My wife’s birthday is exactly one week after mine (i.e., January 27, February 3). We celebrated our birthdays a couple weekends ago at Snowshoe Mountain in West Virginia during a regional snowstorm. That was actually Chelsea’s first-time skiing––she fell down the mountain several times, which was simultaneously concerning for me and adorable to see. It was such a great time together.
On the actual date of Chelsea’s 30th birthday, February 3, 2026, two significant things happened in my personal and professional life: (1) a flagship evangelical outlet published my article on their homepage that morning, and (2) I keynoted a military engineering conference that afternoon. Here is the link to the article, “How My Brain Injury Prepared Me for the AI Revolution,” and here is the keynote:
Thus, Chelsea’s 30th became: waking up to a major evangelical publication featuring my work, trying to act normal while fielding messages, rushing to the Louisville Marriott to speak to 250 civil and military engineers about human dignity and AI, then celebrating her at Texas Roadhouse with family.
It was a statistically, personally, and professionally absurd kind of day.
The kind that only makes sense in retrospect––if at all.
TGC published my work because it addresses questions Christians are asking about AI and human value.
The engineers stood up because my keynote addresses very similar questions.
Different languages, different contexts, same fundamental anxiety about what makes humans matter when capability isn’t the measure.
That both breakthroughs landed on Chelsea’s birthday feels like the Lord underlining my own thesis.
I’ve built an entire framework around the claim that human worth isn’t individual—it’s relational. That we need other subjects, not more objects. That dependency isn’t weakness but design. So, of course, the day that looks most like “mine” actually belonged to someone else 30 years ago. The timing gave the message flesh:
That there will never be a day about me.
That none of them are or ever will be.
And that’s a very good thing for humanity.
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