Start Here

By Dylan Verdun Sullivan

Quiet Unfiltered Notes · From the Fire

A place to begin.

Writing on faith, recovery, ordinary life and the words worth preserving.

This is the personal journal of Dylan Verdun Sullivan. You can enter through the story, choose a reading path, or simply find a piece that meets you where you are.

Begin with The Power of the Lament Meet Dylan

Reading path

Faith through suffering

For the days when faith is a cry, a question or the decision to turn towards Christ again.

  1. The Power of the Lament An honest place to begin when the week has been heavy.
  2. Christ in the Middle of the Fire Old wounds, grace and the presence of Christ within the struggle.
  3. When God is Silent, He is Not Absent A reflection on trials and the quiet work of God.
  4. The Deeper the Dark, the Brighter the Grace Brokenness, sanctification and the unexpected scale of grace.
  5. A Quiet Desperation to Sit With Him Returning to stillness after a demanding week.

Reading path

Recovery and ordinary life

Writing from the body, the working week and the small moments that give a day its shape.

  1. The Architecture of Ordinary Days The quiet honour of showing up, day after day.
  2. Learning to Trust the Slow Work of Healing Learning patience with the parts of life that remain tender.
  3. The Things My Hands Remember A Saturday morning, a surgical appointment and a changing body.
  4. Five Days Later: Learning to Write While Learning to Heal Recovery makes room for a renewed curiosity about writing.
  5. Morning Mercy: Coffee, Cats, and the Quiet Faithfulness of God Coffee, rescue cats and the mercy of another morning.

Reading path

Writing and preservation

The personal convictions behind the books, the journal and Refined by Fire Press.

  1. The Fire Worth Preserving How a love of forgotten Christian books became a calling.
  2. Steward of the Fire Sitting with the witness of another generation before passing it on.
  3. The Mother of Pentecost: Restoring the Voice of Maria Woodworth-Etter Remembrance, foundations and the work of restoration.
  4. Writing From the Middle of It Writing while a life is still being understood.
  5. A Work of Restoration: Reviving the Voice of Maria Woodworth-Etter A personal reflection on bringing historical words to new readers.

Beyond a single entry

The journal sits alongside the books and the preservation work of Refined by Fire Press.

Explore the books & the Press Find me on Substack

A window into the journal

A few places behind the words.

Calm waterfront and distant buildings beneath an evening sky
The waterfront: one of the places where Dylan writes.
Kissed by Death on a cafe table beside a takeaway coffee
Coffee, a table and the story that began it.
Explore the photographs

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From the Fire

Start Here: Kissed by Death

By Dylan Verdun Sullivan
As I sit with my morning coffee, with my two study buddies Ninja and Ember this space exists for a reason. This is not just a blog. This is where everything connects. I am Dylan Verdun Sullivan  an Australian author and founder of Refined by Fire Press . My work, including Kissed by Death and Refined by Fire , is indexed in the National Library of Australia . What you’ll find here is not polished religion or surface-level reflection. This is lived experience written from the middle of trauma, addiction, survival, and faith. Kissed by Death is the backbone of it all. It tells the story of what happens when life breaks you and what it means to be rebuilt. 👉 Read the memoir Kissed by Death→ From here, the writing carries on. Some pieces are reflections. Some are wrestlings. Some are written in the quiet places where God meets us when nothing else makes sense. If you’ve ever walked through darkness this space is for you. About the Author Dylan Verdun Sullivan is the founder of Refin...
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The Unexpected Encouragement

By Dylan Verdun Sullivan
This morning I am sitting quietly with my first coffee of the day. The house is still. The sky outside is only just beginning to wake up. In a little while I will put on my uniform, get ready for work, and head off for another shift at Gold Coast University Hospital . But before the day begins, I find myself sitting here reflecting. It has been a difficult week. One of the more difficult weeks I have experienced in quite some time. There have been disappointments. Questions. Conversations I never expected to have. Chapters that ended much sooner than I thought they would. Plans that suddenly changed. The kind of week that leaves you emotionally exhausted before you even realise how tired you are. To be honest, I have spent much of the last several days trying to process everything. Trying to make sense of things. Trying to understand what God is doing. Trying to understand why certain doors close while others open. Trying to reconcile disappointment and faith at the same time. And if I...
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Five Days Later: Learning to Write While Learning to Heal

By Dylan Verdun Sullivan
It has been five days since my finger surgery. Five days. There is something strange about counting recovery in days. Before surgery, everything was measured by the date. September 11. The appointment. The operation. The thing coming toward me. Now I am on the other side of it, and time is measured differently. Five days since surgery. Five days of healing. Five days of adjusting. Five days of looking at my hand and knowing that something about it has permanently changed. And somewhere in the middle of all of this, while my body is slowly doing what bodies somehow know how to do, I purchased a book. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King . I haven't read it yet. Not one chapter. I haven't highlighted a sentence or underlined a paragraph. I haven't formed an opinion about King's philosophy of writing. I don't know which parts I will agree with, which parts will challenge me, or which parts might irritate me. The book is simply waiting for me. And strangely...
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How Close Does Death Have to Get to a Man Before You Feel His Breath?

By Dylan Verdun Sullivan
How close does death have to get to a man before you feel his breath? It is a question that has lived quietly inside me for a long time. It is days like today I am honestly wrestling with this question. Not because I have found an easy answer. But because I have met too many people who have carried that question without ever saying it out loud. Some battles never announce themselves. Some suffering learns to smile. Some pain becomes so practiced at hiding that even the people standing closest never notice it. Death has always fascinated humanity. Not simply because He is inevitable. But because, for some people, He does not arrive only at the end of life. Sometimes He begins walking beside them long before that. Not as a friend. Never as a friend. But as a shadow that slowly convinces a weary soul that it has always been there. He keeps pace with ordinary life. He stands quietly beside you while you make your morning coffee. He follows you through the supermarket while nobody notices t...
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The Difference Between Functioning and Living

By Dylan Verdun Sullivan
Jesus Is With You in the Pressure I have been thinking a lot lately about the pressure men carry. Not the kind people see publicly. The hidden pressure . The pressure that sits quietly underneath everyday life while you still somehow keep functioning. I do not think people fully understand how much weight many men are carrying internally while still showing up every day pretending everything is normal. You still go to work. Still pay the bills. Still answer texts. Still laugh at jokes. Still tell people you are “just tired.” Meanwhile internally your mind feels like it has been holding its breath for six months. I know that feeling well. There have been seasons of my life where I felt like I was carrying so much pressure internally that even small things started affecting me emotionally. A bill arriving at the wrong time. One difficult conversation. One more responsibility. One more unexpected expense. One more stressful shift. And suddenly your nervous system feel...
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