​I was under the weather yesterday, so it became the perfect day to finish re-watching the television series Lost. This second time through, it hit me differently. There was more emotion. I was crying when it finished. Not because the characters were leaving, but because this time I got what the characters were trying to tell me.

I mean, I really got it.

Maybe because it is Holy Week. There are a lot of parallels to Holy Week in lost.

And more importantly, I think, is I've done a lot of work the last ten years finding myself, which started with fully discovering just how lost I'd been.

Sometimes you need to know you are lost before you can ever feel found.

I've realized in this re-watching, that is what island did in Lost. It forced them to admit they were lost. At first, physically—plane wreckage scattered across sand, smoke billowing, people screaming for help. But eventually—and far more painfully—it revealed just how lost they were emotionally.

Spiritually.

Internally.

And what struck me most this time through is how deeply adverse childhoods are woven into their stories. Nearly every character’s pain could be traced back to the unmet needs, the traumas, the shame, or the silence they experienced growing up.

Jack was still trying to prove to his father that he was good enough.

Kate was still running from the guilt she couldn’t escape.

Locke was desperate to matter to anyone who would claim him.

Sawyer was shaped by a single moment of childhood trauma he couldn’t outrun.

Ben was raised in a world that never truly nurtured him—so he became a master manipulator just to survive.

And isn’t that all of us?

Because of the work I do professionally, and the work I continue to do on me personally, I've come to say that life is us, knowingly or unknowingly, wrestling with our childhoods out loud with one another. Our deepest hurts, fears, and longings don’t stay behind in the past. They travel with us—buried in our stories, disguised as personality, masked as strength, or tunneled deep inside us beneath our addictions, perfectionism, or control.

But the island literally went into the tunnels of their inner worlds and brought them to life. It didn’t cause their brokenness. It revealed it. The real wreckage wasn’t the plane—it was what they carried with them long before they ever boarded it.

And in that way, the island wasn’t just a setting. It was an invitation.

A place where people couldn’t run anymore. A place where ghosts came to life. A place where they were given a choice: face the pain, or let it destroy them. Some chose power. Others chose love. Some chose control. Others chose surrender.

And when they did the hard work of facing what they spent their lives avoiding—healing came. Not all at once. Not easily. But it came. In community. In forgiveness. In sacrifice. In finally letting go.

There’s one scene I can’t stop thinking about. Jacob, the island’s mysterious guardian, is handed a cup by his mother. She says, “You are now like me.” It felt like a sacrament. Like communion. And maybe it was.

Because he then passes the cup to Jack. Jack to Hurley. A passing down not of perfection, but of people willing to carry the light for others. Willing to protect a place where others could still be found.

And maybe that’s our calling, too.

Not to escape our pain. Not to erase our childhood. But to become protectors of spaces where healing can happen. Where people can finally stop running. Where what was broken can be seen, held, and slowly made whole.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence I was finishing up Lost during Holy Week. Because Easter isn’t just about resurrection after death. It’s about the invitation to finally face what’s broken in us so that we can be made new.

And sometimes, that begins with an island.

With landing in a place where there is no longer any doubt that we are lost.

Because it is there, where we finally admit that we are lost, where resurrection and new life begin.

​One of the main reasons I gravitate towards and embrace the Christian story is because all of the characters in the story - save one - are imperfect.

Many of them quite imperfect.

Like me.

There are days I can get to wondering, what on earth use can I possibly be with all of my imperfect baggage.

In the bible there is a story about a guy named Peter. He once pulled Jesus aside and read him the riot act for telling people he was going to die and then raise from the dead in three days.

Easter.

It's ironic, isn't it, the imperfect one scolding the only perfect one to ever live for sharing his Easter plan, the only plan ever devised to fully and totally redeem the imperfect one's imperfections.

And mine.

I am reminded in this Easter season, in the midst of beating myself up for my imperfections - in the midst of too frequently doubling down on my chase to become more perfect - that the Christian story isn't a Christian story at all without our imperfections.

I don't say that as justification - as motivation - to rest easy in my imperfections, but rather I say it as a reminder to rest easy in the arms of the one who once and for all made my imperfections a reason for love, and not a reason to bail on love.

The way of the world quite often IS to bail on one another in response to each other's imperfections. But in this Christian story, this man named Jesus, the perfect one, decided our shared imperfections were the perfect reason to be murdered on a cross on the way to pouring his loving blood into our imperfections.

Not to scold us - but to invite us.

We often make each other's imperfections a reason to hide. But Jesus longs for our imperfections to be the reason we come out of hiding.

Peter went on to have quite the influence on the early church, an influence that carries on to this day.

An influence not built on him finally reaching perfection, but an influence built on him finally believing in the story he once scolded the perfect one for even telling.

A story meant to help me realize that I too can have influence. Not in spite of my imperfections, but through them.

​It is easy to become a greedy person, a greedy family, a greedy country, when you come to believe anything that you have is actually yours to begin with.

Jesus was teaching to a group of people one day. A man in the crowd interrupted Jesus and commanded him, "teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me."

I’ll tell you, be careful interrupting Jesus; he is likely to come at you with some uncomfortable truth. And it will often come in the form of a story.

A story like this one:

***
“The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’

“Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’

“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’

“This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”

***
I love how Jesus started that story – “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest.” Jesus is making it clear the harvest came from the ground and not from the man. So, whose harvest is it, then?

One of the big challenges of being a Christian is accepting that everything I have is a gift from God. And maybe the bigger part of that challenge is owning the responsibility that comes with the gift. The responsibility of transforming your life from a gift receiver to a gift giver.

I often say, I believe one of the bigger shocks many Christians will receive upon entering the gates of heaven, to include me, will be when God unveils a bit of accounting on us all. One side of the ledger will reveal all that God has give to one, and on the other side of the ledger will be the proportion of that which one gave to others.

God is a gift giver not to create collectors of gifts, but to model how to give all that we have been given to others.

There are many things that stand in our way of that model. Not the least of which is keeping up with the Joneses. I will give you and your children, God, once my standard of living looks like the standard of living my friends around me have.

There is entitlement. I have worked hard for this. Fought for it. I have earned the right to decide what I will keep and what I will give away. Nothing stands in the way of ‘others’ focused thinking more than ‘I’ focused thinking.

Then there is isolationism. The idea that I need to first have what I need to survive before I can ever begin thinking about what someone else might need to survive. (The sad truth of that one is we often mistake our need to survive with our desire to thrive, and often, thrive quite nicely).

But God said, “You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself.”

Each morning, I thank God for as many things as I can think of that he has given me. I use that language specifically. I don’t say thank you for what I have but thank you for what you alone have GIVEN me.

Thank you for giving me my sons.

Thank you for giving me the gift of writing and communicating.

Thank you for giving me a job that allows me to feel fulfilled
.
Thank you for giving me this chance to share how grateful I am for all you have given me.

Were I to thank God for what I have, it would be easy for me to believe what I have is mine. But thanking God for what he has given me is my morning reminder that I am the generous recipient of many gifts. Every single thing I have has come to me by way of a gift.

And not because God wants me to be a grateful receiver (even as much as God loves gratitude), but because God is trying to groom a generous giver.

It’s said that it is better to give than receive. That is not a matter of principal, but it is actually the nature of the holy spirit that lives within us.

​Paige Bueckers came to the University of Connecticut in 2020 dreaming of winning a national championship on the women's basketball team. Very few women with Bueckers' talent - if any - leave UConn without one.

But Bueckers' story didn't follow the storyline of many of the women who proceeded her.

2020-21 was a great season, but we all know the challenges that came with 2020. And for the UConn women, although Covid didn't stand in their way of having a great season - or Bueckers, who was named the player of the year - they came up short when it came to a national championship, losing in the final 4.

Then, during the 2021-22 season, Bueckers suffered a torn meniscus and missed 19 games. She came back late in the season, but wasn't herself. The team eventually lost in the national championship game.

Along comes 2022-23, and again, Bueckers season ended early and abruptly when she tore her ACL and missed the entire season.

In 2023-24, Bueckers stayed healthy and the team once again made it to the final four, where they lost to a Caitlyn Clark led Iowa team.

So here we are, 2024-25, Bueckers' fifth season at UConn, and she's still fighting for that National Championship dream come true.

I think knowing Bueckers' story explains the tears in my eyes as I watched UConn win the National Championship this past Sunday. You could almost feel Bueckers' fear of a story ending with her being the greatest UConn basketball player to never win a championship.

But that is not how the story ended.

Bueckers said about her journey, "He [God] sent me trials and tribulations, but it was to build my character; it was to test my faith. I just kept on believing. I did all I could so God could do all I can't."

In the post-game interview on the court after UConn won, Bueckers said, "We lean on God's strength here, and through God's power, for God's purposes. We're not doing this alone."

Steven Furtick says, the less we trust God the more we need details about the plan.

Bueckers could have gotten caught up in the details: Covid, injuries, heart-breaking defeats. Bueckers could have gotten caught up in the details and decided the details weren't leading her to the outcome she'd dreamt about.

She could have become discouraged.

But Bueckers didn't get caught up in the details. She stayed caught up in her trust.

Deep trust requires few if any details.

God told Noah to build an ark. And scholars estimate that Noah kept building for 50-75 years before that ark was completed. Noah continued faithfully building for decades, guided by God's promise rather than a clear timeline or understanding of the full plan.

Oh, how I have days when I need God's timeline. I need the details. I want to shove trust to the side of the road and have God give me a map that details EVERY road I will travel!!

But I look back on my life and see a timeline and details that don't much line up with any plans or visions I have had. Yet, here I am, right where I need to be in God's plan, right on time.

I love stories like Paige Bueckers. Stories that reveal that needing to know God's story for our life often stands in the way of us living God's most beautiful stories in our life.

Paige Bueckers kept showing up.

Showing up in trust not with a notebook full of details.

And in the end, the details she received were more beautiful than she ever imagined.

There's a lesson there for me.

Maybe there's a lesson there for you.

​I told a friend yesterday that rugs are no longer pulled out from beneath me. I told her that's because I no longer stand on rugs.

I was reflecting this morning on a group of people who had the rug pulled out from under them in the bible. In the book of Matthew, Jesus tells the story of a group of people who were hired by a landowner to work in his vineyard.

The landowner when out at 6am and agreed to pay the group he hired one denarius for a day's work. (The equivalent of a full day's wage for a common laborer or field worker). The landowner returned to the marketplace at 9am and hired another group of workers, promising to pay them what is right. At noon and 3PM and 5PM, the landowner once again went and found anyone willing to come work in the vineyard, promising again to pay them what was right.

At 6PM, the end of the work day, the landowner had the workers line up so he could pay them. He had the last ones hired line up first, which meant the group that had worked one hour was going to be paid first.

The land owner paid them a denarius.

Now, you can imagine the excitement of the workers at the back of the line, the group that got hired at 6AM and had worked 12 hours. I mean, they had to think they were about to be rich. You can just feel them doing the math in their heads.

1 X 12 = 😮💰💲

Then the first of the 6AM workers stepped forward. Exhausted from the long day or work but excited for what was about to be given to them. And the landowner paid the worker one denarius, as agreed upon when they were hired, and the very same as the one hour group.

The bible tells us, "When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’"

And the landowner responded, "‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’"

My guess is the 12-hour workers were feeling like the rug had been pulled out from beneath them. Not because it HAD BEEN, but because they created expectations in their own minds they really had no reason to create.

I have created external expectations in my life at times, that's for sure. And often, because those expectations haven't lined up with my reality, my sense of stability and fairness has been shaken. For the longest time, in the aftermath, I pointed my 'grumbling' at people in my life, and to be honest, quite often, I pointed my grumbling at God.

How can I be this good person, God, and them be that bad person, God, and yet they have all that goodness and I'm stuck with all this ugliness? Doesn't seem quite fair, God.

And God has reminded me, over and over, that although my mind can get fixated on the expectations of a merit based economy, God's economy is built on grace and on divine generosity.

God has reminded me, don't stand on the unstable rug of expectations, assumptions of fairness, and merit-based reward, but rather, find steadiness in something deeper and unshakable - grace, unconditional acceptance, a peace detached from external validation.

We can’t truly be at peace if we anchor our worth or stability to things that can shift unexpectedly. Instead, peace and security come when we "stand" on something unchangeable and unconditional—like God's generous grace and our own inner knowing that our worth doesn't hinge on outcomes or comparisons.

We are one of two people in the story that Jesus told. We are the people at the back of the line who feel cheated in some way. Or, we are the people in the back of the line celebrating a generous God, whose grace is unending.

Whose grace looks the same for the front and the back of the line.

Our peace gets robbed when we start to expect something more because of where we are standing in line.

So today, I try to avoid imagining my place in any line. But when I do, when I do find myself imagining a place in line, I do everything I can to leave my rugs behind.

​One of the greatest consequences of losing our connection to God is replacing it with a stronger connection to our labels.

Labels other people assign us.

Labels we assign ourselves.

God never labels, God names. God names us son or daughter. God names us according to the unique gifts he has given each of us.

If I truly listen to God call me, he will call me son, writer, compassionate, healer.

But when I grow distant from God, and there have been periods in my life when I have kept God at a great distance - there are days I still permit that distance - but when there is that distance, the labels I replace my names with are often much uglier.

They often sound like quitter, drunk, wasteful, divorcer, irresponsible, underachiever.

You get the picture.

And when it comes to my faith, my connection to God, it’s a vicious circle. I allow labels to sneak into my life because I allow distance in my relationship with God, and then it’s the labels that make me question why God would want anything BUT distance between me and him.

So the distance grows greater.

It's why I know labels are from the devil, the enemy, the dark side of life – however you choose to label that part of nature. Because what greater weapon could an enemy of God have than to convince us that God sees us as we often label us?

What greater weapon could the enemy have than to convince us that God actually sees us as the people around us label us?

I want to caution you against labels. Print them if you must. Stare at them. But don’t for a second even think about slapping them on you. You are a package that God has lovingly named: son, daughter, gifted. You are worthy of so much more than a label.

God doesn't even see the labels we attach to ourselves or permit others to attach to us. God sees right through them and wants to love away the hurt and hopelessness and depression that often comes with those labels.

God sees right through the labels and shouts our names.

The names he has given us.

God longs to destroy our connection to our labels and strengthen our connection with him.

That happens best when we listen to our names and not assign ourselves labels.

Print them if you must. But please, don't attach them.

​I had coffee with a dear friend yesterday. We've traveled similar roads in life. We still do. It's why our conversations can go in unexpected directions.

Yesterday was no exception.

"Do you love yourself," she asked.

The question - seemingly - came from out of the blue. Seemingly because very little actually comes from out of the blue.

With little hesitation, I told her, yes. I do.

She continued on with our conversation, but as she talked I found myself wrestling with an answer that came with too little thought.

Do I love myself?

When she was done talking, I told her that I think I need to correct myself. Maybe I don't love myself, but I no longer hate myself, and for me that's more than enough.

For me, maybe not hating myself is the same as love. I know it is way more than I ever expected. Or felt like I deserved.

It's been a journey. Not hating myself has followed the pathway of me coming to understand myself. I used to understand myself solely by things I had said and done. Now I know all of those things have things beneath them. Nothing I have said or done has been said or done in a vacuum.

All stories are preceded by stories. Too often we judge one another based on the stories we see, sometimes without ill-intent, because we can not see the stories that preceded those stories.

I told my friend that the most powerful part of ceasing to hate myself is it opened wide the door of possibility that God did not hate me either. I had always been taught that God loves me no matter what I've done, but that is very difficult to accept when YOU hate you because of all that you have done.

You come to know that God's greatest gift - God's greatest avenue to loving me - is knowing and understanding all the stories that came before the stories I once hated most about me. God lives inside those stories, with a loving embrace like no other, those stories I have sworn to secrecy.

Sworn to secrecy from God and others and mostly, myself.

The other powerful part of this journey: once you no longer hate yourself, and once you know that God truly does not hate you, all because he understands (which is not the same as excuses) the hardest parts of us - our most damaging choices and paths - it opens the door for us all to exchange our hatred of others for understanding of others.

I heard someone say at a conference this week, "we should meet others with compassion and empathy for stories we will likely never hear."

That, honestly, has been very challenging for me this week. People around me are making choices that are quite frankly impossible for me to excuse.

I've had to remind myself this week that my mission in life these days isn't about finding ways to excuse the things people say and do that I personally find inexcusable, my mission is to try to understand those things.

My mission is to try to understand that the stories that are challenging my life were preceded by stories that were challenging to those who are behaving in ways I have a hard time excusing.

I am better than ever at that mission because I came to understand there are many things in my life for which there are no excuses. But as God has reminded me, frequently, not one of those things is not open to his understanding.

Maybe the hardest part about understanding God is feeling that his love indeed transcends all the things that I have forever hated about me.

Maybe that is the hardest part about loving myself - and others - having a kind of love that transcends choices and behaviors that I hate.

I don't know that I will ever get there - at least not to the place God is with it. He is God for a reason.

But I know I am on the right track.

My friend asked me, "do you love yourself?"

I am still not entirely sure, but I AM entirely sure I no longer hate myself. And for me, that is a beautiful start. If I get no further than that, ever, it will be a more beautiful place to live than I could have ever imagined living.

​"I wish this post-divorce weight would just go away."

I have felt that at times the last 5 years.

Sometimes intensely.

There's a guy in the bible who gets it. Intensely.

His name was Jacob.

Jacob had a favorite son, Joseph, which deeply angered his brothers. Jealous of their father's special love for him, the brothers plotted to get rid of Joseph. They tricked Jacob into believing Joseph had been killed by a wild animal, while secretly selling him into slavery.

Their jealousy and deceit left Jacob heartbroken, convinced he'd lost the son he loved most.

Twenty-two years later, during a great famine, Joseph's brothers traveled to Egypt seeking food, not knowing Joseph had become a powerful leader there. When Joseph revealed himself, the brothers were shocked and terrified. But Joseph forgave them, recognizing God's greater plan. Overwhelmed, the brothers returned home and told their father, Jacob, the unimaginable truth—Joseph was alive!

Jacob was skeptical. He'd carried the weight of grief all these years. How could it even be possible that Joseph was alive?

Then the bible tells us: "But when they (the brothers) told him all the words of Joseph, which he had said to them, and when he saw the wagons that Joseph had sent to carry him, the spirit of their father Jacob revived."

Sometimes we are too focused on the weight of our problems to see the wagons God has sent to us. Sometimes we are too focused on eliminating our weights to realize God's not on board with eliminating our weight, but rather he wants us to get on board with his desire to help us carry them.

When we put our faith in our weight and not in our God, we can miss the wagons.

When I put my faith in my weight and not the wagons God has parked outside my window, I can miss...

Unexpected friendships or supportive connections: People God placed in my path to offer support or encouragement, connections I am sure I've overlooked or undervalued at times.

Moments of quiet reassurance: The gentle reminders on my walks and hikes or quiet times where God whispered that I'm not alone—even when life is feeling chaotic or uncertain.

Opportunities that are constantly emerging from my hardship: Invitations to speak, write, or connect with others specifically because of my experiences, turning pain into purpose.

My own personal growth and resilience: New perspectives and deeper empathy, signs that God has been quietly reshaping me, even when outward circumstances don't always feel like they are being reshaped the way I'd like them to be.

Deeper bonds with my two boys: Conversations that feel like a stronger relationship is coming alive through our shared challenges.

I know our weights are real.

I know they are heavy, for sure.

But they can also be blinding. They can blind us from seeing the wagons God has sent to help carry our weights.

Not carry them away.

Not make them disappear; we will always be carrying ALL of us all of our lives. Divorce will ALWAYS be a weight I carry.

But God isn't afraid of my weight. In fact, I suppose in some ways God delights in our weights. He sees weight as an opportunity. Because it's in our weights that we are best positioned to see all the wagons that only God can send to help carry them.

Best positioned, that is, when our faith is in the wagons rather than the weight.

​I was in Chesapeake today speaking to school counselors about trauma and bullying, two topics quite intertwined.

Before speaking, and before introducing me, a young lady addressed the audience.

She told them she was glad to be back; it was her first day back on the job after a bit of a layoff. She told them how much she appreciated their cards and texts and phone messages. She told them she was thankful for their prayers, "they carried me", she said.

She told them her doctor asked her before starting her treatments if she had a strong support system. She responded to the doctor: oh, you have no idea, doctor.

I didn't know in the moment what she was going through, but her sense of connectedness with the room was overwhelming. Beautiful even in what felt like heaviness. It made it hard to get up and follow her brief welcome back moment.

At lunch I went up to her and told her that I had no idea what she was battling, but she could welcome me to her prayer chain. Stage 4 blood cancer she told me, but with a spirit and body that seemed every bit as healthy, if not healthier than mine, she said "I've got this."

You never know who you will encounter in a day - who God has decided you NEED to encounter in a day - but I needed to encounter this beautiful human in eastern Virginia.

I needed reminded that there is indeed great power in letting people know that we are praying for them. Sometimes people believe that before they believe God hears and answers them.

And I needed reminded, because I confess there are still days here and there when I do doubt it, but standing in her presence, I had no doubt whatsoever that - I've got this.