​I heard someone say recently, “I am seeking appreciation, not toleration.” This person said this in the context of dating, and more specifically, in the context of dating challenges.

It made me think about how often, in relationships, we settle for toleration. We call it patience, understanding, even love, but often, it’s just endurance. We learn to manage one another instead of marvel at one another.

If it sounds like I am writing this from a place of experience, I am.

I saw this in my marriage. Without ever naming it, we began to put more energy into tolerating than appreciating. The small quirks that once felt endearing started to feel irritating. The little differences we used to celebrate became things we quietly worked around. And before long, we were living alongside one another rather than with one another.

Toleration, I’ve realized, can masquerade as maturity. It can look like restraint, like grace, even like peace. But it’s a peace built on distance - an unwritten agreement not to bump into each other’s rough edges.

Appreciation, on the other hand, requires closeness. It asks us to lean in. To remember what first made us curious about one another. To see what’s still beautiful, still unique, still worth admiring, even when the shine has dulled a bit.

And that’s not just true in marriage. It’s true in friendships, families, communities, and yes, dating. We say we want connection, but sometimes what we really want is compatibility, someone we won’t have to tolerate. But maybe what we actually need are people who invite us to grow our capacity for appreciation.

Because toleration is survival mode, appreciation is life.

Maybe the real work of love is learning to shift from enduring one another to seeing one another again.

I hear it often in our divided world, we need to be more tolerant of one another. I am wondering now, though, if we might need to move well beyond toleration to appreciation. I wonder if we are settling by simply putting up with one another when we could be striving to find the good in one another.

I do worry about this, actually, because again, I know from experience, there is an end to toleration. There comes a point where simply tolerating one another makes love feel more like endurance than joy, and frankly, that's an endurance that eventually becomes impossible to endure.

Appreciation on the other hand - is there ever a good time to stop trying to find the good in one another? 

​I've had two meaningful dinners this week with friends. And at the heart of what made those dinners so meaningful, what made them feel so life-giving, was that during both of those dinners I got to show up and be who I am. Maybe that doesn't seem like such a big deal for many of you, but for this guy, a guy who has previously maintained significant relationships in his life by pretending to be someone else - by LYING - that's a big deal.

In the bible, one of the seven things God says he hates is lying. It’s an interesting word to land on in that list, especially in a world where lying feels almost ordinary.

Studies show that most people tell at least one lie within minutes of meeting someone new. Most of them are small white lies, harmless exaggerations, softened truths meant to make us seem a little better, a little more likable, a little more put together. But maybe that’s exactly why God hates lying. Not because it’s a bad thing to do, immoral, but because it breaks the very thing he loves most: connection.

Every lie we tell, big or small, builds a thin wall between who we really are and who we want others to believe we are. Over time, those walls become thick enough to keep us from being known at all.

Here’s the harder truth: sometimes we don’t lie simply because we want to. We lie because we feel like we have to. Our culture prizes image over authenticity, perfection over honesty. We live in a world that rewards performance, not presence. Even when we don’t mean to, we create environments at work, in church, online - where people feel pressure to be who they think they need to be rather than who they really are.

And I can attest, it is possible to start lying so frequently about who you are that even YOU can come to a place where you have no idea who you really are.

We long for connection, but we hide behind the very words that make it impossible. God made us for relationship, with him and with one another, but honesty is the foundation of both. When we trade truth for image, we settle for fitting in instead of belonging.

Maybe God hates lying because it keeps us from the one thing he designed us to need most, community built on truth. The irony is that many of us lie to fit in, when in reality, truth is the only way we’ll ever truly belong.

Dinners where you feel like you totally belong are dinners you show up to knowing you don't have to bring an alternative version of you to the table.

Find the community where you can belong, the community that lets you show up in truth.

And be that community for someone else, the community that makes truth something we celebrate in one another, not something we hold against one another.

​I presented yesterday on human connection. How we are wired for it. How we depend on it. How it’s incumbent on us to cultivate it and reach into it for our own health and wellness.

I had my message rehearsed, organized, and ready. My goal was simple: equip people with the science and the importance of connection.

But God had something more in mind.

After the presentation, a woman approached me quietly. She shared that a dear friend of hers had been kidnapped in another country. She’s been living in a constant state of fear and prayer, not knowing how this story will end.

She told me that in the midst of this heaviness, she found herself reaching outward, calling people she hadn’t talked to in a long time, writing messages she would normally leave unsent, letting people back into her heart in places she had once closed off.

She didn’t understand why she was doing it, only that she needed to.

Then she said something that blessed me.

She said she almost didn’t come to my presentation. She didn’t have the emotional space for it. But something nudged her and she came anyway. And in my presentation, she said, she didn’t hear a lecture or a lesson, she heard confirmation.

She said the spirit I presented with spoke to her spirit. It told her that the connections she was forging were not random coping mechanisms, they were holy prompts.

They were rescue ropes pulling her through fear and darkness.

Her story reminded me of something that I think is a good reminder - a good message - for all of us.

Sometimes we think we’re leading with facts, but the Spirit is leading with healing.

Sometimes we go in hoping to raise awareness, but God arrives intending to raise a weary soul.

Sometimes we think we are teaching, when in reality, we are simply delivering mail heaven already wrote.

I spent hours preparing content that I believed was important. Yet what mattered most in that room wasn’t anything I said, it was what one person heard in the quiet places only God speaks.

It’s humbling.

It’s beautiful.

And it’s why I will always keep showing up, not just for the message I bring, but for the message God is bringing through it. Because connection isn’t just something we teach. Connection is something God uses to save us, one unlikely moment at a time.

​Do you want to change your week ahead before the week ahead even unfolds? Ok then, change your mind about the week ahead.

We have SO little control over the events awaiting us this last week of October, but we have FULL control over what our mind thinks about how we'll tackle those events.

Pastor Rich Wilkerson Jr. says, "God wants you to win on the inside before you ever see a win on the outside."

Let me tell you, I've spent a lot of my life with that equation inverted. I've spent a lot of my life waiting for victories in my life - praying for them even - so I'd have the chance to experience victorious feelings.

"Win before you begin," Wilkerson says.

Taking a victorious mind into the week ahead is the surest path to a victorious week. If we're going to wait until Friday to decide if the week has been victorious, chances are suddenly much greater that we'll experience the agony of defeat.

The events of my life rarely go the way I imagine them, so the alternative to knowing I'll be victorious through all events is to put my self at risk for feeling soundly defeated on the other side of them.

Win before you begin.

Before you take a step into your week, win it.

When you know your week ahead is going to be your week, nothing can shake what you already know. Faith doesn't dismiss that the week ahead may be full of challenges, it just refuses to let you easily dismiss that with God, no challenge has stopped you yet.

Don't wait until Friday to count your victories.

Count them right here and now.

​I have come to know this - the more important an action is to you becoming who you are meant to be, the more difficult that action is to perform. Steven Pressfield, author of The War of Art, calls this difficulty resistance.

Pressfield writes about the artist's struggle to complete meaningful work, whether it be a painting or a book or other, in the face of distractions. Distractions that seem to magically show up to keep one from completing projects this resistance doesn't want offered to the world. As if the resistance somehow knows this work will make some beautiful kind of difference.

I know this resistance as the devil, and I think it has much broader implications than art.

I believe we are all created to be someone and something. We have a design. A unique and beautiful fit in the puzzle of the world. I believe this because I have a voice inside me always pushing me to become someone just a little different than I am right now.

Not a better me. Or a more right me. Just a different me, as if always being pointed toward me.

The real me.

This is not a voice I have asked for, but one that just seems to have always been a part of me. And yet, this voice always has an opponent. An adversary.

Resistance.

The devil.

I have certainly felt this as I work to complete my memoir. A project that has long faced this adversary. The more the devil throws distractions and resistance at this project, the more I am absolutely convinced it's a project that must get into the world. I don't fully know why, but I do know it must.

I have felt this often when pursuing a healthier me. The voice inside me long ago forced me to see the me that tackles the world with the most clarity is the me who tackles the world without the influence of substance. And yet, this adversary, this resistance, this devil - is constantly dangling the lure of alcohol in front of me.

I have gained some weight lately. Not because I wanted to. And not because I don't know how NOT to. But because the resistance lately to exercise and eating the way I know I personally need to eat has shown up with the resistance of an army. A heavily armed army hell bent on total occupation of me.

And so, what do I do about this resistance - this devil - that stands between who I am and who I am meant to be?

Steven Pressfield would tell me: turn pro.

An amateur waits for inspiration. A professional builds habits that create it. When we turn pro, we stop asking how we feel and start asking what needs to be done. We stop letting our moods determine our movement.

We stop negotiating with the devil.

Pressfield warns there’s a cost to this shift. The moment you begin to take yourself seriously, others may not. Some will mock your discipline, your sobriety, your focus. Some will feel threatened by your growth, because your transformation exposes their own resistance to change. Turning pro often means walking away from those unspoken agreements to stay small together.

But is there a cost too big to pay to come in alignment with the you that you were designed to be?

I don't think so.

So whatever your resistance looks like - fear, distraction, addiction, self-doubt - meet it like a professional. Show up anyway. Do the work anyway. Trust that the voice calling you toward your real self is not your imagination. It’s your invitation.

And when you finally turn pro with your life, you’ll find that the devil no longer has to be defeated, he just gets outworked. And the devil shows up less often in spaces where he knows he'll get outworked!!

​John Mark Comer says, "The dark underside of radical individualism is loneliness."

And what is radical individualism?

Radical individualism is the belief that the highest good in life is personal autonomy - the idea that freedom, identity, and meaning come from being completely self-determined and independent of others.

Sociologists often classify the U.S. as a "highly individualistic society" on the cultural spectrum. The U.S. consistently ranks at or near the most individualistic extreme in global studies, meaning American socialization, policies, and even marketing language tend to reinforce "I" over "we."

So yes - we are radically individualized. And while that’s given us remarkable freedom - not always a bad thing - it’s also left us relationally impoverished. We’ve become experts at building lives, but beginners at belonging.

And that has a cost.

I talk with people often about connection and loneliness. So I believe the following stats when I hear:

- 54% of Americans say no one knows them well.

- 36% report they feel lonely frequently or almost all of the time - and that number goes up to 61% when we're talking about young adults.

I have written often about the ache of loneliness, the longing to be seen and known and held. Well, that ache isn't a flaw, it's the soul's memory calling us home. It's not punishment for being too sensitive or needy, that ache is evidence of God's divine architecture for our lives.

God created us with connection in our bones. In our hearts and souls and minds. Our earliest childhood development wires us to NEED connection, not have it as a lifelong bonus.

Radical individualism tells us to numb the ache - to prove we don’t need anyone. But when we deny that longing, we don’t become free; we become broken. The loneliness doesn’t disappear, it just hides beneath busyness, success, and self-reliance.

The truth is, loneliness isn’t a sign of something wrong with us; it’s something right within us trying to get our attention. It’s the soul whispering what God said from the beginning: It is not good for man to be alone.

But are we hearing the whisper?

I fear not.

The shouts of what's in it for me seem to grow louder by the day. The willingness to push others aside in the chase to have what's in it for me have become all the more forceful. And we seem to be blind to the reality that in actually getting what's in it for me, we are losing what is most critical to you and me.

Each other.

Connection.

Radical togetherness.

It always was and always will be our human design. Without it, the ache will only grow more hurtful and destructive.

​Steven Furtick says, "When something comes into my life in a package I don't like, I can miss the purpose for which that package came."

It's true. We are good at judging the book by it's cover. Judging the value of the gift by the box it comes in and how it's wrapped.

We see the torn paper and think, this can’t be good. We see the broken box and assume, nothing valuable could be inside that.
But sometimes God hides His best gifts in boxes that have been through a lot, boxes that have been dropped, kicked, or left out in the rain, because He knows the treasure inside won’t be appreciated by those looking only for perfection.

Sometimes the gift of patience comes wrapped in the paper of waiting.

Sometimes the gift of compassion comes in the box of loss.

Sometimes the gift of peace comes through the package of pain.

I drove Elliott back to Virginia Tech yesterday. For almost all of the 3 hours driving there, the weather was dreary. Large sections of the drive were so dark it felt like nightfall. But you know what, my kid didn't stop talking to me the whole way.

Not so much as a moment of silence.

I've had two desires as a father. That my kids would come to know and love God with the same kind of heart with which I love God, knowing that they will come to that kind of heart much more from seeing my heart than from hearing about it. And then also, that my kids would look forward to talking to me. Not talking to me because I'm their dad and they feel obligated to - but because they love talking to me.

As we drove, talking through the darkness and above the sound of the windshield wipers wiping back and forth, and as I looked down at the rubber wrist band Elliott was wearing with an important to him scripture written on it, I felt a beautiful light in the darkness.

I felt God remind me that my life has not always been offered to me in the most stable of boxes, and nor have those boxes very often been wrapped in fancy wrapping paper, but my life has overflowed with beautiful gifts.

God has taught me, over and over again, that darkness is not a sign of dark in my life, but of approaching beauty and light. For it is God in my life that is the measure of my gifts, not the boxes.

Maybe you'll have some broken boxes come into your life this week. I'll gently offer, maybe trust God, not the box.

​Post divorce, movies were a source of healing and bonding for me and the boys.

In the beginning, there was no small amount of guilt that came with those movie visits. While I was married, it was their mom who always took them to movies. I would stay behind. Just one example of how kids are impacted when the two people they live with are quietly invested in avoiding one another.

But eventually, I saw how much joy the movies brought the boys. It became clear to me that the movies didn't trigger the same kind of emotions in them that were often triggered in me. So, I traded triggers for peace.

And now, today, with or without them movies bring me peace. Thankfully, yesterday was a 'with them' day. Or at least with one of them.

Elliott is home from college, and so we decided to take in a movie. It was the first movie either of us had seen since Elliott went off to college two months ago. In many ways, the theatre felt like we were both coming home.

One thing about the movies - Elliott is my popcorn guy. Ian doesn't touch the stuff. But Elliott - well, I know he'd still go to the movies if they didn't have popcorn, but I also know he wouldn't enjoy them nearly as much without it. Kind of like I'd still eat ice cream without the chocolate syrup and peanuts, but PLEASE don't take away the syrup and peanuts.

It was early in the movie. I reached over and stuck my hand in Elliott's giant bucket of popcorn and retrieved a handful. I'm not a big popcorn guy myself, but there has always been something kind of comforting about sharing a handful or two of Elliott's.

I think maybe it's the way he doesn't fight me off. Or more, the way he'll move his hands aside to gladly let me share in it. It's not a "he paid for it so I guess I'm obligated to share" kind of sharing, but more like a willingness. A desire. And I like that.

It is funny in life how the places we once had a hard time showing up to can still become places of peace. Joy. It is interesting how wounds can become scars and then scars can somehow become a source of peace in the revealing of them.

In the letting go of them.

In the healing.

It's worth noting that the movie we saw yesterday was "One Battle After Another". That is life, isn't it? One battle after another. I know it's mine.

But I was reminded in that theatre yesterday that life is always better when we don't allow ourselves to stay stuck in the same battle. There's a battle ahead that deserves our attention. And hey, if they are serving popcorn at that battle, count me in!!

​Storms.

It's so easy to see storms as thieves arriving in the middle of the night, intent on robbing us of hope.

But is it possible - maybe - that they arrive DELIVERING hope?

I know. That seems so backwards.

But how much time do we spend searching for hope in the good times, in the peaceful weather? The times that can feel like hope is just magically dancing all around us.

A gift given and not one sought.

If we're not careful, we can begin to focus on the dance and not the dancer. It is tranquil times that can lead us to believe that hope is found in our circumstances, in our situations, and not in the One who lives in us, unfazed by circumstances and situations, an endless and unwavering stream of hope.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you believe in Him (Romans 15:13).

Paul reminds us here that hope is linked to joy, peace, and faith. It transcends our circumstances because it is placed in God’s unwavering nature.

Maybe storms come as a reminder of that. A reminder that the nature of hope has little to do with the nature of our lives, and everything to do with the nature of God.

Life can feel like an endless roller coaster of hope - up and down. But that is not life, that is us.

That is us wavering, not hope.

Not God.