To minister: tend to the needs of someone.
When I speak at trauma and resilience conferences like I did yesterday, I frequently have people waiting in line to talk to me when I finish. It's never to tell me how impressed they are with my knowledge, or how eloquently I speak, it's always to say, "I can relate to your story so much." A woman asked me yesterday if I'd be willing to talk to her brother. No one's been able to connect with him, she said, but I think he'd relate to your story. In other words, she was suggesting my story - my experiences - would minister to him in ways other people haven't been able to. She was suggesting my story might influence him even though he wasn't present to see my PowerPoint. We live in a world where knowledge is more available than ever. In fact, we are turning more and more processes over to just plain old intelligence. Intelligence minus the emotions and humanity. Robots. AI. There seems to be cultural momentum around the idea that the more we know, the more intelligence we collect, the more free we will become. Free from struggle and hardship and pain. What if it's all smoke and mirrors? What if it is pain that was actually meant to be the great liberator of pain? What if Christ dying a painful death on the cross wasn't some grand gesture but a grand act of ministry. A grand statement crying out that the pain I am experiencing will ultimately free you from the pain you're experiencing. Because it's true. There are many days I turn to Jesus and say, "I can so relate to your story." I deeply appreciate the sermon on the mount, but it would mean very little to me if I couldn't relate to the pain of the man who delivered the sermon. People show up to conferences like this because they want ministry for their pain, or they want to become better ministers for someone else's pain. Neither can happen as effectively as possible if the presenter doesn't come from a place of pain. Both in life and in the presentation. Maybe that sounds like a lot of people are not equipped to be presenters. Quite the opposite. It makes us ALL equipped to be presenters. We all have pain. We all have stories. Presenters simply have no interest in any longer hiding from that. Presenters have come to accept - to fully embrace, even - that my greatest gift as a presenter, as a minister, is my pain. We don't all need packed college auditoriums to be presenters. Maybe someone in your friendship or marriage needs a presenter. Maybe someone in your small group needs one. Maybe someone who sits alone in the cafeteria at school or in the breakroom at work needs a presenter. There are people all around us craving a chance to say, "I can relate to your story so much." Pain is the ultimate healer of pain, and relating to each other's pain is the foundation of all meaningful relationships. Relationships that are impossible as long as we're hiding from our pain and not presenting it. We've all walked out some stuff in our life. Don't hide from it. Use it to minister.
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I grew up believing that when you make a mistake, you have to run to God as quickly as possible to retrieve his forgiveness. You do this, I believed, not to live in some peaceful state with God. You do it in an attempt to talk God out of going to war against you.
Do you know what it's like living in a relationship where you're always trying to talk the other party out of going to war against you? It's fearful. It's exhausting. Attempting to love God the way I thought God needed loved used to be one of the most exhausting endeavors of my life. Then one day God flipped the script on exhaustion. He volunteered for the most exhausting death one can imagine, all for the chance to say to me, my forgiveness is your path to peace. It never again needs to feel like the threat of war. My forgiveness is here for you when you most need it, he said, and when you feel like you least deserve it. Let's just call this blanket forgiveness, grace. Grace when you come to retrieve it. Grace when you forget you already have it. It covers you always. Like a blanket. Some nights when I sleep, I forget the blankets are on me. Even though I have to have the room cold enough to always NEED blankets. But there are other nights when I'm fully aware of those blankets. Maybe it's a particularly cold night. And I cling to them as if they know just how much I need them in that frigid moment. In those moments, I am fully aware of just what I am receiving from those blankets. Savannah Guthrie says this about grace: "I see that receiving God's grace is the ultimate bonding experience with him." The last several years, I have felt a closer bond with God than ever. And to be honest, not many years ago this would have been a period in my life I would have been more afraid of God than ever. Because I have wrestled with things that could have left me feeling less deserving of God's grace than ever before. But instead, I have thought of God as that blanket on one of the coldest nights of my life. I have felt the comfort of that blanket. I have clung to it. I have received its peace. The difference between God's peace and God's desire to be at war with us is never about God. It is always about us. It is always about us knowing we can never earn our way out of a war with God. We can only receive our way out. Receive what has already been given, whether we show up to ask for it or forget that it's already there. Grace. God paying the exhaustive price to relieve our exhaustion. Peace. Too often, we enter into partnerships because the partnership feels good. That's not a problem. Who's going to knock feeling good? The problem comes when we have no idea what to do when the partnership hits an inevitable bump that doesn't feel so good.
Partnerships built on a desire to always feel good never last. Because nothing ALWAYS feels good. But partnerships built on a shared purpose, a common direction, they always have a chance. Because when things start to feel sour, the partnership can recommit to getting where it's trying to get while acknowledging sour feelings are often a part of chasing a purpose. Michael Todd says, "pleasure wears off in a challenge, remembering why you're in the challenge doesn't have to." It's easy to rush into a partnership that feels good without ever asking, why am I entering this partnership. Which makes it impossible to know if you're in a partnership with a shared purpose. This can be destructive to a partnership. Maybe it's the most common destruction to a partnership. Because the best question to bring an out of sorts partnership back in alignment isn't asking how can we get to feeling good again, it's how do we get back on the road to where we are committed to going? If you've never identified the road, the partnership is lost. Often literally. Certainly I'm talking about romantic partnerships, but this idea goes beyond that. A lot of people leave churches because they are no longer pleasurable. A lot of people leave jobs because they are no longer pleasurable. A lot of people give up on their diets or their exercise plans because they are no longer pleasurable. Sometimes leaving is necessary. But if you find yourself leaving a lot of things in life, and leaving because these things no longer feel good, it's possible you're more committed to pleasure in life than purpose. I say that lovingly as a recovering pleasure seeker in life. Pleasure is nice. But I've come to know pleasure can also be the fools gold of life. It can often be life's greatest distraction from you chasing and discovering the REAL gold in life. The gold you were meant to discover and create. Because the reality is, we weren't made for pleasure, we were made for purpose. No matter how pleasurable you are feeling, if there isn't a purpose beneath the pleasure, you will always feel some kind of empty. The answer to that emptiness isn't a new form of pleasure, the answer is returning to your purpose. Or, in many cases, identifying it. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
Then, God created Adam and Eve. From there, though, came the question. Where does the creation of humanity go from here? God made man from dirt and woman from the man's rib. God could have chosen literally any answer to that creation question, where does the creation of humanity go from here? God chose motherhood. One could reflect on this as I have and see this choice as a God who wanted to create something more than humanity. This was a God who wanted to create humanity as an expression of love and caring and human interconnectedness. Just as we are an expression of God's love and caring and desire for divine connectedness with us. If those were God's intentions, science certainly supports his design. Studies have shown that secure and loving attachments between a mother and her baby predict better outcomes in terms of stress management, social skills, and emotional regulation. Studies show that the responsiveness of a mother to her child's needs and her engagement in the child's learning processes help foster an environment ripe for cognitive growth. And studies strongly show the presence and supportive role of a mother can contribute greatly to the development of resilience. Children who receive consistent, compassionate care from their mothers are more likely to develop the skills necessary to face life’s challenges effectively. Indeed, many studies support the notion that a strong and healthy connection between a mother and her baby is one of the greatest predictors of a child's future wellness. I am a science AND bible guy. It's never one or the other for me. This overlap between God's vision for motherhood and the evidence science lends to that vision is one big reason for my AND. In the aftermath of my divorce, I have said many times, if I had to choose a mother for my boys all over again I'd choose the mother they have. She has always made her role as a mother her highest priority. Because of that, even as much as I've remained an active father in their lives, I know it is motherhood that has lifted them through some challenging years. I know the bond she's created with them, one in line with the loving and caring and connection driven vision of God, has been glue. For it's hard to shake the image of the cross. In the hardest earthly moment of God's life. The creator who declared the value of motherhood looking down at his mother witnessing his murder. And one of God's last orders of business was calling out to his disciple John, please take care of my mother. A bond to the end. A bond founded on the loving and caring and human connection born in a manger. I know my role in my boys' lives is critical. This article isn't to diminish the role a father plays. But I own that no small part of my role has always been supporting their mom's opportunity to be a present mom. I also know one reason their mom has had the freedom to be a present mom is some of the challenges NOT present in her life that ARE present in the lives of many moms. She's never had to worry about access to healthcare. She's never had to worry about access to education. She's never had to worry about access to social supports that lighten the load of the never ending job of mom. We often judge moms for not showing up for their babies the way God designed them to and the way science supports is the healthiest foundation for human development. Maybe when God was designing the importance of motherhood he was also imagining the way we'd all show up to support mothers. And that design didn't include judgment, but policies and practices that give every mother a chance to show up for their kids the way my boys' mom has shown up for them. Being a present mom was never designed to be a privilege. It was designed to be a gift from God to humanity. A gift that would foster love and care and connection all the way from earth to eternity. Every time we turn our back on opportunities to support every mother and every baby in that gift, we turn our back on the natural design of a loving and caring and connected world. It's not often we talk about that truth when talking about the challenges of the world. Maybe it's time we start. No better time than Mothers Day. Matthew McConaughey says, "happiness as most of us are taught, or as many of us see it, is result oriented. If then. If I get this then I will be happy. It's almost like a ta da moment."
According to McConaughey, "there is no ta da moment." There is no ta da moment. I should memorize that. Like scripture. I find myself reflecting this morning, how much of my life has been spent chasing that ta da moment? If I get good grades, then. If I get voted the captain of the football team, then. If I graduate college, then. If I get that promotion, then. If I get married, then. If I buy a house, then. If I have kids, then. If. Then. It can go on forever. I find myself reflecting this morning, how much unhappiness have I experienced in my life because of the disappointment I have felt when the other side of then never felt like ta da? How much resentment have I harbored in life because the other side of then felt more like a lie than a ta da? How many people are facing grave unhappiness today because the story they've been told about happiness, or the story they've told themselves about it, has turned out to be a fairy tale? How many people have not discovered what I thankfully am starting to, that ultimate happiness comes through enjoying the chase of a happiness you're never going to find this side of eternity. Happiness isn't found in becoming a dad. Happiness is found in enjoying the process of becoming your image of the perfect father you'll never become. Happiness isn't found in getting married. Happiness is found in enjoying the process of working together toward your image of the perfect marriage you'll never have. Happiness isn't found in getting straight A's. Happiness is found in falling in love with the process of learning everything you can about a life you'll never get to learn even a fraction of what there is to know about it. Happiness is discovering that we can get to racing toward happiness so hard that we hardly notice all there is to be happy about in the chase. Happiness is discovering it is indeed a chase; not a race. A goal in life, so I've come to believe, isn't to find happiness at the finish line of life but to create it as we chase life all the way to that finish line. There is no then, when it comes to happiness, there is only now. And oh, what a sweet and beautiful happiness that can be found in understanding that. As part of a trauma and resilience event I spoke at yesterday, we did an activity where the presenter asked someone at our table to recount something hard they've been through while the rest of us reflected on signs of resilience in the story.
I happened to be sitting at a table with my friend Dominick. He told the story of losing his baby last year. As I listened to him, I thought, there was a day, a day not even so long ago, when I wouldn't have wanted to be anywhere near his story. A story heartbreaking and unimaginably difficult. Listening to someone else's unimaginably difficult stories always felt like a threat to my own hard stories. And my goal in life, even if mostly subconscious, was to make sure no one ever got near my hard stories. But as hard as Dominick's story was to hear, mainly because I can imagine how hard that loss and aftermath continues to be on him, something felt beautiful about sitting in that space. A beauty I never in my life could have seen coming. One of the early speakers yesterday spoke frequently about this idea of natural love. She was speaking in terms of how natural it is for a mother to show up to love her child. A natural love this speaker sadly didn't receive. Her point was, though, that it is very unnatural to inflict pain on someone, or to not show up for them when they are in pain. Our human nature is designed such that we naturally show up for one another. It is our inherited instinct. Especially when it comes to meeting each other in hard places. Our humanity, both personally and relationally, gets very complicated when we go against that nature. It gets complicated when we start burying our hard stuff and constantly fighting against our natural instincts to share it. Listening to a friend talk about the hardest moment of his life isn't a place I'd put on a list of places to visit for pleasure today, but it felt like a very natural place to be for a few moments yesterday. It felt healthy and healing and assuring. Not for my friend, although I'm sure it was for him as well, but for me. You can't listen to someone else's hard stories without taking at least a brief visit back to some of your own. The lovely woman at the table with us said, I wouldn't have had enough time to tell the hard story I was thinking of. My mind certainly drifted to divorce and the distance that's created in my relationship with my children. But there my friend Dominick was, playing a big part in hosting a resilience conference in his community. There I was, speaking at it. There our lovely friend Naomi was, spending the day voluntarily participating in it to learn more about resilience and how to spread it in her community. There all three of us were; resilient. Leaning into our natural instincts to love in the way we were created to love. Showing up. Together. I was reminded yesterday at our table that part of resilience is being able to visit the hard stories of our past without moving back in there. Without taking up residence in places that often haunt us from behind. Visiting the hard stories of our past is a great thing to do as a reminder of how far we've come. The hard stories of our past is a great place to be reminded that we've overcome those stories together, by naturally showing up for one another and letting our loving instincts bond us in the direction of a better future story. I had a nice visit with my past yesterday. I am grateful to be able to take visits like that I was once completely unable to take. But this morning, I live here in this beautiful place called today. I live here grateful to no longer be afraid of the stories of yesterday; thankful for how much clearer I see this moment as a result of my fearlessness toward past moments. A fearlessness that doesn't happen without following our natural instinct to show up for one another. Even if just for a visit. 5/8/2024 0 Comments Choose and Go: No regretsI've come to believe regrets are often theories we use to beat ourselves up.
Ellen J Langer says, "when we are displeased with our choice, we mindlessly assume the unchosen alternative would have been better, and then we suffer whenever we think about what we may have missed." It's true. I've spent many hours suffering as if I know how things would have gone had I made different choices. I've let the momentary feeling that I've landed in the wrong place lure me into believing I walked away from some right place. What actually is at the root of that suffering? I'm in the wrong place? Or - the only reason this feels like the wrong place is because I'm allowing myself to believe I chose this place over a place I now theorize would have been the right place? Here's what I know. No one is ever going to give me the right or wrong answer sheet. I will never get to know where life would have gone with an alternative choice. I only get to know the choices I have made. Those are my facts, that is my only answer sheet; I am living in my choices. To label those choices the bad or wrong choices because of stories I dream up about alternative choices I could have made are judgments built on imagination, not reality. If you feel like you're in the wrong place, chances are the answer isn't in the choice behind you, it's in one in front of you. Chances are the answer isn't in a choice you already made, it's in one you need to make. But as a word of caution, just know, whatever that next choice is, you'll never get to know how life would have gone if you'd went a different direction. You'll be able to pretend you know, but you never truly will. That's why these days I lean into the motto: choose and go. Make a choice and live with the reality of that choice, not with imaginations of how the other choice might have gone. Regrets are often a product of our imagination. Quit imagining. Choose and go. It's Resilience Week in Virginia. As part of that, I've been blessed with the chance to speak at a Resilience Conference tomorrow in Danville, VA. Because of this, I've thought a lot about resilience and what it means to me the last week.
To me, resilience simply means having the capacity to see beyond the problem. To have hope beyond the problem. To believe beyond the problem. Seeing beyond the problem doesn't come easy to everyone. It sure hasn't for me. There have been times this has felt like I have a character flaw. But resilience is much more complicated than character. The emotions we feel in the middle of a problem: hopelessness, frustration, anger, sadness, anxiety, depression - all of these emotions take place in the bottom half of our brain. A healthy brain - a resilient brain - will quickly feel those emotions as signals, as invitations, if you will, to go visit the higher level problem solving part of our brain to discover a solution to the problem. But if you have a brain that's never been wired to take that path, to take the high road from problem to solution, you'll stay stuck in the problem. You'll stack stuck in a cycle of emotions that become very compromising to your health and wellness. The thing about resilience is that it's much easier built than learned. I can't sit and read a book on resilience and suddenly feel like, ah, that's the ticket, I just need to leave these emotions behind for a bit and go visit the more logical part of my body's command center. Our ramped up emotions will always make that a difficult road to discover and travel alone. But when we have people show up in our problems and in our emotions and take our hand and walk with us toward a solution, we become bigger believers in solutions. Over time, this practice helps us build a staircase from our emotions to the more logical parts of our brains. This staircase is very difficult to build on our own. Our problems will always make us feel like that's a construction project too overwhelming to tackle. Which is why resilience is almost always a construction project carried out with others. It's why I've come to believe life is a we thing. That's my one word definition of resilience: WE. This is a great week to be reminded that if you're feeling stuck in the emotions of a problem, if you're feeling like there is no way out, chances are that's because you're trying to process it alone. Chances are it's because your stuck in processing the problem and haven't begun making your way toward the higher-power parts of your brain where solutions live. And if that's the case, it's likely because you aren't resilient. That's not name calling. That's not judgment. It quite simply might be your biological reality. The hopeful part of the message is it's never too late to build resilience. It's never too late to change your biology. But it starts with reaching out for help. Reach out to someone and confess that you're in a problem you know you'll never find a solution to because you know you're stuck in that problem. Talk to someone not stuck in your problem who might be able to see the path to a solution you'll never see without them. Many of us stay stuck in the emotions of our problems because when we process our problems we never leave them. We just stay there, in our problem, processing and processing and processing. This is a great week to better understand that about ourselves. To change it. To build resilience. To find your WE. I recently heard Sarah Jakes Roberts asked, what are three mandatory questions to ask your partner before marriage?
I found two of her three questions really important: She said to ask your future partner how they express their beliefs. She said two people can believe in God but the way they express that may be very different. She also said she'd encourage asking a future partner what brings them joy. She said the world is heavy and hard and she'd want to know how she could best help bring joy to her partner's life in hard times. I think those two questions are helpful. But it was a third question she suggested that I now believe is mandatory. When I heard this question, I had to wonder if it would have made a difference decades ago when I entered my eventual failed marriage. It's a question I know I'll challenge my boys to ask of any future partner in their lives. And - I also think it's a helpful and maybe healing question to ask of any close relationship in your life. She said one should ask, "what is the most traumatic experience in your life, and how does the residue of that experience show up in your present?" Wow. As someone who understands today how the residue of my past has stood in the way of me having meaningful relationships in my life, that was a mic drop kind of question. I was momentarily awed that someone could articulate and encourage that question so boldly. Because the reality is, no one was going to challenge me to ask that question 25 years ago. I lived in a world largely burying traumas and denying residues. Both my close inner world and the broader world around me. It's a question, when asked lovingly, doesn't discount or negate someone because of what they have faced, it simply wants to identify if we can navigate the residue of what you have faced together. I found myself wondering this morning, what would I have said if asked that question before my marriage. And in all honesty, I probably would have said I'd never faced anything traumatic. At that point in life the only thing I knew how to do was hide from my experiences and deny their residues. But, someone wise enough to ask that question would have known better than to accept that answer. Because we all have traumatic experiences and we all have residues. Anyone who answers that question with hiding and denial is going to problem solve the future problems of the relationship with hiding and denial. Which, today, is a path I can relate to. It's interesting. I think today I'd say that one question can accurately identify the depth of a relationship. Not just a future marriage, but any relationship one considers deeply meaningful. Because if you ask that question of someone and they feel uncomfortable with it, or threatened by it, then your relationship probably isn't as deep and safe as you thought it was or long for it to be. But when you ask it of someone and they consider that question a gift, as an invitation to be fully seen and known, and as an avenue to better navigating a way forward with something that feels important to navigate with, then you know you have something special. I've come to know that life is always challenging, but what multiplies those challenges is often the residue we bring from our past challenges. Having someone who wants to understand those residues in your life not only soothes the past, but it also smooths the future. I believe this with all my heart these days: the secret to navigating a future filled with contentment is discovering a way to navigate your past without distrust and hopelessness and resentment. Because those are often the unidentified residues of our past we try to drag along the journey to our future. Too often we try to barge into a better future by getting better at ignoring our past. That catches up with you. Better to have it catch up with you at the beginning of a relationship than having it be the destructive ending to it. Maybe an ending that can be avoided by starting with better questions. I had coffee with a friend yesterday. We spent a lot of time talking about anger and forgiveness. She referenced a book she'd read that I knew I'd read and written an article about over a decade ago.
I had to come home and find that article. So many thoughts re-reading that 2014 article. Honestly, some embarrassment about who I have been. Some pride in who I'm becoming. And a big big reminder that in the moments we are getting angry about a life not going our way God is working our life toward joy. Joy if we'll simply stop and believe it and follow it. It is not lost on me that if I had received the life I was angry about not receiving way back then, I wouldn't be living the life right now I'm so grateful to have received. Here is that circa 2014 article: *** I can't tell you about the power of forgiveness without taking you to Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. Here, on the morning of October 2, 2006, Charles Roberts entered a one-room schoolhouse in this Amish community and took the young students and a teacher inside hostage. He sealed the doors shut, then lined up ten girls between the ages of 6 and 13 and shot them in the head. Five of the girls died, the others suffered serious injuries. The immediate nightmare ended when Roberts shot and killed himself, but the horrific details of what had happened were just beginning to assail screaming parents and families waiting outside that bloody schoolroom. How these families and members of the Amish community responded in the aftermath of the shooting surprised many people, though. Before the tragic day was over, many of them had reached out to comfort the widow and family of the killer, a man from their community whom many of them knew. Jack Meyer, a member of the Brethren community living near the Amish in Lancaster County, would describe the response best in an interview with CNN: "I don't think there's anybody here that wants to do anything but forgive, and not only reach out to those who have suffered a loss in that way, but to reach out to the family of the man who committed these acts." The widow of the shooter would later write an open letter thanking the Amish community for their response. She said, " Your compassion has reached beyond our family, beyond our community, and is changing our world, and for this we sincerely thank you." Donald Kraybill, an author and lecturer who has spent decades studying and writing about the Amish community, wrote a book about this event: Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy. In the book he said, "the Amish see forgiveness as a first step toward a more hopeful future." He noted that letting go of grudges is deeply rooted in the Amish culture. It has been taught. The lives of those who lost children and had children permanently injured, as well as those of the family of Charles Roberts, would have headed in a different direction had this community reacted with vengeance instead of forgiveness. A few years ago, a former boss, a man I'd worked for and with for over ten years, refused to offer a positive recommendation to a potential new employer. It cost me a chance at the job. Only he knows why he ignored the many favorable reviews he'd given me over the years. My guess is it was philosophical differences we had about our organization at the end of our time together. Maybe he was simply upset I left. It really doesn't matter, because my response to him eventually caused me far greater harm than his actions. I was angry. As angry as I can remember being in years. I felt like my former boss did me wrong, and I was determined to make him pay for it. I contacted attorneys. I emailed, phoned and sent letters all the way up the operational chain of command of my former organization, including the board of directors. I got angry with friends who still worked with this man and refused to hate him as much as I did. For days into weeks into a couple of months I snapped at my ex-wife as if she had attacked my reputation. I became so obsessed with the job I potentially lost, furious that it had been stolen from me, that I grew unappreciative of the one I had. It's embarrassing to write that paragraph when I consider that within hours the Amish community of Nickel Mines moved to forgive a man who left young girls lying with bullets in their heads on the floor of a one-room school house. And me, I couldn't whip the lasso of revenge fast or wide enough over nothing more than a perceived slight - mere words. In the end, vengeance didn't change my original circumstances. I never got that job. What I did do, though, was risk relationships and inject hate into the world around me. I was determined to make a situation that looked ugly to me look even uglier to everyone else. In fairness, forgiveness didn't work a miracle on the Nickel Mines shooting, either. Little girls still never came home from school that day. But as Kraybill acknowledged in his book, the Amish response of forgiveness transcended their tragedy. Through forgiveness, they were determined to take a situation that looked ugly, and miraculously make the world see love. Forgiveness is powerful. It can prevent years of struggle and anger in a relationship, and with a single thought, it can bring torment to peace. As a father, I am awed by the opportunity to shape the lenses through which our boys look at people they interact with, and in doing so, influence the meaning they'll draw from their relationships. I also understand what a daunting task I'm up against raising forgiving children - especially as I've recounted a recent period in my life when my thirst for revenge was quite alive and well. I blame that on my human nature, which refuses to allow me to delight in someone getting one over on me. It constantly encourages me to get even, convinces me I'm the one who deserves to stay one up on my fellow humans. The problem with human nature is it always involves conditions; treat me the way I want to be treated so I'm not forced to stoop to forgiveness. Maybe forgiveness is one of the greatest tools we have but hardest to use in the battle with our own human nature. And let's not be confused, our greatest source of contentment comes not from overcoming life, but from overcoming ourselves. When we know that, anger at the world can turn to healing of self. It's in that healing that we can find the power to forgive others, and maybe more importantly, the willingness to forgive ourselves. It's not easy. But like the Amish showed us so many years ago in Nickel Mines PA, easy or not, it is indeed a choice. |
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
CategoriesAll Faith Fatherhood Life Mental Health Perserverance Running |