I used to consider myself someone who lived without fear. Now I know I was someone who avoided fear at all costs, and I paid the price of living with the fearful man inside.
Dr. Harriet Lerner says, "It is not fear that stops you from doing the brave and true thing in your daily life. Rather, the problem is avoidance. You want to feel comfortable, so you avoid doing or saying the thing that will evoke fear and other difficult emotions." I found that wording powerful - "doing the brave and true thing" in your daily life. I've come to believe they are one in the same. Doing the true thing. Saying the true thing. Being the true thing. True does take bravery. NOT doing true isn't brave - that is avoidance. No matter how good you get at making it LOOK and SOUND like the true thing, you always know when it's not true. You feel it. And that feels a lot like the fear you're unadmittely hiding from. It feels like anxiety. In their book Attached, the authors Amir Levine and Rachel S.F Heller say, "If you're avoidant, you connect with romantic partners but always maintain some mental distance and an escape route. Feeling close and complete with someone else - the emotional equivalent of finding a home - is a condition that you find difficult to maintain." The first time I read that I'm sure I read it a dozen times. I'm not sure if that was to memorize it or to find a way to read it that made it somehow not sound like me. But it was me. It was me - not just in romantic relationships - but in all interpersonal relationships. It was me and my relationships with jobs. It was me and my relationships with launching new ideas or ventures. Always maintaining some mental distance and escape route - and in case you think maintaining that is easy - I'm here to tell you it's exhausting. Decades of it can leave you feeling lifeless. Dead. The last several years I've been fortunate to find some safe spaces in my life to begin being the true me. There have been people. And really, writing here in the morning has been one of those spaces. I'm sure there are mornings when folks walk away from reading what I write thinking, "he's kind of a mess." To that I would say, you're right. Many days I am. But I would also say I'm not near the mess I once was when I didn't look so messy on the surface. I'm coming to learn there are a lot of people who don't look so messy on the surface but feel pretty upside down. And then there are people who look pretty messy on the outside but feel less anxious and upside down than ever on the inside. Truth can do that. Bravery can do that. If you're avoidant, I feel for you. I understand you. You didn't get there alone. Something along the way made you feel more comfortable with distance and escape routes. I'm also here to tell you there is no better escape route than truth. It takes a lot of bravery - it does take life turning upside down to not feel so upside down any more - but it is the ultimate escape route. It's the escape route from dying to living.
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A couple of months ago I was asked to do a Saturday morning presentation for a local non-profit: My Brother's Keeper. I visited their website and it looked in line with some of my work and certainly my heart - local dads supporting fellow dads - so I said yes and we picked a day.
When I do presentations, the audience size ranges from a couple of dozen to a couple of hundred. I imagined this presentation would be on the lower end of that number. When I showed up yesterday, I discovered the presentation would be on the MUCH lower end of that number - it was me and 4 other men sitting at a small conference room table at their non-profit's humble office. What a blessing that turned out to be. 'Coach' met me at the door when I arrived. He showed me around their space. He told me he'd started this group a few years ago in his living room. He'd invited some friends over, gave them some snacks and drinks, and then told his guys, "I'm struggling with my manhood." Uncomfortable and puzzled looks stared back at him. I was about an hour into my presentation with them yesterday - which by this time had morphed into a conversation somewhat directed by the presentation slides on the laptop that was sitting in front of me - when one of the gentlemen at the table began to cry. Not choke up - but full out cry. He told us how he'd spent most of his life holding on so tight to the pain of his life that he'd been completely unable to share his life with anyone. Coach looked over at him from across the table - choking up a bit himself - and told him it was OK. You're in a safe place. It was clear Coach was no longer struggling much with his manhood. And he had a group of friends who were no longer uncomfortable and puzzled. Their safety spilled over into me. A safety I've longed for for a long time. For many reasons, that was especially so this past week. I've been reminded a lot lately - and intimately so yesterday - that we've traded away our inner circles in life for bigger circles. We've traded away the intimacy of a few relationships for the accolades of having a bunch of them. We've traded away social love for social media. Without knowing it, we've traded away full hearts for broken hearts - and it's killing us. Yesterday, I wasn't a presenter with an audience. I was a man sitting at a small table with other men. We all looked different, but the more we talked - and cried - and prayed - I discovered in so many ways we felt the same. In big circles, it's easy to focus on how we look and what we believe. Sitting at a table together, you risk getting inside hearts and feelings and emotions. I could tell that's a risk Coach was glad he took. Once you begin to understand another's heart - and how another feels - you're truly in a space where you can begin making a difference. You're far more equipped to create the safe spaces where making a that difference can happen. You're far more inclined to trade in your big circles for inner circles. Inner circles where tears become the glue that pulls a broken heart back together, and seals it. We desperately need more inner circles. I'm grateful for the one I found yesterday. It's pretty easy to make decisions that impact people we don't know or love or have a trusting relationship with. There's seemingly little to be lost there. The decisions can feel relatively inconsequential.
I think the truth can be said of the decisions we make about our own lives as well. Maybe more true. If I look back on my life and honestly analyze my decisions, I'd have to say I've been a pretty reckless decision-maker. I'm coming to realize that's in large part because I had no idea who the guy was that I was making decisions for. When you don't know yourself - you can't possibly love yourself. You surely can't reasonably trust yourself. And so you start making decisions like you're drawing names out of a hat at the office Christmas party. Random and without consideration. Only in this case, almost all the selections turn out to be losers. They are destructive. And it's not like you're trying to BE destructive; it's just destruction becomes the greatest risk of making decisions for someone you do not know or love or trust. Over the last several years I've gotten to know me better. Getting to know anyone is a process; getting to know yourself may be the hardest. But as a result, I've started to trust me and love me and desire to make healthier decisions for me. I've discovered my faith is something I want to live and not just believe. I've discovered relationships are something to embrace and not fear. I've discovered that writing is a pathway to getting to know me and not hide me. I've discovered that authentic is sometimes more painful than pretend, but always more worth it in the end. Getting to know yourself is not easy. At least it hasn't been for me. But starting to count the reasons to love and trust yourself is a whole lot healthier than the daily practice of counting the reasons not to. It's healthier to start making decisions that consider a real you that you love and trust. Not that the recklessness is all gone - but less reckless is such a great step in the right direction. Every day is a series of decisions. The question is how much time do we spend trying to truly know the people we are making them for? Making for ourselves and for others? It's pretty easy to make decisions that impact people we don't know or love or have a trusting relationship with. But that is so risky. We owe it to ourselves to make loving decisions. We owe that to others as well. I was barely through Brene' Brown's introduction of her new book - Atlas of the Heart - when I encountered some of the powerful words she's become known for offering us.
She was talking about spending a large portion of her life numbing her pain. And she said, "I learned that taking the edge off is not rewarding, but putting the edge back on is one of the most worthwhile things we can do. Those sharp edges feel vulnerable, but they are also the markers that let us know where we end and others begin." Where we end and others begin.... I was having lunch with some co-workers yesterday. We were talking about a mutual friend who has a bit of an awkward laugh. I told them, you know, some people laugh because they are experiencing genuine happiness and joy in a connection. But other people, I told them, other people use laughter to keep distance in the connection. When there is laughter, you avoid the risk of talking about things that aren't laughter. You avoid talking about things that might be painful. You avoid vulnerable. The last several years, I know I've been working on un-numbing myself. I have a long way to go, but I am feeling more of the sharp edges in life. Several years ago, I had to have a cavity filled in a tooth. The dentist numbed one side of my mouth so I wouldn't feel the pain while he was drilling and filling. I guess that's a good thing while that drill is going. But when he was done, the numb remained. And for hours, I couldn't feel my tongue. I couldn't taste my food. I had no idea, really, where my mouth ended and where anything that came near it began. When the numbness wore off, my mouth suddenly hurt. But I could feel again. And taste again. And there was something really worthwhile about that. One of the things I've been discovering about my own numbing - you can numb yourself long enough that you come to believe the whole world is numb. While you're hiding your own pain, you can start to believe no one else feels pain. The whole world feels numb. That's a dangerous thing to feel if you believe what I believe - that empathy fuels the world. That it's not our ability to make each other happy but our ability to feel and begin to predict each other's pain that nurtures the well-being of the world. When I read Brene' Brown's words, I thought of them through the lens of my own personal life. But yesterday, after writing about the numbing I see many of us exercising when it comes to school shootings, my cousin commented: "I believe being numb is a choice at some point. We may have become numb to the initial news of the trauma, but it is a choice to not stop and sit with the news and emotions of the event. It is a choice to not reflect and FEEL. If we don’t collectively make the decision to FEEL these events will continue to occur. Because with numbness comes inaction." She's right. Numb is a choice. It's not a choice you easily recognize when you're in the middle of numb, but it is a choice. It's a choice you make to hide from your own pain. Which leads to hiding from the reality of others' pain. And when there is no pain, nothing needs to change. Because pain IS the driver of all change. My prayer is that we are all becoming exhausted trying to outrun and outsmart vulnerability and pain. My prayer is that we are all beginning to see the suffering our hiding is bringing to ourselves and to others. My prayer is that we will all start discovering with a little more pain where we end and where others begin. And in that discovery, begin doing something different. Because this morning, in Uvalde, Texas, there are too many families who don't have the privilege of running from their pain. They know all too well this morning the markers of where life begins and ends.. I went to bed a little scared last night. Not of the world, but of me.
I remember back in 1999 - going on 25 years ago now - when news broke of the school shooting in Columbine. So many dead kids - so many lives stolen from a place we once considered murder-proof. My own classroom days were still recent enough back then that I could imagine the horror in Columbine. Recent enough that it struck me that in a space where I discovered life was just beginning, these teenagers had their futures blown away. As I thought about it then, the tears flowed. But that was a lot of school shooting deaths ago. School violence is no longer surprising. It's expected. As the news broke last night of the latest school shooting in Texas, I had no tears. The Governor of Texas last night called the shootings incomprehensible. I fear a greater problem is they've become totally comprehensible. And today, we will do what we routinely do now in the aftermath of these shootings. We will run to the sides of guns or mental health or thoughts and prayers. And it WILL BE OR, because we no longer live in a country that much embraces AND. We no longer consider that solutions are found in the AND and not the OR. We live in a time that gives us all platforms for outrage and debate; I fear our outrage and debate has come at the expense of tears. And so we run to our sides. I saw one image last night that got me as close to tears as I'm afraid I'll get in this shooting. It was a mom walking away from the shooting site in Texas. There's a kind of crying that very few people understand. It's a crying a mom does when she realizes the 7 year old she dropped off at school this morning was killed in that school today. It's the kind of crying a mom does when she realizes the place she sent her child to dream became the place she sent her child to die. I saw that picture and I thought, that's the side we all should have to choose today. Before we choose any other side, we should have to first choose that mother's side. We should have to sit in her tears. We should have to hear her grieve. Not with a Facebook photo, but with a mama in her child's bedroom. Because I truly do fear, that as we run off to fight our battles - our battles over rights and politics and faith and all the other sides we choose - sides far removed from that bedroom - I fear we've forgotten the tears. I fear that death - even death to the most innocent of us - has become so comprehensible that it's become an acceptable consequence of our battles. We've tried battles. We've tried shared anger. I don't think that's gotten us anywhere. Maybe that's because we were created to cry together, not scream together. I went to bed last night a little bit scared. Scared that we are running out of tears. That's scary because I don't think there's a greater change agent than shared tears. I feel like the world becomes a scary place when we're more comfortable fighting one another than crying with one another. And more and more, I wonder if that's the place where we already live. 5/24/2022 0 Comments But God....There was a time when I wasn't a big fan of the book of Genesis in the bible. But today, it's one of my favorite books. I think because the book is full of messed up lives that God finds a way to use for meaningful purposes.
The story of Joseph is one of those stories. Granted, Joseph had a lot of help getting to messed up - especially from his brothers. But like many Genesis stories - like MANY stories about you and me - Joseph showed us God often likes to use our messes more than our perfections to accomplish his plan. When Joseph was a kid, he pissed his older brothers off. (Telling your older siblings you've been having dreams about them one day bowing before you will do that.) So his brothers sell Joseph into slavery. Which eventually leads him to prison. Which then, through a crazy series of events, lands him decades later as the second in charge of all of Egypt. In that role, Joseph finds himself in a position of being able to help his brothers survive an awful famine. Or - he could let them starve and get revenge for what they'd done to him when he was a kid. When given that opportunity, Joseph told his brothers in Genesis 50:20: "You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives." For too long, I've been stuck in the middle of that decision. Do I go with 'you intended to harm me' OR 'but God'? Do I keep wrestling with my mess, or do I choose to move on to what God is wanting to do with my mess? Steven Furtick says, "Everything God wants to do next in your life is connected to what he's calling you to do now." There are many days I think I want God to just go ahead and take care of the right now for me and teleport me into what's next. If you read Genesis enough times, though, you'll discover that's not how God works. God has plans for the messes we're trying to circumvent to get to what we think should be next. Too often, while we're wresting with the harm - whether it's harm someone did to us or we brought on to us or the world dropped down on us - while we're wrestling with the harm, God is patiently waiting for us to say "but God....." I'm reminded this week of how that is ultimately a daily choice. A daily opportunity. But me OR but God? But when is this going to end OR but what purpose is God weaving out of this? But my struggle OR but God's solution? Buts rarely work out for me. I often use buts to introduce my excuses for staying in the hurt. But... maybe but could be the way for me to introduce God to my excuses. But God.. maybe that's the difference between hiding from a calling and answering it. When I was in my 20s, I periodically helped build houses. I mainly did grunt labor, but there was always something magical about watching a hole in the dirt become something beautiful that a family couldn't wait to move in to.
From time to time, I also had the chance to tear old buildings down. Sometimes it was necessary to create space for something new. Necessary or not, though, nothing ever felt as magical about deconstructing. Given the choice, I'd choose building a new house over tearing an old one down any day. I'm not sure I can say the same about my life. Too many days I wake up and head to the construction site where I'm building something brand new - something magical - something I'm excited about - only to find myself drawn back to tearing down the old. The old demons. The old relationships. The old missed opportunities. One thing I discovered about tearing down old buildings when I worked in construction - that work could get so ugly that no matter how beautiful the house was you were making space for - the energy for tearing down was never as great as the energy I had for building new. There often wasn't a choice in construction. Sometimes the old just had to be cleared before building something new. An unavoidable pre-requisite. The good thing was, though, once it was cleared, it was gone. It could never take away from my energy for the new project again. Life isn't that easy some days. We keep going back to the old even though the space is already cleared for the new. But the reality is, in life, the space for new is ALWAYS cleared. It simply requires us to choose where we are going to spend our energy. Because in life we do get the choice. Tear down the old or build the new. There is always going to be some need to work on the old. There are renovations and there are total deconstructions. But if we're not careful, we can get to a place in life where we realize we've spent all of our life fighting the old, and we've built nothing new. We've spent all of our lives tearing our old life down, and never built the life we can't wait to move in to. In construction, it was nice to have a boss who said, "ok gang, it's time to build something new. Let's do it." In life, we are our own boss. And for some reason, some days we refuse to give ourselves the order to build something new. But it's Monday. It's time to hand out orders for the week. Orders to me and to you. It's time to build something new. So let's do it. Ryan Holiday says, "events are objective. They are not good or bad for you. That's where we have the power. We have the ability to decide what story we tell ourselves about what's happened."
I have always believed that life is a story. I believe that today more than ever. But more than ever - I believe it's me who is telling the story, and not life. There are few greater discoveries for me to hang on to when it comes to this life of mine. I've gone through the event of divorce the last two years. I'll be the first to confess that is not an easy event for anyone. I'll also say, I've made that event much more difficult because of the stories I've told myself about that event. Stories largely adapted from stories I've heard life tell. Stories like divorce is a sin. Stories like your boys will never be the same. Stories like a failed marriage is the greatest failure you can have. In fairness, I those are stories - opinions - judgments - I myself at times have poured into the story that life tells. I'm sorry about that. I regret it. Because I know now, better than ever, how many people incorporate the stories life tells into the stories they tell themselves. I now know how many divorced people are living the stories: I'm a sinner. I'm a bad parent. I am a failure.... I will admit, I am a sinner. But that's a story every one of us could rightly tell ourselves. It's also a story God has said none of us have the right to tell ourselves. He sacrificed his son to destroy that narrative in our lives. But I am not a bad parent. The minute I start telling myself that story, my boys will indeed have a dad who is far less a dad than they deserve. And I am not a failure. In fact, I am one of the greatest success stories I know. It's hard for life to see that some days. Because life, too often, measures success by a bank account or a status or a community. It measures success by marriage. Too often life starts the story at, once upon a time, Keith got a divorce. But the reality is, me, and so many of you, have stories that started long before the event life uses to measure success. And the more life tries to tell individual stories based on events and not humans, the more life puts humans at risk for telling themselves destructive stories about themselves. I look at my story and see the number of times destruction was in that story. I look at my story and see the number of times failure was in that story. I look at the number of times I could have written 'the end' into that story - and I refused to. Today, the only story I tell myself is 'once upon a time.' Today, my story starts new each day. It starts with hope and love and possibility. Today, my story is my story, not life's. In this month of mental health awareness, I encourage you to make your story your story. I encourage you to be the story teller in your life. I encourage you to see, if you are reading this, you ARE a success story. You have so many times risen to the occasion of your life - you have risen above the story of life - and you have created a beautiful story I for one want to keep reading and seeing and hearing. You are the greatest story teller your life has ever known. Please - please, tell beautiful stories. I had coffee with a friend yesterday whom I hadn't seen or talked to in over 3 years. Pandemics create those gaps.
Life in general can do that I suppose. As we began talking, it was clear both of our lives had changed a lot the last few years. In fact, the more we talked, the more I wondered how it's even possible for two lives to look so different between cups of coffee. But they were that different. It was a reminder that while we are weathering the storms of our own lives, we have friends out there who are weathering their own. Maybe mine is a thunderstorm, and hers is a blizzard - but a storm is a storm when you're standing in it. And sometimes a cup of coffee is the universal relief to any storm. Even if only momentarily. As we talked, I realized how easy it is when talking about our storms to start blaming ourselves for the storms. Like, somehow storms in life can't just roll out of the plains and into our lives, so I must have caused this storm. And before long, you're no longer talking about a bad storm but a bad me or a bad you. I heard something yesterday morning just before taking that first sip of coffee. I heard Steven Furtick say, "as long as you rehearse what happened you won't reverse what happened." It seemed timely to share this with my friend. Yes, I suppose in some ways as advice. But some friends make great mirrors. You offer them guidance and before you know it you're no longer saying the words but hearing them. You believe something has been put on your heart for them to hear but it's your heart that begins beating; thank you - thank you - thank you. I told my friend it's easy to get caught up in the storm. The storm can be long gone, the sun is out now, but if you're not careful, you can find yourself looking out a window, into the front yard, and there you are, you see yourself, still standing out there with your umbrella wide open. There you are - protecting yourself from the storm in the sun. "As long as you rehearse what happened you won't reverse what happened." There comes a day when we have to look up and see the sun. And we have to go back inside and find a way to celebrate that. Yes, life might look different. But that is the one truth in life no one can stop or deny. Life WILL look different. No amount of time rehearsing the old life will prevent that. My friend said the struggle is real. This thing called life is hard but also remarkably wild and precious. Storms, they are wild. In the middle of them, it's hard to call them precious. But maybe when we stop rehearsing - maybe that is when we come to see them as precious. Maybe when we stop rehearsing, that is when we see the sun. |
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
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