We all need to get away to see our lives in context and to get God's help in the way we live.

That's why I regularly gather with a bunch of men for a long weekend somewhere in the wild on what we call a "manhike."

We completed our third hike yesterday. 11 of us men from VA, MA, NC, AL, & GA schlepped our backpacking stuff to Black Mountain campground and we hiked Mount Mitchell, about an hour from Asheville, NC.

What I love about these hikes is that we know we're bringing a lot more than our gear and we know we need help dealing with it. In this group:

Two of us have pregnant wives.

One of us is at a hard spot in his marriage.

One of us is coming out of addiction and abuse.

Several of us are going through a life transition.

But all of us realized what we share in common in our masculine journey and we saw that we needed prayer. We saw the complexity of our lives in the flickering light of a campfire and knew that only thru prayer could we navigate the issues coming at us.

We prayed at length for our wives. We asked God to show us their hearts and to give us some poetic means to connect with them. We prayed for a revelation of our role in fighting for them.

The fruit of these hikes is an experience of church and a calling out of our best selves. It's a great venue for men to wake up. I'm thinking that I'll do one of these just for blog readers sometime in July or August. Let me know if you're interested.