Mike Yarbrough - Tending the Fire: Ignite Your Heart and Live Life as a Man

Title Page

2021 by Mike Yarbrough

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meansfor example, electronic, photocopy, recordingwithout the prior written permission. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

I dedicate this book to my sons and their fire within.

Contents

Part 1: The High Call of Manliness

Part 2: The 5 Principles of Living Manfully

Prologue

Thanksgiving Day, 2019: 9:00 a.m.

Nearly every Thanksgiving of my life, and likely yours as well, has been spent with family or friends. Typically, I wake early to cook all of the usuals: turkey, ham, a special stuffing, rolls, and all of the fixings, with the house still filled with the sweet aroma of pies prepared the night before.

Though I like to think of Thanksgiving as a day of feasting, its more like a day of preparing followed by an all too brief moment of stuffing ourselves and then watching in sorrow as the leftovers get sent home with the guests. But its worth it. Every year.

This Thanksgiving, however, for the first time in my life, I was alone.

My wife Summer and I were two months into a nasty separation. Not feeling welcomed in my own home and not wanting to bring any drama to our friends on a holiday, I decided to drive to the small town of Black Mountain, North Carolinaabout an hour and a half from my home in Charlotteto spend the day hiking and in contemplation of how we arrived at this place in our marriage.

Had twenty-three years of hard-fought marriage and raising our boys together really come to this? I wondered. How many more Thanksgivings and holidays will look just like this one?

To be honest, this isnt how I intended to open this book. When I first sat down to pen this tome, I imagined an introduction of such inspiring eloquence that men across the globe would take hold of the words contained herein and move upon their world like a sort of possessed orchestraloud and thundering, yet with a beautiful harmony in the midst of it all.

But the truth is, there are a lot of things in my life that havent gone as intended. Instead, Ive brought a bit of my own story and my own fire to these pagesthe real stuff. This is where the heart is, and, thus, where my heart is. Im bringing you in close so that you might catch a genuine flame rather than an impersonal ideal.

Theres a High Calling upon the life of a man. For some, the call is a whisper. For others, it beckons boldly: put the world in order, reject the status quo, live with passion, do what matters, and protect what you love.

The problem is, if we hear this High Call of manliness and yet lack the skills to live it out, well fail ourselves. And when we face disappointments in life, we can begin to feel ashamed and defeated. Over time we become reluctant to swing for the fences.

Thats what I was feeling, that lonely Thanksgiving morning.

9:45 a.m.

On that solitary Thanksgiving morning, halfway to Black Mountain, I called home. The feelings of loneliness and the pain of holidays without my family made me look past the feelings of exasperation and defeat in my marriage. This was a fire tending moment for me.

To call home and let the longings of my heart be known without any certainty as to what would happen next was a challenge for a lone wolf. The truth is, I am a man that needs his family and longs for a community. This means there are desires of my heart that can only be satisfied by someone else. Opening myself up to this truth also meant facing the possibility of rejection. Theres an uncomfortable vulnerability in making our deepest desires known. And thats exactly what I did.

One way or another, this call was going to be a defining moment.

Fortunately, my wife Summer heard the tenderness in my voice and responded in kind. My marriage wasnt going to end. In fact, this was the beginning of a new and much happier chapter in our lives.

My friend Stephen Mansfield played a role in saving my marriage. Just a few weeks earlier, Stephen and I had a chance to sit down at a mens retreat in Black Mountain. Id read a number of his books (as should you) and interviewed him on my podcast some time before. Though I was intent on talking shop about the state of manhood and book publishing, he drew me out. Before I knew it, the story of my separation was on the table. In his fatherly way, he asked questions and listened to me as I laid it all out.

Despite my obvious feelings of finality to my marriage, he encouraged me: Mike, I dont believe your marriage is over. I believe theres still hope.

No one wants to disappoint the hope of a man they admire.

My fire was burning low, and Mansfields much-needed hope was a bit of timber from a friend.

Tending the fire of our souls can be like that. As Mansfield writes in his book, Men on Fire , Once an ignition has occurred, protect the fire, feed the fire and tend it as you must so it will engulf your heart. Once you know the principles that ignite your heart, you can help your brothers do the same.

As you may have guessed, I dont have it all figured out. Im on the journey toward becoming a better man. Ive traveled some unsteady roads, made a few good turns over rough terrain, and Ive found there are certain principles that keep us on the right path. Theyre maxims of masculinity thatll light our fires and help us find our way through the darkness.

In the six years since I started writing this book my life has been filled with unexpected challenges and blessings. Ive grown a movement for men called Wolf & Iron, wrote a little book about pocketknives, saw my sons graduate high school, launched a successful business with my wife making wedding rings from historic woods, watched my dad take his last breaths, and scattered his ashes on a mountain far from home.

At each twist and turn of life, the principles in this book have guided me. Theyve proven to be a trustworthy foundation upon which to stand.

Friend, if youre ready to ignite your heart and truly live life as a man, read on.

Introduction

What is to give light must endure burning.

Victor Frankl, Author, Psychiatrist, and Holocaust Survivor

I magine with me if you will. You are alone, in deep woods, with a great canopy of green and brown overhead. The canopy of trees pushing back all the world and embracing only a single man: you. The sun never beats down here, if there is sun. And while I suppose you could determine whether it were the moon or the sun that illumes the grandeur above and pours out soft and white through the fog onto the forest floor, you would never strain to do so here. You have not come to analyze but to tend, and the forest needs no tending.

You stand in a clearing and your fire is before youits ashes spread wide within a circle of large stones that mark its boundary. These stones, did you bring them to this place? No, you did not. How could you? See how they disappear into the earth? How deep they must go. Theyre beautiful and immovable and in their center burns an earnest flame.

Now, the fire is nothing to brag about, but its hardy enough. Its the type of flame that keeps the chill off most nights, though, you say to yourself, Perhaps not this night. Its early, and already a cool breeze has taken up and seems to have found its home in the ground. Your lower extremities are telling the rest of your body that the cold is coming . You instinctively know you must keep moving and tend your fire.