• Crossing the Threshold: The hero enters the unknown, often facing tests, allies, and enemies.
• Road of Trials: The hero faces a series of challenges and obstacles, requiring them to grow and adapt.
• Meeting with the Mentor: The hero receives guidance and support from a mentor or guide.
• Approaching the Inmost Cave: The hero faces the most significant challenge or ordeal, often a test of their courage and resolve.
• Ordeal: The hero confronts their greatest fear or weakness, often resulting in a near-death experience or a significant loss.
• Reward: The hero gains something of value, whether it’s a tangible object or a deeper understanding of themselves or the world.

• The Road Back: The hero faces challenges on their journey back to their ordinary world, often with the knowledge and skills gained during their adventure.
• Resurrection: The hero faces a final test or ordeal, often a battle or confrontation, that proves their transformation and their ability to return home.
• Return with the Elixir: The hero returns home, bringing with them the knowledge, skills, and wisdom gained during their journey, which they use to benefit themselves and others.”

His narrative structure is compelling because it accurately portrays the structural narrative of my life. I was born into a lower-class family. My Father was a simple man with a high school education. My Mother had an eighth-grade education before dropping out to marry my Dad. I had three sisters. Two were high school dropouts. I had one graduate from high school. We were so poor that my parents received a sympathy card from the Internal Revenue Service every year. I was a C student and basically a mischievous boy. To add to my picture, I would like to point out that I didn’t grow to five feet tall until I was a freshman in high school. I wrestled at one hundred and three pounds as a ninth-grader. In Campbell’s words, I was an ordinary boy with few ambitions and dreams. If it wasn’t for the reason that I was unusually fast. I excelled at track and field.

My prospects for college were very limited. There was little reason for anybody to give me a scholarship. I was ordinary. This put me on track to Campbell’s departure, and I did not understand what was happening. I arrived at University with little understanding of what I wanted to do or how I would pay for it. I just knew that physical labor was not my cup of tea. I was offered an Army Reserve Officer Corps scholarship on track to go into the Army. My whole life was disrupted.

Upon my commissioning as a United States Cavalryman, my whole life changed. I faced so many trials, so much work, and so many obstacles. I was received by a group of men who were a part of the Officer’s Christian Fellowship. God used each of these men to help me understand what was happening.

It was then that I began to face the most significant challenges of my life. I started wrestling with my greatest fear: work. I was a lazy boy. I was quickly losing my childhood to become a young man. I hated the idea. This ordeal was real. Not long on the heels of this ordeal, I was rewarded by being selected into a brand new Defence Intelligence Agency program that put me at the top of the class of my peers. Still, I didn’t understand what was happening.

Over the next few years, I found myself in the middle of every conflict that the USA was involved in. My team of Scouts were in the Iran-Iraq War, the Grenada Invasion, the Nicaraguan Civil War, and the Panama Invasion. I was even tasked to join the 3rd Para Regiment in the Falklands. With each and every engagement, my reputation grew, and I didn’t even know it. I was just doing my job, going where I was told, doing what I did best. I found stuff, and I developed a competency in fourteen languages over that season. Once again, I had no aspirations for fame or notoriety. I just wanted to go home and be with my wife and three daughters.

I had become, unbeknownst to me, a somewhat precarious hero.