For years, Americans have been told the future of driving is settled. Electric vehicles would take over, gas engines would fade away, and anyone questioning the timeline was “anti-progress.” That narrative just took a direct hit, and it came from General Motors.

GM isn’t tweaking its EV strategy. It’s hitting pause, hard.

Charging times still don’t compete with a five-minute fill-up at a gas station.

The company has indefinitely delayed the next-generation refresh of its electric trucks and SUVs. No new deadline. No confident road map. Just a quiet admission that the plan isn’t working the way Washington, or the automakers themselves, promised.

Translation: The market isn’t cooperating.

Truck stop

After pouring billions into electrification, GM is now sitting on $7.6 billion in EV-related losses from 2025 alone, including a massive write-down tied to scrapped production plans and battery commitments. At the same time, EV sales dropped 43% in the fourth quarter after government incentives dried up. Turns out, when the subsidies disappear, so does a big chunk of the demand.

And while EV inventory piles up, GM is doing something far less glamorous but far more telling: It’s going all in on gas-powered trucks. Silverado. Sierra. The vehicles politicians love to demonize are the same ones keeping the lights on.

Because that’s what Americans are actually buying.

This is the part policymakers don’t want to admit. You can regulate, subsidize, and mandate all you want, but you cannot force consumers to embrace a product that doesn’t meet their needs.

Electric trucks still come with trade-offs that matter in the real world, not in a press release. They’re expensive. Range drops when you tow. Charging infrastructure is inconsistent at best, nonexistent at worst, especially outside major metro areas. And charging times still don’t compete with a five-minute fill-up at a gas station.

And now the bill for ignoring that reality is coming due.

RELATED: Stellantis just blew $26 billion on bad EV bet

NurPhoto/Getty Images

Hero to Zero

GM’s flagship EV facility, Factory Zero, has already seen shutdowns and workforce cuts. Production volumes for high-profile electric models remain underwhelming. And instead of ramping up, GM is scaling back, delaying programs that were once central to its “all-electric future.”

Let’s call this what it is, a strategic retreat.

Not because EV technology is useless. Not because innovation has stalled. But because the timeline was never grounded in how people actually live, drive, and spend their money.

For years, the auto industry was pushed into a corner to build EVs at scale or face regulatory consequences. So they did. They spent. They bet big.

But consumers didn’t get the memo.

Now, the same companies that were racing to meet political deadlines are pivoting back to profitability, back to demand, and back to common sense.

And here’s the uncomfortable truth for the architects of this agenda: Affordability matters more than ideology.

Money talks

When EVs cost more, when infrastructure lags behind, and when performance doesn’t match expectations, consumers don’t “adapt.” They wait. They keep their current vehicles longer. Or they buy what works, which right now is still overwhelmingly internal combustion.

GM’s move isn’t an isolated event. It’s part of a broader industry correction that’s been building for months. Automakers are quietly scaling back, delaying investments, and reassessing timelines that were never realistic to begin with.

The electric future isn’t canceled. But it’s no longer on a government-imposed fast track. It’s being dragged back to reality, where consumers, not regulators, decide what succeeds.

And right now, the verdict is clear. If EVs want to succeed, they better start putting buyers in the driver’s seat.

​Auto industry, Electric vehicles, General motors, Suvs, Gas engines, Gm, Lifestyle, Align cars 

What began as a Supreme Court ruling on workplace discrimination quickly became a sweeping federal campaign to enforce gender ideology across American life — and Camille Varone, senior counsel at the DOJ, has proof.

According to the DOJ’s 2026 report by the Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias, the Biden administration expanded the 2020 Bostock decision far beyond its original scope and used it to rewrite Title IX guidance, pressure public schools, and challenge religious exemptions.

Varone tells BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey that the Biden administration “created all sorts of new memorandums, guidance materials, and threatened across the board doctors, schools, school lunch programs, and girls’ sports with compliance, with their views of gender ideology, at risk of losing federal funding.”

“It sounds like you’re saying the Biden administration really weaponized against Christian institutions, individuals, and schools,” Stuckey comments.

The Biden administration also used the Department of Agriculture to tell public schools that if they did not abide by the rewrite of Title IX and allow boys into girls’ bathrooms, they would not receive SNAP funds, and it considered requests for religious exemptions as “harmful conduct to be regulated.”

“So, they really wanted to use this rewrite of Title IX, this transgender issue specifically, to push back on Christians and Christian institutions exercising our beliefs about biology and gender,” she continues. “Is that right?”

“That’s exactly right,” Varone responds.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Relatable with allie beth stuckey, Relatable 

Mother’s Day is more than flowers, lunch at a nice restaurant, Hallmark cards, and sentimental social media posts. It is a reminder of the profound and formative responsibility mothers carry in shaping the next generation.

In a culture increasingly built on outsourcing, mothers are constantly told someone else can do the job better. Let the schools educate them. Let youth pastors disciple them. Let sports teams shape their character. Let others teach them practical skills. Let screens entertain them while we parents catch up on life.

Our ‘do more’ culture demands peak performance in every area of life, but it is leaving both children and mothers exhausted.

But motherhood was never meant to be outsourced. As a mother of two, these are a few lessons I’ve been learning.

Motherhood is discipleship

Mothers remain one of the single greatest influences on a child’s spiritual formation.

Barna research found that among practicing Christian teens, 79% say their mother encourages them to go to church, 66% say their mother teaches them about the Bible, and 72% say their mother teaches them traditions.

Social media and its culture of comparison can make us think discipleship requires planning elaborate Bible lessons, printing worksheets, and creating Instagram-worthy devotional moments. But with just a little intention, some of the most meaningful spiritual lessons can happen naturally through ordinary life.

You light a candle at dinner and explain, “Jesus is the light of the world.” You pull weeds together and talk about how bitterness and sin grow quickly when we neglect to root them out. Or, as my toddler and I did last week, you read “The Little Red Hen,” then knead bread dough or grind flour together while talking about diligence, generosity, and helping one another.

The advantage of this informal approach is that faith becomes woven into everyday rhythms instead of compartmentalized into a separate lesson plan. These are the moments when faith becomes tangible and competence is built.

Children need margin

Modern parenting culture often leaves children overscheduled, overstimulated, and emotionally exhausted. Childhood itself is disappearing beneath endless activities, sports schedules, programs, lessons, and pressure to achieve earlier and earlier milestones. These poor kids are hardly allowed to be kids anymore.

Parents now worry whether their preschooler can pass entrance assessments while many children barely have time left to roam outdoors, build forts, help cook dinner, or sit quietly long enough to become curious. We need fewer sensory bins in the living room and more mud puddles in the backyard.

More than anything, children need margin — the kind of unhurried space modern family life often eliminates — and our presence. They need more kitchen table talk and less time away from home.

They need to be bored because boredom is the birthplace of creativity, resilience, and imagination. In fact, a growing body of research shows that unstructured play is tied to healthier development, stronger executive functioning, and greater long-term independence. My parents’ generation understood this, but my generation often fills every gap in our children’s schedules, leaving little room for kids to simply be kids.

Our “do more” culture demands peak performance in every area of life, but it is leaving both children and mothers exhausted.

Mothers need margin

Another Barna survey found that 32% of mothers say they feel tired most of the time, while 38% say they constantly find themselves worrying about something. Many mothers feel isolated, unsupported, and crushed by unrealistic cultural pressure to “do it all.”

Many women strive to be fully present mothers, maintain spotless homes, manage packed calendars, curate magical childhood memories, and somehow do it all effortlessly. The result is that many families are running at a pace no one was designed to sustain — and more dangerously, it’s spiritually bankrupting us.

As Christian mothers, our family life should look drastically different from the world’s. Our priorities should reflect eternal values instead of mirroring the frantic priorities of the world.

Maybe for your family that means dropping a sport or cutting out an activity to make room for those family dinners and deep conversations — creating space for what matters.

My mother-in-law wisely sat down with my husband as a young boy and showed him on a calendar how many weekends the next “level” of baseball would consume. She told him, “We can do this if you’d like, but if you are saying yes to this, you are saying no to fishing, dirt biking, or camping on those weekends.”

She gave him the choice, and he chose the latter.

That kind of intentionality matters because what fills our children’s time will shape who they become.

RELATED: How to choose godly friends

Print Collector/Getty Images

Life skills matter

A Yugo survey found that 74% of parents believe teens are not fully prepared for adult life. Only 37% of teens know how to cook a basic meal, and just 32% understand basic food safety.

I saw this firsthand during my senior year of college when several freshman girls came over for dinner and Bible study. I asked one to chop an onion and another to brown hamburger meat. Neither had ever chopped a vegetable or touched raw meat before. Not because they were lazy, but because no one had ever taught them.

I came from a very different upbringing. Before the age of 10, I was already baking bread, grinding flour, doing laundry, and helping manage our house — whether I liked it or not.

These practical skills matter because they shape what kind of roommate, spouse, parent, and adult our children will become. We should be setting our kids up for success, not failure.

Some mothers feel intimidated because they themselves were never taught these skills. But the beautiful reality is this: We live in the age of YouTube, tutorials, online learning, and accessible information. If you do not know how to garden, sew, cook from scratch, can vegetables, or bake bread, you can learn.

Ask other women, watch videos, do little by little, and more importantly, don’t be afraid of failing, and failing a lot (like I do!).

I constantly ask people to show me how to do things because I desperately need a community of women walking alongside me in this motherhood journey.

Greatest responsibility, deepest joy

Motherhood has forced me to slow down, eat a lot of humble pie, and imperfectly navigate all kinds of new terrain.

And that is fine. This vocation is ultimately not about curating an image of perfection. It is about faithfully stewarding the souls, habits, character, and formation of the children God has given us.

As mothers, we have the greatest responsibility and the deepest joy to raise our children up to love the Lord and become competent, mature adults who serve God and others well. What we build in our homes today will shape the world tomorrow.

And that responsibility is far too important to outsource.

​Lifestyle, Faith, Family, Motherhood, Christian living, Mother’s day 

A video has gone viral on TikTok for revealing a literacy crisis in America — showing high school students failing to read a very simple sentence: “She wore a silhouette of clothes that were extraordinary but somewhat gauche.”

And BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey believes that one of the reasons for this crisis is not only the method for teaching literacy in schools, but that the amount of parents reading to their children daily has dropped. And according to a study conducted by HarperCollins Publishers, the drop is significant.

“I saw this statistic that says only 41% of children aged 0 to 4 are read to daily as of 2025. That is a nine-point drop only since 2019. Only 55%, a little over half of children aged 0 to 5, are read to at least five days a week,” she continues.

“There are a lot of parents who are overstimulated. They’re tired. They’re distracted. It’s really not about these kids having their own lack of discipline. It starts with a lack of discipline and bad priorities for parents honestly,” she adds.

Stuckey believes that the difficulty parents face finding the time or energy to read to their kids is manifesting in “difficulty for them for the rest of their lives.”

And the reason this is creating so much difficulty for children is because “the comprehension of words is necessary for understanding the world.”

“It is very difficult to be a diligent student, an informed voter, a productive citizen, a helpful neighbor if you do not understand words,” Stuckey says.

But it’s not just the ability to participate in modern society that’s being threatened by the literacy crisis.

“Unlike Buddhism, Christianity does not place a premium on silence or the emptying of the mind. Christianity is a word-based faith. You go all the way back to the beginning. God spoke the universe into existence,” Stuckey explains.

“He dictated all of creation, including the creation of man and woman who were made in his image. He spoke to Noah. He spoke to and through Moses,” she continues.

This is why, Stuckey explains, Christians have historically been “the best communicators in the world.”

“Christians dominated academia in this country before giving it over to the liberals and the secularists over time. And now, I think we have the opportunity to take the lead again. We have to. I mean, look at where we are,” she says.

“We have schools that are not teaching kids to read. We have people going to college and becoming lawyers and doctors with barely a high school-reading level. We’re scared of objective standards here in the U.S., standards of excellence because of whom they might exclude,” she continues, adding, “And all of us are going to suffer for that.”

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Allie beth stuckey, Allie beth stuckey podcast, America, Blaze media, Blaze news, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Blaze podcast network, Blaze podcasts, Blazetv, Harpercollins publishers, Host, Literacy crisis, Reading, Relatable, Relatable with allie beth stuckey, Schools, Students, Teaching, The blaze, Tiktok, Video, Viral 

Few remember what economic plan Jimmy Carter tried to sell in 1980. They remember the misery index, inflation and unemployment climbing together, and the hostages in Iran. What they don’t remember are the policy details, because one question cut through all of it.

Ronald Reagan asked, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”

That was it. Everything Carter wanted to argue for a second term had to pass through that question. Once it didn’t, the rest of the argument no longer mattered.

People escape accountability because we lack the will — or the courage — to let the question stand in the spotlight.

People remember questions like that, not because they were clever, but because they left nowhere to hide.

“What did the president know, and when did he know it?” —Howard Baker

“Can you provide a definition for the word ‘woman’?” —Senator Marsha Blackburn

“What’s your favorite type of abortion?” —Rep. Brandon Gill

And then there is the question God put to Job, not for information, but for perspective: “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?”

Some questions demand accountability from men, while one reminds man who he is. We used to understand this. Now we try to avoid it.

I have spent four decades in exam rooms, where polite conversation is useless when something goes wrong. You don’t ask questions to sound informed; you ask because something is at stake.

What happened? What changed? What are we doing now?

You don’t let the answer drift into language that sounds right but explains nothing. You bring it back, again and again, until something real emerges. No amount of expertise, credentials, or authority allows someone to evade accountability with a filibuster. You don’t have to know how to perform surgery to do that. You just have to care enough not to be brushed aside.

That discipline is rare in our public life.

A congresswoman recently echoed a talking point her party and much of the media have been pushing. She pressed Pete Hegseth about the 25th Amendment and Donald Trump. It sounded serious, but it wasn’t.

The world watched Joe Biden struggle in plain view. Where was this concern then?

The same thing shows up with Elizabeth Warren. She raised concerns about airline prices while opposing the JetBlue-Spirit Airlines merger that might have reshaped that market.

She is welcome to make the argument, but the question remains: “You opposed the merger, so how is this outcome not on you?”

That question doesn’t ask for a speech; it requires an answer.

The same pattern shows up on a much larger stage. For decades, leaders in both parties have said the same thing about Iran: It cannot be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon, and it remains a leading state sponsor of terrorism.

That has been the consistent position, even as the policies have differed. Two Clintons, two Bushes, Obama, Schumer, Pelosi, Biden, and scores of others all said the same thing: Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon.

Now, when Donald Trump takes steps he argues are aimed at achieving that outcome, many of the same voices object.

RELATED: The media can’t hide behind ‘we’ forever

Kent NISHIMURA/AFP/Getty Images

We have also lost the discipline to define the words we use. People throw around “fascist” as if saying it settles the argument, when all it does is raise another question: “What do you mean?”

Not the label, but the definition. If the word means something, it should withstand that question. If it can’t, then it is being used as a weapon or a prop, not a description. Ultimately, the question becomes the teaching moment.

God set that standard in the third chapter of Genesis: “Where are you?” “Who told you that you were naked?”

He didn’t ask because they needed information, but because they needed to see. That’s what a real question does. It brings clarity. It forces things into the open that people would rather leave covered.

Clarity doesn’t come from longer answers. It comes from better questions. And when the question is right, it leaves no room to hide behind time or language.

People escape accountability because we lack the will — or the courage — to let the question stand in the spotlight. The clock runs out. The filibuster works. And the question either goes unanswered or never gets asked at all.

And everyone retreats to their corner, waiting for the next performance.

​Accountability, Definition, Donald trump, Fascist, Jimmy carter, President, Real questions, Genesis, Adam and eve, Opinion & analysis 

The dawn of the AI era has sparked a wide range of reactions, from exhilaration over the technology’s capabilities to deep distress.

Such responses to a new communicative tool are nothing new, and indeed, AI presents new and unique challenges that will require deep thought and sensitivity.

But a heavy-handed congressional response that erodes long-standing American freedoms isn’t the answer. The Senate Judiciary Committee’s passage last week of SB 3062, the GUARD Act, shows the substantial risk that Congress’ “do something” energy poses to free speech.

Restrictions violate the First Amendment by regulating the protected editorial decisions of developers and by infringing on individuals’ rights to create and receive lawful expression.

The bill regulates AI chatbots — especially so-called “AI companion” systems — through access limits, design mandates, and disclosure requirements, backed by civil and criminal penalties of up to $100,000 per violation.

If enacted, it puts the federal officials squarely in the position of deciding how this technology is built and used, limiting engagement with information and compelling speech along the way.

Growing calls for a federal solution to the fragmented landscape of state regulations reflect a clear political appetite for legislative action. And a single national standard has obvious appeal for an industry seeking consistency across jurisdictions. But consistency isn’t the same as constitutionality.

If federal proposals like the GUARD Act replicate the speech restrictions found in state laws, they just hardwire those problems into federal law.

Take the bill’s age verification requirements. The GUARD Act forces Americans to create accounts and prove their ages. Existing accounts are frozen until verified, and companies are required to recheck users’ ages periodically.

Age-verification mandates like this one force individuals to disclose their identity to seek answers and thus give up anonymity, a right the Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized as central to free expression.

Faced with mandatory identity disclosure, many think twice before asking sensitive questions. Would someone trapped in an abusive relationship be more or less willing to seek advice from a chatbot if she had to surrender her privacy? Or how about the employee who is consistently harassed at work but is worried about asking for advice?

There’s a reason that the Federalist Papers were written under a pseudonym. Even public debate sometimes requires distance from the speaker’s identity. That protection is still needed today, allowing people to seek information, test ideas, and ask sensitive questions without fear of legally required exposure.

Then there are rules about content. The bill makes it unlawful to design, deploy, or make available chatbots that, in the government’s view, “encourage” or “promote” certain categories of constitutionally protected speech.

RELATED: Age verification laws do not make us safer

Samuel Boivin/NurPhoto/Getty Images

Who do we want to be in charge of determining that? Those restrictions violate the First Amendment by regulating the protected editorial decisions of developers and by infringing on individuals’ rights to create and receive lawful expression.

Proposals like the GUARD Act dictate how chatbots respond and intrude on editorial judgment by putting Congress’ thumb on the scale of what is acceptable speech. This means control over who can speak, what can be said, and how ideas are expressed.

Those choices shape the substance of speech and risk reducing a chorus of voices to a single, government-shaped note.

Finally, disclaimer mandates can cross constitutional lines by compelling speech. The GUARD Act requires chatbots to deliver federally imposed messages in every interaction. While informing users, its application in every circumstance alters the content and flow of communication itself.

All of this points to a deeper reality that AI systems cannot perfectly predict or control every output. That is not a defect. It’s a core feature of how these models generate responses from probabilistic patterns.

Artificial intelligence, and chatbots in particular, has become Washington’s latest political punching bag. Accusations of manipulation and harm are driving a slew of legislative proposals to censor this emerging technology. The GUARD Act isn’t alone. The recently introduced CHATBOT Act presents many of the same threats.

The same impulse to move quickly in Congress is playing out nationwide, with proposals in states like Minnesota, Florida, and Washington targeting chatbots through access restrictions, disclosure mandates, and content-related rules.

The Constitution doesn’t permit any government to address concerns about AI by broadly restricting protected expression. The First Amendment demands solutions that target illegal conduct without burdening the exchange of ideas.

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.

​Ai systems control, Chatbot act, Guard act, Age verification requirements, First amendment, Free speech, Ai regulation, Chatbots, Opinion & analysis 

While Americans are paying a premium for gasoline, the Iranians are filling up for just 12 cents a gallon. With the Strait of Hormuz blockaded, Iran is desperately trying to use up its oil inside the country — going as far as burning it off at wellheads and hauling it over land in pickup trucks using buckets.

But this isn’t sustainable. Sooner or later, something will have to give.

To find out what happens next and what it means for American gas prices and energy security, Glenn Beck speaks with oil and gas expert Tim Stewart.

Glenn asks Stewart how long before Iran is forced to shut down oil operations.

“From what we gather, they are almost there,” says Stewart.

He explains that oil is stored in tanks, pipelines, trucks, and ships and is in “a constant moving process.” However, the current blockage means the “floating storage” is “shut down,” which “puts intense pressure” on the other storage units. Eventually, the valve on the wells has to be turned down to compensate.

“And that’s what the Iranians actually did,” says Stewart.

But this didn’t solve their problem. Iran’s main oil fields are “legacy fields,” meaning their infrastructure is outdated.

“Those fields have water issues; they have pressure issues; they have migration issues,” says Stewart.

Given that these old fields were already running at their limit before the blockade forced production to slow, Iran will have an immensely difficult time ramping them back up to full operating capacity once the current crisis ends, he explains.

“The [current slowdown] is going to have a long-term impact on their ability to ramp up to another three million barrels a day,” he tells Glenn. “We are kind of in that endgame scenario right now.”

Iran aside, Glenn wants to know how America can address her own oil woes regardless of what’s happening overseas.

Stewart explains that the United States is now the world’s biggest oil producer, but the oil we produce — “light sweet crude” — cannot be utilized because our refineries were built to process “heavy sour crude” imported from other countries. Thus for decades now, we’ve been in an oil swapping game.

But that’s beginning to change.

Stewart notes that companies are beginning to invest in refineries that process light sweet crude oil; Wall Street has finally accepted that fossil fuels are the future; OPEC is starting to crack with the recent departure of the United Arab Emirates.

However, even with the tides turning, we’re still contending with a massive 450 million barrel global shortage.

“So there’s a long tale as to how and when that shortfall is made up,” says Stewart.

Glenn praises President Trump’s America First mindset in “setting us up to be the OPEC of the world,” but he expresses concern for the American people. While American oil companies are sure to make a lot of money from Trump’s initiative, the people themselves are financially hurting from the high prices.

“Has anyone ever said … ‘Hey, is there a way to give the American people a break here and maybe turn our profits down just a little bit?”’ he asks.

“It’s difficult because, again with the industry being bifurcated like it is, you know, the majority of my members of the U.S. Oil and Gas Association are small independent producers. We’re like farmers,” says Stewart. “It’s like when you send the cows to auction, you don’t set the auction price. The auction does.”

The same dynamic occurs in the oil industry.

“We prefer stable prices more than anything,” says Stewart, “and those prices need to be in that $67 to $85 a barrel range. … It allows us to do long-term planning.”

This stability benefits the customer too, he explains.

“The Goldilocks zone is in that $70 to $90 [per barrel range], which that translates to that $2.95, $3.15 a gallon for gas, and that’s where people seem to be able to to function well,” he adds.

Giving consumers immediate relief, Stewart says, is really up to the states.

“Have the states themselves look at what they’re charging and adjust those fees, adjust those taxes or waive them or do a holiday or something like that,” he says. “That brings some immediate relief.”

“The problem is that relief only lasts as long as we don’t get a $20 spike in crude the next day because of a tweet or because of a drone strike,” he warns.

“If things are solved, let’s say in the next four weeks, and it goes back and the strait is open … how fast does the gas price come down at the pump?” Glenn asks.

“I do think you see it this summer, particularly in the United States,” says Stewart.

Once the strait opens, America’s European and Asian allies can start getting their oil supply elsewhere instead of from the U.S., resulting in lower gas prices here.

But Glenn wants to know how low prices will be.

Stewart believes the range of $2.85 to $3.15 is plausible, and it’s “where everybody’s happy.”

“You want a growing economy, which then needs energy to be able to fuel it. You don’t want demand collapse where gas is cheap but nobody’s working, right?” he says. “And so again, it’s this Goldilocks zone we’re trying to get in.”

To hear more, watch the video above.

Want more from Glenn Beck?

To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​America oil woes, Blaze media, Blazetv, Gas prices, Gasoline premium americans, Glenn beck, Heavy sour crude, Iran, Iran war, Iranians gasoline 12 cents, Light sweet crude, Oil refineries investment, Oil storage tanks, Oil swapping game, Strait hormuz blockaged, Strait of hormuz, Strait of hormuz shut down, The glenn beck program, Tim stewart, President trump america, Opec 

I remember the night my legs gave out.

I woke up to my sister standing in my doorway. She was scared. Our parents were arguing behind a closed bedroom door, voices raised, something different in the tone this time. We walked down the hallway together and knocked.

Through recovery and faith, I encountered Jesus not as religion but as relationship.

When the door opened, my father was standing there with a loaded gun pressed to his head.

My legs went numb. I collapsed onto the floor.

Long night’s journey

It wasn’t an isolated moment.

Our home was marked by ongoing conflict and instability, the kind that teaches you early how to stay alert, how to read a room, and how to survive without ever really feeling safe.

I didn’t have words for what I had just seen. I only knew something wasn’t right in a way I couldn’t fix and that whatever I thought “normal” was, it wasn’t this.

That kind of moment doesn’t always explode your life right away. Sometimes it just sits there, quiet and unprocessed, and follows you.

It followed me. It bled into my personal and romantic relationships and ultimately skewed my view of the world and of myself. I learned to survive rather than connect — to perform rather than belong. I struggled to understand friendship, trust, and emotional safety. And over time, resentment toward my parents, especially my father, became part of my identity.

Seeking ‘normal’

As I got older, that disconnect showed up everywhere. I didn’t feel like I fit in. I struggled to form real friendships. I was made fun of just for being myself, and after a while, you start to believe there’s something wrong with you. I didn’t know what the problem was. I just knew I felt it.

So when drugs and alcohol showed up, they didn’t feel like destruction. They felt like a solution. They quieted something I couldn’t explain. They made me feel normal, or at least closer to the version of myself I thought I was supposed to be.

That’s the trap, because it works — at first. What I didn’t understand was that I wasn’t fixing anything. I was covering something I didn’t want to look at.

Later, when things got worse, it was labeled a “mental health” issue.

My father struggled with mental illness, and for many years I wrestled with my own diagnoses, some of which, in hindsight, did not fully capture what was truly happening beneath the surface.

I was prescribed medical marijuana. But instead of helping, it began triggering severe adverse reactions, including escalating instability, mania, and psychosis that distorted my judgment and sense of reality.

RELATED: Camp Hope offers Christ-centered healing to America’s veterans

ptsdusa.org

Not broken

Looking back now, I don’t believe there was something fundamentally broken in me. I believe there was something unaddressed. There’s a difference.

I kept looking for something to fix the symptoms, but nothing was touching the root. And that only works for so long.

Eventually, everything catches up. It did for me.

Addiction did not destroy my life overnight. It unfolded through cycles of defiance, denial, and relapse. Each time I tried to regain control on my own terms, I fell deeper into chaos.

It culminated in a destructive spiral that led me to a reckless and disorienting bender in Atlantic City. The consequences I now faced were legal. There was no talking my way out of this or pretending it didn’t exist. I had reached a point where I could no longer outrun the reality of what my life had become.

Brought to my knees

In hindsight, I believe God had to bring me to my knees.

The illusion of control was gone. I finally realized there was no way I was getting out of this under my own power. And that’s when change finally became possible.

It became possible because faith became real — not something I grew up around, not something I understood intellectually, but something lived.

Scripture says, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” And also, “You shall be called by a new name.”

I used to hear that and think it sounded nice. Now I understand it.

Redeemed and reconciled

Because my identity did change — not overnight, not perfectly, but fundamentally. I was no longer defined by what I had been through or how I had responded to it. Through recovery and faith, I encountered Jesus not as religion but as relationship. Through prayer, God revealed to me that I was not meant to be ashamed of my past but to embrace it, bring it into the light, and allow it to help others.

One of the most profound outcomes has been reconciliation with my father. The man I once viewed as the source of my wounds became part of a redemption story marked by grace, forgiveness, and healing.

Today, I live a life that is sober and grounded in faith. I’ve worked the Twelve Steps and now help guide others through the process. I am actively involved with Chain Breakers and bringing Christ-centered recovery to those who need it.

If there is one message I hope to share, it is that unhealed childhood trauma, misunderstood mental health struggles, and substance abuse are deeply interconnected. Healing requires both spiritual surrender and honest conversations about mental health.

I share this with humility, knowing I too remain a work in progress. It’s my hope that the more we bring stories like mine into the light, the less power shame and isolation will have over those who are still struggling.

​Addiction, Christianity, Conversion, Faith, Fatherhood, Grace and forgiveness, Lifestyle, Mental health, Recovery, Surrender and faith, First-person