It was a quiet Friday night. I found myself scrolling through Roku looking for something mindless and meaningless to watch.
Not coincidentally, I suppose, I landed on something just the opposite. Over the years I'd heard a lot about the movie Wild. It was released in 2014 and is based on the memoir, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Coast Trail by Cheryl Strayed. A basic introduction to the plot from Wikipedia: In June 1995, despite a lack of hiking experience, Cheryl Strayed leaves Minneapolis to hike, by herself, 1,100 miles Pacific Crest Trail. During the journey, she reflects on her childhood and memories of her mother, Bobbi, whose death from cancer sent Cheryl into a deep depression that she tried to numb with heroin and anonymous sex. After her behavior destroyed her marriage and then led to an unwanted pregnancy, Cheryl had an abortion and resolved to hike the trail to try to rediscover the woman her mother raised her to be. There's a scene several hundred miles into the hike, many days into wrestling with her demons, when Strayed wonders, "What if I forgave myself? What if I forgave myself even though I'd done something I shouldn't have?" It was a powerful question. It hit home. Especially when she went on to wonder, if I'm truly sorry for those things, is it still ok to accept I wouldn't be who I am without those things? Just last week I was there. Right there. That exact same spot. Not on the trail, but in that wrestling. I told someone I'd come to be deeply sorry for some choices I've made in my life. But then I had to acknowledge, I'm not sure I would have ever become a person who is deeply sorry for anything without having made those very choices. It is in choices I wish I'd never made where I found the place of becoming someone I think inside I'd always wished I could become. At the time if felt sort of like an apology with an asterisk. Even as much as I knew that asterisk was a part of the most sincere apology I could offer. Maybe ever had offered. Then I watched Reese Witherspoon, who was fantastic as Cheryl by the way, wrestling with the exact same thing. I felt her emotions. I recognized that pain on her face and those tears in her eyes. It made me instantly feel way more human than asterisk. It was comforting to know that what felt like an isolated and unique complexity in my life is maybe a common part of many lives. Are we all wrestling with regrets for having hurt people along maybe the only path that would have ever taken us to feeling sorry for that hurting? Most of us are taught right and wrong. Most of us learn the list of things we should feel remorse about. Most of us are taught the words I'm sorry at a young age. So maybe that's not what's missing in the world to promote deeper healing and remorse and forgiveness. Forgiveness of self and of others. Maybe what is missing is giving ourselves permission to deeply embrace the value in things we deeply wish we had never done. Or, maybe even more complicated, that we can feel deeply sorry for things that we at times also feel a deep sense of gratitude for. It's a great turmoil, I suppose. This reality of hurting others on the way to our own healing. But is that maybe the path we are all on one way or another. Is hurting others an inevitable part of the excavation of self? That sounds like an asterisk, I suppose. Or an excuse. But more than ever I wonder if it's a shared truth. In the movie you come to discover Cheryl, according to the books on right and wrong, had done some pretty despicable things along the way of her life. She hurt a lot of people. Yet, I could only feel myself wanting to hold her and tell her, I get it. I have been there; I am there. And after being a part of your story, Cheryl, I think maybe we all are.
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I'm leading an experience this week during which we spend a lot of time processing the impacts of our pasts. For many, those pasts include regrets.
It wasn't lost on me yesterday that in the context of this Holy Week, yesterday marks one of the more heartbreaking regrets in human history. For yesterday, a couple of thousand years ago, Judas made an arrangement with the high priests to betray Jesus. A betrayal that ultimately led to Christ being crucified. But the bible tells us that shortly after that arrangement: Judas, the one who betrayed him, realized that Jesus was doomed. Overcome with remorse, he gave back the thirty silver coins to the high priests, saying, “I’ve sinned. I’ve betrayed an innocent man.” They said, “What do we care? That’s your problem!” Judas threw the silver coins into the Temple and left. Then he went out and hung himself. Yesterday, listening to others wrestle with some of the experiences of their past, I found my heart breaking for Judas. Because yesterday, as strongly as ever, I realized betrayal is never as simple as an evil act carried out in hatred or disregard for the people in our lives. Sometimes, betrayal involves confusion and wrestling with the unresolved stories of our pasts that sadly play out in dark ways toward people we actually love. It's often assumed that Judas loved Jesus less than the other disciples because he was the one who betrayed him and sent him to his death. Is it possible that Judas loved Jesus just as much as the other disciples - or more - but never quite understood it until looking at him through the dark shadows of betrayal? Does a man go off and hang himself because he simply made a choice he regrets. Or was that regret compounded by other challenging stories of his past. And was it intensified by a deep love for that man? I don't know, but I do wonder. What I do know is we can sometimes beat each other up for choices we make in life without ever knowing the stories beneath the choices. Knowing those stories doesn't make harmful choices less harmful but knowing them does open our hearts up to understanding. And compassion. Maybe even more destructive - we beat ourselves up over our choices without ever exploring the stories beneath them. Knowing those stories doesn't make our choices less destructive but knowing them opens us up to showing ourselves compassion. And grace. I feel incredibly blessed to spend time with folks walking them toward compassion for others and grace for themselves. I feel incredibly blessed that in that walk, I myself walk too. I walk toward grace. I walk toward healing. My heart breaks for people like Judas for whom the wrestling becomes too much. Because it doesn't have to be. Not ever. There are alternatives. Compassion. Grace. Healing. The biggest risk of not knowing who you are is it gives others the constant opportunity to decide that for you.
I used to be obsessed with people thinking favorably of me. So, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the things I could do to make people think favorably of me. I'm not sure I always knew that's what I was doing. But it WAS what I was doing. We all need to feel valued. It's a non-negotiable. And we seek that value in one of two places. We seek it from within us or outside of us. Since I was awful at finding any value inside me, I tried to seduce others around me into valuing me. I was great at it. Until the day I realized I was better at making other people love me than I was at making me love myself. I didn't know it at the time, but fighting for the approval of others destroys self-confidence. When you're value is found in what other people think about you, and since you never have full control of that, you are always at risk of losing your value. And you are always in a place of wondering, am I enough today? Today I am in a place where I no longer have to wonder if I am enough. I am never at risk of losing my value again. Because today, precisely none of my value is dependent on what someone else thinks about me. It's totally dependent on what I think about me. That hasn't been an easy road. I didn't wake up one day and proclaim that I am so confident about me that I can no longer be influenced by you. It just doesn't work that way. It's taken me years to discover my own identity. It's taken decades for the challenges and hardships and my own reckless pursuits of external meaning in my life to beat me up and strip me down to just me. Strip me down to just me and the question: who in the heck am I? I am a Jesus follower. I am a dad. I am a writer. And I am someone who is passionate about influencing the value of human connection in this world. That's who I am. Every day, I get up and go to work trying to sharpen those four areas of my identity. And when I feel like I've done something well in those areas, I tell myself I am proud of the work I've done. When I am done writing this article, I will tell myself, I am proud of you for writing it. Whether anyone likes it or doesn't like it, that won't influence how much I value me. I have found value in being a writer. I honor my identity when I get up and write. I build a self-confidence in my identity that can't be stripped away if I continue to honor that identity. I value me for being who I have come to know me to be. And as a result, I am now solely in charge of my value. Who are you? That's the question. Not who do others say you are, but who are you? Find the answer to that question. Find the things about you that you can value about you. Then go to work growing the value of those things every day, and tell yourself you're proud of yourself for doing it! I also need to add, I am blessed to have people in my life who regularly value the things I do, the things that reflect my identity. That feels good. It feels good because people valuing me is a natural consequence of me valuing myself, and not of me pursuing people's value. I don't think there's been a healthier shift in my life. We can all make that shift. It's been a challenging week. On the way out of the office the other day a co-worker and dear friend said, hang in there. I told her, don't worry about me, hang in there's my middle name.
I wasn't dismissing her encouragement. It meant the world to me. And the truth is, in many ways, my response wasn't a short response to her as much as it was a big reminder to me. A reminder that my life is a story of fall into the pit, jump into the pit, get pushed into the pit, but always, no matter how I got in that pit, mine is a story of always rising from the pit. Tim Ferris says, "as good as it feels to have a plan, it's even more freeing to realize that nearly no misstep can destroy you." I think we all have perceptions of how life would go in our ideal world, but the more we chase that perception the more we come to realize we don't live in an ideal world. It's inevitable, either we misstep or life missteps, but one way or another our plans are constantly facing pits. There's surely value in having plans that help you avoid as many pits as possible. That's wisdom. But I've come to believe there is also value, maybe even more value, in developing a mindset that doesn't fear the pits. Having a mindset that declares, no pit has swallowed me whole yet, and today won't be the first pit to do so. If you had a hard week, celebrate. Not that you SURVIVED the week, but that you BEAT it. You did. The pit had a chance to swallow you whole, but you declared over it that hang in there is your middle name. Hanging in there is NO small deal. We sometimes underestimate just how giant the force in life is that is constantly encouraging us to call it quits. Call it quits on our dreams and plans and hopes. Call it quits on our will to do life at all. So if you had a hard week, celebrate. Look life in the face and say nice try, but hang in there is my middle name. Don't you know that about me by now, life? You woke up today. Go make something of the day. What's the worst that can happen? I don't know, but chances are you already beat whatever it is. You'll do so again. Because hang in there is your middle name. I have felt like a new person the last year. That has little to do with my circumstances. In many ways my circumstances are as challenging as ever.
But how I approach my circumstances? Well - that has changed significantly. I'm assured of that this week in giant ways. I've had car struggles. I took my car in for what I'd been led to believe was going to be a routine repair. It hasn't been routine. It's actually been quite expensive - and the expense grows on. My car is still in the shop, the auto repair experts are still trying to figure out what's wrong with it, and a time or two in our communications I've sensed they don't feel the same angst about my circumstances that I do. That last part has been particularly challenging, since I've been taking my car to the same place for a decade with nothing but positive and helpful experiences. One night earlier this week, after a hard conversation with the team at the shop, I felt anger. As I drove off in a loaner car, which was the most rickety reminder ever that I was NOT driving off in my car, I started plotting ways to make their lives as miserable as they were making mine. Oh, I can't wait to get home and blast them on social media. I'm going to sue them for doing work on my car they weren't sure would solve the problem. I'm going to stand out in front of their shop for weeks holding a protest sign that warns people against getting their car worked on here. Anger knows no bounds when it comes to creative revenge.... Then, I felt something stop me in my tracks. That something was me. The new me. The new me who realizes so much of the emotion I was experiencing in that moment was connected to feelings I carry with me from past experiences, not car experiences. Anger being a big one. That's how emotions work, you know. Psychologists tell us emotions last about one or two minutes. So what I felt about that conversation regarding my car passes pretty quickly. What I feel and think about it, though, well that can go on a long time. And if I let it, it can go in some really negative directions. The new me knows that. The new me knows that in the aftermath of so many emotions in my life, my thinking and my feelings can unknowingly be fueled and directed by events in my past. My lashing out at car people can look and feel like lashing out at my past people. Over time, lashing out just becomes an automated pattern of my brain. And whether holding it in or openly expressing it, lashing out just becomes who I am. So there I was, in a space I've become much more familiar with this past year, a space of recognizing that I was letting events in my life dictate the level of joy I was feeling in my life. Was I happy about my car troubles? No. I am still not. But sometimes joy doesn't look like happy. Sometimes joy looks like not being overcome by an anger that no longer looks like the person you want to be. Sometimes joy looks like NOT lashing out where you once would have. Sometimes joy is owning the power that comes with not having full control over your emotions, but having absolute authority over what you think and feel in the aftermath of them. That's not always easy. I had to pull that loaner car into a parking lot. Take some deep breaths. Quietly pray, not for a better circumstance, but for a healthier way of thinking and feeling about the circumstance I was in. I didn't drive away happy, but I did drive away in peace. There was joy in that. A joy, thankfully, the new me experiences more and more these days. Last night, as Ross and Phoebe and Rachel and Monica and Joey and Chandler laid their keys on the table and walked out of the apartment for the final time, I was conflicted.
Do I wish they were staying, or am I glad to see them go? A couple of months ago, I told you I was about to begin watching the television series FRIENDS for the first time. I'd never seen it, but had recently read Matthew Perry's memoir: Friends, Lovers And The Big Terrible Thing and I had to watch the show. Most of you said I'd enjoy it. You said I'd laugh endlessly. I did. But included in the laughter was a sadness I could never fully shake. Not even for an episode. I never settled into the rhythm of a comedy. I loved all the FRIENDS characters, but I always found myself looking for Chandler. In every scene. Like a protector. And because of his memoir, I knew no matter where I found him, no matter where he was on the set, or where he was in a particular scene, or no matter what line he was speaking, I always found him hiding. Hiding and acting his way out of a personal hell. If you read the memoir, you know there wasn't a single season of FRIENDS when Perry wasn't actively using alcohol and drugs and battling the grips of addiction to both. Even when he was winning the battle, he always knew he was on the verge of losing it again. Losing it in more destructive ways than the time before. When the FRIENDS show began and it was clear it was about to become a monster hit, Perry recalled thinking in his book, "I was going to be so famous that all the pain I carried with me would melt like frost in the sunlight: and any new threats would bounce off me as though this show was a force field I could cloak myself in." If you read the book, you know few predictions ever failed harder. Perry's pain only intensified as the series went on; new threat after new threat pummeled him. Some episodes I found myself sad that Perry had to keep showing up pretending. He talked at length in the book about the obligation he felt toward his FRIENDS co-stars and to the audience to keep showing up funny. He talked about becoming nauseous when a funny line didn't land. Other episodes I found myself amazed that he could show up at all. Even though I could see the ebbs and flows of his health as the seasons progressed, most episodes he looked like he'd showed up ready to go. If you read the book first and then watch the series, this feels like witnessing a miracle. I think the happiest moment of the series for me was when Chandler married Monica. I'm sure it is. The biggest thing I took away from the book about Perry was just how lonely he was. He went through countless casual relationships in search of something he really didn't know he was searching for, only to never find it. I remember shedding a few tears at his wedding to Monica. I remember thinking that this made for television scene, this holy matrimony made up by some writer to entertain me and you, might have been the closest Perry had or would ever come to finding this thing he was looking for. True connection. Part of me wondered at the time if the writers knew this. If this was their way of honoring Perry's always showing up to help the audience find something they'd been looking for. At the end of the book, Perry reflects on some childhood friends. Friends who weren't famous. And he said, "none of them had battled their whole lives with a brain that was built to kill them. I would give it all up to not have that. No one believes it, but it's true." As I watched Perry set his key on the table and walk away, I believed him. Unequivocally. Acting can be exhausting, whether you're doing it to entertain or to survive. So I think I am glad it is over. The show AND Perry's battle. But his book is such a powerful reminder that what often looks entertainment around us, what often looks like joy and happiness and well put together, it is sometimes actually falling apart. Sometimes acting is not for our sake but for theirs; it's helpful and loving to be curious about the people around us with a heart for knowing the difference. You were a good friend Chandler Bing. Thank you for openly sharing your battle with that Big Terrible Thing. I hope it will encourage more of us to be open about the battles with our own big terrible things. I hope it will give us all permission to be a little more real, and a lot less reliant on being good actors and actresses. I grew up on a farm. One of the greatest joys of that was watching seeds become plants that ultimately became harvest. Every fall, when the big machines would take the crops from the field, it was easy to remember that just months earlier those fields were endless rows of sprouts.
I wish I'd known as a kid the symbolism I was witnessing. I wish I'd known just how often that cycle would repeat itself in my life. Seed. Grow. Harvest. And I wish I'd known that not all seeds are easy to watch grow. That even though the seeds in the fields around me more often than not grew up with limited obstacles and were a joy to watch grow, not all of life's seeds grow so unencumbered. There have been many seeds in my life I could have never imagined growing into a harvest. As a result, I think, I spent a lot of time believing the seed was the story. And since that story at times felt dead, like an enemy, I never saw those seeds as something that would grow. Believing anyplace we are is the starting point for growth and not the end, that is hope. Hope is always the fuel we need to keep going. Going to the harvest. I had a significant gambling issue in my younger years. To support it, I got good at stealing from people. And lying to them. You destroy a lot of things on the way to destroying yourself. I remember one day driving home from a horse track. I'd lost a lot of money, money that I'd stolen. It's one of the first and most vivid memories I have of wanting to end my life. Drive off the road and be done with it all. It honestly felt like the best option among none. I didn't drive off the road. I'm not sure why. I don't have some God came down and took wheel story. I just didn't do it. That day is a dark day in a life full of them. It would have been impossible for me to have ever seen that day as a seed. The other day I was talking to a dad friend. He was talking about a young person who has been experimenting with online gambling. He said it seems harmless, but he's starting to worry, at least a little, that the young person might be a little too into it. I told him the story about the harmless two dollar wager I made at a horse track a few decades ago. I told him how quickly harmless goes from simply fun and experiment to driving while trying to determine the best destination, home or into a tree. As more and more people have access to gambling, and face the challenges it brings, I am given more and more opportunities to share my experience. I am given more and more opportunities to feel a day I wanted to call it quits as the day a seed was planted. I don't think God scripted it that way. I don't think my seed to harvest path when it comes to gambling was anyone's plan. It was just life. And life doesn't always look like a smooth road. It sometimes looks like a dark one you don't want to be on. The key is to, as often as you can, recognize everything is a seed. Even the seeds we can't possibly imagine growing into anything, they will. They will if we can begin to imagine them as a harvest story and not a death story. I don't know what you're struggling with today. Maybe for some of you it's a really dark struggle. I don't want you to imagine what the harvest might look like from that darkness; it's impossible to imagine in many cases. But I do want you to believe in a harvest. Believe that one is waiting for you. Believe that you are a part of a seed that is growing you and not ending you. Believe that one day you will be telling the story about some of your deepest shame or guilt or grief or hardship and realize the thing you couldn't stand being a part of, the seed you couldn't bare to watch grow, it miraculously became a beautiful harvest. Not all seeds are easy to watch grow. But every seed can become a harvest. Believe it. Yesterday, I wrote that I have turned my back on some things in my life this year that haven't been serving me well. Things that have been a part of my life in unhealthy ways for four decades. Things I've always known were standing in my way of a future that offers far more hope than any present I've ever experienced.
People might ask, if you've known that, if you've known you are trading in hope for destruction, why hang on to destruction? Why would someone who knows better not do better? The answer is simple and complex. The answer is, it's often hard to trade in what has always made us feel good for the promise of something that might turn out to be good. We are creatures who love comfort; nothing is more uncomfortable than giving up what you know for the promise of something better. We've all lived with enough broken promises to know the extent of that gamble. It's a hard thing to understand about humans from the outside looking in. Why do people cling to such unhealthy habits when the clinging is clearly playing out in unhealthy ways. Do they not see it? I will say to that, in the event you are one who asks those questions, the people you are questioning are equally questioning of you. They too are wondering, do they not see it? Do they not see the inner turmoil? Do they not see the stories of shame and guilt? Do they not see the loneliness? Do they not see the person who would do anything to forget how much they don't like themselves? It's too easy to look at the outside of someone and assume they are destroying their lives when in reality they are often trying to hold together a life that feels destroyed. I'm here to tell you, the path to helping someone to a brand new place isn't questioning, or worse, judging the place they are in. The path is sharing with them that you have been where they are. You have been in this place of knowing there is something better but clinging to what feels better. And you have also been in the place of taking the brave step of leaving behind comfort for the promise of hope. Because many folks seeking comfort have long given up on having hope, yet still deeply long for it. Hope is ultimately the best commercial we have for drawing the comfortable into the discomfort of change. There IS hope. I want you to know that. It's not easy. I know the discomfort you are trying to comfort away, but you won't. I've run a decades long experiment on that one. You just won't comfort away the discomfort in your life. But hope, the sweet call of hope. How do I get THERE? It starts with acknowledging that it's never been comfort you've truly longed for; it's been hope. It's been the hope of waking up one day truly at peace with who you are. Truly confident you are moving in the direction of who you are made to be. It starts with acknowledging it's been comfort standing in your way of that hope, not providing it. And then, take the step. Take that first uncomfortable step. Hope is waiting. I promise. I spoke at a conference yesterday that promoted healthy connections in our youth. Over the course of the day, we heard heartbreaking stories supported by equally heartbreaking data that portrayed a generation of disconnected kids.
Disconnection is a toxic feeling. It eats away at you. And our youth, just like you and I, will often take toxic measures to escape it. These stories are particularly challenging for me. Over the past decade I've come to grips with the truth that I have felt disconnected most of my life. And most of my life I have clung to destructive habits and addictions to escape the toxic feeling our young people are battling these days in epidemic proportions. When I am done speaking, I always receive kind words about my message. A gentleman came up to me afterward yesterday and asked me, are you a pastor? I told him I was not. He said, well, you have the fire of a pastor. You should be one. In some ways, I wish I didn't have that fire. Because that fire comes from a place of deeply feeling this struggle our kids are facing. It comes from a place of deeply fearing the decades ahead for them if they don't find someone to feed their hunger for connection. I fear loneliness will eventually eat away so much of their lives that they will one day wake up and have no idea who they are. Or worse, they will come to identify themselves by the person they've become to deal with the pain of no one ever coming to know the person they really are. They will come to see themselves as an addict or a loser or a monster or someone who is lonely because they are certainly not worthy of anyone noticing them. At the close of our day yesterday, a principal from a local school shared stories of things his school is doing to connect kids in powerful ways. As part of his presentation, he shared a video with us. The video was called I choose you. In the video, conversations were filmed between teachers and students. Conversations where the teachers told students they were allowed to choose a student they believed in, and then have a conversation explaining to that student explaining that belief. Some of the students broke into the biggest smiles in those conversations. Some of them teared up. And some of them had to wipe away the tears that rolled down their cheeks. Me, I was the latter all through that video. I was wiping tears. It is powerful to witness a young person have the parts of themselves noticed they were sure no one ever would. Parts of themselves they themselves were likely dangerously close to believing weren't parts of their identities at all. What a beautiful thing to witness kids moved to such deep emotion by simply being seen. And believed in. This principal said they use human connection in their school as a far greater predictor of student success than any standardized testing. And by the way, grades and attendance have skyrocketed in his school. In so many spaces, including the spaces our kids inhabit, we've traded in being noticed for who we are for being noticed for the trophies we collect. And now we have a world full of trophies belonging to people who have no idea who they are. It's at the heart of a world in great pain, an abundance of which is being felt by our youth. The saddest part of that is the answer is so simple. If you want to experience the beauty of that answer today, find someone you think may have given up on themselves. Tell them you believe in them and tell them why. Stand in their smile, or in their watery eyes, and know you are standing in the answer of all that is eating away at so many of us. Connect someone's disconnection. Help someone trade in temporary relief for something far more permanent. Let's help remind each other who we really are. 2/16/2024 0 Comments Love is not a prize"Somewhere along the way, we adopt this dangerous and debilitating belief system: I am what I accomplish and how well I accomplish it. Please. Perform. Perfect." ~Brene' Brown
One of the most dangerous elements of this belief system is it comes to shape our relationship with God. When we spend a life making choices driven by efforts to please humans, it's easy to start living life obsessed with trying to please God. When we live life defeated by the reality we can never please humans, we can begin to live life believing there's no way to please God. This stands in the way of one of God's most beautiful gifts to us. The gift of us forever knowing what God thinks about our imperfections. In Ephesians 2:8-9, we read, "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast." In these verses, God is reminding us that his loving-kindness for us is not a reward for our behavior. It's just the way God feels about us. Love in its purest most perfect form. God is reminding us that no matter where our efforts fall on the perfection scale today, whether it's a 0 or a perfect 10, his love for us never fluctuates. His love has no scale, love is simply who God is. Maybe that's what is so challenging about human relationships. Love fluctuates so much. Even in the closest of relationships. And it often fluctuates in response to choices. I guess that's why God wants us to know how insignificant boasting about our works is to him. He knows how debilitating and exhausting feeling the need to boast is in so many of our human relationships. God knows it's debilitating to spend so much time trying to be noticed for who we are or what we're doing or what we've accomplished instead of simply being noticed because we are loved. It's really hard to imagine having already received God's love when we're so busy trying to earn love from everyone outside of him. I want us to be reminded that one of God's greatest gifts to us is giving us the chance to show up to him every minute of every day perfectly loved. Perfectly and unchanged from the last time we showed up to him. Maybe we can help others come to better know this gift, better feel it, by being a little more perfect with our love for one another. That's a tall order for us. God's nature is only love, ours has a fair amount of evil mixed in. But we can work on it, we can challenge ourselves to be more accepting and less fluctuating with our love. We can take imperfect steps toward loving each other because we love each other, and not because each other has earned the grand prize of love. God's greatest gift to us is his unmerited love. God's greatest gift is to constantly reassure us that love is not a prize, it is simply love. What a beautiful gift. One well worth giving to others. |
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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