​I have been in relationships where I knew I had not been heard. I knew it because there was no remote sign of an answer in response to my talking or sharing.

That is hard. That can be defeating.

Isolating.

Maybe worse than all of that, though, it can lend to my believing that if I do not get an answer from God, then God too has not heard me.

They don't listen to me, God must not either.

But where too often we define each other by our answers - we use each other's answers to measure one other's attention and presence - God is defined by faith.

Steven Furtick says, "In between prayer and the answer is faith."

The challenge is we live in a world where answers keep coming quicker and quicker. The gap between question and answer keeps disappearing.

Google it.

ChatGPT it.

But God doesn't want to be defined by speedy answers; God wants to be defined by the strength that keeps us moving when we don't have any answers at all.

It feels like God is more interested in me knowing that he always hears even when my pity party wants to convince me he refuses to answer.

God doesn't want my perceived lack of answers to isolate me from him, he wants it to draw me closer to him in trust.

I think back on those challenging relationships. The truth is it wasn't the lack of answers that felt so defeating - it was knowing I wasn't heard. It was knowing my words carried no importance.

I have come to know that every word I think and say is important to God. I know it because many things I have thought or said years and even decades ago, God keeps finding ways to show up and say, I heard you.

Sometimes that shows up like a memory. Other times as new found wisdom - ah ha moments. And yes, often as a long awaited answer.

We demand answers. God longs for us to know we are heard even in the absence of answers. Too often worldly relationships are built on answers; a relationship with God is built on faith and trust.

I am heard; I need no answers to know it.

​The more I try to control life, the more life ends up controlling me.

I’ve seen this truth in so many corners of my own story. For years, I thought I could manage the fear and loneliness and feelings of insignificance that haunted me by drinking. I thought alcohol was a tool to keep me in control of how I felt. But over time, it became painfully clear that alcohol wasn’t a tool, it was a master. What started as me using alcohol ended with alcohol using me.

I saw the same lesson last Friday when I walked into a correctional facility to talk with a group of prisoners. As I looked around the room, I realized that almost every man was there because of an attempt to control something: a relationship, a fear, a craving, a moment that felt impossible to face. And now few humans have less control than they have. 

I’ve felt that in my broken relationships, too. I wanted things to go my way, to meet my needs, to quiet my insecurities. But the tighter I gripped the more those relationships slipped out of my hands. I've wanted desperately to control the path to love all the while being unwilling to surrender to it. 

Why is it so hard for us to surrender? Even in the aftermath of destruction, when we can clearly see how our efforts at control have failed, our first instinct is often to double down and fight harder. Richard Rohr says: “The word ‘control’ does not exist in the vocabulary of the saints.” 

Yet it remains in ours, every day, on repeat.

Our culture doesn’t help. Everywhere we look, we’re promised that control is within our reach if we just buy the right product or follow the right plan. Fitness ads tell us we can control our bodies. Productivity apps promise we can control our time. Financial gurus assure us we can control our futures. And maybe on the surface, these things give us small wins. But eventually, life reveals that small wins don't equal big control. 

The hard truth - and the freeing truth - is that surrender isn’t weakness. It’s wisdom. Pastor Tim Keller once said, “You don’t realize Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have.” 

That’s the paradox of surrender: only when we stop pretending we’re in charge do we discover a power greater than ourselves. But is there anything we want to give up less than the illusion that we can ultimately be in charge? 

Is there anything we fight harder for in life than to be in charge of our life?

For me, surrender has meant admitting I’m not the author of every chapter of my life. It’s meant listening instead of forcing. It’s meant turning over the wheel when my need to steer has driven me into ditches time and again, and even not so rarely head on collisions. 

The more I’ve loosened my grip, the more I’ve found something better than control - occasional peace. 

Oh, trust me, I am still prone to closing my fist, trying to once again fight for control when my life feels so frequently chaotic, but I have loosened it enough to know that real peace isn't inside the fist, it's in two open palms lifted upward. 

Upward. 

Surrender. 

That is ultimately the story of every life - a fight for control only to realize that's a fight you can never win. It's what you do with that realization that matters most in life. 

Surrender. 

​Several months ago, after finishing a presentation about the connection between trauma and substance abuse, a young lady approached me. She told me she worked in a correctional facility filled with men battling addiction.

“They need to hear your story,” she said. “Will you come talk to them?”

I said sure.

It’s easy to say sure when you don’t really believe it’s going to happen. Sometimes “sure” feels like a polite coin you toss into the fountain of good intentions, never expecting to return to it.

But yesterday, I found myself driving down foggy backroads to that facility. The fog felt fitting. Fog and fear make good companions, and fear was riding shotgun with me.

I’d never spoken to prisoners before. “Prison” is a word we toss around so casually, yet inside that word are people. Real humans. And sadly, once humans become prisoners, they put on the prison uniforms of our perceptions: dangerous, mysterious, unrelatable.

My fear wasn’t just about them. It was about me. I usually count on my gift to grab an audience’s attention. But how on earth would I grab theirs? Surely, we had nothing in common.

And then God spoke into my fear. He told me to lead with the one thing we all share: brokenness.

So I did.

I told them I’d never been a prisoner. But besides that, I could relate a lot. Because what we do have in common is this: we are all broken. I told them I’m a broken man, still stumbling forward on a journey toward healing and wholeness, knowing I’ll never fully arrive there this side of heaven.

I admitted something else: I was there as much for my own healing as I was for theirs.

Before I spoke, I whispered a quiet prayer: Your will be done, God.

And then I watched God answer it.

To my amazement, this may have been one of the most attentive groups I’ve ever spoken to. A couple of men had tears in their eyes. Many had questions.

Is it possible to reconcile with the people you’ve hurt?

Is it possible to reconcile with the people who’ve hurt you?

I’ve never been good at connecting with people, is it too late for me?

One young man pulled me aside afterward. He told me the story of what landed him in prison. In his words, I heard the panic of a mere kid who has spent countless hours trying to figure out why he did what he did - desperately afraid that if he couldn’t find that answer, he might never figure out how not to do it again.

Another man asked me if we could connect when he gets out. “I’ve never had a male role model in my life,” he said. “I think you’d be a good one for me.”

I did my best to answer their questions with love and compassion. But honestly, my answers didn’t mean nearly as much to me as their questions did.

We too easily write prisoners off, maybe unaware of how many of them are sitting in their pods and their cells trying desperately to rewrite their stories. We've too often written the end on the stories they don't want to be over.

I was reminded again that there is no stronger connection than our shared brokenness. The moment I started talking about my own shattered dreams, my mistakes, my destroyed relationships, they were all ears.

The broken don’t need our advice as much as they need our understanding. And understanding often starts with this confession: I am broken too.

When my “talk” was over, I stayed an extra half hour just listening. I didn’t ask what crimes they committed. Instead, I listened to the lives they had lived, the traumas they carried, the stories that brought them here.

Nobody wakes up in prison. Nobody wakes up wanting to go to prison. There are stories that lead us there.

And while I’ve never been behind the walls of a state prison, I told them the truth: I have certainly made a prisoner of my own life.

Walking back outside, the fog had lifted. The fear was gone.

The walls and the razor wire fences may have been built to keep men inside, but for a few hours that day, they couldn’t keep out connection, compassion, or hope.

I went in wondering how I could possible relate to these men. I left realizing we shared the most important thing: our humanity, fragile and broken, but still reaching for healing.

Oh Lord that we would all come to know we are best when we reach together, no matter what uniform we are wearing.

​I recently read this line by Elizabeth Gilbert in her new book ‘All the Way to the River’:

“The desire for love, attention, validation, and acceptance — what I call LAVA — can drive us to abandon ourselves, to lie, to chase, to manipulate, just to get that hit of being wanted.”

I am in the process of writing the final pieces of the story of my life. The finishing has been very hard, quite frankly. When I committed to completing this book, I said it was 75% complete.

I now know why it has remained so incomplete for so long.

The unwritten parts of the book are the parts I have most wanted to avoid. I have longed to write the story of my life while at the same time feeling compelled to hide large parts of my life. There is no greater tension for a writer - hiding from the truth.

The parts I have most NEEDED to write are the parts I've least WANTED to write.

The tipping point between not writing the end and no longer being able to NOT write that end was my demons becoming too big to hide. The demons within me raised such a ruckus about being seen that it became clear they would no longer be complicit in my hiding them.

So I write.

I find courage in reading others write the things I know deeply were hard for them to write. I find courage in reading others acknowledge they too have been addicted to a need to be seen and loved and accepted; I know that is hard to admit. I find courage in reading others own just how far they'd go to feed that addiction.

Honesty is not often well received in the world. The world is often much more comfortable with who they want us to be than they are with who we are or who we have been. But it turns out dishonesty is not well received by our souls. And I believe for us all there comes a point where the individual soul goes to war with the whole wide world.

I am sure my war has been a long time coming.

But maybe it is that war that forces one to be brave enough to say I have been a liar. I have been a manipulator. I have been so cold to others that it would appear that one so addicted to love is tragically incapable of it.

So I write.

At times brutal honesty about who we have been can feel like an excuse for what we have done. I have found as I power through the writing of this book that I no longer have much need for excuses in my life. They hold such little value.

What holds value is honesty.

For my soul is at war with the world and I've come to believe honesty is the only weapon that will conquer that world.

As I read the words from Elizabeth Gilbert, I found myself thinking, you are not alone Ms. Gilbert.

Maybe that's what winning the war - honesty - can ultimately become. An assurance to others that they are not alone.

​I have heard this word a lot lately.

Revival.

I've heard it largely in the context of my Christian faith.

It's had me wondering, though, what will become of this revival if we are indeed in the midst of one. For as the church itself has shown us for centuries, it is quite possible for many to gather weekly in a building in the name of revival - and yet - leave the neighborhoods that surround that building left feeling completely unrevived. Still dying in the depths of their struggles.

I have wondered what is a revival without ripple?

What is revival if the hungry are not fed, if the thirsty are not given drink, if the stranger is not taken in, if the sick are not visited and the prisoners not attended to? What will revival make of the orphans and the widows? The addicts and the homeless and the enemies?

I believe in the power of revival. I've personally experienced revival in my own life - more than once. Sometimes it's true that we need re-revived.

But I believe Jesus would agree, that if revival gets stuck on gathering and doesn't leave the gathering feeling a massive calling to GO - the revival has at least come up short.

I do believe many are experiencing revival, but my prayer is those outside the circle of the revival are ultimately the ones who end up feeling most revived.

​In the bible, the spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. If you've ever spent time in the wilderness of your life feeling tempted by the devil - and I have - you might relate.

As the story goes on, after 40 days of fasting, Jesus was hungry. That's when the devil showed up. And again, if it's ever felt to you like the devil shows up trying to make unhealthy answers seem like healthy answers in your weakest moments - you might relate.

The devil told Jesus, if you're the son of God, just turn these stones into bread. Jesus responded by assuring the devil there was more to life than bread.

Then the devil led Jesus to the highest point of a temple and told him to jump, for the bible says the angels will show up and rescue you. Jesus basically told the devil, "I know who I am, I don't need to be performing magic tricks for you."

And finally, the devil took Jesus to a high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world. The devil told Jesus if he would simply bow down and worship him the kingdoms would be all his.

And Jesus said, I will only worship God.

After that, the bible tells us:

"The devil left him, and angels came and attended him.

When we are in the wilderness of our lives, it is hard to imagine angels waiting to attend to us. I suppose that's because when we're in the wilderness of our lives the devil is good at convincing us things in our lives are angels that aren't really angels.

In the wilderness we get good at replacing real angels with pretend angels.

We get good at believing angels aren't showing up so these substances will fill my need for bread.

We get good at believing angels aren't showing up so we start leaning into our own superhuman strength which in the end turns out to be far more destructive than super-anything.

We get good at believing if I simply accumulate power and wealth, I'll no longer have a need for angels. And further, in the accumulation I will actually BECOME an angel. Maybe even THE angel.

The wilderness - the dark places in our lives - they are tricky. They can get us turning to angels that aren't angels and eventually to not believing in angels at all.

The devil tried to trick Jesus into calling upon false angels. Jesus avoided falling for the trick by knowing, without any doubt, that the real angels were already there.

There with him in the wilderness. There waiting to attend to him when he walked out.

Today might throw something at you that will make you question if the angels would really show up for someone like you. The best response, at least I know it's the best one for me today, remind life that the angel is already there.

​Yesterday was the Georgia Jewel Trail Race. The 10th Anniversary. I wasn't there, but I have been there before.

I have been there before and had my life changed because of it.

The memories of the change pop up this weekend every year. Always the same message. Always right on time. And the message, it is hard to see what's next when you have a death grip on what was.

Back in 2018, my first trip to the Jewel, I attempted to run the 35-mile Georgia Jewel. I quit about halfway through the race. I'd spent six months playing up how important the race was to me, how prepared I was for it, and how God was going to help me move every mountain that tried to stop me.

And yet, the mountains were too mountainous that day. Either God or I showed up too small that day.

I don't think it was God....

Coming up short on race day ended up being the least of my worries - at least when it came to running. For months after, I beat myself up for not finishing.

I felt like I'd let myself down. I felt like I disappointed a lot of people who'd supported me. So, for the longest time, having a bad run in Georgia made it impossible for me to have a good run anywhere else.

But that is the story of my life, really. Letting the years behind me blind me to the possibility to be found in the years ahead of me. I have always been prone to letting yesterday have a stronger influence in my life than today and tomorrow.

For the longest time after that 2018 Georgia Jewel race, when I tried to run, no matter where I was trying to pull off that run, no matter how many weeks and months had passed since that race, I was still in Georgia.

Still haunted by Georgia.

I couldn't move forward with what was next in running because I had a death grip on thoughts of quitting that Georgia Jewel.

I think we all want to be ready to tackle what's next; we're truly at our best when we are. Sometimes we'll even stand in the doorway and shout across the prairie of what is next: "here I come." But often, as we shout bravely into tomorrow, we hold onto yesterday and all its fear and shame and guilt.

We really WANT to walk out that door to what's next. We SAY we will. But we just can't let go. We have a death grip on what was.

We have death grips on our childhoods.

We have death grips on failed relationships.

We have death grips on failed business opportunities.

We have death grips on habits or addictions.

You know, the natural rhythm of life is 'next'. The earth keeps revolving, the clock keeps spinning, the calendar keeps flipping forward, the next season keeps coming. Life is constantly marching toward next.

Maybe our most toxic fight in life is our fight against that natural rhythm.

The flow of life is downstream. Too many times I find myself clinging to a branch in the middle of that stream - the 'what was' branch - I find myself clinging with a death grip.

If you find yourself there today, picture it. Picture your death grip on that branch. Feel how tightly you are clinging to it. And then, THEN - picture yourself letting go of it. Feel the freedom as you flow downstream into what's next.

4 years ago yesterday, three years after I quit that first Georgia Jewel race, I went back and finished that race. Crossing that finish line felt like letting go of that branch.

As the image of that 2021 finish line pops up this morning, I find myself needing that finish line reminder as much as I've ever needed it. The reminder that pieces of yesterday are always going to show up wanting to steal any hope we might think about trying to find in tomorrow.

Life always seems to be trying to convince me that my life is finished. It feels like that has always been the loudest and most unshakable voice in my world.

Yet, I find a way to keep seeing finish lines up ahead.

I find a way to keep chasing them.

And so maybe life isn't as much about letting go of the branch as it is staying committed to reaching for the next one in front of you. To keep seeing and believing in that next one in front of you.

I will be forever grateful to the Georgia Jewel. Maybe more than any person or experience in life, that race taught me - keep reaching for that next branch.

And it's given me the chance to say to you: keep reaching for that next branch. And if you're struggling to see it, well maybe that's because you have a death grip on one behind you.

​I’m learning something about myself these days: I don’t have to be outraged by things that don’t outrage me.

That might sound obvious, but it isn’t in a culture where outrage spreads faster than the truth ever could. I saw it again this week. Jimmy Kimmel said something on his show. Hardly anyone noticed in the moment. But almost a day later, a few high-profile voices expressed their outrage, and suddenly it was everywhere.

Commentators dissecting it. Headlines amplifying it. Friends and strangers echoing it.

And I found myself wondering, how much of what outrages us actually outrages us?

I think a lot of us have become megaphones for outrage that isn’t even ours. We hear someone else raise their voice and we instinctively raise ours. Not because we felt the sting ourselves, but because silence feels risky. Because belonging to a side feels safer than standing in the middle. Because outrage, these days, is how you prove your loyalty.

I suppose I have been there, maybe I get drawn back into it from time to time, but I know I have no desire to any longer live there.

There’s a difference between outrage that’s really ours and outrage we just copy. Real outrage comes when something touches what we believe deep down, when it bumps into our own values or experiences. That’s the kind of thing that stirs you to speak or act because it matters to you.

The other kind is borrowed. That’s when we carry someone else’s anger even if it doesn’t actually come from our own heart.

The danger is that borrowed outrage exhausts us. It crowds out the things we are genuinely called to care about. It can even numb us to our own convictions. Worse, it makes outrage look performative - like a way of keeping score, or a way of being seen, rather than a force for meaningful change.

I don’t mean silence is always the answer. Silence has its own cost. Like I wrote yesterday, I’ve lived that cost. I spent years in a marriage believing silence was the healthy option. It wasn’t. Speaking up - early, honestly, and imperfectly - might have saved things.

Silence can wound just as much as words.

But here’s the distinction I’m trying to live into: not every spark deserves my fire. If I’m going to speak out, I want it to be because the outrage is mine and not someone else’s echo.

The world doesn’t need more megaphones. It needs more people who know the difference between a passing wave of noise and a deep call of conviction.

So I’m learning to let the waves pass. And when the deep call comes, I’ll know it’s mine.

​Robert Redford was one the most familiar movie stars from my youth. So last night I paid tribute to his recent passing by watching a familiar movie he starred in 45 years ago: Brubaker.

It's interesting, I remembered Redford being a hero in that movie. The man brave enough to speak up and became a single voice of honesty in a sea of corruption. And even though the years have not diminished the power of that theme, another theme spoke more powerfully to me watching it last night - the price that is paid if silence ever wins.

In the movie, silence is what let cruelty take root. Guards kept quiet, politicians looked the other way, even inmates stayed muted out of fear. Everyone knew something was wrong, but nobody wanted to risk the fallout of saying it out loud. And so suffering went on, year after year, body after body, injustice after injustice.

And that’s not just a prison story. That’s a human story.

For nearly the entirety of my 22 year marriage, I believed silence was the healthy approach. Don’t stir the waters. Don’t invite conflict. Don’t risk losing peace by naming what isn’t working.

I thought silence was my offering of strength. But in truth, it was an offering of absence. And absence corrodes. Looking back, I sometimes wonder if speaking out, risking the confrontation, the discomfort, the truth - might have saved what silence quietly destroyed.

We live in a culture obsessed with the drama of speaking out. Cancel culture debates. Whistleblowers. Journalists. People being “brave” enough to call something wrong. And yes, that deserves attention. But maybe what deserves even more attention is the quiet horror of silence.

Because silence always has a cost. Injustice flourishes in silence. Abuse flourishes in silence. Broken systems, broken families, broken people, they don’t only fall apart because of the noise - they fall apart because of the quiet.

So I wonder when people watch Brubaker, what do they really see? Do they see the cost of one man’s truth-telling? Or do they see the cost of everyone else’s silence? 45 years ago I saw the former, last night I couldn't help but see and feel the latter.

And I wonder the same thing when we watch our culture today. We may applaud or condemn those who speak out, but do we ever stop to ask: what will the ultimate price of silence be?

Silence isn’t neutral. It’s not passive. It’s a choice, and it carries consequences. Sometimes the heavier price isn’t paid by the one who dares to speak, but by the many who choose not to.

​In his sermon last Sunday, Pastor Jonny Ardavanis said, "If you want to know why the world is the way it is, it's partly because the church holy huddles, talks about how dark the world is, and doesn't shine, practically speaking."

He said this after telling his congregation that in the aftermath of tragic events we are more prone than ever to turning to our favorite pastor, our favorite podcast host, our favorite blogger, or favorite TikTok influencer to quickly hear or read their response.

Pastor Ardavanis said, "Well today, I want to ask what YOUR response is going to be."

I had a conversation with a friend the other day. We were talking about leaving the social media world. At the heart of that consideration is the reality that the social media world is a dark place these days.

And the darkness grows darker by the day.

In many ways, the online world has become its own kind of holy huddle. Just like the church can gather and spend more time talking about the darkness than shining light into it, social media gathers us in circles where we amplify the problems of the world without stepping into them. We scroll, we like, we share, we argue - all within a digital sanctuary that rarely requires us to go out and live differently.

The irony is that while the church’s holy huddle keeps the light bottled up, the online holy huddle can convince us that talking about darkness is actually the same as addressing it.

It’s not.

In fact, when the online conversation becomes the main world we inhabit, we risk believing that the dark online world IS the world, and when that happens, we lose our courage to go into the real one carrying light.

The dark online world keeps us fixated on what are 'they' going to SAY about this, which explicitly or implicitly removes my obligation to answer - what am 'I' going to go into the real world and DO about this.

Because the truth is, the world outside our screens is still full of neighbors to love, communities to serve, beauty to notice, and light to share.

Light has forever been and will forever be the only helpful answer to darkness. We should spend a little more time talking about it.

We should spend a whole lot more time being it.

Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

(Matthew 5:14-16)