Oprah Winfrey estimates she has interviewed over 50,000 people in her career. She says the one thing they all have in common: they all want to know that what they do and what they say and who they are matters.
Oprah says that's what we ALL have in common. I find it interesting. Oprah has interviewed some of the most 'accomplished' people in the world. Famous people who have seen and done it all. And yet, there they are, still wondering if they matter. Maybe they are the best people to help us understand what really does matter. So many people don't get happy answers to the 'do I matter' question in their closest relationships in life, so they begin trying to force happy answers through their accomplishments. They pursue prestige in their careers. They pursue dominance in athletics. They pursue large crowds with their performances. Many people pursue those things and GET them, and yet, there they are, wondering, does what I do and what I say and who I am matter. Last weekend the boys and I threw the ball at a local field. We laughed. We cheered. And you know what, I could tell they knew they mattered. They had nothing to prove. And neither did I. In that moment, I knew I mattered too. The thing is, nothing in the world we do, nothing we accomplish, will answer the question does who I am matter. Only love will do that. Only a love that says I see you, I know who you are, I am cheering for you, I am your biggest fan - only a love that says I believe everything you say and do matters. Only love answers the question we ask the most. Does who I am matter? No collection of trophies, no job title, no bank balance, no paparazzi, none of those things say you are loved. People do. Or people don't. You will interact with people today. Isn't it a beautiful thing to know that what they want most from that interaction is to know the interaction matters, is to know that THEY matter to you. Don't make them try to impress you to matter to you. Let them know what they do will never matter to you more than who they are. The reality is we all have one thing in common - we're all running around trying to figure out if we matter, when we should have something completely opposite in common. We should all be running around with hearts that long to make sure EVERYONE knows they matter. So let someone know they matter today. Let's stop asking ourselves questions and start giving those around us answers.
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8/30/2024 0 Comments Joy And hope are straight aheadIf you're not careful, you can find yourself looking to your past for your best days. Maybe you'll find some good memories there, but when those memories begin looking better than today - and tomorrow - that's where you'll live.
You'll live in yesterday; you won't be able to resist the temptation of going there. And that's when true hopelessness begins to settle in. I've been there. But this weekend I visited a place that was filled with hope. This weekend my eyes were pointed straight ahead, no looking over my shoulder. Friday night, my boys and I were riding one of the tallest roller coasters in the world. It was dark. But even still, at the very top of that ride, you could see the moon reflecting off Lake Erie. You could see all the tall roller coasters around the park lit up like an enchanted village. It was magic. Christmas-like magic. It was hope. Then the ride dropped us out of the magic and into the dark night. We raced through it, seemingly out of control. But in that out of control moment, life felt like it had more direction than it had had in a long time. Maybe it was the screams in the seat in front of me. My boys loving every out of control moment. Their joy, an expression of hope in that moment and in their futures, not an echo from the past that could never measure up to right then and right there. We got off the ride and Ian said, that was so worth the 8-hour drive. (I kindly reminded him that for him it was more 'ride' than 'drive' - but I got his point). It wasn't lost on me that we had to drive a long way from home to find the joy. We had to put a lot of distance between where we'd been and where we arrived to find it. But sometimes that's what we have to do, leave where we've been and get moving to where we're going. Sometimes where we've been is our enemy. It's like a minefield, always a risky visit. So we bravely climb 310 feet above it, into the night sky, and drop into the sounds of pure joy. A joy you'll rarely hear desperately clinging to yesterday. There is no better joy than right now joy, but we can get too lost in yesterday to discover it. (Re-written from 2021) I am spending time this week with some folks who have come from really hard places to live lives that are now offering amazing contributions to others living in their own hard places.
I had a young lady tell me yesterday that she never knew how bad her childhood was until someone told her later in life how bad it should have been based on things she experienced. She said the loving relationship she had with her mom always left her feeling hopeful about the future. That hope blinded her and protected her from the hopelessness she could have experienced. Love can do that. And yet there are also folks in the very same room who grew up without love, but always hoped they'd find it one day. And now they have. And now the entire room is filled with spreaders of hope and love. The bible tells us in 1 Corinthians that love hopes all things. It is my experience over the last several years, both in exploring my own story and in exploring the stories of others, that love and hope rarely live too far apart. The smallest dose of hope will find love; even the smallest dose of love can ignite giant hope. It makes sense, though, doesn't it? That the two belong together. If you have experienced disappointment in love, only hope will afford you the bravery to go there again. And if you are a life without hope, it is usually love that throws you a lifeline. Love is rarely found without hope; hope rarely endures without love. They are not meant to be searching for one another but naturally belong together. If you are longing for love today, maybe begin with just a mustard seed of hope. And if you are feeling without hope today, maybe go offer someone even the smallest measure of love. Eventually they will join forces in your life. Hope and love. I have heard stories from a group of people this week who remind me there is no greater force than hope and love working together in one's life. No greater force working together in a society. Maybe some of us need to choose to have hope today, some of us to go love. And we need to keep choosing that until we have a world full of people who no longer feel without either one. Love and hope, they belong together in all of us. 8/28/2024 0 Comments It's possible for life to be falling apart and coming together at the same timeI am sitting here this morning, looking at this picture - 4 years ago today - and in many ways I remember it as sort of a dream come true. Yet, very few people had any idea the nightmare I was living at the very same time.
Is it possible for life to be falling apart and coming together at the same time? I was at the Soles4Souls headquarters in Nashville, Tennessee four years ago this morning. I was running the final 5k of my Great Virtual Race Across Tennessee (and back 😭). The final 5k of a 1220 mile summer. I look back at that this morning and find it incomprehensible that for 118 consecutive days I ran 10 miles or more each day. That is not my current training plan!!! I look back at that this morning and find it miraculous that we set out to raise $1,000, yet so many friends came along side me and helped move that over $6,000. All to support a cause that remains very dear to me. Yet, when I look back, neither of those two amazing feats are what I remember most. What I remember most is a summer of running. Not running a race, but running from life. The most miraculous part of every mile of that race is not just that I didn't want to run any of those miles, most days I had no desire to get out of bed. Honestly, most days I had no desire to continue doing life. You would think when you see someone posting daily about getting closer to a finish line in an amazing race, seemingly full of life and miles and energy, that they are not at the same time wishing the finish line of life was coming much more quickly than the Tennessee state line. But I will tell you, you can't always assume that about people's posts. It was a summer of grief. A summer of life falling apart as if the whole virtual state of Tennessee was being pummeled by a great virtual bomb. Only there is nothing ever virtual about grief. There is some great irony, as I think about it, that I spent a summer running a race in Virginia while pretending to be in Tennessee. Because at no point that summer did I not find myself wishing I could be anyone but me. The good news, the great news, maybe even the miraculous news, is that is not where I am today. Today I would not choose to be anyone but me, or live any life other than my own. I don't race toward many finish lines these days, (Tennessee is a big state😊), but I also don't wish for any finish lines before their time. As I write you these words, I wonder, how did that happen? How did the darkest period of life land here? In possibility, hope, and light? I suppose it's the pattern of my life, in many ways. No matter how complicated things get, and life can get complicated, I keep moving. It hasn't always looked pretty. Or healthy. But I have always kept moving. In this case, during the dark summer of 2020, it helped that I was moving toward a beautiful group of people and an organization I love, backed by people encouraging me to just keep going. And so, I kept going. I guess I just want you to know this morning that sometimes life coming together feels a lot like life falling apart. Sometimes dark hides the light, but the light is still there. It's still there if you'll keep moving. Moving in love and service to others, even if at times that feels like it is doing no service to you. Just keep moving, please. Sometimes getting where you're supposed to be means going through places and spaces you wish you'd never have to go. But go. Go and just keep going. Because it's absolutely possible to be falling apart and coming together at the same time. In fact, I've come to believe that is almost always the order of things. If you don't believe me, just keep going, and see for yourself. 8/27/2024 0 Comments Press ON, Like a waterfallIf a waterfall can be a spirit animal, I want it to be mine.
In a waterfall, no matter the boulders in the way or the unexpected twists in the terrain, the water just keeps going. If my life was water, I'd say I lived too much of it as a pond, trapped within often toxic boundaries, many of my own making, many not, but always confined within my own inability to see around or over or beyond the trap. But in waterfalls, the water is never trapped. It just keeps going. It doesn't stop to be noticed. It doesn't pay attention to where it's been, so it surely doesn't gets stuck there. It doesn't stop to overthink the way it's direction. It just goes. I press on for that life. The just go life. A life not defined by memories, good or bad. Not defined by culture. Defined only by the waterfall spirit within me. Because there is that spirit within me. Within us all, really. Longing to guide us. Over and through every boulder and 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. Oh the sweet sweet sound of that. Never falling, only going. That's the beauty of a waterfall. Maybe today you feel like you are falling or have fallen. But is it possible you are like a waterfall, not falling at all, but simply going? Over, through and around. Going. I suppose we all have some sort of miracle we're waiting on. We're maybe even at a place of wondering what God's waiting on before he comes through with it.
I know I've been there. This morning, I find myself wondering if what God is waiting on is me. There's a story in the bible about a guy named Peter. He'd just witnessed one of his buddy's getting his head chopped off for following Jesus. Now Peter's in prison imagining he's about to experience the same fate. No doubt Peter is waiting on a miracle. The bible tells us Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound in chains, when an angel appeared and the chains fell off. The miracle has arrived? Not yet. The bible tells us something interesting next. It's some of these bible words you read over quickly when reading the bible, thinking they are filler words, when actually for some of us, certainly me, they are not meant to take up space in scripture but to fill some empty spaces in us. The bible tells us after the chains fell off and Peter got up, the angel told Peter, "Put on your clothes and sandals." Why would the author include those words in this story? Can't we just assume Peter put his clothes on before the angel led him out of prison and into his miracle? I don't think we can assume that at all. I know I can't. Because the reality is, there are miracles in my life I'm waiting on that I haven't even got dressed for yet. I'm praying for miracles that God's waiting for me to get dressed for. I think we too often get to thinking miracles are as simple as the chains falling off. Miracles are God do, then me respond. But what if we're missing the miracle God's already performed because we aren't getting dressed and going to where God has planned for us to meet it? The chains were off Peter, yet God still felt the need to say, now get dressed. Maybe God has that relationship for you out there, but that doesn't mean you don't have to get up and put on your trusting other people clothes today. Maybe God has that addiction beaten to a pulp out there, but that doesn't mean you don't have to get up and put on your sober clothes today. Maybe God has that book on a bookstore shelf out there, but that doesn't mean you don't have to get up and put on your writing clothes today. Maybe God has that marathon finish line for you out there some months from now, but that doesn't mean you don't have to get up and put on your running clothes today. What if I'm asking, God, where is my miracle? And I'm asking it so loud and through the deep tears of frustration and impatience that I'm not hearing God's answer. "Put on your clothes and your sandals." If you're waiting on a miracle today, maybe dress like it's already here. There's a reason God told Peter to get up and get dressed. This morning I'm thinking, that reason is me and you. The boys and I took a hike three thousand feet above the world yesterday. I frequently call these hikes escapes. But the more I learn, and think about it, I believe it's more accurate to say these hikes are a search for balance.
Our brain has two hemispheres. A left and a right. They are created to be in an ongoing conversation with one another. But if we're not careful, like everything it seems that has two sides, one side of our brain will try to gain dominance over the other. And in the case of the brain, it's almost always that left side. The left side of our brain is obsessed with facts. It is always analyzing and has a need for definitions. The left side of our brain has this belief that the more it memorizes, like the alphabet and times tables and scriptures, the more control it will have over making all the right decisions on our behalf. I believe the left side of our brain has an ally. It's called society. So much of our lives, when it comes to education and work and even our relationships, are driven by memorizing and analyzing and judging and needing to know how this is all going to work out. Then there's the right side of our brain. It embraces the present moment, context, and the beauty of the undefined. I looked at the boys yesterday, staring down at the valley, the sun out beyond the mountain tops and the shadows covering tiny distant signs of civilization below, and I said, "isn't it beautiful." But the thing is, on that mountaintop, we all had different definitions of beautiful. It looked and felt and sounded different to each of us. None of us were pressured to know the definition of beautiful to experience beautiful. In fact, that WAS the beauty. That WAS the peace. The freedom to experience beauty without having to know what beauty really is. The freedom to live life with enjoyment without analyzing whether or not this should or shouldn't feel like joy. It's interesting, the right sides of our brains developed first in life. As babies, we lived in the moment. We observed and soaked up the fluid and everchanging world around us before anyone ever started defining what that world was. As babies, we were totally consumed with being present. I think about that a lot these days. When I get to feeling anxious or depressed or overwhelmed, I think about going back to those days of being a baby. Where you just observe and take it all in without any pressure of having to know what it all means. I think of the power I have to retreat to that most primitive part of my brain. I think about taking a hike to the top of a mountain. It's important that our brains have a balance. Facts and figures do have a place in making sense of our lives. But if we're not careful, we'll become dominated by those facts and figures. We'll become consumed with knowing the definition of a mountain to the point that we won't allow the mountain to simply define itself. We will need to know what beauty is before accepting beauty's invitation to get to know it. In a world that often thinks it needs to know the answers to experience peace, isn't it ironic that the greatest source of peace might be in places where there are none? Maybe you don't need to escape today, but it's possible you need to find some balance. Maybe for you it's not on a mountaintop, but in music or art or in a long walk. Don't feel pressured to know the definition of balance in your life, simply seek it. Someone once told me there's no money to be made in writing. That was a lie. Or more gently stated, an untruth.
Listen, very few people are getting rich writing, but a lot of people do indeed make some money doing it. The belief I developed around that lie, though, was much deeper than finances. I came to believe that the only value in writing WAS finances; if you can't make a living doing it why do it? And for the longest time, I remained faithful to that belief and didn't dare pick up a pen or sit at a keyboard. Today, I know just what a limitation not-writing places on my life. The last decade of my life was a dark decade, but I have literally written myself out of that darkness into light. Writing has helped me explore the world and explore me and deconstruct a lot of beliefs I had turned into limitations. By offering myself the freedom to write, I discovered the freedom to live with purpose and contentment. And more often than ever: with joy. The more I've uncovered just how many beliefs I've been faithful to in life that were built on untruths, beliefs that were unknowingly prison wardens in my life, the more I wonder how many other people out there are limited by the same. I wonder how many of us are not going where we can go, maybe even where we were created to go, because we have beliefs that have falsely convinced us that's a place we can not go. Or a place we are forbidden to go. A helpful question I ask myself a lot these days, and often secretly write about to you all without actually asking the question out loud, is: why do I believe that? As a result, I have very few beliefs these days that I haven't done my best to confirm aren't built on lies. Maybe one of the most freeing parts of that confirmation process has been uncovering a lot of lies I'd been telling me about me. Lies I had believed and been faithful to. I encourage you to do the same. Confirm the things you believe about the world. About you. About each other. Trace the roots of those beliefs. Chances are you aren't experiencing the kind of beauty that really is all around you. You aren't experiencing it because you've built fences hiding it from you. Fences built on the foundation of faulty beliefs. Life can make it easy to believe that feelings are rather random. They arrive from out of the blue and then we in turn respond to them.
Believing that, especially if there are feelings we long to feel, makes it easy to settle into a waiting game. We begin living life at the bus stop of feelings, waiting for ours to arrive, waiting until we eventually start wondering, dejected, did I purchase the wrong ticket? What if we don't have to wait? What if we have more power to create the feelings we want to feel than we sometimes acknowledge? I delivered a presentation yesterday. To be honest, I didn't feel like delivering it. I was tired and a little worn down. But what motivated me to show up wasn't a pep talk: get it in gear, Keith. It was the feeling of connection I knew I'd feel once I had delivered the presentation. And I did feel that. When I got home from the presentation, the last thing I wanted to do was go to the gym. I really didn't feel like it. What motivated me to show up wasn't a pep talk: get your butt to the gym, Keith. It was the feeling of being energized I knew I'd feel once I finished my workout. And I did feel that. Sometimes I don't feel very grateful toward God. I don't feel like raising my hands toward him and saying thank you when there are some things in my life I've asked him to tend to that still feel very unattended to. But I raise my hands anyways. Motivated by obligation? Commandment? No, I do it because I want to feel attended to. I want to feel God's promise that just as he has been there before, he is there now, leaving absolutely nothing unattended to. I want to feel grateful in spite of my ungratefulness. And so I raise my hands, and feel so thankful for God in my life. Maybe stop waiting at the bus stop for the feelings to show up you long to show up and go raise your hands and grab hold of them. Feelings do come and go, but we have a lot more say in what those feelings are than we often acknowledge. The result, then, is too often living under the control of our feelings instead of the other way around. Trust me, I know changing that's easier understood than implemented, but it starts with something as simple as raising your hands. If you're looking for a feeling today, try raising your hands. If I jump in my car, and you ask me where I'm going, and I say, "I don't know, I'm just going for a drive", it's hard telling where I might end up.
I suppose that's okay for a Sunday drive. To just start driving without any real plan where you want to go. If you have no desire to get anywhere in particular why would you need to know where you're going? After a while, though, that would get tiring. Pointless and aimless. To just drive without ever stopping anywhere you want to stop, without seeing anything or anyone you want to see, without feeling the joy of reaching a destination. Life would suddenly be just about driving and never arriving. I think we all need places we want to arrive to avoid living a life that feels pointless. We need something to point at to give us purpose when simply driving around on a Sunday drive is no longer enough. I can't help but think about this in terms of relationships. A lot of people enter into them because they really enjoy each other's Sunday drive company. But you know, in time, if the sole point of the relationship is to enjoy each other's company, you will quickly cease to enjoy each other's company. I think it's a question that often gets overlooked on the front end of a relationship. Where do we want to go? Absent that question, and absent an answer, the direction is suddenly dictated by the relationship itself. All the emotions and feelings and sentiments and reactions that naturally emit from a relationship - they become the car taking you on a Sunday drive. And if no one has identified up front where they want the car to go, there is no way of really knowing when those emissions have taken you off track. If you never identify where you want to go, you have no way of knowing you are going the wrong way. Until sadly, you're in a place you can no longer stand to be. You can only take so many Sunday drives to nowhere before you wake up in a place that feels like nowhere. But when you do know where you want to go in a relationship, you suddenly become each other's biggest source's of guidance and support in getting there. You become each other's biggest cheerleaders when you hit milestones along the way. Relational emotions and struggles become things that just don't feel bad, that leave you with angst, they are things standing in the way of where we're going, and thus, things we'll need to resolve together and not run off and hide from as individuals. Car troubles on a Sunday drive to nowhere may be inconvenient, but they don't require much sense of urgency to repair them. Because the troubles really aren't standing in the way of getting anywhere. But car troubles on the way to a place we've agreed we really want to get to, those troubles come with a sense of urgency to repair. Because it's no longer about just feeling more at peace about car troubles, it's about getting the car back on the road to a place we've committed to go. The pleasures of a Sunday drive are fleeting. The pleasures of getting to a place we've helped each other get, those pleasures never end. So whether you're talking about a relationship, or just your life in general, if you haven't asked and answered, where do I want to go, you're on a Sunday drive. You might enjoy the randomness and carefree approach to that drive for a moment, but the joy won't last. We can only drive so long and so far without getting anywhere before the carefree is forever in the rearview mirror. The good news is, it's never too late to ask, where do I want to go? The good news is, it's never too late to start driving there. |
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
November 2024
CategoriesAll Faith Fatherhood Life Mental Health Perserverance Running |