 Gregory Boyles says, "Our antidote to misery will always be to dwell in the oceanic, the ultimate, singular place where God wants to be found."
Which begs the question, I suppose, where is it that God wants to be found? I guess God would answer that by saying everywhere. He would tell us he wants us to find him in everything we see and hear and smell and taste and say. He would say he wants us to find him in every second - in every breath. God didn't create us for misery, he created us for him. Understanding that is understanding that God isn't possessive in wanting our every second, he's protective. Maybe the opposite of misery really is dwelling in God. Maybe it is in the sounds of this day saying, I hear you God. Maybe it is in the smells of this day saying, I smell you God. Maybe it is in the words we say this day saying, I hope you hear me God. Maybe it's in the tastes of this day saying, I taste your goodness God. And maybe it is in what we look at this day saying, I see you God. Oh how I see you. Because dwelling in God isn't changing where we stand, it's changing how we perceive the place we're in. Maybe our misery isn't because God isn't there, it's because we're not tuned into his oceanic, ultimate presence. We humans have the capacity to overlook things that are larger than life. Which often allows life to overwhelm us with misery. Try it today if you're inclined. In a moment where God feels absent, change the way you feel. Feel him there. Feel him in what you say and hear and smell and taste and see.
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10/27/2022 0 Comments Our feelings are a non-fiction story I did a presentation yesterday on the impacts that adverse childhood experiences have on life long relationships, and then the impacts the quality of those relationships have on life long health.
It's never a surprise when after a presentation like this, there's a line of people wanting to talk. Wanting to share their story. I had a young woman tell me she'd struggled a lot in life with some things she'd experienced. She wondered out loud, though, if maybe she should not have struggled with those things because they really didn't fall into any of the commonly accepted categories of abuse or neglect. I asked her if she felt hurt. She said she did. I told her that's where the story starts, then, not with whether or not her hurt was validated by the title of an experience. Because abuse is not defined by someone's intentions, it's not defined by whether an act falls within or outside of a category or a law, it's not defined by evil or goodness - it's not defined at all by an act alone, a large and often ignored part of the definition is how the act is felt by another human being. Too many people are afraid to tell the story of how they feel because how they feel doesn't line up with a cultural perception or understanding of they should feel. Too many people don't talk about the feeling of abuse because they can't justify their feelings with a commonly accepted definition of their abuse. And too much of the world is judging the validity of another's feelings of abuse by what we think should or should not qualify as abuse. But here is what can't be judged: one's feelings, one's wounds, one's struggle to rewrite their hurtful history in a way that matches up with a cultural perception that doesn't fit kindly with the way one feels. And hurts. I am so often reminded after these presentations just how many people are walking around with hurt-filled stories they don't feel they have permission to tell. People fear telling a non-fiction story they fear will be interpreted as fiction. So they re-write their story as fiction and then bury it. Buried stories become the stories we use to abuse ourselves. If I feel wrong about something that wasn't wrong, I must be wrong. And I must be bad. But I want you to know all feelings are non-fiction. Our feelings are the starting place for understanding our stories - and one another's stories - not someone else's validation of them. Our feelings are the once upon a time in a story, not an after thought or an extra in the story. It's always powerful to tell someone, don't focus on the event - focus on the wound. Events have a lot of definitions, wounds only have one. Wounds are once upon a time, not the end.  I heard Steven Furtick recently say, "the greatest thing God will give you faith for is not something to have, but someone he wants you to be."
I've discovered in life; you can get so busy chasing down things in life that you can lose sight of who you are and who you want to be. You can get ever clearer about what you want to possess in life, while becoming a perfect stranger to yourself. And it makes me wonder, is it possible to know exactly what I want in life without having a clue as to who I am? Is it possible while I chase to secure those things I want, to lose all security with who I am? How many people get to retirement with all the money they need to live in the world yet lack any capacity whatsoever to live with themselves? How many retire with the resources to run off to anywhere they want yet they feel like there is nowhere on earth that will get them far enough away from themselves. How many people get to the end of the life they have crafted feeling like the craft looks nothing like the crafter? It's never too late to start making the craft in life look more like the crafter. It's never too late to surround yourself with people who encourage you to become the you that you want to become and not the you that has all that they think you should have. Because the world isn't about love of wealth as much as it is love for self. You can love your wealth without loving yourself, but you can't love others if you don't love yourself. Which is why I'm pretty sure God goes tone deaf when we spend our days asking him to grant us what we want without ever asking him to grant us the chance to be who he longs for us to be. It's never too late to start making the craft in life look more like the crafter. And it's never too late for the crafter to long to be more like the crafter. 10/24/2022 0 Comments Take a chance on you I wrote this several years ago. It resonates with me this morning:
"Faith is casting my line and trusting that I have no idea just how beautiful fishing can be. It's recognizing that I only really have control over the casting, the catching is usually in some greater hands and heart than mine. A heart that time and time again has showed up to say, I bet you never imagined catching something this beautiful." Unless it's the lottery, we aren't often big fans of chance. Can you imagine what might happen if we all took a chance on ourselves as often as we take a chance on a bunch of numbers on randomly drawn ping pong balls matching the numbers we're holding in our hand? Chance means I don't know the outcome. But we are creatures who migrate to spaces where we are most able to control the outcomes. We want to fish where we know we will catch fish. And maybe sometimes we catch fish there. But is it at the expense of missing out on the beauty of a catch that might come from fishing in a place where it feels unlikely to catch anything at all? It's one thing to be cautious in life. Some places are dangerous to fish. But it's another thing to never go fishing at all, because what's the point; I'll never catch anything anyways. If you go into the world today visiting the ponds you have frequented most of your life, your life will likely end up looking like it's looked most of your life. Maybe some of you are reading that and thinking, I can accept that. I am content with my life. To which I will say, you are blessed and I celebrate where you are. Some of us, though, feel like there is something else out there. Something more. Something waiting to capture and reveal the very best of who we are; the feeling of being an undiscovered secret maybe? Some of us languish over a lifetime of unwillingness to take chances out of a fear that our chances will look like failure - again - and not beauty. I think, though, that the secret to fishing is rooted in possibility. It's rooted in not knowing if that big one is in this unchartered spot, but today I'm chartering this spot simply because it just might be! I think the joy of fishing might come as much from knowing I believed strongly enough that I might catch something in this unfamiliar spot, so I fished here, as it comes from actually catching something. Don't be afraid of visiting new ponds this week, of taking chances. After all, we only have control over the casting, the catching is often in far greater hands than ours anyways. But we owe it to ourselves to do our part. We owe it to ourselves to take a chance on us. Because where we least expect it, that is often where we find ourselves.  Life is a collection of stories. Our stories. I believe life looks an awful lot like the intersection of the stories we each tell ourselves about ourselves, and about each other.
Seth Godin says, "The same life story can be told in many ways, and the way we tell it changes who we are and who we become." I would take that a step further and say, it changes what the world is and what the world becomes. I've had many experiences in my life. Some pleasant. Some not. But the one thing all of those experiences have in common? They are all over now. Long gone. All that remains of those experiences are the stories I tell myself about them. Something I've noticed, however, the stories I tell myself about many of those experiences - they have changed over time. The experiences themselves are the same; not one minute detail of them has been altered as life has moved on from them. But the stories have changed. It's interesting, isn't it? That our experiences don't shape life as much as life shapes the stories we tell ourselves about the things we've experienced. Which in turn draws the shapes and sizes and colors of life. Our lives and each other's lives. The thing about the shapes of those stories, they are most influenced by the people we share our stories with. If we share our stories with people who allow us to share them in their most authentic form, where the story looks as close as possible to the actual experience, no matter how much the stories may be filled with fear or guilt or shame or hurt or remorse or longing or on and on, then our stories start to look like life. Real. Life. But if we share our stories with people who make us feel fear or shame or guilt, then we start telling ourselves and each other stories that help protect us from the experiences of our lives and not connect us to them. We start telling ourselves stories that help protect us FROM one another and not connect us TO one another. I think too often we go into the world thinking life is writing the story. Life has a big say in the story, for sure. But I think we spend too many days anxiously editing the story life is trying to write so we can feel safer and more needed and more loved in a story that doesn't always leave us feeling those things. I think we're supposed to provide those things for one another: safety, belonging and love. That's the story life is trying to write. But if it doesn't, we will edit the story. We will make up a life story that makes us feel better in the world while we wait for a world to tell us a better story. The world is never going to do that - tell a better story. But we can. The world is never going to make us feel safe enough to tell each other who we really are. But we can. The world is never going to unconditionally embrace the real stories of our lives. But we can do that for one another. And when we do - when we do that for and with one another - the stories we live will start to look a lot more like the story life is trying to write. We can then all go about living life in love - true love - instead of feeling constantly pressured to edit our stories to make it feel like we are. Because the stories we are supposed to tell ourselves are stories of love. Stories that are supposed to look an awful lot like life.  I was sitting in Duffield, Virginia - about 5 hours from the VCU campus - when I got a message from my friend Connie at that very VCU campus. It said, "Hey Keith, just checking to see if you are on your way. Melissa and I are here in room 2129."
On my way 😮? I quite literally couldn't have been further away from on my way.... My heart sank. Or blew up. I'm not sure there's a difference in a moment like that. I'd had two meetings with my friends and co-presenters about this upcoming event in room 2129. We had mapped out our parts; we were ready to roll. But when presentation day came, my friends were there. I was not. I still don't know exactly how that happened. How I didn't get it on my calendar. I just don't screw up the big calendar stuff like that. I could come up with a ton of excuses, but in the moment of reading that text message, none of them mattered. None made it easier to respond: "I'm in southwest Virginia doing a site visit. I'm sorry isn't near enough in this moment, but clearly I won't be there." I was wrong, though. Sorry WAS enough. In fact, sorry was probably unnecessary to my friend. She responded, "no worries Keith, we got it, but you will be missed." Our lives are riddled with big screw ups. Some of them come with very good reasons. Some - maybe not so much. Either way, they all have the potential to stop us in our tracks. Stop us in our tracks for a moment. Some of them can stop us in our tracks for a lifetime. The answer for getting unstuck is always grace. Grace offered to us from others; grace offered to us from ourselves. Our mistakes are a moment. That is it. One. Moment. The only thing that makes a mistake outlive the moment is the need we feel to beat ourselves up FOR that moment - or the need someone else feels to beat us up for it. My friend said, "no worries Keith, we got it, but you will be missed." If you're stuck in a moment today, a moment from yesterday or a moment from years ago, I would encourage you to tell yourself - no worries, you've got this. I would encourage you to let it go. If someone else is keeping you stuck in a moment today, if someone else wants to beat you up for a moment from yesterday or a moment from years ago, I encourage you - let them go. And if you're keeping someone stuck in a moment today, a moment from yesterday or a moment from years ago, I encourage you, if at all possible, let them know - no worries. There are too many challenging moments coming our way for any of us to stay stuck - to keep each other stuck - in challenging moments that are long gone. Just because we beat ourselves and each other up over moments long gone, doesn't mean those moments aren't indeed long gone. Mistakes can rob us all of life. Grace says, not today. Not today.  Part of my job is to visit the sites we grant money to around the state to promote mental health wellness. Many times, when folks think about site visits, they think about auditors and suits and big brief cases.
Me, I'm just a guy with a backpack and a little notebook wanting to collect stories. This week, I've been blessed to collect some great ones. And one of my favorites came with drumsticks. Not the ones you eat, but the ones you tap on the dashboard of your car to the sounds of Godsmack while you're making the 5 hour drive home from southwest Virginia. The drumsticks were gifted to me by three wonderful women representing The Scars Foundation. The foundation was founded by Sully Erna and his band - Godsmack - to help bring a change to the perspective relating to mental health, and the many issues that cause such profound pain. Sully says on the foundation's website: “Scars come in all forms. They are both physical and emotional. They’re traumatizing and make us fear what people may think of us. We are ALL imperfect in some way, that’s what makes us perfect and unique! EVERYONE has something that makes them insecure or embarrassed. Instead of hiding or internalizing them, own them and show them off to the world! Let them empower you so you can be a voice for everyone who can’t be. If we ALL wear our scars loudly and proudly, others will follow.” IF WE ALL WEAR OUR SCARS LOUDLY AND PROUDLY, OTHERS WILL FOLLOW.... That's beautiful, isn't it? As these lovely women from Scars talked about what they've been doing with young people in far southwest Virginia with music - told stories about kids being made aware that they are brave and strong and smart - boxes of tissues were passed around. Because when you hear stories about people with their own scars helping little kids with unimaginable scars discover that their scars make them unique and not damaged, you cry. You cry because you know you are in the middle of a story of hope that no numbers and no metrics can ever tell. The world too often tries to reduce us humans to data. To outcomes and projections and trends and things that can be neatly defined. But what defines us is our are stories. And the most beautiful part of life is when our stories intersect. When they intersect at this place where we recognize the beauty of imperfection in one another. And celebrate it. Celebrate it loudly and proudly. And we hug it. I have goosebumps as I write this. Goosebumps from the miracle of it all. Because there I was, five hours from home, buried inside the mountains of far southwest Virginia, in Duffield, a place very few people even know exists, listening to a story larger than mountains. It's such a powerful reminder that when you turn on the news this morning - wherever your news may come from - and you are painted a picture of a world that is dire - it is not. I have a little notebook to prove it. You may have to turn off the news and drive to the mountains, or maybe even just to your local school or homeless shelter or park, where you will surely finding people with scars gifting one another voices for their own scars. Sometimes it looks like a group of kids sitting in a big circle beautifully pounding drumsticks against buckets. Sometimes it looks like someone helping a kid with homework, someone filling another's bowl with soup, or maybe two people simply walking together on a trail exchanging stories about scars. But it almost always looks like someone with a gift sharing that gift with another. Because that is what brings our gifts alive - sharing them. Yes, sometimes that looks like autographed drumsticks. But most of the time it looks like hearts. Lovely human hearts. And I am here to tell you, there are way too many of them to count.  A friend of mine recently shared a story with me she'd written about a lovely lady she'd come to call the hat lady. This, because of the elegant hat the lady was wearing the day they met sitting in chairs on the side of a mountain.
It was the day my friend discovered the hat lady was dying of cancer. The discovery was made when my friend asked the hat lady what she was doing in these parts of the world. My friend wrote: “I’m dying,” came the immediate reply. I stared at her for the barest few seconds. “Pardon me?” She smiled sympathetically at me, for she knew what was coming was going to hurt even a stranger, and she began spinning her tale: a long, childless marriage where alcoholism ruled many a day, a dire diagnosis just a couple of years prior, a decision to not waste a moment of the remainder of an all-too-short life, the saving grace of a merciful Father, and joy unfettered since. I murmured, I asked questions, I laughed at the funny parts, and I sat with tears running down my face for the rest. She didn’t have long left, she said. The cancer was spreading and her doctors were insisting she return home for scans and treatment. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that—she wanted to cross the Rockies in a Jeep, she wanted to learn to pole dance, and she wished to visit Iceland with her friends—and she was pretty sure she didn’t have time for all of it. I was in tears as I read my friend's words. Then my friend told me about a conversation she had with the hat lady some time later when she reached out to check on her. My friend knew the reality of the struggles, the pain, the sadness - but still - the hat lady told her, "It's been my best day yet..." My friend wisely responded, "and my guess is if I check on you tomorrow, you will say the same thing." Yes, the hat lady said. I will. As my friend told me this, I was again in tears. In tears when it occurred to me, our 'best day yet' isn't actually a day - it's a choice. I was immediately challenged by my own question, if a hat lady dying of cancer can call this her best day yet, what day of mine doesn't qualify as the same? I was reminded of it last night. The end of a challenging day in some ways. The kind of day that wants to lure you into defeat under the false premise that life is more unfair for you than everyone else. Is anything more unfair than dying of cancer before you get to visit Iceland with your friends. Or learn to pole dance? I had the chance yesterday as part of my work day to park my car along the side of a road and stare into some of the most beautiful scenery life can paint. I found myself thinking about the challenges so many people were likely facing in their day, while I, Keith, stood absorbing the most peaceful kind of peace creation can offer. I thought of it again as I dozed off last night. I've never heard the hat lady speak, but I imagine she sounds a lot like my friend. And I could hear her say, "it's been my best day yet." As I fell asleep, I thought to myself. I like that choice. I like it a lot. And I decided, yes, I too had experienced my best day yet. I pray for you all today - I pray you'll have your very best day yet.  In the 16th chapter of Genesis, there's the story of a woman who felt seen for the very first time. It changed the direction of her life. And the world.
It's a change of direction we all have a bit of a longing for. As the story goes, Abram - who God had promised a son with his wife Sarai - grew impatient with the process. Despite trying, Sarai hadn't conceived a child. Feeling as helpless as Abram felt impatient, Sarai suggested that Abram should sleep with her maidservant - Hagar. Abram did. Hagar became pregnant. And as you can imagine, life gets messy for all involved. A tension develops between Sarai and the woman carrying her husband's child. Imagine that.... Sarai becomes abusive to Hagar, so Hagar flees into the wilderness. Where God shows up. Hagar wasn't running TO God in the wilderness, but God showed up there anyways. The bible tells us that God found her near a spring in the desert. And he said to her, "Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?" Where have you come from? Where are you going? Can you imagine God showing up in your life and asking you those questions? Can you imagine anyone showing up, chasing you into the wilderness of your life - you out of breath and all out of hope - with such interest in knowing: where have you come from - where are you going? God told Hagar to go back to where she'd come from, assuring her everything would work out. Hagar did. Not simply because God told her to go back, but because she could feel in her heart God was going back with her. Hagar said after her encounter with God, "I have now seen the One who sees me." God showed up, inquiring about the hardships of Hagar's life. Once you get to a place where you just don't know about God, but feel known by the God you know - life changes. You start going directions you never would have gone when you felt unknown. You no longer go into the wilderness to escape life, you go there to find it. We all search for the places in life where the people we know show up to make sure we feel known. Being known - it's the great life giver. God often showed up in the challenges of people's lives asking them questions he already knew the answers to. Why? To shame them with their answers? I don't think so. I think he did so because he wanted people to know he cared about their answers. I think he did because in the deepest parts of our souls, he knows we all long to know someone cares about our answers. It's why we should all probably ask more questions of one another. Maybe even questions we know the answer to. Because it's not really the questions themselves that make the difference, it's feeling like someone would chase us into the wilderness to ask them that does. It's feeling like the people who know us would do anything to make sure we feel known. The world started with God saying I know you - and you are good. We've been longing to feel known ever since.  Seth Godin says in a talk about marketing, "Often, when we set out to do our work, we focus on popularity and breadth at the expense of the magic and singular experience that could create a favorite. Something we’d miss if it weren’t there."
That got me to wondering about relationships. How relationships have largely become a count of the people who 'like' us and not a reflection of the people who would miss us if we weren't in their personal collection of likes. To be popular only requires us to do popular things. To be missed - well that requires us to pour into a life something that very life couldn't be without us. To be popular provides something most anyone can provide. To be missed provides something only we can provide. I have people I miss. I don't feel less popular without them; I feel less whole. It's a sad dichotomy, really. That we may be living in a time when there is unparalleled personal popularity at the same time that there is unprecedented loneliness. People are seen more than ever, but feel as unseen as they've ever felt. We see more hands waving, but less hands are being held. We see more smiles flashing, while more people roam the world searching for their own smile. We see more people claiming everyone, while having no one to truly claim as their own. No one to miss. No one to notice that they are gone. The circles keep getting bigger. The saddest part isn't that they are indeed getting bigger, but that bigger circles seems to be the ultimate goal. I think we need smaller circles. I'm sure we do. I think THAT should be the goal. Circles so small that if they somehow broke, we'd miss that circle. We'd miss it in a way that would make it very difficult to simply step into another circle. Maybe a bigger circle. A circle where you might very well be liked, but unnoticed if you disappeared. Less can be more. It may not be popular, but it can be more. |