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.
@mattvanswol This is one of the greatest statistics scams in the last decade. This is where the talking point dems repeat that white men are the biggest threat in America.
I used to work at the post office in the Brentwood Country Mart. One day, I was helping a woman with many packages. Out of the blue, I hear a voice yelling at me. I look out the slotted window at this impossibly thin woman in pink pants and jacket that fit so impeccably on her, to the point it was ridiculous. She showed no regard for the other customers in line. She snapped at me again and sighed as if I was the biggest idiot. I couldn’t read her lips and I saw that she was holding a package in her arms. I said something like, I’ll help you after these customers. She snapped again. The woman I was helping finally spoke up and told the lady that I was deaf. That only pissed her off more and she put on her sunglasses and stormed out. Well, that’s my Jane Fonda story and, yes, we should judge people by how they treat others.
You don’t get to spend a decade talking about protecting women, empowering women, believing women, and dismantling patriarchal systems… then suddenly pretend biology no longer matters the second it becomes politically inconvenient.
If fairness in women’s sports means anything at all, then protecting female athletes from competing against biologically male bodies is not hatred. It’s common sense.
Calling every disagreement “bigotry” isn’t moral courage. It’s intellectual intimidation dressed up as virtue.
Women fought for decades to have their own divisions because men are, on average, larger, faster, stronger, and more physically explosive. If those differences didn’t matter, women’s leagues would never have needed to exist in the first place.
Pretending otherwise does not erase reality. It erases the very reason women’s sports were created.
And the real hypocrisy is watching people scream “smash the patriarchy” while defending male physical advantages in women’s spaces the moment ideology demands it.
Ken Griffin donated $400 MILLION to Memorial Sloane Kettering.
Mamdani acolytes targeted children receiving cancer treatment at Memorial Sloan Kettering.
Chicago Public Schools is bussing kids to protest. If we're not careful we will lose our country. The students are telling me that their teachers tell them "F*ck Trump." The indoctrination in this country is not a conspiracy, it is a fact.
Chicago politicians say diversity is our strength but Chicago only has democrats on their city council, as governor, and as mayor. Diversity but not in political ideas.
Hasan Piker has consistently endorsed political violence.
Sorry, but people and organizations that treat him as a voice worth considering and defending don’t get to pretend to be against political violence.
So... Democrats pay people to:
- create hate
- organize hate
- spread hate
... and then they pay people to protest the hate they created, organized and spread.
There is so little racism in America to fight... that anti-racist NGOs have to fund racism to get racism to then get the funds to fight racism.
We also need to shut down ALL government funding to ANY non-profits.
All of them.
The incentive is the same at every one of them.
>Find the crisis.
>If you can't find it, manufacture it.
>If you can't manufacture it, subsidize someone who will.
Taxpayers are literally just a slush fund for fake bullshit.
CNN's @ScottJenningsKY on Virginia's Democrat gerrymander: "Virginia had -- literally had the fairest maps in the nation. They had a 6-5 map, six Democrats, five Republicans. In terms of proportional representation, they had the fairest map in the nation. That was drawn, by the way, by an independent commission that the voters asked for just a few years ago. Now they will have the least fair maps in the nation. And I'm not surprised that the yes vote won. They had all the money and all the lies. And sometimes in politics, when you got those two things, you can put something over the line, even something as egregious as this. This whole thing has driven Spanberger's approval ratings down into the toilet. She lied to the people of Virginia. They had to write a ballot question that was a joke. They drew maps that were a joke. Now you're going to have huge chunks of rural Virginia represented by 5 or 6 Democrats who all live in Northern Virginia, within about 15 miles of each other. It's a complete joke. Everybody knows it. And there's a reason that all these national Democrats and all their money came into Virginia, because, you know, they don't really care about the people of Virginia. They just care about power."
Imagine watching the Deep State torpedo Eric Swalwell in less than 7 days, and still thinking there's a magical career-ending bombshell they've had on Trump but not released over the past 11 years.
🚨 BREAKING: A final order of removal has just been issued for Mahmoud Khalil after he LOST his appeal in court
Khalil was one of the architects of the riots at Columbia University last year
He’ll be scheduled for deportation imminently
FINALLY! 👋🏻
Finland tracked every gender-referred adolescent in the country for up to 25 years.
Their psychiatric needs didn't improve after 'gender reassignment'. They surged.
A landmark peer-reviewed study just dropped. Here's what it found. 🧵
Iranian woman in Sweden:
“Pedophilia is legal in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Little girls are married off to adult men.
We are trying to raise awareness, but Western feminists are completely ignoring us.”
"God gave me strength, I couldn't let them folks die"
16 yr old Corion Evans was hanging out with his friends when he saw a car PLUNGE into the Pascagoula River in Mississippi.
3 teenage girls began screaming for help as the car quickly sank.
Evans immediately sprang into action, diving in to rescue the girls.
When asked where his bravery came from, he replied "God gave me strength, I couldn't let them folks die."
Police Officer Gary Mercer assisted Evans with the rescue, but he began to drown as well when one of the panicking victims tried to pull him under.
Despite being out of breath with exhausted legs, Evans swam back AGAIN to rescue both the Officer and the 3rd teen girl.
Four people are alive today because a young man put the lives of others before his own.
He truly is a hero. 🎖