Some days, when I talk about relationships, especially when I talk about what makes a strong relationship, I can feel a little like an imposter. Like a hypocrite. Historically, relationships haven't been my strength, to include spending the last few years navigating a broken marriage.
But when I reflect on that - I realize the things I know most about in life, the things that seem to resonate with other people, the things I can begin to feel like I have any expertise at all in - ALL of them stem from brokenness in my life. All of them have followed a journey from lost to found. So maybe as I write about my journey from lost to found in relationships, I hope it will help someone else along the way. Yesterday, I had a conversation with a buddy of mine. We don't talk often; it had been months since I last talked to him. Yet, when we do talk, we skip the small talk and the ice-breakers and get right to life. I appreciate that about him. We got to talking about marriage. And he said something to me that I reflected on a lot. He said he and his wife - whom I adore and consider an equally great friend - have a vanilla marriage. Now when you read that, you might think he was complaining, that he was somehow wanting for more. Turns out, though, that couldn't be further from the truth. As he described vanilla, he described two people having the space to pursue their own interests and goals in life without feeling the pressure to display a picture of what the world would call a flavorful marriage. He described giving each other space to be the individuals they each long to become, while supporting the heck out of each other in that becoming. And then he said this. He said they are at their best when life gets hard. When difficulties come along, he said, there is no one on earth besides her that he would want to tackle them with. I thought to myself, how beautiful and secure that must feel. Not to be with someone you know you have the ability to navigate the hardest challenges of life with, but someone you WANT to navigate them with. I think so many pictures of relationships, whether they are marriages or family or friendships, start with images of waltzing together through the cool parts of life. The fun and the glamourous parts - the flavorful. But then life gets hard. And maybe you come to discover you are not at your best when you're navigating that hard stuff together. Being drawn to one another by the vast flavors of life doesn't naturally translate to being drawn to one another when life loses its flavor. When the flavors become bitter and hard to taste. Nobody wants life to lose its flavor. Nobody wants life to get hard and difficult. Nobody does. But life doesn't care what you want. It gets hard. I think too often, when it comes to relationships, we spend a lot of time plotting out happily ever after. We spend a lot of time picking out the colors and flavors, the treats that taste good to us and look good to the world. And then life gets hard. It doesn't matter whether you wanted it to get hard or not. What matters is if you are beside the person or the people in your life you want to do that hard with; the person and the people who have demonstrated they want to do hard with you. There are very few people we can't navigate the easy parts of life with. Maybe the more challenging find is finding the people we want to navigate the hard parts with. I don't know what the answer to that is. At least not personally, because again - I am hardly the expert. But I think it starts with ditching the assumption of - and maybe even the desire for - happily ever after. I think it starts with assuming happily ever after is a fairy tale, and hardships and challenges are a reality. And then looking at the person beside you and asking, is this who I want to tackle reality with. Is this who - more than anyone else. If the answer is yes, then you like my buddy are incredibly blessed. Because when you get to a place - and to a person in life - where you are at your best when life gets hard. You've reached a great place. You have found your person.
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One of the more famous bible stories is the story of Jesus walking on water. And his disciple Peter challenging Jesus in that moment - if it's you, Jesus, call me to you - call me to walk on water as well.
Jesus did. He called Peter. And Peter walked on water. Until he didn't. The bible says: Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!” Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. In his message last week, Steven Furtick pointed out something I'd never picked up on when reading that story. Peter was almost there. He was close enough for Jesus to simply reach out and grab his hand. And yet, he stopped believing. He stopped going forward. He sank. Until Jesus pulled him out. You know, there have been a lot of days lately when I feel like I'm walking on water. I feel like I am oh so close. But I stop. And I cry out, save me. I'm grateful that I keep getting saved, but I'm well beyond anxious to quit stopping. To quit doubting. To quit turning away when I'm so close to being where God is bringing me. Because I am close. I can feel the hand that keeps pulling me out of the water strong enough to imagine what it feels like to hold that hand walking along the water. But it's easy, isn't it? In the storms to feel like I've got this, until that lightning bolt or that clap of thunder sends you back to questioning things God long ago answered. Things he never tires of reminding us, yet all the while longing for us to experience life beyond the reminders. Beyond the saving. Because even though Jesus never tires of saving us, he so wants us to once and for all fully experience life on the other side of saved. And not for him, but for us. Not so he never has to see us sink again, but so he can see us walk on water the way he's spent our entire lives calling us to walk. It's tempting to turn away. But I'm almost there. And so are you. Almost to where God is bringing us. Through this article I'm reminding me by reminding you. Let's not look away now. Doors unlock the first time you are in the presence of "What! You too? I thought I was the only one."
Doors to discovering the things you are painfully hiding from the world are the things the world is painfully hiding from you. Doors to being accepted for who you are and not for who you've spent an entire life becoming to hide who you are. Doors to discovering and harnessing the beauty and power in vulnerability. Doors to discovering that conversations connect people when conversations explore, when they carry on with a spirit of curiosity. Conversations unafraid of where they might lead, knowing someone may need them to go where they've never gone before. Doors to discovering that beneath many of our outward disparities are inward similarities - many of them rooted in shared struggles and longings and insecurities. Doors to discovering I need you more than I need to protect myself from you. Doors to togetherness. Doors to us. Doors to one of the most beautiful freedoms of all, the sweet escape that comes with knowing, I'm not the only one. I was listening to the keynote speaker at a conference the other day. He said a friend once told him, "if you listen really well, you can listen another person into being."
I wrote it down. I knew I'd write about it at some point. But I didn't know I would experience it before I ever had a chance to sit at my keyboard. Later that day, after hearing those words, I was having a conversation with a work colleague who lives and works in another part of the state. Because of that, meeting in person is rare but always a gift of sorts. Especially these days. These days of distance. As we were talking, I began experiencing a comfort. Not in a way that I stopped myself in the middle of the conversation and thought 'hmm, this feels comfortable.' But more in the aftermath - in pondering the unusual peace in the experience - in exploring the mystery in it all. And all I kept coming up with was listening. The being on the receiving end of someone not just listening, but listening really well. I've come to believe that most of us are blessed with the capacity to hear. But more and more, I believe it's a much smaller lot of us who listen really well. When we hear, that simply says we have used our physical means to let soundwaves activate the hearing mechanisms in our brain. But when we listen, when we listen really well, we have combined the mechanisms in our brain with a desire in our heart. A desire to know what another desires to share. You can be heard and never feel a thing. But something very different happens when someone listens. My conversation with my friend eventually had to end. Life obligations and meetings call. But when she walked away I felt myself feeling that I didn't want it to end. Because who wants to stop feeling alive? Who wants to stop feeling called into being? Not every conversation we have is meant to call one another into being. But more of them are than we actually have with one another. I believe our most shared form of suffering is being heard without ever being listened to. Because what being heard often triggers in us all is a deeper and deeper longing to be heard less and listened to more. A longing - often unknown and unrecognized - to feel truly alive. Unknown and unrecognized that is until someone walks away - and the listening stops - and you in some way feel life go with it. And you pay gratitude. Because you realize you had a chance to experience one of life's greatest gifts. I'm not so sure it's not life's very GREATEST gift. The gift of being listened to really well. The gift of being listened into being. You may hear a hundred people today. Maybe a thousand. And sometimes we simply just have to hear. But someone in your life needs listened to today. I assure you of that. I encourage you to tell them - "I want to know what it is you want to share." I encourage you to listen to them really well. You have no greater gift in life to give. 10/5/2022 0 Comments We Are each other's miraclesYesterday, I was invited to attend and speak to an audience at an event titled: Triumph over Trauma. A group of citizens in northern Virginia has started a trauma informed community network and this was their kickoff event.
It was a challenge to make happen. It's a 2 1/2 hour drive north through that always lovely northern Virginia traffic - and I knew I was going to be hurried to get back home in time for Ian's football game. But I knew I had to go. Not because I had something to offer, but because I knew this event would have something to offer me. They always do.... After I spoke yesterday, a woman got up and told her story. In many ways it wasn't a story at all, it was like entering someone's nightmare. And I wanted out of her nightmare - right now - but she kept talking. Talking about the horrific abuse she incurred starting at the age of 3. The dad who took his life; the mom who drank her way through the pain of it all. Falling in love with alcohol herself as a teen - and then weed and then pills. Welcome to addiction. Then along came the children born in the middle of it all, until they were taken away from her. And then the attempts to take herself away from herself - suicide. Over and over. Please let me out of your nightmare; the layers are too sad and too many to even keep up with. But then she told the story of waking up one morning. Tired of the nightmare. Feeling the overwhelming presence of God's promise to help her end the nightmare and not her life. And along came the helpers who wanted to hear and know and heal her story. That's how that story often goes, you know. I've experienced it; I've come to believe it. There is no God's presence without God's people. And without God's people feeling him near, there is no God to point anyone to. For what good is a God who can't be felt? What good is a God who can't empower us to bring his miracles to life? Because here this woman was - now - talking to us. She out of the nightmare and us too. There she was telling us a story of a mom and a wife and a career - a career, by the way, spent helping others. And she had standing beside her the son who had been taken away - and locked away - yet now standing there holding his mom. With love and pride and acceptance. This was no longer a nightmare - it was a miracle. My heart broke as I wondered how often over the course of her nightmare had she been defined by the parts of the nightmare we could all see and not the parts buried along with a broken 3 year old? How many times had she been defined by addict and by bad mom and by worthless human? How many times did those definitions stand in the way of someone reaching in and saving a 3 year old girl while unknowingly - at least I hope unknowingly - adopting new ways to break that little girl over and over again? Because that is where the healing started; it's where it almost always starts. Not with someone throwing a life preserver to the addiction or the suicide attempts or to the victims of the daily shipwreck - but to the little boy or girl lost inside. A little girl, who in grabbing that life preserver, starts clinging to a miracle she gave up on long ago. There we all were, together, listening to her. They we all were, every one of us, miracle workers. We don't know that often enough. We sure don't own it often enough. That our presence in each other's lives IS God's presence. And God's presence is a miracle waiting to happen. Waiting on us. I leave those events hoping miracles will one day quit waiting on us. I hear stories like this mom's story and hope we will one day become humans who look beneath the scars of humans - beneath the addictions and mental health illnesses and beneath the offenses - and see the humanity. A humanity the human itself may never see again without someone finding it for him. Because that is triumph over trauma - finding the humanity you thought was long gone. That is the miracle. And we, my friends - we ARE each other's miracle. We ARE each other's triumph over trauma. Back in 2018, I interviewed my friend Solomon just prior to him completing his longest run ever at that time: The Pine Creek 100K. Yesterday, a little over 4 years later, he finished a race that was over 320K - or 200 miles.
The last couple of years, Solomon has become a best friend. It's a friendship rooted in him showing up for me at a time in my life when I really needed someone to show up. And he's kept showing up. If I think about it, the greatest impact he brings to my life is all about the power found in today. The power to recognize that if we keep changing our days, one day that will come to look like a changed life. We too often ignore that in our pursuit to change our lives. Maybe out of hopelessness. Or maybe it's out of wanting to believe that life can somehow magically change without intentionally doing the hard work of changing every day. In that interview, I asked Solomon a question I find myself still asking him some days: why? Why keep getting up and running. Why keep pushing yourself to run further. And further. Why four years ago were we talking about running what seemed like an unbelievable distance, and now this morning we're talking about running a distance that seems nothing short of impossible in my world. His answer: "consistency." He said he'd never been consistent at anything in his life. Not as a father or a husband or in friendships or in jobs. He said he'd begun to wonder if he even had it in him to be consistent at anything. And then along came running. He said from the earliest days of his running journey he knew it was going to be distance and not speed that motivated him. Because with distance, he'd always have to keep getting up - every day - and pushing himself a little further if he had any hopes of discovering just how far he could go. He knew he'd never get that answer without consistency. Today he'll tell you that he still struggles to be consistent in all the areas of his life he longs to be consistent in. Who doesn't? But he'll tell you he's more consistent than he's ever been. And he no longer wonders if he has consistency in him. Because 11 years he started running. One mile at a time. One day at a time. And today he knows he can run 200 miles. I know him well enough to know 200 miles isn't the answer to the question 'how far can I go?" No - I know he's already starting to wonder, if I stay consistent, if I keep making the most of each day, just how far can I REALLY go? As for me, I am once again reminded that in a life that has me longing for many changes, I know those changes aren't going to come by waiting out the days of my life. They are only going to come by CHANGING the days of my life. One day at a time. Every day. Consistently. Well done brother. Thanks for reminding us all of the power of today. 10/2/2022 0 Comments Finding Peace In the nothingnessSuch a simple question to be so thought-provoking. "Are you at peace when you don't get what you want?"
We spend so much of life thinking about what we want, formulating plans to get what we want, and then actually pursuing what we want. But we don't get everything we want. Some of us get very little of what we want. And I got to wondering, how much time do we spend figuring out how to deal with that? How prepared are we to not get what we want in a world that spends so much time chasing everything it wants? How do we find peace in disappointment? I guess for me, more and more, the answer is in accepting I have everything I need in a world that is full of things I could want. An answer born in being stripped down to near nothing. And in that stripping down turning to God and hearing from him, that even in my nothingness - ESPECIALLY in my nothingness - I am all he has ever wanted. Because with God, nothing is measured by what I have - only by what I give. And when I turn to him in my nothingness, I have given him all he has ever wanted from me. Is it possible that when I turn to him, giving him all he has ever wanted, that he wants me in turn to see and feel more than I could ever want? Is it possible that peace IS in the nothingness? Is it possible that not getting what we want is a more direct path to peace than getting it? The apostle Paul was in a prison cell, with as much nothing as a person could have, when he made the public declaration that he had discovered the secret of contentment. I have everything, he all but shouted to the world, when I have Christ who gives me strength. The Christ who gives me strength to face disappointment. The Christ who lifts my head from the depths of nothingness to face to source of everything. The Christ who reminds me that I could spend an entire life getting everything I ever wanted, and in the end have nothing. Because when you have everything you want, it is possible to be without what you need. It's possible to be without peace. In almost any way that life can be counted and measured, I have less today than I've ever had. But more than ever, I have peace. And what more could I want? |
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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