​I am going to disappear for the month of December. Not like literally disappear - poof into thin air - just disappear from Facebook.

Which begs the question: do you still exist if you disappear from Facebook?? 😊🤷‍♂️

Five years ago, I started on a journey I didn't know I was starting on. There was no plan. There was no map. I don't know whose idea the journey was. Knowing that used to matter to me. It doesn't anymore.

I just know I've been on a journey. And that journey has been the journey of discovering me.

Most days that journey has been more hell than joy. That's part of the process of pealing back the layers of who you've been pretending to be to discover who you really are. The pretend world is exhausting, but many days exhausting is much easier to deal with than hell.

A friend sent me a stuffed toy onion on this journey. Every time I look at it I'm reminded that pealing back layers often comes with tears.

The better part of the last three years of that journey I've showed up here in the mornings. Writing. Many days I have been writing very directly about the journey. I think other days I've been distracting myself from the journey.

Either way, my mornings here have become important to me. They've become a source of peace.

I've always been grateful for the folks who've expressed my showing up here has mattered to you. That has been a gift.

On several occasions, many of you have suggested I need to write a book. In many ways, showing up here has been my way of writing a book. But in other ways, in some very big ways, it's been a way of AVOIDING writing that book.

Because I show up here writing the things I really do want to write about. The things I would want to put in a book.

But the last couple of years, I don't go to bed thinking about the things I want to write. I don't wake up thinking about them. And it's not thoughts about what I want to write about that frequently interrupt my day.

What interrupts my nights and my mornings and my days is this voice telling me the story I have to write, not the one I want to write. It's a voice telling me I will never have permission to write what I want until I write what I must.

That article I wrote earlier this week about turning our shoulds into musts - well that was to me.

The article I wrote this week about the idea of bringing something new into your life isn't clearing out your closet it's transforming your mind - that was to me.

The article I wrote about intentionally shrinking your problems and not sitting back waiting for them to shrink - that was to me.

Well, for the next 31 days, that is what I'm going to do. I'm going to step into my story with hopes of forever transforming my mind by taking the story I've known I should write and making it the story I must write.

Because I must.

I don't know what will become of the story once I write it. I suppose in many ways the story will decide that.

I ask you to think about me. To pray for me. To know in the mornings when I'm not here that I'm sitting at a keyboard writing the story I must write. Know that I've put off writing the story I must write because writing what I want to write is so much easier.

But one thing the journey has taught me is easy isn't the end game.

But know and trust - because I surely do - that once I write the story I must write, the stories I want to write will come with more freedom. They will come with more joy and less hell.

At least that's my hope. And my prayer.

I pray blessings upon you and your families this Christmas season. May God bless you and keep you and may the face of his sweet and precious child always shine upon you.

​When I moved a couple of years ago, I took the opportunity to downsize my closet. I downsized a lot of things, really. When my buddy Solomon agreed to help me move, I told him don't worry, it won't take long, I'm going to be a minimalist.

After helping me move, he said, you weren't kidding.

So I walk into a fairly empty closet these days. I walk into an apartment without a lot of furniture or things hanging on the wall or much scattered on the floor that might trip me up.

I've cleared a lot of things out of my life. That's for sure.

It's helped me realize something. A lot of the challenges in my life have nothing to do with the stuff in my closet or in my living room or piled up in the back seat of my car.

I've come to realize transforming my life into something new and into something I can fully love isn't about transforming the spaces I live in. It's about transforming the space where life lives in me.

It's about transforming my mind.

Too often when we think about simplifying life, we focus on getting rid of the stuff we don't need on the outside. When in reality, change comes when we start getting rid of some of the stuff on the inside.

We think making room for the new me is parting with things that were part of the old me, but really, making room for a new me starts with getting rid of some of the thought patterns of the old me.

A new me isn't about giving all of my old shoes to Soles4Souls (as much as I highly encourage all of us to do so)!!

A new me is about getting rid of my shame and guilt and resentment and sense of abandonment and bitterness and self-doubt and discouragement and so many things of my mind that suffocate the life out of me in ways a messy closet never could.

Messy closets are often an easy way of saying "that's my problem."

Which is the easiest way to avoid owning that "I'm my problem."

Messy closets suck the life out of a living space.

Messy minds suck the life out of - well, life.

Emptying your closet makes room for new stuff in your closet.

Emptying your mind makes more room for life.

It's a journey. An often complicated journey. Emptying your mind of toxic thought patterns - and the people and places and things that contribute to those patterns - that is not as easy as a trip to Goodwill.

It just isn't.

But, when you start to breathe in the new life that comes with new thought patterns - that comes with surrounding yourself with encouragement and hope - you begin to lose sight of some of the things in life and begin to focus on what's truly important in life.

You wake up with a desire to live out and not clean out.

And that is the most beautiful kind of transformation.

​The thing that makes humans unique from any other creature is the uppermost and highly developed part of our brains: the prefrontal cortex.

Here, and because of the advanced development of this region, we have the power to decide. To make choices. To set goals and evaluate their progress. We have the power to incorporate wisdom and strategy into the behaviors we choose to exhibit - to wisely assess what's next.

We all have the capacity to be leaders. Leaders of ourselves, and leaders of others.

But sometimes, and maybe even often, we hand over the throne of our leadership to the voices of our feelings.

I was watching the Notre Dame football game last night. Most of the night they were being soundly defeated. I did something I know better than to do in the middle of the game. I visited the online message boards where Notre Dame fans hang out.

I saw a very common pattern occur.

At first, I heard, "that fumble hurt us".

Which is true. It did. That's definitely a higher brain assessment of a situation void of any feelings. It was a solid assessment of facts. Fumbles hurt any team's chances of winning. It's true.

But then it moved to, "we will never win a championship with that quarterback."

Look out, here come opinions and feelings.....

"Hopefully all of you idiots who were happy to see him become our quarterback in the first place are happy now."

And then, the highly educated opinion, "well I just looked at your profile picture and you have a lot of nerve calling anyone else an idiot."

Thankfully, here comes a voice of reason - or not....

"We shouldn't be bashing each other, we should be focused on the REAL problem here and that's that USC hired a cheating coach to take advantage of a system that encourages cheating and because our University has standards we'll never compete with cheaters."

And it's official.... the prefrontal cortex has left the building.

Sigh.

The thing is, if you hang out in a conversation like this too long, overrun with feelings and emotions, it can start to impact the way you feel. And the way you think. Which can eventually start taking over the way you behave.

Our feelings and emotions are designed to be voices that inform our choices. But if we're not careful, it's not long before we aren't making choices at all; we're simply jumping on the train of emotions and screaming all aboard!!

And, all WILL jump aboard.

You've seen it in your message boards.

You've seen it in the comments section of your Facebook posts.

You've seen it at the local school board meeting.

You've seen it in your living room.....

I saw grown men cussing out a 20 year old college quarterback and then doing the same to one another over a fumble in a football game.

A-fumble-in-a-football-game....

Grown men who I am sure own businesses and attend church and have their own kids and who have exhibited plenty of healthy behaviors in life, but yet, in this case - here - their feelings were taking over leadership of their lives.

Kind of like the rest of the animal kingdom.

Humans were created to know our feelings, not follow every one of them.

We were created with the capacity to hit a pause button, not press play and then repeat. And escalate...

We were created to use feelings as informants, not villains.

I left that message group last night. I left because I could feel my feelings starting to align with some of the other feelings I was sensing. Feelings I knew weren't in alignment with who I am.

I left because I could feel myself handing over the leadership I rightfully own of my life to feelings that are often out to overthrow me.

Because feelings are quite often out to overthrow me. And you.

We always feel before we choose, so feelings get to believing they are head of the household. They are kings. They are the powerbrokers in our lives.

But we are humans. And we have the capacity to say no; no, feelings, you are not in charge.

We have the capacity to leave with love or to lead with love - there is a time and place for both. But we always have a choice.

Because we are humans.

Choice is what makes it so.

​It's true. If you've experienced any progress in life, any change, it likely came when you decided something you'd been saying you should do was actually something you must do.

"I should." There's nothing totally wrong with it. It's a wonderful start. Dreams often start with I should.

But dreams can die there too.

You can wake up a month or a year or even decades from now repeating the same I should.

I have been there. I have mastered that repeating.

Enough so that I've noticed life turns a deaf ear when it hears us spill into the world the things we think we should do. I guess life's heard more of that song and dance than any of us have.

But life, I have also noticed, like a best friend, seems to get excited when I decide my should is going to become a must.

Back in March of 2020, I decided I should write an article and share it here every morning. And because I quickly started treating those articles like they were something I must do and not something I should do, tomorrow I will write and share my 800th article since then.

800 articles. Sure, they are the result of me writing. But much more than that - at least to me - they are the result of me embracing a life that grew tired of 'I should' and started taking on the much scarier role of 'I must.'

I should doesn't give a hoot if you show up; I must insists that you do.

I should comes with no expectations; I must demands your best.

We've just passed Thanksgiving and we are rounding the corner to the new year. A time of year when we begin to wrestle with resolutions. All the things we're going to do in the new year to better ourselves.

Chances are, many of those things are things you said you should do at the start of the last new year. Things that never got to leave behind I should and embrace I must.

I want to encourage you. Just pick one. Pick one thing you are going to make a must in your life. Pick one thing about which you are absolutely tired of hearing yourself say I should.

I promise you, when you pick one I should and make it an I must, your whole life starts to feel a greater sense of urgency around making your shoulds musts.

When you daily see what happens - and how it feels - to honor your ideas and feelings and beliefs with commitment, you begin to cringe when you hear yourself think or say "I should."

You begin to see just how much you've cheated yourself in life by letting your dreams die in the world of I should.

You will see that everything changes when you decide living is something you must do, not something you should do.

​I am content with my life and discontent with who I am.

I am at peace with the journey, but unwilling to accept that the journey is at peace with me.

There is work still to be done.

Life is my unquestionable hero for all that it has taught me. Yet, I have too much left to offer life in return if I'm to succeed at fully honoring the hero.

Becoming, that is my goal. Always becoming.

And to never again wake up feeling like I've become.

Because that's the day you quit. That's the day you become content with life AND with who you are.

And maybe there is nothing more discontenting than that.

​I was talking to a friend the other day. She was talking about the hard stuff she's faced in life. She said she was grateful, though, because she knows a lot of people have faced harder.

That used to be my gratitude practice. Acknowledging that things could be worse. And although it is true that someone out there is always facing something harder than me - that gratitude practice left me stuck.

Because when you come to believe one of the most beautiful qualities of where you are is that you aren't where someone else is, you can begin to lose hope that life will ever be anything else. You begin to accept that your life is good because others have more bad.

I've lived most of my life like my friend. Quick to acknowledge that life has been hard. Quicker to acknowledge that it could be much worse.

The last few years, well maybe they've been some of the hardest in a hard life. But I've come to accept a couple of things about hard - and about gratitude.

One - the magnitude of someone else's struggle has no relationship with the magnitude of my own struggles.

And so two - the starting place for looking at my struggles, and for building my own sense of gratitude, starts by looking at my life, not anyone else's.

The last few years, I've shifted my gratitude practice. No longer is it 'things could be worse than they are.'

Instead, my gratitude practice these days is challenging myself to see that 'things are better than they seem.'

I've recognized that I have a tendency to layer struggles on top of struggles in my life. That has happened because when something doesn't go just right, I start to imagine all the other things that won't go right. When something doesn't feel just right, I start looking for other areas in my life that don't feel right. And pretty soon, I have imagined a struggle much more significant than the struggle actually is.

So gratitude these days is: "I have this struggle, but I." Gratitude these days is no longer: "I have this struggle, and."

I have this struggle, "but I" get to see my boys tonight.

I have this struggle, "but I" get to use the gift of writing to feel more at peace.

I have this struggle, "but I" have friends who aren't afraid of my struggle.

I have this struggle, "but I" am not afraid of it either.

You see, the 'but I' keeps us from layering struggles. Because when we say I have this struggle 'and' - what follows is often additional struggles we imagine and not real blessings we could be counting.

Counting blessings in the middle of a struggle stops the layering. It helps us constantly remind ourselves that maybe life is more beautiful than we've imagined it to be.

And when you can remind yourself that life is more beautiful than you've imagined it to be, you suddenly have hope that it always can be.

When you practice finding more beauty and not imagining deeper hardship, you find more beauty.

The biggest source of hope for more beauty isn't that someone else has less of it than you, but that you have gotten better at seeing the beauty you already have.

Happy Thanksgiving dear friends. Find the beauty in your life, even if it means looking through the lens of struggle. And please know, as I look through both the lenses of struggle and of peace in my life, I see you all there.

You are beauty.

Thank you and have a very happy Thanksgiving.

​Everything changes when you see your kid.

It first happened for me back in December of 2006 - the day I first saw my first kid. I looked at him through the clear plastic walls of an incubator. I stared at him. And he stared back.

In a stare, I came to see how meaningless my life had been. In an instant I was invited into meaning. An invitation I never saw coming. In his own quiet way, without words, that baby Elliott was the first person to ever ask me to quit running from meaning.

Everything changes when you see your kid. Everything changes when you quit running from meaning and begin an endless pursuit of it.

It changes when you see your kid waving at you from the stage of a preschool play.

It changes when you see him score his first touchdown in a flag football game.

It changes when you see him look down in awe at the top of the Grand Tetons during his first plane ride.

A meaningless life can suddenly be overwhelmed by meaning when you look at the world through your kid's eyes.

Until the day those eyes are filled with tears because you're leaving. He doesn't understand and you can't explain and suddenly meaning seems lost once again.

And it's tempting - oh so tempting to once again start running from meaning instead of pursuing it.

Until you are there, standing along the fence that surrounds a high school football field. And your son runs by you in a cheerleader outfit. You can't help but picture him running right out of the incubator and on to the field.

There was an energy about him. A smile. Laughter. There wasn't a stare this time, but there was glance.

And there was meaning.

Life changes when you see your kid.

Everything changes when all you've been running from gets lost in this beautiful gift you are blessed with the chance to run to.

The gift of meaning.

So much to be grateful for this week of gratitude.

So much to cheer about 😊

A friend of mine shared a Brene' Brown Ted Talk on Facebook yesterday in which Brene' said this:

"Vulnerability is our most accurate measure of courage. If we're going to find our way back to one another, vulnerability will be the path." 

My friend Jenny Wilkerson Baker introduced me to this word 'vulnerability' a little over 4 years ago when we sat down for the first of many interviews. She talks about it again in the short clip below from our most recent conversation in early 2022. 

(I'll share a link to the entire conversation in the comments; it's my favorite chat with Jenny yet. And I have loved them all.).  

It's amazing, really, that 4 years ago I had no idea what vulnerability was. Oh, I knew the generic definitions to this word, I just didn't know the ones that were life changing. Because today, there is nothing I long to have more of in my world and create more of in the bigger world than vulnerability. 

Brene' Brown says, it's our path back to one another. I believe she's right. And I also believe it's our path back to God. The same thing has separated us from both; the internal and external pressures to hide who we are. 

I have seen what happens in a room, in a conversation... in a relationship, when without saying a word another feels permission - safety - to be who they truly are. To tell the story they really want to tell. To strip themselves of all masks and with delight say, this is me. 

Do you know how much of the world is hiding beneath the burden of having no place to say, "this is me?"

Much of the true beauty in this world is hidden beneath those burdens. I am not sure there is anything more sad than sensing how much of the world feels pressured to hide the most beautiful parts of themselves. 

The parts that have overcome. The parts that have endured. The parts that have experienced every emotion in life. The parts that have poured so much life INTO life. 

Yet, they are sadly the parts that have lived truths that have somehow become easier to live out as lies. 

Brene' Brown is right - it is the most accurate measure of courage to go back to the truth. To share it with another. 

It is equally a great act of courage to sit with another and create a space that invites it in - the truth. 

I have seen what happens when courage takes the stage. There is little if anything more beautiful. 

And I have seen a world where courage isn't even invited to the show. 

The former is the path. Brene' Brown is right. It is the only path back to one another. And to God. 
But like every path, it is up to us to build it and to travel it.

​It's up to us to find the courage to do so. 

​I had a friend say to me the other day, "I often think about how God can take my mess and make it into a message, and what that might look like."

I told her with no uncertainty, it would like me.

It occurred to me as she was saying this, that if you add the word age to the word mess, you get message. And it also occurred to me, that's the story of my life: a mess that has aged and has become a message.

I didn't spend much time in the ugly midst of my messes wondering what God would make of them. I was too busy making messes of my messes to imagine what good could ever come from any of it.

Maybe because in messes we often give up on good.

But I spend a fair amount of time every day these days marveling at what God has done with those messes. I am often overwhelmed with gratitude for the messages he has crafted from them.

It's comforting. It's comforting because it's not like my life is free of messes these days. It seems that while our old messes age into messages, new messes come along.

I look at messes differently these days, though. Because I do know what it would look like if God took my mess and made it into a message.

It would look like me.

And it would look like you.

Messes. Aging. Into Messages.

In the end, if you honor that process, there is nothing messy about it. There is only beauty in the mess.

Lately, I've wrestled with this premium the Christian faith puts on the forgiveness of sins. Not because I don't believe in the power of forgiveness - or the necessity of it - but because I see too many forgiven people living in continued shame and hopelessness.

No, the more I read my bible, the more I believe Jesus is far more interested in healing my deepest wounds than addressing my need for forgiveness - a forgiveness that many days my wounds won't begin to allow me to recognize a need for.

Let alone ask for it.

We shared a video in the training I helped lead last week. We often show this video. It has a powerful message. A teaching. But last week, after seeing this video hundreds of times, I took away an entirely new take on it.

In the video, a teacher has an encounter with a challenging student. He has a difficult history and has clearly showed up to disrupt the class. But the teacher, who has years of experience, knows there's a story living in this student deeper than disruption.

The teacher starts pointing out the student's strength. He has charisma, she tells him. And, because of that charisma, she tells him he would make the perfect morning greeter for her class.

She gives him a job. Not because she wants to put him to work, but because she wants him to know she sees his worth beneath his hurt. 

The video made me think of an encounter Jesus had with one of his students: Peter.

You may know the story. Peter was the often arrogant and boastful student. "Oh, they will have to kill me before I ever let them kill you Jesus!" Yet, before Jesus was crucified, on three different occasions, Peter denied even knowing Jesus to save his own boastful skin.

Then Jesus rises from the dead. And finds Peter.

To forgive him? No, I don't think so. I think he finds him to heal his wounds.

In the 21st chapter of John, their conversation goes like this:

When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?”

“Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.”

Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.”

Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”

He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”

Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.”

The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”

Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.”

Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.

Why did Jesus keep poking at Peter? Why did he keep asking him over and over - do you love me? To hurt him? To rub it in his face that he had denied him?

No. I don't believe so. I think Jesus wanted to meet Peter at the place of Peter's deepest pain, and then there tell Peter, I have a job for you. Not because I want to put you to work, but because I believe in who you are.

My people need someone to look after them; I believe you are the right man for the job.

Too often, our idea of forgiving one another is simply putting aside or moving beyond the offenses of another that have disturbed us. And also too often, that doesn't begin to recognize and understand and maybe even long to heal the wounds beneath those offenses.

I know a lot of people who will show up to church this Sunday because they've heard it's a place that will help them find peace for their hurts and their wounds. And yet, it's entirely possible, many of them will leave knowing they are forgiven yet feel not one step closer to healed.

Sometimes forgiving someone simply says I don't think you're unworthy.

But that is not nearly the same as someone saying I see your worth.

It's not nearly the same as saying, in spite of all you've done to me and to yourself, in spite of all you've been through and in spite of this unloving story you are telling yourself and others - I see your worth.

I see it so much, in fact, I have a job for you....