 I exchanged messages with a friend after Rory McIlroy won The Masters golf tournament yesterday. I said, "Talk about resilience. So many times he could have let the tournament beat him."
Resilience can be an overused word. Mainly because people have so many different definitions of what resilience means. But to me, after delivering countless presentations on the subject, I've come to believe resilience is the capacity to navigate challenging situations in a healthy direction. That will look different from person to person, but it will always start with a belief that a healthy direction is possible. If one does not believe they can get where they want to go, they will never get there. Over the weekend, McIlroy faced many challenges that threatened his pursuit of a second consecutive Masters championship. Each time he stood up to the challenge. In a post-tournament interview, he said that when he fell three shots behind, he imagined the score he'd have to get to in order to win the tournament. He could have been imagining collapse, instead he was mapping out victory. That's not as easy as it sounds, this whole belief thing. Because our brains are wired to expect the worst. When we fall behind by three shots, our brains are wired to make us believe it's all over. Why? Why would our brains do that to us? Well, believe it or not, our brains are actually doing that FOR us. If we have brains that are always expecting the best, our brains will quit looking for the worst; they will quit looking for threats. Which goes against the brain's primary job of alerting us to the threats that might compromise our survival. This means the idea that there are 'naturally positive or optimistic people" is a myth. Rory McIlroy has had to spend countless hours forcing his brain to believe good was coming in the face of a setback to have the belief he had this past weekend in the midst of setbacks. WE ALL have to spend countless hours practicing this with our brains. If you have not started your day telling your brain this is going to be a great day, you've given your brain permission - even if unintentionally - to believe otherwise. And if at the end of the day you don't count all the ways your day went well, you'll go to sleep having given your brain permission to count the day as a defeat. We will all encounter challenges today. And I'll be the first to honor that not all challenges are created equal. Yet, the path to navigating them in the healthiest way possible does start at the same place. Belief. Belief is our friend. But it can feel like an enemy to our brains. So you may have to fight for your belief. But do it. Fight that fight. That's where resilience begins
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 Friday, at the conclusion of the second round of The Masters golf tournament, Rory McIlroy had a six shot lead. No one in the history of the tournament had ever had a lead so large after the second round.
Yesterday, at the conclusion of the third round, McIlroy found himself in a tie for the lead. The six shot cushion was all gone. In post-round conversations with the media, the tone felt like McIlroy was in a challenging spot. Granted, he didn't play well. And the big lead was gone. But, he was STILL in the lead going into the final round. A position any player in the tournament would have gladly signed up for when the tournament began. Life does that to us sometimes. It can be easy to forget the position we are standing in because we're no longer standing in the position we used to stand in. McIlroy wasn't just standing in the place of co-leader of the Masters golf tournament; he was at the same time standing in the place of the golfer who had a six shot lead just 24 hours earlier. Same reality. Different reference point. Completely different emotional experience. Different for the golfer and media and fans alike, where winning somehow felt like losing. Sometimes it's really hard to appreciate where you are when you are wrestling with where you should be. It's hard to look at the opportunity in front of you when you are wrestling with what might have just slipped away. For us mere humans, I think that's a tough wrestling match. For Rory McIlroy, well - I have a feeling he'll respond like a guy determined to become only the 4th golfer to win The Masters in consecutive years. Yes, he's trying to keep it from slipping away. But there are worse places to keep a golf tournament from slipping away from than at the top of the leaderboard. 4/11/2026 0 Comments Maybe It's Time To Take A Chance At 10:35 a.m. on December 17, 1903, Orville Wright piloted the first flight. The flight covered about 120 feet, lasted 12 seconds, and landed.
Man could suddenly fly. Then, on April 10, 2026, about 123 years later, Artemis II landed in the Pacific Ocean after flying for 10 days, traveling a total of 700,237 miles (about 30 million times farther), reaching speeds of 25,000 miles per hour. And it just blows my mind what can happen in 123 years. Like, I just don’t get it. My great-grandfather was born in 1899. So he was just a child when the Wright brothers were experimenting with flight on the coast of eastern North Carolina. As a child, was his imagination even capable of picturing humans flying 240,000 miles to the moon - circling it - and coming back home to tell everyone about it? And I’m not talking about the kind of progress made since the Old Testament of the Bible. I’m talking about the progress made since the birth of someone I knew and loved. And the Wright brothers - surely they were not thinking about rockets or orbits or the moon. They simply wanted to prove man could power an aircraft off the ground, into the air currents, and control it while it was there. After doing just that for 12 seconds, could they have imagined where that would one day take us? All of us. Could they have imagined this man - me - glued to a screen, watching a spacecraft from Artemis II splash into the Pacific Ocean at 8:07 p.m. - exactly the time mission control said it would - after completely leaving the atmosphere the Wright brothers simply dreamed of entering? But isn’t that the way possibility unfolds? Life is full of perceived limits. But once a limit is removed… well, look out. Anything is possible. Before the Wrights’ flight, flight belonged to birds and imagination. After, it belonged to us. And once something becomes possible, it rarely stays contained. It stretches. It evolves. It invites the next questions. If we can lift off the ground, how high can we go? If we can go higher, can we leave the atmosphere? If we can leave Earth, can we reach the moon? I wonder how many of us fail to reach the moons of our lives because we stop asking, Can I? Or maybe we ask… and then quickly answer our own question: No. That’s not possible. When my great-grandfather was a baby, man had not left the ground. A baby born yesterday was born into a world where man has traveled 240,000 miles away from it - and come back. Time didn’t make that possible. Curiosity did. Belief did. Taking a chance did. What do you believe is possible, but refuse to take a chance on? The Wright brothers believed man could fly. We’re still discovering just how far that belief could take us.  I had a virtual meeting with my friend Wayne recently. In the meeting, Wayne told me about an encouraging note he'd recently received from our mutual friend Jen. While telling me about it, he got up from his chair and pointed the camera he was using for our meeting at the note pinned on his wall.
There were a couple of pictures - and this note. I could not make out the words, but I could tell it wasn't long - a few short sentences at most. Yet, Wayne's emotions - his voice cracking and tears glazing over his eyes - made me feel like he was sharing thoughts on a beautiful novel he'd recently read. I had coffee with our friend Jen yesterday. I told her how much her note meant to Wayne. She was caught off guard by this. She told me, "It wasn't a long note at all. I was simply thanking him for doing such great work on a project we did together, and how much it meant to me." As I was talking to her, I wondered how many people underestimate the power we have to lift up another human being by seeing as normal acts of love that are not so normal at all. How often, I wonder, do we not know how much we have lifted another human being because we are not entirely aware of how much that human needed to be lifted. I think we have no idea sometimes how powerful it can be for the unseen to feel seen. For the undervalued to feel valued. For the forgotten to feel remembered. And don't we all have those days in our lives? Those days of feeling: Unseen. Undervalued. Forgotten. I watch and listen and read as we banter about solutions for all the giant problems currently overwhelming our world. And yet, in some worlds, the solution is quite simple. It's two or three sentences. Or maybe even two or three words. Thank you. I appreciate you. Your work is important. The world needs lifted. But maybe the lift isn't as heavy as it seems.  *re-written from an article I wrote in 2021....
While hiking on the Appalachian Trail with my sons yesterday, I told them about all the people who make the 2,200 mile hike from Georgia to Maine each year (or from Maine to Georgia). I told them when I was a program director for a wilderness program for at-risk kids years ago, I'd often hire young people who had just completed the trail. They'd used the experience to bridge a new college degree and their first job. Yesterday, we crossed paths with a dozen or so folks making this trek. Oddly enough, though, very few of them were young. In fact, almost all of them were middle aged and alone. I read this quote this morning: "A man is not old until regrets start to take the place of dreams." In reading that, I find myself wondering, how many of those hikers were out there avoiding old age? I'm wondering this, maybe, because I know that's been me the last several years. A guy aging and feeling regrets adding up and dreams slipping away. As we passed each hiker, I instinctively said good job. It's a habit I've picked up trail racing, where I'm sure each runner is out there competing against themselves and the terrain. The hikers said thank you in response, as if acknowledging they were out there taking on a challenge more than an afternoon hike. Each of them looked proud - as if totally aware they were either avoiding or evicting regrets from their lives. I was glad I had my 12 and 14 year old sons with me. I'm glad they got to witness people chasing dreams. As they asked questions about what it takes to complete the hike, I knew dreams were hatching in their own minds and hearts. Admittedly, with some fatherly desperation, I encouraged them to chase dreams. All of them. I suppose that's because I'm older now. I've begun to experience some of the wear and tear that comes with aging. The eyes fade. Bags and wrinkles start taking over the youthfulness of the face. Some days it's harder to remember things I couldn't possibly forget just yesterday. For sure, I've felt the torment of aging. But is there a greater torment of aging - a greater hazard - than regret? Thankfully, that is not an unavoidable hazard. Because: We are never too old to line up in Georgia and start hiking. We are never too old to write that book or run that race. We are never too old to start a new job or learn a new hobby. We are never too old to become who we want to become. The challenge is we never out-age the voices around us and the voices in our head that say we can no longer do the things we dream of doing. And when we listen to those voices, regrets replace those dreams. Yesterday was a step in helping my boys avoid one of the greatest hazards of old age. Yesterday was a healthy reminder for this old man that we're never too old to chase and protect our dreams. And maybe in the reminder, a chance to shake off one of the greatest torments of aging. Chasing dreams. Maybe that's the real fountain of youth.  Like many of you, I've been awed by the photos coming back to earth from Artemis II.
Images of earth from a distance that almost doesn’t feel real. Blues that look painted. Clouds that look placed. A planet that somehow looks whole. And I find myself staring at those images and feeling like images have never been more misleading? Because I live on the surface of those images. The surface where leaders threaten to eliminate the inhabitants of those images from existence. Where people in the images are divided over everything that is divisible. Where voices roll ever louder around the world of those images in tones less and less kind. And I keep coming back to the same question: How can something be so beautiful and so broken at the same time? Astronauts have talked about what happens when they see Earth from that distance. There’s actually a name for it. The “overview effect.” They don’t just see the earth differently. They feel it differently. From up there, there are no borders. No arguments. No sides. Just one planet. They know what’s happening down here. They know the conflict. The division. The hate. But from where they sit, they can’t see it. And maybe that’s not because it isn’t there. Maybe it’s because it isn’t all there is. Maybe beauty doesn’t disappear because brokenness exists. Maybe it just gets harder to see when we’re standing too close to it. I wonder sometimes if God sees us like that. Not unaware of the pain. Not dismissive of the brokenness. But not consumed by it either. Because what I tend to see are moments. The ENDLESS headlines - the sometimes true, often not - fragments of a much bigger story. And if I’m honest, the closer I stand to the headlines, the easier it is to believe that war and hate is the whole story. But what if it’s not? What if God sees the whole picture? Not just who we are in our worst moments, but who we are becoming. Not just what is breaking, but what is being rebuilt. Maybe while we see and feel the damage, God sees the design. Maybe God sees us through astronaut eyes; or do astronauts see us through the eyes of God? I’ve had moments in my own life where everything felt like it was falling apart. And maybe if someone had taken a snapshot of my life in those moments, that’s exactly what it would have looked like. Broken. But time has a way of creating distance. And distance has a way of revealing things we couldn’t see up close. Growth. Healing. Even beauty. Not in spite of what I went through, but somehow woven through it. And I wonder if that’s part of what God sees all the time. A perspective not limited by proximity. A vision not overwhelmed by what is right in front of him. A love that holds the broken and the beautiful at the same time. Because from where I stand this morning, this world is nothing but falling apart. But from where he sees, with his astronaut eyes, it might still be coming together.  By a very wide margin, the bible is considered the best selling book of all time. Estimates suggest between 5 and 7 billion copies have been printed and distributed over history. But here's the question: If Jesus hadn't walked out of the tomb, would anyone have bought the book at all?
If the story ended on Friday, would anyone have bought any of it? Because Friday wasn't a new story. It had been heard before. A man rises up. People begin to believe in him. Hope starts to gather around his words. And then the system crushes him. That’s not a story people build their lives around. That’s a story people learn from - be careful who you follow, be careful what you believe, be careful how much hope you allow yourself to feel - you learn and you move on. If the story of Jesus ends on a cross, it becomes a cautionary tale. A tragic one. A meaningful one, maybe. But not one that changes the world. And certainly not one that becomes the most distributed book in human history. No one risks everything for a story that ends in defeat. But something happened that made people stay with the Jesus story. Not just stay, but tell it. Carry it. Die for it. The same followers who scattered when Jesus was arrested suddenly became the ones who refused to stop talking about him. That part has always fascinated me. Because fear doesn’t turn into courage without something happening in between. People don’t go from hiding to proclaiming unless something shifts deep inside them. And whatever that shift was, it didn’t just change them. It changed the trajectory of a story. Because without resurrection, the cross is the end. But WITH resurrection, the cross is not the end. It’s the turning point. Everything that looked like failure gets redefined. Everything that felt final gets reopened. Everything that seemed lost is somehow still alive. And I don’t think this is just about theology. Or church. I think this is about us. Because if I’m honest, there have been parts of my life that felt like they ended on a Friday. Moments where something died. A relationship. A version of myself. A belief I thought would carry me further than it did. And in those moments, the hardest thing to hold onto is not faith in God. It’s faith that this isn’t the end of the story. Maybe that’s why this Jesus story has endured. Not just because of what it claims happened. But because of what it awakens in us. A deep, stubborn hope that endings are not always endings. Christianity didn’t spread because a man died. That story has been told a thousand times in a thousand different ways. Christianity spread because people believed death wasn’t the end of the story. And whether someone believes that literally, spiritually, or somewhere in between, I think we all understand the longing behind it. We don’t want our stories to end in defeat. No one would have bought a story that ends in death. But we will give our lives to a story that refuses to stay there. 4/3/2026 0 Comments Too Far Gone Never Arrives This story would be unbelievable to me if it didn't so closely mirror my own story.
Out of all the ways God could have orchestrated salvation, he scripts a criminal's final breaths within arms reach of Jesus. Not in a temple. Not after years of seeking. Not after cleaning himself up. But in the middle of his worst moment. We spend so much of our lives trying to get next to God, and yet, here is a criminal who could no longer move an inch - and God shows up on the cross right next to him. And this criminal, he brings so little to the table. No glamorous resume. No transformation story. No proof he will live life differently. Just a sentence: "Remember me." Luke: 23:39-43 39 One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” 40 But the other criminal rebuked him. “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence? 41 We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.” 42 Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” 43 Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” There are so many messages God wrote into this story of Good Friday. Certainly the grandest is Jesus giving his life for me. Jesus knew he was doing that. But this criminal - he had no idea he was also dying for me. Dying so that I might know it's never too late. That I am never too broken. That I am never ever too far gone. And maybe most importantly - I do not earn God's presence in my life; God just shows up. This criminal, executed on a cross, he was surely believing it was the end. And without notice, God shows up right next to him and declares no one is ever too close to the end for me to show them it is only the beginning. Some of the best options in our lives come when we believe we are completely out of options. Take that from someone who knows what it feels like to believe I've run out of options. If you are inclined to believe you are too far gone, Good Friday is a reminder that too far gone never comes. You may feel like you're carrying the burden of a cross alone; if so, I encourage you to look at the cross next to you. He is there. He dies knowing the end is just the beginning. He longs for you to know it too.  I led a 3-day experience last week helping people connect the experiences of their past with the reality of their present. The group became close. Connected.
At the end, I asked them why they thought our bonding had happened so powerfully. A woman sitting right in front of me said, “Keith, you lead with such humility. It makes it easy to bond.” It was some of the most meaningful feedback I’ve ever received. One, because there was a day when I would not have been recognized for humility. And two, because as a follower of Jesus Christ - a follower who longs to become more faithful every day - humility is at the core of that following. Today is Maundy Thursday for those who observe Holy Week. One of the historic moments remembered on this day is the Last Supper. In a week that mourns Christ dying on a cross and then celebrates his rising from the dead, a meaningful act from that dinner often gets overlooked. Jesus had gathered his friends for a meal. Not a fancy dinner. Just a group of people around a table who had been doing life together. It had been a long day. They were tired. Something to know about that time - people walked everywhere. The roads were dusty and dirty. And they wore sandals. So when you showed up for dinner, your feet were… not great. That’s why a prepared host would have someone there to wash your feet when you arrived. Not a glamorous job. More like a lowest-on-the-ladder type gig. But there was no one assigned to do it that night. So everyone just ignored it. They sat down with dirty feet, pretending everything was fine, because no one was about to volunteer. Then something happened. Jesus, the one they followed, the one they respected most, he stood up. No speech. No announcement. He took off his outer garment, grabbed a towel, poured water into a basin, and knelt down. You can imagine the confusion in the room. What is he doing? And then it became clear. He was washing their feet. One of them protested, “Hey, no - you’re not doing this for me.” And Jesus essentially responded, “If I don’t do this, you’re missing the point of everything I’ve been trying to show you.” For years, I missed the point of that story. I heard it. I respected it. But I didn’t see it. I didn’t understand what Jesus was trying to teach me about love. About leadership. About how we are meant to treat one another. I didn’t see how deeply he was trying to reach the most humble places in my heart. And maybe we’re still missing it. Because today, many of us are still sitting at tables with one another, pretending not to notice what needs to be done, waiting to see if someone else will go first. Before the cross. Before the empty tomb. Jesus got on his knees and washed feet. And maybe, as much as we need to remember the cross and the resurrection, we need to remember that. And go low enough to love the people right in front of us. 4/1/2026 0 Comments Just Keep Showing Up While watching March Madness games on my big screen Sunday, I had a smaller screen next to it broadcasting a relatively less glamorous sporting event.
The Houston Open golf tournament. Back in 2023, pro golfer Gary Woodland began to struggle. He would soon learn he had a lesion on the part of his brain that caused him to live in fear that he was dying. He would eventually have surgery, which involved a baseball-sized hole cut from the side of his head to remove much of the lesion. Woodland returned to the PGA tour in 2024 and appeared to be doing well. But a few weeks ago, he went public with the reality he's battling PTSD. He shared that he recently ran to a portable bathroom during a tournament to break down in tears when he was overcome with emotion. Doctors have told Woodland that the high stress environment of pro golf isn't the best environment for what he's battling. But for Woodland, competing on the PGA tour is a childhood dream come true. One he's not willing to let go of so easily. So he's kept showing up. He's put measures in place - has a team in his corner - that helps protect him from the people and situations that might unexpectedly spook him. But even so, showing up is a battle of its own. Each and every time. This past Sunday, Woodland had a one shot lead going into the final round. He hadn't won a tournament in seven years; he certainly hadn't won since the surgery and subsequent mental health battle. But there he was. Showing up. Battling. And ultimately - winning. I won't lie, watching Woodland's wife run on to the 18th green to hug him after he won, and then seeing him crying in her arms, that got me. Yes, UConn sinking that last second shot to beat Duke on the big screen was big time emotional, but it was a different kind of emotion. Because that golfer on the little screen looked a whole lot more like my life. And maybe yours. It looked like the temptation we all face each and every day to quit. To give up. To believe we will never defeat our demons. And maybe we won't. But that doesn't mean they get to defeat us. We get lost somedays I think - lost and wondering what on earth am I going to do now. Sunday, I was reminded that the best answers usually start with showing up. Showing up. Just keep showing up. |