07/10/2026
I left everything to follow him. My boat, my business, the only life I had ever known. I walked away from all of it the day he looked at me and said, come.
For three years I was never far from his side. I ate every meal with him. I watched him do things no man should be able to do. He knew me better than my own family did. Better than I knew myself.
One day he looked at me and gave me a new name. He called me a rock. He said he would build something that would outlast the world on someone like me.
And the night it all came apart, I told him to his face: even if every last one of them runs, I never will. I would die before I would ever leave you.
I meant it. God knows I meant it.
Hours later I was standing by a fire. A girl looked at me and said, you were with him. I looked her in the eye and told her I don't know the man. She pressed. I swore on it. The third time I cursed and said I never knew him at all.
Then the rooster crowed. And across the courtyard, he turned and looked right at me. I went out and wept like something in me had died. Because that is who I really am when it costs me something.
Not a rock. A coward.
So I was sure he was done with me. I had been handed the name and I had thrown it away.
He wasn't done with me. Years later I sat down and wrote a letter to people who felt as disqualified as I did. And I told them the truest thing I know:
You are chosen. You are called. You belong to God.
I didn't write it because I was strong. I wrote it because I know exactly what it feels like to be the last person who should get to say it.
My name is Peter. It was never about who I was. It's about who he is.
What label are you carrying that was never yours to carry?
