What's Hanging on Your Walls?

There was a time—back when I was a boy—when the walls of my room could barely breathe.

They were plastered floor to ceiling with posters. Heroes, frozen in motion. The Bash Brothers. Doc Gooden winding up. Roger Clemens gripping a rocket. Ozzie Smith captured mid-backflip. And then there was The Land of Boz—a crooked poster that refused to hang straight, but held magic anyway. The kind of magic only childhood idols can carry.

I didn’t know why those posters mattered then. I just knew they did. Over time, they came down. One by one. And up went something new—something that felt more permanent: autographs. Not just signatures. These were trophies. Proof that I had stood in the same space as greatness. A signed bat from Frank Thomas, “The Big Hurt.” Robin Ventura’s signature from the infield. Aikman. Montana. Hakeem the Dream. Todd Day at War Memorial Stadium in 1990—one of my prize catches as a kid.

My wall shifted from dreams to documentation. From someday to see, I did that.

Years later, in the first office of a little rent house in Texarkana, I found myself hanging new trophies. Not bats or posters anymore. But plaques. Certificates. Commendations. All carefully arranged. A young man’s résumé in picture form. It mattered to me then—to be seen. To be noticed. To prove I belonged.

And like a good soldier, I carried those plaques with me. Office to office. Job to job. They were anchors I wasn’t ready to pull up.

But recently—just a few months ago—I found myself in my current office, sitting in the stillness, and my eyes landed on one particular plaque. A photo of me with a former governor. It’s been nearly twenty years since it was taken. And I asked myself: Why did this matter so much that I framed it? Right beside it, another frame caught my attention. A piece of artwork my wife gave me early in our marriage—fifteen years ago now. Still matters.

There’s a photo of us as a young family, freshly planted, hearts full of promise. I’m holding our red-headed baby girl in a green dress. The hand-carved elephant from a friend who went on a mission to Africa. The bridal portrait of my wife that still sits on the shelf—her eyes lit with joy. So does the picture of my dad and me, taken just two weeks before he passed.

Here’s the truth I’ve only recently started to admit out loud:I’ve been processing my walls.

Because somewhere along the way, the plaques stopped singing. The awards grew quiet. The framed degrees went still. They’re not bad. They just don’t stir anything eternal.

But my wife’s smile? My dad’s eyes? The sound of my children laughing in a photo I can still hear? That stirs something deeper. Something legacy-shaped.

I think most of us spend the first half of life collecting. Accolades. Titles. Letters after our name. Bios full of position and polish. And we think that’s the goal. We hope someone will walk into our office, or scroll through our profile, and be impressed. But then it hits you—quietly, like a whisper behind the glass of an old frame:We stop building résumés and start writing obituaries.

That’s the shift I’ve been feeling. Not in a morbid way. In a holy one.Because those shiny tokens from my twenties and thirties? They now sit in a box in the garage—stacked next to posters and signed baseballs that once meant everything.

What brings me joy now—real joy—isn’t wrapped in gold foil. It’s in flesh and blood.

It’s in my daughter’s wedding photo. It’s in making breakfast together on a slow Saturday morning. It’s in holding Stacy’s hand on a Tuesday night. It’s in the way my dad looked at me, with love and pride, before he left this world. It’s mission trips with my kids. It’s a house filled with laughter and prayer.

Legacy—not achievement—is what my soul has started to crave.

Proverbs 13:22 says, “A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children.” And I’ve been asking myself what kind of inheritance I’m really leaving. Not just money. Not just a name. But something that outlives my words. That speaks long after I’ve gone quiet.

My kids—and their kids—won’t care that I was the Delta Zeta Sweetheart (there’s a plaque somewhere, I promise). They won’t care what position I held in the College Republicans in 2000. But I hope they’ll remember that I showed up. That I prayed over them at night. That I danced in the kitchen. That I loved their mom fiercely. That I carried them to places they hadn’t dreamed of yet.

And maybe one day, they’ll process their own walls. Maybe they’ll find a picture of us together. And maybe—just maybe—they’ll smile. Not because of what I achieved. But because of who I loved.

Joshua said it like this in his farewell:“As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

That’s not just a statement. It’s a declaration. A covering over generations.