​I watched a news story last night about a college student, blind since birth, doing color commentary for an NBA G league team in Delaware. This young man can't see a thing, but relays the action to fans listening in on the radio as if he doesn't miss a thing.

When asked how he does it, he said he listens. Listens to the direction the ball bounces up and down the court. Listens to which side of the rim it hits when a player misses a shot. Listens for the swish of a shot made. He said he listens to the refs and the players and the crowd reactions. He listens to it all.

He sees the game through the sounds it produces.

It got me wondering if maybe sometimes we should close our eyes more. Maybe there are times we are more equipped to see what's going on in the world around us when we can't actually see what's going on in the world around us.

Maybe we would be better off in some conversations closing our eyes, having nowhere to go other than toward the words of the person across from us who longs for nothing more than those words to be heard by the person across from them.

Maybe on a morning walk, stop and sit on a bench, close your eyes and listen to the world. I think there are times the world is trying to tell us things that we miss while trying to see all that we think the world is begging us to see.

I didn't finish watching this news piece and find myself longing to be blind. But I did find myself wondering if this young man, in his blindness, might at times see things in the world that I, full of sight, often miss.

I found myself wondering if the way to gain a better understanding of the world at times, if the way to better know the people around me, is to simply close my eyes and listen.

It's worked miracles in one young man's life.

Close your eyes....

​I am going to deeply miss our outgoing Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy.

No Surgeon General in the history of our country has done more to promote mental health wellness; no Surgeon general has done more to help us as a country come to understand that our mental and physical health are not even remotely different things.

In a closing letter, Murthy revealed that he spent the better part of his two terms trying to answer the question: "What are the deeper root causes of the pain and unhappiness I encounter so often across our country"? He went on to say that, "answering that question is urgent because the status quo is harming our physical and mental health, robbing us of our optimism, and contributing to division and polarization."

And the answer that Murthy came up with? He said, "After years of reflecting on the stories I have heard, delving into scientific data, and convening researchers, I have come to see there are three essential elements that fuel our fulfillment and well-being: relationships, service, and purpose.

I spent 4 hours talking to school counselors in Chesapeake yesterday about how best to support students who are coming to school with mental health challenges. Which, really, is almost all of our students to some degree these days. And the one thing I came away with, the one thing I ALWAYS come away with, is the importance our students place, the craving they have, for relationships.

A student coming to school with challenges almost always finds the less challenging path inside a relationship with someone at the school. Someone who sees value and purpose in them. Someone who often inspires in the student a desire to serve others and their community in beautiful ways they never would have discovered on their own.

And it was also not lost on me driving home, listening to Murthy talk about his prescription for the "pain and unhappiness" he so often encounters, that in the midst of sharing time with those counselors yesterday, in the midst of living out a purpose that is deeply fulfilling to me, in the midst of serving others in a way I find meaningful and they seem to as well, this man, me, who battles his fair share of bouts with pain and unhappiness, felt entirely happy.

I would not have traded that time yesterday for money or fame or power, the triad Murthy feels too many are pursuing with a false belief they will be the cure for their pain.

On his way out, Murthy suggests we have a choice. We can choose "the status quo marked by pain, disconnection and division, or a different path of health, happiness, and fulfillment. Choosing the latter will require rethinking what defines success and a good life. It will require building our lives around the time-tested triad of fulfillment, grounded in relationships, service, and purpose."

What I love most about Murthy's preferred choice is that it's not a choice we have to wait on the country to make, or even our neighbors or friends to make, it's one we can make each day.

The choice to connect with friends and family in a deeper and more consistent way. The choice to identify the work or activities in life that fulfill us and lean into those activities, even if they don't make us rich or famous or powerful. And the choice to serve our neighborhoods and our communities in ways that make our being there value added.

A lot of doctors throughout the ages have been credited with medical breakthroughs upon discovering various medicines and vaccinations and surgeries. Many of them indeed quite important.

But maybe this nation's doctor has discovered the biggest breakthrough of them all. That the healthiest prescription we can all write for our lives is to return to the understanding we all evolved from. The understanding that our lives are absolutely dependent on our interconnectedness, on our service with and for one another, and it's in that understanding where we will find our truest happiness and fulfillment.

Thank you for your service Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. It has truly impacted my life and so many of the lives I get to connect with. You were brave enough to call loneliness one of the greatest health risks of our times. I hope we will all be brave enough to connect with one another in ways that will eradicate that risk in the times to come.

​Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. (Genesis 2:8)

It's true, before God encouraged man to flourish, God created the space where he knew man would most be able to do so.

It is also true, especially of this man - me - that man has often turned to spaces outside the garden - spaces and choices and relationships - where he was never going to flourish but always believed he must surely be close to finding the answer.

I have spent much of my life running from the garden I was always meant to be planted in. For much of my life, I have avoided the God who has been lovingly declaring, I am right here, while I wildly ran to a God I have imagined must surely be somewhere over there.

God created the garden and said, come sit with me. Man ran off to a tree and said, surely there must be more.

It's a painful lesson to learn. Living a life believing there just has to be more, when the reality is more than I could ever have imagined has been waiting in the garden. Why would God create the garden before he ever created the man he longed to share it with? Turns out where we are planted has more influence on our ability to flourish than our desire to flourish does.

I have declared this year that my words are 'break through'. If we aren't careful, we can come to believe our breakthrough comes on the other side of a breakout.

Break out of this relationship I'm in.

Break out of this job I'm in.

Break out of this debt I'm in.

And certainly, breaking through does often require us to break out of some things. But I think often overlooked in our chase of the breakout is a simple question: am I planted in the right place?

Am I so busy running away that I no longer hear the one asking me to stay? Stay in the garden with him.

The righteous will flourish like a palm tree, they will grow like a cedar of Lebanon; planted in the house of the Lord, they will flourish in the courts of our God. (Psalm 92: 12-3)

Flourish, sometimes it's not about finding a new house, but flourishing in the one we were always meant to flourish in.

It takes some plants a long time to grow.

But no plant will ever grow planted in the wrong place. 

There's a scene in the television show Landman. A daughter is distraught over the breakup with a boyfriend her father had predicted would end in a breakup. The daughter asks her father, "why are you always right", to which he responds, "because I've spent my whole life being wrong and never forgetting any of the lessons I've learned."

Over the years in my work trying to prevent substance misuse, especially among our youth, I've had parents ask me, "how am I supposed to talk to my kids about the dangers of using substances when I used them myself?"

I am quick to tell them that many of the giant difficulties in my life can be tied to using substances as a teen and young adult, and that those are the stories I tell most when talking to my kids or any kids about using substances.

I no longer run from my imperfections, I embrace them. My imperfections don't take away from my credibility, in fact, they ARE my credibility.

I'm not sure why any parent would feel the need to hide their mistakes in life from their kids. I don't know why they would be afraid to talk openly about choices they made that resulted in outcomes more unfavorable than a different choice likely would have produced.

I think it's honoring the reality of life when we prepare our kids for mistakes more than we prepare them for perfection.

I think it's honoring the reality of life when we don't beat ourselves up for mistakes, no matter how old we are, and get immediately to the work of figuring out the lessons to be learned.

And shared.

Do we not realize that most of the folks advising us on what we should do in books and on podcasts and in TED Talks got to a place of advising us after years or decades of experiencing the results of doing the opposite of what they are now suggesting we should do?

Do we not realize the pastors populating our pulpits got their taking the routes of Moses and David and Abraham, the broken and often quite sinful paths? Pastors are often not preaching about the road to avoid as much as they are about the lessons learned on roads they should have avoided. (I do wish more would clarify that in their preaching).

When we come to know better and start doing better, we aren't hypocrites, we are wise.

When I suggest that my boys should do some things opposite of what I did, I'm not spreading hypocrisy, I'm offering them hard and often painfully earned wisdom.

We get to decide the value of our mistakes. They are burdens or gifts, and that is often determined by our ability to mine the lessons and gift them to others.

There is no such thing as a perfect human or a perfect parent, trying to convince anyone otherwise might be the biggest mistake of them all.

​I am sure when I got married I knew God wanted to be a part of my married life. When my marriage broke, I didn't feel nearly as sure that God wanted much to do with my broken marriage life.

I am sure when we had our boys, I knew God wanted to be a part of my journey as a dad. When I've had my moments of looking like a broken dad, and I have had a few, I haven't felt nearly as sure that God's wanted to be a part of my broken dad journey.

When I have committed to address unhealthy habits and addictions in my life, I have felt God right by my side saying we've got this. When I've fallen off the wagon is those pursuits, I have felt at times like God jumped off that wagon too.

Steven Furtick says we too often "put our faith in the faith and not in the God who gave us the faith."

When we build something, when we tackle something new or challenging in life, it's easy to have faith this is going to work. It's easy to believe this is going to be a blessing to me and to all. But when it starts to fail, and we start to lose our faith, it's possible what we had with us was actually confidence in self and not faith in God.

God isn't confined to building. God isn't limited to success and winning streaks. God also shows up in the breaking. Shoot, God's SPECIALTY might be showing up in the breaking.

I know sometimes it doesn't feel that way. Breaking feels like broken which can feel like NO ONE is here with me. But maybe that's because we're more prone to invite God into our building projects than we are into our projects that are falling apart.

Maybe we're more prone to invite God onto the wagon and not into the falling off.

I guess that's the point. God loves invitations. Maybe we feel more comfortable inviting God into the "let's do this" stories than we do inviting God into the "that just fell all apart" stories.

But that is an us thing, because God wants invited into it all. God doesn't see our lives as win or lose - God sees our lives as something to love and to hold and to treasure.

Building or breaking.

God is never an invitation we need to consider but one that serves us well to ALWAYS extend. No matter what.

If in this new year things start to feel like they aren't going your way, and you get tempted to believe God isn't there in the breaking, before you believe that, ask yourself, how strongly have I invited God into this breaking?

What's the old Field of Dreams line - if you build it they will come?

Well, that's God. He will come if you build it. But if it happens to break in the building, or if no one shows up once it's built, well God will come for that too.

Don't invite faith into your life. Invite the God who gave it to you.

​Boundaries.

I've probably heard that word the last half decade more than I'd heard it the previous five decades combined.

Boundaries.

I hear that term used so often these days and in so many different contexts, at times I'm not sure I even know what it means.

Boundaries.

There's a story in the bible. It's the very beginning of Jesus' public ministry. Jesus goes into the desert to fast for 40 days. While there, Satan shows up to pester him with temptations.

Satan tempts him to turn stones into bread to satisfy his intense hunger. Satan challenges Jesus to jump from a temple to show off to the people and prove that he's the son of God. Satan offers to give Jesus ruling power over the entire world if he'd simply bow down to him.

Jesus said no to all of these temptations.

The story is often portrayed as a lesson in avoiding temptations. But in reality, it might be a much more powerful lesson in setting boundaries. Maybe the story was never about what Jesus said 'no' to as much as it was about him protecting what he most wanted to say 'yes' to: His identity as the son of God.

One of the very first ways Jesus said yes to his identity as the son of God was by putting a boundary between him and the identity of Satan. Jesus spent a lot of time in the desert saying no; maybe no is the strongest boundary we can build to protect our yes.

I wonder sometimes if folks who have a lot of boundaries know more about what they're saying no to than the yes they are protecting?

I say no to a lot of things the first two hours of every morning as a way of protecting my ability to say yes to writing. Knowing my yes makes it much easier to say no to a lot of things at the start of my day.

A lot of people are starting the new year with a list of things they are saying no to. They are establishing boundaries. But I've discovered repeatedly in my life - too repeatedly - that I lack the capacity to stay strong in my no without fully knowing the yes I'm trying to protect with it.

Maybe you're wanting to say yes to a healthier you this year.

Maybe you're wanting to say yes to more meaningful relationships.

Maybe you're wanting to say yes to a new business opportunity.

I encourage you to memorize your yes. Pray over it, meditate over it, journal about it. Make that yes such an intense part of the you that you long to become that your no becomes your most treasured weapon to protect it. ​

And then, and only then, start putting up the boundaries, start saying no to the things that want to challenge you to abandon the you that you long to become.

Because in the end, our desire to say yes to who we truly long to be will always add a strength to our boundaries that willpower can ever provide.

Jesus didn't say no to Satan.

He said yes to all he'd come to earth to become.

Boundaries. 

​After Notre Dame beat Penn State Thursday night, an ESPN reporter recognized Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman as the first black college football coach to lead his team to a national championship game in football.

She asked him what that meant to him.

I thought it was a beautiful question to close her interview (contrary to some narratives she did NOT lead with this question). I also thought it was a very fitting question since only 14 of 134 major college football coaches are black, yet over 50% of the players are black. I love humans beating the odds stories, whatever their particular odds might be, and be not mistaken, this is Coach Freeman beating the odds.

I was a bit surprised yesterday to wake up and see videos of this interview all over the internet. Surprised, that is, by the way the video was being introduced, not that it was being shared. Like I said, to me it was a beautiful reflection of the human spirit.

Turns out not everyone saw it that way.

Many saw it as race-baiting. For a moment I thought, well, maybe I don't even know what race-baiting means. So I looked up the definition: "The unfair use of statements about race to try to influence the actions or attitudes of a particular group of people." (Britannica)

I went back and watched the video again.

And again.

And again, I walked away feeling like I was in the midst of something beautiful, not something unfair, and certainly not something inaccurate or fabricated. I get emotional watching my brothers and sisters beating the odds; Marcus Freeman was being celebrated for beating the odds.

Additionally, folks on the internet watching the video celebrated Coach Freeman for "not taking the bait." I guess when I don't see bait in a question I can't possibly begin to see "not taking the bait" in an answer. But if you watch the video, you can see the emotion and the honor Coach Freeman felt in the moment, the moment of being recognized as the first black head coach to EVER make it to the national championship game.

What Coach Freeman said was that he never wants an individual honor to take attention away from his team. And anyone who has watched Coach Freeman over the years knows this isn't him avoiding bait, this is who he is.

Call him a great father and he points to his wife.

Call him a great coach and he points to his assistance coaches.

Tell him Notre Dame has been a great college football story and he's going to point to his team. (Quarterback Riley Leonard recently called him out in a press conference for not taking enough credit for the team's success.)

Coach Freeman is one of the greatest examples of humility I've ever witnessed. But look in his eyes when asked the question. Look at his face. He was moved by what he'd accomplished as a black man.

Freeman not taking the microphone and making a speech about race wasn't Marcus Freeman "not taking the bait" - it was Marcus Freeman doing what Marcus Freeman does - sharing the glory of his personal achievement with his team.

I did not and can not see this reporter's question as a means of dividing us. To me there is no more beautiful path to unity than being invited to celebrate each other's achievements. Even achievements that are associated with one's individual race.

Freeman has said this about the honor in a more private setting, "It's a reminder that you are a representative for many others and many of our players who look the same way I do. You know, your color shouldn't matter, and the evidence of your work should, but it takes everybody."

Over 50% of division college football players are black. Only 11% of their coaches look like them. Many players don't have coaches that look like them.

Color shouldn't matter, it's clear to some degree it still does. To change that, as coach Freeman pointed out, it takes all of us.

So, I celebrate. As a huge Notre Dame fan, as a huge Marcus Freeman fan, but mostly, as a fan of human goodness, I celebrate Marcus Freeman going to the national championship game as the first black head coach.

I pray that in my lifetime this reporter's question will be rendered irrelevant. But for now, it's a completely relevant question. I celebrate her for asking it.

And speaking of beating the odds. It's been 35 years since Notre Dame won the national championship in football. Please, Coach Freeman, help us beat those odds next !!!!

​We sat there, side by side, and watched him kick the ball. The ball initially headed right - (insert panic) - then curved back in and soared through the two uprights.

Without even a look at one another we clapped one single boisterous clap. A shared sigh of relief that felt a lot like celebration. Our claps were so synchronized it was as if we'd been practicing that clap for 18 years.

In my dreams, I supposed we had been.

When you find out you're going to have a baby boy, your wildest dreams do indeed go to places like sitting together one day, watching Notre Dame play in one of the biggest football games of your lifetime, that baby boy beside you, now grown into a teen who loves your team as much as you do.

It is actually no longer your team but OUR team.

You imagine that last second kick to win the game, sending your beloved Fighting Irish to the National Championship game.

You imagine that late night moment, much later than any other moment you would even consider staying up past midnight for, as magic.

As pure joy.

What you don't imagine is you'll be watching it in a small one bedroom apartment.

What you don't imagine is that you're teen son will be visiting you and not living with you.

What you don't imagine is how much love will fall apart in your life on the way to building this shared love for a team.

And as that ball sails through the uprights, as the crowd roars and the players celebrate, as your shared clap echoes through your tiny home, you realize that dreams come true don't really care about the circumstances you experienced along the way.

Dreams come true are going to deliver the joy they were always dreamed to deliver. Turns out our dreams can survive challenging circumstances.

Some may read this and think, wow, that's a bit much for a simple college football game.

Maybe.

But that moment, that shared clap, it had as much to do with healing as it had to do with a football game.

Maybe God allows us to have dreams over our babies that he knows will one day come true at just the right time. A reminder that we have a lot more victories in front of us no matter how heavy the losses might feel behind us.

Some folks say it's just sports.

I get that, but it usually never is. 

​Many people in my community have been without water the last couple of days. It's frustrated me, but likely not for the reasons you might assume.

I follow the Hanover County Government social media pages. It's where I used to live and where my boys still attend school. So I have peeked in with some interest as they've updated the community the last couple of days on the status of the water outage.

It has been difficult viewing to say the least. None of that difficulty has been associated with the leaders doing the updating.

The kindest sentiment I can use to describe most of those following along and commenting during those updates has been frustrated. I get it, being without water for a couple of days presents challenges to the lives of people used to having water. But I would also describe the comments of no small number of those commenters with less kind sentiments, like rude and irrational and at times mean.

Comments calling for people's jobs. Comments ridiculing the way the leaders were dressed. Comments challenging the intelligence of our leaders. Comments suggesting the community had been betrayed. All over a water outage that everyone knows will be very short-lived.

Short-lived, that is, at least by comparison.

I have been to Honduras twice in the last 5 years. Not one person in Hanover County will ever know water outage like the entire country of Honduras knows on a regular basis. And the water they have is always subject to a water boil advisory. One of the main messages we heard before traveling there was do NOT drink the water.

And flushing toilets and showers? Well those are luxuries to them like having a private jet would be to me.

So yes, it has been very difficult for me to follow along and watch people berate people who are working hard to solve a 48 hour water outage - people who will not QUIT working hard until it's resolved - while knowing that so few people in this world are giving a second thought to the nearly 2 billion people around the world living without water EVERY SINGLE DAY.

People who at times get frustrated by their living conditions and march toward our southern borders and get their own form of berated, called freeloaders and worst. When actually, they are just people frustrated living every day without water headed to a place they've heard about where people turn knobs and access endless supplies of it daily.

And flush toilets.

I wonder, when the water comes back on, and it will - we all get to live sure of that - will anyone repurpose the frustration they've experienced being without water for 48 hours and feel some of it for the people who've lived their whole lives without it?

That is a valuable and often overlooked inherent purpose of emotions. We get to feel certain things as a way of learning how others feel in similar situations. Many people now know firsthand how hard life is without water; I've heard and seen them relentlessly express that the last two days. But will that make it any harder for them to sleep knowing that's a daily feeling for nearly 2 billion people (25% of the world)?

My hope is the answer will be yes. If that is you, I encourage you to read the book, Thirst, by Scott Harrison. Harrison is the founder of charity: water.

If you're interested in learning more about his non-profit and maybe supporting it, you can visit:

www.charitywater.org

It might be a nice place to hang out for a bit today and take a break from the county government sites, for our water will soon return.

That's a given.

A given that is not given to billions of our brothers and sisters around the world.

​Do you have any scenes in your life people use to tell the whole story of your life?

I do.

Divorce is certainly one of them.

There are people who didn't spend one second inside my 22 year marriage, yet somehow feel like they know my marriage story based on watching my divorce scene.

I have also made some poor choices throughout my life fueled by addictions and unhealthy habits. These are scenes I wish didn't exist but scenes I also know aren't the whole story. A lot of habits and addictions are born in unresolved pain, not in some wild desire to adopt addictions and unhealthy habits. Pain is often the unknown scenes that make addiction stories incomplete.

I always think of Andy Dufresne in the movie Shawshank Redemption. Dufresne is convicted of murdering his wife and her lover, and portrayed as cold and emotionless during the trial. Most people assumed he was guilty because of that portrayal.

But the movie goes on to show us the real Andy Dufresne. It shows us we didn't know the real Andy; we had no idea the stories that were written before the courtroom portray and those that would be written after that scene so harshly judged.

I think it's also reasonable to note that not only do outsiders judge our whole stories based on individual scenes, but we often do that to ourselves.

We make decisions or choices that leave us feeling guilt or shame, and we fail to give ourselves grace for the scenes that contributed to these choices, and at the same time fail to recognize that there are more scenes to be written in the story that currently feels like guilt and shame.

The story is never over.

Think of Peter.

Peter, one of Jesus’ closest disciples, denies Jesus three times during His trial, even swearing that he doesn’t know Him. It's a heartbreaking scene, one of Jesus' most loyal followers, best friends, betraying him out of fear.

Yet, one of the first things Jesus does after he rises from the dead is repair this bond between him and Peter, and then Peter would go on to become one of the boldest leaders of the early church.

Jesus knew the betrayal scenes in Peter's story, but what Jesus leaned into more than those scenes was Peter's WHOLE story. He knew who Peter was before those betrayal scenes, and he knew who he needed Peter to become after those scenes.

There are people in your life who don't know your whole story. There are days YOU don't fully recognize and give grace to your whole story.

But God knows it. In every single moment, and in ever single scene of your life, God knows the whole story.

And the beautiful thing is, our God, unlike humans, does not get stuck on scenes. Our God doesn't hold against us a bad moment or day or month or year. Our God is too busy adding grace to the scenes we've lived and writing the story of our scenes to come to spend any time judging or wrestling with us over any particular scene in our lives.

It's a beautiful and healing thing to know that when we are judged by others or judged by ourselves over a particular scene, that it was just that - a scene.

Maybe others want to call that scene the whole story. Maybe there are days even you call it so.

But God never does.

To God a scene is always a scene.

Move on, he's nudging us.

Move on from the scene and keep living the story God is trying to write.