STAY WITH ME

Some exciting news to share on this Thankful Thursday!

We’ve begun filming a documentary about me inspired by one of our producers: my dear friend Kelli O’Hara.

It’s directed by Chris Bolan, who is an easygoing, positive professional with a warm heart and a kindness that makes him a joy to work with. He came out to LA for a few days with our cinematographer, Vas. Shooting a movie is a lot of work, and Vas certainly came prepared—with a new Fuji camera approved for IMAX and a great sense of humor.

The title of this piece is “Stay With Me” and that’s not poetic license.

It is another way of saying the words Jesus used: “Abide in me, and I in you.”

More on that in a moment.

During filming, Chris asked me a question that stopped me cold:

“Do you think you’re going to beat ALS?”

On that particular day, I answered,

“I don’t know. Let’s see what God has in store.”

And I couldn’t stop thinking about my answer.

For days.

Do I think I’m going to beat it? Yes.

Do I think I’m going to beat it? No.

Have I already beaten it in many ways? Yes.

All of these things can be true at the same time.

But something about my answer didn’t sit right with me. It sounded like I was wavering on my dream—like I was standing in the middle of the tennis court, not on one side or the other.

That realization led me back to more of me.

I’m discovering in this chapter of my healing that everything—spiritual insights, guides, lucid dreams, troubled relationships with friends and family—all of it leads me back to myself.

As a friend of mine once put it:

Sometimes when you learn what you don’t want, or who you aren’t, you learn what you do want, and who you are.

I didn’t like my answer to that question.

And because I didn’t like it, I realigned more deeply, more vigorously.

ABIDE IN ME, AND I IN YOU

— John 15:4

This is what I mean when I say “Stay with me.”

There is a line in the teachings of Jesus that is often misunderstood because we read it through a modern lens instead of the original language.

When Jesus speaks about faith, the Greek word used is pistis.

It does not mean optimism.

It does not mean belief without evidence.

It means trust, fidelity, steadfast alignment.

Faith, in this sense, is not something you think.

It is something you stay loyal to.

Likewise, when Jesus speaks about doubt, the Greek word used is diakrino, which means to divide, to be internally split, to waver between two identities.

Doubt is not questioning reality.

Doubt is being divided against yourself.

This distinction changes everything.

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YOU ARE NOT ASKED TO DENY WHAT IS.

Jesus never taught denial.

He did not ask people to pretend storms weren’t real.

He did not ask them to ignore sickness, fear, or danger.

He asked something far more demanding:

Do not let what you are facing define who you are.

The storm can exist.

The symptoms can exist.

The facts can exist.

But diakrino—division—happens when facts are allowed to split you away from your deepest knowing of self.

That split is where suffering compounds.

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IDENTITY COMES FIRST — NOT ACCEPTANCE, NOT RESIGNATION

There is a subtle but critical distinction missing from many modern conversations about healing and “acceptance.”

Acceptance says:

“This is what is happening right now.”

Resignation says:

“This is who I am now.”

Jesus never taught resignation.

Again and again, he returned people to identity first:

You are whole

You are forgiven

You are not abandoned

Not as denial, but as alignment.

Faith (pistis) is the repeated choice to remain aligned with who you know yourself to be, even when evidence is incomplete, contradictory, or loud.

Abide in me, and I in you.

Stay with me.

And remember: alignment is not a single moment. It is a practice.

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PRACTICE CLARIFIES THE SIGNAL

Each time you return to identity,

without denying symptoms,

without resisting reality,

without collapsing into resignation,

your internal signal becomes more coherent.

You stop broadcasting fear one day and truth the next.

You stop oscillating between authorship and surrender.

You stop splitting yourself in two.

A divided signal produces a divided experience.

But coherence matters.

When identity is practiced consistently, the signal clears.

And when the signal clears, reality reorganizes around clarity—

around authorship rooted in identity rather than reaction.

Not through force.

Not through pretending.

But through alignment.

This is what I do every day now. In the face of symptoms, in the face of doubt, I stay with me – I stay with myself. My true self.

With thanks and love,

Aaron