Happy Monday, Creators 👋

Just over five years ago, my wife Char went in for a regularly scheduled prenatal appointment. We had no idea that visit would be the first scene in a story we weren't ready to live.

Just a couple of days after that fateful visit, our daughter Hannady came into this world nearly ten weeks early. What followed was five weeks in the NICU. We were watching Hannady reach milestones, learning how to care for a premature baby, and still trying to absorb the fact that this was actually our life now. It was one of the most disorienting stretches I've ever walked through.

There were moments I was full of faith and vision for a bright future. There were other moments when I was terrified and just holding on. I consider myself a man of faith. Romans 8:28 is my life verse — I have stood on it more times than I can count.

But despite all of that faith, I still flinched.

I'm not sharing that to be dramatic. I'm sharing it because I think you have been in a space like that — maybe not a NICU, but a moment where your faith met a reality that didn't wait for you to feel ready. You flinched too. And you've been quietly wondering what that says about you.

Here's what I've come to understand:
Flinching isn't the opposite of faith. Running from the truth is.

Thankfully, we’re not the only ones who have had to deal with the tension of a tough reality and holding on to faith that things would work out.

Picture it. North Vietnam. 1965. Navy pilot James Stockdale ejects from a crippled aircraft. He hits the ground — knee shattered, shoulder destroyed — and becomes a prisoner of war for eight years. He was tortured more than twenty times and spent years in solitary confinement.

Years later, when author Jim Collins asked him how he survived it, his answer was this:

It wasn't the pessimists who broke. It was the optimists. The ones who said "we'll be home by Christmas" — and when Christmas passed, said Easter. And when Easter passed, said next Christmas. Every broken deadline took something irreplaceable with it. They died, Stockdale said, of a broken heart.

Collins called this the Stockdale Paradox. Two things, held together, non-negotiable on both ends: unwavering conviction about the outcome, and unsparing honesty about where you actually are.

I've sat with my life verse for a long time. And the more I sit with it, the more I think we sometimes use it in ways it was never meant to be used.

That verse does not say all things feel good. It does not say all things look good from where you're standing. It says God works — present tense, active, right in the middle of the mess — for good. That means the verse was written for people who are in something hard. It was written for the NICU. For the slow quarter. For the year that didn't go the way you planned.

To claim that promise, you have to be honest about what you're actually in. You can't receive the comfort of Romans 8:28 while pretending the situation isn't what it is. The verse holds both — the reality of the moment and the redemption of the outcome.

Flinching, for me, wasn't a failure of faith. It was my humanity meeting something real. What mattered was that I didn't let the flinch become the final word. I held the truth of those five weeks, and I held Romans 8:28, and I refused to let go of either one.

Hannady is home. She is thriving. And I understand that verse in a way I never could have without that experience.

see this play out in the creative and entrepreneurial space all the time. Two versions of the same mistake, just dressed differently.

The first is running your life — and your business — on optimism alone. Believing things will work out without honestly looking at whether they're working. Using faith as a reason to avoid the numbers, the hard conversation, the honest self-assessment. That's not trust. That's avoidance with a scripture attached. And like Stockdale's optimists, you'll eventually run out of Christmases.

The second is the reverse — being so deep in the data, so focused on the metrics, that you lose the vision entirely. Every slow week starts to feel like a verdict. You begin optimizing for the algorithm and stop building for the person you're actually called to serve. The facts are there. The faith is gone. And without both, you don't have the Paradox — you just have anxiety.

The narrow road is holding both at the same time. Honest about where you are. Unshaken about where you're going.

#1: Anchor your conviction

Write down — in one sentence — what you believe you're ultimately building and why it matters. Not a goal. A calling. Think of it as your Romans 8:28 for your work. Put it somewhere you'll see it before you open your analytics. It does not change when the numbers do.

#2: Get clear about your gut-level reality

Once a week, look honestly at your actual situation — without looking away from it and without spiraling into worst-case thinking. What is the data actually telling you? Where are you right now? Stewardship requires sight. You can't work with what you won't look at.

#3: Adjust your actions — not your calling

With your conviction in one hand and your reality in the other, ask: What does faithfulness look like this week?

I hope this message finds you well. I’m sharing from my heart in hopes that you will be inspired to unearth and live out your God-given purpose. Hopefully, something I said resonated. I would love to hear from you if so. Please feel free to reach out to me on social media.

FYI: I’m mostly active on LinkedIn these days. If you were forwarded this message, you can subscribe here to receive thoughts like this directly in your inbox. And don’t forget to check out the latest episode of my podcast, ConvoRoom with Mark Allen Patterson.