For nearly three decades of my life, alcohol was my best friend. Even when alcohol was no longer my best friend, I wished it was.
There are days I STILL have that wish, which some days makes it hard to have best friends. A lot of people won't get that, but far more people than you can imagine DO get it. Matthew Perry got it. I know that because I recently read this in his book 'Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing.' He said about alcohol, "it took away so much of the pain, including the fact that when I was alone, I was lonely, and that when I was with people, I was lonely, too." There are lines in people's stories that you read again. The story itself begs you to move along, but you just keep reading that same line - over and over and over again. I had to pry myself away from that line. Someone would look at the surface of Perry's life - high profile star on one of the biggest television shows ever, picture after picture of him surrounded by people, and one could wonder, how on earth was he ever lonely? I mean, he starred in the show Friends - FRIENDS for crying out loud. How does one of the most high profile friends ever suffer from loneliness? The answer in his case, and in many of our cases, is secrets. Secrets we bury deep inside, hidden far away from the world. Often we hide them so far away from the world they end up hidden from ourselves. Loneliness starts as this beautiful accomplice in the hiding until it becomes an unbearable problem. Then along comes this friend. Alcohol. The friend that wants to know none of your secrets. He's not even curious about them, and even more, he helps you forget that you've ever had any secrets at all. It's love at first drink. I'm not here to promote alcohol as friend of the year. Anyone who has known alcohol as a best friend knows alcohol is a jealous and evil friend. It comes disguised as your best friend, yet ultimately desires to leave you in a life without any friends at all. It's easy to be someone's best friend when you've created a scene in their life where you can be the ONLY friend. We don't often look at the addict or the drunk or the obsessed - obsessed with many things beyond alcohol, really - and wonder, are they lonely? No, quite often our instinct is judgment long before we are curious enough to wonder, are they lonely? Matthew Perry would wonder about loneliness. I would. And, the Surgeon General of the United States, Vivek Murthy, he would, too. He recently released a health advisory pointing out that over 50% of people in the US experience measurable levels of loneliness. And it's killing them, he says. Literally. Many people will read Perry's book or hear his story on the news and lament that he never got a handle on his addiction. I read it and I hear it and think, his addiction made it very difficult to get a handle on his loneliness. Even more, I think, it was his addiction conspiring with his secrets. With his burdens. The parts of himself he never found a way to get close enough to someone to share. So he got close enough to something that always wanted him to feel like you have no need to share. Something like alcohol that always promised, I will guard those secrets for you. I will love you just the way you are. The things is, none of us feel loved just the way we are if we have to wonder, would I be loved if someone knew just the way I REALLY am? Too often, we are friends who say that we love people just the way they are without knowing just the way they really are. Too often it's easier, less time consuming, to accept the smile I see as a happy friend and not a smile hiding a lonely friend. I am challenging you, if you have friends or spouses or co-workers or church small group members, it might be worth your while to ask them, do you ever feel lonely? We're good at asking 'why do you drink so much' or 'why do you spend so much time buried in your phone' or 'why do you spend so much time at the office', but maybe in some cases, maybe in many cases, it might be more helpful to ask, do you ever feel lonely? And maybe add, I'm asking because I do. I feel lonely sometimes. Maybe they will say no. I don't ever feel lonely. And that's OK. Because maybe someone will say, I do. I do feel lonely. And maybe that will be the conversation that opens the door to the burdens beneath the burden of loneliness. We have to quit being friends that pressure one another to hide our burdens from one another. We just have to. Because it's making us lonely and drunk... and dead. My heart breaks for Matthew Perry. But I am also thankful he had the chance to share his burdens with us. His REAL burdens. It wasn't soon enough to save his life, but maybe it was soon enough to help us save each others' lives. Maybe we can all become best friends with people who offer life, and not best friends with things that steal it.
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Life will always feel new to you if you are going forward.
The challenge is, we don't always like the feeling of new. New comes with the unknown. The unfamiliar. The scary. Scary. That doesn't sound like peace. And ultimately, isn't that what we are all in search of? Peace. It's hard to understand, but sometimes we - (me) - settle into turbulent or anxious or apathetic life patterns because we know those patterns. They are familiar. And familiarity, as ugly as the familiar might be, can be easily mistaken for peace. This may not feel good, but I know how to do this THIS. I'm not sure I can do the next step in life, but I'm completely confident in my ability to keep doing this one. I've practiced this one my whole life. There comes a point when you wonder if peace is on the other side of where you are. It just has to be. So you take a step. You don't recognize the surroundings; the path beneath you feels slippery and unstable. It all just feels so new. I must be going the wrong way? One sure sign that I have walked into a new space, into a new opportunity, into a new relationship, into a new possibility - into new hope - one sure sign of new is I do not recognize any of this. For some, that might be a sign to turn around. For some, though, for those looking to move forward, the new is a welcome sign. The new says you don't recognize me not because of where you are, but because you are no longer where you were. Because you are moving forward and onward. Today, if you want to move toward something - toward any goal or place or situation - it starts with accepting there is going to be something new in all the steps to getting there. The key is to embrace the new more than the familiar. To embrace possibility more than settling. To embrace challenge more than confidence and control. Because the path forward is often out of our control, it often leaves us doubting we are up to the challenge, it often leaves us tempted to turn around and go back to the familiar. Don't turn around. New life is often where we find life itself. But new life is never found clinging to the old. Life will always feel old if you are stuck. Go forward, and celebrate every new step along the way. Many of us have a dream cycle that goes like this:
Dream. Have dream criticized. Give up on dream. But if a dream is worth dreaming, it is worth chasing. If a dream is worth dreaming, it is worth surrounding yourself with people who lift dreams and not shoot them down. If a dream is worth dreaming, it is worth giving that dream the loudest voice of them all. Certainly a voice louder than the critics' voices. If you have a dream on your heart today, listen to the dream. And when you speak it out, and it is met by the voices of naysayers, don't become your own naysayer. Turn up the volume on that dream. Turn. It. UP! Give your dream a voice. Give your dream the loudest voice! Maybe the dream won't come true, but let the dream tell that story, not dream's critics. I had a work meeting yesterday. As part of the meeting, a collection of bright and caring people discussed ways our work environments can be more trauma sensitive.
The ideas often sound like programs or policies or laws or practices. I am a fan of all of those approaches. But only if at the heart of each of them is knowing what traumatizes workers most - what traumatizes people in general most - is the feeling that they are going it alone. They are going at their challenging jobs alone. They are going at their homelessness and hunger alone. They are going at their anxiety and depression alone. They are going at their broken relationships alone. They are going at their addictions alone. There's a buzzword out there for people who collapse under the pressure of going at their things alone. That word is burnout. But too many times burnout is interpreted as someone being exhausted by what they are dealing with, when what they are actually being exhausted by is dealing with it all alone. Alone in the challenge is what leads to burnout, not the challenge itself. We were created for community. We have survived the evolution of human existence because of it. Burnout is a result of us turning our backs on both of those truths. In a culture whose greatest testimony is - we have got this, we've become a culture of - you have got this. A culture built on the strength of interdependence has become a glorification of independence. Ask yourself, would I rather tackle something really hard with friends or something really easy all by myself? When you answer that, and you look around your community at all the people tackling something hard, you'll have taken a giant step into knowing how to best help them. Sure, policies and practices and programs can help, but not if we don't take the right giant step first. We are not burning out, we are burning up. And the fire - it is not exhaustion, it is loneliness. Togetherness, it's become such a watered down approach to life. But togetherness, it is still plenty intense enough to put out the fire. I met a friend for breakfast last week in Wilmington. My friend works for a ministry that looks after the homeless and tries to protect the women among them from sex trafficking.
As she has described her work to me, it's sounded very challenging. More than once I've thought, that is not work I could do. After breakfast we went for a walk through the downtown area. We hadn't gone far when she spotted people she knew. She said, let me introduce you to some of my friends. We crossed the street. And when we approached a group of four homeless people hanging out together on a bench, they all smiled. Their greetings made it clear just how happy they were to see her. And me. They were happy to see me, too. It wasn't lost on me that this was my friend's day off. A day she wasn't getting paid to look after the homeless. A day she wasn't getting paid to introduce them to her friend or me to hers. A day she could have seen them from across the street and headed the other way. It wasn't lost on me that as she's described her 'clients' at work as friends, she's truly meant it. These people were her friends. It also wasn't lost on me that I believe that's the first time I've actually spent time with the homeless in their home. The streets. I've handed the man on the corner a five dollar bill as I drove by. I've put money in the collection basket at church. I've said yes when the cashier asked me to round up to buy a thanksgiving turkey for the needy. I've done a lot of things in the name of serving Jesus and in the name of ministry. But maybe that was the first time I stood on a downtown street with a homeless man listening to him proudly tell me about his new job. And maybe there was no greater gift I could have given him in that moment than being someone who wanted to hear it. Curt Thompson says "we come into the world looking for someone who is looking for us." Is one of the greatest pains of the homeless found in their belief that no one ever again will show up looking for them? When my friend showed up to her homeless friends with joy, with her exuberant - I'm so glad to see you guys - they looked found. Jeremiah 29:13 says "you will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart." I'll be honest, that experience on those streets with those homeless friends, them hanging out with their friend and my friend - it challenged me. Most days I feel like I'm seeking God with all my heart. I do. But many days, in spite of that, I feel like I'm not totally finding him. Maybe I'm not often enough seeking in the right place? Maybe God isn't always found in the collection plate or in the rounding up, maybe he's found in the friends we have on the streets. Watching my friend walk those streets, shouting out greetings to friends that not another soul was shouting out to, stopping at a park bench to laugh with friends no one else was stopping to laugh with, she reminded me of a man I've read about in the bible. The man who walked street after street making friends with the friendless. The man who approached the judged without judgment. The man who sought out the evicted to invite them in. The man who challenged us, and continues to challenge us, to never forget that no matter what our ministry, if it looks more like client than friend, we might not be seeking with all of our heart. What a beautiful opportunity we have in this time, because more people than ever are feeling friendless. Maybe we all can't do ministry, but we can all certainly do friendship. 11/9/2023 0 Comments Stop blaming. Start dancing.Someone asked me recently if I am an over-thinker.
I said I am not. Then, I jokingly said, I think the problem is the rest of the world just doesn't think enough. 🤷♂️ Okay, maybe I wasn't joking. I do confess to processing the hell out of life. But I think the reason I do that has shifted over the last several years. It's been a good shift, I think. I used to process life because I wanted to know who was to blame for where I am. I've never been particularly content with this place known as where I am, so I wanted someone to blame for that. And the truth is, I'd usually end up blaming me. About blame - once you figure out who's to blame, you're still exactly where you were when you had no idea who was to blame. Blame is a brake on life. It stops it you. Or worse, blame is quicksand. It slowly sinks you. There have been days when I've woken up, decades into my life, more than well down the road of this journey, feeling like I've gone nowhere at all. How do you live for so many years, yet some days feel like you've never lived at all? Blame. That's how. Lately, I've come to accept that no matter whether you're to blame or I'm to blame or everyone is to blame for where I am, I am where I am. And I am WHO I am. Because that's the other evil side of blame. While you're trying to figure out who's to blame for WHERE you are, you lose total track of WHO you are. You become a complete unknown in a place you have no idea how you got to. Maybe that's the definition of discontent? The last several years I've spent a lot of time thinking about how I got here. How, without blame and without judgment and without verdict. Just simply, how. And in the how I've come to know me much better. I've come to know the events that shaped me and the events that I shaped. And I've come to better understand how they all came together to create this shape named me. I am not the other side of fault. I am just me. There's a beautiful thing that happens when you get to I am just me. Life's brake releases. Life reaches down and pulls you from the quicksand. And you begin to dance with this life you've been given. No matter who gave it to you. In the dance, you begin to experience hope and possibility. You begin to imagine future. Isn't that the dance we all long to be born into, to carry out, the dance of hope and possibility and future. If you're not dancing that dance today, I'd encourage you to take a look at your dance floor. Quit trying to figure out whose fault it is that THIS is your dance floor. And just dance. Don't dance with blame, dance with you. Maybe the opposite of blame is discovering what a beautiful dance partner you've had available to you all along. You. So, no more blame. Dance. When I feel discontent, it is usually because I have forgotten.
I've forgotten my purpose. When your life is about leaning into purpose, you are never lost. Not ever. It's when we start measuring our standing in life by measures other than purpose that discontentment creeps in. Or stampedes its way in. Measures like: Am I where I think I'm supposed to be? Am I where others think I'm supposed to be? Am I as far in life as she is or he is? Am I noticed. Appreciated. Viral. Famous? Some of those things may be of service to your purpose; most are only interested in hijacking it. If you know your purpose, contentment isn't about 'am I there yet?' Contentment is about 'am I being true to my purpose where I am right now?' When I think about my purpose, my purpose is to live out God's light, to encourage human connections that look and feel like that light, and that my love for my boys always looks like my heavenly father's love for me. Maybe that is more than one purpose 😊- but they are intertwined for sure. The thing is, my purpose has no end game. It has no final destination. It only asks, am I being true to that purpose right here and right now. When the answer is no, my life often feels discontent. When I feel discontent, I know the answer. It's my purpose. I need to realign my heart and my mind and my soul with my purpose. Right here. Right now. For that is always the starting point for contentment. For the last couple of years, I've followed the racing career of a horse named Cody's Wish. Mainly to follow the wish a horse granted a young boy well beyond where the wish began.
In 2018, when a colt was still a foal, and without a name, a young boy born with a rare genetic disease visited the farm where the colt lived. It was part of a trip to grant a dying boy his Make-A-Wish wish. The young boy, Cody Gorman, sat in a wheelchair admiring the horse. The horse approached and gently put his head in the boy's lap. That touching moment led the owners to name their horse: Cody's Wish. I watched last year, 4 years removed from the original wish, when Cody's Wish won the biggest race of his career, the Breeder's Cup Mile. There in the winner's circle, waiting on him, in his wheelchair, was Cody Gorman. I remember being in tears. The horse and Cody and the owner's family and Cody's family - they had all become one BIG family. And there they were, celebrating together. I remember wondering, does anyone feel the beauty of a wish grown well beyond the depth of the original wish a boy had to visit a horse farm? I remember wondering, is it wishes that give birth to miracles? And I watched again Saturday. Cody's Wish well behind in the prestigious race he'd won just a year ago. Here he comes, flying, and he's engaged race leader National Treasure down the stretch. The horses bump repeatedly the last several yards of the race. Two fighters trying to push the other out of the way on the way to victory. Cody's Wish jockey, Junior Alvarado, said he never had a doubt who was going to win that fight. I had the meanest horse, he said. My horse is full of fight. A friend who owns horses once told me that horses can feel human emotion. I believe that. I have no doubt it was Cody Gorman's fight that won out down the stretch. It was Cody Gorman's urging, sitting once again near the winner's circle, that meant as much to back to back Breeder's Cup wins as the jockey's urging. Maybe more. That big victory was Cody's Wish's last race. The owners had announced before the Breeder's Cup Mile that this would be their horse's last hurrah. What a way to end a career. It's like Peyton Manning going out with a Super Bowl victory. What no one knew, though, was it was Cody Gorman's last hurrah as well. Cody died on the plane trip home from the race Sunday. I heard that news yesterday and my heart dropped. How does life align in such tragically beautiful ways sometimes? I believe I know. I think part of it is wishing. We have no idea where the wishes we wish might go. Life is about wishing and believing in beautiful destinations. I thought about Cody's Wish last night. Everyone knows the family is grieving, but I do believe the horse knows. Horses can feel human emotions. So I believe as much as anyone that horse grieves the passing of Cody Gorman. I think if Cody's Wish had a wish, it would be one more race. Come out of retirement, cross the finish line, glance over and see his friend in his wheelchair in the winner's circle. I think Cody's Wish would prance over, mean and full of fight, and lay his head gently in Cody's lap, and say - we did good kid. Man, did we make some wishes come true..... Rest in peace Cody Gorman. Thanks for reminding us all about the power and beauty found in wishing. And carry on Cody's Wish. Thank you for doing what we could all do just a little better, tending well to one another's wishes. 11/6/2023 0 Comments We are all always on the way thereLast Friday, my friend and colleague Marrin and I spoke at a parenting educators symposium. On the way in, I told Marrin, I'm not up for this. It's been a long week. I'm not prepared.
For many reasons, I told her this isn't where I want to be. After the event, the host sent me and Marrin a nice message. She said our presentation was energetic and well received by the audience. She said she wants us to come back for a future symposium. In her eyes, and in the eyes of the audience, we showed up looking like we had it all together. But in many ways, neither of us felt that way. There are two messages here. The first is how we see ourselves. Too often, in the midst of our struggles, we feel like the struggles are holding us back from where we need to be. The reality is, they are preparing us for that place. What we wrestle with in the dark often makes little sense until we are seeing it in the light. The light we find on the other side of our struggles. Looking in the eyes of those dedicated educators was a great reminder of why we were there. WHY is often a great source of energy, both in the midst of our wrestling matches as well as on the other side of them. We fight through our struggles a little harder when we know they will have meaning on the other side. And on the other side, our victories feel more victorious when we know what the victory is really all about. We don't often know what we're really fighting for in the middle of the fight. There is also this. Often, we look at people who show up looking like they have it all together and believe that they DO have it all together. We dismiss the possibility that they fought like hell to win a war on the way to getting there, and we can begin to wonder why they got the gift in life of having it all together while I got the curse in life of fighting a life of wars. The message is this. Whether you are feeling like your life is hopelessly falling apart or whether you are feeling like someone else has it inexplicably all together, neither are true. It helps me to know that about me. It helps me to know that about you. We are all always on our way there. And on our way there, there will be wars. Wars that rarely make sense until we get to the other side of them. We are always on our way there.... Ian had his fifteenth birthday yesterday. Nothing makes a parent reflect more than a kid's birthday.
I found myself thinking, he's growing up to be just like him. I found myself smiling. I'm in the sixth decade of my life. I feel like I am finally growing up to be just like me. I don't want my boys to have to wait that long. That's why I don't have dreams for my boys. I don't have any desire that they have a better life than I have had. I really don't have any desires for my boys at all, other than that they grow up to be just like them. When we have dreams for our kids, it's tempting to make our dreams their dreams. Which makes their dreams largely fueled by pressure and not desire or passion. Pressure that often has them growing up to be someone other than themselves. I had a conversation with a friend at lunch yesterday. I was commenting just how different my boys are as teens than I was. She asked if that is a good thing or a bad thing. I said it's just a thing. It's tempting to want to measure my kids by who I was or am. It's tempting to measure my kids by who I'd like them to be. It's tempting to imagine the course of their life against the map of some course I have plotted out for them. It's tempting, but I don't do it. I don't do it because I want my boys to grow up to be just like them. Not just like me. Not like my desires. A lot of folks out there in the world are struggling today. I think at the root of many of those struggles is too many people have grown up to be just like someone else. They got so busy living a life looking like someone they were supposed to look like and never stopped to discover who they are. So happy birthday Ian. I love you buddy. And I really love that the you I love looks more and more like you every day. Keep being you pal |
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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