Purpose Means Confidence

After Belinda and I got married, settled into a rhythm, and found our routine with our house dog, Beau, something dawned on me. I was finally free to chase my old love of hunting dogs again. That is as long as Belinda agreed. Marriage comes with its own chain of command when acquiring hunting dogs.

Around that time, a couple of my buddies got into squirrel hunting with Original Mountain Cur hounds. I started tagging along. Hunting wasn’t anything like the days of my childhood. Now you could slap a tracking collar on a dog, and—miracle of miracles—you could actually find him when it was time to head home.

That was a far cry from the old days.

I still remember sitting in a Hardee’s in the town of Tazewell at seven in the morning, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes after being up all night trying to find a couple of cold nosed hounds. We never saw a coon, never fired a shot. At some point I finally looked at my Papaw and said, “I’ll squirrel hunt with you, but I don’t believe I want to coon hunt anymore.”

Those dogs were somewhere between heaven and Kentucky.

But technology, the love of hunting dogs, and good friends reeled me back in.

That road led me into the world of Original Mountain Curs. They’re remarkable dogs. Athletic, intelligent, loyal, and wired with a natural instinct to hunt. A good Mountain Cur doesn’t just chase game. He reads the woods like a seasoned woodsman. Rugged, brave, and devoted to his people, he seems to know his job before you ever speak it.

I once read an old story that cur dogs in England got their name because peasants cropped their tails short to avoid a tax based on a dog’s full length from nose to the tip of the tail. Short-tailed dogs were labeled “curtailed,” which eventually became “cur.” Whether every detail of that tale is accurate or not, the grit of those old working dogs still shows up in today’s Curs.

Over the years, I had four of them. I started with a couple of pups that turned out to be decent dogs, just not quite what I was after. One was a touch too aggressive with other dogs, so he ended up in a single-dog home where he fit right in. The other was a fine little squirrel dog but didn’t care a thing about coons, so I passed him along to a young boy who wanted a squirrel dog of his own. That match worked out just right for both of them.

Then came the day a friend and I drove down to Asheboro, North Carolina, to look at a brindle dog with a long name: Streak’s Tennessee Tyge II. When we pulled up, Tyge didn’t look like much. Shy, backward, skittish—he was scared of his own shadow.

But then we cut him loose.

It was like somebody flipped a breaker. He lit up the woods. That dog was a squirrel-hunting machine. Sharp nose, sharp eyes, never stopped looking up, and he timbered with a squirrel like he had binoculars. He came home with me that same day. For the next twelve years, he was my shadow.

Tyge and I covered a lot of ground together. Ohio. Arkansas. Alabama. A whole patchwork of places in between. Coon or squirrel, it didn’t matter. He was accurate, steady, and trustworthy. A joy in the kennel—never barked without reason, kept himself clean, easy to call in when you were ready to go. Folks later nicknamed him “the Specialist” because he was a road-hunting machine. Drop him off a four-wheeler, hit a stretch of woods, and that he would stir up game like a seasoned scout.

After some time of hunting for fun, I finally joined my buddies and entered us into a world hunt in Jamestown, Tennessee. I’ll be honest—I didn’t know what I was doing.

It was an elimination hunt. Three dogs in each cast. Dog with the most trees and points moved on. First cast, Tyge handled business. Never came back. Never acted wild. Got in there, treed, and stayed treed on every squirrel. Absolutely amazed me. Second cast… same thing. He beat two dogs I’d heard plenty about. Dogs that, on most days, would have been better than him. But not that day. That day Tyge hunted like he’d been storing purpose in his bones for years.

We placed sixth in the world our very first try. Met some great folks along the way too.

But the placement wasn’t what stayed with me.

It was the moment they gathered everyone for pictures. That same shy, backward dog walked right into a room full of strangers like he owned a corner of it. Head high. Tail steady. No hesitation. No shrinking back. He had stepped into who he was made to be.

And that brings me to the deeper part of this story.

When I think of Tyge, I think about purpose. About the thing you’re shaped for before you ever realize it. Tyge had the ability long before he had the confidence. All he needed was guidance, encouragement, and someone who believed in him. Once he trusted that, he overcame the fear, the hesitation, the self-doubt.

Life feels like that for us too. Hard to untangle. Hard to make sense of. Most folks come to a point where they ask, “What’s the meaning of all this? Why does any of it happen?” And the answer you land on will either anchor your soul or leave you wandering without direction.

A Mountain Cur was made to please his master and hunt. That’s his purpose.

Scripture puts a steadying hand on the shoulder:

“I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13).

That verse isn’t about pride. It’s about dependence.

And then there’s Gideon. When the angel of the Lord found him, he wasn’t leading anyone. He was hiding in a winepress, trying to survive. Yet the angel greeted him with, “The Lord is with you, O mighty man of valor” (Judges 6:12).

Gideon didn’t see that in himself. But God did.

God sees us according to what He intends to do in us, not through the lenses of our of our own doubts. Scripture reminds us in Jeremiah 1:5 Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you came out from the womb I set you apart; I have given you as a prophet to the nations.”. You see God had plans for Jeremiah just like He does for all of us.

We aren’t accidents. We aren’t products of pressure or culture. We are created with purpose—eternal, God-given purpose. I told someone onetime that I didn’t believe in God until I was 27 years old, but God has always believed in me.

Tyge never knew why he was timid. Never knew he wasn’t supposed to amount to much. He only knew his master believed in him and put him where he could flourish. When that happened, he became more than anyone expected.

That’s what God does in a person.

He takes the shy, the hesitant, the unsure, the wandering… and He calls out the purpose that’s been waiting since the beginning. Christ doesn’t force purpose on us. He invites us into it. But we have to follow. We have to trust our Master. We have to let Him lead us into the life we were shaped for.