The Mapp
Life is a journey, and every journey needs a guide—or at least a good story. Welcome to The Mapp, hosted by Michael Pursley, where we navigate the messy, beautiful business of being human. The podcast's name is a nod to both Michael A. Pursley Podcast and the "maps of meaning" that help us find our way in life.
Born during the stillness of the COVID-19 lockdowns, The Mapp emerged from Michael’s hunger for understanding. Inspired by long-form conversations that spark insights and refine ideas, Michael dives into deep, authentic dialogues with curiosity and humor. From life’s profound mysteries to its absurdities, nothing is off-limits.
Each episode unearths the treasure of human stories: wisdom, laughter, and moments of profound connection.
At its core, The Mapp is about the human story. It’s a place where problems shrink, purpose grows, and laughter and revelation often arrive hand in hand. For Michael, the podcast is more than a platform—it’s a mission. It’s an effort to create a space where wisdom is shared, ideas are tested, and hearts are healed. Whether through a profound insight or an unexpected laugh, Michael hopes listeners walk away from The Mapp with a sense that they, too, are part of a bigger story—one that is still being written and, in the words of another great storyteller, echoes through eternity.
The Mapp
Walk Anyway Devotional
What if your suffering isn’t a detour—but the very road you’re meant to walk?
In this reflective devotional, I share the defining loss of my early life: both of my parents gone by the age of five. That rupture didn’t just take them—it shattered the basic assumption that life is safe, that the world is predictable. While other children grew up under the illusion of stability, I was forced to confront the fragility of existence far too soon.
But here’s the paradox: from the depth of that pain emerged something more than survival. It gave birth to meaning. Not comfort. Not ease. Meaning.
Drawing on voices like Nietzsche, Jung, Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn, and Lewis, we explore the brutal but transformative idea that suffering isn’t life gone wrong—it is life. War. Betrayal. Death. Disease. These aren’t interruptions to the human story. They are the story. The real question isn’t whether you’ll suffer. It’s what you’ll do with it.
Pain can destroy you—or it can forge you into something dangerous to despair.
Healing doesn’t look like forgetting or “moving on.” It looks like returning to the site of your wound again and again, each time with a little more strength, a little more clarity. Like chains loosening—one link at a time. That’s not regression. That’s redemption in motion.
Your trauma is not your identity. But it may be the very soil where something eternal takes root.
Some wounds are healed. Others become holy.
This episode isn’t just for those in crisis—it’s for anyone who’s ever stared into the dark and dared to believe that light could still speak. If you—or someone you love—is struggling to find meaning in the chaos, let this be a reminder: grace is not found in spite of suffering, but often through it.
Thank you for joining The Mapp. If this resonates with you, don’t forget to subscribe and share it with others who might find it meaningful. Subscribe, leave review, and follow us on social media to stay updated and join our community of explorers. Together we navigate life’s pathways.
One of the hardest things that I've experienced in life is settling in to unexpected chaos. When I was very young, my life was completely upended. Both my parents died within two years of each other. I was five years old when my mother passed the second death there, and it created a deep, deep, deep insecurity within me that life is very unpredictable, it's not safe. Chaos can come in and just snatch people away from you without warning, and it set a precedence in me of how to kind of anticipate life, and I was living in a completely different world than especially people who are within my school of of the human experience that we were. We were having the outlook that we had for the future, and mine was one with deep, deep, deep uncertainty and insecurity and life.
Speaker 1:It just doesn't offer anybody a neat little script to follow. What it will hand us inevitably is some form of chaos, whether that's suffering without explanation, trials without warning, pain without an apology. But what I've learned is the suffering isn't meaningless. In fact, it may be the most meaningful thing that you're going to face in your life, and crisis that we're living through isn't a detour, but it is the road itself, and so the question we have to ask sometimes is what if the pain isn't a punishment but it's preparation? And there are examples of unnecessary suffering. That's not what I'm talking about. Examples of unnecessary suffering, that's not what I'm talking about. But in this devotional we're going to face the uncomfortable truth that life wounds us all and yet in those wounds we may discover who we truly are. I draw from voices like Nietzsche, dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn, young, lewis that these doors have kind of been opened up to me by other people who I've listened to. And this isn't for abstraction or survival, but it's so you can walk forward, even when everything in you is screaming to give up and there's kind of a nonsensicalness to the chaos, the trauma that you're facing. You can carry your suffering in a way that shapes not only your life but the life that comes after you, generations of people who are unseen. You can stop generational curses, things like generational poverty, things like the domestic abuse. So the question isn't whether you're going to suffer or not in life. You will. The question is, what will you do with the pain that you're experiencing? It always has been war, famine, plague, deception, loss. These aren't interruptions to the story. They're a main narrative in the story, and crisis isn't a glitch in the matrix. It's part of the matrix and you, you were born into it. You don't get to choose the time that you live in or the weight that you're handed. You only choose how you carry it.
Speaker 1:And in this time, this age of deep uncertainty, everything is a fog. Your eyes can be fooled, your ears can be manipulated, videos are lies, audio can be lying, even your own heart lies. Often people will say trust your feelings, follow your heart. Scripture says the heart is deceitful above all things. Sometimes it'll teach you to forsake things for pleasure. Other times it'll put the weight of false condemnation on you. And still you're expected to stand, not because it's easy, but because it's right. Your pain, people will acknowledge it, maybe, but when it's time to carry weight, to show up to build something that matters, they expect you to function, limping or not. Maybe you started 200 meters behind everybody else from the starting line in life. Maybe your family has been behind for generations, but no one's going to slow down for you. That's harsh, but it's also freeing, because it means the question is no longer will they notice my pain, but rather what will I do with it?
Speaker 1:Nietzsche would say you become who you are, not who the world demands, not who the algorithm is designing, but the version of you that crawled from the wreckage and chose to keep going. Dostoevsky would say there is glory in suffering rightly. You're not called to be the fastest. You're called to be faithful, to love even when unloved, to forgive even when unseen, and to live your story and live it like it matters, even if the world forgets your name. Jung would warn us do not run from your shadow, because the shadow you avoid becomes the demon your children inherit. Solzhenitsyn would demand truth In an empire of lies. He'd say this let the lie come into the world, but not through you and Lewis, he would whisper of grace. He'd say pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world.
Speaker 1:Maybe your suffering isn't punishment, maybe it's preparation. The world does not revolve around your trauma. It never will. But that doesn't mean you're powerless. You were born into conflict and while others may chase comfort or collapse into their despair, you can walk another path, a path of sacrifice, of perseverance, of truth. You don't run to win trophies. You run so your children can start closer to the line. You run to break chains that weren't yours to carry. You run to plant seeds that you may never see bloom. And at the end, when you limp across that finish line, tired, scarred, forgotten by men, heaven will stand, because God sees what man forgets. So walk anyways. What other choice do you have? Walk anyways. What other choice do you have?
Speaker 1:I'll leave you with these three questions what if the part of your suffering you've called punishment is actually the threshold of your becoming? Is actually the threshold of your becoming? What truth have you kept buried? Not because it's hidden, but because you fear who you'd become if you faced it In the silence, when no one else sees and nothing moves. Are you being forgotten or are you being formed? If you're still standing, even barely, even if it's a Mortal Kombat, fatality kind of stance, where you're wobbling, getting ready to be finished by the life you're experiencing, you've already begun.
Speaker 1:The burden that you carry in this life is real, it's heavy and it may not go away tomorrow. But the call is not to collapse beneath it, it's to stand up, to shoulder it, to walk forward and attach the right meaning to it. And that's the paradox that your suffering can break you or it can shape you into something solid, something dangerous to darkness. So take heart, you're not meant to carry that all by yourself. Christ didn't say avoid the burden. He said come to me all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. That's not a sentiment, it's a lifeline. There is rest, but it's not found in escape. It's found lifeline. There is rest, but it's not found in escape. It's found in surrender. There's grace, not just to endure it but to be transformed by it. And some wounds will be healed in this life and others will become the very places where God meets us most intimately. And sometimes the healing doesn't come all at once. We want that, we want just a quick fix.
Speaker 1:But sometimes it comes like links of a chain being unwrapped, one at a time, slowly, painfully and purposefully. It would be like you're standing there and you have chains from the top of your shoulders to your feet and you're on a spool and God is pulling you, pulling the chains off, and as you come around you're facing the trauma or the problem all over again. You're like why am I facing this again? But each time that you spin, you're getting one chain length lighter coming out of it. And so you spin through some pain and the same weakness and you're wondering why has it gone away? You're getting one chain length lighter coming out of it. And so you spend through some pain and the same weakness and you're wondering why has it gone away? But you're not where you were. You're one chain length lighter. And that's not a failure, that's sanctification. That is God working with you, not in spite of you.
Speaker 1:John Carpenter once put it well. He said look at the world and you will see the horror, the cruelty, and then somehow still you find the beauty. And that's the real miracle, and it is To see clearly and still choose love, still choose hope, still walk forward. You're not in your past, you're not your pain, you are what you do with it. So walk anyways, not because it's easy, but because it's true and because truth is the only thing that can carry you through. I hope that you were encouraged by this and you found another small piece of the puzzle in how to orientate yourself and navigate the human experience that we call life. If you know of anybody who's struggling themselves they're really going through it feel free to share this with them. Sometimes one word in the right moment is enough to change the next step or even change the trajectory of our lives.
Speaker 1:I remember listening to a guy who was working with a golf instructor and the golf instructor watched him struggle and struggle, and struggle and he just kind of came over and chuckled. He said, okay, what am I doing wrong? He's like, well, you're not hitting the ball right. And he's like, okay, what am I doing wrong? He's like, well, you're not hitting the ball right. And he's like, well, that's self-evident. And he started cussing as golf instructor, he's like no, what I mean is if, when you hit the ball, if it's just like a couple millimeters this way, tilting the club this way, or a couple of millimeters this way, it's going to change the trajectory of the ball. And that the farther him some pointers, and then he became more consistent.
Speaker 1:And so for us, like, when we're, you know, going to share something with somebody? Sometimes it's hard to quantify what's going to be the actual impact of this Like, is it even worth it? Like, what are they going to think? And we hear often, you know, talk is cheap, talk is cheap. People want to see actions and there's merit to that. But scripture tells us that the power of life and death is in the tongue. And when Jesus is coming in in Revelations, it's actually a two-edged sword coming out of his mouth not being wielded by his hands. Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks when God spoke and light came into being. So we don't want to discredit the merit of words, and so all I'm saying with that is being able to pour into people, be an encouragement, edify, uplift them. So if you feel like this would resonate with somebody or be something they need, don't hesitate to pass it on. Until next time, take care.
