Why?

I’ve been asking myself a simple question lately: why?

Because something has shifted in me over the past couple of years. Writing—once something I rarely felt drawn to—has become almost a daily necessity. I find myself writing Bible studies, working on a memoir, adding to a growing collection of blog posts, and building on the novel I’ve already completed. Along the way, I’ve also written multiple study guides and continue producing podcast content. None of this was part of some grand plan. It just… happened.

And now I’m left wondering: why now?

Maybe it’s the season of life I’m in. As I approach 70, I’m increasingly aware that more of my life is behind me than ahead of me. That realization has a way of sharpening your focus. My father passed away at 76, and whether I like it or not, that number sits quietly in the back of my mind. It doesn’t feel morbid—it feels clarifying. Time is no longer an abstract concept. It’s personal.

But I don’t write because I think I’ve discovered something revolutionary. I don’t believe I hold some hidden truth that the world is waiting to hear. In fact, most of what I write is probably already known, already said—just not in my voice. And maybe that’s part of the answer.

Because voice matters.

Writing for Those Who Come After

If I’m honest, one of the deepest motivations behind all of this is my family—my children, and especially my grandchildren. I want them to know me, not just as a memory, but as a voice. I want them to understand how I think about God, how I wrestle with Scripture, how I’ve tried (and sometimes failed) to walk faithfully through life.

I also want them to glimpse a world they will never fully experience—the one I grew up in. A different place. A different pace. A different set of challenges. There are stories, lessons, and even mistakes that I want to pass on, not because they’re extraordinary, but because they’re ours.

And I want them to know what their grandmother and I have walked through together—the trials, the struggles, the quiet victories that never make headlines but shape a life nonetheless.

A Strange Sense of Preparation

There’s another thought that’s crossed my mind—one that I can’t quite shake.

I remember watching my wife before each of our children were born. There was always this burst of energy, this urgency to prepare—to clean, to organize, to get everything ready for what was coming. At the time, it seemed almost instinctive.

And I wonder sometimes if what I’m experiencing now is something like that.

Not in a physical sense, but in a spiritual one.

What if God is preparing something? What if there’s a kind of “birth” on the horizon—not necessarily something I’ll see fully—but something I can sense? And what if this drive to write is part of that preparation? A way of channeling that energy into something that will outlast me?

I don’t know. But it feels possible.

Leaving Something Behind

Without drifting too far into the somber, I do recognize another reality: the men in my family haven’t typically lived long lives. Early 70s seems to be the pattern. That awareness doesn’t frighten me, but it does prompt me to think about legacy.

Not legacy in the grand, public sense.

But something simpler.

Something more personal.

I think I want to leave behind a record—not of achievements, but of thoughts. Of faith. Of questions. Of a life lived in pursuit of God, even when that pursuit felt uncertain.

Because here’s the truth: I don’t know how many people read what I write. Very few listen to the podcast. The audience, by any measurable standard, is small.

And yet… I keep going.

Because the compulsion isn’t tied to the response.

It’s tied to the calling.

Breaking the Silence of the Past

There’s one more piece to this.

My family, for all its strengths, never really documented its story. The few things I know about my father came from conversations later in his life. Beyond that, much of our history fades into silence. I know very little about the generations before him – or my mother’s – who they were, what they believed, what they endured.

That absence has always felt like a quiet loss.

And maybe, in some small way, I’m trying to change that.

I want my grandchildren—and their children—to be able to pick up something I’ve written and hear my voice in their heads. To know not just what I thought, but how I thought. To feel a connection across time.

In fact, I can’t help but imagine something bigger.

What if this didn’t stop with me?

What if each generation added its own chapter? Its own stories, reflections, and lessons? What if, a hundred years from now, there was a shelf somewhere filled with the ongoing story of our family—volume after volume of ordinary lives, faithfully recorded?

A living, growing testimony.

A generational conversation.

I don’t know if that will happen.

But I like the idea.

So… Why?

Why do I write?

I’m not sure I can give a single, definitive answer.

Maybe it’s time.

Maybe it’s legacy.

Maybe it’s preparation.

Maybe it’s love for my family.

Maybe it’s simply obedience to a quiet nudge I don’t fully understand.

Or maybe it’s all of those things, woven together.

What I do know is this:

I have to write.

Even if no one reads it.

Even if no one listens.

Even if the only people who ever truly engage with it are sitting around a table decades from now, flipping through pages and saying, “I can just hear him saying this!.”

That’s enough.

More than enough

in His Grip,

paige

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