​It's possible the prison that holds the most prisoners is the prison of regret. The sad part about that particular prison, though, is we are free to leave whenever we like. And yet, so many of us choose to stay.

Why is that?

For me, for the longest time, that prison was actually a comforting place. It's where I could go to blame yesterday for how awful my today was. It's where I could go assume that if I'd just done THIS differently back then - or hadn't done THAT at all - life would be different now.

Of course, that's a false assumption. No one on earth knows what is on the other side of what if I had or hadn't. No one.

Those are false answers we create to blame yesterday for today. Those are false answers that give birth to endless shame and guilt and yes - regret. Those are false answers that help us pass time in the prison of our past while the opportunities of our future run off with our freedom.

I've discovered a powerful escape route from my own prison of regret. When I find myself in the challenging moments that invariably beg me to start wondering - what if I had - I flip the script. I literally flip the script from the past to the future and I ask myself - what if I do.

On the other side of what if I had done this or what if I hadn't done that is an answerless void. But on the other side of 'what if I do' is possibility. Possibilities that come with answers.

Instead of spending my morning lamenting the past, I can wonder, what if I write an article this morning? That's a step into the future, not a step into prison.

Instead of wondering what life would have looked like if I'd started running 20 years ago, I can wonder, what will life look like if I go for a run this morning? That's a step into the future, not a step into prison.

Instead of wondering what life would have looked like if I hadn't picked up that bottle when I was a kid, I can wonder, what will life look like if I don't pick up that bottle today? That's a step into the future, not a step into prison.

When it comes to regret, we get to choose the step: prison or future. And that choice comes in the form of a question.

Do I ask what if I had, or what if I do.

Those are two very different questions.

They point life in two very different directions.

​There are things I do in life that reflect more of what I want right now than what I value most.

I think about my eating, especially as it pertains to my health. Several years ago, I adopted a plant based diet. The adoption lasted about six months. During that six months, I felt better than I'd felt in years - maybe ever. Health indicators like my blood pressure and cholesterol were as good as they'd been in decades.

I'm no longer on that diet. It's not like I woke up and kicked the diet out of my life one day. Instead, I slowly dismissed it until we were no longer a thing.

Here's the struggle. I still value my health. I still believe eating healthy is a key component of being healthy. AND - I know - not theorize - that plant based eating is personally a healthy choice for me.

So why do I no longer eat that way? It's simple. Most days, when it comes to what I eat, what I want right now wins out over what I value most. My diet contains far more plants than it did prior to adopting and then abandoning the plant based diet, but it's still a long way from eating like my health is something I value most.

Most days this isn't because I want a cheeseburger, it's because I want convenience. (Although, I do REALLY want my ice cream....). But it doesn't really matter what the want is if the want is steering me away from my values.

The thing is, I know there are other areas in my life where I choose what I want over what I value most. I'm pretty sure that's because what we value most requires long term investment and commitment and discipline. It requires waiting on the reward that getting what I want right now doesn't often make me wait on.

And I know I am not always great at waiting on.....

It makes me wonder, when we're interacting with one another, how much are we experiencing each other's true values, and how much are we interacting based on what each other want right now.

I wonder how many relationships we get into because of something we want right now.

I wonder how many jobs we take because of something we want right now.

I wonder how many purchases we make because of something we want right now.

How much of this world revolves around want right now; how much of it revolves around values?

Many days, I get to feeling like we are all in this race to capture all the things we want, only to get to the end of the race and realize we captured few things of value.

Few things that WE value.

If you want to ask a great question, ask yourself - how much does my life look like the life I value most. Not the life I WANT, but the life I value.

If you are really brave, ask that question of someone close to you. Not as an assault, but as someone who cares. Because more than any of us really know, what we're looking for in life is someone to help us live out our values, not someone to help us chase down our wants.

And with that, I think I'll go have a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast. I want a bowl of Frosted Flakes, but for at least this meal - values over wants.

​Did Jesus know?

Jesus said, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment of them all. The second most important commandment is like this: “Love your neighbor as you love yourself."

When Jesus said that, did he have any idea we'd struggle most with the command to love ourselves?

Did he know, that as we struggled to offer ourselves grace in the face of our own shame, we'd struggle to offer our neighbors grace in the face of theirs?

Did he know, as we spent a life hiding from ourselves and hiding from our neighbors we'd ultimately come to believe God was hiding from us?

I think he did know.

Jesus didn't go to the cross to express his love for who we might one day become, he went there to express his love for who we are. Jesus didn't go to the cross to send us into hiding from what we've done, he went there to say you have nothing left to hide.

Jesus didn't say the first commandment was to love ourselves, but he sure seemed to know that was a critical piece to loving our neighbors and loving our God.

I don't think Jesus died to prove that God was worth loving. Or that our neighbors are worth loving. He died to prove that WE are worth loving. I think he knew if we couldn't believe that part of the commandment, we'd never be very good at the other two parts.

Some days, I think Jesus wonders what else he has to do to help us understand - that no matter what we are burying - he has no interest in burying us for it.

He died and then rose from his own burial to help us see we are worth it. I think he was hoping that would be the last time he'd have to ask us to rise from our own graves - from our own secrets - from our own torment.

There are days, though, I hear him still asking.

Asking us to come clean about who we are. Not to crucify us because of our condition, but to fiercely love us in that condition.

Loving our neighbor as ourself doesn't work so well when we aren't very loving of ourselves. And when we aren't very loving of our neighbors, God begins to feel like the most distant neighbor of all.

You may be flawed but you are beautiful.

You may be broken but you are healing.

You may feel unlovable but you are not.

And that is a really important truth for all of us to know.

​I went into Walmart yesterday afternoon. Not many good stories in my life start with "I went into Walmart." On top of that, soon after I went inside, the skies opened up. I was suddenly in a hostage situation - my captors: Walmart AND mother nature.

While I was waiting on a prescription to be filled, and for the herds of rain to stop pounding against the steel roof above me, I wandered into the eye glasses store. One of my captors asked me, "can I help you?"

There was something strange about the way he asked that from the get go. Like, he seemed excited about the possibility that he might actually be able to help me. Quite the unusual captor he was.

I showed him my eye glasses. One of the arms on my frames had been holding on for dear life the last couple of months. My thoughts had been to just nurse that arm until it was a better time for me to get new glasses. But my captor suggested he could make that arm like brand new.

He took my glasses, which didn't leave me totally blind, so I could still see the man all but dancing toward and then disappearing into a back room. He was back there for less than five minutes before reemerging with my glasses.

Glasses with two perfectly healed arms.

The man handed them to me like he was Jesus just seconds removed from restoring sight to a blind man. I accepted them like I was standing in the presence of a Jesus restoring sight to a blind man.

I asked him what I owed him. He said nothing. (Jesus never charged for his miracles either 🤷‍♂️).

When I walked away from that man, it struck me that there are a lot of ways to help someone. And maybe the best way to help is with a spirit of excitement. Maybe the best way to help is by considering what you are doing might feel like a miracle to the one you're doing it for.

My prescription was finally filled. What seemed like 40 days and night of rain finally stopped. And I walked our the doors and finally on to my car.

On the way there, I stepped in the deepest of puddles. My foot suddenly drenched. That's OK, I thought. Maybe I'm still not able to walk on water, but one miracle was good enough for me today. I'll take it.

And besides, I finally have a good story that starts with "I went into Walmart....".

​God is uniquely equipped to see beneath our brokenness into our hearts and minds and souls to fully know that we are all beauty on the way to being formed.

He is, after all - I believe - the one who formed us. What he has formed he will always be able to see every part of.

There's a closeness that can happen - a connection like no other - when you are in a relationship with a God always intent on seeing your beauty. A God who always believes you are on the way to becoming your most beautiful self.

Many of us, myself included, don't always experience the fullness of that connection with God. I think there are three reasons for that.

One - we tend to focus on our personal flaws way more than we focus on the beauty we are becoming. When we focus on our broken while God is focusing on our beauty, there's an obvious disconnect there. A spiritual life not on the same page with the spirit.

Two - when we focus on our flaws, that tends to influence what we focus on in our relationships with the people around us. If I'm not curious about the beauty in me, I'm sure not going to be as curious as I can be about the beauty in you.

But that's precisely why God created us to be in relationships with one another, to be mutually curious about the beauty we are all becoming.

So three - if we don't ever get to experience the connection that happens in real life with one another built on a mutual curiosity of one another's beauty, it's very difficult to feel and believe that God is curious about our beauty.

If the people around me aren't interested in seeing the beauty beneath my brokenness, why on earth does it even matter that an invisible God is? It's very difficult to experience the fullness of a relationship with God if we aren't experiencing the fullness of a relationship with someone around you.

I think changing that - maybe healing that - starts with me. It starts with you.

It starts with believing that you are beauty on the way to being formed. Whether you choose to believe it's because God says it's so or because it's simply just a healthier way of living for you and me to believe it is so. I think that's where it has to start.

We all get a chance to look in a mirror. And for most of us, we will see not an image, but a perception. OUR perception. That perception will be that image is a disaster. A disaster that is and a disaster that is a bigger disaster waiting to happen.

Or.

Our perception will be I'm looking at beauty on the way to being formed. Wherever I am in that mirror today - it is only a step on the way to beauty.

And when what you're looking at is a step on the way to beauty - it IS beauty.

If you're reading this, you ARE beauty on the way to being formed. I believe that because I believe God formed you that way. But even if you don't believe that about God - well I also believe it because I am beauty on the way to being formed. And many days that's a beauty I have to see beneath a lot of problems and a lot of brokenness.

It is some days not an easy view to access. But I do.

So if I can see it in me, I know YOU can see it in you. And if I can see it in me, then I can surely see it in you.

And I do.

You are beauty on the way to being formed.

​I'm not sure there's a bigger piece of wisdom I wish I'd had long before I received it than this: sometimes what you're dealing with right now isn't what you're dealing with right now.

The last few years I've come to realize, the most challenging part of my life hasn't been what's felt like an endless string of challenges, it's that most of the time I was never battling the right challenges.

Fighting challenges is hard. Fighting the wrong ones is exhausting. It can leave you feeling like a failure. Hopeless.

So often we are living in the emotions of a problem we see, when those emotions are really tied to a problem we can't see.

Or we refuse to see.

It's a scary trip for some of us - to start getting curious about the problems we don't see. It takes bravery to wonder if the fight in front of me has anything to do with the fights behind me. It's ironic, though, when you do go there, when you go to the unseen, you can begin to see life more clearly than ever.

It's an ugly but at the same time beautiful journey to go there.

Ugly, because it's not always easy to go where you never wanted to go again - whether you actually knew that or not. Beautiful, though, because you can suddenly start making sense of the things that you've worked so hard not to sense.

It's a personal journey, but it goes a long way to helping us understand interpersonal journeys. Because if I'm bringing emotions to an interaction that aren't really dealing with what I'm dealing with right now, maybe that's true of you as well. So maybe some of the fights we end up in aren't fights about where we are right now together, but where we each of us have individually been before.

I think it's something worth all of us considering.

I know it's a journey worth all of us taking, if we dare take it.

Trust me, I know it's hard. It's a journey many of us put off for years and maybe decades. Maybe we're waiting for the right time. Maybe we waited until the wrong time. Either way, there's sort of a new beginning that can happen in life when we start battling the right challenges.

In ourselves, and with each other.

​I've come to believe there are two kinds of happy people. People who are happy because they are happy, and people who are happy because they don't know how to be sad. I believe there are far more of us in that second group than there are in the first.

Our instincts are to see every smile as happy. 'Everyone happy' is our comfort zone. Happy makes interactions and relationships much easier.

Sad requires work. It requires sharing on your part and understanding on my mine. It requires vulnerability on your part and curiosity on mine.

A smile is much easier. We all know how to smile, even when we don't feel happy. We all know how to make each other believe we're happy, even when we're sad. Put on the nice smile and the nice clothes and sing the nice song.

Happy.

Until we're walking through a world where it's impossible to know the difference. Who are the happy people? Who exactly are the sad?

Maybe that's the saddest thing of all. Maybe there isn't a smile big enough to hide the painful reality of that truth. Maybe one of the unhealthiest things about us as people is we no longer wonder - is that happy song you're singing you, or is it just a song you wrote for your show?

In many ways, intentional or not, we've come to demonize sad. We've made it a character flaw in ourselves and in each other. We've made happy a clean bill of health, and sad terminally ill.

And no one wants to be terminally ill, so we smile.

But what if being sad isn't any more unhealthy than being happy? What if the only unhealthy thing about being sad is not being able to say I'm sad. What if they only unhealthy thing about being sad is feeling like I have to sing happy songs, when today, I really need to sing a sad one.

Elton John wrote about those sad songs:

If someone else is sufferin' enough, oh, to write it down
When every single word makes sense
Then it's easier to have those songs around
The kick inside is in the line that finally gets to you
And it feels so good to hurt so bad
And suffer just enough to sing the blues

The bible tells us that those who sow in tears shall reap in joy. Our own experiences - our own wisdom - tells us that the truest path to happiness almost always travels a tearful path.

I fear we're losing sight of that path - fast. We smile and avoid wars on the outside, leaving so many with wars raging on the inside. Wars that just want to feel good to hurt so bad.

Wars that just want to sing the blues.

But we smile instead.

We're afraid to invite people to be sad. We're afraid to do it in our relationships. In our churches. In our schools.

So we sing happy songs and convince ourselves everyone is happy. Only many of us know, they aren't always real songs. They are often just part of the show.

If you're sad today, I encourage you - find someone and tell them, I am sad. That doesn't make your broken. It doesn't make you troubled.

The trouble begins when you smile because you're unhappy.

The trouble begins when you sing happy songs when your heart wants you to sing the blues.

Don't be afraid to sing the sad song today. Don't be afraid to skip the smile. And don't be afraid to remind yourself, those who sow in tears shall reap in joy.

​Yesterday, I wrote an article that seemed to resonate with some of you. At the heart of the article was the idea that "our wounds aren't meant for a grave, they are meant for new life."

I suggested new life comes through those burdens when we share them and not when we hide them. As evidence, I pointed to Jesus, who when seeing his disciples after he rose from the dead, pointed to his wounds and declared, "it is I myself."

Jesus could have left his wounds in a grave, but he chose to bring them with him to his resurrected life.

I had a friend ask several questions in response to my article. Questions I've spent years pondering before writing what I wrote yesterday. My friend asked:

Do your burdens need to be clearly seen by others or by yourself only? And, what would a person do if they could not reveal to others that burden?

My answers here are not advice; they are my story. My history. But I'll start by sharing another Jesus encounter. The encounter Jesus had with the woman at the well - one of my favorite bible stories ever.

The bible tells us that Jesus and his disciples stopped at a well to get some water. They stopped in a Samaritan community where culturally speaking, they had no business stopping.

But those were the places Jesus liked to stop. They were the conversations Jesus lived for.

While there, Jesus had an encounter with a woman. A woman who had been shunned and marginalized by her marginalized community. She was the outcast amongst the outcast.

Can life get much lower?

This woman and Jesus, they started having a conversation. And during that conversation, they had this exchange in John chapter 4:

Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; For you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband."

And the woman said, "What you have said is true.”

I read that and I know Jesus was not setting the woman up to confess her sins, he was setting her up to release her burdens. He wasn't setting her up to be marginalized further, he was setting her up to be free.

This woman went back to town and told all the people about her encounter with Jesus. And they responded by flocking to him by the thousands and listening to his stories for two days.

They did this because a woman they couldn't stand came to tell them the Messiah was at the well? Like, she just said this and off they went - no longer an outcast but suddenly the most reliable source of Savior sightings?

No.

I will always believe it wasn't her words they heard that prompted them to go to Jesus - it was the new life they saw in her. She was suddenly alive with freedom. It was her burdens no longer buried in a grave coming alive in an undisguisable way.

And the magnitude of that, because of her new life, thousands came to know and love Jesus in a way they never would have without this woman. Without knowing her in a new way.

I've had the Jesus encounter. Not with Jesus himself, but with someone I deeply admire. And in that encounter, I shared burdens that had been burdens for decades. Burdens I kept in a grave. Burdens that have begun to transform death to life.

I've heard it said that addiction thrives in secrecy. That's true. And so does anxiety and depression and loneliness and suicidal thoughts and hopelessness.

So does exhaustion.

It is the most painful of journeys, hiding your life from the life you're trying to live. And yes, you will turn to many things to dull that pain.

And then one day you have an encounter. And someone says I know your pain. I know your burdens. And you say, "what you have said is true."

You walk away from that encounter known.
There is no more beautiful state of life than known.
There is nothing that feels more alive than known.
And it leaves you longing for one thing more than anything else in life: known.

I know that's my journey now: known.

But that journey is not an easy one. Jesus made it easy on the woman at the well. He said, I know your burdens. He opened the door to the pain she'd kept trapped inside. But she responded to the opening by racing through that door to new life.

We don't make it easy on each other to share burdens. We too often use burdens against one another to imprison, not to release.

But when you find that one person, or a circle of friends, or a church small group, or a trusted family member. When you can find just that one place to experience the opportunity to say, these are my wounds - it is I myself - it's then that you suddenly stop waiting for release. You start breaking your way out of the prisons you've trapped yourself in. Whether people want you out or not.

It's then that you start seeing your own burdens with a clarity you've never seen them with before.

It's then that the life you've hidden starts to hold hands with the life you're living.

Life isn't always pretty on the other side of bringing your burdens out of the grave. But there is a beauty in being known that will never be found in being pretty.

There is new life that can never be found in the grave.

I am not an expert on the best way for anyone to show someone else their wounds. I'm not. I've butchered that one my whole life. But I am an expert on the new life that comes on the other side of showing them.

I am the woman at the well.

I no longer long for hiding, I long for living. I long for known.

I long for "it is I myself."

​I did a lot of walking last week. Walking where the world meets the ocean. Because when I walk there, they do feel like very different things - the world and the ocean.

The world feels like me. The ocean feels like God.

There is a peace there. As if the ocean takes hold of my burdens and washes them away from me. Almost as if that is the ocean's job.

But then I walk away. And in time discover nothing has been washed away at all. It was simply a respite.

Or maybe a reminder, of sorts.

When I got home last night, I was listening to the story of Jesus showing his disciples his wounds shortly after he rose from the dead. Partly to prove to them - this is me. I am the one who was nailed to a cross.

I don't think it had ever occurred to me before when hearing that story - when Jesus rose from the dead, he chose to bring his wounds with him. A God who can rise from the dead is a God who can choose to leave his scars in the grave.

But he didn't.

Why?

When the disciples thought they were seeing a ghost, Jesus directed them to his scars. He said to them, "See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself."

Jesus could have found a thousand ways to prove that he was who he was claiming to be. He chose one way - his wounds.

I reflected on that last night, now far from where the ocean begins. The burdens washed away now swept back upon me. What if burdens aren't meant to be washed away? What if they are simply meant to be washed?

What if they are meant to be clearly seen for what they are - a part of our story. Not meant for the grave at all, but for life. What if they are meant to hold up and declare as proof - 'it is I myself.'

Maybe we don't go to the ocean to lose but to find.

To find proof.

And truth.

That our wounds aren't meant for a grave, they are meant for new life.

And maybe that new life is found in the ocean. Not the ocean we walk along, but the ocean we bring with us when we walk away.

I encourage you, maybe bring the ocean with you this week. Don't bury yourself beneath your wounds. Don't let anyone else bury you there. Hold them up.

Hold them up and proclaim, it is I myself.

​I am reminded this morning that can certainly be the case; the size of our victory is going to be the size of our struggle.

I spent the last couple of days virtually watching the Badwater 135 running race. It's call the most demanding and extreme running race offered anywhere on the planet. I don't know how one would verify that claim. But the race starts in Death Valley and travels 135 miles through 100 degree plus temperatures and includes 3 mountains totalling over 14,000 feet of climbing.

So I'm not going to be the one leading the protest of that claim.

For years, I've watched my friend Harvey Lewis run that race. And a couple of times WIN that race (he finished 4th this year). Harvey has found a way to make the extreme look easy when it comes to running. He's found a way to hide the struggle, even though we all know it's there - every step of the way.

But this year, I was fixated on Harvey's fiance' Kelly, who was running it for the very first time. Fair or not, over the last few years it's been easy to watch Harvey's running feats and call him superhuman. But watching Kelly prepare for this race, reading her thoughts leading up to the race, feeling some of the pressure she felt going into it - it felt like I was watching a mere human tackle Badwater.

And there is something powerful about watching fellow humans tackle the extreme.

Following the reports online, it was clear Kelly's race was a struggle from early on. She battled to make the cutoff times at many of the checkpoints. If you miss a cutoff time, you are officially a non-finisher.

She made one of those cutoffs by less than a minute.

When your struggle is cutting it that close every time - every time you have a choice to make. Stop or go? Every time, you get to decide: am I going to chase victory the size of my struggle, or am I going to let struggle have the final word?

Kelly finished the race a little over an hour ahead of the 48-hour time limit. She spent nearly two full days running through extreme heat which included 14,000 feet of climbing. But I've seen the pictures of her finish. You could tell - on that face was victory the size of the struggle.

And in my eyes - an amazing woman may have just turned into superwoman.

Very few of us reading this will be running Badwater anytime soon. But nearly all of us will be waking up to struggle. Some of us mighty struggles.

We are all up against cutoffs - we are all up against the question some days - am I going to be defined by victory the size of my struggle - or in the end, does struggle get to tell my story.

I am absolutely impressed by Kelly's physical capacity to pull off what she just pulled off. But more than that, the place from where I draw deep personal inspiration, is the number of times Kelly chose victory in the middle of a struggle begging her to quit.

Chances are we will all hear the haunting voice of struggle in one form or another today. Just know that somewhere in there is the voice of victory. It's not often as loud. Maybe it never is.

That is, unless we choose to hear it.

When we choose to hear it, the voice of victory is every bit as big as the voice of our struggle.

Your choice.

Well done Kelly. Enjoy your victory celebration. So well earned.