I plant the seed. Christ finishes the work.

I was an actor

I dropped out of college, my dad cut me off, and I moved to Los Angeles to prove everybody wrong. I was successful at it. I made a film that went around the world for a summer of festivals, started a production company, took an office on Rodeo Drive. And I never once felt fulfilled.

Everything I was doing was finding fulfillment within me, as me, for me. Everything was about me. That is not a confession dressed up as humility — it is just an accurate description of how I lived.

I’d been introduced to Christ a dozen times

Catholic high school in Louisiana. A Jewish father, an Episcopalian mother. Los Angeles handed me Buddhism, Tibetan mysticism and Scientology. Then a girlfriend who was born again and determined to get me into a church.

None of it took. I walked into that church telling her that if anybody looked at me strangely, or tried to make me sing or speak in tongues, I was leaving.

He wasn’t talking at me. He was talking to me.

The pastor opened by talking about Lance Armstrong, which was something I could actually relate to, so I listened. He said the cross Lance wore could easily have become one more symbol of death — and that for Christians it is the opposite, a symbol of life.

I blanked out on most of the rest. What landed was that for the first time, somebody in that position wasn’t talking at me. He was talking to me. I left with every prejudice I had about Christianity in pieces.

That is the whole reason this site reads the way it does. I was not argued into anything. Somebody respected me enough to meet me where I already was, and that did the work.

Half the day on the body, half the day on the Bible

At the same time my body was falling apart. I had been a swimming, biking, running machine, and then every movement became difficult. I was convinced I had MS. The doctors landed on fibromyalgia, told me I had a sixty-year-old’s back, and told me I would never be an athlete again.

So I split my days. Half of them studying muscle tissue — how the fiber is structured, how it regenerates — which I put together with my biomechanics background to build the tools to work on myself the way a therapist would. The other half studying the Bible, trying to work out who Jesus actually was.

I had no interest in religion. But I loved the Jesus dude the Bible talked about. Not the church and not the religion — the man who gave everything so that I could be me.

Those two halves became TriggerPoint. I had not set out to start a company. I had set out to walk again.

I believed it was my ministry. I still felt alone.

We lived on the road out of an Airstream for a while, shipping orders as we went, and the foundation under every decision was the word of Christ rather than religion. The mission was to educate people and let them decide for themselves. I genuinely felt like I was walking alongside people who needed the message.

Then I sold it. I retired early on purpose — I wanted to be a parent, I wanted to be the best husband I could be, and those were the right reasons. I would make the same call again. But a lot of focus went missing along with the work. I tried other sports. I traveled. I kept landing on the same conclusion: there was a greater purpose, and I had not found it yet.

Thousands of miles, on my own

So I went back to running. Alone, for thousands of miles. No distraction. Nobody telling me I should be going faster or slower, that I should be better, that I should be more driven. Nothing. Just me.

In that time alone I re-established my bond with Christ, closer than it had ever been. It became the driving focus for all of it — being a better father, a better husband, a better human being.

Covering the distance He made for me

It started to feel like I was covering a distance He had already laid out for me. So I went looking into His travel — where He went, how far, how He spent the three years of His ministry. That is where 3,125 came from.

What struck me was not the number. It was how much of that time He spent on His feet. Not judging anyone. Delivering the message. Sharing it with whoever would listen. Knowing exactly how it ended, and walking it anyway.

He went on foot

Read the Gospels looking for transport and you will find almost none. Jesus moves between Galilee, Judea, Samaria and the Decapolis — up to Jerusalem for the feasts, back north again, out to the wilderness, round the lake. He covers that ground the way everyone covered ground then. Walking.

The one time He chose to ride, it was a borrowed donkey into Jerusalem, and that was not convenience. It was a deliberate act of humility and a fulfillment of prophecy, and the Gospel writers point at it precisely because it was unusual.

His ministry was not something that began once He arrived somewhere. The movement was the ministry. The conversations happened on roads. The disciples were called mid-task and then walked beside Him for three years. People met Him because He came to where they already were.

Where the number comes from

Add up the journeys recorded across the Gospels and 3,125 is the figure that keeps coming back. Estimates vary and some run higher, but this is the number that recurred often enough to stand behind, so it is the one we use.

For scale: 3,125 miles is roughly Los Angeles to New York, and then some. Spread across three years it is a little under three miles a day, every day, for a thousand days.

That is the part worth sitting with. It is not a heroic number. It is an ordinary number, repeated for a very long time.

The misfits in the dirt

Go out on the trails and look at who is there. Misfits, in the dirt, celebrating each other’s accomplishments. The support. The beauty. The love and the passion for simply being out there. Winning is close to meaningless. What counts is the distance covered.

Every step breaks you down, physically and mentally. Every step builds you back stronger, physically and mentally, through Christ. I do not know a cleaner picture of what opening your mind and your heart actually feels like.

People tell me they are in the wilderness. Free from the city. One with nature. I agree with all of it. I would only add that Christ made every one of those things, and I believe He brought that person to that place at that time. Sometimes all it takes is a few simple words from me while we are out there.

I don’t get to judge anybody about anything. I plant the seed. Christ finishes the work.