When you’re raised in small-town Virginia by a redneck father and a Mennonite mother, certain things become ingrained. And when you marry a small-town girl and have two small-town kids, all you want to do is pass those ingrained things along.

Like believing the best life is one lived in the country enjoying the pleasures it provides—summer nights beneath the stars, rocking chairs on the front porch, deer grazing in the fields. And believing that no matter how iffy life can get sometimes, there are some things that are eternal and unchanging.

But above all else, believing that in everything there is story waiting to be told.

That’s where I come in.

The thing about life is that there’s so much of it. We spend our days bombarded with things to do and have done, with Stuff, and it’s easy to overlook the things that matter when they’re surrounded by things that just don’t. Trust me. I speak from experience.

As confusing as this world can sometimes be, it’s helpful that all the things we really need to know aren’t confined the hidden places but shout their presence and beg our attention. Wisdom doesn’t lurk, it dances.

Life’s great lessons are freely offered in the small moments of our everyday, in the people we meet and the places we go. It’s all the proof I need that God is just as much blue jeans as flowing robes, that truth is simple rather than complicated, and that despite it all, life is beautiful and worth the living.