​Our deepest wounds in life happen in relationships. The wounds we carry with us, the ones we try to drink away, hide from, and the ones that leave scars that seem to never want to disappear - nearly all of them are relational wounds.

And yet, often, we try to heal from them in isolation.

Some of God's earliest words were "It is not good for man to be alone." And yet, Western culture promotes little more than it promotes individualism.

Even in healing. (Don't believe me - google self-help at some point today).

Dr. Dan Siegel says, "Integration is the heart of healing." And integration happens through connection, not avoidance. When Siegel is talking about integration, he's talking about bringing together the disconnected parts of ourselves.

Relational wounds lead us to numb our body from the pains of our mind. They lead us to hide hard emotions that are tied to hard experiences. They lead us to pretend our past has nothing to do with our present. They lead us to hide ourselves from others.

Healing isn't just about feeling better; healing is about reconnecting all of these parts of ourselves that we've allowed to become so separated.

All of this disintegration - it feels like distress. And when we experience distress, our body starts looking for signals of safety. And from birth, we are wired to look for those signals in one another.

A calm voice.

Gentle eyes.

A warm touch.

Someone who is fully attuned to our presence.

All of those signals calm our nervous system so that our brains and bodies can begin feeling and writing stories of healing. When you can share out loud to another the story of this wound you've been holding - and they don't so much as flinch like you might have expected them to - that wound is no longer a source of shame or pain or rejection, it is now a source of connection.

It is on its way to making a healing story out of a hurting story.

Brene Brown says, "shame cannot survive being spoken and met with empathy."

When you think about Jesus, and all of his miracles - his healing - it was almost always to return people to their communities, not just to display his power. Jesus was always trying to integrate people. Maybe because man was not meant to be alone.

But man do we keep trying to prove otherwise.

Avoidance and isolation don't protect you from pain, they actually rob you of the chance to make meaning of it.

You don't need to shout your story to the world. Not everyone is ready for that. Start with finding one person to gently hold your story. And trust doesn't require a leap - maybe start with a simple lean.

One big thing about connection I have learned in my own healing journey is this: you don't have to heal before you connect, healing often begins because you do. We don't have to be ready to connect, sometimes it's connection that makes us ready.

That has sure been my experience.

I used to live like connection was a threat upon my life. I am learning more and more each day that connection is actually a lifeline.

I am learning that we heal together.

We do.

Or we do not heal at all.

​The agency I work for at the state is re-organizing.

Or re-aligning.

Or re-structuring.

I'm not entirely sure which "re" it is but anytime you get to incorporating "re" in business or life it usually means some version of out with the old and in with the new. Which isn't always a bad thing.

I guess the key is that someone in charge of the "re" knows precisely what they want to do with the new that couldn't be done with the old, otherwise you run the risk that re-structuring will lead to structures every bit as shaky as the old one.

Maybe even more shaky.

But before I make that the point of this article I will move on.

Yesterday the team I work with got the official word on what this restructuring will look like in our world. In short, it means the office we all worked in no longer exists - it's being absorbed by other offices - newly formed ones and old ones alike. It also means that some of us will continue to work directly together and other of us will work for new people and with new teams.

All of which kind of sucks.

In ten years one grows to take some pride in the office they work for. And in ten years, one grows to appreciate and adore the people they work with, especially when our shared work is centered on helping others find and keep emotional and physical and mental wellness in their lives.

There were sad exchanges yesterday. Sad that an office can just disappear with the stroke of a pen. Sad that what we've all been able to do with one another in collaboration now feels in danger of being replaced with silos and division. Sad that our impact across the state feels largely unseen in this mad dash for efficiency. Because we all know that the way we work together changes people's lives far more than the way lines connect or flow on an org chart ever will.

But maybe that's what I need to be reminded of. Maybe it's something many of us can be reminded of.

People's names and titles and offices don't change people's lives - the way we enter into those lives does. And the way we enter into those lives can leave an impact that survives and thrives well beyond any re-organization.

Years from now, and likely even mere months from now, people will not remember the name of our old office, but they will continue to live lives made healthier by it.

When we receive a gift from someone, a gift that touches our souls, we don't care where the gift came from. We often treasure most what the gift means to us, how it stirs us, and the well meaning found in the giver of the gift.

That is the moral I suppose, one that isn't ever meant to be re-structured but only held close, an unshakeable truth, that we have gifts within us always ready to pour out. And life indeed does at times make them more difficult to pour out - to share - but difficulties in life are often meant to remind us that difficult is almost always only a bump.

Difficult is rarely the end.

Unless we choose it to be.....

​One big lesson I have learned in my life is to never get to believing I have any idea who and how and when God can and will use someone.

There have been many moments when people rightfully could have said, "that guy needs God in his life." And yet standing right beside me, quite unknown to them and me, was a God saying, "I am already here."

People rightfully could have been suggesting - "that guy needs a miracle in his life" - completely unaware one was already in the works.

So often we miss God at work because we get to believing we know better than God who and what God can use. We miss God at work because we get to believing we are better at spotting the signs of God than God is at creating them.

We have challenges in our lives, enemies, and maybe we get to praying God will intervene in their lives. Make them less unlikable. Well, it is my experience that God has a knack for using enemies to intervene in MY life. How on earth can God help me understand the power and beauty of HIS forgiveness if he doesn't help me discover the power of my own?

God is working. Just because it doesn't look like the kind of work I'd like it to look like doesn't mean God isn't working.

God is working. Just because the person that God is working through doesn't look and act the way I'd like them to doesn't mean God isn't working.

God's closest followers watched God die on a cross and walked away believing they'd been wrong about God all along. Turns out what they were most wrong about was how they thought about who and what God could use to create his story.

We never - not ever - know better than God when it comes to knowing what God is up to.

Maybe you have things going on in your life and you've come to believe - God surely can't use this. I am here to remind you, as someone who has seen God re-write the story of some pretty evil things in my life - surely he can.

Maybe you have someone in your life and you've come to believe - God surely can't use them. I am here to remind you, as someone who has been written off by self and by others more times than I can count - surely he can.

And he will.

God's gift is seeing and doing things we can't or won't see or do ourselves. That makes us really good at missing God.

Well, I have come to believe this about my life.

Quite strongly:

God is never missing.

​Waiting for some of the things I am waiting on in life is hard. It is hard because I assume the things I am waiting on will be good. This is a grand assumption, of course, since most of what I am waiting on I have never had.

How can I call good things that have never really proven to be good?

Yet, Still.... I wait without wanting to wait.

I confess that in this waiting, since I have unwavering belief that God has an active role in the timing of my life, not the least of which is in the timing of when the things I am waiting on will arrive, I find myself asking - when?

When, God?

How much longer will I have to wait?

These questions, well they are also built on some grand assumptions.

The assumption that God also believes this thing I am waiting on will be good for me. I makes guesses about good; God knows good.

Also the assumption that God doesn't see something incredibly valuable happening to the character of me while I wait for this thing I am waiting on to become a part of me.

Will we discover in heaven that the gift of waiting was far grander than any gift we ever waited for? Afterall, for many of us the gift of life is all about waiting for the gift of heaven.

Do we miss great pleasure waiting for what we are waiting for when we don't see and feel the goodness in the waiting?

Waiting for some of the things I am waiting on in life is hard. But maybe that is because I have yet to fully discover the good that can be found in the waiting.

​I had a three-hour conversation yesterday with a colleague-turned-friend named Negar. We’ve been working on a project together, but the real connection didn’t happen in the project, it happened in the pauses, in the stories, in connection.

Negar’s family immigrated to the U.S. from Iran when she was a little girl. She now lives in Dubai with her husband. They both still have family in Iran.

As we started our conversation, I could tell Negar was weary. She looked tired in our shared screen. She told me how she and her husband had been trying to stay connected with loved ones in Iran while the world around them feels increasingly uncertain. And how that connection gets more difficult to make by the day.

We talked about the fear and ache of watching from afar while violence, politics, and power struggles unfold dangerously close to the people you love. I confessed to her that in sixty years of living I have never for a second had to worry about war devouring the people I care most about.

I told her it is one of the things I understand least about God. How some of us will go through life never seeing a war, and yet some will grow up never escaping it. Or the haunting memories of it.

It’s easy - too easy - for war to feel like a headline when it doesn’t touch your circle. It can feel like someone else’s fight, someone else’s pain. Until you know someone. Until you hear their voice, and see the tiredness in their eyes, and realize that they are carrying the weight of the world in ways you've never had to.

It's quite the testimony that reading about wars and living in wars are two very different experiences.

Looking in Negar's eyes, I was reminded that wars are not just about countries. Not just about politics or alliances or blame. They are about people.

They are about one family, one mother, one uncle, one friend still trying to make a life in the middle of uncertainty.

They are about the children who wake up to the sound of fear - a fear that may very well accompany them the rest of their lives. The parents who don’t have good answers for that fear. The prayers whispered across time zones, hoping to keep someone safe without knowing how.

Knowing someone changes everything.

It softens the hard edges of opinion. It silences my need to pick the right side. It reminds me that humanity is never as black and white as a headline.

Headlines beg us to pick sides. But sometimes the side to pick is not a country or a cause, it’s compassion. It’s choosing to care, even when we don’t fully understand. It’s listening. It’s mourning what is lost, even if it what is lost was never ours.

I don’t pretend to understand the history or the politics of most wars. But I do understand friendship. I understand the sacredness of hearing someone’s heart. And maybe that was the sacred design of God bringing Negar into my life when he did.

Maybe God doesn't need me to understand why some grow up in war when others don't as much as he needs me to understand that his heart breaks with ours, no matter whose borders we stand behind.

It is often the breaking heart that is most open to love, and it is love that most often breaks down the barriers that keep us apart.

Not the least of those barriers: war.

​In the aftermath of divorce there has been an autopsy. An autopsy performed by me, and an autopsy performed by people outside of my marriage.

The autopsy sounds a lot like questions:

What did you do wrong?

Where did you miss the signs?

Why didn't you see it coming?

The reality is - a reality very difficult for many of us to embrace - is not every bad outcome is the result of bad decisions and mistakes. We like to believe this isn't true. We like to believe if we can pinpoint where we screwed up, we can protect ourselves from ever landing in a place that feels all screwed up ever again.

But here's some truth. Sometimes you didn't mess up. Sometimes you just showed up and life did what life sometimes does. Sometimes what you're feeling isn't evidence of failure - sometimes it's proof that you cared, you risked, you tried.

Sometimes our kids going through struggles isn't because we've failed as a parent.

Sometimes a divorce doesn't mean the marriage was a bad decision to begin with.

Sometimes changing jobs doesn't mean we didn't have what it took to succeed in the last one.

Sometimes standing in the wilderness of life doesn't mean we didn't do a great job of following God.

Just because an outcome feels like failure doesn't mean WE are the failing that landed us there.

Outcomes aren't always the best way to evaluate our choices along the way. They shouldn't be dismissed, for sure, but we are often too quick to use them to indict ourselves for every decision we've ever made. Sometimes an outcome isn't an invitation to come up with a better decision, but instead an invitation to tell ourselves a new story about ones we've already made.

Let me encourage you. It's very possible that what you're feeling isn't because you failed. Sometimes life just takes a turn. Now you get to decide: do I continue to beat myself up for that turn, or do I find the courage to boldly face the next turn?

One choice gives your outcomes the power to say just give up. The other choice gives your outcomes the opportunity to say you keep going.

So I want to encourage you,

keep going....

​There seemed to be a theme in my Fathers Day life yesterday:

Forgiveness.

A dear friend and I used Fathers Day to discuss challenging relationships with our fathers. I think we agreed that neither of us really knows what to do with those challenges. I think I also acknowledged that she does more beautiful things with her challenges than I do with mine.

Then in a separate conversation, I shared with a friend that I grew up in a small community with a heavy Amish population. She asked if there was anything I took away from that childhood experience. I told her, unequivocally, even if many years later, it's the power of forgiveness.

I recounted for her the story of the West Nickel Mines School shooting in Lancaster, Pennsylvania back in 2006. A gunman killed 5 girls between the ages of 6 and 13 in the one room schoolhouse.

That very evening, the Amish community rallied around the family of the killer. Many of them doing the rallying were family members of the little girls who were killed. A member of the community explained: "I don't think there's anybody here that wants to do anything but forgive and not only reach out to those who have suffered a loss in that way but to reach out to the family of the man who committed these acts".

(Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy is a powerful book about this event).

I grew up in my community understanding this was just the nature of the Amish. A nature, I confess, that isn't always easy to make my own nature.

As a Christian, I am always quick to embrace the "I am forgiven" narrative of my faith. I am quick to embrace the reality that KNOWING I am forgiven is good for my well-being. But what is often less talked about in the Christian community is the power in forgiving.

Charles Spurgeon says, "we come to the cross to be forgiven, but we stay at the cross to be forgiving."

We are often quick to proclaim that Jesus died on the cross so that we may live a life feeling forgiven. But before Jesus took his last breath, he publicly forgave his killers. With some of his final painful breaths he said, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do."

Did Jesus forgive so we'd follow the laws of forgiveness, or did Jesus so publicly forgive in hopes we'd discover the beauty in forgiving?

Did you know research supports that:

Forgiveness lowers stress hormones.

Forgiveness improves mood and resilience.

Forgiveness reduces cardiovascular risks.

Forgiveness fosters peace and connection in relationships.

Jesus left the earth offering us the gift of forgiveness. That's the gift we Christians often talk about, the one we most often proclaim as the primary reason for turning to Christianity.

But what if receiving forgiveness is only the halfway mark to finding the true beauty in Christianity?

Or just life in general.

What if the Amish forgave not because they were told to forgive, but because they had discovered it was the most peaceful and loving way to live life?

It is one thing to proclaim, I am forgiven. That quite honestly takes very little effort - especially for a follower of Jesus.

But what about forgiving, can we just as easily proclaim I am forgiving?

Honestly, I cannot. And it turns out that not only is living in unforgiveness really un-Christian, it's also quite un-healthy.

We go to the cross to be forgiven.

We stay there to become more forgiving.

​I used to hear God say to me, "they call me father."

It sounded like bragging.

Arrogant.

Authoritarian.

Then I became a father. And now I too say, "they call me father."

Not because I am bragging. Or arrogant. Or want my sons to know who is in charge.

I say it because there are no more meaningful words in my life that I can possibly utter than, "they call me father."

I say it because there is nothing that has taught me more about life, nothing that has GIVEN me more life than "they call me father."

I say it because there is no greater form of love, no more powerful way that I have ever received it than "they call me father."

I used to hear God say, "they call me father."

Then one day God decided beyond the objections of my own indecisiveness that he wanted me to be able to say those very same words.

"They call me father."

They do, and because they do, there is nothing I am more grateful for than the chance to turn to God each and every day and say, thank you.

Thank you for the chance to call you father.

Happy Fathers Day for all who are blessed by the chance to say, "they call me father."

​American tennis star Coco Gauff won the French Open last weekend. In the tennis world, that's a pretty big deal.

On the way to winning the tournament, she had to beat the French tennis player Lois Boissan in a semi-final match. As you can imagine, at the French Open the crowd is pretty one-sided when your opponent is from France.

After beating Boissan, Gauff was asked in a post-match interview how she dealt with the partisan cheers for her opponent. Gauff playfully said to the crowd, ""When you guys were chanting her name, I was saying to myself my name."

What a great strategy. And not just for Gauff, but for all of us.

If you're like me, there are days when it can feel like everyone is cheering on the rest of the world. It can feel like you're taking on the world on its home turf, and you're waiting for one single person to start cheering for you.

Sometimes the waiting never ends....

I want to encourage you, don't wait. Start cheering for yourself. When it sounds like you're drowning in the world's cheers for someone else start drowning yourself in your own cheers.

At a training I am a part of this week, we close each day by offering shoutouts - cheers - to fellow participants. Everyone gets one. And when they do, you can see the smiles spread across their faces.

But the world doesn't see to it that we all get our shoutouts at the end of each day. Or at any point in the day, really. So sometimes we have to be our own shoutouts.

Sometimes I have to look in the mirror and say, "you've got this, Keith."

Sometimes I have to look in the mirror and say, "great job getting that article written today, Keith."

Sound odd? Self-congratulatory?

Maybe.

But there's a reason why sports teams (and tennis players) play better at their home stadiums - why musicians can play for hours to screaming crowds - cheering triggers a boost of positive emotions and even chemicals like dopamine and adrenaline, which help us focus, push harder, and believe we can succeed. It’s like getting a shot of energy and confidence - just from knowing someone is with us and wants us to win.

Fortunately, research suggests we can get many of the same benefits when we cheer for ourselves.

So my suggestion: if the crowd isn't on your side, be your own crowd.

​Feelings have a say in our lives. But they don't have to have THE say.

Situations can feel unkind, but we can double down on kindness.

Situations can feel discouraging, but we can be an encouragement to someone in the middle of them.

Situations can feel hopeless, but our voice can sound like hope.

Situations can feel overwhelming, but we can be a calming presence in the middle of the chaos.

Situations can feel unfair, but we can respond with fairness and grace.

Situations can feel isolating, but we can be the hand that invites people back to connection.

Situations can feel rushed and impatient, but we can be the ones who slow down and take a stand against time.

Situations can feel cold, but we can be warmth.

Situations can feel like a frown, yet we can choose to look like a smile.

Situations can make us feel like they are in charge. It's true, they have a say. Sometimes a big say. But situations don't ever get the ultimate say in who we choose to be.

We do.

Just because feelings feel loud doesn't mean we lose our opportunity to be louder.

So be louder.