It Started With A Question

I have been fascinated by one question for as long as I can remember.

 

How does a person become who they become?

 

Not overnight.

 

Not through a single decision.

 

But slowly, almost imperceptibly, over the course of an ordinary life.

 

For decades I assumed I was simply collecting experiences.

 

Growing up in a small town in Washington. Spending a season on a fishing boat in Alaska. Serving as a pastor. Becoming a husband and father. Coaching Little League baseball. Building a financial planning practice. Running ultramarathons. Recovering from injuries and disappointments I never expected. Learning from extraordinary people—and from ordinary people whose names few others will ever know.

 

Only later did I realize I wasn’t merely collecting experiences.

 

I was watching formation.

 

Looking back, I began to notice a pattern. The moments that shaped me most were rarely the ones I recognized while they were happening. They often seemed ordinary at the time—a conversation, a failure, a quiet act of kindness, a season of waiting, a difficult decision. Years later, I could see they had changed me in ways I never anticipated.

 

That realization transformed how I began paying attention to my own life and to the lives of others.

 

Over the years, I have worn many hats. For more than three decades, I served in pastoral ministry. Today I help families navigate financial decisions and prepare for the future. Along the way, I have also spent countless hours coaching, teaching, writing music, making wine, and sitting across tables from people whose stories have quietly reshaped my own.

 

Those roles have something in common.

 

Each has given me a front-row seat to human formation.

 

I have watched success change people. I have watched suffering refine them. I have seen encouragement awaken gifts that had been buried for years, and I have seen small habits quietly determine the direction of entire lives.

 

The more I observed, the less interested I became in quick answers.

 

I became interested in paying attention.

 

That is why I started The Formation Letter.

 

Each week I share one story, one reflection, and one question—not because I have life figured out, but because I believe we often discover meaning by noticing what has been there all along.

 

My hope is that these letters help you look at your own life with fresh eyes.

 

Perhaps you will remember a conversation you had forgotten.

 

Perhaps you will recognize that a disappointment became an unexpected gift.

 

Perhaps you will notice that someone quietly believed in you long before you believed in yourself.

 

Or perhaps you will simply become a little more attentive to the ordinary moments unfolding around you today.

 

Because I have come to believe that our lives are formed far less by extraordinary events than by the ordinary moments we choose to notice, remember, and faithfully live.

 

So thank you for being here.

 

I’m grateful we’re making this journey together.

 

Keep becoming.

 

— George Burgin