​I told a friend a story yesterday. After hearing it, she said I am sure there are many layers to that story.

I said you are right. There are.

The truth is there are layers to all of our stories, to all of our lives.

On my walk back from the beach yesterday, I started thinking about this in terms of the rings that mark the life of a tree. When you cut it down, you get a glimpse of the story of that tree's life.

A ring for each year. Each year with its own story.

Maybe there are rings I wish weren't there when someone cuts down the tree of my life. But then that would make it no longer my tree. It would be some other tree that is not me.

As I look back on my ring of 2022, I wouldn't change anything about it. There were easy days and hard days. There were happy days and sad days. Days that left me full and days that left me longing. But they were all my days. Every one of them.

All days in the story of my tree. All the days forever included in my ring.

My friend says, "The journey of life is beautiful even in the midst of intense grief, especially in the midst of intense grief."

One day when someone cuts down the tree of my life, they won't be able to tell which rings were grief and which rings were joy. They will only see a series of rings spiraling out from birth to death like a beautiful piece of art.

What a blessing to be able to see the art in our rings long before the tree is cut down. To see the beauty in the midst of them....

I pray you can look back and see the beauty in your 2022 ring. I hope you sense and feel the beautiful tree it is helping you become. I know for some of us that is harder to do than for others. Still, that remains my prayer.

And I pray your 2023 ring will be your most amazing ring ever. If not because it's an amazing year, then because you take a step closer to knowing just how amazing you are no matter what the year holds.

Because this ring you are about to grow is you. And you are the only you. One day someone will cut down the tree of your life and they will see the rings of the one and only you.

In a world so large, and so full, isn't that a beautiful thing to know - the uniqueness of our own uniqueness?

Every tree has its rings. Every human has their stories; every story it's layers. Oh the peace when we see the beauty in them all. In our own and in each others.

Happy New Year to all of you dear friends. As you ring in the new year, don't forget to celebrate the old rings. The rings that make you YOU.

The rings that make you beautiful.

​In many ways, we are an outcomes based culture. We often look at ourselves and others based on what we and they have achieved. We have placed metrics on just about every corner of life to help us determine the value of those corners.

Naturally then, when we go to setting goals for the new year, we can start thinking of those goals in terms of 'what do I want to accomplish this year?'

I heard James Clear say something yesterday that I'd heard him say before, but it hit me different as I've been thinking ahead to 2023. Clear says, "every action you take is a vote for the kind of person you want to become."

It got me asking the question, what kind of person do I want to become in 2023.

Because it's possible to lose 25 pounds in 2023 and not become a different person. Especially if I haven't asked myself what kind of person do I want to become in 2023.

Because it's possible to finish a book in 2023 and not become a different person. Especially if I haven't asked myself what kind of person do I want to become in 2023.

Because it's possible to run 2,023 miles in 2023 and not become a different person. Especially if I haven't asked myself what kind of person do I want to become in 2023.

Because I can read the bible from front to back in 2023 and not become a different person. Especially if I haven't asked myself what kind of person do I want to become in 2023.

Because it's possible to achieve a lot of outcomes in life and not become a different person. Especially if I haven't asked myself what kind of person do I want to become in life.

It occurred to me yesterday, in a very slap in the face manner, just how hard I plow through life, setting goals and having my eye on the prize, while rarely ever stopping to ask myself, what kind of person am I trying to become?

And here is the thing, when we ask ourselves that question, the answers will come from the inside and not from some excel spreadsheet on the outside. I'm a fan of data, but is the data pointing me to what I'm trying to achieve or who I'm trying to become?

Because I assure you, we all have stories deeper than our spreadsheets. Often times much deeper. I think we'd be better off throwing each others' spreadsheets in the trash and listening to each others' stories instead. But I digress....

So let me just stop and encourage you. Ask the question before you go into the new year. Who do I want to become in 2023?

Then map out your path. Map it with goals and outcomes, sure. But don't create a map to success, create a map to you.

​Nick Saban says:

"The fact of the matter is, if you want to be good, you don't have a lot of choices. It takes what it takes. You have to do what you have to do to be successful."

Many of us go into a new year setting new years resolutions. Most us know exactly what it takes to achieve those resolutions. Come February or March, and we are no longer on a path to achieving them, it's not because we forgot the path. It's because we allowed ourselves to believe that there are alternative paths.

That there are other choices.

The older I get, the more I'm coming to believe having choices is overrated. Maybe even destructive. Too often choices become distractions and not opportunities. Because deep down inside all of us, I believe we know the choices that are best for us in any given moment or season. Most of us know what it takes.

It's the choices outside of what it takes that get us to considering otherwise.

I encourage you to do what I'll be doing the next couple of days. I'm going to be writing down the two or three things I want to be good at next year. Then I'll write down the two or three specific things I'll have to do each day or week to be good at them.

I'm going to write down my personal it takes what it takes....

Maybe you want to be good at running. Or nutrition. Or going to the gym.

Maybe you want to be good at writing. Or relationships. Or parenting. Or your faith.

Maybe you want to be good at sending thank you cards or reading books or making the world cup soccer team.

I don't know what's important in your life. I don't know what dreams you've dreamed for a dozen New Years only to see them not come true. I don't know what, come December 31, 2023, will deliver you to a place of feeling good about getting good at the things you decided to get good at.

But I know what it takes to get you there. It takes limiting your choices to doing what it takes.

Write it down, like you have discovered an old family recipe. And cook it every day, like it's an old family recipe passed down for generations. This is not the year to experiment with the ingredients. To mess with a family tradition. It doesn't need a sprinkle of this or a dash of that.

It needs what it needs. And nothing else.

Make this the year of no other choices.

None other than doing what it takes.

#nochoice

Anyone care to guess what my 2023 phrase will be? 😊🤷‍♂️

​Some tell the Christmas story as the light that has come.

And that's a beautiful story.

Others tell the Christmas story as the light that will come again.

And that's a beautiful story.

But maybe the most beautiful Christmas story of all is the day after Christmas story. The day we can discover that long after the light came, and long before the light will come again, the light lives within.

Inside each of us is a manger scene. Filled with light. Born again each new day.

It is not a Christmas past story. Or a Christmas future story. It is a story of today.

Of light.

That we can shine on one another.

Long after the light came. And long after the light will come again.

We can be the Christmas story.

​Many of you know that behind the scenes I am working on a writing project. In many ways, the story that project tells began 16 years ago today. Recently, I wrote this entry in the story. It is worth sharing today.

*****

I remember his birth as powerfully as if it was my own. In many ways, it was.

She told me once, when Elliott was born you went on your own journey. And you didn't invite anyone to go along with you.

I look back and see truth in that. It's not like I planned a vacation and decided I didn't want any company. I just think it's possible to get well into a journey before you realize you are on one. You wake up one day and you're miles down the road, all alone, without a clue as to where you are and how you got there and from where you've come.

Not every journey is planned. Perhaps, very few of them are.

It was the middle of the afternoon on December 18th, 2006. I looked into his incubator in the NICU at Pitt Memorial Hospital in North Carolina. There was an older nurse standing next to me and she said, "there he is."

And indeed, there he was. Elliott Thomas Cartwright. My first born.

I stuck my hand through a hole in the incubator. Our eyes locked as he saw it coming. There is no other microscopic second in time that I remember with great clarity; I am writing this book about memories I recall with widely varying levels of clarity. That's the nature of memories. Time and experience can disrupt them and reconfigure them.

But that second - that stare - I remember it as if it's happening once again. Right now.

There was this feeling. And there was the voice.

The voice said, "now you know how I feel about you every single second of every single day of your life."

The voice was God. People ask when I tell that story, did you really hear God? And what they are really wondering is, are you suggesting you heard God's actual voice? Did you hear the kind of sounds one hears when they talk to one another about life over coffee at their local Starbucks?

No. I didn't. If I had heard a voice I could hear at Starbucks, then I don't think I would have considered it the voice of God.

All I know is that I heard it. And in the moment of feeling an unimaginable love for another human being, I heard a voice that made me feel an unimaginable love for myself. It wasn't like the love I felt for that child; it was something much stronger. It cut through decades of guilt and shame and hurt and anger and it said you are lovable.

There is something very powerful about feeling lovable for the first time. I wonder if that baby in the incubator was feeling that as we stared at one another.

Was he feeling love?

I didn't know it then, but the voice of God was inviting me on a healing journey. I didn't know it then, but I accepted God's invitation. I accepted the chance to heal my relationship with humanity, and with God.

I don't think I ever knew that humans could heal together. If I knew it, I had never experienced it. Maybe that's why I traveled the journey alone. Maybe that's why it would be a decade into the journey before I discovered that humans can not only heal together, but that's one of their greatest strengths.

A strength gifted to us by the God who wants us to be constant reminders to one another that He feels unimaginable love for us every single second of every single day. He created us - humans - specifically for that reminder. Healing may be the official voice of that reminder.

The reminder shows up in an incubator, but along the way healing often loses its voice and it is hurting that takes over the conversation. Hurting one another.

But it is never too late. That's the reminder. It is never too late to show up and love one another back together again.

I've discovered that on this healing journey. A journey that began sixteen years ago. A journey that many days feels more beginning than end. More broken than fixed. More wrong than right.

But I am forever grateful for the reminder that showed up as a baby in an incubator. Baby Elliott. The constant voice and constant reminder that we can love one another back together again. I can still feel that looking into that baby's eyes.

And more than ever, I am thankful for the baby in a manger. The baby who showed up to remind us that there is no more powerful way to love each other back together again than forever echoing to one another the voice of the God who never stops saying, oh how I see your beauty.

And oh how I love you....

Every single second of every single day.

I​'ve been taking a break from Facebook. Not to be off Facebook, but to refocus my writing energies. To take on a project I've long  needed to but couldn't for many reasons.

The break hasn't felt like a break. I told a friend it's much easier to write the stories around you than it is to drill up the stories within you. But there comes a time when the stories within feel like they are eating you alive, taking fiery dragon size chunks out of your soul, and truth becomes an urgent leap for a life preserver.

I wrote this one of the first days of this project:

We are born with dragons. In the moment of birth, life becomes a conflict of us against the dragons.

In some childhoods, the dragons grow and breathe a forever inferno that sears the heart and the soul and the mind of the dragon's captive. And yet, in more hopeful spaces, the dragons are slain. And the slayer is always truth.

All my life, I had lived out this battle between me and my dragons. All my life, I had felt a searing pain with no idea where it was coming from. How on earth does a man unknowingly have dragons living within him? And how on earth is it, that in a world so vast, it would ultimately be a complete stranger who would introduce him to them.

I don't know the answer to those questions. They are buried somewhere in the truth. And although I have a deep longing to speak that language - the language of truth - it is still a struggle.

It is still an exploration.

In many ways, that is what this story is. It is my attempt to learn and practice the language of truth. To grab hold of and never let go of the mighty weapon that truth can become in our lives.

The weapon we can lift high above our heads and plunge once and for all into the fiery mouth of the dragon and kill the relentless pain that countless other weapons could never manage to kill.

My writing project is far from complete. The more I write the more I know that. But I felt called to share that piece of the project. A calling that comes with a strong and heartbreaking sense of urgency.

Last week, I was in a work meeting. Some of our consultants shared data from a survey that was conducted among young adults in Virginia last year. Young people who are 18-25 years old.

The data showed that young people are still using a lot of drugs and alcohol. The most startling part about that is they are starting younger than ever.

But here are the heartbreaking numbers. Numbers I wish would take away the collective breath of every living person.

Of the 5,000 young people who responded, almost half of them said they were so sad or lonely or depressed at some point the previous year that they couldn't do their life - school, work, relationships - for at least a 2 week period.

Further, 65% of them said that if they had something hard going on in their life, they didn't feel like they had anyone they could talk to about it.

Half of them desperately depressed, more than half of them with no one to talk to about that. We have an epidemic of young people walking around being eaten alive by their dragons.

Yesterday, I saw the story of a man people call tWitch. I myself wasn't very familiar with him or his work. But it was clear he was dearly loved by the outside world.

I found myself wondering yesterday, what is it he couldn't tell the outside world that so dearly loved him? What story did he have that couldn't be translated into truth. What story had he held onto until it could not longer be held a second longer?

I strongly support suicide lines. And therapy. And checking in with friends and loved ones. And reminding people that they will be missed.

But I need everyone to know, all of those things are helpful, but quite often they don't slay dragons. It's very risky to outsource dragon slaying.

Because dragons are slayed in the middle of deep and loving human connection. WE - WE are each others' dragon slayers.

Dragons are slayed when we become lovingly curious about each others truths. A curiosity so deep that we are willing to slam on the brakes of our lives and listen. Not tomorrow or this weekend or when we have a little more free time. But right now.

Dragons don't operate out of convenience. I assure you of that.

Dragons are slayed not out of obligation, but out of intense desire. An intense desire to slay someone's dragons as much as they want them slayed.

A desire not only open to but inviting of truth. Truth - the universal language of dragon slayers.

I don't know if we see it or not; it scares me to death that I don't believe we do. But we live in a world that is largely hidden from the truth.

I know, how can that be? We have a billion media outlets sharing the truth. We have social media platforms hosting billions of contributors sharing the truth. We have thousands of religions sharing the truth. Politicians and non-profits and corporate executives sharing the truth.

Truth is everywhere.

You can believe that, until you look around and see a world disappearing before your eyes. The famous and the not so famous. And they are all taking the ultimate truth with them. A truth they didn't know how to tell because truth is such a hard language to learn and speak.

Until it eats you alive. Like a dragon.

You will be with someone who has dragons today. I promise you that. You will be face to face with them. Let them know you speak the language of truth.

Let them know the truth you speak and hear looks like love and acceptance and holding. Holding on to one another as you watch dragons die.

There is no more difficult but beautiful kind of holding.

65% of our young people say they have no one to talk to when they have something hard going on. Dragons love those numbers; humans die because of them.

WE cannot afford to outsource dragon slaying; dragon slaying is a WE thing and WE must hold each other and lovingly invite and honor the language of truth. Each others truth.

Or we will watch it disappear, faster and faster, and take with it too many that we all deserve to have with us just a little longer.