​In Ephesians 6, Paul talks about putting on the full armor of God. But the very first piece of the armor?

The belt.

The belt of truth.

The world would be easy, that belt quite unnecessary, if the world was built on truth. But it is not. Not entirely, at least. There is a spiritual enemy out there intent on overwhelming us with deceptive ideas. Ideas wrapped in just enough truth to feel familiar. So familiar that we start to make deceptions the heart of our truths.

"You’re not enough."
"You’ll always be that addict."
"No one really wants you here."
"You’re too broken to be used by God."
"You're too late. Too old. Too far gone."

Without our belt of truth, these spiritual deceptions become real-life identity theft. A belt doesn't just accessorize, it secures, it stabilizes, it keeps the rest of the armor from falling off.

Without it everything starts to sag.

In today’s culture, there are all kinds of lies disguised as freedom:
You are only as valuable as your productivity.
Love is a transaction, give just enough to get what you want.
Success means being busy, being seen, being envied.
Feelings are facts. If you feel it, it must be true.

Truth is whatever works for you in the moment.

Those are cultural deceptions and they’re everywhere. They don’t show up with flashing red lights, they show up in ads, algorithms, comment sections, and even our own inner narratives.

So what is truth?

For me, it’s the unshakable truth that I am a child of God. That I’m not what I’ve done. I’m not what I fear. I’m not what the culture says I must become to be worthy.

Truth is that I am already loved. Already chosen. Already known.
Before I write the first word. Before my boss declares that I am worthy of a promotion. Before the scoreboard says win or lose.

But I also must acknowledge my truth is not everyone's truth. Not everyone believes in God. Not everyone names Jesus as truth. Not everyone finds their value in the belief that Jesus came and died and rose again - all as supernatural testimony to a worth impossible for me to secure on my own merits.

So what’s their belt of truth?

Maybe it’s the truth that:

You are inherently worthy, not because of what you produce, but because you exist.

You matter. Your story matters. Your pain matters.

Healing is possible. You are not beyond redemption.

You are more than what was done to you.

You are loved—by someone, somewhere—and you’re not alone.

We all deserve a belt of truth. Because life without one leaves us exposed - vulnerable to lies that tell stories of us much uglier than the stories we truly are.

The stories this world truly needs now more than ever.

Maybe that’s the invitation here: Not just to wear our own belt of truth, but to help others find theirs.

To name their worth until they can speak it for themselves.

To hold space for someone else’s truth, even if it's still unraveling.

To remind them they don’t have to believe every thought that crosses their mind. Humans can often be the most beautiful mirrors, reflecting back upon someone the truth of beauty they will never see in themselves.

Because the enemy doesn’t come roaring with swords.

He whispers.

And the belt of truth, it's what allows us to hear him loud and clear.

“You’re just waiting for joy to catch up.”

I heard that line in a podcast interview recently. The guest was facing the host as she responded to a question, but it felt like she was looking in my eyes when she answered with those words. 

Sometimes you are going through motions in life you have no idea you are going through until someone names those very motions.

I’m still here. Still doing the work. Still writing and showing up and walking my trails. Still being a dad, a friend, a helper. I’m not broken down on the side of the road - but joy? Joy has been trailing behind. Like Siri mapped it a much longer route to avoid the tolls, indifferent to the possibility that someone was desperately awaiting its arrival.

The word for this, I recently learned, is anhedonia - the inability to feel pleasure from things that used to light you up. It’s one of the quieter signs of depression, especially high-functioning depression.

That makes it easy to miss.

When you're still meeting deadlines, still showing up for people, still producing - no one thinks to ask if you’ve stopped feeling. In a world where wellness is often measured by productivity, being productive can often be quite counter productive to your health.

But that’s the ache. You’re doing more “right” than ever, and still, something’s missing.

The spark. The joy. The full emotional yes.

In this interview, Dr. Judith Joseph said: “You’re not a human being anymore. You’re a human doing. You’re trying to outrun something you haven’t fully resolved.”

That one landed, too.

Because the truth is, unresolved trauma doesn’t always leave behind chaos, it often leaves behind busyness. Productive people, achievers, givers… many of us are just trying to stay ahead of a pain we don’t want to sit with. We don’t even realize how much we’ve built our lives around avoiding what hurts.

Until joy doesn’t show up. And like standing at the bus stop waiting on a bus that's ten minutes late, you start wondering - where is it?

I’ve spent years learning how my trauma shaped me. Childhood experiences I once downplayed or couldn’t name have explained so much of why I’ve kept myself busy. Not just productively busy, but protectively busy. As if constant motion could keep me ahead of the ache.

Side note, world - constant scrolling is one of the way MANY have adopted busyness to stay ahead of the ache....

But here’s the thing: you can only outrun yourself for so long.

I’ve started to understand this as a different kind of crisis, not dramatic, not loud. Just a quiet erosion of aliveness. The moments where you just know something should feel good, but it doesn't. This absence of joy doesn’t always mean failure. Sometimes, it’s a signal that our body, mind and spirit is tired of trying to outperform our pain.

It’s tempting to dismiss this. After all, the world loves functioning. Especially high-functioning. But what if the quiet erosion of joy is a crisis? What if our inability to feel pleasure, to engage deeply, to be present - what if that’s more urgent than we’ve allowed ourselves to believe?

I’ve come to believe it is.

We were wired for joy. It’s our birthright. But trauma rewires us for survival, for vigilance, for going through the motions without ever truly being in them.

And healing? Healing begins by naming what we’ve tried to outrun.

So I’m naming it.

I’ve been waiting for joy to catch up. Maybe you have, too.

The good news? I believe it can. Joy may be late. But it isn’t lost. And it’s not punishing you. It’s just been waiting for you to stop running long enough to be found.

Not by pushing harder. Not by performing better.

But by finally giving yourself permission to feel again. To rest. To receive. To be.​​

​The apostle Paul was one of the earliest practitioners of mindfulness. Some Christians will think that sounds a little too woo-woo. But it makes it no less true.

Paul was in prison when he sent a letter to a Christian community living in the ancient city of Philippi. He founded a church there and had a heart for its people. In the letter he told them he had a secret for a peace that surpasses all understanding.

Last week I found myself in a place where I couldn't begin to locate that kind of peace. Paul's letter felt more like a fairy tale than an invitation. But if this man was writing about a peace he was experiencing in a prison cell, there is no hiding from the invitation within his words.

There is no denying his longing for all of us to experience such peace.

Paul said, "whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things."

If I am being real, the source of my distress last week - at the heart of my lack of peace - was my focus on things that were ONCE lovely. It was my focus on how lovely I thought that things could and should one day be.

While going back and forth - yesterday and tomorrow - I spent very little time focusing on all that IS lovely in my life right now - a form of mindfulness.

Steven Furtick often suggest we are time travelers. Minds wandering off into the future or into the past. This is a problem, he suggests, because true peace comes from being mindful of the here and now.

Monday. It's always easy to feel ugh, where did the weekend go?

Monday. It's always easy to look to the week ahead. What can and must be done? And how fast will the next weekend arrive?

But Monday. Peace CAN be found in Monday. It can be found when we don't think of Monday as the beginning of a new week or as the end of a weekend, but as a day full of things lovely in and of itself.

A peace that surpasses all understanding isn't found in fixing yesterday. Or in stepping into a better tomorrow. A peace that surpasses all understanding is found in all that IS.

All that IS right now.

Monday.

Time travel is the great robber of peace. Mindfulness returns us home, to all that IS, to the God of peace so ready to meet us there.

God knows yesterday. God has seen tomorrow. But God is living with us here - today - Monday.

Close your eyes. Think about something that IS lovely. There you will find a peace that cannot be stolen by yesterday or tomorrow.

There you will find a peace that surpasses all understanding.

There is where I need to spend a lot more time this week than I did last.....

​Today, I am presenting at the Overcoming Trauma Through Connection Conference in Danville, VA. I will start by asking the question, "How Steep Is Your Hill?"

Many years ago, the University of Virginia conducted a study. They put a group of students at the foot of a large hill with a loaded backpack and had them estimate how steep the hill was they were about to be challenged to climb.

The catch is - the students were divided into two groups.

One group of students got to stand next to a friend while they looked at the hill. The other group, well they stood staring at the hill alone.

The research revealed that the students looking at the hill standing by themselves estimated the climb was going to be much greater than the students standing next to friends. Further, the closer the students felt to the friend standing next to them, the less climb they saw in the hill.

How steep is your hill? The answer usually has nothing to do with the hill; it almost always has EVERYTHING to do with who is standing with you when you look at your hill.

There is a lot of talk about the impacts of loneliness in our world today. Maybe the greatest impact is just how many people see the hills in their lives as much more daunting than they really are simply because they look at those hills alone.

Looking at daunting hills equals stress. Sleeplessness. Depression. Thoughts of suicide.

I know.

And I also know just how much hills shrink when someone looks at that hill with you.

The bible tells us: “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”

Sometimes having faith the size of a mustard seed isn't easy to find. Sometimes the mustard seed seems as big as the mountain. Until someone stands beside you and takes your hand as you talk to your mountains.

Sometimes the mustard seed is US.

Us coming along side someone lost and staring at their mountain. Us, pouring the faith that runs through our hearts and minds into theirs.

Us who say, together I think we can move this mountain.

How steep is you hill?

Rarely is the answer about the hill.

​A few weeks ago, I received an email from a young woman I’d never met. She found my contact info online and reached out to learn more about my work - specifically, the work I do connecting childhood trauma and adversity to long-term health.

I responded to her email. Turns out she was living in Dubai, but really wanted to chat. Our first phone call a few weeks ago led to five hours of early morning (time differences are real I'm here to tell you) virtual conversations this week.

She shared her story: how her family immigrated from Iran to the United States when she was five years old, chasing the only hope they had - treatment for her seven-year-old sister who was suffering from a rare disease. They didn’t know a soul here, but they were searching for survival, not community.

She spoke about what it was like to grow up in a foreign land, listening to a language she couldn’t understand, watching her parents navigate a strange world while caring for her sister. She told me how everything changed - again - when her sister passed away at 18.

Since then, she’s spent much of her life feeling out of place, always searching for something - somewhere - that felt like home.

That search led her, unexpectedly, to me.

But what she told me next is what moved me most: for the first time in her life, she feels like she’s found her place. And it’s not a location. It’s a purpose. She believes she was made to help bring awareness to the world about the importance of early childhood experiences, the very same work that has allowed me to find a home in life.

What a beautiful reminder that home is found in unity, and unity in unlikely places.

There were many moments in our conversations this week when I knew I wasn't talking to my friend in Dubai, but to the God of my universe. The God who has taken the challenging stories of my life and weaved them into opportunities to enter into the challenging stories of other people's lives.

There are things in our lives we can't even begin to imagine. There are visions for our life we do not have the capacity to envision - directions for our lives that get too destroyed in the wayward explosions of our lives.

Until God calls.

And when God calls, it rarely looks like what we expect.

Just weeks ago, I couldn’t have imagined being so deeply moved by the childhood story of a little Iranian girl. I couldn’t have imagined traveling to Dubai to meet her, to do everything I can to help her bring love and healing to the world.

But then again, maybe that’s the whole point.

Quite often, our imaginations are limited by our unwillingness to pick up the phone when God calls, usually because we can’t imagine that God’s call might come disguised as an email from halfway around the world.

But more each day, I am learning to live in awe of the stories God is trying to write into my life.

And more each day, I am learning to let God write.

​On the first day, God said, "Let there be light."

Three days later, on the fourth day, God made the sun and the moon and the stars.

God promised light and God delivered light long before he revealed signs of light.

There are things in my life that God has promised me - love and security and wellness. Only, there are days some or all of those things feel quite missing. Or inadequate.

If I think about it, on the days I get to feeling that way, those are days when I am likely looking for signs that those things are real and not looking toward the promises gifted me by the one responsible for creating the signs.

God makes promises in our life that sometimes don't look like signs of promises come true until four days later.

God makes promises in one season of our life that require many seasons in our life to look like promises come true.

Sometimes God promises a meaningful job in your life when the signs in your life look like unemployment.

Sometimes God promises you're going to be a healer in this world when the signs in your life look like battling your own addictions.

Sometimes God promises you're going to find a meaningful relationship in your life when the signs of your life look like divorce.

I have learned through the years, albeit imperfectly, to put my trust and my faith in the truth of what God has promised me more than any truth I can find in what the world is trying to show me.

(God's promises and the world quite often look different).

I can do that, again - imperfectly, because there have been so many times in my life when the signs of truth of God's promises seemed quite far from the promises themselves, only to have those signs one day arrive.

Signs that arrived in spite of me losing faith in the promises that foretold their arrival.

God said there was light. Four days later he revealed signs of it. The beauty of faith is we never have to wait to find truth in God's promises.

Signs are nice.

The sun is a beautiful reminder of light.

But the sun sometimes gets lost behind the clouds.

Signs are nice.

Faith is nicer.

Faith allows you to know light is true on the cloudiest of days.

Keep your faith in the promises; the signs are never far behind. 

Faith.

Why do we lose it?

Sometimes we lose it because we pray for things that don't show up when we'd like them to.

Sometimes we lose it because we make choices we know we shouldn't have made and we begin to feel like it's too late to make the better choice.

Sometimes we lose faith because voices in this world tell us our faith is foolish.

There's a story of a woman in the bible who didn't lose faith no matter how much it looked like she had every reason to do so. Her name was Hannah. She was one of two wives of Elkanah, and while his other wife Peninnah had many children, Hannah had none.

In that culture, barrenness was shaming.

Yet, year after year, the family would travel to the temple at Shiloh to worship and sacrifice. And year after year, Peninnah would provoke Hannah, mocking her infertility until she wept and could not eat.

One year, in deep anguish, Hannah stood before the Lord and poured out her soul - no rehearsed prayer, just tears and quivering lips. Her grief was so strong that Eli the priest mistook her for being drunk.

When she explained her grief, Eli blessed her. And Hannah, still without a child, walked away with a different kind of peace that day, not one based on suddenly having a child, but on surrender.

And in time, her prayer was answered. She conceived and gave birth to a son, Samuel.

The beauty of Hannah’s story isn’t just in the answered prayer. It’s in her resilience. In the way she kept going back to God even though it hurt. In the way she believed before she received.

Her story reminds me that my faith doesn’t always look like all is well. It often looks like going back when things couldn't feel more unwell.

Not just once.

But again.
And again.
And again.

I have some prayers in my life God has not answered. And it's frustrating. Maddening at times. Yet in my anger, God is always waiting. Waiting for me to come back.

I have made choices in my life that didn't work out well. At times I've allowed the results of those choices to fill my life with shame. But God isn't shaming. God isn't blaming. God is waiting. Waiting for me to come back and make the next better choice.

I have voices in my ear at times telling me that my faith is foolish. Voices provoking me to believe my pain is a signal that God isn't listening, God is not here.

But there is always another ear, another voice, and it is always calling me to ignore those voices and come back.

That is faith many days, going back in spite of the voices, in spite of the appearance that going back has never paid off before so it surely won't now.

God's rewards don't often come in the form of instant gratification, of instant answers. God rewards - God's greatest blessings - often come in all that we learn and come to believe in the willingness to keep coming back.

Again and again and again.

Often faith doesn't look like answers, it looks like coming back.

​I turn 61 today.

I told a friend recently that "being in your 60s" sounds so much older than turning 60 🤣.

The truth is, though, I don't much fret about growing older these days. When I was born, the life expectancy for a white male was 67 years old. By so many measures I have already lived a life longer and more full of goodness than one deserves.

Don't get me wrong. It's not like I'm trying to write my obituary here. At least not one I want read this afternoon. But it is true that I no longer worry if this will indeed be the day of its reading.

Erik Erikson once said, "I am what survives me."

I think about that a lot these days. I used to think my life would be measured by what I achieved. The titles. The milestones. The things I could point to and say, “There, now you can see that I matter.”

But life has a way of reshaping what you measure. It teaches you that the things you can touch, the trophies you can display, the boxes you can check - they all eventually gather dust.

What doesn’t gather dust is love. What doesn’t fade is the kindness you offer when no one was looking. What doesn’t disappear is the courage you hand to someone else in the middle of their fear.

What survives us isn’t what we owned, but what we gave away.

I am indeed learning - I am what survives me.

I am the way my sons will remember how they were loved more for who they are than for anything they could accomplish.

I am the prayers whispered when no one knew I was struggling, but God heard them anyway.

I am the words I dared to write, even when I wasn’t sure anyone would understand them, or read them at all, simply because I wanted someone to know they aren't alone.

I am not the awards I won or the mistakes I made. I am the lessons I leave behind, the love that keeps moving forward, the small moments that become someone else’s strength long after I'm gone.

I think about my grandfathers - dead for many decades now - yet in me, they are living with hearts pounding out more love than ever. Their gentleness is in the hearts of my two sons who will only ever know the parts of those men that survived them.

I think about the books I read from authors long gone, the songs I sing, the games I play - all things that have survived a past to so beautifully shape my todays.

I think about that man on the cross, thousands of years ago, more alive in me today than he was ever alive when he was surviving his own humanity.

Thank you, Jesus.

Another birthday marks another year closer to the end of this life, but strangely, that no longer feels like loss.

It feels like planting. It feels like trusting the soil to do what it was always meant to do: carry life beyond the one who plants life.

I don’t know how many more birthdays I have ahead. But I know this:

I still have seeds to plant.

Still have stories to tell.

Still have people to love.

Because I am not just who I am while I’m here. I am what survives me.

I encourage you, as I begin this journey of "being in my 60s" - and as you continue your fight of being in your own survival - give heart and thought to what might survive you.

Give heart to all that you can still plant.

Oh how this world needs planters more than survivors right now.

Planters like you and me.