A Life Built on Thirteen Daily Choices
Dancing for Quarters: Turn Your Need for Approval into a Legacy That Lasts
It started with a boy, a jig, and a handful of quarters.
As a boy in Kansas City, Rod Masteller would dance a jig for his uncles at family gatherings. The harder he danced, the more they clapped. The more they clapped, the more coins they threw. Counting his quarters afterward, still hearing their applause in his ears, he absorbed a belief that would quietly run his whole life: my performance, plus other people’s approval, equals my worth.
He carried that pattern straight into ministry. Decades later, on the roof of a hotel in Atlanta, after a conversation with his wife that stopped him cold, Rod finally understood something that changed everything: his worth was never up for negotiation in the first place. God wouldn’t love him more for performing, and wouldn’t love him less for resting. The question that organized the rest of his life became simple: are you going to dance, or are you going to rest?
This book is what came after that night. Thirteen daily choices, told first in Rod’s own words, then through the eyes of his wife and four daughters, who watched him live differently, and who are still living differently themselves because of it. It is honest about the hard years: a daughter who ran away, a cancer diagnosis, a divorce in the family, a season in a treatment center, and finally, Rod’s sudden death. It doesn’t skip the fire. It shows what came out of it.
The 13 Choices
Through Thick and Thin
Being present, not merely busy, and how it shapes a child’s whole understanding of love.
Don’t You Know Any Happy Songs?
Choosing a joy anchored in hope, so you can sing even through sorrow.
Don’t You Love Chocolate Cake?
Handing bitter ingredients to God and trusting Him to bake something good from what looked ruined.
That’s Bad! No, That’s Good.
Trusting that even in the middle of the hard thing, God is working it together for good.
Let’s Take a Walk, So We Can Talk
Putting the big rocks in the jar first, so your days add up to the life you meant to live.
Oh, Dear, Here She Comes
Paying the unseen daily cost that quietly creates freedom to be present for what matters most.
When the Unexpected Happens
Investing in one life at a time, knowing one seed can multiply into generations.
What’s in a Seed
Holding what you have loosely, and discovering you cannot outgive God.
When No One Else Is Looking
Living undivided, the same person in private as in public, so your whole life tells one true story.
Surprising Advice
Choosing to be the present, active father he never had, so his daughters could know a trustworthy father, and through him, their Heavenly Father.
When All Seems Lost
Kneeling in surrender and praying prayers that outlive the one who prayed them.
Which Way Is North?
Knowing which way is true north, the compass beneath every other choice.
What’s Next?
Living with the finish line in view, so today’s choices are made in light of what lasts forever.
Three voices in every chapter.
Rod, in his own words
Drawn from sermons, journals, and recordings. The teaching, straight from the man who lived it.
Linda, telling the story
What it actually looked like to live alongside him, up close, in real life.
The daughters, living it now
Michelle, Kim, Crystal, and Heather each share how that same choice is showing up in her own life right now, in her own marriage, her own parenting, her own faith.
That last part is the whole point. This isn’t five people looking back and admiring a good man from a distance. It’s proof that what he built is still being built, one generation forward.
Available for pre-order now.
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Pub date: November 24, 2026. Every pre-order ships as soon as the book is available.
This isn’t a book about a man who had it all together.
Rod would be the first to tell you he didn’t. He failed, plenty of times, and got back up, plenty of times. This family went through real fire together: a daughter who ran away from home, a cancer diagnosis, a divorce, a season of intensive treatment for one of their own, and finally, the sudden loss of Rod himself.
The faith in these pages is sincere, but it’s lived, not lectured. If you’ve grown tired of hearing from people who talk a good game, this book was written for you.