To you, it's just a Cracker Barrel parking lot. To me, it's where I gave my life to Jesus Christ.
I was 21 years old. I was working at the Cracker Barrel in Tallahassee after some of the worst years of my life. I'd made mistakes. Real ones.
I grew up in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, raised by a mom who worked hard and didn't accept excuses. But I made decisions that should have ended my story before it ever really started. By the grace of God, they didn't. But every day, I was carrying them.
One afternoon, a church group came into the restaurant, just back from a revival. I served them their meals like I served any other table. But something happened while I was serving them. I can't fully explain it to you. The Lord spoke to me. He said, “Stop running from Me.”
It knocked me back.
I went to find the table, and they were all gone. I could see through their windows that they were getting on their bus, and I knew deep down that if I let them drive away, I was going to keep running. So I went outside. The last woman, just as she was stepping onto the bus, turned to me and asked, “Are you okay?”
I told her, “No ma’am, I’m not okay.” I told her the Lord was telling me to stop running.
That whole bus emptied out, stood with me in the parking lot of a Cracker Barrel in Tallahassee, Florida, and prayed over me right there.
I gave my life to Christ that day. Right there.
I still get emotional about it. Because I know what I was before that moment, and I know what He's done since. He gave me a wife who shares my faith. He gave me three sons. He gave me a career, a community, a calling I never would have dared to ask for. He took a kid from Crown Heights who’d run out of chances and gave him a life that doesn't make sense apart from grace.
People ask me sometimes why I talk about it. Why I bring up the parking lot. Why I don't just keep that part private and let folks see the polished version.
I'll tell you why.
Because there's a young man out there right now — maybe in Tallahassee, maybe in Tampa, maybe in Miami, maybe in a small town in the Panhandle — who thinks his story is already over. Who thinks the mistakes he's made disqualify him from the life he could have had. Who thinks God doesn't want anything to do with somebody like him.
I'm here to tell him: that's a lie.
In life, you're not who you are at the lowest point. You're who you choose to become after.
The Lord met me in a Cracker Barrel parking lot. He'll meet you wherever you are.
You just have to stop running.
82 years ago today, nearly 160,000 Allied troops stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, launching the liberation of Europe.
We are free because they were brave. 🇺🇸
For 14 years, TPUSA has inspired a rising generation to stand for freedom, truth, and the future of our country.
What began as a bold idea has become a movement carried forward by students and young leaders nationwide.
Today, we celebrate this milestone and look ahead to what comes next. Onward 🇺🇸
Dear @WhiteHouse, my name is Rodney Smith Jr., founder of Raising Men & Women Lawn Care Service in Huntsville, Alabama. Through our 50 Yard Challenge, over 6,000 kids across the country have signed up to mow free lawns for the elderly, disabled, veterans, active-duty military, first responders, and single parents. With America celebrating its 250th birthday this year and me also being born on July 4th, I wanted to humbly ask if a few kids from our program and myself could travel to Washington, D.C. to help mow the White House lawn for this historic celebration.
More than anything, I want these kids to see how a simple act of service something as ordinary as mowing a lawn for someone in need can lead to extraordinary places. What better lesson in community service than showing them that helping others can take them all the way to our nation’s capital? I’d also love to bring my American flag-themed mower in hopes that the President might sign it, so I can later auction it off and donate 100% of the proceeds to a nonprofit supporting veterans. It would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to highlight the importance of service, patriotism, and the impact young people can have when they choose to make a difference. 🇺🇸
🚨 VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE JUST WENT FULL PATRIOT MODE
"It hit me that every time we lose somebody, every time somebody goes overseas and sacrifices their life every time that a person gives the ultimate sacrifice to the United States of America, we often read about it as a line on newspaper or online."
"But there's a father, there's a mother, and there's a grandma and aunts and uncles and a whole crew of people who love them the same way that we all love every single member of our family."
"And you take that love and you set that on one side, and you consider the balance that all of us owe, because on the other side is we have to meet their sacrifice by carrying something forward that they can't carry forward. We have to make this country worthy of that sacrifice."
"My friends, is every single day, we have to send people to Washington who wake up every single day and recognize that they fight for you. That's how we honor this sacrifice. That's how we make this country great again, and that's how we make 250 years of American history and American patriots proud."
🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
Saban has the college football world turned upside down today. I guess some of the bitterness still comes from all the butt-kickings he handed out over the years.
It took me the first few years of his Alabama tenure to realize that he genuinely cares about the game and that his words weren’t just talking points.
Some of you are criticizing him because he beat your team instead of focusing on what he actually said today in Washington, D.C.
I know it makes for a good story and generates clicks during a slow period in college football, but answer me this:
Why would a retired person of his status—someone with more money than he could ever spend—want to go to Washington and open himself up to criticism?
Maybe it’s because he truly cares about the future of college athletics.
@UofAlabama In the old city in Jerusalem, there’s a guy whose brother went to Alabama, so he became a #Bama fan and has a store where he sells all @UofAlabama T-shirts, etc. Of course I had to go in there and buy a shirt.
Alabama & Georgia are the only schools to have their teams make the CFP, Men's Basketball, Women's Basketball, Softball, and Baseball Tournaments in the 2025-26 school year
🇺🇸 Take a minute to reflect on the hallowed grounds of the Normandy American Cemetery in France on this Memorial Day. Perched on a bluff overlooking Omaha Beach — the very site where our heroes launched the greatest assault for liberty in human history — lie the final resting places of 9,389 American warriors who gave their last full measure of devotion during D-Day in World War II.
These are not just graves. They are monuments to American courage, sacrifice, and the fierce belief that freedom is worth dying for. Among them:
• 307 Unknown Soldiers — forever honored, never forgotten.
• 1,557 names inscribed on the Walls of the Missing — their spirits still watching over the cause they served.
• 45 pairs of brothers who fought and fell together.
• Three Medal of Honor recipients and four heroic American women buried side by side with their brothers-in-arms.
This sacred cemetery was established on June 8, 1944, just days after the invasion. This was the first American WWII cemetery on European soil. A permanent reminder that when evil threatened the world, America answered the call.
To every American who stormed those beaches, climbed those cliffs, and never came home: Your blood bought our tomorrow. Because of you, the light of liberty still shines bright across the globe.
We will never forget. We will never falter.
God Bless our Fallen Heroes. God Bless the United States of America. ❤️🤍💙
Every year, I share this video of French caretakers who take sand from Omaha Beach in Normandy, and scrub them into the letters to give them the gold coloring.
They do this for all 9,386 US soldiers who died.
France also gave us this land as American soil. #MemorialDayWeekend