pushing back that great, great horizon.

love, nic