Quiet Unfiltered Notes: From the Fire

It is still early this morning. The coffee is hot. The house is quiet. My cats Ninja and Ember are creating Cat Chaos. Outside, another ordinary day is beginning. In a little while I will put on my uniform get my mind focused and make the familiar drive toward Gold Coast University Hospital for the sixth day in a row. If I am honest, my body feels it. There is a particular kind of tiredness that settles in after several consecutive shifts. Not dramatic exhaustion. Not the kind that demands attention. Just the quiet ache that reminds you you have been giving something of yourself every day for almost a week. As I sit here this morning, I find myself thinking about something that surprised me. I am proud. Not the loud kind of pride that wants recognition. The quieter kind. The kind that simply looks back over a difficult week and whispers, you kept going. I think we often underestimate the quiet victories in our lives. We celebrate promotions. We celebrate milestones. We celebrate achie...

It is a quiet morning before I head off to work. The world is getting ready to face today's chaos. The world outside my window is moving toward another morning while I find myself sitting here with a cup of coffee that has already gone cold, thinking about something that has occupied my mind more than usual these past few weeks. Love. Not the kind we often talk about. Not the kind celebrated in films or written into songs. Not even the kind that exists between families or lifelong friends. I have been thinking about the love of God. The strange thing is that the older I become, the less certain I feel that I understand it. That may sound like an unusual thing for a Christian to admit. Surely years of faith should produce certainty. Twenty-three years I have pursued the Lord. Surely maturity should make everything clearer. Yet I have found almost the opposite to be true. The longer I walk with Christ, the more I realise how much of His love exists beyond my ability to fully explain....

There is a conversation I have replayed in my mind so many times that I can no longer tell where the memory ends and the mythology begins. I know roughly what was said. I know the room. I know the light. I know what I was wearing and the particular quality of silence that came afterward. But the precise words have long since blurred at the edges, worn smooth by the handling the way a stone becomes something almost beautiful after enough years in a river. I still replay it. Not because I am stuck. Not because I have failed to move forward. But because somewhere beneath all my conscious reasoning, some part of me has decided that this memory is not finished with me yet. That it still carries something I have not fully understood. That to stop replaying it would be to lose something I cannot afford to lose. I have asked myself why. And as I start my weekend, that question has been sitting with me all week. The one I cannot shake. Do we keep certain memories alive because somewhere deep wi...

It is late tonight i finished my last shift for the week. The house has finally grown quiet. The world is winding down. The notifications have stopped. The emails can wait until tomorrow. For the first time all day there is nothing demanding my attention. No conversations. No work. No responsibilities pulling at my thoughts. Just silence. It is strange how uncomfortable silence has become. Not because silence is dangerous in itself. But because of what it often reveals. During the day we have become experts at staying busy. There is always somewhere to be. Another shift to work. Another project to finish. Another message waiting to be answered. Another errand. Another responsibility. Another distraction. And when the day finally ends, many of us do something almost without thinking. We switch the television on. Sometimes we are not even watching it. It simply fills the room. Background noise. Background conversation. Background company. Some people fall asle...

its one in the morning and I havent long got home from my shift at Gold Coast University Hospital and as the world sleeps I find myself sitting quietly with a deep sense of gratitude. It has been one of those weeks where I have spent a lot of time thinking and reflecting on books. Not just writing them. Not just publishing them. Not just selling them. But thinking about where they go after they leave our hands. Next week I will be donating a box of my memoirs to The Footpath Library . And honestly, the thought has encouraged me this week more than I can properly put into words. There are moments throughout the publishing journey where you become consumed by practical things. Printing. Editing. Distribution. Marketing. ISBN numbers. Sales reports. Social media posts and content creating. Book listings. Reviews. All of those things have their place. They matter. But every now and then something happens that reminds you why you started writing in the first place. This feels like one of t...

As Saturday rolls around and my week comes to a close at the Gold Coast University Hospital , I find myself thinking about something I have not been able to shake all week. A letter. Not just any letter. A letter I wrote years ago to a younger version of myself. At the end of my memoir Kissed by Death, I wrote a letter addressed to the boy I once was. The boy who had no idea what was waiting for him. The boy who would eventually find himself fighting for his life. The boy who would carry wounds nobody else could see. The boy who would spend years asking questions that seemed to have no answers. The boy who often felt invisible. The boy who did not yet know that he would survive. For some reason, that letter has been sitting heavily on my heart lately. Maybe it is because life has changed so much recently. Maybe it is because I have been reflecting on where I have come from. Maybe it is because some chapters have unexpectedly closed while new ones are opening. Or maybe it is simply beca...