A good shepherd doesn't leave when the night falls.
Jesus called Himself the Good Shepherd because He never runs from His flock. And if we follow Him, we’re called to stay, too—to be the ones who stand firm, who shine light, who protect, who love, even when it’s hardest. When the sky darkens and the wolves creep near, the shepherd doesn’t abandon the flock to save himself. He doesn’t run to safety while the sheep scatter in fear. Instead, he stands his ground, staff in hand, eyes scanning the shadows. He listens for the sound of danger, ready to defend, to guide, to protect. Because that’s what shepherds do. In the daylight, it’s easy to lead. The path is clear, the dangers are few, and the sheep follow willingly. But the real test comes in the night—when uncertainty grows, when the predators close in, when fear makes the flock restless. It’s in those moments that the shepherd’s calling is proven. And it’s the same with us. It’s easy to show up when life is bright, when the culture is calm, when standing for truth and love comes without risk. But what about when darkness falls? What about when division prowls, when the world is restless, when the easy thing is to walk away? That’s when the real shepherds stay. The world needs people who don’t flee when the night comes. Who don’t give up when fear spreads. Who don’t retreat when the wolves of hatred, despair, and confusion circle. Anyone can lead in the daylight. Shepherds stick around when the night falls.
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I told someone yesterday—someone who was once significant in my life—that I regret not taking the chance to repair a rupture when the opportunity came. I balked at it. I wish that choice had been as simple as yes or no, repair or not, but to say it was more complicated than that would be an understatement.
Dr. Curt Thompson says, “When it comes to ruptures, to repair them we must first imagine doing it, and without the imagination to do it, we never attempt it.” In the moment of that choice, I had never in my life focused on repairing a rupture. Not. Once. Ever. So not only did I lack the capacity to imagine what repair even looked like, I had no skill set whatsoever to pull it off. In my world, for all of my life, rupture looked like something you ran from, or yelled over, or crawled in a bed in the back room of the house pretending there was no such thing as rupture. Repairing the ruptures that tear two people apart is hard work. And if you've never experienced the beauty on the other side of that work—or even understood how the process works—what motivation do you have to enter into it? If you have only ever known the pain of rupture, why on earth wouldn’t you run from it, hoping the pain would just disappear? Especially when disappearing pain feels like a far more realistic option than building something from it. But here’s the truth: the pain of rupture never truly goes away. We carry it from one relationship to the next, and before long, every slight tremor in our current relationship feels like the 9.0 earthquake from the last one. Until there are no such things as tremors—every conflict, big or small, becomes an earthquake indistinguishable from earthquakes of the past. And eventually, everyone learns to run and hide under their heavy furniture at the first sign of an earthquake. I have had to work hard to reach a place where I can feel these tremors and remind myself: This is quite possibly NOT an earthquake. I have had to work hard to recognize that just because the ground shakes, it does not mean the earth is about to fall apart. I have had to make up for decades of NOT imagining the beauty on the other side of repair just to feel the slightest hint of hope that such beauty does exist. It is my hope to help people understand that what feels like an earthquake may simply be a tremor. It is my hope to help people stop running from the earthquakes that have rocked their lives—to help them see that their past ruptures are not the greatest predictors of disaster in the here and now. It is my hope that by helping people imagine repairs that have maybe not had that repair kind of imagination, that they too can begin to build a life on the foundations of ruptures and not on the run from them. Because if I have learned anything in my long life, it is this: You never outrun your ruptures. They will always find you. And when they do, you will have a choice—keep running or imagine repair. I know it can be hard to imagine repair, but beauty often comes on the other side of hard things. I’ve shared this high school memory before.
Back then, like now, wars were raging around the world. And in the early 80s, there were murmurs about reinstating the draft. I remember friends who were almost giddy at the idea. They had this bring-it-on attitude, ready to go off and fight. I didn’t get it. That wasn’t my reaction. My reaction was Canada. And how fast I could get there. That memory stayed with me—not in a way that haunted me daily, but in a way that subtly shaped something inside me. I think that was the first time I came face to face with the possibility that I wasn’t brave. That somewhere inside me I had adopted coward as part of my identity. I don’t think that way anymore. Because I’ve come to understand that bravery doesn’t always look like running toward war—even as I recognize that doing so may be one of the bravest things a person can do. Sometimes, bravery looks much smaller. At least on the surface. Bravery is getting out of bed in the morning—soaking in the first breath of the day when you’d rather not breathe at all. You get up not because you want to, but because if you don’t, something in you will wither. Because you know there are people who need the pieces of you that you still have to offer, even when you don’t feel like you have what it takes to offer them. Bravery is getting up and being a good and loving dad to your kids when you've lost all belief you can ever be that good dad. You do it not because you feel some sudden reassurance toward that belief, but because you'd rather feel like an incapable dad than a missing dad. Bravery is getting up and writing and sharing the insides of your heart, not because you need to prove you can share them, but because you so deeply refuse to ever go back to the place where you had no idea how to share those insides at all. Bravery isn't proving to the world who you are and what you stand for, bravery is being unable to sleep living out any version of you that doesn't look like who you are and what you stand for. It’s taken me a long time to get here. It's taken a long time to get from being a high school kid completely unaware of who he was to being a man who knows exactly who he is. There are still many days I'm not brave enough to be that man, but when I am feeling those less than brave moments, I don't lean into a need to prove I am that man, I lean into a fear of dying my way back to the man I used to be. Be brave today. Not to prove who you are, but out of a fear of turning into someone you are not. 2/5/2025 0 Comments The Last Shall Be FirstThere’s a growing branch of 'Christian' thinking that suggests Jesus’ love follows a hierarchy—and that He commands us to do the same. A love that puts family first, then community, then country, and only after all that—the rest of the world.
Everyone is certainly free to embrace their own branch of 'Christianity'—because be sure—there are branches. Many of them. There are denominations. And within denominations, there are branches. Even within individual churches of the same denomination there will be wildly different takes on what it means to be 'Christian.' There are, in fact, so many different branches of 'Christianity' now that I hesitate to call myself a 'Christian'—given that no one could possibly know what I mean by that when I say it. And depending on the particular branch one might associate me with when I call myself that, they might find what I consider the most beautiful part of me—my love for Jesus—to be quite off-putting. I guess when it comes to love and hierarchies, in line with my particular beliefs—my particular branch—they start and end with a command to love God. Thousands of years ago, religious leaders—followers of a more legalistic branch of faith—pressed Jesus with a question: “What is the greatest commandment of all?” And the Jesus I love answered, The greatest commandment is to love God. And the second, by the way, is like that one—it is to love one another. Jesus would go on to describe what loving God and loving one another actually looks like. It looks like loving the least of His children. His definition of "least" being those who need love the most—His definition of "children" being all the world, not just the small subsets of our little worlds. In fact, it was Jesus who said, The first shall be last, and the last shall be first. Jesus’ love was never about hierarchy—it was about need. It was a command for those of us in positions more comfortable than others to seek out those who need comfort and provide it. Not as an afterthought once we’ve secured our own comfort, but as a mission. A mission we pursue far and wide, even—if not especially—at the expense of our own comfort. Many of Jesus' own disciples walked away from their families—not to abandon them, but to follow Jesus in making the least first. Jesus spent no time lecturing those disciples about the importance of staying behind to serve their families, their communities, or their countries. It was Jesus who once said, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple.” Was Jesus telling us to hate our families? To hate ourselves? No. But He was making one thing clear: never let your closest circles stand in the way of the kind of love I’ve commanded you to give. The last shall be first. Jesus seemed to be intensely serious about this. Mic drop serious. He once told His followers: “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” It is risky, I believe, to start drawing hierarchies in the sand when it comes to defining an order in which we love one another. Jesus' order was clear: last to first. No matter where those last are. Following our own orders—our own structures and rankings—it becomes dangerously easy to start calling waste what Jesus calls love. And love was never a suggestion from Jesus. It was a command. God looks down at us, with love, and sees no circles dividing us by importance or significance. No circles that divvy up His love or determine an order in which He distributes it. God sees only ONE circle: Us. And I will never be convinced He wants us to see it any other way: Us. I led a training for school counselors and social workers yesterday on emotional awareness and management. Me—the guy who, for most of his life, was completely unaware of his emotions or what emotions even were. Me—the guy who used alcohol and a host of other unhealthy avenues to cope with buried emotions that were unknowingly determined to eat me alive.
For many years, my life was a mess (not that it doesn’t still have plenty of messy moments). And for many years, God was working in the background of my mess, preparing me to be a minister of messes. I told the group about the many years I worked as a counselor for adolescents in a therapeutic wilderness program. I told them that, for the first year of that experience, I was the absolute worst counselor ever. And I do mean EVER. I told them it was because, in that first year, I stayed completely focused on the behaviors—the surface-level stuff—rather than the emotions beneath them. But those emotions? They told a much truer story of what these young people were struggling with than their behaviors ever could. After my presentation, a young woman approached me and thanked me for sharing that story. She said she’s working on becoming a counselor and doubts herself a lot, so it was encouraging to hear someone talk openly about struggling early on in their counseling path. That’s when I had to tell her—I have never been a "counselor." I have a business degree. But helpful counseling is ultimately about having the capacity to meet people in their messes. On the way home, I kept thinking about that. Sometimes it’s hard for me to believe that God is meeting me in my messes because I start expecting God’s presence to feel like everything all cleaned up. But then I wondered—does God even see anything as a mess? I mean, I look back on my life and see a great mess. But when the aftermath of that mess was me ministering into the mess of another one of God’s children—at a time when she seemed to need it most—did mess even cross God's mind? Maybe things feel so messy because we forget there are two sides to every mess: -The side we see. -The side where God is doing something we can’t yet see. And in the middle of a mess? It’s much easier to focus on the first than the second. But moments like yesterday remind me—ah, yes, God. Yesterday, or last year, or many decades ago, in the middle of what felt like a complete disaster, you were ministering me into becoming a minister of someone else’s mess. You were reminding me that behind the scenes of every mess is a God who is creating beauty. The fact that we don’t see or feel that? It’s not the story of a God who isn’t there. It’s the story of humans like me—humans who so easily lose sight of Him, who so easily lose trust in that truth when standing in the middle of the mess. God is always doing something in our messes. And that doesn’t always—or even often—look like a God with a broom and a dustpan. No, more often than not, it’s a God with a paintbrush—creating beauty from the mess. A beauty that may not show up on a canvas for many, many years—but that is how the ultimate Minister of Messes works. It’s a tough ask. Trust me, I know. But as much as you can, try not to let the mess you see on the canvas in front of you blind you to the beauty being painted on the canvas just on the other side of the mess. Sometimes that other side is slow in coming. But we don’t have to be slow in recognizing that it is, indeed, coming. 2/2/2025 0 Comments Take Up Your Folding ChairThe thing about complaining is that it's habit-forming. And the thing about a complaining habit? If you do it long enough, you can begin to feel like you're making a contribution when you're not.
Most people complain about things they want changed. Almost all chronic complaining changes nothing. Seth Godin says, "The best way to complain is to make things better." I think that's a great litmus test for our potential complaints—is this going to make something better? I also acknowledge that some people complain simply to complain, to let off steam, to signal belonging to a particular group, or maybe to hide from their own fears or concerns. I understand all of that. But I'm writing to folks who think complaining is a change agent. It is Black History Month. This month, we recognize brothers, sisters, and movements that built fights to make things better—fights that transcended the misconception that change can be won by complaining. I love the story of Shirley Chisholm, born in 1924 to immigrant parents from Barbados and Guyana. Chisholm didn't just complain about the barriers she faced as a Black woman in America—she shattered them. In 1964, after years of deep community service in her Brooklyn neighborhood, Chisholm was elected to the New York State Assembly, becoming only the second African American woman to serve in that capacity. Then, in 1968, she became the first Black woman elected to the U.S. Congress. Chisholm gained a reputation for her boldness (which is maybe the opposite of complaining) and was famously quoted as saying, “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.” Not to be limited by where she could take that folding chair, in 1972, Chisholm became the first Black woman to run for a major party's presidential nomination. Her campaign slogan? Unbought and Unbossed. Chisholm faced what felt like unbeatable odds in her run for the nomination. She had no support from white politicians and very little from black male leaders. Yet—she ran anyway. She didn’t complain about being an underdog. She just kept showing up with her folding chair. Chisholm didn’t win the nomination, but she wasn’t done. She went on to finish seven terms in Congress before retiring in 1983. From there, she became a professor at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, teaching politics and women’s studies. She mentored young students, especially women and people of color, encouraging them to engage in politics and public service. Later in life, Chisholm reflected, “I want to be remembered as a woman who dared to be a catalyst for change.” There is nothing daring about complaining. It takes far more energy than boldness to complain—and that energy is often an energy-suck for people looking for spaces to fuel their courage to fight and make things better. There will always be reasons to believe there is no seat at the table for us. There will always be reasons and opportunities to complain about that. Or—we can see it as the best reason to pick up a folding chair. Fixing things never happens by complaining that things are broken. Fixing things always happens when people like Shirley Chisholm set aside complaining in favor of making something better. For Chisholm, that change started in her Brooklyn neighborhood as a young black woman and ended with her being posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom a decade after her death. Unbought. Unbossed. Most marriages-and meaningful relationships in general-don't suddenly fall apart. It is most often a series of little breaks between two people who have no idea how to repair little breaks along the way toward one giant explosion. The mistake in the breakup is to believe the relationship blew up in the explosion and not in the little breaks along the way.
I find it interesting that when two people get married they are often asked if they will take each other for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health - but what I've never heard anyone ask is do you even know how to do worse or poorer or sickness? In a wedding ceremony, two people are never asked, do you have any idea how to fix this when it starts falling apart, because it indeed WILL start to fall apart? No, two people are asked to promise to hold something together that in all likelihood they have no practice or experience or witness to what it means to hold something together slowly falling apart. They make a promise in a moment that feels like beauty that can often become a promise held over the heads of a connection that has begun to feel more like hell. Dr. Curt Thompson says, "repairing ruptures is the way we create beauty and goodness in the world every bit as much as the way in which we create beauty in those places where it's easy to do." Thompson is saying that learning to repair small and big breaks isn’t just about preserving a promise—it’s about deepening and expanding beauty itself. In relationships, we often assume that conflict or distance is a sign of weakness or failure, but secure relationships aren’t those without rupture; they are the ones where repair happens consistently. Culturally, we celebrate love in its initial beauty—romance, friendship, connection—but we don’t talk enough about how love is just as much (if not more) about staying at the table when things get hard, when leaving feels easier, and when everything in you wants to walk away. We don't talk enough about love as owning our part, seeking understanding, and doing the slow, sometimes painful, work of rebuilding. I will admit, I was never good at the slow, sometimes painful, work of rebuilding. How could I have been? Most of the relationships in my life during the critical periods when I was learning about relationships looked far more like rupture than repair. It wasn't until after my marriage had completely fallen apart several years ago that I first heard about the kind of repair I'm writing about here. I don't know how it is, really, that when it comes to relationships we don't spend much time talking about rupture and repair. The way we build stronger brains is when neurons get disconnected and then reconnect with stronger signals. Our muscles grow when fibers tear and then rebuild stronger. Winter comes along in order to build a stronger spring. So much of life is about falling apart and coming back stronger. Yet, when it comes to relationships, we often simply rely on the promise of happily ever after. You know, Jesus came to earth because there was a rupture between God and us. Jesus died a brutal death on a cross to demonstrate there was no measure too painful for him to take to repair that rupture. Maybe we learned the lesson on that cross that repair is important and that God is always willing and quite anxious to repair our relationship with him. But maybe we overlooked an important part of that lesson, the part where God was telling us that the best way we can practice repairing our relationship with Him is to get good at repairing our relationships with one another. Repair not because God wants to prevent something beautiful between us from falling apart, but because repair is the foundation on which many of the strongest and most beautiful things are built. I live a life that is ruptured in many ways. I live in a world that is rupturing all around me, it seems. It all feels so challenging to many. I wonder if that's because we are so prone to see and feel rupture as a sign things are falling apart and not as an invitation to repair. I understand that. Many of us are much more experienced at rupture than repair. But I also know, all the way to death on the cross, repair is always worth fighting for. Rupture feels like the end. Repair is the promise that nothing ever is. Jesus often spoke in parables. He did so because he longed to reach people's hearts more than people's minds. Our hearts best connect at the intersection of each other's stories.
I've been playing around lately with turning some of my 3,000 articles into parables. Stories reach the heart sometimes in ways mere articles cannot. And my desire, like Jesus, is to reach hearts. With that said, I have turned an article I wrote last year into a story I want to share today. I'll link the original article in the comments. I'd love to know your thoughts. Stories always resonate with me, so this was fun to do. *** I sat on the edge of my chair, fingers gripping the neck of my guitar, pressing into the same old chords I had played a thousand times before. The wood was worn, the strings stretched thin, but it still felt like home. Safe. Predictable. Mr. Ellis sat across from me, listening, his fingers tapping on the music stand in front of him. When I finished the song, I let the last note hang in the air, waiting for his usual nod of approval. But today, he just sighed. "You play that well, Liam," he said, tilting his head. "But why do you never play anything new?" I shrugged, looking down at my guitar. "These are the songs I know." Mr. Ellis leaned forward. "I know. But are they still your songs?" His words caught me off guard. I frowned. "What do you mean?" He stood and walked to the shelf, pulling out a crisp piece of sheet music. He placed it in front of me. "Try this." I barely glanced at it before shaking my head. "I can’t play that." "You haven’t even tried." I sighed, feeling the pressure mount in my chest. "I just… I don’t know it. And I don’t want to mess up." Mr. Ellis watched me for a moment before speaking. "Keith, do you love music?" "Of course." "Then tell me this—when was the last time you felt something when you played?" I opened my mouth to answer but hesitated. I thought back to all the times I sat in this room, playing the same songs over and over. I told myself it was because I loved them, but now that I thought about it… maybe it was something else. A habit. A routine. Something I could control. Mr. Ellis nodded, as if he could see the wheels turning in my head. "I think, somewhere along the way, you stopped playing for the love of music and started playing for the safety of what you already know." I swallowed hard. "These songs… they remind me of when I started. Of when my grandfather gave me this guitar. Of when music felt… easier." Mr. Ellis softened. "I get that. But music isn’t meant to stay the same. It grows with you. And if you keep playing the songs of the past, you might never hear the music that’s waiting for you now." I stared down at my guitar, my fingers thoughtlessly tracing the strings. "Just try," Mr. Ellis said, tapping the new sheet music. "Not because you have to. But because maybe, just maybe, there’s a new song inside of you that’s been waiting to be played." I hesitated, then slowly set my fingers on the frets. I strummed once. The chord was unfamiliar, a little shaky, but there was something about it—something alive. And for the first time in a long time, I played not from memory, but from possibility. *Story is based on the following article written in 2024: https://www.rkcwrites.com/rkc-blogs/dont-let-the-emotions-of-your-past-write-the-songs-of-your-future 1/29/2025 0 Comments Picking The Right FightsThousands of my friends and colleagues across the state and country woke up yesterday morning having had their livelihoods threatened while they slept. A late-night executive order was issued from the office of the president that paused all federal funding that pays our salaries and supports the work we do for our youth, families, and communities.
The memo gave almost zero details as to what the pause would entail; even by the end of the day yesterday, none of us had been given any assurances that our jobs—or our opportunity to serve—were safe. The memo simply stated that funding would be paused while the administration assessed how the money was being spent. I believe that's a good idea. Everyone in leadership at that level has a right—a responsibility—to assess how the money they oversee is being spent. There is, however, a good and a bad way of going about that. I personally would probably say, "Let's take a look at how the money is being used and determine whether this is good stewardship going forward." A bully, however, would take your money first and then make you prove you are worthy of having it back—while making you live in fear as he decides, without you. This memo took the approach of the latter. Of course, this is all illegal. A judge put a temporary pause on the pause yesterday afternoon. But this is the fight this president wanted from the start. Now, my colleagues, our programs, and I have been reduced to pawns in his battle. In 2023, this president said he would fight the 1974 law that prevents a president from unilaterally sending out a memo in the middle of the night to immediately halt funding—funding that provides jobs, sustains communities, and supports families. Funding that enables a father to provide for his two teen sons. And now, he has sent that memo. And now, he has the fight he wanted to pick. Some have described the anxiety and chaos many of my colleagues are experiencing as a natural consequence of the memo. That may be true—but it was also premeditated. The emotions were the plan. They were not an unforeseen outcome. Because emotions fuel a fight. The outrage sparked by a memo only fuels the emotions of those who support it—emotions that serve to strengthen a man’s push for sole control over how every dollar is spent in this country. Sole control to take back money the moment he disagrees with how it's being used. Even money that, through constitutional processes, was already promised to the people and communities who depend on it. Yes, I am anxious this morning. Yes, it would have been easier to stay silent than to write this. But there is great power in having the details. There is even greater power in withholding them. And yet, the greatest power of all is in sharing them. Not opinions about a man—but the truth about how his choices impact the people I care deeply about. In the end, I may end up without a job. But that will not stand in the way of my fight. A fight I live to pick, even if imperfectly. A fight commissioned by my God—not by anyone who pretends to be God. A God who created diversity. A God who died on the cross for equity. A God who enters into the heart and soul of every human He has ever created with the same message: You are included. No memo can stop that commission. I am grateful to be surrounded by so many in this state and beyond who serve their communities with love, heart, passion, devotion—and fight. Theirs is the fight that makes me most emotional. A late-night memo may suggest you are expendable. But I have been in your communities. And your communities tell a very different story. Thank you. To me not a one of you will ever be expendable. 1/28/2025 0 Comments Look Forward, Not FarSteven Furtick says, "Look forward, not far."
I’m sure much of my depression in life has resulted from looking too far. And at times, it still does. It’s a cycle of sorts. You can clearly see where you want to go—the relationships you long for, the career achievements you hope to reach, the father you want your boys to see you as. You can see it all. But in seeing it, you also see every step it will take to get there. I think I’ve spent much of my life looking forward to my future while hiding from it at the same time. Maybe that’s a definition of depression—looking forward to a future with an intimidating path. Faith tells us it’s good to know where we’re going, but it calls us to be present where we are. Faith tells us it’s wise to have a destination, but we will never reach it if we spend our lives dreaming of arrival instead of living the day we are in. I have often resisted plans in my life. Plans can feel like a long, slow road to where I want to be right now. But that’s a me problem. Plans don’t produce anxiety. What produces anxiety is focusing on steps beyond today’s step. Worrying about next year’s steps instead of working on today’s step—that’s what creates anxiety. Jesus once said, “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” Sobriety feels impossible if I fixate on staying sober next week instead of embracing the sobriety of today. Healing from trauma feels overwhelming if I worry about emotions that might be triggered next year instead of holding onto the peace I can find today. Writing an entire article can feel daunting. Writing this sentence makes it feel far less so. Andy Stanley says, "Direction, not intention, determines destination." Sometimes we get caught up wondering—How much further do I have to go? But in reality, the better question might be: Am I going the right direction? Direction is determined by what we do with this moment. With this day. String enough days together in the right direction, and one day, tomorrow will start to look a lot like where you wanted to go. I have a hard time driving at night. It’s harder for me to see. So I slow down. I pay attention to the road right in front of me. That’s great advice for driving at night. And in that, there’s also some great advice for living during the day. Look forward. Not far. |
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
February 2025
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