10/30/2020 0 Comments We are all planting something todayI've recently had the chance to interview two gifted runners, Meg Landymore and Whitney Richman. One thing I took away from both of them is what they both seem to appreciate most about this gift they have for running, is the position it puts them in to help others.
I shared reflections with Whitney about the people who helped me finish my first marathon several years ago. Today, looking back, I know those people weren't just responsible for helping me finish a challenging race, but for planting seeds in my life that continue to shape my best me. As we start our days, I think it's important to recognize that we are all going out into the world and planting seeds. Once we acknowledge that, we can ask ourselves, what kind of seeds am I planting? Am I planting seeds that I hope will grow my standing in my job or career? Am I planting seeds that I hope will land me a bigger house or a bigger car? Am I planting seeds that I hope will help me live a long and healthy life? I don't think there is anything wrong with answering yes to any or all of those questions. Unless - unless planting those seeds comes at the expense of planting people. I think the greatest gift we all have is the chance to pour from our hands into the hands of others the benefit of what life has taught us. I believe in that way we are not only the seeds, but the water for plants thirsting for a lifetime of growth, not a season. We are all planting something today.
0 Comments
Yesterday, I spent some time with a friend I treasure. She's had a rough time lately; her dad's been critically ill. There were days she was sure she was going to lose him.
But yesterday she shared great news. Her dad is home and well and suddenly living the life of an inexplicable miracle. My friend said something to me that has weighed on me. She told me she's not a religious person but a spiritual one. Then she told me the story about her dad - this miraculous turn from death to new life - and about repaired relationships and families drawn together in unexpected ways. As she told me about this shift in life from constant worry to peace, I was grateful I was talking to a spiritual person and not a religious one. Driving home from meeting with her, I wondered how many religious people are roadblocks to other people experiencing God's miracles. I wondered how many religious people get caught up memorizing the definitions of God and measuring and judging other people by them and in their own lives miss God's invitation to experience peace. More and more, "religious" to me means believing one has the right definition of God. Talking to my friend yesterday, I found myself feeling "spiritual." I found myself believing that being spiritual means being so filled with God's love that we can't help but notice it when he's pouring it into the people around us. I found myself wondering if memorizing the right definition of God isn't the quickest path to totally missing him when he works a miracle. When I read those words below from a recent Seth Godin blog post, one word came to mind: friends.
I look above me as I write this and see the Facebook label: Friends. Next to it is a number. It's the number Facebook uses to help me count my friends. Or, is it possible, it's the number they use to encourage me to measure and pursue a sense of popularity. If so, it works. I receive a friend request. I accept. The number increases. The bells and whistles of a pinball machine cut loose in the background of my mind as the Facebook "Friends" scoreboard lights up. I've wondered about the Facebook definition of friends. What I've realized is it doesn't require much wondering. With Facebook, a friend can be a complete stranger you've never had and never will have a real life encounter with. In fact, it's entirely possible you'll never even have a digital encounter with them - they may never become more than a new digit on the scoreboard. Yet - they get counted as a friend. I've been blessed. Many of the digits on my scoreboard have become people who have truly blessed my life. I'm thankful. But I do wonder somedays if Facebook and social media in general has expanded the reach of friendship, or if they've actually decayed the definition of it. I wonder, when one is hit by the inevitable weight of struggles, does their Facebook friends scoreboard bring them comfort - or pain? Does one look up and see that number and feel surrounded by support, or do they feel like they are on the wrong end of a mass exodus? I looked up the definition of friend - in the Urban Dictionary of all places. The definition is beautiful: _____ A friend is someone you love and who loves you, someone you respect and who respects you, someone whom you trust and who trusts you. A friend is honest and makes you want to be honest, too. A friend is loyal. A friend is someone who is happy to spend time with you doing absolutely nothing at all; someone who doesn't mind driving you on stupid errands, who will get up at midnight just because you want to go on an adventure, and who doesn’t have to talk to communicate with you. A friend is someone who not only doesn't care if you're ugly or boring, but doesn't even think about it; someone who forgives you no matter what you do, and someone who tries to help you even when they don't know how. A friend is someone who tells you if you're being stupid, but who doesn't make you feel stupid. A friend is someone who would sacrifice their life and happiness for you. A friend is someone who will come with you when you have to do boring things like watch bad recitals, go to stuffy parties, or wait in boring lobbies. You don't even think about who's talking or who's listening in a conversation with a friend. _____ When I read that definition, I wondered, if someone looked up at their friend count, and it said ONE, but that one was THAT Urban Dictionary kind of friend, would they trade that friend for 5,000 Facebook friends? Would they trade that friend for popularity? And I also wondered, when we see the popularity of our Facebook friends, do we assume they have that ONE Urban Dictionary kind of friend in their life? Do we assume they feel surrounded and not like they are on the wrong end of a mass exodus? I worry some days that we've let social media dilute the meaning of friendship. We've come to see friendship as a number and not the chance to wait in boring lobbies with someone. I worry that the road to popularity is blindly paved with unimaginable loneliness. 10/25/2020 0 Comments The future arrives dailyAs a kid, I remember thinking about what I wanted to be when I grew up. My parents and teachers and coaches were always painting a picture of the possibilities the future held. They inspired me with this idea I could be anything I wanted to be.
There's no doubt I lived life looking with excitement toward the future. Then one day I realized I was there. I was standing in the middle of the day I'd been dreaming of. Only, it looked nothing like I'd imagined. Standing there I was no longer looking to the future as a land of possibilities, but at this distant idea that might one day come save me from my present. I wonder how many of us rewrite the possibilities of our futures while failing to realize we are already there. The famous actor John Wayne has this written on his tombstone: “Tomorrow is the most important thing in life; it comes into us at midnight, very clean. When it arrives it is perfect. It puts itself in our hands. It hopes we learned something from yesterday.” I didn't always get that - this idea that each day is a new slate. As a result, I created a future that was far more about rewriting the past than honoring the gift midnight had just put in my hands. Today, I still dream about the future. I believe the future has been wired into us as a source of hope. I've come to realize, though, the future is something we create, not something that finally arrives. The future is the sum of all the answers to the mornings we wake up and ask, who do I want to be today - not who do I dream of being tomorrow. The beauty in that - for me - is that when you find yourself standing in a future that doesn't much look like you thought it would, you can remind yourself midnight has arrived. It's clean and perfect and it's in your hands. It's here to remind us the past isn't something to rewrite but something to teach us. And ask us: Who do you want to be today? 10/24/2020 0 Comments October 24th, 2020Over the last couple of years, I've come to believe that people don't fear difficult times as much as they fear going through difficult times alone. In fact, I wonder more and more if loneliness isn't far more at the roots of something feeling difficult than the circumstances that often get labeled as the difficulty.
When I talk with people who have overcome difficulties, and I ask them how they did it, they will almost always start by naming people. It will be their friends or family or co-workers they acknowledge, not a miracle cure or their own willpower or determination. On the other hand, when I talk with people who seem to be living under the weight of difficulties, there's a distance in their eyes. There is a longing. And if they talk about their difficulties at all, it's usually not about how deeply they hope they wake up one morning and their circumstances are gone. No, more often than not, they share some sense of wondering about who is going to help them walk through them. In the spiritual context, grace is this idea that no matter how bad things get or no matter how bad WE get, God's going to keep showing up and offering us assistance. God's going to keep bringing it no matter what. But outside of the deeply spiritual person - a depth I often struggle to get to - that kind of grace in the human context is hard to grasp without humans showing up and offering one another assistance - no matter what. I think the greatest tragedy in the many challenges we are facing right now is the perception that the challenges themselves are the tragedy. When in reality, I think the real tragedy is how those challenges drive a wedge deeper and deeper between us. I'm remembering the hydraulic wood splitter my dad used to rent when I was a kid to help us split up large logs before winter. That gas powered wedge would move forcefully down a rail, ever so slowly, until it made contact with the log. As the hydraulics drove the wedge deeper into the log, you could here the crackling sound as it began to split. And then - a final pop - as the log divided and fell into two pieces on the ground. I fear one day I'll hear the sound of that pop in the world. In his book Together, Vivek Murthy says: "Right now, the world is locked in a struggle between love and fear. Fear manifests as anger, insecurity, and loneliness. Fear eats away at our society, leaving all of us less whole. Love shows up as kindness, generosity, and compassion. It is healing. It makes us more whole. The greatest gift to ever receive will come through these relationships. The most meaningful connections may last for a few moments, or for a lifetime, but each will be a reminder that we were meant to be a part of one another's lives, to lift one another up, to reach heights together, greater than any of us could reach on our own." The world is full of struggles right now, but I think they all mask our biggest struggle - this struggle between love and fear. The sad part is, while we wrestle with and work to develop cures for all of those other struggles, we know the answer to the biggest one - it's called grace. It's not an answer waiting to be discovered, it's one waiting on us all to extend. 10/23/2020 0 Comments The more rely on god to pull us through, the more we get to say i trust you godIn his book Visioneering, Andy Stanley tells the story of his 5 year old son walking along a large wall in their back yard for the very first time. The wall moves along at 3 feet off the ground, then rises to 5 feet and then to a section 8 feet high in the middle of the wall.
Stanley tells of nervously watching as his son walked along each section before he was finally standing on top of the peak. Then the son declares, I don't want to do this anymore. Stanley tells him to jump, that he'll catch him. The son looks down and measures the magnitude of that promise for a bit, and then he jumps. And Stanley catches him. Stanley describes the honor he felt from his son's trust. Trusting God is so easy when there is nothing to lose. When we are standing on top of 3 foot wall decisions, where there is little risk of the decision going wrong, it's easy to say I trust you God. It's those 8 foot wall decisions though, those 8 foot wall periods in life where things look impossible, that is when it's hard to say I trust you God. The reality is, the higher the wall the more inclined we feel to take over. We put all the pressure on ourselves to make a tough decision turn out to be the right one or to battle our way through a struggle alone or to make some big dream become a reality. Because the more unlikely good outcomes appear in all those situations the harder it is to imagine God can pull it off. So we take over for him. I love the story of Moses parting the Red Sea. God told Moses to collect the people of Israel from Egypt where they were enslaved and to take them to the edge of the Red Sea. He said, I'll make Pharaoh and his men so mad they'll chase after you - they'll get you to the edge of the Red Sea where they'll feel like, oh, we've got them now - and then I'll show them my 8 foot high wall trick. There was Moses, 8 foot high on that wall, God asking him to jump. And Moses jumped. He stretched his hands out over the sea and the waters parted. The people of Israel walked on dry ground where they never imagined there could be any. And then of course, as the story goes, the water closed in on the mad Egyptians chasing after them. God could have led them to a 3 foot wall or a 5 foot wall - but he needed them to see they could trust him on that highest section. God is honored by our faith and by our trust. The more we have to rely on God to pull us through, the more we get to say I trust you - the more we honor Him - the more we say I love you God. When we're saying I've got this in life, we're saying I love me. When we're saying God, I can't possibly do this without you, we're saying I love God. Who will you love today? Since Saturday morning, I've been following some runner friends who are involved in a running event called The Big Dog's Backyard Ultra. This event doesn't follow your normal race framework of line up at a start and run to a predetermined finish line. No - the finish line for this race doesn't come until there's only one runner left standing to cross it.
For nearly 48 hours now, these friends have been running a 4.17 mile loop once every hour. If you complete that loop before the hour is up, you are granted the opportunity to line up and run it again the next hour. If you can't, you're done. I'll save you the math - they are coming up on 200 miles worth of loops. That is unimaginable to me. As of this writing, there are still 5 of them left battling it out. It occurs to me those 5 have reached a point where they have to feel like they are out there wandering and waiting. Sleepless and physically beaten up they stagger through the miles, all the while asking themselves - when will this end. I find myself wondering, how do they keep going? How do they look around them in circumstances begging them to quit and yet find a way to keep going? I've been there in running and in life. Not at that 200 mile mark - I assure you - but we all have our point where life begins to feel like wandering and waiting. We all reach the mile marker where quitting is far more appetizing than continuing. It's been my personal experience that too often when we get here, we grab hold of what sounds most appetizing instead of trusting there's something better just one more step ahead. Going for what is appetizing often meets a personal desire. It settles for the easiest path. Trust, well that often leans into something bigger than us. Trust often wants to remind us we've made it to the other side of struggle before; we'll do it again. Running has taught me we are all in charge of creating what is appetizing in our lives. If you quit enough, when you get to the point of wandering and waiting in your life, quitting will sound delicious. But if you get to that point often enough, and choose to pass on today's happy hour special and press on, you ultimately discover the secret to a happy life. You ultimately get to a point where wandering and waiting isn't life's way of intimidating you - it's life's way of inviting you to trust that it's all worth it. 10/18/2020 0 Comments We are god's storyMy friend Michelle recently celebrated 5 years of being cancer free. Yesterday, her husband threw a surprise Covid-style drive by party for her. When I pulled up, Michelle was all smiles.
Because we've been friends for awhile, I knew what those smiles were about. I knew the story she was smiling about wasn't hers, but God's. While the cancer has been gone for 5 years, those years haven't come without scares and concerns. Yet, through each of them, Michelle has always reminded me long before I could think of reminding her: God's got this. There's a story in John chapter 9 in the bible. Jesus and his disciples cross paths with a blind man. Jesus' disciples, who were always trying to figure out life just like we're always trying to do, asked him - whose fault is it this guy is blind? Is it because his parents sinned, or is he blind because of his own sins? Jesus quickly told them this man's blindness is not about fault or punishment, but about an opportunity for God to reveal the story of God. Jesus went on to heal the man. The man went on to share the story of God. There have been many times over the years I've told my friend Michelle - you are strong or you are courageous or you are an inspiration. And she's always quick to remind me - not without God. There have been times lately when that reminder has been powerful. When I talk to her about challenges in my own life, she's quick to say, God's got this. Her "God's got this" comes with extra meaning - it comes across as more than the right Christian thing to say in the moment - because she's always made that the meaning in her own story. People are listening to the stories we tell about our lives. It's been my experience they are most curious about the stories we tell when life is hard. I think that's because almost everyone has figured out how to navigate life during the good times. It's the hard times that trip them up. It's the hard times that trip ME up. That's when it's helpful to have people in my life who've always skipped telling the stories that make themselves look good in favor of telling stories that speak to how good God is. WHAT and HOW. Those often become two words competing against each other instead of words that work together. And it's been my experience - HOW might be the mightiest 3-letter-word dream killer known to man.
How many mornings have you woken up with something on your heart? A new dream. A vision. Something that brings unexpected fire to your life. You wake up with this idea stirring in you. If you pull this off it will make a difference in the world. A difference that will bring goodness to your life and the lives of people around you. I've had many of those mornings. Oh, this is going to be a great day. I finally have a vision.... And I start thinking about it. I actually can't STOP thinking about it. Oh, this WHAT I'm feeling called to do brings some energy with it. I'm alive! Then I start thinking about HOW I'm going to pull it off. Suddenly I'm faced with I have NO idea how I'm going to pull this off. I lack too many skills. I don't have the time or the money or the connections to people who can help make my WHAT a reality. I know WHAT I want to do in this world, but I suddenly have no idea HOW I'm going to pull it off. And too often, by the end of the day, by the end of the process that takes me from dreaming of 'what' to trying to figure out 'how', the energy from the birth of a new idea becomes the mourning of the death of another impact on the world that will never happen. Oh how many times I've given God credit enough for being able to put a dream on my heart only to turn around and discredit his capacity to pull it off. One thing I'm trying to do about this - I've tried to stop interpreting these things God puts on my heart as suggestions. I've tried to stop hearing God say, "hey Keith, I have a cool idea you might be interested in" and I've tried to start hearing God say, "hey Keith, I have an idea and if WE don't pull this off we're going to miss a chance to impact the world." Andy Stanley says this about a vision God puts on our hearts: "In light of a divine vision, our daily faithfulness takes on new significance. It is no longer faithfulness for faithfulness' sake. There is something at stake. If the visionary doesn't act, something significant won't get done." Something significant won't get done. I think it's easy to dismiss a dream when we believe God is just bouncing ideas off us. What if we start interpreting dreams as a sense of urgency from God - as God putting dreams on our heart because he knows we are the only one who will make sure something significant gets done - something God NEEDS done. What if God is putting dreams on our hearts because he knows we'll keep chasing WHAT he needs done long enough for him to show us HOW he intends to make it happen? If you have a dream today, lean into WHAT. Lean into what you know. And what you know is this: God isn't going to light your life on fire with a 'what' only to watch that fire die because you don't know how. God loves it when we don't know how. He loves it because he knows how much more we're going to love him when he ultimately shows us the how. Because make no mistake - you might not know HOW, but God does. 10/14/2020 0 Comments When a door opens, walk through itI wasn't far into my recent Georgia Jewel race when I heard footsteps coming up from behind me. Then I heard a voice, "are you Mr. Keith?"
Hearing myself referred to as "Mr. Keith" made me instantly feel like an old man. When I turned and saw how young the man was from where those words came, I felt like I should probably be spending the day in a nursing home and not out on the trails of the Georgia Jewel. The young man was David Kauffman. It turns out he and his wife Mary Ann were running their first ultramarathon. David told me that in preparing for their race he had listened to my podcast conversations about the Jewel. He specifically pointed out how inspired he was by the one I recorded about my Georgia Jewel failure. Hey kid - that's not the pep talk I need today!! David was the first of three runners I encountered that day who commented on my podcasting. I'd never met any of them before. I've said my prayer that day was for God to make his presence known to me every step of the way. By the end of the race, I felt like one of the things God was telling me while we hung out was I needed to get back to recording these podcasts, since I'd been on a bit of a break from it. I tried to talk myself out of it. I'm busy with work and with other pursuits. Podcasting takes time I don't have. But God just kept putting that on my heart. So I reached out to David and Mary Ann. I asked if I could interview them about their Jewel experience. We scheduled the interview for last night. Prior to the interview, I reached out and asked if there was any part of their story they'd like to make sure we got out there. If so, I'd ask questions to lead us there. Never in a million years did I see what came next. Mary Ann responded to my question. She said she didn't know how far back I'd traced her story on Facebook, but she'd been married before. She was a 19 year-old newlywed - pregnant with her first child. She and her husband Marcus were returning home from a Thanksgiving trip. Arriving home, they saw what appeared to be a disabled car. Marcus took Mary Ann to a friend's house while he went back to help them. When he got there, though, he discovered the occupants of the car were robbing their house. The robbers shot Marcus in the head. Some time later he died. I say all the time, the reason I love interviewing runners is because they all have stories that are deeper than a runner trying to win a race or achieve some running milestone. Stories that speak to me. But I'm not sure I've ever discovered a running story quite this deep. So last night I interviewed them. I started by telling Mary Ann how hard it had been for me to process her story. I told her I have a son who will be 14 soon - not much younger than that 19 year-old mom and wife. I asked her, how on earth does a "kid" handle that kind of event? Her answer was simple: God. Mary went on to describe a faith I can't always comprehend. One thing she said to me stuck out in that faith. She said she was grateful she never had to deal with forgiveness. She said she forgave her husband's killers from the beginning. Mary Ann said everything else she had to deal with was hard enough; she's thankful she didn't have to battle bitterness on top of it. In that moment, before my running podcast ever got to talking about running, I knew why God had me in the middle of that conversation. It was like God was staring at me, looking for my reaction as Mary Ann talked about how thankful she was she didn't have to battle bitterness. When Mary was done telling her story, I could hear God ask, shall we talk about your bitterness now? Uhm, not right now God - I have to finish this interview. I asked David, Mary Ann's husband of five years now, how he came into Mary Ann's life. David said, I don't have a big story like Mary Ann's - I feel like I just walked through a door God opened in my life. It wasn't lost on me that's why I was in that conversation with two of the most beautiful people I've ever met. God opened a door with "hey, are you Mr. Keith?" - and God was asking me if I was going to walk through it. In a few days I'll share our interview. I can't wait for you to hear what I discovered on the other side of that door. Yes, our conversation was heavy to start, but man did we have some fun too. It might be one of the most fun interviews I've ever done. I wonder how many open doors I walk by every day. I wonder how many life changing moments I miss when I do. Today I'm full of gratitude that I walked through this one. |
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 |