Mark Smith Has Run Out of Time

Ordinary Christian dad — warned for years — now crossing the line he feared.

FIELD DISPATCH FROM CANTON, GEORGIA, DAY 11

Survival Dispatch: Remnant is the Christian preparedness audio drama American families are listening to right now.

A forty-year-old VP of commercial lending. A Glock 19 and a deer rifle he hasn’t fired in four years. A wife who has been telling him for two years. The American Christian father every reader recognizes — and the line he is about to cross.

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THE FATHER AMERICAN CHRISTIANS ARE GOING TO SEE THEMSELVES IN

Mark Smith is forty years old. He is six-foot-one. One hundred ninety-five pounds. Athletic, but not gym-built — he carries himself like a man who used to play sports and stopped, the way many American Christian husbands carry themselves at his age. Dark brown hair with gray at the temples. Square jaw. Sharp green eyes.

He is the Vice President of Commercial Lending at a regional bank in downtown Atlanta. Twenty years in finance. He has been married to his wife Sarah for nineteen years. They have two children — a seventeen-year-old son and a twelve-year-old daughter. They live in a two-story home with a walk-out basement on a cul-de-sac in Cherokee County, Georgia. His commute is I-575 south to I-75. He leaves the house at 7:30 AM and is at his desk by 8:20 AM. He has been on that commute for so long that he no longer thinks about the road — the road thinks about him.

Mark is a nominal Christian. He goes to church on Christmas and Easter. He says grace at family dinners and means it less than he should. He sits in the pew during the service and listens to the sermon and nods at the right places. If you asked him whether he was a man of faith, he would say yes. If you asked him whether he was the spiritual head of his household, he would say yes more slowly. He is the kind of American Christian father every reader of this column knows. He may be the kind of American Christian father reading this column right now.

He is not a coward. He is not weak. He is not stupid. He is not a man any reasonable American would walk past and dismiss. He is one of the millions of capable, decent, working Christian fathers this country produced over the last forty years. And on Day 11 of the collapse, in his own kitchen, with his wife at the table and his rifle across his lap, he is finding out that capable, decent, and late is not enough.

THE GLOCK 19 AND THE DEER RIFLE

Mark owns a Glock 19. He owns a .30-06 bolt-action deer rifle with a scope. The pistol he carries occasionally. The rifle he had not fired in four years before the morning the strikes hit. The rifle is eight years old and has taken three deer in seven seasons — a respectable but unremarkable record for a Southern man who works in a downtown high-rise five days a week. The pistol he had taken to the range twice a year, not often, not seriously, not because he had a plan, but because he had told himself he should.

On Day 8 of the collapse he killed a man with both of those firearms. The man was his neighbor, Mr. Halverson, late fifties, gray hair, widower, who had spent ninety minutes on Day 7 standing motionless at his own mailbox in a pale blue bathrobe and slippers. On Day 8 Halverson came across the cul-de-sac, around the side of the Smith house, and broke through the kitchen window. Mark put three rounds in his chest with the Glock 19 at center mass. His son Jake put one round in the man’s head with the deer rifle at twelve inches.

The body is in the back yard now under a guest-bed sheet. Mark Smith has not slept more than three hours at a stretch since.

The pistol and the rifle worked. They did exactly what they were designed to do. They are not the problem. The problem is the man holding them. Mark Smith has been a competent, occasional shooter for twenty years. He has never been a tactical operator. He has never trained with men who train. He has never worked through a problem at full speed against a thinking adversary. The skills he has are real. They are also not the skills the next forty-eight hours of his life are going to require.

THE BOOK ON THE BEDSIDE TABLE

Two Christmases ago, Mark’s wife Sarah gave him a book. It was wrapped under the tree with a small handwritten card she had signed simply “Sarah.” The book was Mike Glover’s “Prepared.” Mark had thanked her, set the book on his bedside table, and left it there. He had not opened it. Not in the first month after Christmas. Not in the spring. Not in the summer. Not on the anniversary of the day she gave it to him. The book sat on his bedside table for almost two years gathering dust and a small ring of coffee residue from a mug he set on it once and forgot about.

On Day 8 of the collapse, after killing his neighbor in his own kitchen, Mark Smith picked the book up off the bedside table and carried it downstairs and sat in the chair by the front door with his rifle across his lap and read the first chapter.

By Day 9 he had finished four chapters. His hand was shaking when he put the book down for breakfast — not from fear, but from recognition. The man who wrote the book was telling him, in plain unsensational English, every single thing his wife had been quietly trying to tell him for the last two years. Every concept she had tried to bring up at dinner. Every tub in the garage she had quietly filled while he was at the office. Every range trip she had taken alone because she did not want him to feel obligated to come.

Sarah had given him the book because she knew he would not listen to her. She had given him the book because she knew he might listen to a man. American Christian husbands reading this column today — sit with that for a moment. Your wife is doing this right now. Your wife has been doing this for years.

REMNANT is the Christian preparedness audio drama where a real American family learns what it costs to be visible in a world without rules.

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SLOW TO ACT, FAST TO COMMIT

There is a phrase that describes Mark Smith better than any other. He is slow to act and fast to commit. When he decides, he goes. The deciding takes him longer than it should. The going, once he starts, does not stop until the thing is done. He is the kind of American Christian husband who took six months to propose to his wife after he knew he was going to and then never wavered for a single day in nineteen years of marriage. He is the kind of father who took two years to open a book about preparedness on his bedside table and then read four chapters of it sitting next to his rifle on Day 8 of the collapse.

Sarah is not slow to act. Sarah decides at 0530 with a cup of coffee and a Bible open on the kitchen table and the math run twice in her head. Sarah is the trigger. Mark is the follow-through. This is the rhythm of their marriage and the rhythm of their household and it has been the load-bearing dynamic of the last nineteen years. He has not always understood it. She has never asked him to.

On the morning of Day 11, Mark is one foot from the line every American Christian father will eventually have to cross. The line where he stops being the man who said grace at dinner and meant it less than he should have, and starts being the man his household actually requires. He has not crossed the line yet. He is one decision away. Sarah is at the kitchen table waiting for him to come downstairs and ask her what they are going to do.

He is going to come downstairs. He is going to ask. She is going to tell him.

THE FAITH ARC THE AMERICAN PULPIT HAS STOPPED PREACHING

American evangelical preaching has spent forty years giving Christian men a model of faith that is comfortable, vague, and emotionally rewarding. Be a good husband. Be a good father. Pray with your wife. Tithe. Show up on Sunday. Mean it on Easter. Love Jesus. The model is not wrong. It is just incomplete in a way that does not survive contact with the kind of week Mark Smith is currently living through.

On Day 8, after killing his neighbor, Mark Smith said “Amen” out loud for the first time in twenty years and meant it more than anything he had ever said in church. Not in a service. Not with hands raised. Not with a worship band playing in the background. He said it sitting in the chair by the front door with his rifle across his lap and his wife asleep on the rug nearby and his son asleep beside his best friend whose father was dead, and the dog at his hand, and the candle in the dormer across the street still burning.

He said it because he had finally understood what his wife had been telling him for fifteen years. He said it because he understood that the comfortable evangelical Christianity of his bedside-table life was not the Christianity that had carried his wife through every dark hour of their marriage — that the Christianity that had actually carried her was the older, harder, deeper kind that takes seriously the idea that the lion in 1 Peter walks about, and that the watchman in Ezekiel is responsible for blowing the trumpet, and that the master of the house in Matthew 24 was foolish for not watching.

The faith arc Mark Smith is on is the faith arc the American pulpit has stopped preaching. It is the faith arc American Christian fathers are going to have to walk anyway, whether the pulpit catches up to it or not. Survival Dispatch: Remnant is the audio drama walking it for them, on the page, in real time.

WHAT HE ALREADY KNOWS ABOUT SATURDAY

On the morning of Day 11, Mark Smith knows three things he has not yet said out loud.

He knows the water level in the basement. His wife ran the math at 0530 yesterday. The household is at fourteen gallons for nine people and the gap is closing every hour. He has seen the Glock 19 on her hip and the Bible open on the kitchen counter and the camp percolator on the propane stove and he has not had to ask her how she is doing because he can read her shoulders from twenty feet.

He knows the watcher in the dormer is still there. He has not seen him. He does not need to. The candle going out at 0341 told him everything the candle was going to tell him.

And he knows what he is going to have to ask his wife when he comes down the stairs. He has known it since 0500. He has been sitting in the chair by the front door with the rifle across his lap and Mike Glover’s book on the side table and the dog’s head two inches from his hand, and he has been making the decision the way he always makes decisions — slowly, carefully, all the way through, with no possibility of taking it back.

By the time his foot hits the bottom stair he will have crossed the line. By the time he sits down across from Sarah at the kitchen table he will have committed. The man who walks into the kitchen on the morning of Day 11 is not the man who walked out of it on the morning of Day 1. American Christian husbands reading this column — the line is closer than you think.

WHY YOU SHOULD BE IN THE PEW SATURDAY NIGHT

Survival Dispatch: Remnant is not a survival fantasy and it is not a tactical fanfic and it is not a YouTube prepper hobbyist daydream. It is the Christian preparedness audio drama American families are listening to right now because the kind of week the Smith family is living through is the kind of week American Christians have started suspecting they may have to live through themselves.

Mark Smith is the spine of the husbandly side of that drama. He is every American Christian father reading this column — forty years old or close to it, capable, decent, late. He is the man whose wife has been quietly preparing the household while he commuted into the city for twenty years. He is the man who finally opened the book on Day 8 and read four chapters sitting next to his rifle. He is the man on the morning of Day 11 who is one foot from the line and is about to cross it.

On Saturday his household walks off the porch. EP005 of Survival Dispatch: Remnant is titled “The Water Run Ambush.” On Sunday they come back across the threshold, or they do not. EP006 is titled “Holding the Line.”

Christian fathers: be in the pew. Become a paid subscriber today. Bring your wife to the kitchen table tonight and tell her you read this column and you understand now what she has been telling you for years. Then sit down beside her on Saturday night and listen to the audio drama together. You will both know what to do by Sunday morning. You will both know what kind of father the rest of this country is going to need you to be.

Survival Dispatch: Remnant. The Christian preparedness audio drama that does not flinch.

EP005 ‘The Water Run Ambush’ drops Saturday. EP006 ‘Holding the Line’ drops Sunday.

Become a paid subscriber today - the candle is out. Be in the pew before the family steps off the porch.

Paid subscribers get early access, companion articles for every episode, and access to the Remnant Roundtable webinars where you can help shape the story.