I've learned lately that sometimes being stuck is disguised by living in a rhythm, a nice orderly pattern. Order can feel safe. It's predictable. It requires little of me other than repeat.
Repeat yesterday and the day before that and the day before that. Only, the problem is, our days are not meant to be replicated. Life is not order, it is chaos. And so if we see chaos as the enemy of our orderly lives - of our safety - we are likely to live under the pressure of always trying to restore order. But what if the chaos of a new day isn't a call for order, but an invitation to discover new possibilities. If you think about it, today is a surprise party. We have no idea who might be showing up to our party. What gifts they might be bringing. What ideas or inspiration or hope they might bring into our lives. The question is, do we see them as uninvited guests - or possibilities? If we see them as unvitied guests, it's likely that we won't show up to our party. We'll go into hiding. We'll retreat to our patterns and order and familiarity. If we see them as possibilities, well - maybe we jump right in the middle of them and see if we can yell surprise as loud as they do. Maybe we treat them with curiosity instead of defensiveness. Who knows, maybe in the middle of them is our next breakthrough. Our next idea to write or sing or draw about. Maybe in the middle of them is a meaningful connection. Today is Monday. Let me be the first to yell SURPRISE!! I don't know who the guests will be at your party today, but see them as possibilities. See them as an opportunity to ask yourself, am I stuck? Am I on repeat? If so, join the party. Be bold. See the chaos as a chance to re-order, not restore order....
0 Comments
If you've been hanging out on social media the last several days, you've likely seen a wave of sentiments from people who are praying for the people of Ukraine.
And maybe, like me, you've wondered - is anyone praying for the people of Russia? I mean, let's be real, the man who is trying to confiscate an entire country has long held in confiscation his own country. The brutal measures he's taking to claim ownership of another country, he has long used to retain ownership of his own country. It's easy to break a war down to one side against another. It's easy to distribute prayers that way. But both sides have stories. Histories. And none of those histories include people who chose to be born into the situations they've been born into any more than your history or my history includes that choice. Many of us are very privileged to be in a space of choosing who to pray for. The people in Ukraine AND Russia - they are all in a space today of desperately needing every prayer we might choose to offer on their behalves. Prayer is an act of love. Jesus said we are to love everyone. He offered exactly zero exceptions to that command. So I suspect he is not only receiving, but longing to hear and join us in prayer for every single person in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia. I find comfort in that. Because there are days when I could be labeled more worthy of prayer than others. There are days I could be labeled the bad guy easier than the good guy. Yet, God's longing for me has only one label: unconditional. Which is how I think God wants us to pray for others: unconditional. Father God, for every person in the Ukraine and Russia conflict who knows and feels your presence, may they find strength and feel your love and our love in that presence today more than ever. For every person who has never felt or known your presence, will you help them discover it? They need you. For every person who knows you and has turned their back on you - like I surely have from time to time - draw them back to you. Back to you where they will find wisdom and love to guide their next steps. Thank you God. Thank you for being the only source of unconditional love we have. Thank you for seeing there are not sides to our conflicts, but stories. Thank you for always being willing to meet us where we are in our stories. With love. Unconditional. Amen. I had a conversation with a friend about my two sons this week. I told him I have one son who wants to know all the rules because that's his path to pleasing people. If I adhere to the boundaries people set for me, those people will not be angry with me. And maybe even they'll like me.
He's never actually said that, but I see him living it. Then I have another son. He also wants to know all the rules. But he wants to know them because he believes on the other side of those rules is all the fun stuff in life - the adventure. He's never actually said that, but I see him living it. It's funny - if someone asked me which son do you worry about most in terms of long-term wellness - it would be the rule follower and not the rule ignorer. Oh, I believe they are both on a good path. They are good boys and good can overcome a lot. But I've discovered that rules and boundaries can become a burden in life, they can become a relentless pressure, they can start sucking the ever living life out of you. You can wake up one day perfectly located in the coral that's been built for you. Yet, inside that coral, you are dead. I think we have rules and boundaries and corals because we believe they are good guidance. They aren't. The rules and boundaries that fit here don't fit over there. The rules and boundaries that apply to this stage of life don't apply to the next one. And, some rules and boundaries that were true 20 years ago, they aren't even true today. If your direction in life depends on keeping up with the latest rules, that can become an exhausting life. Listen, I know we need some rules and boundaries to keep us safe and alive. They have their place. But more than rules and boundaries in life, I've come to believe what one needs to be fully alive is character and curiosity. Too often, our rules and boundaries are in place to impose character and not to encourage us to adopt our own. Those same rules and boundaries often stifle curiosity, not encourage it. Rules and boundaries often do the thinking for us at the expense of us learning how to think for ourselves. More and more, with both boys, I challenge them to ask what is possible, not what are the rules. More and more, I challenge them to ask what is the best thing I can do here, not what is the right thing. Best reflects on love. Right often reflects on the rules. Best reflects on who I am and who I want to become. Right often refects on who someone else thinks or even demands I should be. I think we should all go into the world today and do the very best thing. Sometimes that looks like the rules. Sometimes it doesn't. Dr. Alan Shore studies the brain. And he says joy is the feeling we get in the presence of someone who is obviously happy to be with us. For him, this isn't a theory. It's science. It's our biology.
As babies, our sense of attachment is built on someone showing up to comfort us with a smile. As a baby, our distress turns to joy in that moment. It's our earliest definition of love. A definition that gets wired into our brains. And maybe, in those earliest moments, the definitions of love and joy become very similar. I suppose we could think that's a baby thing. That we evolve to some different and more complicated definition of joy. Of love. Yesterday, I met my boss for coffee. I hadn't seen her in person in months. She sat down at a small table where I was sitting. She smiled this giant smile. And she said, "I am so happy to see you." I could see it on her face. She meant it. The joy I felt told me it was so. I then told her about this definition of joy I'd been reading up on. I told her I believed that definition more than ever. One of my favorite scriptures in the bible - scriptures beautifully poured out recently in the song "The Blessing" - say this in the book of Numbers: The Lord bless you and keep you; The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; The Lord turn his face to you and give you peace. I do wonder these days if our path to finding joy in the face of God is finding joy in the faces of one another. And I worry - if that is so - is the reason so many people are living lives low on joy tied to our searches for joy outside of faces? Is it tied to the reality that our faces have become largely hidden from one another? And no - that is not a statement on a pandemic and masks. Our faces have been hidden from one another long before masks came along. Masks have just become a convenient place to blame for hidden instead of accepting responsibility for hidden. Our faces have been hidden from one another as we stare at screens. They've been hidden from one another as we bury our heads in our work. They've been hidden from one another as we race from one thing to another without ever stopping to smile at one another. Smiles do require stopping. Stillness. We are too often no longer fans of either. I'm afraid we've abandoned the faces we were wired to find joy in because we believe there must be some greater source of joy out there. That is a belief that goes against our biology. And I believe - against our creation. It's a belief I felt in its truest form meeting with my boss yesterday, when I received a shot of joy like I haven't experience in quite some time. I think many of us long for more joy in our lives. I think we long to spread it. Well there's a simple thing we can do today to promote both. We can stop someone. And smile. And let our face shine upon them. We can let them know this smile is dedicated to you. This smile is quite simply because I'm happy to be with you. I promise you - you will have increased the joy in the world. It is science. It is faith. It is love. Several weeks ago, I sat in a church service. Part of the message that day troubled me. A day later- long after I left the building - it was still troubling me. So I emailed the pastor and expressed my concern.
I'm not a regular at this church. I'm just a sinner roaming in off the streets. So when the pastor's response was to invite me to have coffee with him, it caught me off guard. At the heart of what I expressed to the pastor was my fear that the bigger church - not just his church - is addressing 'sin' as the wrong choices bad people make and not the choices good people make to cope with voids and hurts in their lives. That's not my attempt to make excuses for good people, it's an attempt to help us get better at helping our brothers and sisters fill voids and cure hurts. The grand consequence of that bad people approach - in my opinion - we are trying to force a relationship with God that relies on obedience instead of inviting the church to meet one another in their hurts. Because it's there - in our shared pain - that I believe we will ultimately discover the truest image of God. The truest form of relationship. With God - with one another. They are one in the same. The pastor listened to me. I have incredible respect for someone whose response to a stranger's email is let's have coffee. I have even more respect for a pastor who says, at the heart of our church mission is connecting one another. So I want to gather perspectives on how we can do it better. Yesterday, I had lunch with this pastor. Joining us this time was a pastor on staff who leads efforts to build small life groups in the church. And for an hour and a half, we talked about relationships. Inside the church and out. No one in this conversation was put in a position of saying, you are right. Because no one came to the conversation wanting to prove anything, but to get better at connecting one another in a way that resembles the way God wants to be connected to us. I walked away from lunch with a full heart. I walked away with incredible respect for two local pastors. And I walked away knowing the words I heard in a message several weeks ago were not disturbing words at all, they were an invitation from God. That was God dialing my number and begging me to pick up the phone. His invitations are everywhere. Just because we don't pick up the phone doesn't mean he isn't calling. Because He is. It's too easy to write off the things we hear that disturb us as wrong, when it's possible they are an invitation. An invitation to be curious about one another. A curiosity that leads us to truly understand God in a way we could never understand him in one Sunday message. If you hear something disturbing today, it may not be an invitation to lash out, but to enter in... I'm pretty sure when I write these articles, they often have spelling and grammar mistakes. And I need to tell you, just so long as you understand what I'm trying to say - or even mostly understand it - I don't care about those mistakes.
I haven't always been that way when it came to my writing. I used to write a paragraph. Go back and check it for mistakes. Repeat. Repeat. It was edit as I go writing. Today, I just write. These thoughts come upon my heart and enter my mind and my passion becomes getting them out. I follow the flow of the thoughts; I don't make my thoughts sit and patiently wait on my obsession with writing rules. It's made all the difference. Today I'm much better at sharing my thoughts and feelings - even if many days it doesn't follow all the rules. Running has been the same. I used to chart and graph my miles and speed and heartrate and elevation gains and losses. I did that mostly so I could compare it to other people - the kind of runners I wanted to become. Then one day it hit me - much like writing - I don't want to be another runner. I just want to be a runner. The act of running is what brought me fulfillment - not the data that described my run. I still glance at my watch when I run. But it's out of curiosity and not an obsession with what it is saying to me. I think there are times when we let the details of life stand in the way of our living it. Some days we need to say screw the miserable storyline I'm trying to live out - whether out of expectations or rules or data - and go create the storyline our heart and soul is longing to live. There's a lot of life that gets missed when we start trying to memorize the script - when we over-analyze it and get caught up in the details of it. When we lose countless nights of sleep over it. Because frankly, I've discovered - our best life is often found in writing a script, not trying to follow one. It's Monday. Throw some scripts away this week. And then - write one. 2/20/2022 0 Comments listening is the result"But the listening is the result...."
If God could grant me a superpower I'd wan't to be able to get the whole world to adopt that message. Listening is the result. As I present and speak and train on the power of relationships, I often say very few people get to experience that power because we're not really good at them. Most audiences nod together in agreement. At the heart of our relational incompetency is we aren't great listeners. And at the heart of that, I think, is two things. One - I think we get so caught up in our own worlds that we lose curiosity about someone else's world. Without curiosity there is no need for listening. And two - I think we grossly underestimate the power in listening. We can become so driven to just do something that listening can feel inadequate. We can skip the step of curiosity and jump right to advising and counseling - or worse - judging. Maybe if we truly understood how many people long to say "I feel heard" - we'd get more committed to listening. Maybe if we ever felt the connection that comes with silently sitting next to someone as they release words and emotions long trapped and hidden, we'd be more compelled to receive connection with our ears than trying to force it with our mouths. I think sometimes we see listening as a step that stands in the way of - it delays - the chance to get to work. The reality is, listening often IS the work. Listening often is the first and the last step. Listening IS the result. I interviewed my friend Jenny Baker this week. We talked almost exclusively about relationships. She said some powerful things in this discussion, but one of the more powerful was this: she said, "our emotions are not bad, they are helpful in terms of gateways to self discover. And self-discovery happens really powerfully through relationships."
I don't know. Most days emotions do seem like bad things. I suppose because they often feel like walls and not gateways. They feel like hurdles in the exact middle of a relationship - demanding distance - and not invitations. I was hiking in a dense wilderness with a friend some time ago. I was a little bit ahead. There was a lot of silence. Until I could hear her crying - sobbing, really. It came out of the blue. I wanted to run ahead. Away. That's truly what I wanted to do. There was something scary about her emotions. Crying comes with an unease that doesn't accompany laughter. Or even frustration. But I didn't run ahead. I made myself stop. And turn around. And go to her. And hug her and ask, are you ok? Clearly she was not ok, but sometimes that's what emotions are. They are words that for many reasons can't be spoken. They are a way of asking for the questions we don't know we need to be asked. Are you Ok? Would you like to talk? Is there anything I can do? She wasn't OK. And she told me why. Then she stopped crying and out of nowhere I started telling her about my own sadnesses. Not because I owed her that in return, but because I wanted to. Because emotions had created this gateway into a place where I could explore my own life in partnership with her emotions. Gregory Boyle says, "we all taste eternity when person merges with person. We need to find ourselves poised to enter into relationship with anyone anywhere." I do believe that about eternity. That in some supernatural way we will all be one. We will be merged. We will all be merged, but with our own stories. I do imagine - with a smile - that the difference will be that we will suddenly embrace each other's stories with acceptance and compassion and love. Our emotions will have walked us through the ultimate gateway of discovering who we are. Through the gateway of discovering that who I am - is a lot like you. Emotions often try to hide that truth from us. But if we allow them to, they will absolutely lead us to living in that truth. I was driving home from having dinner with my friend Solomon last night. I was listening to the Message (Christian) channel on satellite radio. The host was working from a closet in her home (I've been there; they are quiet places to work 🤷♂️). As she was talking, one of her young children popped in to tell her goodnight. The host asked her little daughter if she wanted to say a good night prayer for the listeners.
Listeners could hear the little girl approach the mic, and with little thought, the little girl started praying. Thank you God for mommy. Thank you God for little brothers and sisters. Thank you God for houses. Thank you God for grandmas and grandpas. Thank you God for all the cute little animals (I'm assuming she wasn't thankful for the ugly ones ?🤷♂️😊). Thank you God for the grass; it makes it so much easier to walk. Thank you God for all people. Thank you God....... ( then there was a bit of an abrupt pause here - like mama was giving her the cut - cut - cut sign in the background).... "Amen God," she quickly said. The little girl must have been 3 or 4. Too young for her to have memorized a script. When she was asked to pray, her prayer was clearly the first thing that came to mind. The first thing that came to MY mind was - how adorable. Then I thought, I wonder if her prayer caught God's attention in the same special way it caught mine. I wonder if God starts to doze off when we recite our memorized prayers for the simple sake of having recited a memorized prayer. And I wonder if God's ears and heart and spirit perk up when he hears the simple heartfelt thank yous of his children. Children big and small. I wonder that, because little touches my heart more than an unscripted thank you from one of my boys. One of the biblical definitions of prayer is: an avenue that God has provided for the believer of making known the deepest feelings of our heart. If you could have heard this little girl's voice when she started "thank you for mommy" - you knew God was truly hearing her deepest thoughts. I'm afraid - maybe - as we grow in our prayer life - we begin to hide our deepest thoughts from God. Our words of prayer become the words we use to disguise the feelings we truly feel. Maybe that's true in our relationships outside of our relationship with God? Maybe if we're interested in having a deeper and more meaningful prayer life - one that draws us closer to God - maybe we start with thank you. Maybe - for a moment - we put aside the devotional prayer assignment for the day (and I have nothing against devotionals) - and simply start "thank you God for.....). Maybe if we're interested in having a deeper and more meaningful relationship with one another - one that deepens our connection - maybe we start with thank you. I've written a lot about - had a lot of conversations about - conducted recent interviews that focused on: vulnerability. Well, in a culture that praises and maybe encourages independence and a 'you can go it alone' mentality - thank you is a very vulnerable expression. It acknowledges I wouldn't be here without you. It acknowledges I wouldn't be able to have this or learn this or do this or experience this - without you. So thank you. Thank you - the perfect start to a prayer. The perfect start to any meaningful conversation. I was listening to some post-Super Bowl commentary yesterday. An analyst said Matthew Stafford - the Rams' quarterback - took advantage of the big break he got when the Lions traded him to the Rams before the season began.
It's funny how often we look at winners and talk about their 'big break' moments. We reduce a Super Bowl championship to a guy who gets invited to a big break - he accepts it - takes advantage of it - and bingo: champion. There's a risk in that narrative. At least for us who have championship dreams. Maybe our dreams aren't winning a Super Bowl, but rather we want to own a business, pastor our own church, find a soulmate, run a marathon, hike the Appalachian Trail. Dreams are relative. Their common denominator? Dreams invite us to get out of bed in the morning. But do we get up and look out the window and see if our big break has arrived? Or do we get up and start tackling the little breaks that just might get us there? Tackling those little breaks is no guarantee our dream comes true. Standing at the window waiting on it to arrive, well that's a guarantee it never will. It's your choice. Tackle or wait. For twelve years, Matthew Stafford woke up every day in Detroit acting like his big break had already arrived. He avoided windows. So when his 'big break' moment came in Los Angeles, I'm not sure he saw it the way some of us did. The way some of the analysts did. When you treat every moment like it's a big break, you'll never miss the little breaks that show up to hand you directions to Los Angeles. There are a bunch of little breaks showing up today. They are ready to take your hand and show you the way to your dream. Don't miss them. Don't miss them while you're staring out the window. |
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
CategoriesAll Faith Fatherhood Life Mental Health Perserverance Running |