Ambushed by God: Why I Wrote These Books
Retirement was supposed to be the easy part—time to kick back and enjoy the view.
I couldn't shake the burden.
What follows became Black Diamond Dads™—The Carbonado Collection™—four volumes of true-to-life stories about fathers refined under pressure. But the story of how they got here starts twelve years before I wrote a word.
The Burden I Shelved
Twelve years ago, I felt the first pull to write down what I'd spent decades doing with men. I started an outline. I could see the shape of it.
Then my career surged—a major promotion, a full calendar, no margin. So I did what busy men do with a calling that's inconvenient: I put it on a shelf and told myself I'd get to it.
Twelve years, it sat there.
I Wasn't Done. I Was Being Prepared.
In 2020, men's ministry exploded. The pandemic drove men toward each other in a way I'd never seen—and I spent that season, an entire year, coaching and training group leaders across the globe, trying to keep up with the demand.
Then I stepped away. I pulled back from men's ministry for a few years, planning to rest until retirement and figure out later whether I'd return at all.
I thought I might be done. I wasn't done. I was just being prepared.
Ambushed by God
I retired in August 2025 and went looking for something to do with my life.
Then, I was truly ambushed by God.
I don't have a softer word for it. He made it clear I wasn't called to a finish line, but to a new forge—that for such a time as this, He was redirecting my life toward a mission I could no longer ignore. The work I'd shelved for twelve years wasn't shelved anymore.
So I acted. Here we are.
One Book Became Four
I set out to write one book—forty stories, all in a single volume.
It got long. Too long. So I split it into four, one for each cut that refines a father: purpose, brotherhood, peace, and joy. Ten stories each.
Then I felt the pull to add questions at the end of every chapter—because I know men. We don't open up on our own. We need something to pull it out of us. That's when the idea hit: why not full workbooks? Something a man could work through alone, or better, sit down with a group of other guys and actually talk it through.
The stories move you. The questions change you.
Why Forty Stories
I could have written hundreds. I chose forty on purpose.
In Scripture, forty is the number of testing, preparation, and transformation—the flood, the wilderness, Moses on the mountain, Jesus in the desert. Forty is the full measure of pressure a man passes through before a new beginning. That's exactly what these stories are: forty fathers, tested and refined, coming out the other side—gathered into four volumes.
Why They're Composites
Every story is drawn from real men I've known—but not one is traceable to a single person.
The names, the places, the jobs, the details—all changed, deliberately and thoroughly. These are composites, written so no man could ever be identified. The truth in them is real. The men in them are protected.
Why They're Free
Because a book behind a paywall doesn't reach the man who needs it most.
I'm retired—nowhere near finished, just no longer doing it for the paycheck. This is ministry first. I'd rather get these stories into the hands of every father who needs them than price them so only some men can afford them.
The Heat Is On
The world is crushing fathers. It's time we started using that pressure to craft something rare, something valuable, something that lasts.
Twelve years on a shelf. An ambush I couldn't argue with. Forty men, refined under pressure, gathered into four volumes. This is the work God wouldn't let me leave undone—and now it's yours.
Refining the Man. Forging the Legacy.™
Ron Maxson, Jr. | The Dads Prayer Coach
