When I say the phrase “male friendship” what comes to mind Your first thought may be a co-worker, or your college roommate, even though you haven’t spoken in 4 years, or perhaps another dad who you coach soccer with every Spring. All reasonable examples, but these are not the friendships I have in mind. Funny enough, when I first thought of this phrase, I picture a group of guys meeting together in someone’s basement as an “accountability” group. Though this can be productive and, in some cases, necessary, I don’t believe this is the type of friendship most guys seek out.

When I was a young engineering student at the University of Minnesota my apartment overlooked the I35W bridge that crossed the Mississippi River just north of campus. It was an impressive structure with its four lanes of traffic each way and massive steel beams holding it up. I had driven over that bridge hundreds of times. But on August 1st, 2007, the unthinkable happened. During evening rush hour, when traffic loads were peaking, the I35W bridge suddenly collapsed into the river below. In engineering terms, the integrity of that bridge’s structure had been compromised and down it came.

Ruth and I live where the high plains bump up against the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains. In an hour we can be high in those mountains looking a hundred miles to the east over a vast sprawl of America’s, west scribed with highways, roads, trails, rivers, creeks, and ranch lands. I have to tell you, it’s a moment. This article is that kind of moment. It is not possible to write about finishing well without, as they say out here, “looking down my back trail.” But, we’re not looking at roads, ranches, and rivers. It’s people- met and places-landed and God in the middle of it all. Whatever faith I have and have attempted to live out comes from there.