1/15/2023 0 Comments Life is a we thingBefore the start of the Megsmiles 5K yesterday, my friend Maria caught this picture of me taking a selfie with my dear friend Kelly Jarvis Anderson.
Over the last several years, I've said it a lot - I have presented and taught on it a lot - I've said, life is a we thing. At the heart of that message is the truth that we are neurobiologically wired to be our healthiest selves in the middle of we. And, maybe not so disconnected - if at all - we are most content in the middle of we. Relationships are the greatest protective factor we have over every unhealthy risk we might encounter in life. I confess, I have not always understood that. I've certainly not been good at it. I have spent a lot of my life avoiding we and not embracing it. I have spent a lot of my life feeling threatened by we and not the least bit open or curious about what lies in the depths of it. Because we thing is much more about depths than heights. It's much more about a longing to hold what you might find on the inside than it is about liking what you see on the outside. Kelly is one of the people who helped open my eyes to we thing. She always moves right on by the ornaments hanging on my outside and says tell me about what's happening on the inside. It was a gift yesterday for Elliott and I (because Ian got tired of our pace and ran on 🤷♂️) to walk with Kelly and her friend Renee (I love her expression in the selfie shot 😊) the final mile of the race. They talked about how they met 30 years ago as young teachers in rural Hanover County. And now, even though they live in two different states, they have remained best of friends. Their families have become each other's extended families. I found myself envious of that in many ways. But more than that, I found myself grateful to be in the middle of that conversation. I found myself grateful that my sixteen year old was right there with me listening in to the power of we. The joy to be found in it. I found myself believing we are almost always - if not always - in the right place at the right time. I found myself more committed than ever to this message: life is a we thing. I long for we, and I long to spread the gospel of we. Jesus once said, life boils down to this: love God, love one another. That often gets preached as a command. I believe if I was sitting with Jesus it would feel more like an invitation. I believe I'd feel Jesus longing to know what's on my inside while totally ignoring how put together I was trying to look on the outside. Jesus is a fan of Christmas I think; Christmas ornaments - not so much. I believe that because of my friend Kelly. I believe that because of the people who have come alongside me in some dark times and been curious about my darkness. And then, upon discovering it, sat there in it with me for a bit without feeling pressured to turn all the lights on. Because that is we thing. Meeting people where they are no matter where you are. Life is a we thing. I saw a lot of runners yesterday, but few were racing for the prize. Most seemed to be racing for togetherness. And more than any medal we can hang on a wall, togetherness is what ultimately holds us all together. Nothing is better for any of us than we.
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Nine years ago today, I was sitting in our local library when I received a 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 was loyal to her friends, 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 wants to lure 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 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, others for 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. It was the furthest I'd run in decades. I've been running ever since. It's funny, though, over the past nine 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. One thing I've learned is that the beauty in the process, the beauty in the finish line, is often found in the people who help you get there. Back in 2017, I was running toward the finish line of the Patrick Henry Half Marathon. The year before, I didn't make it there. The August heat derailed my day at mile 8. A few miles from the finish, two friends who came into my life after Meg died showed up to help me find my way to that finish line. One was Meg's mom Pam, the other was Solomon Whitfield. I don't think I would have finished my race that day if they hadn't showed up. Back in the summer of 2020, I was going through one of the harder seasons of my life. I was out driving in the middle of the sunny afternoon, but life felt like a thousand midnights. I somehow found myself sitting on a picnic table in my friend Pam's yard. I was telling her about the challenges I was facing in life. I told her, I know it's not like losing a daughter, but it's hard. Pam looked at me, without hesitation, and said grief is grief, Keith. And you are grieving. I knew I was sitting in the beauty of the ashes of Meg's death. They were hard ashes to sit in. It's hard to feel beauty at the expense of someone else's deepest pain. But it was a beauty I desperately needed in that moment. A beauty I will be forever grateful for. A few months later, I found myself sitting at an Olive Garden with my friend Solomon. Again, I was lost. And again, a friend was showing up near the finish line to help me find my way. I'm not sure I'd have found that finish line if he hadn't been there that day. I know a large part of my life has been spent being lured away. The kind of lured away that Meg never experienced. Many times the last several years, I have felt Meg luring me back. Back to me. I have felt that through her mom and through my friend Solomon and through countless other friends who would have never come into my life if Meg hadn't been taken from ours. Finding yourself is beautiful. Especially when you'd been as lost as I'd been for as long as I'd been lost. Saying that - knowing it cost someone you love one of the people she loves most - doesn't feel beautiful. But it is. I don't know why life works that way, where beauty is more likely to spring forth from ashes than it is from beauty. But that IS how life works. For nine years now countless of us have been sitting in the beauty of the ashes of Meg's death. They are hard ashes to sit in. It's hard to feel beauty at the expense of someone else's deepest pain. But it is a beauty we all so desperately need. We miss you Meg, but may we all live lives that nurture beauty in the world long after we're gone. May we all live lives that will forever make it easy for others to find the beauty in our ashes. 1/12/2023 0 Comments Show Me I matterI visited work colleagues in Roanoke yesterday. They told me about a project they'd recently done with youth in their community.
The project started when a local survey told them that almost 50% of the youth surveyed said they feel like they don't belong. So my colleagues put together a group of those students. They asked them, if you could tell the world something they could do to help you feel like you belong - help you feel like you matter - what would you tell them? Then all the students got to pick one of those messages. They each had a chance to have a photo taken. And then they got to choose one of the messages to attach to their individual photos. Many adults who saw the photos said they'd never seen the young people look so happy and at ease. On one hand, the messages are heartbreaking. When I think about the number of kids who just want to have someone listen to them, who just want someone to help them with their homework, who just want someone to tell them they are not alone - that is gut wrenching to me. But on the other hand, it's encouraging. There are a lot of complex problems in the world. Problems that require big minds and big resources to sit down and wrestle with and negotiate a path forward. This problem with our youth, though. It is not complex at all. Our kids just want to know they matter. And matter to them isn't the latest iPhone. It's not a new car. It's not an anything at all. It's a someone. It's very inexpensive to be a someone. Sharing a new iPhone will set you back a grand. But sharing your heart, showing someone they matter - well that's relatively inexpensive. I thought about those kids' answers as I drove to my next stop. I wondered - if I sat down with a group of adults - with you and with me - and I asked the same question: what does the world need to know about helping you feel like you belong - like you matter - would the answers be any different? I am sure this issue of belonging is an issue at the heart of these young people in Roanoke. But I'm also pretty sure it's an issue at the heart of you and of me - of humanity. I worry some days that we make this simple matter of the heart more complex than it has to be. I worry that big minds wrestle with ideas and resources to generate solutions that will allow us to make one another feel like we matter without having to show one another that we matter. I worry that it's become an easier task to spend on a connection than it is to enter into one. I worry that we are much better at spending on someone else's heart than we are at sharing our own. But our kids are crying out. And maybe they aren't just crying out for themselves, but crying out for all of us: show me I matter. We will all go hurriedly into our lives today. But please do me a favor. Do US a favor. Find one person; it doesn't have to be a kid. It would be nice if it was, though. But listen to these kids below and tell someone why they are special. Tell someone you are here to listen to them. Tell someone you've got there back and that they aren't alone and that you will be there for them. Listen to our kids and one another - without judgment - get to know someone. The world looks chaotic and completely out of order some days. But our kids are giving us the solution. Not big minds and resources - but our kids. They are pleading with us. Show them they matter. They are pleading with us. Show each other we matter. Once again this week, I find myself connected to the story of a young person taking their life. I find myself in this place more and more these days. I have a couple of young persons I call my sons, so this place scares me. Maybe scares me more than any other place.
I've been writing the story of my life the last month or so. I feel compelled this morning to share a small chapter of that story with you. ***** Is it possible that popularity is only grooming us for loneliness? Is it possible that popularity is not a gift, but a curse? Evil disguised as a blessing? It was the first great collapse in my life - going off to college. It was the first great fall, under which so many other dominoes would ultimately fall. I remember my first college class. There were more people filling the endless rows and seats of that class than there were in my entire high school graduation class. All the popularity in the world means nothing when you are suddenly surrounded by a sea of strangers. Strangers who have no interest in electing you the president of anything. Strangers who have no interest in asking you to join their team, let alone making you their captain. I don't remember what that first class was, but I do remember what it felt like to be lost. As I look back, it's easy to wonder if that was the beginning of lost in my life. The beginning of alone. Or is it possible that day, in that class, my eyes were opened to something popularity had always hid from me? That day I discovered popularity will abandon you when the going gets hard - in the unpopular moments of unfamiliarity. And the unfamiliar have no interest in filling the void it leaves behind. That was four decades ago. Popularity wasn't nearly as popular as it is today. It didn't yet have scorecards like 'likes' and 'loves' and 'shares' and 'views.' The world hadn't quite figured out yet how to leverage unbridled popularity for profit. And power. But it has mastered it today. A February 2021 CDC survey revealed that young adults (18-25 years old) suffer high rates of both loneliness and anxiety and depression. According to the survey, 63% of this age group are suffering significant symptoms of anxiety or depression. That number is not some. It's not many. It's rapidly approaching most. In their report - 'Loneliness in America' - the authors write: “As a society, we do little to support emerging adults at precisely the time when they are dealing with the most defining, stressful decisions of their lives related to work, love, and identity. Who to love? What to be?” I worry about our young people. Lured into the allusion of togetherness by the myth of popularity. I worry about our young people, scared away from the potential of togetherness for fear it looks like popularity. A popularity that has rejected so many of them. Popularity is seductive and it is threatening. It is a villain and it is a comforter. It can hold the loneliest of us wholly together like glue. Until it's gone. Like cheap glue. And you're left surrounded by strangers. Maybe in that moment you turn to something that has always agreed to be there, no matter how unpopular you get to feeling. Alcohol, maybe. Or something else. But more and more, I feel our young people are choosing to turn to nothing at all. They look at the dashboards and the scoreboards and feel totally abandoned by the game. And they quit. They don't fit in with strangers and they've been abandoned by popularity and they have never been exposed enough to togetherness to know it's togetherness that's at the heart of their most painful longings. So they quit. Their world collapses like dominoes. Only these days, I fear the collapse is much more rapid; the dominoes much fewer. It would be many decades beyond that first college class when I would feel the sense of togetherness that exposed the myth of popularity, that undid the damage inflicted by seas of strangers. It's made me wish for a world of togetherness. One that doesn't need scoreboards to measure worth. Togetherness doesn't find it's worth in scoreboards. It finds it in one another. I wish for a world of togetherness. Like many of you, my heart has been moved by the the Damar Hamlin story this week.
Monday, throughout the day, I found myself looking forward to watching a high stakes NFL game that night. Tons of playoff implications. Two of the hottest teams in football. It was a football fanatic's dream. Grab the popcorn and diet coke and plop goes the man into his recliner. But, nothing lodges the popcorn in a fan's throat quicker than watching a football player die on the field. We all come to watch the game with some level of interest in violence. I'm pretty sure none of us come expecting to see a violent death. As I was watching another high stakes NFL game last night, I choked up when they showed the Instagram post published by Hamlin yesterday. A post thanking everyone for the love and support. And for the prayer. There were moments Monday night when many folks wondered if Hamlin had made his last social media post. So it was indeed a miracle to see for ourselves last night - in the middle of the same venue where we watched him die - a football game - that he and his social media account were alive and well. There has been a lot of conversation this week about the role that prayer played in Hamlin's miracle. We saw players praying on national TV. Sportscasters prayed in the middle of their telecast. Prayer was everywhere, and because prayer has been such a highly visible component of a highly visible miracle - there has been talk of a resurgence in people acknowledging the power of prayer. A prayer revival of sorts. I'm not so sure how helpful that kind of prayer revival is. Which is not the same as saying I'm not completely thankful this young man is alive and well today. I am. But when we start to attach the power of prayer to a God who loves saving lives when we all ask him with enough passion to do so, people will quickly begin to wonder, then, why has God not saved the loved ones in my life? Maybe everyone won't ask that question. But it's a question I once asked of prayer. And of God. One of the first times I asked it, I woke up in a dark basement. It's one of the first clear memories I have of being disappointed by a morning. By the waking up. I found myself wishing I hadn't. I found myself angry that the God of miracles hadn't come through with a miracle in my life. Because trust me - no one was rushing into that basement to perform CPR - no teammates were kneeled around me and no one was praying on national TV - but I was dead. That was one of the first mornings I heard the God of miracles tell me, "I'm not here to save your life, I'm here to give you life." I have said often the last few years that scientifically speaking, I have been alive all my life. But when you wake up disappointed by that scientific fact, nothing feels alive about being alive. God came to me in a whisper that morning. A whisper drawing me to pray WITH God and not TO God. A whisper from a God longing for me to invite him in more than I longed for him to raise me up. A God that longed for a prayer revival that he didn't need another living soul to see, but so desperately wanted me to feel. I woke up today. I woke up without a hint of disappointment in that. I came to my desk and I put on my headphones and pulled up the song: It Is Well With My Soul. I quietly listened and felt..... When peace like a river, attendeth my way, When sorrows like sea billows roll Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say It is well, it is well, with my soul It is well with my soul. Those words, quietly whispered in the dark of my living room - far removed from that dark basement - there is no greater prayer revival than that. I pray we all quietly find that gift. The gift of prayer. Not the gift that keeps us alive, but the gift that gives us life. Because that is the greatest miracle of all. There are so many of you out there who don't feel that all is well with your soul. And I do get that. Please know that while the world rightfully celebrates miracles it can see and touch - God sees you and longs to work a quiet miracle in your life. God so wants you to know and feel - all is well with your soul. I had a meeting with some work colleagues yesterday morning. The group is made up of folks I delivered a trauma training to last summer. The training turned out to be more than a training - they usually do - it became a beautiful experience shared by beautiful people. Friends.
As a result, we've continued to meet once a month to process and extend the experience. One of the folks on the call shared that someone close to her has been going through a difficult time. She's realizing, she said, that what she herself has been through is equipping her to help this person in ways she never would have been able to. She told us, that is powerful to me. I told her I heard a pastor ask in a sermon that very morning, "what happens when you no longer know the difference between who you are and what you've been through?" I told my friend she just answered the question. The answer is - you become powerless. Powerless to change your life; powerless to be an agent of change in anyone else's life. Another woman on the call shared an analogy that stuck with me. She said it's like Christmas lights that look so beautiful when they are strung and lit around a tree. They are the same lights, she said, that before strung around the tree were a tangled mess in a box. They are the same lights. The untangling simply helped reveal their beauty. That is writing to me. I often write to untangle the world. And lately I've been doing a lot of writing that focuses on untangling me. The events in our life gain power and momentum if we never stop to untangle then. I'm discovering in writing out the story of my life just how much I have let decades of events - some events I did - some events done to me - some events that were just events - but all the events can start to get tangled together and shoved in a box and we can come to see that box as our life. We can come to accept our identity as the tangled mess in the box and lose sight of the power available to us in the untangling. I have this habit that doesn't work well for me. The habit isn't important. But as I've been writing I've come to realize just how much this habit is tied to my tangled mess. It's become part of the momentum of my events. Lately when I'm tempted by this habit I tell myself: "you are not the kind of person who does this thing." And that has been powerful. What I am doing is purposefully stopping and reminding myself, I am not the events in my life. The tangled messes of my life speak to my identity - sometimes loudly - but they are most certainly NOT my identity. Not unless I leave the messes tangled. The power and the beauty is found in the untangling. Untangle. You couldn't pay me to eat a spoonful of mustard. Well, maybe you could, but it would cost you.
There's just something so detestable about mustard as a solo party. The thing is, don't give me a cheeseburger without it. I even like putting a little bit of mustard in when I'm cooking chili. Mustard doesn't do well alone, but mixed in with other ingredients, it can become a don't leave home without it. I've been spending a lot of time lately writing the story of my life. I've been doing it a lot like I do here many mornings. I pick a period or an event or a relationship or a topic and I reflect on it. And the thing is, those articles alone - well some of them aren't feel good articles. I would never want my whole life to look and feel like some of those individual articles. That's the beauty of it. It's part of the discovery of it. I haven't lived my whole life in those articles. Those articles have become a part of my story. They are a page in a book. But they are not the story. The book isn't finished. Neither am I. But both are close enough to the end that you can see that life is never about a moment or an event in isolation. Life, like a book, is a collection. It's a gathering of isolated stories that make up the whole. In fact, I think we can get to believing that those isolated moments add value and meaning to our story, but maybe just as much - if not more - it's the finished story; it's our life - that adds meaning to those isolated moments. In the midst of moments, some moments can feel hard. And when it feels like hard is never going to end it's hard to imagine how hard belongs in the story. This doesn't fit into the narrative I long for in life. As you write the story of your life, and live it, you come to realize a couple of things. One, it's very rare, if ever at all, that life follows the path of the narrative we long for. That's not how the story of life gets lived. And two, it's often the moments in our life we want to kick to the curb while we are in them that end up playing the leading roles in our story. You can't see that when you're in it. Life ends up telling the story of those moments more than those moments tell the story of life. I suppose it's a lot like mustard. I think cheeseburgers do a much better job at telling the story of mustard than mustard ever could. You may be in a hard moment today, or this week, or this year. Try to have faith. Life will tell the story of this moment. And likely, the story will be much more beautiful than it feels right now. |
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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