​I have heard it said that "actions speak louder than words". Maybe it's the writer in me that feels a bit of angst when I hear that.

At an event I attended this week, one of the day's themes centered on collecting words. When we heard or experienced something that resonated with us, we wrote a word down in the journal we'd been given in the opening session to hold a space for that moment.

To close the event, we put our names on a name tag along with one of the words we'd captured during the day. We walked around the room, discussing with other attendees why we chose the word on our name tags.

Those conversations were priceless. In a brief two minute conversation you got a glimpse into someone's heart. You got to experience the day's event through their eyes. Their words suddenly added meaning to the words you'd collected throughout the day.

In so many ways, the world is an intersection of the words we share. Conversation is an intersection. A crossing point. A place where two separate experiences briefly overlap and, if we’re paying attention, expand.

But there’s another side to that.

If words are how we meet, then silence is often where we don’t. And maybe one of the times actions truly speak louder than words is when someone chooses not to speak at all. Not because they have nothing to say, but because it doesn’t feel safe enough to say it.

Because being misunderstood feels riskier than being unseen.

Because past experience has taught them that their words won’t be held with care.

Because somewhere along the way, they learned that silence protects.

I have experienced deep silence in relationships; today I know better than ever that the action of not talking was accompanied by a painful desire to do just that - talk.

When you walk around a room sharing your words with relative strangers, and they share theirs, and you feel the bonds that start to form - you discover - or maybe rediscover - the power of words.

I do believe actions are important. But maybe one of the most important actions we can all take is ensuring everyone feels safe enough to share their words.

​Yesterday, I had the privilege of speaking at an event titled Hidden Potential: Uncovering Creative Strategies to Support Recovery. I walked away from that event energized, grounded, and reminded of something deeply human.

We are all recovering from something.

Too often, when we hear the word “recovery,” our minds narrow to substance use. While that is an important and valid part of the conversation, it is far from the whole story.

Recovery is much broader. It lives in the quiet battles we fight every day - the grief we carry, the self-doubt that lingers, the past we’re trying to make sense of, the expectations we’re trying to shed. Each of us is navigating something that stands between where we are and a healthier, more whole version of ourselves.

And yet, one of the hardest parts of recovery is not just overcoming what’s in front of us, it’s seeing a path forward at all.

So often, we don't struggle for a lack of strength, but because we cannot yet see what we’re capable of contributing to a path forward. Our vision gets clouded by the stories we tell ourselves. Stories shaped by failure, fear, or limitation. We begin to believe that what we’ve been through defines what we can become.

Hidden potential lives on the other side of those stories. And more often than not, we don’t uncover it alone.

Hidden potential is something we discover in each other. It’s revealed when someone else sees possibility in us that we’ve overlooked. When they listen to our story and reflect back not just the pain, but the strength, the resilience, the creativity embedded within it.

There’s something profoundly transformative about being seen, truly seen - by another person.

Yesterday, I witnessed that in real time.

The room was filled with people who showed up willing to be their authentic selves. Not polished. Not perfect. Just real. And in that kind of space, something shifts. Barriers soften. Conversations deepen. People begin to step out from behind the stories that have kept them small.

In environments like that, hidden potential doesn’t just exist - it emerges.

I find myself coming alive in those spaces. There’s an energy impossible to ignore. The energy of connection. Of shared humanity. Of people recognizing themselves in one another stories and realizing they are not alone.

My talk centered on the power of human connection, and I keep coming back to this: perhaps one of the greatest fuels behind the power of connection is our capacity to uncover hidden potential in each other.

Connection isn’t just about support - it’s about discovery. Maybe it is MOSTLY about discovery.

It’s about holding up a mirror for someone and helping them see not just who they’ve been, but who they might become. It’s about creating spaces where people feel safe enough to explore that possibility. And it’s about recognizing that none of us are meant to navigate recovery - or growth - on our own.

We are each other’s catalysts.

As I reflect on yesterday, I feel grateful, not just for the opportunity to speak, but for the reminder that when we come together with openness and authenticity, we create the conditions for transformation.

And maybe that’s the real work.

Not just recovering, but helping each other rediscover what’s been there all along.

In a world that can get to feeling overwhelmingly dark, I was reminded yesterday that within each of us there is the potential for overwhelming light.

It is there, if we will all commit ourselves to discovering it in one another.

​On my way to Damascus yesterday, I stopped at Virginia Tech to take Elliott to a movie. After the movie, he asked if we could stop and get a phone charger. His had died. (And when a college student's phone charger dies you have to fear the student's passing is sure to follow!!).

So, I said sure. Walmart is just across the street.

I have to confess - it has been years since I've been in a Walmart. Nothing against Walmart - but EVERYTHING against giant buildings filled with lots of people looking for the ten zillion things they do (and mostly don't) need. So, three steps inside the doors, my central nervous system was in full fight-flight-freeze mode - and Walmart is one of those rare places that can trigger all three at once.

We quickly found a phone charger. Then I asked Elliott if he needed anything else.

He said no. Then I prodded - you sure you don't need any snacks or anything. He said, "Well, I guess some snacks wouldn't hurt."

And when he said that - and as we headed to the snacks - it hit me how much I needed him to NEED snacks. It hit me how good it felt to return to that part of fatherhood - if only for a brief stroll through the snack aisle and a checkout line - where being dad meant taking care of a kid.

I remember the days of taking little boys into Walmart with deep dread. Nothing compounds the chaos of Walmart like the chaos of toddlers.

But yesterday, he was no longer a toddler. Or chaotic. Just a young man that now fully understand that all of that stuff in Walmart - not the least of which is phone chargers - doesn't grow on trees.

It's not free for the taking.

Unless you're with a dad longing to take care of his kid one more time.

Then it's free for the taking.

​A 2023 study by the American Psychological Association found that 61% of adults cite "uncertainty about the future" as a top source of stress. But if you dig into that, the uncertainty isn't the stress, it's the fight to eliminate uncertainty.

If someone asked me to list inarguable facts I've collected over my lifetime, maybe number one on the list would be: Life is unpredictable. As I write this article I am certain that today is Sunday. I am even more certain I have no idea what this Sunday holds for me.

No matter how much I try to plan a day ahead free of surprises, surprises are on the way. That is a fact.

That fact alone is not stressful. What is quite stressful is trying to force uncertainty out of my life.

I - and we - do this in many different ways.

We postpone making decisions believing a time will come when we will have a better understanding of the RIGHT decision. Only to discover that time never comes. And in that time we might have missed opportunities and have likely grown more anxious.

We try to control all variables before moving forward. This looks a lot like perfectionism. Since perfectionism is a myth, this creates a stressful and exhausting, endless battle.

Or we might overwhelm our friends and family with requests for reassurance. Tell me this will be okay. This is reassurance they can't offer because they have no idea if this will be okay. But we keep asking anyway.

Maybe we are catastrophizing. We take every piece of uncertainty we find and turn it into the worst case scenario. We skip reassurance and jump right to assuming nothing will ever be okay again.

Or - which has certainly been this uncertainty fan's go to throughout his life - you just numb it all away. Nothing makes uncertainty more tolerable than being too drunk to know how uncertain life is. Or escaping into the world of social media scrolling or television binge-watching. Surely the world will be more certain when I sober up or look up again.

But no. It won't be. That's a fact.

I am better than ever these days at dealing with that fact. And really, nothing eases the stress of uncertainty more than accepting that life is nothing if not uncertain. Uncertainty isn't something we escape in life, it's something we embrace AS life.

I am also better at planning my day. When you have small steps ahead mapped out, uncertainty might derail one small step, but it won't derail your whole life. When something goes off track, you’re not starting from scratch; you’re simply recalibrating the next step instead of questioning the entire direction.

And I'm also much better at talking through uncertainty with friends. Not searching for reassurance that everything will be okay, but as a reminder that no matter what, we are in this uncertainty together.

The world is uncertain. Uncertainty becomes an enemy and a threat to our well-being when we treat it as a theory rather than a fact. It becomes a battle when we treat it as something that needs to be removed from our lives instead of navigated as part of them.

Today will be uncertain. There are no work-arounds for that. So we might as well get good at working through it.

​In a recent interview, Reid Wiseman, commander of the 2026 Artemis II lunar flyby mission, said about his crew's return to Earth: "When I got back on the ship, I'm not really a religious person, but there was just no other avenue for me to explain anything or to experience anything, so I asked for the chaplain on the Navy ship to just come visit us for a minute. And when that man walked in - I'd never met him before in my life - I saw the cross on his collar, and I just broke down in tears."

One mistaken belief that believers in God can hold is that we must act as salespeople for God. And often that sales pitch can sound like a mandate to follow the believer's religion or theological framework.

When I walk out into a morning sunrise or look out over a mountain sunset, I wonder: who am I to believe God needs me to sell anything on his behalf?

Quite often, all God asks of me is to be prepared to answer questions that creation has invited God's created people to ask.
Sometimes our efforts to push people toward God stand in the way of their capacity to hear the invitation God has long been offering.

A chaplain did not barge into a room trying to convince Reid Wiseman what he should have seen, he showed up invited to listen and to add hope to what Wiseman saw.

Too often what we pressure people to see in God doesn't begin to compare to what God has already shown them.

God does not need us to believe in him.

God does not need us to convince others to do so.

But God does love inviting us all to do so.

Sadly it's often the believers who stand in the way of non-believers hearing the invitation.

​I went to see a special 30th anniversary showing of Jerry McGuire last night. There's an iconic scene at the end of the movie when Dorothy tells Jerry McGuire: "You had me at hello."

Something hit me powerfully in that scene that hadn't hit me as powerfully the dozen times I'd seen the movie before. When Dorothy is saying "You had me at hello," she is surrounded by a sizable group of divorced women who'd all had to say goodbye to their marriages.

It made me wonder - fictionally speaking - are Dorothy and Jerry still married? Are they celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary this year? Or did they, like so many of the people in the room with them, have to learn to say goodbye?

I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve seen Jerry McGuire since my marriage ended six years ago. So maybe I wasn’t just watching the scene -maybe in some way I was sitting in that room.

I wonder if the women listening heard Dorothy's words with some cynicism. I wonder if they, like me, were all too aware that "hello" is the easy word to say in a marriage. We romanticize the moment of connection - “you had me at hello” - but relationships are built - or broken - by the words that come after.

I fully know the power of "you had me at hello." I dated my ex-wife for less than 5 months then flew off to the Virgin Islands and got married. We knew the love language of connection quite well, emotional peak, our struggle came with with maintaining it.

"I had you at hello" can be deceiving. It can tempt you to believe marriage will always be as simple as hello. It's not. Because more important than hello, you have to be able to say things like:

“I was wrong.”

“Can you help me understand?”

“I feel ___, and I don’t fully know why yet.”

“I need…”

“I hear you.”

“Thank you for…”

“I’m scared that…”

“What do you need from me right now?”

“Let’s try again.”

“I still choose you.”

These were words not often - if ever - said in my marriage by either of us. I read them like a foreign language in our story. And when you can't find these words in a relationship, it's a steep and painful fall from "you had me at hello" to goodbye....

It occurred to me last night just how many love story movies end at the hello part. The emotional peak. They end at the promise of happily ever after without ever following the promise.

Maybe Dorothy and Jerry are still together. Maybe their hello has indeed turned into happily ever after. If so, I think that would make for a great sequel.

Maybe one I and many of us need to see.

Be reminded of the part where they fall in love - yes - but more importantly, the part where they learn how to stay.

​I heard Jerry Seinfeld say something recently that stuck with me:

“I want to put a smile on as many faces as I can. That’s a pretty good life if you get to be someone doing that.”

That sounds simple. Almost too simple. And maybe that’s why we miss it.

Because most of us didn't wake up this morning with a goal to make someone smile. We woke up thinking about productivity. Progress. Performance. We thought about what we need to accomplish, fix, earn, or prove.

We woke up to chase things we can measure. Things we can point to. But somewhere along the way, is it possible that we start overlooking something that can’t be tracked?

A smile.

We treat that like a small thing. But what if it isn’t? What if making someone smile is one of the most powerful things we can do in a day?

There’s a part of me that wonders if we are building lives full of achievement while quietly starving something essential inside all of us. Because we can become successful without being kind. We can become prosperous without being present. We can reach goals that impress people without ever truly connecting with them.

Is it possible to become prosperous without ever making someone smile? And if so, how big will our smile be in the middle of our prosperity?

Jerry Seinfeld has certainly been prosperous, but his prosperity has been built on the foundation of smiles. And so he smiles.

I don’t think we were created just to accumulate. I think we were created to connect. And sometimes connection doesn’t look like deep conversation or life-changing moments. Sometimes it looks like eye contact. A kind word. A moment of being seen.

Sometimes it looks like a smile.

We don’t always know the weight someone else is carrying when we cross paths with them. We don’t know how long it’s been since they felt noticed. Or valued. Or light. Which means something as simple as making them smile might not be small at all.

It might be the thing that breaks through a heavy day.

The thing that reminds them they’re not invisible.

The thing that shifts the momentum or a darkness we can't see.

Maybe the life we’re chasing isn’t found in the big things we’re striving for, but in the small things we keep overlooking. Maybe a good life isn’t just measured by what we build. But by how many faces we soften along the way.

Make it a priority. Soften a face today.