More Than a Thursday is something I’ve been wanting to say for a while now. A year in, fifty two episodes behind us, and somewhere along the way this counter stool became more than a weekly stop. It became a place I keep coming back to because the writing won’t stay in one lane and the road keeps handing me more than one journal can hold.

So I opened a few more doors. Same diner. Same voice. Just more seats at the table.

Grace To Go lands every Sunday morning before most people are fully awake. A short scripture rooted reflection written the way I’d say it if we were sitting across from each other over coffee that’s still hot. No church background required. Grace on the Ground is the Wednesday companion. One small act of kindness tied to Matthew 25 Lives. Something real. Something anybody can do. And Still Pouring is me stepping behind the counter and telling you what I see from this side of the coffee pot. My story. My road. The things chaplain work teaches you that don’t show up in any training manual.

All of it lives at roadsidenotes.substack.com. All of it is free. All of it is yours. The counter is bigger than it used to be but the coffee is always on. Pull up a stool anytime.

📖 Read the full Journal entry: https://faithandgoodcourage.com/2026/10/15/more-than-a-thursday/

🎙️ Roadside Notes is a reading series from the Faith and Good Courage Journal, stories of grace, grit, and second chances written and read by Christopher Tuttle, The Route 66 Chaplain.

#FaithAndGoodCourage #faithgoodcourage #Route66Chaplain #ChristopherTuttle #RoadsideWisdom #Rule66 #HealingHighway #GraceToGo #GraceOnTheGround #StillPouring #KindnessForTheRoad #WitWisdomAndDinerMoments #GraceOnTheGo #route66 #matthew25lives

The Loop Ends When You Do. I didn't come up with that. I heard it years ago from someone who said it the way people say things when they've lived it rather than read it. It stayed with me the quiet way the useful ones do. Until the right moment pulled it forward.

That moment showed up at a diner counter on Route 66 sitting next to a truck driver named Frank. Same dispatcher. Same reassigned load. Same promotion that went sideways fifteen years ago. Same slow burn that hadn't cooled one degree in all the time I'd known him. Frank wasn't a bitter man by nature. Funny. Sharp. The kind of road veteran who could read weather and traffic and people with equal accuracy. But he had this one loop he couldn't find his way out of and every time I saw him he was still in it.

A friend had once tried to help by pulling out the definition of insanity. Frank didn't receive that well. He told me the whole story with the same energy he told the dispatcher story, which was a pretty good illustration of the very point the friend was trying to make. Truth delivered like a judgment closes doors. That's not the quote's fault. That's just how people work. This week's Roadside Notes is about the version that lands different. And the day the loop finally ends.

🎙️ Roadside Notes is a reading series from the Faith and Good Courage Journal, stories of grace, grit, and second chances written and read by Christopher Tuttle, The Route 66 Chaplain.

#FaithAndGoodCourage #faithgoodcourage #Route66Chaplain #ChristopherTuttle #RoadsideWisdom #Rule66 #HealingHighway #KindnessForTheRoad #QuietStrength #TheCompassionDeficit #WitWisdomAndDinerMoments #GraceOnTheGo #route66 #matthew25lives

The Man Who Collected Happy didn't call it that. That's just what it was. He traveled for work but somewhere along the way he had made a decision that a few extra days and a road worth taking was worth the longer itinerary. So he took the long way. Every time. And every diner he stopped in, every counter stool he climbed onto, he asked the same question.

What makes you happy.

Not as small talk. Not as a conversation starter he'd forget before the coffee arrived. He actually wanted to know. He listened, filed it away, and when he got home he went through what he'd collected and looked for things he could apply to his own life. Happiness as field research. Joy as something worth studying in the people who had found it. Then he sat down next to me and asked me the question.

I didn't have to think about it long. Helping others is my inner peace. That's the whole answer. He wrote it down. Then he asked what that looked like in practice. So I told him about Matthew 25 Lives. About thirty years in radio and television doing public giving with cameras and headcounts and dollar values. And about the moments that actually stayed with me. The quiet ones. The note left at a counter. The conversation that went longer than planned. No camera. No broadcast. Just a smile given and one received and neither one of us will ever forget it.

📖 Read the full Journal entry: [URL TO COME]

🎙️ Roadside Notes is a reading series from the Faith and Good Courage Journal, stories of grace, grit, and second chances written and read by Christopher Tuttle, The Route 66 Chaplain.

#FaithAndGoodCourage #faithgoodcourage #Route66Chaplain #ChristopherTuttle #RoadsideWisdom #Rule66 #HealingHighway #KindnessForTheRoad #QuietStrength #TheCompassionDeficit #WitWisdomAndDinerMoments #GraceOnTheGo #route66 #matthew25lives

The Empty Stool was the last seat in the house. Every other spot at the counter was taken and the booths were full and the lunch crowd was moving fast and not paying much attention to the young man who slid onto that last stool like he was trying to take up as little space as possible.

He didn't want to be there. Not in the diner, not in the conversation, not in whatever day he was having. He ordered coffee. Didn't look at the menu. Didn't look at me. Stared at the counter the way people stare at things when they're not actually seeing them. I didn't push. I never push. But I did what I've learned to do in those moments. I paid attention and I stayed present and before I left I wrote something down on a piece of paper and left it where he'd find it after I was gone.

I didn't know if it would land. You never do. You just leave the note and trust the road. A few weeks later I came back to that diner and a waitress came around the counter and said she needed to tell me something. The young man on the empty stool was her nephew. She had watched the whole thing. She said something shifted in him after that day. Then she went behind the counter and came back with a slice of pie and said she owed me pie for a lifetime and she intended to make good on it.

📖 Read the full Journal entry: https://faithandgoodcourage.com/2026/09/24/the-empty-stool/

🎙️ Roadside Notes is a reading series from the Faith and Good Courage Journal, stories of grace, grit, and second chances written and read by Christopher Tuttle, The Route 66 Chaplain.

#FaithAndGoodCourage #faithgoodcourage #Route66Chaplain #ChristopherTuttle #RoadsideWisdom #Rule66 #HealingHighway #KindnessForTheRoad #QuietStrength #TheCompassionDeficit #WitWisdomAndDinerMoments #GraceOnTheGo #route66 #matthew25lives

Mile Zero doesn't look like much. It's just a driveway. A cup of coffee going cold in the cupholder. A map you've already looked at three times even though you don't really need it. The engine running. The garage door still open behind you like it's giving you one last chance to change your mind.

That's Mile Zero. And it's the most honest moment of any journey.

I met a woman at a gas station just outside of Kingman who was standing next to her car with both hands wrapped around a paper coffee cup staring at the highway like it owed her an answer. She wasn't lost. She wasn't broken down. She was just at Mile Zero and taking her time about leaving it. I asked her where she was headed. She smiled and said she wasn't completely sure yet. Said she figured the road would sort out the specifics once she got moving. I told her that was about the smartest thing I'd heard all week.

This week's Roadside Notes is about the moment before the first turn. The wide open unwritten nature of a morning that hasn't made up its mind. You don't need the whole map. You don't need every answer. You just need enough courage to back out of the driveway and point it forward. The road takes care of the rest. It always has.

📖 Read the full Journal entry: https://faithandgoodcourage.com/2026/09/17/mile-zero/

🎙️ Roadside Notes is a reading series from the Faith and Good Courage Journal, stories of grace, grit, and second chances written and read by Christopher Tuttle, The Route 66 Chaplain.

#FaithAndGoodCourage #faithgoodcourage #Route66Chaplain #ChristopherTuttle #RoadsideWisdom #Rule66 #HealingHighway #KindnessForTheRoad #QuietStrength #TheCompassionDeficit #WitWisdomAndDinerMoments #GraceOnTheGo #route66 #matthew25lives

The Regular doesn't always have a name on the sign out front. But everybody inside knows who he is. He's the one who comes in at the same time, sits in the same spot, orders the same thing, and tips the same way every single time. Not because he's a creature of habit. Because he's a creature of commitment. There's a difference and the people behind the counter know it even if they've never put words to it.

Every diner on Route 66 has one. The man in the corner booth every Tuesday morning at seven. The woman who always gets the soup and always stays for a second cup. The truck driver who hits the same stop every westbound run and always asks about the cook's grandkids by name. They're not famous. They're not trying to be. They just keep coming back and that turns out to be everything.

This is episode fifty three. One year of showing up every Thursday without a paywall, without a pitch, without asking anything except a few minutes of your time and whatever the road put in front of both of us that week. This week's Roadside Notes is about what it means to be The Regular. For a diner. For a person. For anything worth returning to. And why reliable turns out to be one of the most remarkable things a person can be.

📖 Read the full Journal entry: https://faithandgoodcourage.com/2026/09/10/the-regular/

🎙️ Roadside Notes is a reading series from the Faith and Good Courage Journal, stories of grace, grit, and second chances written and read by Christopher Tuttle, The Route 66 Chaplain.

#FaithAndGoodCourage #faithgoodcourage #Route66Chaplain #ChristopherTuttle #RoadsideWisdom #Rule66 #HealingHighway #KindnessForTheRoad #QuietStrength #TheCompassionDeficit #WitWisdomAndDinerMoments #GraceOnTheGo #route66 #matthew25lives

The Man Who Was the Building didn't introduce himself. He didn't need to. You understood who he was the moment you walked through the door at Hackberry General Store and saw him moving behind the counter with the quiet ease of someone who had been doing this long enough that the place and the person had become the same thing.

Mary and I had stopped in on one of those Route 66 afternoons where the plan is loose and the road is doing the deciding. While we were there a group came in from somewhere far enough away that English wasn't the first thing they reached for. He didn't hesitate. Didn't look for someone else to handle it. He just moved toward them the way he moved toward everyone else and started doing what he did. Pointing. Nodding. Smiling the specific smile of a man who has learned that kindness doesn't actually require words to travel. They understood him perfectly. Because genuine welcome doesn't have an accent.

The towns that refused to die didn't survive on their own. They survived because somebody inside them refused to leave. Refused to stop caring. Refused to let the bypass have the last word. He was that somebody for Hackberry. This week's Roadside Notes is about what it looks like when a person and a place become the same thing. And what the counter looks like from both sides.

📖 Read the full Journal entry: https://faithandgoodcourage.com/2026/09/03/the-man-who-was-the-building/

🎙️ Roadside Notes is a reading series from the Faith and Good Courage Journal, stories of grace, grit, and second chances written and read by Christopher Tuttle, The Route 66 Chaplain.

#FaithAndGoodCourage #faithgoodcourage #Route66Chaplain #ChristopherTuttle #RoadsideWisdom #Rule66 #HealingHighway #KindnessForTheRoad #QuietStrength #TheCompassionDeficit #WitWisdomAndDinerMoments #GraceOnTheGo #route66 #matthew25lives #Route66Centennial

The Boy Who Wanted to Watch wasn't causing trouble. He just wanted to see everything. The lifts going up. The air guns spinning lug nuts off. The machines that balanced the tires. Jacob was seven years old and the whole place was a laboratory and nobody had told him yet that he was supposed to sit still and look at a screen.

I was only supposed to be there five minutes. Tire pressure check on my way through Kingman. In and out. Back on the road. That was the plan until I walked into the waiting area and saw a young woman trying to hold herself together while simultaneously trying to keep a very curious seven year old from pressing his nose against every window in the place.

Her name was Terry. She had blown a tire just outside of Kingman on I-40. She was a waitress, a part time dental hygiene student, and a single mom on her way to New Mexico to bury someone she loved. Jacob needed someone to take his questions seriously and answer them straight. Terry needed someone to tell her she was in a good place and that she was going to be okay. Neither of those things took a lot. They just took showing up and paying attention and being willing to stay a little longer than planned. My five minute stop turned into an hour I never planned and wouldn't trade.

📖 Read the full Journal entry: https://faithandgoodcourage.com/2026/08/27/the-boy-who-wanted-to-watch/

🎙️ Roadside Notes is a reading series from the Faith and Good Courage Journal, stories of grace, grit, and second chances written and read by Christopher Tuttle, The Route 66 Chaplain.

#FaithAndGoodCourage #faithgoodcourage #Route66Chaplain #ChristopherTuttle #RoadsideWisdom #Rule66 #HealingHighway #KindnessForTheRoad #QuietStrength #TheCompassionDeficit #WitWisdomAndDinerMoments #GraceOnTheGo #route66 #matthew25lives

The Centennial Seeker found me before I found him. I was halfway through breakfast at a Route 66 diner when I heard him ask the waitress about the towns. The ones that had every reason to dry up and blow away and somehow didn't. She listened politely, smiled, and pointed right at me. So he pulled up a stool and we got to talking.

Pete from Kentucky wasn't really asking about the towns at all. He was asking about himself. Twenty two years of sixty hour weeks and a morning where he finally looked up from the work long enough to realize he couldn't remember the last time he had done something just because he wanted to. He didn't ease into it. Didn't plan a sabbatical. He just stopped. Handed in his notice, packed what fit in the car, and pointed it west. Two flat tires before he hit the Oklahoma state line. A water pump that gave up in the middle of nowhere. A cracked windshield courtesy of a truck tire outside of Holbrook. And a breakfast on a curb in Flagstaff with a homeless woman that he called one of the best twenty minutes of the whole trip.

This week's Roadside Notes is about what happens when the weight of everything you've been carrying gets heavier than the fear of letting it go. The towns that refused to die didn't survive because everything went right. They survived because the people in them learned to sit with the hard parts long enough to find what was still worth saving. Pete from Kentucky was doing the same thing. One mile at a time.

📖 Read the full Journal entry: https://faithandgoodcourage.com/2026/08/20/the-centennial-seeker/

🎙️ Roadside Notes is a reading series from the Faith and Good Courage Journal, stories of grace, grit, and second chances written and read by Christopher Tuttle, The Route 66 Chaplain.

#FaithAndGoodCourage #faithgoodcourage #Route66Chaplain #ChristopherTuttle #RoadsideWisdom #Rule66 #HealingHighway #KindnessForTheRoad #QuietStrength #TheCompassionDeficit #WitWisdomAndDinerMoments #GraceOnTheGo #route66 #matthew25lives #Route66Centennial

If It's Your Calling, It Will Keep Calling. You've probably seen that on a coffee mug or a piece of wall art somewhere. Maybe you smiled at it. Maybe it stopped you for just a second longer than you expected and you weren't quite sure why.

I met a man outside of Flagstaff who knew exactly why. He just hadn't said it out loud yet. He was in sales. Good at it too. Comfortable salary, company car, a territory he knew cold. But within ten minutes of sitting down he was talking about the classroom. Not his classroom. Not anymore. The one he left fourteen years ago when the numbers stopped making sense and a recruiter called at exactly the right moment with exactly the wrong opportunity.

He wasn't complaining. He was just talking. The way people talk when they've been carrying something long enough that it starts coming out sideways in conversations with strangers over bad coffee. But the classroom kept showing up. In the way his eyes changed when he mentioned a nephew he had been helping with math. In the way he said the word teacher like it still belonged to him even though he hadn't used it in over a decade.

Callings don't leave. They just wait. With a patience that is honestly a little unsettling when you think about it too long. This week's Roadside Notes is for anyone who has been running from something that keeps finding them. Stop running long enough to ask why it keeps showing up. It's been calling a long time. It's not going to stop.

📖 Read the full Journal entry: https://faithandgoodcourage.com/2026/08/13/if-its-your-calling/

🎙️ Roadside Notes is a reading series from the Faith and Good Courage Journal, stories of grace, grit, and second chances written and read by Christopher Tuttle, The Route 66 Chaplain.

#FaithAndGoodCourage #faithgoodcourage #Route66Chaplain #ChristopherTuttle #RoadsideWisdom #Rule66 #HealingHighway #KindnessForTheRoad #QuietStrength #TheCompassionDeficit #WitWisdomAndDinerMoments #GraceOnTheGo #route66 #matthew25lives

The Detour Called Self-Doubt doesn't announce itself. It doesn't put up a sign or flash a warning light. It just quietly redirects you and before you know it you're sitting on the hood of your car at a gas station just off the highway staring at your phone like the answer is in there somewhere.

I pulled off for fuel on a stretch of road that doesn't offer a lot of options. There was one other car at the pumps. A man, maybe mid-forties, sitting on his hood with his phone in both hands and the look of someone who had been there a while. Not lost. Not broken down. Just stopped. He was on his way to the job interview he had been working toward for two years. He had driven three hours that morning to get there. And now he was sitting in the Mojave Desert talking himself out of it.

That's the thing about self-doubt that nobody warns you about. It doesn't show up when you're unprepared. It shows up when you're ready. The ones who make it three hours down the road and then stop are the ones who wanted it badly enough to get there. Self-doubt is not the enemy of readiness. It's the proof of it. This week's Roadside Notes is for anyone sitting on the hood of their life right now waiting for permission. Get back in the car. Finish the drive. The road already knew you were ready.

📖 Read the full Journal entry: https://faithandgoodcourage.com/2026/08/06/the-detour-called-self-doubt/

🎙️ Roadside Notes is a reading series from the Faith and Good Courage Journal, stories of grace, grit, and second chances written and read by Christopher Tuttle, The Route 66 Chaplain.

#FaithAndGoodCourage #faithgoodcourage #Route66Chaplain #ChristopherTuttle #RoadsideWisdom #Rule66 #HealingHighway #KindnessForTheRoad #QuietStrength #TheCompassionDeficit #WitWisdomAndDinerMoments #GraceOnTheGo #route66 #matthew25lives

Someday Finally Showed Up and it looked exactly like a corner booth at Mr. D's 66 Diner in Kingman, Arizona. Both had the burger and the root beer float. Both had the pie. They had been married forty-nine years and eleven months and they were somewhere in the middle of the greatest road trip of their lives.

No phones on the table. No awkward silences to fill. Just two people who had long since run out of things to prove and were simply enjoying where they were. Route 66 had been on their list since before they were married. They had talked about it the way couples talk about the things they're going to do when the time is right. And then one morning the time was right and they got in the car. Route 66's centennial year as the backdrop. Hawaii at the end. Two things they had always meant to do together. Not one for him and one for her. Both for both of them.

This week's Roadside Notes is for anyone who has been treating the life they want like something they'll get to eventually. Someday doesn't wait. You have to go get it. The road is a hundred years old this year and it's still out there. Still the same two lanes it always was. Go get your someday. It's closer than you think.

📖 Read the full Journal entry: https://faithandgoodcourage.com/2026/07/30/someday-finally-showed-up/

🎙️ Roadside Notes is a reading series from the Faith and Good Courage Journal, stories of grace, grit, and second chances written and read by Christopher Tuttle, The Route 66 Chaplain.

#FaithAndGoodCourage #faithgoodcourage #Route66Chaplain #ChristopherTuttle #RoadsideWisdom #Rule66 #HealingHighway #KindnessForTheRoad #QuietStrength #TheCompassionDeficit #WitWisdomAndDinerMoments #GraceOnTheGo #route66 #matthew25lives

She Drove It Anyway and nobody in her life tried to talk her out of it. That part surprised her. She had braced for the pushback, the raised eyebrows, the quiet chorus of are you sure about this. Instead her teenage kids helped her pack. Her sister put a tracker on her car. Her best friend called every evening at seven. And on a Tuesday morning in early fall she flew to St. Louis to drive Route 66.

She wasn't running away. She had been through a divorce, lost a job she was good at, and spent the better part of two years making sure everyone around her was okay. Somewhere in the doing of all that she had misplaced herself. Not dramatically. Just quietly. The way you set something down for a minute and then can't quite remember where you left it. Her dad had driven Route 66 when he needed to think. Told her the miles had a way of sorting things out that nothing else could. She had carried that story for thirty years. This was finally the right time to find out if he was right.

I met her in Needles on one of her last days on the road. She slid onto the stool next to mine with the easy comfort of a woman who had been doing this long enough to feel at home anywhere along the road. This week's Roadside Notes is her story. And it belongs to every person who has been so busy taking care of everyone else that they've lost track of where they set themselves down.

📖 Read the full Journal entry: https://faithandgoodcourage.com/2026/07/23/she-drove-it-anyway/

🎙️ Roadside Notes is a reading series from the Faith and Good Courage Journal, stories of grace, grit, and second chances written and read by Christopher Tuttle, The Route 66 Chaplain.

#FaithAndGoodCourage #faithgoodcourage #Route66Chaplain #ChristopherTuttle #RoadsideWisdom #Rule66 #HealingHighway #KindnessForTheRoad #QuietStrength #TheCompassionDeficit #WitWisdomAndDinerMoments #GraceOnTheGo #route66 #matthew25lives

The Note You Leave Behind doesn't require a conversation. It doesn't require an introduction or an explanation or even eye contact. It just requires paying attention long enough to notice that the person next to you at the counter is carrying something heavy today.

The counter stool is the best seat in the house. Always has been. You get the front row view of everything. And sometimes what you hear from the booth just behind your left shoulder is a voice that's been holding it together for too long and just ran out of road. You know that voice. Most of us do. We've used it ourselves at some point, hunched over a phone in a public place trying to keep it together while the world kept moving around us like nothing was happening.

You don't go over. That's not what they need. What they need is simpler than that. A receipt. A napkin. The back of whatever's in your pocket. Seven words. Find happiness in the fact that the world needs you. You fold it once, set it where they'll find it after you're gone, and then you walk out to the parking lot and let it do whatever it's going to do. You'll never know. That's the whole deal.

This week's Roadside Notes is about the kind of attention that changes how you move through every room you walk into. It doesn't cost anything. But what it produces can mean everything to somebody on a day when everything felt like nothing.

📖 Read the full Journal entry: https://faithandgoodcourage.com/2026/07/09/what-the-road-taught-me/

🎙️ Roadside Notes is a reading series from the Faith and Good Courage Journal, stories of grace, grit, and second chances written and read by Christopher Tuttle, The Route 66 Chaplain.

#FaithAndGoodCourage #faithgoodcourage #Route66Chaplain #ChristopherTuttle #RoadsideWisdom #Rule66 #HealingHighway #KindnessForTheRoad #QuietStrength #TheCompassionDeficit #WitWisdomAndDinerMoments #GraceOnTheGo #route66 #matthew25lives

What the Road Taught Me didn't come from a book or a classroom or a motivational weekend. It came from a diner stool, a long stretch of highway, and enough miles to finally stop arguing with the quiet.

Everybody's carrying something. The man eating alone at the end of the counter isn't necessarily lonely. The woman who doesn't make eye contact isn't necessarily rude. Most of the time people are just tired in a way that doesn't show up on the outside. The road taught me to give people the benefit of the quiet. Don't fill it. Don't explain it. Just let them have it. Sometimes that's the kindest thing you can offer a stranger.

This week's Roadside Notes is about what happens when you log enough miles to stop passing through and start paying attention. The road doesn't reward the people who have it all figured out. It rewards the ones who keep going anyway. There's a point on a long drive where the noise in your head runs out of things to say. That's where the real lessons live. And if you're willing to sit still long enough to receive them, they have a way of showing up right where you are.

📖 Read the full Journal entry: https://faithandgoodcourage.com/2026/07/09/what-the-road-taught-me/

🎙️ Roadside Notes is a reading series from the Faith and Good Courage Journal, stories of grace, grit, and second chances written and read by Christopher Tuttle, The Route 66 Chaplain.

#FaithAndGoodCourage #faithgoodcourage #Route66Chaplain #ChristopherTuttle #RoadsideWisdom #Rule66 #HealingHighway #KindnessForTheRoad #QuietStrength #TheCompassionDeficit #WitWisdomAndDinerMoments #GraceOnTheGo #route66 #matthew25lives

He sat down next to me at the counter like he'd done it a thousand times, because he had. Different counter, different state, same stool. He drove cars for dealerships. Picked them up in one place, delivered them somewhere else, and filled the miles in between with diners just like this one. He'd seen enough of this country to stop being surprised by it.

He told me the world had gotten loud. That most people he sat next to anymore were either angry about something or worn down from pretending they weren't. He wasn't complaining. Just reporting. The way a man who has driven every road learns to report. Then he said something I didn't expect. He said he liked my laugh. Said it plain, the way people say things when they actually mean them.

This week's Roadside Notes is about what happens when a stranger pulls off the highway not for the coffee but because something in him needed to see that it was still possible. That a person could move through all of it and still have a light in them. You don't always know what you're giving people when you show up with something genuine in you. Sometimes you're just having coffee. Sometimes you're the answer to a question somebody carried in from the highway and didn't know how to ask. Both can happen on the same Tuesday.

📖 Read the full Journal entry: https://faithandgoodcourage.com/2026/07/02/the-man-who-drove-every-road/

🎙️ Roadside Notes is a reading series from the Faith and Good Courage Journal, stories of grace, grit, and second chances written and read by Christopher Tuttle, The Route 66 Chaplain.

#FaithAndGoodCourage #faithgoodcourage #Route66Chaplain #ChristopherTuttle #RoadsideWisdom #Rule66 #HealingHighway #KindnessForTheRoad #QuietStrength #TheCompassionDeficit #WitWisdomAndDinerMoments #GraceOnTheGo #route66 #matthew25lives

It wasn't a remarkable morning. Coffee. A window seat. The kind of quiet that settles in before the day gets loud. I wasn't looking for anything. I was just there. That's when they pulled in. An older car moving carefully into the handicap space. And then everything slowed down.

He was old. Fragile in the way that men who were once very strong sometimes become. Getting out of that car took everything he had. When he finally stood, he straightened up and adjusted his sweater the way a marine adjusts his dress uniform. Like it mattered. Like he still had somewhere worth showing up to. He retrieved the walker, opened her door, positioned it at just the right angle, and walked her inside. I don't think he saw a single person watching. I don't think it would have changed anything if he had.

This week's Roadside Notes is about what happens when kindness moves before you do. Nobody planned it. Nothing dramatic happened. An old man loved his wife well in a parking lot. A stranger held a door. Two menus got grabbed without thinking. That's all it was. And somehow it was everything. Kindness costs nothing. But what it gives back is something you carry for a long time.

📖 Read the full Journal entry: https://faithandgoodcourage.com/2026/06/25/kindness-costs-nothing/

🎙️ Roadside Notes is a reading series from the Faith and Good Courage Journal, stories of grace, grit, and second chances written and read by Christopher Tuttle, The Route 66 Chaplain.

#FaithAndGoodCourage #faithgoodcourage #Route66Chaplain #ChristopherTuttle #RoadsideWisdom #Rule66 #HealingHighway #KindnessForTheRoad #QuietStrength #TheCompassionDeficit #WitWisdomAndDinerMoments #GraceOnTheGo #route66 #matthew25lives

I wanted the straight shot. Efficient. The kind of drive that gets you somewhere without asking much of you along the way. But I missed the ramp on I-40 just out of Kingman. No signal, no GPS worth trusting, just heat waves and a frontage road that hadn't seen a map update since the Eisenhower administration. That's when I saw him. A kid sitting on the hood of a busted car, flipping a coin like he was in quiet conversation with the universe.

He wasn't flagging anyone down. He wasn't panicking. He was just waiting. And when I pulled over and asked if he needed a ride, he said something I didn't expect. "I don't need a map. I just need a reason." He'd left a bad place and didn't know exactly where he was headed. Only that staying behind was no longer an option.

This week's Roadside Notes is about what happens when you miss the exit and end up exactly where you were supposed to be. Grace doesn't always announce itself with flashing arrows or clear outcomes. Sometimes it shows up as a detour, a kid on the hood of a car, and a coin with no wrong side. This one is for anyone who's ever wondered whether the unplanned turns in life are leading somewhere worth going. They are.

📖 Read the full Journal entry: https://faithandgoodcourage.com/2026/06/18/grace-takes-the-detour/

🎙️ Roadside Notes is a reading series from the Faith and Good Courage Journal, stories of grace, grit, and second chances written and read by Christopher Tuttle, The Route 66 Chaplain.

#FaithAndGoodCourage #faithgoodcourage #Route66Chaplain #ChristopherTuttle #RoadsideWisdom #Rule66 #HealingHighway #KindnessForTheRoad #QuietStrength #TheCompassionDeficit #WitWisdomAndDinerMoments #GraceOnTheGo #route66 #matthew25lives

It wasn't a remarkable day. Just the road and a reason to stop. A handwritten sign in a diner pie case. Buy one, get one. Nothing spiritual about it. Just a bakery that made a little too much and a diner trying to move it before closing. But somewhere between the first cup of coffee and the second, something shifted quietly. And a few miles down the road, a man standing on a corner with a handwritten sign that said Hungry got a piece of pie he wasn't expecting.

Kindness is not always reactive. Sometimes the decision comes first. Before the moment. Before the need is even visible. This week's Roadside Notes is about what happens when you start living a little more ready than you used to. Hands a little more open. A quiet yes made in a diner before you even know where it's going.

It doesn't take much. A second cup of coffee. An extra slice of pie. A few dollars set aside just in case the road puts something in front of you that you didn't plan for. This one is for anyone who's ever wondered whether staying ready makes a difference. It does. More than you think.

📖 Read the full Journal entry: https://faithandgoodcourage.com/2026/06/11/kindness-is-not-always-reactive/

🎙️ Roadside Notes is a reading series from the Faith and Good Courage Journal, stories of grace, grit, and second chances written and read by Christopher Tuttle, The Route 66 Chaplain.

#FaithAndGoodCourage #faithgoodcourage #Route66Chaplain #ChristopherTuttle #RoadsideWisdom #Rule66 #HealingHighway #KindnessForTheRoad #QuietStrength #TheCompassionDeficit #WitWisdomAndDinerMoments #GraceOnTheGo #route66 #matthew25lives

I was sitting at a Route 66 diner not long ago, hands wrapped around a cup of coffee, watching the quiet rhythm of the morning unfold. The kind of place where the plates clink softly, the coffee keeps coming, and nobody's in too much of a hurry. Then something small broke the pattern in the best possible way.

The waitress poured a little more coffee, paused, and said she wanted to cover mine. Not because of anything big. Just because she'd noticed. And in that one quiet moment at a diner counter, something came back around that I hadn't thought twice about giving. That's the whole story. And it's bigger than it sounds.

This week's Roadside Notes is for anyone who's ever wondered whether the small things count. The quiet kindness nobody saw. The breakfast you picked up for someone without making a thing of it. The moment you chose to notice someone who might otherwise go unnoticed. They count. More than you think. Maybe more than you'll ever know.

📖 Read the full Journal entry: https://faithandgoodcourage.com/2026/06/04/coffee-came-back/

🎙️ Roadside Notes is a reading series from the Faith and Good Courage Journal, stories of grace, grit, and second chances written and read by Christopher Tuttle, The Route 66 Chaplain.

#FaithAndGoodCourage #faithgoodcourage #Route66Chaplain #ChristopherTuttle #RoadsideWisdom #Rule66 #HealingHighway #KindnessForTheRoad #QuietStrength #TheCompassionDeficit #WitWisdomAndDinerMoments #GraceOnTheGo #route66 #matthew25lives