​I spent a lot of my life believing I needed certainty to move forward. Today, what helps me move forward most is knowing there is no such thing as certainty.

We can start with life. Life is not certain.

Tomorrow is an ideal. A nice one. But no one is certain if it is coming or not.

I look back on my life and I also know beliefs aren't certain. So much of what I believed even a decade ago I don't believe today. At least not the same way.

My faith has changed. My politics have changed. My world views have changed. All of those things that at one point I was one hundred percent certain about, they have changed.

Much of my life was built on beliefs and assumptions that are no longer a part of my life. Which in a way makes certainty a thief.

Relationships are uncertain.

So are our finances and our weather and the next person to walk into the room.

Life. Is. Uncertain.

And what holds us back most is our need for it and the pursuit of it. When what actually helps us best move forward, sometimes with amazing speed and joy, is embracing the truth that there is no such thing as certainty.

We spend so much time chasing the myth of certainty, trying to force it into our lives, when our entire life's history is scientific proof that certainty doesn't exist.

Just look back. You'll see.

And then look to right now. Because right now is as certain as life ever gets. You have just been given a breath, you're breathing, of that you can be certain.

There is more freedom in what you can do with that breath when it doesn't require certainty.

There are chances to pursue things in life when you don't need certainty's permission to pursue them.

A new job.

An adventure.

Love.

Move to a new neighborhood. A new state.

So much more.

Don't lean on certainty; all certainty eventually dies. Knowing that is a gift. Because truly living starts not by denying uncertainty but by embracing it.

Embrace it.

​I received hard news yesterday. Loss is always hard news. It's especially hard knowing you have two teenage sons, and loss, as little sense as it makes to any of us, makes littlest sense of all to teens.

It's especially hard when you recall the losses of your own teenage years. You remember your confusion. You remember wondering, if loss is such an inevitable part of this game called life, what is the point of playing it?

I confess, echoes of those teenage questions have never completely escaped me. I suppose that makes you fearful of the questions your kids will ask.

Maybe that's why it's such a helpless feeling being a dad whose superpower is not vaporizing questions you know full well are planning an invasion on your kids. And being a dad equally helpless at answering questions there just are no answers to.

Then I think about my heavenly father, the father who DOES have the power to vaporize questions before they invade. And yet, often he does not. The father who does have answers to questions there are no answers to. And yet, often he doesn't answer.

Why?

My best guess is, based on lessons from a long life obsessed with having answers, is that life is often not about the answers we receive but about the answers we come up with.

Memorizing the answers to the problems on the test will never be as useful as working your way through the problems on the way to discovering your own answers.

And there is also this. An important this.

God is not always great at showing up in my life with answers. But God is undefeated showing up in my life helping me navigate the questions. Even after I have countless times dismissed him and disowned him for showing up without answers.

I imagine that pains God much the way it does me, showing up and walking through the suffering of one's questions. But maybe no one knows better than God the power of showing up; maybe that is the most beautiful answer of all?

Showing up.

Maybe God feared if we ever knew all the answers, there would be no more showing up?

There is no greater isolation in the world than the island that keeps you from removing the suffering in the people you most desire to remove the suffering from.

But it is not an island we are meant to stay on. Even if it means leaving it to tend to questions without any answers at all.

A lot of us don't get to places in our lives that would be good for our lives to get because we are waiting for that elusive moment of no-doubt. We are waiting to know this next step is the right step, no doubt about it.

There are times, for sure, that doubt is a warning sign. Don't take that step, danger ahead.

But more often than not, doubt is an invitation. It's a calling. It's an opportunity for us to dismiss the the destructive voices of our past in favor of the more hopeful voices of our future. It's a chance to step out of our emotions and not forever live hijacked by them.

There's a popular bible story. The disciples are in a boat, in the middle of a storm, and Jesus appears. Walking on water.

Jesus calls Peter to step out of the boat and walk toward him. The bible tells us:

Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!”

Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?”

I wonder what Peter's answer was. Why DID he doubt? Why do WE doubt?

We doubt because this wind looks like a storm I've been through before, and I don't want to go through a storm like that again.

I've been rejected before, I don't want to feel rejected again.

I failed at starting a business before, I don't want to feel like a failure again.

I got hurt the last time I let someone know who I am, I don't want to feel hurt again.

Someone criticized my writing the last time I shared it, I don't want to feel criticized again.

You know what I love about the Peter story? Peter didn't drown. He was full of doubt, full of hesitation, full of fear; maybe he'd been through some bad storms in his past, but Peter felt doubt as an invitation and not a warning.

I've come to know, when looking back on so many of the limiting doubts in my life, doubt was often my future suggesting this thing right here won't work because that thing back there didn't work.

Anyone who has lived long at all knows the world often feels like a giant force field standing in front of us as a constant threat to our forward progress. The world often sounds like a booming voice, screaming, "don't even think about getting out of that boat."

Peter got out of the boat, and he didn't drown. In fact, he found the hand that most wanted to help him get beyond that giant force field in life. The hand that wanted to show him hope and opportunity and promise.

What helping hands, hope, and promise are you not stepping into while refusing to get out of the boat?

What emotions are you drowning in and not walking on and through?

What doubts are you hearing as warnings that are actually invitations?

Maybe this is the perfect week to discover the value in a step. Not a step free of doubt, but one absolutely full of it. Because the reality is, if you're taking steps that are all no-doubt steps, chances are you aren't going anywhere.

Chances are you're actually spending more time in the boat than you realize.

​There's a story in the bible of two of Jesus' disciples returning home after they witnessed him being crucified. Even though Jesus told them he'd rise from the dead in three days, they were walking home before that third day had ended feeling hopeless and lost and defeated.

The Jesus who'd felt like the answer to everything seemed to have died and left them with nothing more than another broken promise in their lives.

As they are walking along their 7-mile trip home, downcast, the risen Jesus appears to the two. They don't recognize him, and they begin to tell Jesus in great detail all that had happened in Jerusalem (as if Jesus didn't know), and why their hearts were torn in two.

Then Jesus, trying to help them understand the story wasn't over, begins to quote from scriptures all that had been predicted about his death. He began to tell them all the prophets had foretold about the story of His death and resurrection.

Death was never going to be the end of the story, he wanted them to know.

Still, the two were clueless.

It wasn't until they were sitting at the dinner table with Jesus, when they felt an intimacy with Him that felt familiar, that they recognized him. And the bible tells us in that moment they asked each other, "were not our hearts burning within us while he talked to us on the road and opened the scriptures to us?"

It wasn't the scriptures that won them over, it was remembering how Jesus made them feel.

I had a woman corner me in the hallway after I gave a talk last week. She said, I wish I could remember what you said there at the end of your talk. I can't remember the exact words, she said, I just know they gave me goosebumps and tears.

We forget that sometimes, that all the way back to the days of Jesus and well beyond, our connections - or lack of them - are largely determined by the way we make one another feel, not what we say to one another in the connections.

We often spend a lot of time trying to make sure we get the words just right in our relationships, when in reality, we should probably prioritize getting the feelings just right.

Connections strengthen on feeling safe and seen and known and celebrated and admired. I have said, I miss my boys a lot when I'm not with them. It's not because they say "I love you too" when I tell them I love them, it's because I feel loved by them when they aren't saying a word.

It's because I feel my heart burning no matter what they say.

We live in a world that offers us platform after platform to share our words.. That can be a great opportunity, I suppose. Especially if we're asking the right question before we share them.

I think it's always better to ask ourselves "am I sharing the right feelings" than it is asking "am I sharing the right words."

Because in the end, as we walk along this road called life, we will remember far more of the former than the latter.

Right feelings almost always find the right words.

​Our human desire is certainty. We want to live in absolute predictability.

God's desire is mystery. He wants us to turn lovingly and longingly to him in all of our unpredictability.

Some days that creates quite the conflict in our stories. 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.

Maybe God is too obsessed with the page I'm on to look that far ahead.

Maybe 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 together today.

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

Faith is living today like I already have the proof.

Faith is finding certainty in the mystery.

Some days that makes this mystery story we're living a challenging story to live in. But what a beautiful story it is.

​With the 2024 Summer Olympics beginning, I thought this article from 3 years ago was worth editing a bit and re-sharing.

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

But I am not.

What I am 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.

I am watching people who appear to be larger than life because they've spent a larger amount of their lives than me 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 I'll do 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. What they want and deserve in life. 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 more. 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 or to become a part of our lives, or are we making excuses why it can't?

So the next few weeks, during these 2024 Summer Olympics, I think I'll spend a little more time thinking about what is really important to me. And, maybe, challenge myself to spend a little more time thinking about the way to get there, and not the way out.

​It's easy to come to believe our brain is for helping us figure out what to do next. For dreaming that next step and mapping it out and making it happen. And that is true. Our brain can be very good for that.

But what our brain is most good at, if we let it be good at it, is telling us what NOT to do.

Our brain, very basically, is divided into two halves. The bottom have is full of habits and instincts and compulsions. Some of them good, some not so good. But left to its own devices, the bottom half of our brain would run our lives. We would become humans that simply follow our instincts.

Is it too late, maybe that is what we already largely are?

The problem with that is the bottom half of our brain is where our emotions take place as well. And, so often, it's our emotions that are trying to dictate what we do next.

What we think and say and do.

The top half of our brain is where those emotions ideally get sorted out, and in the sorting the brain helps us determine healthy and unhealthy responses. It's where we get a chance to know our emotions have just conjured up a really bad idea. Then our brain kindly says, I understand where they're coming from, those emotions, but I can't let you follow through on this idea.

It only leads to destruction.

Many times, the brain knows this because it has seen this idea followed through to destruction in your life previously.

One of the most destructive instincts and habits in my life was alcohol. Not the substance, necessarily, but the way I used it. Which was heavily and consistently and ALWAYS to forget.

Even if I didn't always know exactly what it was I was trying to forget.

But one of the main impacts of alcohol is it actually shuts that top brain's mouth. The part of our brain that is trying to tell us what to do and not to do, what to remember, the part of the brain trying to help us understand the implications of our future and of our past, the part of the brain that is trying to help us make sense of our lives, alcohol kicks that part of the brain to the curb.

Alcohol says, we don't need the menacing voice of logic from that know it all top brain. You and I will be forever enough hanging out here in the basement of your brain, so I will remove the part of your brain from our relationship.

And so we did hang out together. We were all that each other needed. For better than three decades we leaned on each other. Heavily. And in many ways, we mutually destroyed my plans and my brain's basement.

I am on a far less destructive path in my life these days. Maybe that's another phrase for healing? Somewhere along the way I elected the top half of my brain as president of my life and voted my lower brain out of office. Or, maybe it's much truer to say, I have taught them how to work together in my best interest.

The top half of my brain is good these days to take my hand and say, let me walk you through this idea all the way to the end. I feel you, that part of my brain says, I know how friendly some of those compulsions were to you at times, but they are also liars.

They promised you so many good things, but came through with glimpses of hell.

And then, the top part of my brain plays the tape of my life, all the way through, beyond the parts where I used to clip the tape, to the end where I am forced to witness the downfall.

I witness it, and then I say thank you.

In turn, the lower brain these days is much less committed to deceiving me. It seems to have struck a deal with the commander of that top brain, offering me more emotions that feel like joy and contentment and hope, and much less like fear and shame and guilt.

The lower brain seems to be giving my higher brain more permission to say yes these days, yes, I think that's a great idea.

It's useful to look at our lives and examine where we have, even if unknowingly, decided to live in the basement of our brains. Where have we turned our brains over to our compulsions, much against the will of a top brain screaming, that's a really bad idea.

For many of us I fear it's our phones, we seem to retreat there often even against our own wills.

For others I am sure it's substances.

​Food. 

Unhealthy relationships.

Our work.

There are many places we retreat to forget all that we want to forget, all the paths to destruction we'd rather not have to think about.

It is worth remembering our brain is really good at helping us plan where to go next, but maybe not nearly as good as it is at telling us which plans lead to destruction. Maybe not nearly as good at telling us where not to go.

A beautiful favor our brain will do for us - if we'll only come out of the basement long enough to listen.

​As I live out the rest of my days and hopefully years, I will point my days and years toward healing.

Healing me.

Healing others.

I have this story that I share, an example of sorts, when I'm speaking about a child's developing brain. The example is of an infant waking in the middle of the night, crying out, afraid of the dark. And of a dad, me, tired from many endless nights of sleeplessly tending to infancy. I know there are parents who can relate.

I say there are two possible responses from this dad.

One, I march angrily down the hall toward the crying infant with an intense focus on getting MY sleep. I will possibly stand in the doorway of the room, loud, threatening that child to get to sleep or else.

I suppose many us sleepless parents have lived out some form of that example.

My point is not to judge our worst parenting moments, but to help us understand, if that becomes our primary response to a child's fear of the dark, they will not only develop a more intense fear of the dark, they will come to fear the monster in the doorway far more than that dark.

Predicting that you will add more dark to their darkness will become the pattern of your child's brain.

The other response, of course, is to simply recognize and cherish the child's fear. To recognize what they need most in that moment is to feel safe. So in spite of your sleeplessness you hold and assure that child, that even in the dark, things will be okay. In which case the child will eventually come to know the dark as something they will navigate safely, and you as someone that will lovingly help them do the navigating.

Predicting that you will add light to their darkness will become the pattern of their brain.

I am reflecting on that example this morning as I write this in the context of my own fear of the dark. My own fear of my own darkness.

For most of my life, I have stood in the doorway of my darkness yelling at me, threatening me, shaming and guilting me. I have looked into the darkness of my life and been a monster of a parent over my own darkness.

And over time, I came to fear nothing more than my darkness and the me who has tended to it.

In recent years, however, I have come to understand, with the help of some loving and caring people, that healing lives in that darkness. And that light is a most beautiful symptom of healing.

I have come to understand that I can no longer stand in the doorway of my darkness, like a monster, and abuse myself over all the choices and experiences that I layered into that darkness.

I need to go meet myself there, with kindness and compassion, replacing monster tales with compassion tales, and in spite of my decades of sleeplessness, assure myself, that even in the dark, things will be okay.

Savannah Rae Bohlin says, "that is why you feel such an intimacy with darkness, because it is fuel for your light."

And so it is there, in my darkness, in studying all that it has to tell me, that I free myself to become more intimate with the darkness of others. Because the truth is, that in itself is what prevents so many of us from becoming close to one another, close to anyone, really, our fear of the dark.

Of ours and of each other's.

We would much rather hang out with each other in the light. But light is a symptom of healing. And healing is found in the dark.

We must quit being monsters to one another's darkness.

We must replace our monster tales with compassion tales.

We must all become students of the dark, on the way to becoming healers.

​One of my favorite songs these days is Another One by Elevation Worship. These words speak to me:

Miracle after miracle
Open door after open door
Here it comes, so get ready for another one
'Cause if He told the sun when to rise and it did, He will again
And if He told the storm to be still and it did, He will again
And if He told the sea where to split and it did, He will again
And if He told the walls when to fall and they did, He will again
And if He told the chains when to break and they did, He will again
And if He told the bones, come alive, and they did, He will again
If He told the stone, roll away, and it did, He will again
And if He told the grave, let Him go, and it did, He will again

I suppose this song speaks to me so intensely because my faith in Jesus is buoyed by miracles. The miracles I've read about. The miracles Jesus has worked in my life.

Because be sure, my life is nothing but miraculous.

The Jesus who took this kid who struggled through his adolescence and placed him in the lives of kids struggling through their adolescence. That's a miracle.

The Jesus who took this man who abused alcohol for 25 years and placed him in a position of trying to encourage people coping with life through all sorts of habits and hang-ups and addictions of their own. That's a miracle.

The Jesus who took this man suffering through his own traumatic past and placed him in the lives of communities eager to learn about and heal from the implications of their traumatic pasts. That's a miracle.

The Jesus who took this man who never wanted kids and gave him two of the most beautiful humans in the world who daily define a reason to live. That's a miracle.

The Jesus who took a man who once debated living day in and day out and transformed him into a man who today only wants to define for others a reason to live. That is a living breathing miracle.

You see, my belief in Jesus doesn't come down to wondering if Jesus can be a miracle worker in this life. Jesus has already answered that question.

Again and again and again.

So the only question I ever have about Jesus in my life is will he do it again. Well, looking back on my life, that's a pretty foolish question.

Because I am left with no doubt, He will again.

​Three days into his earthly ministry and his relationship with his disciples, Jesus worked his first public miracle. The bible tells us:

On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples. When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.”

Most of us, whether we follow Jesus or not, know what happened next. Jesus turned water into enough wine to last the whole wedding feast.

It's interesting, the Jesus who could turn water into wine clearly could have prevented the wine from running out at all, right? So why did he?

Why didn't Jesus prevent what he clearly could have prevented.

It's a question I've asked myself at times when trying to solve the mystery of my own relationship with God. Most recently, I suppose, I've found myself asking God that question about my divorce.

God, you clearly could have intervened here, why didn't you? You could have worked a miracle no one else could have seen coming and no one else could have worked, why didn't you?

In the years since my divorce, I've learned a lot about myself. Most importantly, I've come to intimately understand why I've struggled all of my life with any kind of intimate relationship. And not the least of those relationships I've struggled with has been my relationship with God.

And the truth is, as very sad as this truth is, as long as I was in my marriage I was always going to see the root of my problem as the other person, or me, or God. My problem was always going to be about the people in my relationships and not the general fears and shame I felt in the midst of any meaningful relationship with anyone.

It's been on the other side of the lowest point in my life that I've come to the highest understanding of my life. I had to run out of my own capacity to do a relationship for God to begin to teach me how to do a relationship.

For anyone reading who might be thinking I'm giving the okay to divorce, I'm not. I have just come to know in my own personal relationship with Jesus that if I look back and get caught up in right or wrong or okay or not okay, I can miss the depths of his miracle.

If I lose sight of a God who had to endure watching his son die on a cross, I can lose sight of the truth that God doesn't always have to feel joy in what he's witnessing in our lives to work a miracle in our lives.

At the end of the water to wine story, the bible tells us, "What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him."

The reality is, if Jesus had prevented the wine from running out, he would have been prevented from working a miracle that drew his disciples closer to him than they'd been in their early days together.

And I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God has allowed some things to painfully run out in my life to draw me closer to him than I've ever been. And to prepare me for relationships I never could have had without the pain of discovering all the reasons why I've been so relationally ill-equipped all of my life.

Sometimes it's easy to grasp the miracle of the Jesus who can turn water into wine. That Jesus gets a standing ovation. It's much harder, though, to grasp and applaud the miracle of the Jesus who would allow the wine to run out in the first place.

But sometimes that's what he does. He let's the wine run out.

And it's painful.

But if Jesus of the cross taught us anything, it's that pain doesn't diminish a miracle. In fact, it's pain that is often at the heart of it.