Appleton City, Haircut Day, and Word Before World

I woke up today in Appleton City, Missouri, in my tent on Pastor Jerry's lawn at the Lutheran church.

I had every intention of sleeping in, until it got so hot that I had to get out of the tent. By 6 a.m. I was wide awake. I immediately said my prayers, read scripture from the Bible app, and listened to the John 3:16 devotional before scrolling.

This has been the foundation of my sobriety since May 13th, 2026.

It's only been about three weeks or so, but it has felt like a lifetime.

I don't feel like I'm on a pink cloud at all. Sincerely, I kind of dread walking every day. But every day, I just pray and move my feet. I recognize a peace that has been as foreign to me as my childhood. Maybe not that far back, but it's been a long while since I remember just being — and not fighting everything.

The romance of being on the road, not shaving, not getting a haircut, not carrying the weight of what other people think about me — that's something I've cherished from day one. But the longer my hair got, the scragglier I became, and I noticed it started taking a little longer to create connections with people.

And recently, that started mattering to me.

I'll back up and tell you why.

My first walk across America was the same way. I had people suggest I wear flowers on my gear so I wouldn't scare people away, and I chuckled to myself. On treks like this, I just didn't care. If someone judged me, so be it.

But I still connected with people.

I've connected on this walk as well, but the first walk and this one have been similar and different in so many ways.

I grew up in church and later graduated into alcoholism.

I got sober for the first time around 20 years old, after only drinking a couple years and already having two DUIs. I stayed sober that first time for two and a half years, relapsed for a day, bounced back with another year, and thus began my 30-year cycle of building things up and tearing them back down.

I've struggled mightily with organized religion. I've tried Buddhism, New Age Christianity, regular Christianity — something usually just didn't feel right.

But no matter how far off course I got, there was always this image of Jesus on the cross saying, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

It has always resonated with me on a soul level.

No matter how far I drifted, I couldn't escape that vision.

Around the time I started battling alcoholism, I also started second-guessing everything I had been taught. I became deeply aware of the motives of religion, and I remember drawing a line in the sand. I didn't want to believe something because of reward or punishment. I just wanted to know the truth.

The one thing that never stuck with me was atheism.

To me, this world and universe have too many layers, too many mysteries. You can argue evolution, primordial ooze, extinction, progression, regression — all of that. I wasn't there. I don't know.

But something on a soul or spirit level has always been there for me, and that's what I've spent my life trying to reconcile.

What was on the other side of the singularity before the Big Bang? What holds that? And then what holds that?

There are mysteries I don't think we'll ever understand.

And in the middle of all of that mystery is Jesus asking forgiveness for the people murdering Him.

That's hard to reconcile sometimes.

It's hard to reconcile with other parts of the Bible too. (Please God don't strike me down.)

It's hard to reconcile with the harm some religions have done in the name of God. It's hard to reconcile with politics. It's all difficult to reconcile, in my opinion.

The Bible talks about the lukewarm believer, and that has been me to a tee my whole life.

Early on during this walk, I made a decision: before this journey was over, I was either going to be sold out for Christ, or I was going to abandon the idea entirely.

Being stuck on the fence for 30 years has led me nowhere.

Truthfully, I wasn't expecting the former to take root this early in the walk.

I began this walk while I was still periodically drinking.

Those days around my last drunk, I was listening to a former Hells Angel on the Shawn Ryan podcast, and it had a huge impact on me. I was in suicidal deliberation in my own mind. I felt too far gone to be redeemed, too far gone to become a good guy again.

Then I listened to this former Hells Angel tell his story.

He was either one hell of an actor, or God had been doing something big inside him.

That cracked the door open just enough for me to beg God to come in.

A few days later, I listened to Bryce Crawford, and he hit the nail on the head for me. Every time I got close to buying into the church thing, the people around me just didn't line up with what I was hearing. I wasn't even judging them as hypocrites — it just felt fake sometimes. Like a performance.

Those two podcasts, combined with setting everything else aside, led me to a decision:

I was really going to try to spend time getting to know my Creator.

That was another issue I always had. I'd pray sincerely and feel nothing. My attitude wouldn't change. It felt empty.

Honestly, I even felt that during the first couple days of this new attempt.

That's when I really started praying for the things inside me that were blocking me from God to be revealed and removed.

And it was when I started letting go of resentment and praying for forgiveness that a little light started coming through.

There's another passage about the fruits of the spirit.

I know you're not supposed to test God, and maybe consciously I don't, but deep down that's what I look for: fruit.

What's my fruit?

And I started finding some peace that felt different.

So yeah, this is a long road ahead for me. I don't know what it's going to look like before it's all said and done, but I'm committed to this process of growing closer to God.

And recently, it started mattering how I looked.

Not because I cared whether people judged me, but because if I had some fruit to share, I didn't want unnecessary walls standing in the way of connection.

So today was haircut day.

Time to pray and move my feet.
Peace and love,
Robert