Years ago, I owned a pontoon boat. I'd often drive the boat to the middle of a wide open lake and then turn the boat off. I'd hop overboard and swim a bit, staying close to the boat. Until I'd notice the boat had drifted far away from where I had originally parked.
There was never any damage done. Sometimes it's okay to simply drift until you're ready to put the boat back on course. But if you do that too often - and if you don't really have a course in mind - you run the risk of getting lost. You run the risk of a life adrift. A life adrift looks a lot like a life doing what culture says you should do. It looks a lot like what family and friends convinced you you should do. It looks a lot like a life afraid of doing the things you've always felt called to do. It looks a lot like a life feeling unworthy of the life you are capable of living. A life adrift is a life that looks lost. I've lived a large portion of my life adrift. That's not the same as a life of regret - I've drifted to and in and out of some places I'm really grateful for. I feel like I've lived a life that God has steadfastly course corrected to some amazing spaces and opportunities. The course corrections in my life are the greatest evidence I have of a loving God. He's never fully let the boat slip away while I was swimming. But I know I have put too much burden on God in that regard. I don't think God FEELS overburdened by that as much as I do. But I wonder if God ever wishes he could do less course correcting and more applauding as he watches me steer my boat off to the places he and I both know I was meant to go? I think running taught me a lot about steering my boat. I picked a race months or a year out in front of me. A race I couldn't possibly run today, but if I followed the course I designed to get me to that race's finish line - I would get there. If by chance I didn't, it wasn't because I got lost, it was because I abandoned the course. Or, maybe I just picked a bad course to getting there. Not once, though, in any of those challenging races, did I ever drift to the finish line. I picked the finish line. I picked the course. I steered my way there. I'm afraid too many of us are adrift in our jobs, in our relationships and in our roles in our communities. We show up to these spaces in our life, but we haven't picked a spot where we want to go with them. We show up to them, but then we park and swim. How do you know if you're adrift in an area in your life? You're adrift in your job if at the end of this day you have no way of knowing if you're closer to where you want to be in your job. How do you know if you're adrift in a relationship? You're adrift in your relationship if at the end of this day you have no way of knowing if you're closer to having the kind of connection you long to have in that relationship. How do you know if you're adrift in your community? You're adrift in your community if at the end of this day you have no way of knowing if you're helping your community move in the direction you'd like to see your community move. You're adrift in your life if you have no way of knowing how close you are to becoming the person you want to be. A runner running a marathon - dead tired at mile 13 - totally unsure whether they can take another step or not - is NOT adrift. That runner KNOWS they have 13.2 miles to go. They know exactly where those miles are that they have to travel to become a marathoner. They know how close they are to becoming a marathoner because they decided they wanted to become one. How close are you to becoming who you've decided you want to become today? If you don't know the answer, you might be adrift. And if you're adrift, you might be at risk of becoming lost. I'm grateful for the places I've drifted to in my life, but I'm more determined than I've ever been to get where I know I'm made to be in life. Maybe that's because I've just never been a big fan of swimming.
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One of the biggest mistakes I'm prone to making is allowing myself to believe life is a little while experience - that it's a short term gig. When you allow yourself to believe that, you are at risk for turning to things that help you survive a moment when life is about thriving for an eternity.
Survive and thrive are two different mindsets; they are two different sets of actions. It is often the difference between destruction and flourishing. The desire to feel good today is often the enemy of the goodness that can be found in tomorrow. And the next day. Because feeling good is not always a precursor to or a reflection of what IS good. In fact, one of the cruelties in life is that seeking the path that feels good often goes in the opposite direction of what IS good. If that sounds depressing, if that makes life sound like a bachelor party thrown in a church sanctuary, it might be because you've never experienced how good life can feel on the other side of goodness. Many years ago, I worked as a counselor with some challenging kids. It was a wilderness program, so in addition to the challenges the kids brought, the living environment was often challenging as well. If I'm being honest, many days nothing about the experience felt good. Early in that experience, when the kids frustrated me, I was prone to doing things that made me feel good. When a kid got out of hand and pissed me off, I'd find myself yelling. Cussing. Even grabbing hold of a kid or two. That was never about goodness. That was never about thriving. That was always about me being distracted away from long-term good to embrace what momentarily felt good. In fairness to me - as a way to understand me and not excuse me - I didn't understand that at the time. And also in fairness to me, I ultimately got better at seeking the goodness found in compassion and empathy - at waiting out and trying to understand the things kids do to feel good short-term on the way to discovering a mutual good with someone who cares enough to wait on them. To walk with them and not at them. There were many days I didn't want to show up for those kids because it didn't feel good. But every day I did - because somewhere inside I knew it WAS good. And today, many of those kids reach out and say that my showing up helped prepare them for a life that has been good to them. I won't lie - that feels good. Little feels better than hearing that. The path to feeling good runs through goodness. If you try taking a detour around goodness - if you get distracted away from it - you risk living a life looking for the next way to feel good without ever truly finding your way. That isn't preaching; that's experience. That isn't preaching; that's a guy still daily prone to wanting to feel good at the expense of goodness. But that same guy is better than ever at understanding life isn't a short-term gig. It's an eternity deal. And that deal is far more about doing things that will help me thrive throughout eternity than it is about what feels good today. Life is not about a little while; it's about the whole while. 8/29/2022 0 Comments HOw can I help?How can I help?
I don't know that we ask that question enough. And at the same time, I'm not so sure how often we truly want to be asked that question. I think we avoid asking the question because it makes us vulnerable. Asking how we can help someone makes us face the reality we may not know the answer to that question. We pride ourselves on having the answers - the right advice - without having to take the inconvenient step of asking any questions. It also makes us vulnerable to hearing things that might catch us off guard. The things people need help with aren't always the kind of struggles we assume they are having. Struggles that might be as hard for us to hear as it is for others to bear. On the other side, being asked 'how can I help' forces us to face some things: do I really want help, do I believe help is even possible, are you going to be one of those who is curious about my struggle but bail on me when we actually get to the helping part? In my work, for years I was part of teams that went into communities largely assuming the kind of help those communities needed. And many times, the strategies we put in place didn't work the way we predicted they would. Ways we assumed they would. Over the years, we've gotten better at one thing that has made a world of difference. We've invited people to the table and asked them, how can we help? There's a tension in that. There's 'we have no idea what kind of answers we might get' on one side of the table. And, 'how much do you really care what my answers are' on the other side of the table. But beneath that tension - if both sides can hang in there through it - there is opportunity. Assumptions disintegrate, hope starts to come alive. I've become a believer in that question: how can I help? Not because it always helps, but because it's an invitation to a process that looks and feels a lot healthier than many of the things we do in the name of help. It's a question that can make for stronger communities. And - for stronger connections between you and I. Maybe you'll see someone this week who looks like they need some help. Maybe ask them: How can I help? Did you know the only real difference between a weed and a flower is what the gardener thinks of the plant. If they think a plant is desirable, they'll see it as a flower; a thing of beauty and something to keep. If they think the plant is taking away from the beauty of their other plants, they'll see it as something to remove - to kill.
I think of the poor dandelion. It's fate determined not by where its seeds land, but what the owner of the soil on which those seeds land thinks of them after they bloom. I mean, really - to me - the dandelion looks like a miniature version of the sunflower. I often see people having their pictures taken in the middle of a bright yellow field full of sunflowers, but never with dandelions. I wonder if that's because we've been told sunflowers are flowers and dandelions are weeds? I wonder how many people don't want to have their pictures taken next to us because of what someone else decided to call us. I wonder how many of us flowers begin to see ourselves as weeds because of those same labels. I guess by definition flowers are desirable; weeds are not. The reality is, though, we are all full of traits that are both desirable and undesirable. None of us are either flower or weed. Maybe the aim, though, is to get better at seeing everyone as a flower and not immediately removing them because someone told us they are a weed. Richard Rohr says, "What love means is to say, “I know your faults, I see your weeds, and I care for you anyway.” Only God’s heart, only the mind of Christ in us, really and fully knows how to do that." The heart of Jesus - by instinct - doesn't see flower or weed, it sees beauty. It's a heart that doesn't care to adapt to our definitions of flower and weed, it's more concerned with us adopting that heart's instinct for beauty. Maybe it starts with looking at a dandelion and thinking, what a beautiful flower. Then maybe it goes to us looking at one another, flaws and all, and thinking - what a beautiful human. That's hard to do sometimes, because we often operate from definitions - and the beautiful human response often requires super human instincts. The kind Jesus has, and longs for us to adopt. And maybe that does start with the dandelion. Yesterday, the boys and I took a hike I'd always wanted to take. We hiked up to the top of Crabtree Falls. I was surprised by what I found there.
I guess I'd always thought it was one big fall. What we found, though, as we made our climb, was a series of beautiful falls along the way, some swift and some beautifully slow, all magically connected as the water made its way down the thousand foot mountain. But swift or slow, the water kept going. No matter the boulders in the way or the unexpected twists in the terrain, the water just kept going. I thought if a waterfall could be a spirit animal, I'd want it to be mine. Even more, I'd want it to be that for my boys. If my life was water, I'd say I've lived too much of it as a pond. Trapped within often toxic boundaries - many of my own making. Many not. But always out of the inability to see around them, or over them. Beyond them. But in waterfalls, the water just falls. It doesn't stop to be noticed. It doesn't stop to look to where it's been - it surely never gets stuck there. And it doesn't stop to overthink the way it's going. It just goes. I long for that for my boys. Just go. Don't be defined by your memories, good or bad. Don't be defined by your culture. Surely don't be defined by me. Be defined by your inner-waterfall. There is a spirit within us all that is guiding us. Over and through every boulder, around every turn and down every fall we can't even begin to see, it is guiding us. And if we listen, we are never falling, we are only going. That's the beauty of a waterfall. It can be the beauty in us. A beauty I'm so grateful to discover more each day. A beauty I was so grateful to feel at the top of a hike I've long wanted to do. I think we are all born with a spark that is intended to fuel our desire to create beauty. I believe we were created from beauty for the sole purpose of creating more beauty.
Along the way, though, many of us experience things that aren't beautiful. Things that make our past a burden and our future something we fear. Then we discover drugs or gambling or porn or shopping or our cell phone or our jobs or sex or on and on - things that for even a moment make the present tolerable - and then we are no longer creating beauty. We are incinerating the voices that haunt us within. Addiction is complicated. So complicated, in fact, that there are a lot of addicts among us who don't even know they are addicts. A lot of people among us turning to vices and devices to drown out the voices of fear that make their every moment intolerable. As complicated as addiction is, we make it more complicated - more incinerating - by focusing so much of our attention on the vices and devices and not the fears. Not the voices. We pile shame and guilt on top of the fear instead of pouring compassion on the flames so many can't find a way to extinguish. And don't be mistaken - they do want it extinguished. It's a beautiful thing how that flame is ultimately extinguished. It's not a gang of fire fighters rushing the scene with their axes and hoses. It's a soothing voice. Empathetic. Curious. It's an ear longing to hear the voices within as desperately as the addict wants to feel them gone. An ear that sticks around after those voices are indeed gone - and then goes looking for your spark. Goes looking for the beauty you were created to create. The guided pathway from addiction to passion. Treatment and recovery are often as complicated as addiction. Both too often overlook someone's longing to have something in the pursuit of helping someone stop something. They overlook the longing for connection. They overlook the reality that in many ways we are each other's treatment and recovery. We are each other's path from addiction to passion. We are each other's chance to put out the flames and rediscover the sparks. Sparks that never go away. We were created out of beauty to create beauty. Just because we don't see it doesn't mean it's not there. It's always there. Help someone find it. There's a story in the ninth chapter of John's gospel in the bible. Jesus and his disciples encounter a man who had been blind from birth. The disciples asked Jesus, whose fault is it that this man is blind? Is it his fault or is it his parents' fault?
Jesus told them this man wasn't blind because of what anyone had done wrong, he was blind because God was about to do amazing things with the man's blindness. Then Jesus got down on the ground. He spit into the dirt until he could gather a handful of mud. Then he rubbed the mud on the man's eyes and told him to go wash it off in a pool of water. The man did as he was told, and then the man could see. I take a couple of powerful things away from this story. The first is the man didn't ask for sight. He was simply going about his day as he always had, sitting in the dirt and begging. But then unannounced, Jesus comes along and gets down in the dirt with him. And gives him new life. I am also reminded of the story in Genesis, when God got down in the dirt and created Adam, the very first man. He molded him from the dirt and blew breath into his nostrils and the man came alive. The man came alive like life had never come alive before. Oh how encouraging that is. There are days I can feel no more alive than the dirt and the dust beneath my feet. The dirt and the dust I find myself sitting in - wondering - whose fault is it that I am here? Oh how encouraging it is that there is a God who has no time for or interest in blame or fault, but only in bringing new life. New life, not from some far away place called heaven or the galaxies or the universe, but from the dirt he sits in right next to me. Oh how encouraging that our God is not a distant God, but instead a God who wants to blow his breath into mine; he wants to rub his muddy hands on my eyes. Our God doesn't just want to be imagined, he wants to be felt. Oh how encouraging that God isn't judging my dirt from trillion miles away, but sitting in it with me. Not seeing dirt at all, only new life. Friends, if you are in the dirt today, you are not alone. God isn't waiting for an invitation, he is there with you. He knows just how little beauty you find in this space you're in, which is precisely why he will not stop until nothing but beauty is pouring from that space. Our God is not afraid of your dirt. Our God is not judging your dirt. Our God is sitting in it. With you. Touching you. Breathing new life into you. New life is coming. In fact, it's already there. It's right beside you. A couple of years ago, some colleagues interviewed me on their podcast about the work I do around adverse childhood experiences. Yesterday, I had the honor of going back on their show to interview the host as they kick off their new season.
One of the first questions I asked their host Casey was how did the podcast get started. Casey explained that during the pandemic, many of the programs they were offering weren't possible because you couldn't visit people in person. So her boss suggested they start a podcast to keep information flowing. Casey told me she told her boss, "but we don't know anything about doing a podcast." Her boss said - we'll learn. Casey said over the next few months she kept throwing out reasons why a podcast wouldn't work. Meanwhile, her boss forged ahead making plans like there was no chance it would fail. And here they are - season three - 30 episodes later. Mel Robbins says we all have a bias toward action or toward thinking when it comes to change. She says with thinkers, it's that pause that gets them in trouble. Thinkers hear the idea about a podcast, then pause to think about it, and before they know it, often unknowingly, they are sucked into a habitual way of thinking that talks them out of action. Meanwhile, folks who have a bias toward action have ordered microphones and lined up a guest for episode one. The thing is, it's not like we are born thinkers or born action takers. It's just a way of thinking that becomes a habit. The more we pause to think in moments of opportunity, the more it becomes our natural instinct to listen to someone else's podcast while we go on thinking about starting ours. Many of us would call this pause - this stopping to think in the face of an opportunity - procrastination. I looked up the definition for procrastination and found this one: 'Habitual or intentional delay of starting or finishing a task despite knowing potential negative consequences.' I'd always thought of procrastination as that delay - but never considered it in the context of 'knowing potential negative consequences.' But many of us are living those consequences. Many of us are living with not knowing where that idea would have gone if we'd only taken action. Casey told me a school superintendent listened to one of their episodes and insisted that their staff listen to it. And when that staff listened, what did they hear that helped them influence the students they work with. How many lives were given an opportunity to experience better lives as a result of that one episode. Sometimes the negative consequences of us being thinkers and not action-takers extend well beyond us. Challenge yourself. The next time you find yourself in the middle of that pause - in the middle of thinking about an idea - stop that pause from falling into the tired old habit of indefinite delay. Of inaction. Of nothing.... It's never too late to re-shape your bias from thinking to doing. You simply have to take command of the pause. Take command of that delay you know is going to have negative consequences. Many of us have mastered thinking. And there's definitely a place for thinking. But thinking alone will never get you to season three. It's much more likely that thinking is where you'll find yourself getting stuck. Don't get stuck; take action. God has followed me around all my life. He has followed me when I was alternately trying to find him and earn him. And behind me and in front of me and beside me he has been saying all that time, I am already here - I am already yours.
I am closer to God than ever, but God isn't closer to me than ever. God is right where he has always been - right beside me - waiting for me to get out of our way. Waiting for me to experience in him that which he has experienced in me since long before he breathed his image into me. Because it's his image breathed into me, my presence has always been enough for God. It's his greatest joy. But because we too often long for - and expect - so much more from each other than presence, it's hard to grasp that about God. It's hard to imagine that just being with me is enough. It's hard to imagine God is really there because it's hard to imaging he would want to be. So, I go on trying harder; I search deeper. It's hard to get ourselves out of the way. Maybe it's the hardest thing ever - to let go of shame and guilt and past. But when we are willing to do that, when we are willing to wade through the carnage of it all, when the dust clears you might just find someone standing there. Someone glad to be there. Someone thankful not that you found them, but that you discovered you never had to look. And you begin to wonder if God might be there too. There is so much beauty in this world. We often miss it while we focus on all that we believe is not beautiful about us. We miss it when we insist that we can outperform with beauty outwardly all that we've come to believe is ugly within us. Then one day we are reminded ugly is something we see; it is never something that we are. Ugly is a myth we create about ourselves and about one another. Beauty is truth. It has been since the day God looked upon us and saw that we were good. We quit seeing that, not God. And so, we went on, try harder and searching deeper for something that was already there. You are not ugly. You are beautiful. Maybe today is the day you will see that. You will see that and discover all that you've been standing in the way of. All that has been there all along. In the 12th chapter of the book of Daniel we read:
"Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever." We have more platforms than ever on which to shout. And when we share space on those platforms, the flow of information can quickly become a battle. A battle to out-shout. To the point that the line between loud and true begins to blur. I guess someone ultimately wins those battles. For some reason, though, it feels like we are all losing the war. One of my very dearest friends in the world lost her daughter to a drunk driver many years ago. It's always amazed me how she's walked through the emotions of that loss. Through the sadness. The anger. The unfairness of it all. I always think about the many chances she's had to lash out at life. To lash out for a cause. To let her circumstances add volume to her voice. But that's never what she's done. She has simply continued to shine. The impact she's had on countless lives has had little to do with what she's said in the aftermath of tragedy - it's had far more to do with what she hasn't said. In the book of Philippians, Paul references those words in Daniel when he says, "Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.” Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life. Paul was in prison when he wrote those words in a letter to his friends. Paul was in prison when he chose to cling to those words of life and shine rather than shout. Many of us are battling through our own prisons of sorts. We are mired in our own darkness. My friend has been a constant reminder to me that it's very difficult to shout our way out of darkness. It's much easier - and life-giving - to shine our way out. We live in a world constantly drawing us into arguments - into battle. Maybe the answer to winning the war is staying out of some of those battles. Maybe that's when we shine. Like the stars forever and ever. |
Robert "Keith" CartwrightI am a friend of God, a dad, a runner who never wins, but is always searching for beauty in the race. Archives
February 2025
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