(Verse 1)
He was raised with a chip on his shoulder,
Middle fingers aimed at the sky,
Never fit inside the clean white fences,
Never bought the neat little lies.
Hard hands worn from carrying burdens,
Late nights and a back bent low,
Did what had to be done for survival,
Walked through places good men won’t go.
He kept shadows tucked in his back pocket,
Demons riding shotgun at night,
Had a mind that wandered through darkness,
Still fought every day for what was right.
(Pre-Chorus)
Cause a man ain’t clean just because he smiles,
And saints ain’t made without walking miles.
(Chorus)
He was a broken man, cracked like dry land,
Trying to hold together what slipped through his hands.
Didn’t get fixed by a preacher’s words,
Or perfect prayers anybody heard.
He got fixed by the fire, the scars, the pain,
By finally standing in the truth unashamed.
Not by becoming somebody else to impress—
But by surviving long enough to become himself.
(Verse 2)
Cynical son with a rebel heartbeat,
Questioned everything they called truth,
Saw too much pride behind stained-glass windows,
Too many masks and borrowed proof.
Still he’d go to war for his children,
Carry mountains if they needed ground,
Cause beneath the smoke and rough edges,
There was a love that never backed down.
Seasoned by loss and lessons unpaid for,
Every scar had a story to tell,
He learned life ain’t angels and devils—
Most of us live somewhere in between hell.
(Bridge)
And he finally quit trying to outrun himself,
Quit hanging his soul on somebody else’s shelf.
Looked in the mirror and laughed through the ache:
“Maybe I was never ruined… just bent from the weight.”
(Final Chorus)
He was a broken man, built from hard roads,
Carrying burdens nobody else knows.
Still a little dark, still a little wild,
Still got the grin of a cynical child.
But he found peace in the war he possessed,
Cause the man he was fixing… was already his best.
Brazos_Built
