10/31/2023 0 Comments Your victory does not signal my defeatI was scrolling through Facebook yesterday. A friend posted she'd just finished reading her 80th book of the year.
EIGHTY!!😮😮 I call myself a big reader. And so, after reading her post, my mind immediately went to: I am SO. FAR. BEHIND..... I glanced over at the stack of books in my 'to be read stack' - and it's possible THAT stack totals 80 - but my finished books list for the year isn't even a quarter of my friend's list. My finished list suddenly felt unfinished. Incomplete. My mind went to thinking, I'll never catch up. Why bother reading at all? Then I caught myself. Thank God almighty I'm so much better at catching myself. I caught myself and reminded myself, I don't read to maximize the number of books I read. And that is NOT to diminish those who read a high volume of books. But my reading is a process. I underline and highlight and fold pages. When I'm done with a book, it's unreadable for anyone else. I use quotes from books in presentations. I build slide decks out of information I gather. I write articles. If I get two chapters into a book and it's not heavily underlined or quoted, I toss it aside. Unapologetically. Unfinished books do not haunt me. Books serve a purpose in my life and in where I'm going. I know books serve a different purpose in my friend's life. It's not important for me to know which of us has a better purpose or which of us gains more value out of reading, what's important for me to know is the number of books she reads has zero bearing on where I'm trying to go. Unless, that is, I get to feeling like I'll never get where I want to go because of where she's already been. Think about it. How illogical is that? Knowing we are both headed to two very different places, yet I get to feeling behind on my mission because she's closer to completing hers? We all have different gifts. Different missions. We are all running our own race. Someone winning theirs is not the greatest prediction of where I'm going to finish in mine. I am the greatest prediction of that. What she gets out of her 81st book won't have near the impact on my race as what I take away from the book I'm currently reading. There are days I wish I could read 100 books in a year. But it's not who I am. And nothing good ever comes from me wishing I was someone I am not. Run your race. Just YOUR race. And hey, win it!
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I've never been a big fan of the show FRIENDS. Mainly because I don't recall ever seeing it. Oh, I'm sure an episode or two snuck onto the screen over the years; FRIENDS just never became one of my shows.
That might make it hard to understand why the death of FRIENDS star Matthew Perry has stuck with me this weekend the way it has. Full confession, when Perry's picture and the stories about his death started filling my newsfeed, I had no idea who he was. None. Thank you Google. Now, I'll never forget him. I've ordered his memoir. And I'm sure FRIENDS is the next show I'll binge. I guess I was struck by how much I could see myself in Perry's story. How much I could FEEL myself in it. Minus the fame and the millions. It starts with Perry's childhood friends. When asked about his life filled with hardships and addictions, Perry's oldest friends said that his heart never changed. No matter what he'd been through or what he was currently going through, when they'd catch up, he had the same giant heart he'd always had. We make that mistake about people. We think that because someone makes a million dollars an episode to make a television show, there's no excuse for them not acting like their heart. I hear it asked all the time. How could he or she, with all they have going, make choices that seem to turn all they have going upside down. The truth is, I often take that question personally. I often feel seen - and judged. The answer, those are often choices of the brain and not choices of the heart. One of the greatest sources of tension in life is trying to make your brain CHOOSE to be who your heart knows you CAN be. I assure you, though, just because we see someone throwing it all away doesn't mean they desire to be a person throwing it all away. I also assure you that desires of the heart are often overwhelmed by patterns of the brain. Perry's childhood is described as one of traumatic invisibility. His dad left when he wasn't yet a year old. His mother worked and was rarely present. In his memoir, Perry described a childhood filled with feelings of loneliness. At the age of 14, Perry turned to alcohol. I have often said, my biggest regret about my relationship with alcohol isn't that I drank alcohol. It's that I drank it as a hurting twelve year old. When your brain is predisposed to loving something, whether it be because of genetics or because your life is in a place where substances might bring the kind of relief nothing else ever has - or both - and you're at the age when your brain is wiring in things you will come to love because of their relief FOREVER, you are in the deadly crosshairs of patterns of addiction and misuse. At the time in your life when your brain is supposed to be wiring in relationships as the greatest source of soothing, and those patterns get replaced by something else, chances become significantly greater that you will get good at relationships with some things and awful at them with some ones. Patterns that often even a lifetime won't correct. In his memoir, Perry acknowledged his early substance use contributed to a life of broken relationships. Perry also acknowledged he never really got good at overcoming his addictions, but that he always knew how to help someone else overcome theirs. And he was always willing to be there if they needed him. Again, I know that can be confusing to people. How can you help others with the thing you haven't been able to help yourself with? Most of my life these days is devoted to helping people have healthy relationships. Even as I struggle to figure out how to do that myself. But it's a gift to reflect on your life and discover all the places where things went awry and be suddenly as equipped as anyone - maybe more equipped - to help people avoid the same pitfalls along the way. You reach this point where part of your struggle to overcome your own deficits is soothed by helping someone else avoid them. So I get what you're saying, Matthew Perry. I get you. I look forward to reading more about your life. And in doing so learning more about mine. Because that is where we learn the most about ourselves, inside the authentic stories of other people. It's where we can be reminded unhealthy choices aren't always matters of the heart. They aren't often as easy as 'just follow your heart.' They are sometimes much more complicated than that. I pray this morning that Matthew Perry's complications are over. I pray his life today truly is as simple as, follow your heart. 10/29/2023 0 Comments Peace, it's an inside out journeyTurmoil: a condition of extreme confusion, agitation or commotion.
Turmoil: most of my life has been spent in turmoil. I have discovered something in life I wish I would have discovered much sooner. Me. I spent five decades of my life living in turmoil. The turmoil of trying to make sense of the world, while each day getting further removed from making sense of me. The world, our culture, it grooms us to believe that we make sense of ourselves by making sense of the world. We are groomed to believe that peace is an outside in process, and not the other way around. But I know it's humanly possible to get five decades into life and feel like you know everything there is to know about the world, yet at the same time, know nothing at all about yourself. That gap, that gap of knowing far more about the world than you know of yourself, that is turmoil. Peace: a state of tranquility and quiet. I don't think anyone would suggest that as I live out this sixth decade of my life that there is world peace. Most would suggest the opposite. But I am at peace; at least as much as I have ever been. Peace, much like turmoil, is a journey. Peace is simply a sign one's journey is headed in the right direction. And I am headed in the right direction. I've discovered the key to my peace isn't finding a way to quiet the world, it's through prayer and writing and long walks, quieting the commotion in my mind. I've discovered the key to my peace isn't bringing world peace, it's knowing the gifts I have to contribute to the world's journey toward peace. And contributing them. I've discovered the key to my peace isn't answering the question, who am I? It's coming to love the answer God gave me to that question long before I was born. I've discovered the key to my peace isn't dictating how the world relates to me, it's choosing to peacefully relate to the people in my world. Oh, I confess, there are days my life can still feel full of turmoil. It can feel like it wants to once again head down the road of confusion and agitation. I am still confronted with those days; that has not changed. What has changed, though, in the midst of turmoil, I know peace is not found out there, it's found in here. Peace is not found by changing the world, it's found by changing me. Something I would have remained forever ill-equipped to do if I'd never come to know who I truly am. There are days I regret having made that discovery, who am I, much later than I would've liked to have. But I sure don't regret the discovery. It's been the most beautiful discovery of my life. Peace. A state of quiet and tranquility. It isn't a problem that we tell ourselves ugly stories about our lives. That's just our brain doing what it's good at doing. And in many ways, it's our brain doing what it's SUPPOSED to be doing.
In order for our brain to help keep us alive, it's primary job, it has to detect threats to our life. Our brain is a bit of a negativity seeking machine. The problem begins when we turn the negativity the brain perceives about the world into ugly stories we tell ourselves about who we are as individuals. The problem isn't the stories the brain tells, it's the stories we believe. If there's something negative going on in the world, it must be my fault. Why wouldn't the world be ugly with me in it? And then once we believe that, we begin to feed our ugliness instead of our beauty. The world, with some help from our brains, feeds us a theory that we are unworthy. We run with it and make unworthiness a true story about our identity. So how do we help our brains stay real about the threats in this world? How do we help our brains come to know that we are NOT one of those threats? It's simply and it's hard. Simple to know, sometimes hard to do. But when we feel our brain feeding us a story that suggests we're ugly, we need to say, that's a lie. When we feel our brains feeding us a story that suggests we're unworthy, we need to say, that's a lie. When we feel our brains feeding us a story that my broken world is my fault, that I am to blame, we need to stop and consider, that's a lie. We all long for honesty in our relationships. We want to know the people closest to us won't tell us lies. Well, one way to help us all get there is to quit believing the lies we tell ourselves. The healthiest honest relationship we can have in life is the relationship we have with ourselves. Don't let your brain tell you otherwise. It's a helpful organ, but it doesn't always tell the truth. When life gets to pushing us around, when people get to pushing us around, we can miss God in that. We miss God because we think God is in the midst of the pushing.
But God doesn't push. God pulls. So often we get overwhelmed by the way life's storms are pushing us around. Pushing us around with unemployment. Or broken relationships. Pushing us around with guilt. Shame. Pushing us around with loneliness and isolation. Life can get to pushing us so hard that we can feel like we are being pushed under water. Drowning. But God's hands are not conspiring to hold us down. God's hands are reaching down to pull us out. God is not bullying us into submission, God is calling us into freedom. We can miss that. Because so often life feels like a pressure cooker pushing us from obligation to obligation. Pushing us into this challenge and then into that challenge. Pushing us to the point life always feels like raging waters and never feels like flowing stream. Always feels like pressure and never feels like peace. Maybe that's because in the push we never stop to look for the pull. Maybe because while life's barking orders we never stop to hear the gentle call of God. Maybe as we are so overwhelmed by life's misdirection we never stop and grab hold of God's call into direction. I told someone the other day that it's been many years since I woke up feeling like I have to go to work. I think that's because I no long work for all the reasons life taught me I had to work. Today I work in response to God pulling me into work he's longing for me to do. Life no longer pushes me to work each day. God pulls me there. Work is no longer obligation, it's response to invitation. I think maybe we all need to do that a little more often. When we get to feeling beat up by obligation, we need to stop and pause and find quiet and listen for the invitation. When life feels like a bully, we need to listen for our friend. Because God is not a bully. God is not pushing us around. God is pulling us. He's calling us. He's offering an invitation. Often life feels overwhelming and distressed. Many times that's not because we haven't been invited into peace. It's because we aren't listening for the invitation. When life pushes, God pulls. If life pushes you today, listen for the pull. And accept it. 10/26/2023 0 Comments Heaviness Can Be A sign of LifeSomeone asked me yesterday, what do you do to find balance, to bring equilibrium to the heaviness of your work?
I said, it's usually writing or a long walk or hike. Yesterday, after one of those heavy speaking engagements, I chose hike. On the way up the mountain, I felt as out of breath as I've felt in a long time. I guess I've been choosing writing over hiking a bit too much lately. While stopped and gasping for a bit of air, it occurred to me that in my search for respite from heaviness, I had entered into more heaviness. This also occurred to me; what a beautiful sign of life breathlessness can be. Nothing makes you more aware of life than gasping for the breaths that sustain it. At the top of the mountain, heaviness gone, the weight lifted, I looked out over Virginia's most beautiful colors from one of Virginia's most fantastic points of view. And I pondered, how does one ever experience the freedom of a weight lifted if they've never acknowledge the weight? I have spent the last several years acknowledging the weights in my life. The heaviness. And although they have not all been lifted, I am no longer afraid of acknowledging them. I am no longer hiding from them. In fact, far more than fearing the heaviness in life, I fear returning to patterns of trying to avoid it. I have felt far more alive in the heaviness of my life than I ever felt in the numbness that came from denying it. Life does indeed come from climbing the mountains in our lives, not in pretending they don't exist. Not in trying to find the seemingly easiest way around them. Someone said to me in our session yesterday, "I have never heard anyone explain what you just explained the way you explained it. And I understand it more than I've ever understood it." It is not lost on my why that is. It's because she accepted the invitation to explore the heaviness of her life. She accepted the invitation to explore that heaviness as a friend and not a predator. She accepted the invitation to see weight as the pathway to weight lifted. And so more than learning a lesson, she began a journey to unloading burdens that had been weighing her down. She began a journey of feeling a bit out of breath, but with newfound confidence that new breath is coming. And maybe like me, she discovered, or will discover, that being out of breath in life is far more exhilarating than not breathing at all. 10/23/2023 0 Comments Live unanchored, TodayOur identity is not anchored to our best or our worst moments. We live in between them.
It's powerful to know that. How much of my life do I spend letting success tell me I'm better than I think I am, or letting failure tell me I'm the biggest louse ever? How much of my life do I get consumed with pursuing goals that will show the world I'm great, and how much of my life do I spend hiding in the basement because a bad day or a mistake told me I belong there? Some days that feels like the balancing act of life. We spend life trying to undo or recover from moments that didn't go so well, or chasing a dream we think will forever put the low moments in life behind us. But we live in today. And today is the in between. In between the good days and the bad days. In between the mistakes and the atta boys. In between I wish I didn't do that and someday I'll show them all. I don't know what kind of day today will be for you, but I know it deserves all of your attention. It doesn't need to be wasted on trying to undo your worst day or dreaming of your best day. You are not anchored to yesterday or to tomorrow. You are fully alive, today. Fully capable. Not your worst day and not your best day. You are simply you. The today you. And what a powerful thing it is to know that I have a lot of say in who the today me will be. Live unanchored. Today. Steven Furtick says, "get your eyes off who left and focus on what was left."
Furtick's message was about relationships. And I can relate. But the message also goes well beyond that. Just as easily as we can be thrown for a loop by relationships that end, we can be toppled by situations that end. Jobs. Experiences. Where we live. When things end, disappointment usually follows. Often because we start focusing on what's gone and not on what was left. And in that disappointment, we can begin to feel more alone instead of more put together. Because everything that leaves, if we look hard enough, in EVERYTHING we can find something valuable that was left behind. In the pain of ending, if we look hard enough, we can always find a new beginning. This past week I led a 3-day training. I always say if we bond in the training the way I hope we will, it will feel more like an experience than a training. That was definitely the case this week; we bonded. Then I also say, in the aftermath of those experiences, when they end, I struggle with an emotional hangover. I get so moved by our shared experience, I get so settled into and completed by the power that comes with human connection, that when the connection is gone, I feel alone. That is the challenge. When people are gone. Or jobs are gone. Or we move to a strange town. Or when we've trained six months for a race and now it's over. When all of these things that one way or another serve to complete us, when they leave, we can immediately begin to feel incomplete. We can begin to feel alone. We are not, though, we are simply focusing on what left and not on what was left behind. In everything that is gone in my life, if I think long and hard enough about it, I can think of something that was left. In everything gone in my life that feels like a hole, if I think long and hard enough about it, I can find a building block. My problems start when I focus on the hole and not the building. Most of our problems start there, with the way we tell ourselves the stories of our lives. And one of the biggest stories we tell ourselves an unhealthy version of is the story about things that are gone. The story is never about gone, it's always about what's been left. Because what is gone is gone, but we are left to carry on. And usually, if not always, what is gone left us something to make us a little bit better at carrying on. If we tell ourselves a healthy story about what is gone.... At the end of our training yesterday, the group took time to reflect on our shared experience.
A woman spoke up. She said, I am often known as the woman with the RBF (resting bitch face). To be honest, I did not find that one bit confusing. In the three days of training, I'm sure I never saw her smile. I'm even more sure I was never tempted to believe she liked being there. Or that she at all liked me. She went on to tell us, though, that she's a college professor. She teaches future teachers how to establish a safe classroom. She says she teaches about safe spaces and relationships in many areas of her life. I want you all to know, she added, that even though I didn't become as open and vulnerable as many of you did, I felt the safety in the room that came from you all embracing it. She said it may have been the first time in her life she'd felt the safety that she teaches. I was moved by that a great deal. It's always my mission as the leader in these trainings to establish a safe place. Her words may have been the greatest affirmation I've received in that regard. But I also related to her. Powerfully. Doing this work the past eight years opened my eyes to what safe spaces are. The more I defined safe spaces for the people I taught, the more I came to know how unsafe I felt in the spaces I inhabited. The more I taught safety to others the less safe I felt myself. And when I talk safety in this context, I'm really talking about freedom; I'm talking about feeling the freedom to be who I truly am. I'm talking about sensing that you are a safe place to share the stories and the feelings and the thoughts that have become a painful burden after weeks and months and years and decades of secrecy. Safety is alluring. It's contagious. It's tempting. It tempts you to share who you really are more than it tempts you to become someone you think people want to believe you truly are. I am reminded this week that there are a lot of books out there that define relationships and safe relational spaces, but until you're actually sitting in one of those spaces, you'll never truly know the definition. I am thankful for all the people who show up in safety - RBF and all 😊 - because the reality is, that's often the most courageous gift we can offer one another. Safety. I watched the final episode of the show Suits last night. For a bit I felt sad that it was over, but I eventually settled into the hope of the stories that were told over 138 episodes.
What captivates someone like me to a show like Suits - captivates me to the point that I feel intense sadness when the final credits roll? I suppose if I'm real, it's the non-fiction I find in the fiction. It's the me in my world that I see in the them in their worlds. Without giving details, I'll sum up the show Suits: it's a collection of characters working together to overcome their childhoods on the way to victorious futures. And they are largely doing it without knowing that's exactly what's going on. In the background, the writers give us glimpses into the character's pasts so that WE know that's what's going on. The characters go about their days wrestling with the implications of it all, assuming they are battling the circumstances in the moment. But they are not. Their pasts are center stage in the tension of almost every circumstance they face. I've been leading a trauma training this week. I've heard countless stories of people coming to better understand the wrestling matches of their pasts. The greatest gift of that is the very same people come to realize the magnitude of the victory they bring to the table today. The victory I get to witness. The victory I get to grab hold of for myself. That's the beauty that happens when people wrestle out loud with the stories of their past. Because I assure you, whether you are doing it out loud or stuffed somewhere deep inside, that is what we all wrestle with most. Our pasts. And often our way in the past pasts. That's the beauty I found watching the show Suits. As they all got to know each other on a deeper level, as they all got more comfortable wrestling out loud, together, with the stories of their pasts, the greatest power these powerhouse lawyers had was helping each other overcome the demons of their pasts. To the point that the battles in the courtrooms were no longer the main story. I wonder if that's life? A constant call for us all to help each other overcome the demons of our pasts. Helping each other to the point that the fights that most days take center stage in the world today are no longer the main stories at all. Because in the end, the main stories on Suits became compassion. Acceptance. Understanding. Friendship. Loyalty. In the end the main story became love. Love is really what we find in the present when we're willing to wrestle out loud with one another the stories of our pasts. I'm going to miss you Suits. But I'm more hopeful than ever in victory. I am more hopeful than ever in love. |
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
February 2025
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