I walked into my office at Randolph-Macon College yesterday. Everything looked completely different. I guess since the students had left for summer break, my lady friends and colleagues in the counseling center decided it was the perfect time to perform our version of the extreme home makeover.
One of the ladies asked me, "what do you think?" It looks amazing I said. I especially like how the kitchen area suddenly looks like a cozy little coffee shop. I can see myself sitting at that small wrought iron table and chairs in the corner with the inspirational wooden signs hanging above it. Who here any longer needs to run off to a coffee shop to feel the vibe of working in a coffee shop! "Do you want to know the best part about all of this", the center director asked me. It didn't cost a dime. We just imagined what we wanted and then started looking around the center for what we already had to pull it off. Later, I found myself reflecting on those words. And wondering. How often do we imagine what we want in life but quickly shut down the possibility of having it because we don't think we have what we need to make it happen? How often do we imagine creating something abundantly more beautiful in our lives but don't take even the first step toward it because we think we lack the abundance to pull it off? How often do we start from a place of "this is what I'm going to need to make it work" and not from "this is what I have to work with?" The center director told me, I'm glad we didn't have a budget for this. If we had, she said, we probably would have purchased a bunch of stuff that wouldn't have made the place look nearly as nice as it now looks. There's something valuable that happens in working with what you already have. It's like a nod of gratitude to God for things we were never going to be grateful for while overlooking them thinking they weren't enough. It's okay to want more out of your life. It's okay to want abundance. But if you're waiting for abundance to show up at your steps in the arms of the Amazon delivery person, you might be using the wrong approach to getting your abundance. Sometimes abundance looks like the time I already have but waste on something other than pursuing my abundant dream. Sometimes abundance looks like the relationship I have and not on one I imagine will be abundantly better. Sometimes abundance looks like the old lamp in the attic and not the one I can't afford at the local home improvement store. Sometimes the most abundant feeling of all is standing back looking at the abundance we create out of what could have felt like I don't have nearly enough. Maybe one of the greatest lies we tell ourselves is "not enough". And quite a devastating lie at that. Because nothing prevents abundance in our lives more than not looking for and finding the abundance that's sitting right in front of us. A lot of us have far more abundant lives that we realize. Discovering them starts with wondering, what do I already have? Dream today. Then look around and see what you already have that will help you chase that dream. Then chase it. All the way to abundance.
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Pastor Jabin Chavez says, "the devil is a present devil. He only has access to this current moment. God, on the other hand, has access to yesterday, today, and tomorrow."
That is a powerful spiritual truth to understand. It helps us begin to feel the kind of "hail Mary" pressure the devil constantly lives under, the never-ending threat that if he can't derail God's plan for us in this very moment, God may forever sweep us up in his calling on our life. That is why the devil holds nothing back in the temptations of this moment. Why there is no lie the devil won't tell us about our past and our present and our future. It's why the devil is so anxious to get us telling ourselves lies about our lives that we will carry into the future that he has no control over. We know that about ourselves, don't we? That if we start believing we aren't enough today, chances are we'll still be believing we aren't enough tomorrow. That if we live today in fear of tomorrow chances are we'll still be in fear of tomorrow next week and next year. The devil knows that about us. He knows if he can get us twisted in our thinking about who we are today, he can twist God's plan for who he wants us to become tomorrow. The story God is weaving with our past is not the story the devil is writing with our past because the devil has no power over our past. And the promises God has for our future are not the promises the devil has for our future because the devil has no access to our future. The conflict comes in the right here and the right now. That is where the devil and God do battle, in this present moment. Only, in this present moment, God is living inside us offering us strength and reassurance, while the devil is a voice on the outside shouting lies. So really, it's us doing battle with the devil, not God. God is holding us, whispering to us without ceasing. Don't listen to him, he says, you are more than enough. Don't listen to him, with me you are more than strong enough. Don't listen to him, with me you are always way more than loved. Don't listen to him, with me your past has been beautifully redeemed and your future is nothing less than prosperous. Don't listen to him, with me you have truth and no need to turn to his lies. Whenever we get to feeling anxious in this moment, defeated in this moment, lost in this moment, that is the devil shouting. The devil screaming in desperation. Because the devil knows this moment is his last best shot. If he doesn't make it, chances are we'll be swept up in the whisper of God forevermore. And even the devil knows there is far more power in God's whisper than the devil's shout. It is worth knowing that. Clinging to that. That if your day starts to feel full of desperate screaming coming at you from the outside, there is a whisper waiting for you on the inside. Turn to it. Turn and hug in return the whisper that is hugging you. And say I hear you, I believe you, because you are a promise for forever and not a lie for right now. The devil has one shot at you and that is right now. With God we're never too short to block that shot. So why not do it. Go ahead. Block that shot. The Indiana Pacers' coach, Rick Carlisle, was asked to comment on the recent passing of his former teammate and basketball legend, Bill Walton. Carlisle said, "he defiantly competed to make every moment in life the best moment it could be."
I found that to be beautifully profound. "He defiantly competed." Carlisle didn't simply say he competed to make each moment the best, but that he DEFIANTLY competed. Because some moments don't make it easy on us to make it the best moment possible, do they? Some moments seem to be inviting us into chaos or confusion or destruction. And we often have histories and stories we tell ourselves about our lives that make us vulnerable to accepting such invitations. Carlisle seemed to be suggesting that Walton had a gift for staring such moments in the eye and saying no, I will not let this moment beat me. I will not let this moment make something of my life I'm not interested in it making of it. In Carlisle's eyes, Walton was always trying to win the moment. What can you do today to defiantly compete to make each moment the best moment it can be? Can you let perceived slights go on by in favor of not letting those slights slight the moment? Can you embrace the possibility that this angry moment shall pass and not cling tightly to it as if you are just destined to be forever an angry person? Can you tell the moment trying to convince you that you need a drink that your best moments these days don't include drinks? Can you tell the moment begging you to binge on Netflix that you'd rather read a book that will better prepare you to binge on life? Can you tell the moment trying to convince you that prayer is useless that you would have never arrived to this moment without it? We are all going to battle with our moments today. Seems like Bill Walton understood that. Maybe in Walton's passing we can all carry a piece of him forward and more defiantly compete against our moments. Maybe we can all start insisting, this is going to be the best moment this moment can be. That's my kind of defiance. I was watching the Charles Schwab Challenge golf tournament Saturday. When the tournament came on the air they announced that 30 year old Grayson Murray had died that morning after withdrawing from the tournament the previous day with an illness.
I had followed Murray's story over the last few years, a story that included ongoing battles with depression and alcoholism. So when I heard the news I feared what his parents would reveal the next day, that Murray had taken his own life. I was stunned. Heartbroken. Confused. Murray had won a big golf tournament just a few months ago. At the time, he credited his sobriety and his work on his mental health as a big reason for the turn around in his life. He began using his social media platforms to encourage others in their battles. He seemed to be in a great place. He did. He seemed to be in a healthy place. And that is scary to me. Because if he was in the healthy place so many thought he was in, but he wasn't, how do we ever know when someone is truly in that healthy place. How do we really know when we ourselves, who have battled our own mental health issues, are in the healthy place we feel like we're in. It has been some time since I've had the feeling that I don't want to live. And even in my darkest moments, I always maintained a desire to want to want to live. I always knew I wanted to want to live bad enough that I would eventually once again find that want to. But Murray's death has me wrestling with the fragility of all that. How quickly can one go from wanting to want to - to not wanting to - to not being here? Murray had played a good round of golf on Thursday. He was in contention to win after round one. But on Friday his game started to struggle until he withdrew with two holes remaining. Was his game struggling Friday because he was feeling mentally unwell? Or did the struggles with his game put him in an unhealthy place mentally? Was it both? I don't know. I'm sure the people in his life don't know. And that's a scary thing. All I know is that as we come to a close of Mental Health Awareness month, we cannot let our efforts around mental health awareness ever come to a close. Not at the end of this month and not at the end of the next. No one is ever to blame when it comes to a tragedy like Grayson Murray taking his life at such a young age. Mental health has no room for blaming and shaming and guilting. But it has plenty of room for awareness. Awareness that like cancer, once it's been beaten there are no guarantees it will never come back. Awareness that like cancer, never having had it is no guarantee it won't show up today. Awareness that like cancer, the more we talk about it openly, the more we accept it as part of our whole health journey and not some unmentionable outlier, the better we'll get at protecting each other from it. The better we will all get at protecting ourselves from it. My heart breaks for the family of Grayson Murray. It's clear they didn't see this coming. My guess is Grayson didn't either. His parents released a statement Sunday that in part read: "Please respect our privacy as we work through this incredible tragedy, and please honor Grayson by being kind to one another. If that becomes his legacy, we could ask for nothing else." Research has shown there are indeed a lot of health benefits to treating each other and ourselves with kindness. So maybe that's something we can all do as we continue to grow mental health awareness. Be kind. Sacrifice is commonly regarded as giving up something valuable in the present to improve the future. What sacrifice looks like has evolved over time.
In the old testament of the bible, sacrifice was often people sacrificing their good livestock to get back on the good side of God. Then of course, the idea of sacrifice radically changed in the new testament when Jesus sacrificed his life for the good of all humanity. This set the stage for sacrifice to become more personal, for giving of one's self for a better future. Today, we set aside one day each year, Memorial Day, to nationally recognize the service men and women who have sacrificed their lives in hopes of securing a better future for our country. There is no greater giving of one's self. I think we have long recognized the important linkage between sacrifice and a better future. But on this day of recognizing the ultimate sacrifice, giving one's life, I have to wonder if we're better at honoring sacrifice than doing it. Or at least I have to wonder that about me. Maybe it's because when we honor sacrifice it is often grand acts of sacrifice like giving one's life. I don't ever want to minimize the grandness of those acts, but it's also important to know seemingly lesser sacrifices can have equally grand effects on the future. I wonder, for example, what would happen today if we all agreed to sacrifice our bitterness? Just take it to the alter and burn it for the good of all humanity. What would happen today if we all sacrificed our screen time? We currently spend an average of 7 hours a day looking at our screens. What if we gave up even a few hours of that to look at each other? What would happen today if we sacrificed alcohol? 5 million people visit emergency rooms each year with alcohol related illnesses and injuries; 140,000 people die. 30 million are annually diagnosed with alcohol use disorders. Maybe alcohol isn't destroying your future, but it's destroying THE future. What if we sacrificed old systems that benefit some but disregard many? What if we sacrificed name-calling? What if on this Memorial Day, when we rightfully honor so many men and women who have sacrificed it all for the future of our country, we asked the question, am I honoring those sacrifices with a willingness to make my own? For most of us are not being called to sacrifice our lives, but to sacrifice pieces of our lives that would not only make the greater world around us a better place, but they are indeed sacrifices that would make us feel healthier in every space we enter. Sacrifice is giving up something valuable in the present to improve the future. Well some of the things we're holding onto aren't valuable at all, they are just hard to let go of. On a day when we recognize countless who let go of their lives, hard seems like a fairly weak excuse. It's a good day to be thankful for those who have sacrificed it all. It's a good day to be thankful we haven't been called on to do the same. But it's a good day to reflect and maybe examine; am I being called to sacrifice something in my present for the good of the future, both mine and the world at large? Sacrifice is the pathway to a better future. Understanding that is not nearly as difficult as the sacrificing. But maybe it's time to move beyond the understanding. In a moment I can so relate to, the apostle Paul once lamented, "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do."
This was Paul saying, in frustration, I don't get me. I want to do all the right things but most days I struggle to do any of them. Paul is asking out loud, how is it that I know what to do but can't consistently do it. Anyone else relate? Paul was on a journey of discovering what I've been on a lifelong journey of discovering, that the mission of my spiritual life isn't to be a good toe-the-line employee of God, but rather, to be open to experiencing the spiritual nature of the God who chose to do life with me fully knowing I'd never be able to toe the line. Paul would go on to teach us that there is no goodness that comes from a spiritual life aimed at getting straight A's to please the teacher. The goodness that comes from a spiritual life is accepting the spirit of the teacher who is far more interested in love for the sake of love than love for the sake of a grade. I, like Paul, have spent too much of my life memorizing the performance standards God never set for me while ignoring the spirit of God that is daily living in me. The spirit God wants to flow into the world through me. God has no need for me to memorize his rules; mainly because defining God becomes less and less necessary when I allow God's spirit to take over and define me. When I allow God's spirit to overflow in me with love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Those are the fruits of God's spirit living in me long before and long after I do not do what I know I need to do. I can too often get caught up feeling pressured to do what I know God wants me to do at the expense of not allowing myself to experience the God who longs for me to feel who he is. When we are focused on pleasing the God who is out there, we are not embracing the spirit of the God who is in here. "For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do." For Paul and for us, that is a forever truth. We can't escape it. But for Paul and for us, there is another forever truth. The fruit of our spiritual journey with God isn't found in how well we perform, it's found in how well we embrace. Embrace who God is and not what God expects. The answer to living in alignment with God isn't doubling down on our efforts to quit doing the things I know I'm not supposed to do, it's doubling down on the time we spend allowing ourselves to feel and align with the spirit of who God is. When we sit and ask God to allow us to feel the spirit of his love that is already living in us, the choices we make will look more and more like God's love. Not as a reflection of our commitment to doing what God says, but out of the beauty of living out who God is. We will never be able to play the role of God in this life, so maybe it's time to quit rehearsing his role. But we can look more and more like the spirit of God each and every day, so maybe it's time to spend more time embracing that spirit. You can never please a teacher who isn't looking to be pleased, but we can always make the world a more beautiful place by adopting the spirit of the teacher. And like Paul, if that's the mission of the spiritual journey we're on, to make the world a more beautiful place, that's a spiritual truth well worth knowing. A week ago, I sat here in my new apartment - angry.
I'd planned my whole Saturday around making myself available for my internet provider's technician to show up and connect my service. I was told the technician would arrive between 3 and 5. As the clock ticked closer and closer to 5, I felt myself getting anxious. Maybe even frustrated. Finally, in the closing minutes of that timeframe I'd been given, the provider sent me a text message. It was an apology: we're sorry we missed you, please reach out to reschedule as soon as you're back home. I quickly picked up the phone and not so quickly connected with a customer service agent. The first thing I did was provide a little education; NOT showing up to meet someone is NOT remotely the same as missing someone. The agent assured me, me the guy who had been sitting in my apartment for hours waiting, that they indeed showed up but no one was home. A week ago, I sat here in my new apartment - ANGRY! The next half hour of our conversation consisted of the song and dance we sometimes have to do with customer service agents. A dance that never seems to go well for the customer. It's a dance I'm sure I never got to take the lead in, but in the end, I rescheduled my visit for yesterday. I confess, I spent a lot of last week whining about not having internet. I spent a lot of time being a victim. I spent a lot of time threatening to get a new internet provider. I spent a lot of time letting the story of an internet provider not showing up dictate a negative story in my life. Then yesterday, right on time, the provider's technician knocked at my door. I opened it to find a large, heavy set man. He was kind. Anxious to help. And in less than fifteen minutes, he had my internet up and running. On his way out he pointed to a plaque on one of my shelves. He asked, "is that what I think it is?" I told him it was a plaque a friend had made me after I ran one of my best half marathons several years ago in Lexington, Kentucky. I thought it must be something like that, he said. He went on to tell me that his sister is helping him train for his first half marathon here in Richmond in November. He said he had a 3-mile training run to do later in the day, a run he was feeling less inclined to do as the Friday work day wore on. But seeing that plaque, he told me, that was the boost he needed. He went on to tell me he'd lost 37 pounds since January doing his training. He told me all about the shorter races he had coming up this summer to prepare for his big day. And the more we talked about the ways running changed my life, the more excited he seemed to be getting about the changes in his life. On his way out the door, he told me our visit was going to do far more for him than it could have ever done for me. His smile now the biggest part about him. We fist-bumped with big enthusiasm. And as I closed the door, I could hear him giving himself an exuberant pep talk, even a few woo hoos thrown in there, as he made his way back to his truck. As he pulled away, I thought, no, this visit actually did far more for me than it did for him, which had nothing to do with internet. I found myself reflecting on a God who had somehow taken the keepsake that had been given to me to honor my success six years ago and used it to provide a keepsake to a man seeking success today. I found myself reflecting on a God who didn't for a second see my missed appointment as a miss at all; he saw it as opportunity. I found myself reflecting on a God who is often smiling through my whining. A God who is always ready to create a hero story out of my victim story. I found myself reflecting on this miraculous God who can take a plaque gathering dust on a shelf and turn it into a moment as beautiful as the moment I first received it for a perfect stranger. For whom is that a bigger gift when the dust settles, me or the stranger? I found myself wondering, begging even, God, how can I see the kind of opportunities in every single moment of my life that you see? How do I get better at skipping the whining and trusting in the beauty? A week ago, I sat here in my apartment - angry. This morning, I sit here smiling, hearing the echoes of a beautiful man racing off to his truck to race home to his training run. I thank you God for miracles. I thank you God for perspective. Thank you God for weaving the webs of this life I'm not often capable of weaving. Thank you, God, for the stories in life that are far more lovely than anger. Often life feels unpleasurable. Not because life is not pleasurable, but because we've fallen into a pattern of deciding we are not going to be pleased.
Sometimes this is a pattern we're aware of. More often than not, though, it's a pattern that quietly grabs hold of us each new morning and goes on to dictate the terms of each new day. In this case, things have happened to us along the way that leave us feeling displeased with life. And long after those things have passed, the emotions attached to them insist on being a part of our morning routine. They want us to build a life on reliving the past and not imagining the future. Dr. Joe Dispenza says, if we don't wake up to a day dictated by the possibilities of the future we will automatically fall back into the patterns of the past. That's our brain. It starts the day as tired as we feel. And if we don't take control of it, it will take control of us. It will revert back to the patterns from the morning before and the morning before that. And if those patterns are patterns that feel displeased with the world, we will start our day predicting the world is going to drown us in displeasure in the day ahead. So, what do we do? We wake up and tell the day ahead I will be pleased with you. I am choosing that pleasure right now. We tell our brain I am not going to wait for a future that feels pleasurable to feel pleasure, I'm going to choose to be pleased with that future even before it arrives. We inform our brain that we are tired of dwelling in the emotions of our past and we command it to experience the emotions we feel while envisioning the possibilities our future. Every day we get a choice. Take control of my emotions or let my emotions take control of me. The outcome of that choice will largely determine how pleased we feel about life. Be pleased with life before it gets pleasurable. Maybe that's the most pleasurable way of all to live life. I was standing in line for lunch at a conference yesterday with my friend and work colleague Marrin. Marrin follows a gluten-free diet and has food allergies, so she was asking the servers questions about the ingredients in some of the food options.
I didn't notice a woman standing in line with us who was clearly paying attention to her conversations, but a beautiful thing was about to happen because she was. When Marrin and I sat down with our lunches, a woman approached our table and said, "I don't want to come across as creepy, but I have some gluten-free pasta and chicken I brought for my lunch, and I'm more than happy to share it with you." She would go on to be almost apologetic that the pasta isn't as firm as some other pastas, but if my friend was willing to overlook that, she was more than welcome to have it. I was caught off guard by this, and not in a creepy way. Here we were, speaking at a conference that challenges us to enter into the struggles of others, to better understand them in our desire to bring healing to them, and there standing before us was a woman carrying this challenge out as if it wasn't a challenge at all. As if that's just the way she does life. I heard someone say yesterday that we are always being asked the question, 'will you open your heart'? Reflecting on that, and our lunchtime experience with this beautiful human, I found myself wondering: if we don't hear that question is it because we struggle with hearing, or do we struggle with listening closely enough to the people around us to fully hear that question being asked of us? This woman was paying attention to what was going on in the lives of the people around her. And whether she'd articulate it this way or not, what she was hearing was, "will you open your heart?" It's telling that in answering, yes, I will open my heart, she felt obligated to acknowledge that opening her heart might come across as creepy. Why is that? Why is it that another human being responding in generosity and love would have to overcome her beliefs that her generosity might come across as creepy on her way to our table with her gluten-free pasta and chicken? Have purposeful acts of kindness become so rare that we have to battle the awkwardness of taking on that rare in order to be kind? Maybe this online world doesn't help much with that. In this online world we are often so after each other's throats over speeches and politics and religion and world views that we can forget in the real life world out there, there are people who are answering the question, "will you open your heart" with a resounding hell yes. In this online world where people are often debating who has the most closed hearts out there, it's easy to forget there's a woman standing in a lunch line waiting to open hers to everyone. I know I left that lunch a little more challenged to opening my ears a little wider. A little wider in an attempt to hear that question, will you open your heart? And to answer yes, as many times as I can, until slowly but surely no one ever again has to feel creepy about answering that question with their own yes. Maybe listen to the world a little closer today. If you listen close enough, not a day will go by without you being asked, will you open your heart? Let's all answer yes just a little more. Let's share the stories of those opening their hearts just a little more. And maybe one day offering our gluten-free pasta to someone in need will feel like the most normal thing in the world to do. Because the truth is, that is supposed to be the most normal thing about us. I was messaging with a friend this morning who is doing mission work in South Africa. In addition to the challenge of the work in the mission field, she has some challenges going on back home. Her closing and encouraging words, not in spite of the challenges but because of them, were, "I have a good and faithful God, and so do you."
After reading her message an article popped up I wrote last year. Oh God. Right on time. Always. *** One word I would use to describe the bible is storms. In fact, I think one of the main purposes behind the bible is that that readers and believers come away embracing the reality of storms. If you're someone who is looking to avoid storms in life, the bible is not your book. If you are someone who believes the path to joy is finding a flight pattern that goes around the storms, the bible is not your book. The bible is a book about finding joy IN the storms, not outside of them. At the heart of that is God's desire for joy to be discovered in relationship. In relationship with him and in relationship with one another. And think about it, when do we lean most heavily on relationships? Not when you are driving your nice new car, but after you've crashed it. If you read the bible, and you are reading about a character struggling, let me give it away, God's about to show up. Struggle is always a precursor to God showing up. Which is why I believe so strongly in the bible. In my life, struggle is always a precursor to God showing up. It's been my life's pattern. Struggle, God. Struggle, God. Struggle, God. Lately, though, that pattern has shifted. It's a shift that's been life-changing. Because today, more than ever, I see my pattern as: Struggle AND God. Struggle isn't a messenger sent to tell me God is on the way. Struggle is God crying out I am here. Struggle is not a warning sign to get ready for God. Struggle is the opportunity to cling to God. Maybe that's because God has an important earthly lesson he wants us to take away from that. So much of our earthly unhappiness comes from hiding our struggles from one another. Trying to avoid them. When maybe we're supposed to use our struggles as an opportunity to openly cling to one another. We will never do that if we see our struggles as the hurdle between you and me. We will never do that if we see struggles as something we have to get around on the way to you and me. Struggles ARE you and me. Struggles ARE me and God. Struggles are what bind us, not divide us. That's the biblical take, and there's an awful lot of research to suggest it's the earthly take as well. |
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
November 2024
CategoriesAll Faith Fatherhood Life Mental Health Perserverance Running |