This Psalm is speaking to me this morning.
I have sons. This psalm is such a beautiful reminder that today, they are watching who I praise. Who I attach greatness to. They are watching and listening and witnessing just whose acts I proclaim to be the mightiest. And - there is a really good chance as they begin to speak into the next generation - the choices I make today will be influential. Oh how I can picture David - maybe lying in an open pasture looking up at the night sky - saying these words: On the glorious splendor of Your majesty And on Your wonderful works, I will meditate. People will speak of the power of Your awesome acts, And I will tell of Your greatness. They will burst forth in speaking of Your abundant goodness, And will shout joyfully of Your righteousness. There is no greatness bursting forth that will exceed the greatness that's already been. Not yesterday. Not today. I'm reminded of that as I go for my morning run and look to the rising sun. As once again this earth has spun perfectly timed on its axis. To the millisecond it has spun, igniting day after day the perfect rhythms of our cells - the life cycles of humanity. I remember flying over the Grand Tetons with the boys several years ago. It was their first plane ride. Their first glimpse of a snow capped mountain - so close to those mountains I wondered if the belly of the plane might leave skid marks in that snow. I remember telling those boys, someday you may question God. On that day, you need to question these mountains. David said, one generation will praise your works to another. I can picture being in that pasture with David, him rolling over and turning his gaze from the night sky - to me. I can hear him asking, whose works will you praise to the next generation?
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Albert Einstein said “The definition of 'insanity' is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
Based on Einstein's definition, I've come to believe trying to prove our worth is an act of insanity. The minute we prove to one person we are someone worth celebrating, a new person will pop up that we'll feel the need to prove our worth to all over again. We can make a life out of proving our worth: I can get the grades, I can get the promotion, I can make the money, I can win the race - we can spend our whole life proving to everyone around us we are worth celebrating - and get to the end of that life never having once celebrated our own worth. It may be the way we most overcomplicate being human - failing to see the inherent beauty and worth in simply being human. I think about my running journey. In the beginning of it, I was obsessed with keeping up with the other guys and girls, in proving I belonged in the running community, chasing down milestones and benchmarks that would make the case that I'm worth celebrating as a runner. Then one day, I realized I deserved to have running in my life. It made me feel healthier, it made me feel more connected to people, it motivated me to chase down dreams inside and out of the sport. One day I realized running wasn't my avenue to be celebrated by others, running was the clearest avenue ever to intimately understanding my own humanity. A humanity worth the beauty running added to it. A humanity worth celebrating. This day after Martin Luther King Jr. day, I reflect on his life. On the surface, he may appear to have been a guy out to prove his worth. In reality, though, he was a guy who absolutely KNEW his worth. He KNEW he wasn't defined by his color, but by the simply breath-taking beauty of his own humanity. Martin Luther King Jr.'s fight didn't start with the idea of proving his worth - it started with a man who deeply knew it and celebrated it. It was his celebration of his humanity that led him to fight to be treated humanely. You are human. You are up this morning and moving around - a complex and divine creation. Forget the rest of the world for just a second and comprehend for just a second what an amazing creature you are. No feelings or thoughts or emotions - yours or your neighbor's - can undo the amazingness of that. So start the day celebrating you - you the creation - full of worth. And just maybe - maybe - that will prevent you from feeling like you have to prove that to anyone today. I'm kind of a numbers guy. I like data. I love math. And so when I read this quote this morning from Martin Luther King Jr., believe it or not, numbers came to mind.
My numbers. So I wondered to myself, if there were two columns - one column where I made a mark for every time in my life I've fought to address a concern I had about ME and MY situation in life, and then another column where I made a mark for every time I've fought to address the concerns I had about the broader concerns of ALL humanity - essentially people not named 'me' - what percentage of those marks would be in the 'me' column. After crunching the data, I'd say I've lived a large portion of my life confined by individual concerns. A scary large portion. Martin Luther King Jr. says, “Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.” In other words, he's saying when we live in this place confined by concerns for ourselves, that is a dark place. It is destructive. But we can all make a choice to walk in the light of being concerned about others. There is no one reading this right now who has ever been more self-centered and selfish and destructive than I have been in my life. But I can also say, over the last several years, I've become more concerned about all of humanity. I've become more concerned about what other people have gone through in their past, and what they are going through this very moment. I've spent more time listening to other people tell me about their pain, and less time letting life seemingly strangle me with mine. I have NOT been able to solve the concerns of all humanity, but I'll say this. The moment you start putting more marks in that column of being genuinely concerned about others more than you are about yourself, you start seeing and feeling a light. A new light. I've come to know that light as life. You actually get to start living. You know, us Christians have this intimidating and overly religious saying about being "born again." It's often offered as sort of a threat on your life. Like, if you're not born again you're not getting into heaven. I listened to a sermon yesterday and the speaker said "the kingdom tool is sacrificial love." His point was, this Jesus who came to earth so that we could be "born again" - modeled that the way to be "born again" was to give up all concerns about self and start re-investing ALL of those concerns into others. The entire ministry of Jesus is a story of a man who sacrificed all concerns for PERSONAL well-being to demonstrate nothing but concern and love for ALL human beings. Jesus demonstrated this idea of "born again" isn't about eternal life - it's about THIS life. Being born again isn't about walking through the gates of heaven, it's about walking out of the gates that confine us in selfishness, and through the gates that confine others in hurt and suffering and oppression and hopelessness. Light and living are a choice. Mathematically speaking, it's choosing to put our marks in a different column. I just want to live in peace.
I've said that, maybe you've said that, in response to the question: what is it that you truly want out of life? As I consider my desire for peace, and how it's been hard to find at times, I think I have to own that I've too often pursued peace outside-in instead of inside-out. I think I have to own I've spent way to much time trying to make the world around me a peaceful place instead of me a peaceful person. Maybe that's because I too often buy into the lie that the road to peace starts with the world around and not the world within. I've been reflecting lately on a powerful scripture - John 16:7. Jesus is telling his disciples that he's going to be leaving soon. Of course, this doesn't sit well with them. Just like it wouldn't sit well with us if someone we loved said they were leaving. But Jesus tells them - oh, don't be sorrowful - this is for your good. Jesus says in John 16:7 - "nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you." Jesus did leave. He did send a comforter in the form of His spirit. And here's the thing I too often forget. That comforter didn't buy a house in my neighborhood, he boldly moved in INSIDE me. Isn't that a beautiful thing? That Jesus made it so we didn't have to go wading through the often noisy and un-peaceful world looking for comfort. Isn't it a beautiful thing that Jesus made comfort the most accessible thing we have in our lives - like in this very second we all have the opportunity to shut out the noise of the world and say "good morning comfort." I know many of you reading this don't believe that. I don't either many days. But I have to be fair to Jesus and ask myself, when I'm looking for peace, how often do I start with me? How often do I try to dim the noise of the world, spend quiet time in prayer and meditation, seek comfort from within before I go looking for comfort outside? And how often do I go into the world, wrestling to arrange it in a way that I think looks like peace, battling against the elements I think stand in the way of that peace, constantly looking for the path that looks like the quickest way to peace. How often do I consider peace starts with me and not with you? How often do I consider Jesus left not to take peace with him, but to give us our best chance at it? A chance that starts within me, and not around me. I am built to move forward. Like, there's this invisible little gear shift inside me always set on "D" - just drive dude.
But - I think, there's also an invisible little gear shift in life that is always set on "N" - as in NO, no way am I'm not going to make it easy for you to just go forward. It's like I'm in this unspoken conflict with life - I know my best days are ahead of me - I can see those days; yet, life is determined to keep me stuck where I am. Or - maybe worse - life stays busy trying to jam my invisible little gear shift into reverse. It's cruel, in a way, how life does that. It uses my own mind against me. It uses clever little tricks to anchor me in the past. Life knows when it does that - the motor inside me stuck on drive - will simply spin its wheels and eventually burn out. One of those tricks is the way life constantly invites me to wonder, "what if" this or "what if" that had been different. What if I'd responded differently to that conversation? What if I'd showed up instead of stayed home? What if I'd taken that job and not this one? What if I'd never taken that first drink? What if. What if. What if. Life never runs out of opportunities to point us to our past and beg us to rewrite it. It never runs out of ways to tempt us into believing that if we'd just done this differently, or just looked at that from a different angle, our life would be a much more beautiful picture than it is today. Life wants us to believe that if we ponder that long enough we can know the answer. We can actually come to know how life would have turned out if we'd just done things differently. Because life knows, if it can get us to believe that, it can keep us stuck blaming ourselves for what we didn't become instead of letting that gear shift run wild into the future we are meant to see. The reality is - there is no answer to what if. Equally true, there is no changing the ifs we wonder about. Not one single one of them. I told someone the other day that when I go there, when I go to "what if" - oh, I still get stuck there. My engine roars, the wheels spin, the mud flies, and I can feel the motor dying. I feel all of me being depleted. But - I said - the good news is I just don't go there as often as I used to. Because when I feel life begging me to ask "what if" - I'm trying to ask myself a different question these days: I ask "what is". What is happening right here and right now? I have full control over this moment that is, right now - what am I going to do with it? What am I going to do with this moment, to add fuel to the me stuck in drive, a life full of natural instinct to move forward in this world? Many days I struggle with the right answer to that. But I get better each day at eliminating a wrong answer. And that wrong answer is: "what if?" 1/14/2021 0 Comments Burn in or burn outThe other day a friend asked me "how are you doing?"
They didn't ask it in a casual way like we sometimes do to kill conversation time. They asked it like they wanted to know. So I thought for a minute, and then I answered them. I said, recently, there have actually been days where I don't feel like life is a fog. Looking back on our conversation, and after reading Godin's words this morning, I think I could have said that there have recently been days where I don't feel completely burned out. I hear that a lot from friends lately; I'm just burned out. I think about those friends. I think about me. I think about all the things we have going on in our worlds right now that are simply - for the most part - beyond our control. And I think about those friends. And I think about me. And I think about how hard - how much energy we are putting into - trying to control them. I look at these match sticks this morning. I think about how impossible it would be to keep a single match burning. I think about how frustrating it would get trying to figure out exactly how to make that happen - keeping this thing going that is beyond our control to keep going. Then I also think about the freedom that comes with simply being OK with lighting a new match every time we need fire in our lives. I think that's what's behind some of the fog lifting in my life these days. With the turn of the new year, I've centered myself on lighting the matches in my life that can actually have fire in them. It starts in the morning. I've always been a morning person. I've always felt that's when I'm at my "burn-in" best. But I've formalized it in 2021 - and those who know me well know "formalize" is not a strength of mine. It fits me about as well as neat and clean and organized and planful. ⏹But I'm up at 4:30. ⏹Prayer and meditate until 4:45. ⏹Until 5:15 - I read in and write about the book - "We Make the Road by Walking - a year-long quest for spiritual formation, reorientation and activation." ⏹Until 6AM I write some thoughts that have been on my mind right here on Facebook. ⏹From 6-7 I'll run or walk or exercise. ⏹Then it's shower and eat a healthy breakfast (which may be my only "healthy" meal of the day 🤷♂️). My point here isn't to highlight my morning routine. We all have different lives that make it possible/impossible to duplicate each other's routines. The bigger point is that I HAVE a routine. I have a part of my day where I've formalized time and methods to burn-in. With this routine, I know that by 8, before my world uncontrollably turns uncontrollable, I've purposefully spent time controlling things that I can control. Things that certainly make a difference in my life. Things that better equip me to make a difference in someone else's life. Here's the other thing - and maybe the more important thing. When things do get to feeling uncontrollable, when things do begin to put a fog over and around and in my life - this routine is a reminder of the things I can control. It's a reminder that in a burn-out moment, it would likely work out better for me to take a 10 minute walk, or to read in my book, or to write down some thoughts I'd like to share the next day. It's a reminder to walk away from the uncontrollable and show up and persist at the things that are in my control. And who knows - maybe showing up and doing the things we can do to make ourselves better - maybe that's the most control we'll ever have over the things we spend so much time fighting to control - the things we just know will make the world better. 1/13/2021 0 Comments meg menzies 7 years laterSeven years ago today, I was sitting in our local library when I received this text message:
“Meg Menzies was just hit by a car while she was running. She died.” I didn’t know Meg. I was friends with her husband, Scott. I'd worked with him on different projects in his role as a local law enforcement officer. But I knew a lot of people who did know Meg. And with shattered hearts, they began telling stories about a woman who, to me, sounded quite ordinary. She loved God, she treasured her family - especially her three young children - and she had a passion for running. But as the stories continued, as one after another they continued to build on each other, I discovered something remarkable in her story. In a culture that is fixated on luring us away from the ordinary - from the sanctuary of God to busy cities that never sleep, from the quiet embrace of our children to the pursuit of fame and fortune, from a commitment to wellness to the endless chase of unhealthy pleasures - Meg was never lured away. Less than a week after her death, it became clear to me I wasn’t the only one who’d found extraordinary in her story. On January 19, 2014, the Saturday after Meg died, over 100,000 people from all around the world responded to a social media request to “Run for Meg.” Complete strangers were so moved by Meg’s story that they grabbed their families and friends and hit the streets to run. Many did so for the first time, or at least the first time in a long time. I was one of those first time in a long time runners. I ran eight miles that morning. The last time I'd come close to running that far I was in high school. Which was at least 8 miles in my past.... I've been running ever since. It's funny, though, over the past seven years, I've begun running toward things instead of away from them. I've processed a lot of what I've hated about my past in a way that's left me with hope and love for the future. Seven years ago today, a shoe memorial was spontaneously erected where Meg died. I remember putting my first pair of shoes on that memorial after that first run. As I stood there, looking at the hundreds of other shoes hanging there, I was overwhelmed by how one ordinary woman's life could bring so many people together in that one rural spot in our community. In September of 2019, I went to Honduras to distribute shoes with Soles4Souls. As I knelt down and put a new pair of shoes on a little girl's feet - her smile as big as the whole country of Honduras - I was overwhelmed by how one ordinary woman's life could send me so far from home, to a place where my heart overflowed with love for a people I never imagined loving. In September of 2020, I completed the 35-mile Georgia Jewel. I'd tried it twice before and couldn't finish. As I crossed that finish line alone - in darkness after 13 1/2 hours on my feet - 7 years of a running journey flashing before my eyes - I was overwhelmed by how one ordinary woman's life had helped me find a strength in me I never knew existed. I was overwhelmed by how a woman I never knew introduced me to a ME I never knew. I took those shoes I wore in Georgia to hang them on the shoe memorial a few weeks later. As I stood there staring at that memorial, I could hear Meg say, those shoes don't belong here. You know where those shoes need to go. I lifted the trunk of my car and placed those shoes in a bag of ordinary shoes I'd been collecting from ordinary people to donate to Soles4Souls. I could hear Meg saying, we are all quite ordinary, you know, but our stories don't have to be. Our stories can be of extraordinary hope that never lets go. Our stories can be of a love so powerful that it never gives up. Seven years ago a beautiful life ended. But, in response, thousands of lives have found new beginnings. Seven years ago, a little corner in Hanover County Virginia turned to ashes. But today, the beauty from those ashes continues to rise all over the world. Meg's story continues to be a hope that never lets go. It continues to be a love that never gives up. When Elliott - my firstborn - was born, I felt God talk to me. God was as overwhelming in my life in that moment as he's ever been. I dare say, it's as overwhelming as he'll ever be.
In the very first seconds of looking into my son's eyes, my heart full of a love I could have never imagined, I heard God say, "now you have at least a sliver of an idea of just how I feel about you every single second I look into your eyes." Yes - I heard God's voice. And yes, I continue to hear those words every day. I need to hear them. Because there are days I don't feel like I'm performing well enough in this life to be loved by God. There are days I don't feel like I'm performing well enough to be loved by anyone - really. But in that moment, when I heard God insist that I feel his love for me, I was a very imperfect man. Much like I am today. I think as a culture, we make it really difficult to understand this concept of God's love. We make it difficult because we attach so much individual worth with individual achievement. It starts in the lives of too many children. They are pushed to make the all-star teams in their homes. We've standardized the tests that assess whether they are all-stars or not in their schools. And when those kids apply for college or a job, we ask them to hand over a bullet-point summary of their achievements prior to that moment - just to make sure they are worthy of either. Most of those kids - they carry the burden of all that into adulthood. To feel worthy, they feel like they must measure up. Social media has built an empire on that need. We also have a mental health crisis in this country, like never seen before, built on the collective beliefs of too many that they never will measure up. I guess that's why I love God. I guess that's why I cling to that voice, to those words, "now you have at least a sliver of an idea of just how I feel about you every single second I look into your eyes." I cling to them because God's love starts with acknowledging that I will never measure up. That I will always be riddled with imperfection. I cling to God's love because he never asks for a bullet-point summary of my day - which tests I aced and which ones I failed. No, in fact, every time I try to hand God that summary, he pushes my hand aside. Watches my list drop to the ground. Then he takes my hand and puts his summary in it. His bullet-point list. And every day, every moment, when I look down at that list, it simply says: ⏹I love you ⏹I love you ⏹I love you ⏹I love you So today, if you feel like you're not measuring up. Put your summary down. Put out your hand and let God hand you his. When he does, hand over that burden you're carrying to measure up. Because you're with a God who believes you already have. I thought about this recently. You know when I'm NOT questioning God about the circumstances in my life? It's when the circumstances in my life are going just the way I want the circumstances in my life to go.
I'm happy. I'm content. I'm wearing every article of "Life is Good" clothing I own. But you know what else I've discovered happens when Life is Good? I don't change. I get to celebrating who I am and stop thinking about who I can and need to be. Who God has created me to be. I'm guessing God knows that about me. I guess that's why when the circumstances in my life aren't going just the way I want the circumstances in my life to go, that doesn't concern God nearly as much as it does me. Because God isn't about creating beautiful circumstances in my life, God is about creating a beautiful me. And God knows a beautiful me isn't a final destination, it's a process of daily changing. I guess to fully grasp that - at least from a place of believing God really does love me when circumstances don't feel loving - I have to look at all of that through the eyes of being a dad. My boys experience hard times. Right now they are on their 9th month of sitting in their rooms doing school instead of sitting in a classroom doing it. Whether that's right or wrong, fair or unfair, healthy or unhealthy - doesn't much matter - it's the way it is. The Life is Good dad in me wants nothing more than for those circumstances in their lives to get back where they were. Where school was being done the way they and I think it's supposed to be done. Where it felt good and comfortable. The dad who loves his kids in me wants nothing more than for them to change through these circumstances. The dad who loves his kids knows young school boys become beautiful men, not when life throws the right circumstances at them, but when challenging circumstances shape them the right way. That's not a theory of mine. It's a fact of mine. I can look back on all the challenging circumstances in my life and see how they shaped me. They changed me. Far more than any Life is Good circumstance ever did. That's why in the midst of our circumstances these days - a pandemic, cultural challenges, broken relationships, joblessness, traumas and re-traumas - through it all, I know there's a God watching over me who isn't celebrating the challenging nature of my life, but rather, he's lovingly taking comfort in knowing I'm becoming the beautiful person he knows these circumstances will create. God has a big advantage, you know. God knows what the final circumstances look like. What God wants us to focus on - to spend our days refining - is what will we look like - who will we be - when we take our seats in those final circumstances. Well, we are officially over a week into the new year. For many, that means several successful or unsuccessful steps toward becoming the new you.
I'm reading the book: The Gift, by Edith Eger. I didn't get to chapter one before I read these words - "When you change your life, it isn't to become the new you, it's to become the real you." We live in a world constantly trying to sell us on becoming a new and improved version of ourselves. Often, advertisements - commercials, they are the first hint we get of how much new we need in our lives. The television subtly gives us the solutions to all of our brokenness without ever telling us how broken we are. They trust us to come to that conclusion on our own. We paint so many pictures of who we want to be based on the pictures we see in the world around us. Which means, really, many of the pictures we paint of who we want to be - they are indirectly painted by someone other than us. Painted by people who are often more interested in us becoming who they think we should be and not who we truly are. I get that - many segments of our economy would tank if this wasn't true. But I wonder, as many of us have started our journeys into the new year, how many of us are looking for new yous this year, and how many are looking for real yous? How many of you, this year, are looking to add programs, products and people to your life that change the way you look to the world in the light of the day? And how many of you are looking to add those same things to you life to change the way you see yourself in the dark of the night? The first probably comes from a desire to become a new you. The latter most likely from a desire to become the real you. The first usually comes because we don't feel accepted by the world. The second because we have a hard time accepting ourselves. So many people, and I've been one, spend so much of their lives chasing the answer to "who do you think I should be?" And, as a result, they get to the end of their lives never having answered - and in many cases - worse - never having asked: "who am I?" I just want to encourage you - the world doesn't need a new you this year. The world needs the real you. I've gotten to know too many "real you" people in my life. They are often much more beautiful than the "new you" versions of themselves. The "real you" version of them adds so much more to the world than the "new you" version. I'm hoping this will be a year of living in the real world, not a new one. |
Robert "Keith" CartwrightI am a friend of God, a dad, a runner who never wins, but is always searching for beauty in the race. Archives
May 2024
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