​When I was in my mid-twenties, I went to work part-time for a Mennonite carpenter. I was a drunk and a gambler looking to make a little extra money to gamble more and stay more drunk.

Not long into this experience, at lunch one day, the carpenter started talking to me about Jesus. Not in a preachy way. Not in an invasive way. It was more like he was introducing me to his family - like he was opening his wallet and showing me pictures with infectious love and admiration.

In that moment, I was infected. Jesus appeared in my life. Like family. Family I'd had my whole life but was meeting them for the first time at a family reunion.

Sometimes people will ask me to prove Jesus. Show the evidence. And I turn around and point to him, following right behind me.

Almost always they don't see him. Which I get. No judgement here. Because until that lunch with the carpenter, I'd never seen him standing behind me either.

But he was there.

I have followed Jesus since that day. Only - if I am truthful - some days I forget that I am following him. Some days it looks like I am following me more than him. Thankfully, though, Jesus never lets that stand in the way of choosing to follow me.

There are days when life begins to feel very challenging. Hopeless. And out of the blue I will hear it: "We've got this." I hear those words and look up and see him, the Jesus I met at that lunch with the carpenter.

And some days life can be going quite well. Goodness coming my way in ways I'd never imagined. And out of the blue I will hear it: "We did it." I hear those words and look up and see him, the Jesus I met at that lunch with the carpenter.

It is true that I follow Jesus.

But the truth is, there are more days when Jesus reminds me that he is still following me than I assure him that I'm still here following him.

I am working on that. Hard.

But I am working on it with the peace of knowing that for over twenty years of my life, I completely overlooked the Jesus standing right behind me. Twenty years...and he never budged. Not one inch away from me.

Jesus waits for me to follow him with all the following I have in me.

He waits - right behind me.

​I reflect a lot on things that have happened to me. Our brain is good at that - holding on to things we've experienced in the past to help us make sense of the things we are experiencing in the present.

But it occurred to me lately that our brains are NOT great at remembering the things that didn't happen to us.

I'm sure many of you read the story recently about the high school teenagers who were rolling toilet paper in the trees of one of their favorite teacher's houses. It was a school tradition.

As the students escaped, they accidentally ran over the teacher, who had tripped and fell in the street as the students drove away.

The teacher died.

A big part of the story is the family of the deceased teacher asked prosecutors to drop charges against the driver of the car. The prosecutors honored their wishes.

I have certainly thought about the grace the family of the teacher offered these students. But more, I think, I have thought about all of my high school choices that could have gone woefully wrong that didn't.

The direction of life can change in an instant. Many times we think about how the things that DID happen changed our lives. And often, we look back on those things with some regret or sorrow or what-ifs.

But I have found myself looking back this week on things that did NOT happen. I've felt great gratitude for those things.

I thought a lot this week about the countless times I drove under the influence of alcohol as a high school student - or drove with a friend who was. It wasn't once or twice, it was many times. And every single one of those times I somehow avoided killing myself or someone else.

There's a different kind of feeling I get when I think about the things that didn't happen that could have. It feels much closer to gratitude. It feels much closer to life's sense of grace.

I am sure these students who were involved in an innocent prank gone wrong will never be rid of the weight of what happened that night. They all stopped and tried to save the teacher's life. Some things in life you can not unsee.

I feel thanks for the family of the teacher who made a choice to make sure some things did NOT happen to these kids. For maybe one day when they are wrestling with the events of what went down that life-changing night, they will find it comforting to reflect on what did not.

Our memories are great at drifting to all the things that have happened to us. Especially the worst of those happenings.

I think it's kind to give our brains a break and reflect on a few things that didn't happen. At least it sure feels more kind in my case.

​Every year on March 14, mathematicians celebrate Pi Day - the day that honors the number 3.14, the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter.

Pi is a strange number. It never ends. It never repeats. No matter how many digits we discover, there are always more hiding beyond them.

For centuries, some of the smartest minds in the world have tried to “solve” it. Computers have now calculated trillions of digits, yet we still haven’t reached the end.

And we never will.

Which, if you think about it, might make pi less like a math problem and more like a metaphor for life. Because I don't know if you've seen it, but I feel like we live in a world that can be pretty obsessed with solving people.

Scroll through social media for five minutes and you’ll see it everywhere. People reduced to headlines. To labels. To one bad moment. One bad opinion. One bad decision.

A slice.

We live in a culture that is constantly cutting people into slices of pie and deciding which ones deserve to be thrown away.

But life isn’t built in slices. It’s built like pi. Infinite. Complicated. Always continuing beyond the part we can currently see.

The more years I live, the more convinced I become that most of our problems begin the moment we start pretending people are finished stories. But they aren’t. None of us are. Every one of us is still adding digits.

A mistake isn’t the end of a person. A failure isn’t the final chapter. A painful season isn’t the whole equation. It’s just another number in the sequence.

The challenge, of course, is that the world prefers clean endings. Clean conclusions. Clean judgments. Pi refuses to give us that. It keeps going. Which is probably why circles have always been one of the most powerful symbols of life. A circle has no clear beginning or ending point. You can start anywhere and keep moving forever.

The circle of life, as the song says.

Some of us fall by the wayside.
Some of us soar to the stars.
Some of us sail through our troubles.
Some of us live with the scars.

And yet we are still part of the same circle.

If pi teaches this giant circle call us anything, it’s that some things were never meant to be finished. Not love. Not redemption. Not grace. Not the human story.

Maybe that’s why something as abstract as a math constant has managed to capture human imagination for thousands of years. Pi quietly whispers a truth we struggle to accept:

There is always more to the story.

More digits. More chapters. More chances to become something different than we were yesterday. Which means the person you are today isn’t the final number in your sequence. And neither is the person standing next to you.

So today is Pi Day.

Celebrate the math if that’s your thing.

Celebrate the pie if that’s your thing too. (Apple with ice cream still gets my vote.)

But maybe the real celebration is remembering something deeper:

None of us are finished equations. We are still unfolding. Still expanding. Still adding digits to a story that, if grace has anything to say about it, might just keep going forever.

​Last night, Colin Dorgan scored the game-winning goal in double overtime to help advance his high school team to the Rhode Island hockey state championship game.

No big deal, right? High school athletes make big time plays all the time. Well, this big time play comes with a bit of a back story.

Last month, Dorgan's mom, brother, and grandfather were killed in a shooting at a local ice rink. Dorgan was wearing a patch on his jersey to honor them when he scored the game-winning goal.

As one might expect, his teammates and the crowd rushed him in celebration. Dorgan said, "It was the greatest moment of my life."

I would never suggest that his greatest moment somehow balances the scales of what was surely this young man's worst moment. I would not dare argue that this somehow makes life fair. But it is my experience, if we pay close enough attention, life does indeed TRY to be fair.

It's an evil world. I won't pretend otherwise. Life can feel in over it's head at times trying to reveal goodness in the midst of it all. But I am thankful that life never gives up trying. I am thankful that I wake up most days with a sense that life really wants to work for me and not against me. (Even on the days when I probably don't help life out with that work as much as I could).

I look at this young man's face. I see celebration rising to the surface of a soul that surely feels a deepest kind of loss.

What a reminder - life is full of loss.

Defeat.

But victory - well stay tuned, because victory is right around the corner.

​The problem in most conflicts isn’t who has power. It’s the belief that power must belong to only one side.

Elliott and I went to see the new Pixar movie yesterday: Hoppers. Basically, the movie is a story about man versus the animal kingdom. And at times, the animal kingdom versus man.

In ways that can only be orchestrated in movies, both sides had their turn to hold the power in their dispute. And when their turn came, both sides used it to make the situation worse.

Only when both sides came to see that sharing power was more powerful than owning it all did the situation resolve. And not just resolve, but end better than either side could have imagined when they held all the power.

I left the movie thinking: yep, when it comes to power, we have to rely on Pixar to create animated stories that make it even remotely possible to dream of a world that discovers the power in sharing power.

Our country is at war right now, in spite of our president suggesting it's merely an excursion on our end. And much of the language we hear in this global conflict - even in everyday conversations online - makes it sound like a contest:

Who is strongest?

Who dominates?

Who can “obliterate” the other side?

Who controls the outcome?

But history keeps teaching the same lesson. Victory through domination has never led to peace. It only plants the seeds for the next conflict.

In Hoppers, the story shifts when power stops being something to possess and starts becoming something to share. That’s when cooperation begins. Relationships form. Solutions appear that neither side could reach alone.

Is there anything more fantasy - more science fiction - than a world outside the movie theater where power becomes something people long to share more than possess?

And I’m not even talking about world politics and wars alone.

Marriages break down because people want to possess power more than share it.

Churches divide because people want to possess power more than share it.

Business partnerships divide.

Families divide.

Small town communities divide.

All because the thirst for power becomes too insatiable to share with another.

And it’s sad, really. Because I have seen this movie come to life often in small circles. The part where people choose connection over possession of power. And the result becomes a kind of beauty I could have never imagined, even if I owned all the power in the world.

I’ve seen the kind of connections that can form when people fight harder to understand one another than they fight to dominate one another. I’ve seen solutions arise like magic in problems where solutions once felt unimaginable.

It makes me wonder if maybe the opposite of connection is the thirst for power? I know it's at least one of the opposites.

Maybe we can’t end a war today. But we can listen more than we fight to be heard.

We can try to make someone feel more comfortable in our presence instead of trying to intimidate them.

We can long to see more than we demand to be seen.

We can try on the other side’s shoes in a conflict instead of insisting everyone must wear ours.

I don't know, but if you need a little hope and inspiration about the power of shared power, I can strongly recommend going to see Hoppers. Because I concede, without hope, this world can begin to feel hopelessly powerless.

​A dear friend lost her mom last week. In talking about it, she suggested that with her losing her mom, who has always been an important part of her life, and with me in the middle of a radical work life shift, we are both adjusting to new normals.

I told her that's life to me. Always adjusting. Because every day is a new normal. If there even is such a thing as normal.

I mean, what the heck is normal anyways?

What is a normal day?

Who is a normal person?

What exactly is a normal life experience?

It seems to me normal is what makes us feel most comfortable. It's the parts of life we find most consistent and predictable. It's the people and situations that we prefer.

But all of that - comfort, consistency, predictability, and preferences - it's all fleeting. Whatever feels normal - it normally doesn't stick around long.

Certainly not forever.

So to me, adjusting to a new normal isn't just a part of life - it IS life.

It's acknowledging that every day is going to be a surprise of some sort - every day WILL require some form of shifting - and the healthiest kind of life embraces a mindset committed to finding a way to navigate the shift and not be derailed by it.

It's true; today I am adjusting to a new normal.

And I will again tomorrow.

Getting good at the adjusting - that's the secret.

​When Lou Holtz became the coach of Notre Dame football back in 1986, one of the first things he did was have the players' names removed from the backs of their jerseys.

The names have remained removed from Irish jerseys ever since.

Holtz wanted the players to know that going forward, they were playing for something bigger than themselves - that the only name that mattered on the jersey was Notre Dame.

It's quite the contrast, isn't it? Today, some 40 years later, players get paid for the names on their jerseys. Today, it's not uncommon for a player to leave the name on the front of the jersey to get paid more for the name on the back of it.

And to be clear, that does include Notre Dame players.

I don't have a strong opinion on that change - or the system. It's here and there is no turning back.

But Coach Holtz passed away yesterday. And as I reflected on his life, the philosophy of no names seemed a fitting place to start and end. No names wasn't just a coaching strategy for Coach Holtz, it defined who he was.

Holtz was never flashy or glamorous - he was often simply more relentless than everyone else. He out-gritted people. And he expected his players to do the same.

Former Notre Dame player and Heisman Trophy winner, Tim Brown, once said, "Coach Holtz demanded excellence every day — not because he was hard on players, but because he believed they were capable of more than they believed about themselves."

Holtz wasn't a big man - he often poked fun at himself for being the little guy with the cartoonish voice - and yet, he always felt like the biggest man in the room.

Big enough to have a gift for convincing a group of individuals they were at their best when they worked together - and then he pointed them to where they were going to go. Together. That often required them to forget their value as individuals, and fully embrace the identity of The Fighting Irish.

It's interesting. As I look back on the 1988 National Championship team - currently the last one in Irish football history - I can remember some of the individuals on that team. Tony Rice and Ricky Waters come to mind. But what I remember most is watching that team beat Michigan and Miami in close, heart-pounding wins during the regular season.

And I remember that TEAM carrying Coach Holtz off the field after beating West Virginia to secure the championship.

As former players and others begin to reflect on what Coach Holtz meant to them - as many have done over the years - I'm pretty sure Coach Holtz wouldn't want any of the reflection to be on him as an individual. I'm pretty sure he'd want them reflecting on all they did as a team.

Coach Holtz never hid from his belief that he was living a life serving something much bigger than himself. And whether your something is God or Team or Family or Country - Holtz never stopped living out what he believed was the most important first step of that service:

Forget about the name on the back of the jersey.....

I am fond of saying, life is not a you thing; it's a WE thing.

God speed, Coach Holtz. And thanks for all the WE moments you invited us into sharing over the years - not the least of which is that 1988 National Championship.

It won't ever be forgotten.

​Is it possible that many of us wrestle with challenging feelings that come with not getting things we never really wanted in the first place?

Is it possible some of us were pointed to a career path we never wanted to follow, and now wrestle with not getting there - or worse - getting there and hating every minute of being there?

Is it possible that some of us live pursuing a bigger house we never in our lives wanted until our best friend got a bigger house?

Is it possible that some of us wrestle with being single only because the world tells us we have too much going for us to be living alone - as if NOT living alone validates our worth?

Is it possible some of us STAY in relationships for the same reason?

Is it possible some of us show up to church every Sunday because someone said we need to show up to church every Sunday, and yet, in doing so, never come to know the God who we supposedly go there to see?

Showing up can check a box, but is it the box we long to check?

To know what you really want you have to know who you really are. How many of us take time each day - or week - or even this year reflecting on who we truly are?

How much does the life I live, the things I have, the things I say - how much does any of it really reflect who I am inside? The closer those answers are to everything, the closer we likely are to peace and contentment. The further away they are, the more likely it is we need someone to help us understand we don't really want what we think we want.

The world makes a lot of money convincing us we want things we don't want - through advertisement and comparison. A lot of people feel deeply fulfilled when they see us achieve the dreams they dreamed for us. But all of that often comes at a great cost.

The cost is us.