​When does my faith most often fall apart?

When MY plans don't go MY way.

But that's not faith.

The moment you feel something in your life fall apart, and you feel it as a stop, a quit, then you haven't been leaning into faith at all.

You've been leaning into you.

The superpower of faith is in the language. Stop means go. Done means it's not over yet. Failed means you have no idea what the real victory even looks like.

Tauren Wells says, "if it's not good then He's not done, there will be joy in the morning."

If you get to a stop, hear go.

If you get to a dark spot, know it's not dark, it's simply the night.

And the morning is coming.

Along with it - joy.

There will be joy in the morning.

​Behind the scenes of social media, there is often a world taking place that looks nothing like the the world playing out on Facebook or Instagram or pick your platform.

Several weeks ago, a high profile football game took place. Not many people saw it coming. Colorado versus Colorado State hasn't been must watch TV outside of the state of Colorado in forever.

It became high profile because Colorado's new high profile coach, Coach Prime, brings attention wherever he goes. He'd be the first to tell you that's on purpose. He seeks attention, because with attention comes influence.

With influence comes the opportunity to change lives.

And culture.

During this rivalry game, one of Colorado State's players, Henry Blackburn, put a vicious hit on Colorado's star player, Travis Hunter. A hit that lacerated Hunter's liver, which is projected to leave him sidelined for a few weeks.

In the aftermath of the hit, social media exploded with ugliness. People called the hit dirty. Blackburn and his family received death threats. A young kid suddenly became a hated villain in the Colorado Cinderella story.

The hit was aggressive. It was late. It was worthy of a penalty.

But it was also the kind of hit you see every Saturday and Sunday on football fields across America. Football's a violent sport; I don't think I'm the first to figure that out. But the hit wasn't remotely out of character for the game of football, which made it a little reckless to use it to judge the character of the kid landing the hit.

In the aftermath, as social media ran with its narrative, Hunter and Blackburn were connecting by phone. Blackburn to check on Hunter's health, Hunter to say it's all part of the game.

Let's move on.

So they moved on. And last week made a video. In the video, Hunter said he felt the hit was a blessing, because it gave two players the chance to come together and show the world that behind the scenes of a game, there are people.

Real live people living out real live stories that don't always look like the stories portrayed on social media.

I love social media. It offers such beautiful opportunities to spread light to dark in places and with speed once unimaginable.

But it also offers the opposite. It makes it easy to paint over light with dark. Which sells. Because it's often our human nature to be drawn to stories of hated villains than to stories built on forgiveness and love.

I don't always understand that about our nature, but it is indeed too often our nature.

So we need these reminders. This influence. This change. From two kids playing a game. A reminder that it IS just a game. And life is never about the game, it's about the people playing it.

It's about the kind of character and humanity the game brings out of us.

The kind of character and humanity happening between real life people in real life situations, not the people talking about those lives and situations on social media.

​God loves me.
This I know.
But not because the bible tells me so.
These two do.
Elliott and Ian.
In all of his power and authority and sovereignty and creativity,
God could have chosen any way to write us into his story.
He chose to write us in as children. His children.
He our father, we his children.
He didn't want to be our king or czar or ruler or dictator.
He wanted to be our father; he wanted us to be his children.
I never wanted children.
But isn't it like God to write stories we don't want but ultimately can't live without?
Isn't it like God to write a story that says, you will know the kind of love I have for you through the kind of love you have for them.
Elliott and Ian.
They are the once upon a time in the truest love story I have ever known.
Unconditional. Non-judgmental. Kind.
Would I have ever really known love at all without them?
Isn't it like God to ensure I never have to know the answer to that?
God loves me.
This I know.
But not because the bible tells me so.
These two do.
Elliott and Ian.

​I have a friend who can be hard on me. Hard in a gentle yet challenging sort of way.

I was bemoaning the lack of sunshine the other day. Genuinely wondering out loud, where has the sun gone and when upon this great earth is it shining its way back.

My friend said, "maybe she's showing you what the opposite of sunshine is so you can learn from opposites and appreciate the side you like more."

Nothing stops bemoaning quite like wisdom and profundity.

Because it's true, at least for me. When the patterns in my life change, I can settle in and begin to wonder when the pattern will return to normal - so I can return to normal. I can begin to wonder when my comfort and my preferences will be once again given the honor they richly deserve.

Only that's not how life works. Life doesn't honor our comforts, life challenges us to get good at finding comfort in all of life.

Sunshine or not.

Life doesn't see sunshine and gloominess as opposites, it just sees them as equal partners in the atmosphere of living. It's us who decides one is better than the other. It's us that decides only one of them has value and the other is a thief.

I don't think my friend was selling me on the beauty of a cloudy day. I don't think she was trying to sway me away from my allegiance to sunshine. But I think she was saying, you can't afford to turn your back on the lessons a gloomy day comes to offer.

I think she was saying you can't spend the rest of your life afraid of darkness when their is actually much light to be found there. Often more than you'll find in a sunny day.

The forecast for the rest of this week is indeed gloomy and drizzly. That is not my preference. But it is my genuine desire to every day get better at this life thing. To be a better and stronger person.

I am thankful for a friend who is willing to challenge me to see gloom as a friend of that desire and not an enemy.

I think we all need friends like that, especially on the cloudy days.

​I guest lectured yesterday at a child and adolescent psychology class. It was the session on substance use disorders, and my friend and the professor of the class, Barry, annually invites me to speak to this topic.

I always tell the class that I think the biggest mistake we make when diagnosing substance use disorders is believing that the substance use is one's real problem. I think it's the biggest mistake we make of diagnosing anyone's choices and behaviors.

My oldest son Elliott once shared, with much exasperation, how frustrating it was to watch one of his favorite NBA stars get suspended for using drugs. How on earth, he asked, could a guy who has it all make such a stupid choice?

And I told him, we have to be careful about so quickly reducing anyone's choices to a simple act of stupidity.

I know from experience that what looks like someone at war with themself on the outside, is often someone trying to protect themselves from the warzone that lives inside them. I don't think anyone would call that stupid; protecting yourself from entering a warzone.

The reality is, for many of us, our addictions and habits and obsessions with pleasure are layers. They are barbed wire fences wrapped firmly around the edges of our memories, around the edges of the unhealed parts of our lives, put there to assure us we never have to go to those parts.

It's true, most of us long to be healed. Far fewer of us, however, want to face the hell of healing. For at least a moment, what we can pretend is unknown feels much more pleasant than knowing.

That is what our addictions and habits and obsessions are; they are pretending. They are fighting to keep the unknown as far away as possible from the land of the known.

To you, pretending may look like stupidity, irresponsibility, recklessness. To you, pretending may look like war.

To the pretender, however, pretending often feels like avoiding a war.

Which is where we all end up: avoiding.

If you can pretend my addiction is my problem, my own personal stupid choice, you can believe there's no need for you to enter my warzone. And if I can embrace my addiction as a solution and not my problem, I can come to believe there's no need to enter my warzone.

And so it continues. A world at war on the outside without getting one step closer to knowing the wars we are all battling on the inside.

We double down on pretending to know the problems without getting a single step closer to where the problems really live.

In the warzone.

And so the war goes on.

Only, it's the wrong war.

​For much of my life, I have felt like I've been working for and toward the gift of God's love. Most days I feel like I'm moving beyond that way of thinking and feeling, but I still have my days.

This past weekend, I got to hang out with a lot of 'church people'. The people I have traditionally believed God loved. In the midst of talking to these people, and dare I say teaching and preaching to these people, I can begin to wonder, what on earth am I doing here?

What on earth does a guy looking for God's love have to offer people who have already found it?

That's what I can find myself thinking.

Until I remember one of my favorite bible characters, Paul. The man who had been killing the 'church people' until God showed up and convinced Paul he was as loved as the people he was killing. And then Paul became a teacher and preacher of love.

God didn't start loving Paul after he became who he became, God loved Paul INTO BECOMING who he ultimately became.

Over and over, that's the story of almost every character in the bible. God loving them into change, not loving them in the aftermath of it.

Our problem isn't that God doesn't love us in our struggles, it's that we forget that he does. We stop believing that he does. And when we stop believing God loves us, we stop loving ourselves.

You know, a lot of times people forget that God loves them in their struggles because we humans stop loving people in their struggles. We humans can start looking like people who want the people around us to change in to people we can start loving.

We often make our love someone else's reward and not the power with which we enter into someone else's struggle to bring hope and change.

We often lead with judgment and hope for healing, when it's putting aside our judgment that is often the ultimate fuel for healing.

If you want to know where God is most present today, look right smack dab in the middle of your biggest struggles. God is waiting for you there, even as you do everything you can to stay away from that place.

Maybe the more we tell ourselves God's love is there, the more likely we'll go to those hard places. Go there and find the courage to make the changes that need to be made there.

And maybe, just maybe, if we start finding each other there, finding each other in our hardest places, we'll all find the courage to make those changes.

We'll all start feeling love as a gift we get in the midst of our deepest struggles, not a reward we get once we've overcome them.

Love is not a reward for doing life well, it's how we help each other feel most well while doing life.

​I lead a breakout session at a conference yesterday; God on the Brain: The Nexus of Religious Faith & Mental Well-Being. The keynote speaker was Dr. Andrew Newberg, a neuroscientist and one of the original founders of neurotheology, the study of the intersection of the brain and spirituality.

In his talk, Dr. Newberg revealed something fascinating to me. When we simply talk to God, or study our bibles, or recite prayers, brain scans show that the higher level thinking parts of our brains light up with activity.

Yet, when we enter the flow of life with God, when we sit in silence and welcome the presence of God, when we walk in nature to experience God, when we simply surrender ourselves to God's nearness with anticipation and welcoming, it's the lower parts of our brain that light up.

That's critical. Because it's the lower parts of our brain that reflect felt safety and security and belonging. And I think that's what most of us long for in our spiritual journeys.

Felt safety. Security. Belonging.

I think that's what we're all looking for in our relationships with one another, too. And maybe, just like with our relationship with God, we too often lean on memorizing what the relationship should be instead of surrendering to what the relationship offers.

Maybe we lean on defining what the relationship should be instead of sitting next to one another discovering the beauty that can be found in our time together.

Our God has the power to make us all-knowing. But from the beginning, God made it clear all-knowing would never be one of our superpowers. All knowing has been forbidden from day one.

I wonder if that's because God, especially when it comes to relationships, wants us to sit in shared curiosity. I wonder if God wants us to treasure discovering what we can become together more than the need to know what we already are.

I wonder if God wants us to know that we can't think or know our way to belonging, but we can sit next to him and discover it. Maybe as a way of helping us know that's where we'll find it in one another.

Sitting next to each other.

Discovering.

​I spent a lot of time this week reflecting on challenging incidents in my life. I spent an equal amount of time reflecting on ways I wish those incidents had gone differently, on ways I wish incidents in my life were currently going differently.

I'm reminded this morning how unhealthy it can be to think about those incidents and preferences in isolation, how when we read those moments as the whole book and not chapters in the book, we tell ourselves incomplete stories.

The incidents in our lives leave footprints. They leave them in our hearts and minds and souls. When we look at those individual footprints, when we focus on those moments in time, we can get stuck there.

Stuck staring at one single moment; one single step. Often one we consider a MIS-step.

When we look at our lives through a wider lens, when we step back and look at all of the footprints and not just one, we see where the footprints took us; we see a path.

We see the whole book and not a single chapter.

We see a greater purpose.

As I shared the footprints and paths of my life this week, people around me started seeing their own footprints and paths a little clearer. They started putting the chapters of their lives together and gained clarity about their story.

Maybe that's the power and beauty of seeing the footprints in our lives within the paths of our lives. Maybe it helps us free people from the incidents in their lives and launch them into their stories.

Into their purpose.

Maybe it helps me and them understand, that no matter what preferences we have for our past or for our present or for our future, in the end, no matter what life does with our preferences, our moments become footprints.

The moments we desire and the moments we don't; they all become footprints.

The gift is knowing that the footprint is not the story, it's a chapter. And every once in a while, we owe it to ourselves to break free of the chapters and read the story.

The whole story.

​I spoke at a DUI Specialty Dockets event earlier this week. In my mind I was going to be speaking to a relatively small crowd. But when I arrived, the reality became something different.

There were over 400 people in the audience. Many of them judges and elected officials. I don't often feel uneasy - unqualified - before speaking to a group. But I confess, I felt immediately uneasy. Unqualified.

I opened with words I had no intention of opening with. But something inside me told me, pushed me, if I was going to connect with this group, it was going to be through my story and not through information they'd heard a thousand times.

So, I told them about the kid who fell in love with alcohol at the age of 12.

About the kid who spent his high school years experimenting with pills and creating opportunities to stay drunk in secret.

I told them about the kid who turned into a college student whose love affair with alcohol turned into an abusive relationship. With alcohol and with everyone around me.

I told them about my own DUI in my mid-twenties.

I told them about being sentenced to a 72-hour inpatient treatment program.

I told them about the man I met there. He was standing on the front porch. He looked old and unkempt and fully given up on life. I looked at him and thought, "what am I doing here with these people?"

These people.....

I had a group session with "these people". I remember the old man telling the story of his life. The story of where he'd been and not who he was.

I didn't know it then, but it was my first really big hint; where we've been has a whole lot to do with who we are. An unkempt present usually has a lot to do with an unkempt past. A love of alcohol is often the best way to hide from the kind of love we longed for and could never find.

And a lot of us looking at people and wondering 'what am I doing here with these people' - we one day wake up and realize more than we ever knew, I am one of these people.

I think it's important for judges and elected officials and court workers and pastors and friends and well - everyone, to know that.

I could see and feel people connecting with my story. I no longer felt uneasy. Because when you share your real story with people it connects with the real story in them. Maybe it even leaves them wishing they could stand up and tell theirs.

Our stories are a gift to one another. I'm sure I first learned that from a man I judged well before I knew his story. I'm sure that's when I first discovered my judgments have no place in the land of healing.

My story does.

Our stories do.

​I've always hated painting.

But the truth is, I've sure done enough of it in my life.

I think we should all stop painting and start living.

Stop painting over it and start living through it.

With trust, that in the end, the life we ultimately create will be far more beautiful than the one we're trying to hide.