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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Signs are nice.

The sun is a beautiful reminder of light.

But the sun sometimes gets lost behind the clouds.

Signs are nice.

Faith is nicer.

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

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

Faith.

Why do we lose it?

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

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

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

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

In that culture, barrenness was shaming.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not just once.

But again.
And again.
And again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Again and again and again.

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

​I turn 61 today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am indeed learning - I am what survives me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you, Jesus.

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

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

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

I still have seeds to plant.

Still have stories to tell.

Still have people to love.

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

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

Give heart to all that you can still plant.

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

Planters like you and me.

​We are living in a time when many people feel less control of their lives than ever.

They are feeling less powerful.

I get it.

But Seth Godin says, "no one can change everything, but everyone can change something. If you want to live a life of impact, it's in your control to do so."

I think that's the real danger of this time we are living in. There are so many things people want to change, and are feeling powerless to do so, and so they in turn begin believing they can change nothing at all.

I have to remind myself of this a lot lately: I am not here to change the world, I am here to impact it.

Changing the world is often out of my control; impacting the world is NEVER out of my control.

I find myself worrying more each day, what happens when the people with the biggest, most beautiful hearts, hearts I love, who ache to fix everything wrong in the world, begin to feel so defeated by what they can’t change that they stop showing up for what they can?

Big problems often leave us believing there are only big answers. Maybe that is true to a degree. But maybe we need reminded that the seemingly little things we are doing in an ocean of big problems are bigger answers than we believe.

There are mornings I wake up and wonder, what on earth difference is another article going to make? And I am reminded, I don't write to change the world; I write to leave a positive footprint.

I write to help CREATE a path, not change all the paths that are already there. Paths I often have no power to change.

I practiced a webinar with a colleague in another state yesterday that we will present for educators today about trauma sensitive approaches to discipline in schools. I found myself wondering, what's the point? Many of the things we will discuss in the webinar schools are now banned from even talking about at all.

But I am reminded, the teachers we will talk to might not be allowed to go back and talk about what we talk about, but each one of them will have more power to treat their students in a way that will make a bigger and healthier impact on their lives.

It's easy when living in a world that feels out of control to begin believing EVERYTHING is out of my control.

But it is not.

I want to live a life of impact. And as long as I am breathing, I have full control of that one.

We all do.

​As we roll out of Easter, let's not roll away without taking one big implicit piece of advice that Easter offers us - in fact, I can actually hear God's voice, making it more EXPLICIT in my own life - but I can hear God saying, "stop letting people tell you when I am done with you."

Easter shouts that advice. It shouts that truth.

After watching Jesus murdered, all of his apostle holed up in a house - hiding - just sure that they were next.

They thought it was over.

On Easter Sunday - Mary, Mary and Salome walked to the tomb with spices to put on Jesus' dead body, because they too thought it was over.

In spite of Jesus telling all of them repeatedly that he would rise in three days, they listened to the crowds. The crowds cheering on the murder of Jesus. And they believed the crowds when they said, finally, this whole Jesus thing is over.

You know why they shouldn't have listened to those crowds? Do you know what Easter reminds all of us pretty clearly? It reminds us that NO ONE knows when God is done with a story.

NO.

ONE.

I shouldn't need Easter for that reminder. More times than I can count in my life I've thought, God is surely done with my story.

I've woken up in strange places on the other side of drunken benders and surely felt, God can do nothing more with this story.

Many of those mornings I woke up giving serious consideration to ending my story for God, a favor of sorts, to remove any obligation he might feel toward trying to make something of my less than nothing story.

When you walk out the doors of marriage and into the world of divorce, oh believe me, there are plenty of people who will assure you that God is done with your story. Plenty of people who will walk out of your story. Enough so that you'll start believing it yourself - my story is over.

Pastor Robert Madu says, "when you get to feeling like God is done with your story, walk back to the last place you saw him."

For me, quite honestly, many times that is right here. Right where you are reading me. Because in my writing, someone is going to read my broken story, find hope in the truth that if God is not done with me, that if I can still write about the presence of God in my story, then it's possible he's not done with you either.

My words can become the last place you saw God.

People often want to see your brokenness as the end of your story. God often sees it as the beginning.

If the brutal murder of a man on a cross can become the beginning of a story, what on earth CAN'T be the beginning of a story??

I want to tell you today that NO ONE knows when God is done with your story. So, if anyone wants to suggest your story is done, don't listen to them, go look for the last place you saw God.

And same if YOU start telling yourself God is done with your story.

Don't believe you.

Go to the last place you saw God, and be reminded, he will NEVER be done with your story. Not ever. So please, don't let today be the day you start listening to a story that says otherwise.

​It was the third round of the RBC Heritage golf tournament. Justin Thomas was leading. Unfamiliar territory. For nearly three years, after every tournament, Thomas was asked:

Will you ever win again?

During that third round, Thomas bent down to move some debris from around his golf ball. In doing so, the ball moved—just the slightest bit. Chances are, no one but him would have ever known.

But Thomas knew.

So, he called tournament officials over and reported the incident. Per the rules of golf, this resulted in a one-shot penalty.

Fast forward to Sunday. After 72 holes, Thomas ended up in a tie for the lead, forcing a playoff.

I found myself wondering, did Thomas think about that penalty? Did he regret reporting it, knowing that without it he might already be holding the trophy? No more “will you ever win again?”

Then, he sank a 21-foot putt on the first playoff hole to win.

Something about that felt right.

But let’s be honest, you’ve lived long enough to know integrity doesn’t always "win." Not by worldly definitions, anyway.

God doesn’t always reward doing the right thing with victory. At least not on the outside.

John Wooden once said, “Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are.”

It can be tempting sometimes, I think, to chase reputation. To chase power and fame and control. To chase an ending to the idea that your best golf days are behind you, and chances are you will never be known as a golf champion again.

For some the trophies mean everything. Win at all cost. 
​
But there are some people who’ve decided a clean conscience makes for a better night’s sleep than a full trophy case. Some people can’t pretend they didn’t see the ball move.

No matter the cost.

We all have to decide.

Is integrity the way or is it what stands in the way?

I admire Justin Thomas. Because had he lost that tournament by one stroke, there's no doubt in my mind he would have gladly accepted the question - "will you ever win again" - knowing that he didn't sacrifice his integrity to avoid the question.

Chances are, you’ll have to choose a way today.

There are always two paths.

And the choice is always ours.

​It was that same day. The day he had risen. Two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. They were talking with each other about everything that had happened. As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; but they were kept from recognizing him.

I always wonder about that part. It doesn’t say they refused to see him. It doesn’t say Jesus hid from them. It just says they were kept from recognizing him.

What kept them from seeing him?

What keeps ME from seeing him?

Maybe it's sorrow. Disappointment. Exhaustion from long prayers that haven't been answered the way I hoped they would be. Maybe it's fear or chaos or all this inner-turmoil. Or maybe it’s just the fog of life, where I'm so consumed by everything out there that I miss the one who is still walking right beside me.

Right here.

It’s easy to celebrate Easter as an event. A date on the calendar. An empty tomb we proclaim with sunrise services and bright music all the while boldly proclaiming: “He is risen!”

But what if resurrection isn’t something we’re meant to just celebrate, what if it’s something we’re invited to recognize? Because it’s possible to proclaim Jesus is risen… and still not see him.

It’s possible to walk seven miles with him and mistake him for a stranger.

It can be the darkest side of Easter—not that Jesus was crucified, but that we miss him entirely once he is risen. That we might live our lives never realizing how close he’s been the whole time.

The two on the road finally recognized Jesus, not in the walking, not even in the talking, but in the breaking of bread. In a small, ordinary moment that suddenly became sacred.

And maybe that’s the point.

Maybe we don’t need mountaintop miracles or burning bush revelations. Maybe all we need is a quiet meal, a prayer, a long hike, a moment of honest vulnerability where our hearts and minds are open to seeing him.

And then we see him, the one who has been with us all along.

It's then that Easter becomes real, not just because the tomb was empty two thousand years ago - but because Jesus still walks with us today.

So, I’m asking myself this Easter morning, and I invite you to ask it too:

Where might Jesus be walking with me right now?

And more importantly…

Do I recognize him?

​I’ve come to believe that the most terrifying part of Good Friday wasn’t the nails.

It wasn’t the crowd shouting for Barabbas, the crown of thorns, or even the betrayal from a close friend.

It was the complete surrender of control.

That’s what Jesus gave up when he stopped defending himself. When he remained silent before Pilate. When he didn’t call down angels. When he healed the ear Peter cut off instead of picking up a sword. When he looked at the one begging to be remembered and whispered, “I assure you.”

He surrendered control not just of his body, but of the story’s appearance.

He let it look like he lost.

That’s hard for me. Because like many of us, I want my story to look like a win. I want healing to look like wholeness, not a scar. I want redemption to look like applause, not crucifixion. I want transformation to look like triumph, not trauma.

But Good Friday is a bold declaration: God does his best work in the worst moments, and he rarely asks our permission to do it that way.

The hardest part of my own story hasn’t been the betrayal, the divorce, the failures, or the scars. The hardest part is accepting that healing doesn’t always come in the form of a miracle—but in the form of a cross I have to carry, in surrendering the narrative I’d rather write.

Jesus didn’t avoid Friday. He didn’t edit it.

He entered it fully.

Because he knew something we forget in our pain—Sunday was coming, but not without Friday.

We want to skip to the good part. Jesus didn’t.

He stayed in the hard part. He bled in the silence. He loved in the betrayal. He forgave in the pain. He assured a thief before assuring anyone else.

He knew what we’re still learning: that the worst thing is rarely the last thing.

So maybe today, the invitation is this:

Don’t rush through Friday.

Don’t numb it. Don’t theologize it away. Don’t skip to Sunday.

Let Friday do its work. Let it remind you that some of the best things come not by conquering the darkness, but by trusting God enough to walk through it.

Not with answers. But with assurance.

"I assure you," Jesus said.

That your brokenness isn’t too broken.

That your shame isn’t too deep.

That your worst isn’t your end.

That Friday might look like death—but it's only the prelude.

​It's Thursday. The night before Good Friday. And if there were ever a moment when violence felt justified—when righteous anger, self-defense, or retaliation would have made perfect sense—it was that Thursday night in the garden.

Jesus had just finished praying in agony. He had sweat blood. He had asked His friends to stay awake with Him, and they had fallen asleep. He had already chosen the hard road. And then, in the stillness of that night, Judas arrived.

With guards.

With betrayal.

With torches and swords.

It would have been easy—natural, even—to respond with force. And that’s exactly what Peter tried to do.

Peter, who had just vowed to die with Jesus if it came to that. Peter, who was still trying to prove himself faithful. Peter, who pulled out a sword and took a swing—cutting off the ear of the high priest’s servant.

And that’s when it happened.

That’s when Jesus got as close to angry as he seems to get in this entire Easter story. Angrier than when they arrested him. Angrier than when they drove nails into his hands and feet. Angrier than when the soldiers mocked him in his dying moments.

Only in THIS moment did he yell, “No more of this!”

Those four words, sharp and urgent. Not a whisper. Not a gentle redirection. But a line in the sand.

Jesus wasn’t just stopping Peter from causing more harm. He was stopping something far deeper. He was stopping the possibility of leaving behind any hint of a notion that violence could ever be the way to heal anything.

He was rejecting the impulse to fight injustice with more injustice.

He was silencing the part of all of us that thinks retaliation redeems something.

He was saying no—not just to Peter’s sword, but to the centuries of swords that would try to follow in His name.

And then, in what might be one of the most quietly miraculous moments of the entire Easter story, Jesus healed the servant’s ear. One of the men sent to arrest Him.

Let that sink in.

Jesus, in the middle of betrayal, pain, and arrest, healed the one who came to harm Him. If violence were ever appropriate, it would have been here. But Jesus opposed it—as strongly as He ever opposed anything.

In that moment, Jesus wasn’t just rejecting violence. He was modeling redemption. He was showing us that the real revolution wouldn’t be won with swords. It would be won with surrender.

And not the surrender of weakness. But the surrender of love.
A love so strong it could look power and betrayal and injustice in the eye and say, “I choose healing anyway.”

Good Friday was full of violence.

But Jesus chose Thursday to make his stand against it. Not by protecting his life from it, but by healing one who'd been victimized by it.

​I was under the weather yesterday, so it became the perfect day to finish re-watching the television series Lost. This second time through, it hit me differently. There was more emotion. I was crying when it finished. Not because the characters were leaving, but because this time I got what the characters were trying to tell me.

I mean, I really got it.

Maybe because it is Holy Week. There are a lot of parallels to Holy Week in lost.

And more importantly, I think, is I've done a lot of work the last ten years finding myself, which started with fully discovering just how lost I'd been.

Sometimes you need to know you are lost before you can ever feel found.

I've realized in this re-watching, that is what island did in Lost. It forced them to admit they were lost. At first, physically—plane wreckage scattered across sand, smoke billowing, people screaming for help. But eventually—and far more painfully—it revealed just how lost they were emotionally.

Spiritually.

Internally.

And what struck me most this time through is how deeply adverse childhoods are woven into their stories. Nearly every character’s pain could be traced back to the unmet needs, the traumas, the shame, or the silence they experienced growing up.

Jack was still trying to prove to his father that he was good enough.

Kate was still running from the guilt she couldn’t escape.

Locke was desperate to matter to anyone who would claim him.

Sawyer was shaped by a single moment of childhood trauma he couldn’t outrun.

Ben was raised in a world that never truly nurtured him—so he became a master manipulator just to survive.

And isn’t that all of us?

Because of the work I do professionally, and the work I continue to do on me personally, I've come to say that life is us, knowingly or unknowingly, wrestling with our childhoods out loud with one another. Our deepest hurts, fears, and longings don’t stay behind in the past. They travel with us—buried in our stories, disguised as personality, masked as strength, or tunneled deep inside us beneath our addictions, perfectionism, or control.

But the island literally went into the tunnels of their inner worlds and brought them to life. It didn’t cause their brokenness. It revealed it. The real wreckage wasn’t the plane—it was what they carried with them long before they ever boarded it.

And in that way, the island wasn’t just a setting. It was an invitation.

A place where people couldn’t run anymore. A place where ghosts came to life. A place where they were given a choice: face the pain, or let it destroy them. Some chose power. Others chose love. Some chose control. Others chose surrender.

And when they did the hard work of facing what they spent their lives avoiding—healing came. Not all at once. Not easily. But it came. In community. In forgiveness. In sacrifice. In finally letting go.

There’s one scene I can’t stop thinking about. Jacob, the island’s mysterious guardian, is handed a cup by his mother. She says, “You are now like me.” It felt like a sacrament. Like communion. And maybe it was.

Because he then passes the cup to Jack. Jack to Hurley. A passing down not of perfection, but of people willing to carry the light for others. Willing to protect a place where others could still be found.

And maybe that’s our calling, too.

Not to escape our pain. Not to erase our childhood. But to become protectors of spaces where healing can happen. Where people can finally stop running. Where what was broken can be seen, held, and slowly made whole.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence I was finishing up Lost during Holy Week. Because Easter isn’t just about resurrection after death. It’s about the invitation to finally face what’s broken in us so that we can be made new.

And sometimes, that begins with an island.

With landing in a place where there is no longer any doubt that we are lost.

Because it is there, where we finally admit that we are lost, where resurrection and new life begin.