Fire Makers: Built Different | Joshua Aranda | A Story and A Poem
This is my friend Joshua Aranda, on the left, a saint of adventure and suffering.
I met with him the other day, and took a peek into his soul. This man is a unique and fascinating treasure of God. He is an ultra runner, coach, loving husband and father, and change maker.
He's built around an intense calling:
To walk people through the hardest thing that they've ever done, and to continually, faithfully, press into and through the hardest things in his own life, so that he can be refined to be able to walk others through their hardest things.
Running Into The Fray
He's a man of adventure, and jungles, and mountains. But he’s not a reckless man. He's a man of faith and wisdom.
Remember when David; little, young King David, sees the massive, hulking, dangerous form of Goliath, a seasoned killer of men? Goliath is mocking, cursing; lip curled in contempt. “You've sent a little boy to fight me?" And what does David do, armed with his sling and his faith? He doesn't walk, he runs into battle. He runs. He runs into the risk, he runs into the danger, he runs into the place of testing. David was built different.
Joshua's built like that. He seeks the hard things. He seeks the places of suffering. He seeks to be tested, broken, refined. He is difficult to understand. It's difficult to understand the mysterious gravity that he feels towards suffering and hardship, like a moth to the flame. There is something he loves about that place.
I do not know another like Joshua Aranda. But get in his presence, and you will sense the calling on his life. To run against his own limits, to run into the valley of the shadow of death, to run towards the difficulty and not away from it, to find the face of God in the breaking point. This is the gift and the superpower that lives inside this man, the divine invitation that he hears, whispered in his bones.
The Hardest Thing
He’s heading into a challenge that he’s calling the hardest thing he’s ever done, running hundreds of miles in the Sonoran Desert. He expects this to push him to his limits and beyond. See his words below.
A Poem of Reminder
He wrote this poem, shared the link in a LinkedIn post, and you better believe I was on the phone asking for his permission to post it here. Beautiful, powerful words that draw the soul into awe and the hunger for growth and excellence and calling.
Remember
By: Joshua Aranda
Remember Joshua.
This is not a race.
This is not for fun.
This is a descent.
A misogi.
A crossing.
A threshold
A sacred tearing away.
This is the journey you must take.
You are walking into the wilderness not to escape—but to remember.
You will be broken here.
You will be fractured.
You will be emptied.
You will be tested.
This is the cost to come back again.
But when the illusions fall away, when the noise finally dies, your creator will speak to you.
In the silence. In the dust. In the ache.
Listen carefully.
There will be moments when you want to quit, you will beg to quit—when your body screams, your mind fractures, your soul dims.
This is good.
This is the gate.
There is only one way.
Go towards it.
Go through it, Joshua.
That’s when the descent begins. And when it comes, when everything in you wants to stop, you must remember why you came:
to become more whole.
to go before others
To know what you have.
To feel what you’ve buried.
To wander through the desert so you can return with love in your hands and hope in your heart.
You are not alone in this.
Yes, you will cross the desert with no one by your side.
But they will all be in your heart.
They are with you.
She is with you.
Your wife—your queen, your bride, your covenant partner, your best friend and greatest teacher—she walks with you in every step.
No, she’s not on this trail, but she has shown you the way.
No complaints. Just love. Every step.
If it is not love, no words need exit your mouth.
Her love is not small.
It is not fragile. It is forged.
It is as vast and complex as the desert you are crossing.
She is the steady voice that reminds you who you are. She is the hand that steadies the foundation so you can go and be broken and come home whole.
You are running to her, not from her.
You are to honor her. To be more for her.
She is not waiting at the finish line—she is the perpetual journey you have chosen.
Remember,
the kiss of her lips on your neck.
eyes locking across the dinner table.
the many miles you have already covered together.
And your children—they are the story you are writing with your body.
Norah’s sweet smile and savage cackle. The twinkle in Noah’s eye and the roar in his voice. The curiosity that pulses through Jack and the warmth of his morning snuggles.
These are the truths that carry you. These are the memories you’ll taste when food loses flavor and time loses shape.
They are your greatest gift to this world and they are your fuel.
Move and remember…
This journey is not for you, it’s for them and the world they’ll inherit**.** You need to show them what a man looks like when he doesn’t quit. When he weeps, yells, stumbles, forgets and still gets back up.
This suffering is sacred because it’s chosen, and chosen suffering teaches courage that comfort never will.
Teach your children.
Give them everything you have ever learned.
Spare nothing.
Remember, this isn’t about achievement. This is about alignment.
You are running with what cannot be seen. You carry the weight of every man who has not known how to cry. Every father who wants to show up but doesn’t know how. Every parent who has witnessed their child losing their innocence far to early. Every soul unraveling quietly under the pressure of holding it all together.
This is your offering.
You can’t erase history.
You can’t undo what’s been done.
You cannot remove suffering.
You cannot heal cancer.
You do not need to.
You are here to carry it.
To feel it all.
And to keep moving.
Not to be the strongest—but to be faithful.
Not to lessen suffering, but to give it purpose.
When your own tools fall short, let the pain become your prayer.
Let the silence be your teacher.
Let every mile crack you open just a little more until love can get in again.
This is not suffering for the sake of suffering.
This is sacred. This is what emergence of a better you costs.
This journey will break your body, test your mind, and ask everything of your spirit.
And when all your reasons fall away, what will remain is love.
This is the only thing that endures.
When you are hallucinating.
When you are crying.
When you are furious, destitute, hollow and done—you are not done.
You are crossing the threshold. You are being invited deeper. You are being forged.
Go.
And when you return, you will carry not glory, but presence.
Not triumph, but tenderness.
Not stories, but proof.
Proof that love is stronger than pain.
That perseverance is sacred.
That humanity can do hard things, over and over, and still come out softer, kinder, more full of fire than when we began.
You will sit at the dinner table with more gravity.
You will hold your wife with more fire.
You will listen to your children with less urgency and more awe.
Because you did not come out here to win, or conquer, or escape.
You came out here to remember what matters and all that you have.
And you will return—sanded down by the desert, more fully alive, more true, more able to love.
Now get up.
And move.
Everything that you have
Everything you have loved
Depends on it.
See you on the other side.