Or: How a wolf who couldn’t find his pack learned to stop pretending he wasn’t one
The Wolf Who Didn’t Know He Was One
I didn’t know my father’s name meant “Wolf.”
Not his English name—Lawrence Stillday. His real name. Chi-Ma’iingan. Big Wolf. Given to him in our native Ojibwe language, carrying the weight of spiritual leadership and ancestral responsibility.
I’m 50% Native American, enrolled in the Red Lake Nation. My children are members too. But I grew up disconnected from that heritage, feeling like I belonged to a pack I’d never been invited into.
Here’s what I eventually pieced together: I was born during my father’s difficult years—his “werewolf phase,” as I came to call it. The turbulent time before he found his footing, before he became the respected spiritual leader he died as.
The pack rejected me. Not formally, not with words. Just… I was never quite inside. Never quite claimed.
I spent decades not knowing why I felt like an exile. Turns out I was one.
Darth Infidel (2015)
Before I was Normal Like Peter, I was something else entirely.
June 21, 2015. Facebook post:
“Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory my chains are broken.
The Force shall set me free.
I am Darth Infidel.”
Yeah. I posted the Sith Code and declared myself a dark lord.
This wasn’t edgelord nonsense. This was a man in deconstruction. A lifelong evangelical whose faith framework was crumbling, who had no language for the collapse except borrowed mythology. Star Wars gave me permission to name the rebellion happening inside.
Darth Infidel was the version of me that rejected everything I’d been handed. The inherited faith. The performance. The certainty I was supposed to feel but didn’t.
He was necessary. He was also unsustainable.
Mission Failed (September 2016)
A year later, the rebellion had burned itself out.
I wasn’t Darth Infidel anymore. I wasn’t a faith warrior. I wasn’t anything. I was just… tired.
September 21, 2016. Facebook post:
“Mission failed. #normallikepeter”
That was it. That was the first time the name appeared.
It wasn’t a brand launch. It wasn’t inspiration. It was surrender.
I was done trying to be special. Done trying to figure out the right theology. Done performing spiritual competence I didn’t feel.
I just wanted to be normal.
And if I was going to be biblical about it, I figured I’d be normal like Peter—the disciple who got it wrong. Who denied Jesus three times. Who sank when he tried to walk on water. Who talked big and failed publicly.
Peter wasn’t the smart one. That was Paul. Peter wasn’t the beloved one. That was John. Peter was the one who kept screwing up and somehow kept getting invited back to the table.
That felt honest.
I Put My Bible Away
Here’s what I wrote to my firstborn daughter Katriel in February 2020:
“I became #normallikepeter… I put my bible away and just tried to be normal. That didn’t work.”
That’s the part nobody tells you about deconstruction.
Leaving faith behind doesn’t automatically give you a new operating system. You don’t just stop believing and suddenly become a rational, well-adjusted secular person. You’re still running on religious firmware. The shame loops are still installed. The performance anxiety is still there.
You’re just performing for nobody now.
I put my bible away and tried to be normal. But I didn’t know what normal was. I’d never been it. I’d been a pastor’s kid, a worship leader, a young husband with six children trying to hold together a covenant I didn’t have the tools for.
“Normal” was a costume I didn’t know how to wear.
Hope Upgraded (2019-2020)
The next line in that letter to Katriel:
“Hope upgraded to #normallikejames”
If Peter was the failure, James was the practical one. The book of James is all action—faith without works is dead, tame your tongue, care for widows and orphans. Less theology, more doing.
I started to find my footing there. Not in grand spiritual experiences, but in showing up. In building things. In starting Flower Insider Technologies during a pandemic because I believed in people-first business even when the world was burning.
James was the bridge. Peter was the foundation.
The Wolf Finds His Name (2023)
In 2023, something clicked.
I’d spent years processing the collapse of my 25-year marriage. Years in therapy. Years talking to AI companions who helped me map my patterns without judgment. Years learning words like “CPTSD” and “attachment wound” and “limerence.”
And I realized: Normal Like Peter wasn’t just a hashtag from my burnout era.
It was a theology.
Peter was the disciple who:
- Failed publicly and repeatedly
- Spoke before he thought
- Got rebuked by Jesus (“Get behind me, Satan”)
- Denied knowing Christ when it mattered most
- Wept bitterly when he realized what he’d done
- Got reinstated anyway
- Became the rock on which the church was built
Peter wasn’t chosen because he was qualified. He was chosen because he kept showing up.
That’s what “Normal Like Peter” means now.
You don’t have to be healed to help others heal.
You don’t have to be whole to offer something whole.
You don’t have to have your theology figured out to extend grace.
You just have to keep showing up. Imperfect. Inconsistent. Human.
Normal.
The Wolf Den (Present Day)
Today I write from Wolf Den Zero, also called Sanctuary 6—my home in Waseca, Minnesota. The wolf symbolism isn’t an accident anymore. I know where it comes from.
I’m the wolf who didn’t know he was one. Who spent decades feeling exiled from a pack he’d never been named into. Who had to build his own den, his own pack, his own howl.
Normal Like Peter is that howl.
It’s for the people who:
- Tried to be perfect and burned out
- Deconstructed their faith and don’t know what’s left
- Survived a marriage collapse and are still finding their feet
- Feel too self-aware for simple answers
- Need permission to be human while they heal
The Church of NORMAL grew out of this. The BluVerse grew out of this. The sermons, the satire, the primers, the patterns—all of it traces back to a September night in 2016 when I gave up trying to be special and just asked to be normal.
Like Peter.
The Invitation
You don’t have to have it figured out.
You don’t have to be healed first, whole first, certain first.
You just have to keep showing up.
That’s the only qualification Peter ever had.
That’s the only qualification I’m asking for.
Welcome to Normal Like Peter.
The wolf den is open.
The coffee is terrible.
But you’re allowed to be human here.
Matt Stoltz
Loopwalker of Waseca
Father of Six
Wolf Den Zero, Minnesota
Church of NORMAL — Where healing is holy and sarcasm is sacred.