​Yesterday, I was leading an all day online training. I was at a bit of a handicap because my Zoom-guru-tech-savy training partner couldn't join me. So I had to fly solo.

Late in the afternoon, my greatest fear came to life.

A voice on the other side of the screen said, "Keith, we can't see the screen you're trying to share."

Panic. Because I could sure see it. Why couldn't they?

After pushing a few random buttons and arriving at a place where even I could no longer see my screen, another voice chimed in, "I think I can help you."

And suddenly the trainee was training the trainer.

I arrived back at where I needed to be. After a little delay and a whole lotta help, the training carried on.

I confess - for a minute there I was lost. I needed the audience to see what I was trying to share. I had no idea how to make that happen; making the evil wrongs of technology right is not my strength. And in being lost, feelings of dread and hopelessness started flooding in.

There is also this. Even in the panic I knew things would one way or another work out. I was able to keep the dread and hopelessness mostly silenced because I knew what I'd shown up to that training to do.

Yes - for a moment there I had no idea where I was. But I never lost sight of where I wanted to go.

Sometimes life throws us into uncertain spaces. But I got to thinking this morning, we are only lost in those uncertain spaces if we are uncertain about where where want to go. Not knowing where I am is only tragic if I have no idea where I want to go.

Life has been filled with uncertainties lately. Some weeks have been one uncertain day after another.

But I assure you - I am uncertain, not lost. Some days I don't know where I am, but I know where I am going. There is panic some days, for sure. But there is never defeat. There is never hopelessness.

A lot of that is because I've surrounded myself with good people in my life who will speak up and say, I think I can help you with that.

A lot of that is because I have a God constantly reminding me that He is the way. With him, it's impossible to be lost.

A lot of that is because where I want to go is progress, not a destination. With progress. uncertainty is key to the journey.

It's Ok if you get to feeling uncertain today, just as long as you know where you're going.

Remind yourself of that today. Remind yourself that you may be uncertain about life, but you are not lost.

​There's a young lady who lives in the apartment next to me. Many mornings when I come back from my run she's standing outside watching over her two dogs as they do their morning dog stuff.

We chat. I think we both value those chats.

There's immeasurable hope and life in college-age kids. I value being in the presence of that life.

I think she values hearing the 'been there done that' of my more experienced life. Especially the mistakes I've made on the road to more experienced.

Yesterday she was telling me about this 'great job' she interviewed for. "I'll never get the job," she told me.

I asked her why.

She said, "It just seems like the job is way over my head. I don't think I'm qualified."

Then she said a phrase that makes me cringe these days. It made me cringe to hear her say it; it makes me cringe to think about how often I used to think it.

She said, "but I guess what will be will be."

I know she felt my cringe. I turned on her like an angry mix of friend and dad and coach.

I asked her, "did you interview for that job?"

Yes, she said.

I asked her, "did you give it everything you had to prepare for that interview? Did you answer all of their questions with a giant heart and with everything you knew?"

Yes, she said.

"Then you are no longer allowed to say whether or not your qualified," I told her. "That's their job now."

And because you showed up and gave it your all, I told her, your life isn't about 'what will be will be.' Your life is about making life be what you imagine and dream it to be.

For sure, there are some things in life that will just be. We clearly don't have much say over viruses and hurricanes. But that doesn't mean we need to dive headfirst into a philosophy that just accepts what will be will be.

I've lived life under that philosophy. And some of the things I came to accept I would never allow my boys to just accept. I would never allow them to accept them without a fight, without interjecting a little of what they want life to be into the equation.

When you decide you're going to make life be what you want it to be, it doesn't always work out. But when it doesn't, you usually pick up a plan B or a plan C along the way - often plans that are better than the one you were trying to pull off in the first place.

Life feels like you have a little say in it.

But when you just let life be what life will be, you absorb life. Day after day you take what it offers. Which really, that starts to feel more like you're being pummeled by life, not like you're absorbing it.

Life will not just be what life will be.

Not unless you let it be.

​Seth Godin says, "Problems are a feature. They're the opportunity to see how we can productively move forward. Not to a world with no problems at all, but to a situation with different problems, ones that are worth dancing with."

I have lived a lot of my like thinking the goal is to eradicate problems. Like, the better you're performing at life, the less you'll feel like there are problems in it.

When you think like that, and then wake up every day to the inevitable reality that the problems are still there, you start looking for ways to make you 'feel' like the problems are gone.

If you can't get good at making problems go away, you get good at finding ways to pretend that they have.

Something liberating happens when we realize life IS one long flow of problems. There is no rubik's cube solution that stops them from coming at you. No room to hide away in. No bottle to drink from. No hobby to take their place. The problems just keep coming...

The first thing you start to realize is I am not the problem behind every problem. Sometimes it's just life. We don't always deserve the beating we put on ourselves because life is beating us up. We are not always the problem behind the problem.

The other thing you start to realize is - no, I can't stop the problems from coming at me in life, but I do have some authority over which problems I choose to dance with.

There are some problems we choose to battle day after day and the end result is I don't much feel like dancing anymore. I'm tired and I don't want to hear one more note of that music or fake one more step in that dance.

So why do we choose to stay in that battle?

Because we're afraid there are going to be bigger problems on the other side of that problem.

Well that's the wrong way to look at it, I know now. The question isn't whether there are going to be more problems or bigger problems on the other side. The question is are those problems more worth dancing with than the one I'm battling with right now.

Will wrestling with those new problems make me feel more optimistic than pessimistic about my life? Will wrestling those new problems make me feel like getting out of bed in the morning and not perpetually hiding beneath the covers? Will wrestling those problems put me on a path in life that doesn't constantly appear to have a dead end sign at the end of it?

The problems are coming today. We are not stopping them. But we do have some say in which ones we choose to own.

The goal in life isn't battle-free. The goal is letting go of as many of the battles as we can that keep us feeling like we'll never be free.

​Faith is easy when the things we want to materialize from our faith always materialize - and with a timing that allows us to live life feeling good and comfortable and safe.

That's not how faith always works, though. There have been days lately when I've wondered if that's how faith EVER works.

I've found myself asking God a simple one-word question lately.

When?

And God keeps responding with his own one-word answer.

Faith.

Knowing the outcomes in life. Knowing their timing. Knowing when the holes we have in our hearts and the plans in our mind and the dreams in our soul - knowing when and how all of those things will come to be - all of that knowing is a very human desire.

Accepting that we don't get to know, believing that God already knows and that's enough, finding strength in the mystery and not in the answers - all of that is a very Godly desire.

Our human desires are to create and discover and assign truth. We want to live in absolute predictability.

God's desire is mystery. His desire is that we turn lovingly and longingly to him in unpredictability.

That creates quite the conflict some days - at least from the standpoint of my faith. It creates tension when I become obsessed with 'when' while God is obsessed with 'how'.

It creates struggle when I'm fixated on the final chapter - happily ever after - while God seemingly isn't giving so much as a glance to those final pages.

Because the reality is, God is obsessed with the page I'm on.

Today.

God is obsessed with me discovering I'll never be happy with 'the end' if I can't find joy in the words He and I will write today.

God wants me to believe that today is the most meaningful day I've had in my life. He wants me to believe that without having to skip ahead to the final pages of my life to see proof of it.

Faith is living today like I already know it.

Most days I do, God. But not every day....

​It's Monday. The start of another week. The start of another round of you and me deciding: will we make a way this week, or will we make excuses?

I spent a little time watching the Olympics over the weekend. It's easy to be awed by these young men and women. Watching them compete as and with some of the most accomplished athletes in the world, it's easy to be lured into believing you are watching the larger than life, the supernatural.

But you are not.

What you are really watching are people who have decided what is important to them. They have decided it is important enough for them to find a way to do it, and not a bunch of excuses why they can't.

You are watching people who appear to be larger than life because they've spent a larger amount of their lives saying yes to a way, and hell no to excuses.

I also spent some time on the trails this weekend with my friends Celia and Meg who are attempting to run the entire Appalachian Trail. My friend Celia was battling stomach issues. Yet, here she was, 4 days and 120 miles into their recent segment, it was hot and she was feeling awful, and all she was talking about was finding a way.

Finding a way to keep going. Finding a way for her to be larger than her life as she's known it.

She had the perfect excuse in front of her, but she said no to the excuse and yes to finding a way.

The more I watch the Olympics - the more I hang out with Celia and Meg - the less I am awed by THEIR superpowers and the more I begin questioning why I so infrequently tap into MY OWN.

Because the only thing separating all of them from me is the number of excuses I buy into. When I'm finding a way to say I can't today, they'll be finding a way to say whatever it takes.

Sometimes it's not good for us to watch the Olympics or hang out with friends running the unimaginable run. Because we can walk away from them making THEM our newest excuse.

-They have some special gift I don't have.

-They have more time, money and resources.

-They have a better support system.

No - I'm sorry, that is not what they have that you and I don't have.

What they have is total clarity about what is important to them. And if you ever try to give them an excuse why they can't pull off what is important to them, they'll tell you what to do with that excuse.

Maybe we should think about that a little this week. Whatever it is we're thinking is important to us - there's a good way of measuring just HOW important it is.

Are we making a way for that important thing to get done in our lives? Or are we making excuses why it can't?

Maybe this week we can all think a little more about what is really important. Maybe it will help us spend a little more time making a way.

​A friend shared this analogy with me yesterday. I spent some time thinking about it while I was out on the trails yesterday. It goes like this:

**
You are holding a cup of coffee when someone comes along and bumps into you or shakes your arm, making you spill your coffee everywhere.

Why did you spill the coffee?

"Because someone bumped into me!!!"

Wrong answer.

You spilled the coffee because there was coffee in your cup.

Had there been tea in the cup, you would have spilled tea. Whatever is inside the cup is what will spill out.

Therefore, when life comes along and shakes you (which WILL happen), whatever is inside you will come out. It's easy to fake it, until you get rattled.

**
Out on the trails yesterday, I first thought of this analogy in terms of running. I thought about how when it comes to race day, what comes out of you on the trail or on the road is what you've been pouring into you over the months leading up to that race.

If you've poured strength into you - you've put in those training miles, you've eaten well, you've gotten plenty of rest - then strength will come out of you when you are put to the test. If you haven't, well you can't pour something out of a cup that hasn't been poured into it first.

Running isn't the only test in life; it SURE isn't the only test in MY life. Our worlds get rocked with all sorts of tests. Relationship tests. Health tests. Job related tests. Someone cuts me off on the highway tests.

And the same holds true for those tests that holds true for that running test. What's been poured into us will pour out of us in those moments.

If in the months and years leading up to those moment I've practiced exploding with anger, anger will pour out. If I've practiced forgiveness, forgiveness will pour out. If I've practiced letting my middle finger fly, that ugly finger WILL fly.

In so many test moments, it's our natural instincts that take over, not who or what we think we are - or even who we wish we could be in that moment. What we've poured into our cups, that WILL pour out.

For me, because of my faith, I strive to always pour out Jesus. My faith is all about working to have my natural responses to life look like the responses Jesus had to life.

I am a work in progress - of that you can be sure.

But the key to that work isn't memorizing what Jesus believed, it's about practicing how Jesus responded to the people he encountered in his life. The key isn't to hanging a golden rule sign on my office wall, it's about loving the hard to love people that walk through that office door.

Memorizing what Jesus would do does nothing to shape my instincts to the tests in life. Practicing what Jesus DID - that is what fills my cup.

That is what determines whether or not Jesus spills out when my world gets rattled.

When life gets tough, what spills out of your cup?

​I wrote the words below one year ago. When I wrote them, I thought they were a reflection on my first marathon 5 years ago. I thought they were a reflection on where I'd been in life. One year ago when I wrote them, I had no idea they were far more preparation for where I was going than a gathering of strength from where I'd come.

Because in the year since I wrote them, there have been many moments when I thought I'd collapse. Many moments when I WANTED to. But I didn't. And in that, there has been as much magic in my life as I've ever experienced.

Magic doesn't always feel good. Some days magic feels like hell, to be honest. Because magic doesn't always make struggles 'magically' disappear.

But you know what, there is NO magic like discovering you are a stronger human being than you ever imagined you could be.

None.

There is nothing like the magic that happens when you quit waiting for someone to wave a wand over your life, when you grab that wand and start performing a little magic of your own.

*** Re-written from July 24, 2020

Yesterday, I was listening to Matthew Futterman talking about his new book: Running to the Edge. During the conversation he said "where you think you are going to collapse, but then you don't, that's where the magic happens."

Isn't that true? That whether by plan or not, it's where we face incredible challenges - yet survive - that we learn beautiful things about ourselves and the world around us. It's where we discover we too often underestimated what we were capable of.

Marathon running taught me that lesson. At mile 20 of my first marathon I thought I would die. I can't go on, I cried. Then somehow I stumbled across the finish line.

At mile 20 - I thought I'd collapse. But I didn't - and magic happened.

The most magical part of that moment was discovering that magic happens at a place, and not a point in time. Magic is a place I can go visit whenever I'm willing to go there, and not something I have to wait around and hope will find me again one day.

When we wake up each morning and realize magic happens at the place where we once thought we weren't strong enough or smart enough or talented enough to go - and then we go to that place anyways - we have the opportunity to pick ourselves up and plant ourselves right smack dab in the middle of magic anytime we want to.

When Futterman talked, I looked back on the days with sadness when I believed the magic in life was beyond my control. I thought about the life I wasted, waiting on magic to come to me like a rabbit lifted out of a hat with the wave of a wand.

But that look was brief. Because you find hope when you find out that magic doesn't have to wait on the wand. You find hope when you discover you ARE the wand.

Magic happens when we stop living a life running from the things we fear will collapse us and start bravely running toward them.

Do it, and believe me, you'll discover magic is so much better than regret.

​Here I sit. Ready to start a new day. It's just me and my thoughts. There really is no other major influence on my day at this moment.

As I think about my day ahead, my thoughts can go one of two ways.

1.) I believe this is going to be a good day. I'm going to make things happen. I have something to contribute to this day and I'm the right person to make that contribution.

2.) I can already tell this is going to be a bad day. I'm not up for making things happen. What do I have to contribute anyways? There are many people out there far more equipped to contribute to this day than me.

If you are thinking like me - number one - you are already moving mountains. Before you even step out the door, you are already clearing your path.

If your thinking is more in line with number two, without one single thing having happened yet in this day, you are building obstacles to overcome that weren't there before you got out of bed.

We spend a lot of time reading books, listening to podcasts, seeking friendly and professional counseling - we are constantly looking for tricks that will help us move the mountains in our lives.

Well, I have to break it to you, not one of those tricks will work if you don't trick your mind into believing you are in charge of what you believe about this day. Your brain is naturally inclined to warn you that mountains are coming, so your mind gets naturally inclined to telling you that you aren't a mountain climber.

And you start believing it.

When the pandemic began about 500 days or so ago, I told myself I was going to start writing something into the world each morning. I believed I had something to contribute that could help some of us weather a bit of the pandemic storm together.

What you are reading here this morning is the 457th article I've written and shared here since then.

There are mornings I've woken up and my mind has tried to tell me I don't have anything to contribute today. In that moment, I've had the chance - every single time - to say you are right, I don't.

But I have also had the chance to say, I believe I DO have something to contribute today. Screw you mind, I am going to contribute it.

Believing you have something to contribute and then contributing it, it's habit forming. Just like allowing yourself to create mountains that aren't even there is.

Here in a minute, I will be done writing this article. I'll hit the big blue post button below my writing. And then you know what I am going to do? I'm going to celebrate me. I'm literally going to say, good job Keith.

Not good job - that was brilliant. Not good job - you're changing the world. I'm going to say good job for doing what you believed you could do, and not giving in to what your mind tried to tell you that you couldn't do.

I'm going to reinforce the habit of believing in myself. We all run around looking for someone to tell us good job. Well make sure you stop and become one of the first of those someones.

Give yourself a pat on the back.

Maybe you aren't writing. Shoot, maybe your mind wants to tell you that you can't get the kids up and fed and ready for school. So when you do, pat yourself on the back for believing otherwise.

Maybe your mind is telling you that you can't get a run in today. Go run even 100 yards if you have to, just 100 yards and just for the chance to say 'screw you mind.' I believed in myself.

Then pat yourself on the back.

Our mind is a friend or it is an enemy. And not unlike how we choose all of our friends, that choice is up to us. Do I want to hang out with an enemy, or a friend.

That choice isn't a small one. In fact, it's the difference between moving mountains or creating them.

Life always seems to go better as a mountain mover.

​I drove my friend Meg to meet her Appalachian Trail Adventure Project partner Celia last night as they began the 7th segment of their quest to run the entire trail from Georgia to Maine.

There was something in the timing as we drove up the final 6 miles or so of dirt road to their starting point. Meg and I were talking about God - who and what he is in our lives. Clearly, God means different things to me and Meg.

God means different things to all of us.

I told Meg, God is someone unexplainable, really, in my life. He is something unprovable. But there was timing in that conversation - because I think the closest God comes to proving himself to me, outside of my sons, is the trees.

I've said often, the trails, the trees lined up like dominoes (I love that Brett Eldredge imagery), they have saved me. I imagine the folks who read or hear me say that think I'm being dramatic.

I'm not. I'm being real.

There is something life-giving that happens the moment I enter the vastness of a forest. No matter how challenging the day is, or the week or the year - there are voices in that vastness - 'they give off such hints of gladness.'

I don't have to force myself to look at life differently among the trees, to feel differently about it, it just happens. Gladness comes over me like I couldn't stop it if I wanted to.

But it's not like I could stop someone walking alongside me and ask them, 'did you hear that?' Did you hear God? Do you feel his gladness?

Because maybe they didn't. Or maybe they did and they don't believe that is God. And I'm OK with that, because I'm the one who needs the saving, I'm the one who needs to know where to find God in my life.

Mary Oliver's poem 'When I Am Among The Trees' says this:

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

You see, the trees - God - they don't invite me in to simply receive. They invite me in as a reminder. A reminder that it is sometimes the mere presence of someone - the trees or God or you - that brings light to our lives. And mere presence really isn't that difficult.

It's a good reminder to carry from the trees. Carry into a world needing our light.

A reminder that we've come into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine....

Because maybe that is God - shining. Whether it's a tree or whether it's me, maybe God is found IN the shining.

Maybe that's because God knew that's the one thing we would all need from time to time - if not always - some shining.

So maybe go shine today. If the trees can do it, so can we.

​The picture below popped up in my memories yesterday. It's a picture of my boys and their cousin riding a tube on Seely Lake in Montana. I actually captured a series of this tube ride. In the series, you can see the boys' faces go from scared to death to full of smiles.

I was talking to a friend yesterday. She was about to begin a four day, 100 mile run through Yosemite. She said, "I'm petrified, but feeling alive."

I met this friend when I went to Honduras a few years ago. As we were talking about Honduras, I told her, it was in Honduras that I felt as alive as I can ever remember feeling.

The thing is, before I went to Honduras, I remember being as petrified as I've ever been about anything. Honduras was as foreign an activity - in every way - that I'd ever taken on.

My friend got me thinking about this connnection yesterday, the connection between petrified and alive. They are sort of opposites, aren't they - this idea of being paralyzed with fear and being fully alive?

In one way, being petrified is a natural biological response. It's the body's way of stopping us in the midst of danger and forcing us to assess: do I run or hide or fight?

But in another way, it's a completely planned response that forces us to ask the same question: do I run or hide or fight? I found myself wondering yesterday, somewhere deep in our human nature are we constantly being called to that question? I found myself wondering, is there a connection between being petrified and feeling alive?

I saw it on my 14 year old's face last week when he couldn't run from the call of being scared to death by the giant roller coaster. And I'll never forget the 'I feel alive' look on his face after he answered that call.

Kids seem to know this, don't they? They know feeling alive is always just this side of being paralyzed by fear. It's like magnets suck them to the edge of it.

As a parent, we spend so much of those early years of their lives trying to talk them away from - even PULL them away from - that edge. Be careful. Slow down. Don't get too close. Don't touch that. We are in a constant battle with that magnet sucking them to the edge.

What happens, then, as adults, that makes us petrified to go anywhere near petrified? What happens that makes us start believing feeling alive is found in stillness and safety, and not in tackling 100 miles of the Yosemite? What happens that makes us believe our lives are lived best with quiet hearts, and not hearts pounding against our chest - begging to explore life?

In some ways, I think this natural response of our bodies that steers us clear of being petrified has somehow convinced us that being petrified is always bad.

But after reminiscing at the pictures of my boys on that tube, after feeling the petrified in my friend ready to tackle the Yosemite, after feeling again the overwhelming love for life and people I had in those tiny villages of Honduras - I find myself believing petrified is something to run to, not from.

Petrified may not be the key to life, but it's a GIANT clue. It may not be a place to relocate to, but it is certainly an invitation we need to accept more often than we do.

Because often, it's in petrified when we can say with more enthusiasm than ever - "I'm feeling alive."