Part 2: The Weight of Light

The silence that fills a home after the police leave is heavy. It isn’t peaceful; it is suffocating. For the first few hours, we didn’t speak much. We just moved through the rooms of our house like ghosts, checking locks that we knew were already engaged, pulling curtains tight against a world that suddenly felt like it had turned its back on us. I looked at my wife, my high school sweetheart, the woman who has known me since I was a boy in the ninth grade, and I saw a shadow in her eyes that broke my heart. We were safe, technically. The threat was neutralized. But the feeling of safety? That had been stolen.

It was a dark moment in our lives. It wasn’t just the fear of physical harm; it was the violation of our sanctuary. It was a dark moment for our commonwealth, too, because when political violence targets a family, it tears at the fabric of the entire community. I sat in the kitchen, staring at the coffee maker, wondering if I had made a mistake. Not a mistake in policy or leadership, but a mistake in choosing a path that brought this kind of darkness to the doorstep of the people I love more than life itself. I felt entirely, crushingly alone.

But then, the sun came up. And with the morning, something shifted.

I expected to face the wreckage of that day in isolation. I expected to have to rebuild our sense of security brick by brick, entirely on our own. I was wrong. Coming out of that darkness, just literally in the hours after, was an extraordinary amount of light.

It started as a trickle. A neighbor dropping by, not to ask for a quote or to complain about a local ordinance, but just to stand on the porch and ask, “Are you okay?” Then came another. Then the phone started ringing, not with reporters seeking a soundbite, but with old friends and constituents who had heard the news.

By mid-afternoon, the trickle had become a flood.

I looked out the window and saw people gathering. These weren’t political operatives. They weren’t there for a rally. They were just… people. People from all different walks of life were there to try and help our family and our Commonwealth heal. It was a tableau of the America I still believed in, even when my faith was shaking.

There was the mechanic from down the road, wiping grease from his hands, standing next to a university professor. There were union workers in hard hats standing shoulder-to-shoulder with small business owners. There were parents holding their children’s hands, looking at my house with a fierce sort of protectiveness. They didn’t care about my party affiliation in that moment. They didn’t care about tax codes or budget deficits. They cared that a neighbor had been threatened. They cared that a family was hurting.

I remember walking outside, hesitant at first. The air felt different. It was charged, not with the static of violence, but with a warmth that is hard to describe. I saw people from different faiths coming together. That image is seared into my memory forever.

In a world that loves to tell us how divided we are, how much we hate each other, I saw the exact opposite. I saw a local Rabbi talking quietly with a Pastor from the AME church. I saw members of the Muslim community standing with members of the Catholic parish. They weren’t debating theology. They were doing something far more powerful. They were praying for me and my family, praying for our healing.

I have always been a religious man. I write a lot in this book about my own religion and my own faith. My faith has always been my anchor. It’s the lens through which I see the world and my obligation to serve it. I talk about my faith in my religion, and importantly, my faith in other people. But until that day, “faith in other people” was somewhat theoretical. It was a principle I held, a talking point I believed in.

That afternoon, it became physical. It became real.

I stood there on my lawn, surrounded by this sea of humanity, and I listened. I heard the murmurs of the Lord’s Prayer. I heard the cadence of Hebrew prayers for protection. I heard the beautiful, melodic recitation of the Quran. Different languages, different traditions, different names for the Divine, all rising up into the same sky, all directed at one single purpose: to wrap my family in a shield of love.

I pray a lot. It is a daily discipline for me. I pray in the quiet of my car; I pray before big decisions; I pray when the weight of the office feels too heavy to carry alone. But prayer had always been a solitary act for me—a conversation between me and my Creator. That day was different. That was the first time in my life that I experienced the power of other people’s prayers.

It is a distinct physical sensation. When you are the one praying, you are reaching out, sending your energy upward. When you are the one being prayed for by a community of that size, it feels like being held. It felt like a physical weight was being lifted off my shoulders. I looked at my wife, and for the first time in twenty-four hours, I saw her shoulders drop. I saw her take a full breath. The terror that had gripped us was being diluted, drop by drop, by the sheer volume of goodwill pouring in from the street.

I spent a lot of time talking about that sensation afterward. I tried to explain it to my staff, to my friends. It wasn’t just “support.” Support is a casserole (though we got plenty of those, too). Support is a card. This was spiritual intervention. It was the realization that we are not actually separate. That when one of us is threatened, the community bleeds, and the community has an immune response. That response is love.

One specific moment stands out. An elderly woman, someone I had never met, came up to me. She looked like she had walked a long way. She took my hands in hers—her hands were rough, calloused, warm—and she didn’t say anything about politics. She looked me in the eye and said, “We are holding you up so you don’t have to stand alone.”

That was the “extraordinary amount of light”. It was blinding in its intensity. It burned away the fog of fear. It reminded me that the person who threatened us—the man who is thankfully behind bars now for up to 50 years —was small. His hate was small. It was loud, yes. It was dangerous, absolutely. But compared to the ocean of compassion that was standing on my front lawn? He was nothing.

I realized then that this is what it means to heal our Commonwealth. Healing isn’t just about passing laws or fixing bridges. It’s about this. It’s about showing up when things get dark. It’s about refusing to let fear dictate how we live.

As the crowd eventually thinned out and the evening set in, the house didn’t feel silent in the same terrifying way anymore. The silence felt peaceful again. The prayers of those strangers seemed to hang in the air, coating the walls like a protective paint.

I went upstairs to check on my four kids. They were asleep. For a moment, I stood in the doorway, watching them breathe. I thought about the struggle every day as a dad to protect them. I thought about how close we came to a different outcome. But then I thought about the people outside. I thought about the Rabbi and the Pastor. I thought about the mechanic and the teacher.

I realized that my faith in other people had been vindicated in the most profound way possible. I wasn’t just a politician to them; I was a neighbor. And they weren’t just voters; they were a lifeline.

This experience changed me. It changed how I pray. It changed how I lead. It made me realize that finding light is a struggle every day, but it is a struggle we do not have to undertake alone. The light doesn’t just come from the sky; it comes from the people standing next to you. It comes from the community that refuses to let the darkness win.

That night, for the first time since the threat began, I slept. I slept wrapped in the knowledge that while there is evil in the world, there is an overwhelming amount of good waiting to push back against it. And that good, that light, is worth fighting for every single day.

(End of Part 2)

Part 3: The Fork in the Road

The adrenaline of a crisis is a strange thing. It acts as a numbing agent, a temporary shield that allows you to function when your world is tilting on its axis. In the immediate aftermath of the threat, and in the beautiful, overwhelming hours when our lawn was filled with neighbors and prayers, I was running on that adrenaline. I was buoyed by the collective strength of the people who showed up. But adrenaline, by its nature, is finite. It burns off. And when it does, it leaves you with the cold, hard silence of reality.

The morning after the crowds dispersed, the sun came up just as it always does, but the house felt different. The “extraordinary amount of light” that had flooded our property was gone, replaced by the mundane, quiet routine of a Tuesday. My wife was in the kitchen, making breakfast. My four kids were scrambling to find backpacks and shoes. On the surface, we were a normal family. But beneath the surface, everything had changed. The man who threatened us was behind bars, yes. Justice was moving its gears. But the question he had planted in my mind was taking root, growing vines that threatened to choke out my resolve.

I sat at the kitchen table, a cup of coffee growing cold in my hands, and I found myself staring at a fork in the road.

I talk about this often—the struggles of different forks in the road in my career. People often focus on the big, public moments: the election nights, the bill signings, the press conferences. But the real forks in the road, the ones that define your soul, happen in the quiet moments when no one is watching. They happen at the breakfast table when you look at your children and wonder if your ambition is writing a check that their safety will have to cash.

I know some of you have focused on one of those points in my career, perhaps the most recent speculation about higher office. But there have been many points in my career where I tried to make a decision and align my head, my heart, and my gut about how I could best serve and how I could still be someone that my kids could rely on.

This was the hardest one yet.

The alignment of the Head, the Heart, and the Gut.

It sounds simple, doesn’t it? A three-part checklist. But in practice, it is an agonizing negotiation.

My head was screaming at me to stop. My head is the pragmatist. It deals in data, in risk assessment, in the cold logic of cause and effect. My head looked at the police reports. It looked at the rising temperature of political discourse in this country. It calculated the probabilities. It said: Michael, you have done enough. You have served. You have given years of your life to this Commonwealth. Look at what just happened. Look at how close the darkness came to your door. Is the next title, the next policy win, the next election worth the potential cost?

My head reminded me that I am a dad to four kids. Four innocent lives that did not ask to be public figures. They didn’t ask for security details or threat assessments. They just want a dad who is there for soccer games, a dad who isn’t distracted by the constant pinging of a phone, a dad who doesn’t have to check the perimeter before letting them play in the yard.

My head looked at my wife—my high school sweetheart from the ninth grade. We have grown up together. We have navigated every phase of life side-by-side. She is the rock upon which my entire life is built. I saw the strain in her face, the way she paused before opening the front door, the subtle tightening of her jaw when the news came on. My head told me that I owed her a life of peace. I owed her a husband who could be fully present, not one constantly looking over his shoulder.

My gut, however, was churning with a different message. My gut is the instinctual part of me. It’s the part that senses danger, yes, but also senses duty. My gut told me that walking away now would feel like running. It told me that the fear I was feeling was exactly what the person who threatened us wanted me to feel. That is the purpose of political violence—not just to harm the body, but to break the spirit. To silence the voices of those who try to lead.

My gut told me that if good people retreat every time the darkness gets loud, soon there will be no one left standing in the light. It was a visceral reaction. A refusal to be bullied. A refusal to let a criminal dictate the terms of my life.

And then there was my heart. My heart was torn right down the middle. My heart beats for my family, fiercely and without reservation. But my heart also beats for this community. It beats for the people who stood on my lawn praying. It beats for the single mother I met in Pittsburgh who needs better healthcare, for the steelworker in the valley who needs his pension protected, for the teacher who is buying supplies out of her own pocket.

Trying to figure out a way to serve my community while also still trying to be a good dad and a good husband is a struggle every day. It is not a balance you achieve once and keep forever; it is a tightrope walk you have to perform every single morning. And that morning, looking at the “fork in the road,” the tightrope felt impossibly thin.

The Shadow of Civil War

The struggle wasn’t just personal; it was contextual. I couldn’t make this decision in a vacuum. I had to look at the world we are living in.

I thought back to a conversation I had recently. I attended a bipartisan dialogue with Governor Cox of Utah last month at the National Cathedral. It was a solemn, beautiful setting—a place designed for reflection and higher thought. We were there to talk about how to disagree better, how to find common ground in a fractured nation. But the data Governor Cox shared chilled me to the bone.

Governor Cox cited research on political violence that he said suggests the United States could be on a long-term path to civil war.

Let that sink in. Civil war.

For generations, that term has been a history lesson for us. It was something that happened in black-and-white photographs, something we studied in school as a cautionary tale of a time when brother fought brother. But to hear it spoken of as a future possibility? As a trajectory we are currently on? It was terrifying.

First, do I feel the same way? That’s the question I asked myself. Do I believe we are too far gone?

I certainly agree that we are living through a time of rising political and anti-Semitic violence. You don’t need a research paper to see it; you just need to open your eyes. I’m sure you know about the attack on the Chabad-Lubavitch world headquarters in Brooklyn. That wasn’t an isolated incident. It was part of a pattern.

I sat there at my table, thinking about the map of violence that has been drawn across our country in just the last few months. It is a map of pain. We saw it, I believe, two nights ago against Congresswoman Omar. We saw it against Charlie Kirk and Speaker Hortman in Minnesota. We saw it against my own family here in Harrisburg. We saw it against President Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.

The bullets, the threats, the hammers, the rhetoric—it doesn’t discriminate based on party. It doesn’t care if you are a Democrat or a Republican, a conservative or a liberal. It targets the very idea of democracy. It targets the idea that we can resolve our differences through words and votes rather than through force.

There have been other examples as well. I mean no disrespect if I omitted anyone there, so please accept that as just making the point that we’ve seen a rise in the number of incidents.

This reality weighed on me heavily. If the research is right, if we are indeed drifting toward a civil war, then what is the responsibility of a father? Is it to take his children and hide? To find a cabin in the woods and wait for the storm to pass? Or is the responsibility of a father to stand in the breach? To try, however futile it may seem, to hold the fabric of the nation together so that his children have a country to inherit?

This was the deeper layer of the “fork in the road.” It wasn’t just about career vs. retirement. It was about engagement vs. resignation.

The Daily Struggle for Light

I realized then that the “light” I spoke about in the previous chapter—the light from the neighbors, the prayers, the community—that isn’t a permanent state. You don’t just “find” the light and keep it in your pocket.

I talk about how trying to find light is a struggle every day. It is an active verb. You have to try. You have to wake up, acknowledge the darkness, acknowledge the fear, and then consciously, deliberately, go looking for the light.

As a dad, that means putting on a brave face when you are worried. It means listening to your daughter’s story about her day at school with your full attention, even when your mind is racing with security protocols. It means showing your sons that strength isn’t about physical dominance, but about emotional resilience.

As a husband to my high school sweetheart, it means being vulnerable. It means admitting, “I am scared,” but also saying, “We will get through this.” It means honoring the partnership that started in the ninth grade, back when our biggest worry was a math test, not a death threat.

And as a public servant, it means looking at that research about civil war and saying, “Not on my watch.” It means refusing to accept the inevitability of violence.

I thought about the people who prayed for me. They didn’t have to come. They could have stayed home, locked their doors, and watched the news in safety. But they chose to step out. They chose to engage. If they could do that—if strangers could step into the line of fire (metaphorically and spiritually) for me—then how could I do any less for them?

Aligning the Pieces

So, how did I align my head, my heart, and my gut?

It wasn’t an instant epiphany. It was a slow, grinding process.

My head eventually accepted that while the risks are real, the risk of doing nothing is greater. If good people leave the arena, the vacuum is filled by the very people who incite the violence. The only way to ensure my children’s long-term safety is to build a world where political violence is not the norm. I cannot build that world from the sidelines.

My heart found peace in the realization that my service is an act of love for my family. I am fighting for their future. I am fighting for a Pennsylvania, and an America, where they can disagree with their neighbors without fearing for their lives. And I realized that the love I received from the community was a fuel source I could tap into. I didn’t have to generate all the energy myself.

My gut settled. The instinct to fight, to stand my ground, was the right one. But it had to be tempered with wisdom. It couldn’t just be stubbornness. It had to be a “moral clarity.”

I believe elected leaders have a responsibility to speak and act with moral clarity and to condemn that violence, regardless of who’s targeted, whatever party they’re from or ideology they represent. That became my new mandate. That became the path forward from the fork in the road.

I decided that I wouldn’t just go back to work; I would go back with a renewed purpose. I would not just be a politician; I would be a counter-weight to the hate.

I looked at the question of higher office—”prominent Democrat who might run for president,” as the reporters like to say. And I looked at it through this new lens. It wasn’t about ambition anymore. It was about utility. Where can I do the most good? Where can I most effectively pull the nation back from the brink?

What can you do to help pull the nation back from the brink? That is the question that haunts me. That is the question that drives me.

The answer isn’t simple. It’s not a soundbite. It’s a daily practice. It is about lowering the temperature. It is about refusing to dehumanize your opponent. It is about acknowledging that the person across the aisle loves their country just as much as you do, even if you think their ideas are wrong.

I thought about the attack on the Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters. I thought about the fear in the Jewish community, a fear that echoes centuries of persecution. I thought about the fear in the African American community, represented by the threats against Congresswoman Omar. I thought about the fear in the rural communities, the fear in the suburbs.

We are a nation in fear. And fear is the precursor to violence.

If I chose the path of retreat—the easy path at the fork in the road—I would be validating that fear. I would be telling my kids that when things get hard, you quit. That when the bullies get loud, you hide.

I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t look my high school sweetheart in the eye and say, “I’m done,” because she knows me too well. She knows that I wouldn’t be happy on the sidelines. She knows that my “gut” would never forgive my “head” for making that choice.

So, I chose the harder path. I chose to stay. I chose to step back into the arena, but with no illusions. The rose-colored glasses were gone, shattered on the driveway the day the threats arrived. I see the cracks in our foundation now. I see the “long-term path to civil war” that Governor Cox warned about. I see it clearly.

But I also see the light. I see the people.

I talk about the struggles of different forks in the road in my career, but this one felt final. It felt like a recommitment ceremony. I wasn’t just continuing a career; I was consecrating a mission.

The Complexity of Service

I want to be clear: this wasn’t a heroic movie moment. There was no swelling orchestral music. It was a quiet decision made over cold coffee. It was a decision that came with a heavy dose of nausea and anxiety.

Trying to figure out a way to serve my community while also still trying to be a good dad is a puzzle I haven’t fully solved. I miss bedtime stories sometimes. I miss date nights. I worry every time my phone rings late at night. That is the cost.

But the value? The value is in the eyes of the people I meet. The value is in the hope that we can turn this ship around.

I realized that “aligning my head, my heart, and my gut” isn’t about getting them to agree perfectly. It’s about getting them to compromise. My head accepts the risk. My heart accepts the sacrifice. My gut provides the courage.

I am not just a politician. I am a neighbor. I am a father. I am a husband. And I am a believer—not just in God, but in us. In the “US” that is big enough to hold all of our differences without tearing apart at the seams.

I recognize that you all are going to have a lot of questions, probably not about things that are in the pages of this book. You want to know about the horse race. You want to know about the polls. You want to know about the strategy. And I respect that. That is your job.

But my job? My job is to tell you that the strategy doesn’t matter if the country falls apart. My job is to tell you that we have to stop seeing each other as enemies. My job is to be a dad who shows his kids that you don’t run from a fight when the fight is for the soul of your community.

The struggle is real. The darkness is real. The threat of civil war is, God forbid, a possibility if we don’t change course. But as I sat there that morning, finally putting my coffee cup in the sink and getting ready to face the day, I knew one thing for sure.

I wasn’t going to let the darkness write the end of my story.

I was going to write it myself. And I was going to write it with the help of the millions of decent, loving, prayerful Americans who are just as tired of the hate as I am.

The fork in the road was behind me. I had chosen my path. It was uphill. It was rocky. It was dangerous.

But it was the only path that led toward the light.

(End of Part 3)

Part 4: The Light We Carry

The Architecture of Resilience

The house is quiet again, but it is a different kind of quiet now. It is no longer the silence of holding one’s breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop. It is the silence of a structure that has weathered a hurricane and still stands. The man who cast that long, dark shadow over my life and the lives of my wife and children is gone. He is behind bars now for up to 50 years. That number—fifty years—rings in my ears not just as a measurement of punishment, but as a measurement of time returned to us. It is fifty years where I do not have to watch the driveway with dread. Fifty years where my children can grow into adults without that specific specter haunting their steps.

But the end of the threat is not the end of the story. It is simply the beginning of the work.

As I sit here, looking back on the journey—from the moment the threats began, to the overwhelming darkness, to the “extraordinary amount of light” that flooded in from my neighbors—I realize that this experience has been a forge. It has burned away the superficial layers of my ambition and left something harder, simpler, and more essential.

I told you that this is a story about how my faith has shaped me, my family guided me, and the light that I find from others inspires me to do this work. Now, at the end of this chapter of my life, I want to unpack what that truly means. Because if we are going to pull this nation back from the brink, as I believe we must, we need to understand the tools we have at our disposal.

How Faith Shaped Me

I write a lot in this book about my own religion and my own faith. For a long time, in the public square, we have been told to keep those things private. We are told that faith is a personal matter, separate from the nuts and bolts of governance. And in a constitutional sense, that is true. We do not impose our beliefs on others. But in a human sense, it is impossible to separate the leader from the soul.

My faith in my religion has been the bedrock. It is the thing that tells me that there is a purpose to suffering, that justice is not just a legal concept but a divine imperative. When the darkness was at its worst, when I felt that hollow coldness I described earlier, it was the rituals of my faith that gave me a ladder to climb out. It was the ancient words, spoken by millions before me, that reminded me I was part of a continuum.

But this experience taught me something new. It taught me about my faith in other people.

This is a harder faith to keep. God is perfect; people are messy. People are angry. People are scared. We are living in a time where the “other” is demonized, where political opponents are treated as existential enemies. It is easy to lose faith in humanity when you see the vitriol on social media or watch the news of rising violence.

And yet.

I pray a lot. I have spent my life talking to God. But that moment on my lawn, surrounded by strangers—that was the first time in my life that I experienced the power of other people’s prayers.

That experience shaped me. It chiseled away the cynicism that inevitably builds up when you work in politics. It proved to me that the reservoir of goodness in the American people is far deeper than the reservoir of hate. The hate is loud. The hate makes headlines. The hate drove a man to threaten my family. But the love? The love showed up in hundreds of quiet footsteps. The love showed up in the Mechanic and the Rabbi and the Teacher standing side by side.

My faith has shaped me into a leader who knows, with absolute certainty, that we are not broken beyond repair. We are just disconnected. And the job of a leader—my job, for as long as I hold this office or any other—is to be the copper wire that reconnects us.

How Family Guided Me

If faith is the foundation, family is the compass.

I talk about how trying to find light is a struggle every day as a dad and a husband. It is not a poetic struggle; it is a gritty one. It is the struggle of fatigue. It is the struggle of worry.

I am a dad to four kids. Four distinct personalities, four futures I am desperate to protect. When the threat came, my first instinct was primal: Lock the doors. Get out. Quit.

That would have been the easy choice. It would have been the safe choice.

But then I looked at my wife. She is my high school sweetheart from the ninth grade. We didn’t meet at a fundraising gala. We didn’t meet in the halls of power. We met when we were kids, trying to figure out who we were. She knows the version of me that existed before the titles. She knows the man, not the politician.

She guided me. She didn’t do it with a grand speech. She did it by simply being there. She did it by refusing to let the fear change who we are as a family. She reminded me that if I walked away from my calling because of a bully, I wouldn’t just be letting my constituents down; I would be teaching our children the wrong lesson.

I am constantly trying to figure out a way to serve my community while also still trying to be a good dad and a good husband. It is an imperfect science. There are days I fail. There are days the balance is off. But the guidance I receive from them is clear: Be the person we know you are.

They guided me to stay. They guided me to align my head, my heart, and my gut. They reminded me that being a “good dad” isn’t just about physical safety; it’s about modeling moral courage. It’s about showing them that when the world gets dark, you don’t close your eyes. You light a candle.

The Light That Inspires the Work

And so, we come to the work. The “light that I find from others inspires me to do this work”.

What is “this work”?

It is easy to get confused. In Washington, in Harrisburg, in the state capitals, it is easy to think the “work” is winning elections. It is easy to think the “work” is passing a budget or getting a bill signed. Those are the mechanics. Those are the necessary evils of the system.

But the real work—the work that actually matters—is pushing back the darkness.

We are living through a perilous time. I cited the research Governor Cox mentioned, suggesting we could be on a “long-term path to civil war”. I told you that we are living through a time of “rising political and anti-Semitic violence”.

This is not a drill. This is the reality of our moment.

I listed the attacks: the Chabad-Lubavitch world headquarters in Brooklyn. Congresswoman Omar. Charlie Kirk and Speaker Hortman in Minnesota. My own family in Harrisburg. President Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.

The list goes on. I mean no disrespect if I omitted anyone there, so please accept that as just making the point that we’ve seen a rise in the number of incidents.

The “work” is to stop this list from growing.

The “work” is to look at the political landscape and refuse to accept violence as a tool of engagement.

I believe elected leaders have a responsibility. It is not an optional responsibility. It is not something we can do only when it is politically convenient. We have a responsibility to speak and act with moral clarity.

What does moral clarity look like?

It looks like standing up and condemning violence regardless of who is targeted. It means that if you are a Democrat, you must condemn violence against Republicans with the same ferocity that you condemn violence against your own. It means if you are a conservative, you must stand as a shield for your liberal neighbors when they are threatened.

It means saying, unequivocally, that violence against a person because of their party, their ideology, or their faith is an attack on all of us. It means condemning the violence regardless of whoever actually is engaged in that level of political violence.

This is the hardest part of the work. It requires us to put our humanity above our tribalism. It requires us to say, “I disagree with everything you stand for, but I will fight to the death for your right to stand there safely.”

The light I found on my lawn inspires me to do this. Because the people on my lawn didn’t check voter registrations before they prayed. They just prayed. They showed me the standard we need to aspire to.

The Humble Request

I recognize that you all are going to have a lot of questions.

You are going to ask about the polls. You are going to ask about the strategy for the next election. You are going to ask, “What can you, as a prominent Democrat who might run for president, do now?”.

I recognize that your questions are probably not about things that are in the pages of this book. The media cycle moves fast. It feeds on conflict. It feeds on the “game” of politics. And I respect that. I understand the job you have to do.

But I have a job to do, too. And part of that job is trying to change the conversation.

So, I have a request. It is a simple one.

It would mean a lot to me. I’d be really humbled if you’d take a book with you.

I am not asking you to buy it to make me a bestseller. I am asking you to take a few moments to read it and let me know what you think.

Read the chapters where I talk about the struggles of different forks in the road in my career. Read the parts where I talk about trying to align my head, my heart, and my gut. Read the sections about my faith and the “power of other people’s prayers”.

I want you to read it because I think the answers to the violence, the answers to the “brink” of civil war, are not going to be found in a policy paper. They are going to be found in the human heart. They are going to be found in the realization that we are all struggling with the same things: how to be good parents, how to be good neighbors, how to find light in a dark world.

If we can start the conversation there—at the level of our shared humanity, rather than our political divisions—then I believe we have a chance.

The Final Reflection

The man who threatened my family is gone. Fifty years. It is a lifetime.

But the fear he tried to instill? That is something I have to dismantle every day. I do it by waking up. I do it by hugging my kids. I do it by going to work.

I do it by remembering that even in the darkest moment, there was an “extraordinary amount of light”.

I hope that this story was brief enough. I know I have gone on for a long time here, pouring out thoughts that have been bottled up since that terrifying night. But I felt it was necessary.

I’ll stop there.

I am ready to answer your questions now. I am ready to talk about the policies and the politics. But before we dive into the noise, I wanted to ground us in the silence. I wanted to ground us in the truth that saved my family.

We are not enemies. We are neighbors. We are not combatants. We are a community.

And as long as we remember that, as long as we are willing to pray for each other and stand for each other, there is no darkness that can extinguish our light.

Thank you for listening. Thank you for reading. And thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for being the light.

[Epilogue: The Quiet Porch]

The sun is setting now, casting long shadows across the lawn—the same lawn that was once a crime scene, then a sanctuary, and now, just a lawn again. The grass needs cutting. The kids’ bikes are scattered near the driveway. It is perfectly, beautifully ordinary.

I sit on the porch steps, the wood rough against my palms. Inside, I can hear the sounds of dinner being prepared. I can hear the laughter of my children. It is the best sound in the world.

I think about the forks in the road. I think about the road not taken—the one where I quit, the one where I ran. I am glad I didn’t take it. The road I am on is harder. It is steeper. The wind blows colder here. But the view? The view is worth it.

I see a future where we pull back from the brink. I see a future where the research about civil war is proven wrong, not by luck, but by the hard work of millions of Americans refusing to hate. I see a future where a dad can serve his country without fearing for his children.

It is a long way off, that future. But I can see it.

I stand up, brushing the dust from my pants. I turn toward the door, toward the warmth and the noise and the life waiting inside. I am ready.

I open the door, and I step into the light.

(End of Story)