​Last night, Elliott sent me a picture out of the blue, his first football game as a student at Virginia Tech.

On the surface it would appear to be just another snapshot of a ruckus Lane stadium, the crowd, the moment. But the picture was more masterpiece than snapshot; snapshots can't find the deepest parts of one like this picture did.

There’s something about surprise gestures like this. They remind us we’re being thought of, even when we don’t ask. They open a window into our kids’ world - what they’re seeing, feeling, living. For a moment a simple picture bridges the miles between Short Pump and Blacksburg.

The truth is, I needed that bridge. You worry about your kid when they go off to college. And maybe I worry a little bit extra because when I went off to college I really went off - and in many ways my life since then has been a giant fight to get back on.

It's also true that Elliott's birth was probably the biggest victory in that fight to get back on - a light in a dark life came on. I've never depended on that kid for that light, but I have sure treasured it.

I think that’s why when his picture came through joy swelled in a way that feels bigger than the picture itself. It’s not just the stadium lights or the maroon shirts in the stands, it’s the message behind it: “Dad, I wanted you to see this. I wanted you to be part of this moment with me.”

It strikes me that these small, simple ways of saying “I’m thinking of you” are missing in many relationships. We wait for the big conversations, the grand gestures, or the perfect timing, when most of the time what we really need is just a simple reminder that we’re on someone’s mind.

Is there a greater gift in life than to know we are on the minds of those whose minds we long to be on? Is there any easier gift to offer?

Connection isn’t as complicated as we sometimes make it. It lives in the ordinary. A picture. A quick text. A simple “I thought of you.”

Those are the moments that remind us we belong to one another. And they are never as small as they seem.

It is the thought that counts, they say.

Sometimes there is little that counts more.

​He goes off to college today.

In the earliest seconds of his life, when they were fighting to SAVE his life, college seemed so far away.

As I changed the first diaper of my life, good Lord did college seem so far away!!

When he took his first steps and said his first words, college seemed so far away.

When we were playing ball in the yard and then when he caught his first pass on the field, college seemed so far away.

When he started high school, when he was suddenly holding a driver's license, college seemed so far away.

Shoot, even as I sat and Facetimed him in a McDonald's parking lot yesterday, college seemed so far away.

But it is not far away.

Today college is here.

I have joked with Elliott a lot this past year: "don't do it dude - don't grow up - I am telling you this whole adult thing is not all it's cracked up to be."

I have said that with such mixed emotions.

I know in that joke (or maybe not a joke) is the voice of a dad who has not treated the whole adult thing well, and nor has the whole adult thing always been a devoted friend to him. But yet, I also say it with great joy and great hope and great pride, for this kid - my kid - enters this adult world from an entirely different starting point than I entered it from.

He does not take with him many things from his childhood that I took from mine, things, it turns out, that will always want to make a war of adulthood.

As thankful as I am for things he will take to college, I am equally thankful for that which will not go with him.

I am also thankful that one of the greatest declarations of peace upon my adulthood was hearing the words: "your baby is going to be just fine." If I were to know I'd have to experience every moment of my adulthood war all over again just to experience that one precious moment of peace, I would do it.

I would do it without anything near a second thought.

For that little baby goes off to college today. And I don't need him for even a moment to redeem my adulthood - that mission has long been accomplished.

No, all I need is the chance to say thank you.

Thank you, God.

For as far away as college has always felt to me, you've always known this day was right here and now. You have guarded so many of his steps along the way. You have guarded so many of MY steps along the way.

In your quiet way, you have always encouraged me to treasure every moment, and I have. So that today I don't sit here wondering where the time went, I simply say thank you for that time.

What a gift. Every second.

For sure there have been moments along the way when I have not been there - and today will be another one of them - but you will be, God.

That is not just 'a' comfort, it is THE comfort.

My comfort.

For I know it will be true of his adulthood what has been true of mine, that no matter what, you never walk away. There is never an adulthood war too big for you. In the midst of all darkness, you remain a light.

A light pointing to college.

To adulthood.

To eternal life with you.

It all seems so far away, until it's not. And in that I find great joy and great hope.

Go get em baby Elliott.....

Welcome to adulthood, and don't say I didn't warn you 😊❤️

​Yesterday, I led a training for preschool teachers in Stanardsville, Va. I told them they’re my favorite audience. Not because their work is cute or simple, but because so much of what I teach about trauma, resilience, and connection starts where they spend their days: with our pre-kindergarten (pre-k) little ones.

In those years, the brain is building at a pace we never see again - more than a million new neural connections fire every second in the early years, wiring how we feel safety, how we reach for people, and how we recover when life knocks us down. The architecture gets built “from the bottom up,” and the quality of our earliest relationships helps determine whether we go through life with a foundation that is sturdy or fragile.

I told them I have a kid heading off to college this week, and yet I remain most grateful for his preschool teachers. They didn’t just teach letters; they taught him how to be with other humans. They practiced the tiny, everyday rituals that keep our nervous systems from learning the world is a place to fear. When I speak about healing today, I’m really tracing lines back to rooms filled with blocks, picture books, songs, and adults who knelt to meet a child’s eyes.

Sadly, before I started my presentation, the director of the program acknowledged a shrinking number of young people served. Cuts in state and federal funding, low wages for staff, and unreasonable poverty guidelines that are used to determine eligibility have all contributed.

This is sad to me, given my own personal history with pre-k and the endless data that supports the 'head start' quality pre-k participation offers children, families and our culture in general.

So often the children who most need relationally rich preschool experiences are too often the last to get them. That’s not a moral failing of individual parents or teachers; it’s a systems problem we continue to seem unwilling to solve.

At the end of our training yesterday, I led the team through various scenarios they might encounter with their little people. They used a relational framework I provided them to guide small group discussions about how they might go about solving the challenges outlined in the scenarios.

After we finished our discussions about their resolutions, I reminded them that when they help repair a conflict stemming from a shove at the block table, they are helping young people rehearse future apologies that will save friendships and marriages.

I told them I hope they get applauded for that half as much as they applaud their 3 year-olds.

My son is packing and ready to head off to Virginia Tech tomorrow. But when I trace the through-line of his life, I find it in the preschool years: a teacher who noticed when he went quiet, a class that sang the cleanup song until belonging felt normal, a director who sent home a note celebrating who he was becoming.

Not every child gets that experience.

That’s the sentence I can’t shake.

If we want to change the trajectory of a generation, if we want fewer adolescents swallowed whole by anxiety, fewer young men chasing belonging in the wrong places, fewer families crushed under the weight of “going it alone” - we can start where the brain starts. We can make sure every child has a safe, steady place to practice being human, and every grown-up in those rooms has what they need to stay and do the work.

As a culture, we are too prone to responding to the crisis at the end - when a crisis becomes too big to ignore. Yesterday, I was reminded that the best place to respond to the crisis is going back to the beginning. And, in becoming a culture that truly believes every child DESERVES that beginning - not understanding that is the REAL too big to ignore crisis.

To all the beautiful people at Kiddie Kingdom, Inc. - thank you. He goes off prepared to tackle the many challenges ahead. I will never forget where the heart of that preparation began.

Thank you.

​Recently, upon exiting the Pantherian roller coaster at Kings Dominion, out of breath and feeling like I'd just emerged from a blender, I took a long look at that coaster, and then at my kid, and I said to him, "someone designed that thing to inflict upon us exactly what it just inflicted upon us."

He looked at the coaster, stared, and said, "yep."

I did a little research. It actually takes 8,000 to 10,000 hours to DESIGN and PLAN to build a roller coaster like the Pantherian before building it ever begins.

In other words, it takes a lot of thought and intention on one end to produce what ultimately feels like total chaos on the other end.

It's interesting. I asked a friend lady how she's been doing. She said, "it's been a roller coaster ride." In continuing our conversation, it became clear to me that 'roller coaster ride' was analogous for chaotic.

I'm not a big believer that God designs our chaos. But, I am a HUGE believer that what feels like chaos to us feels much more like order to God. I am a HUGE believer that what feels like wild and twisted randomness to us, looks and feels much more like a straight and tranquil path home to God.

Roller coaster chaos can often feel like a bunch of engineers got together and threw a bunch of steel together over drinks. Maybe lots of them.

But nothing could be more opposite of the truth.

Life can feel chaotic. Sometimes very chaotic.

But that doesn't mean it is.

​I apologized to one of my son's for something the other day. In that apology I told him, you know, when I die, there may be people who will reflect on my brokenness. And I'm okay with that. I've never hid from my brokenness. But I hope you, my son, will simply remember that I never quit.

I never quit showing up willing to deal with whatever might come my way in the day ahead.

All my life I have watched a world try to master its control over the outcomes of life. To become all knowing. Because once you fully control and know the future, you are fully prepared to deal with it.

To survive it and thrive in it.

While it's true that we have certainly made some intellectual gains as a culture over my lifetime, have we really made any gains at all in being able to control the future? I mean, as an individual reading this, are you any more certain about what tomorrow will bring your way than you were thirty years ago?

I mean, REALLY certain?

I am not.

And that's okay. Because I learned long ago the secret to life isn't knowing the future but being willing to tackle with everything you have the unknowns that will inevitably come with it. Because that is the most predictable thing about the future: you really have no idea what it holds.

It is wise, certainly, to plan for the future. But it is wiser yet to grow strong and persistent enough to tackle a future that doesn't show up according to your plan.

Too often, we get set back weeks, years, even a lifetime lamenting a future that didn't show up looking the way the future was supposed to look. But the reality is, an unexpected future isn't a surprise, it is life. An unexpected future isn't a reason to quit, but an invitation to take newfound strength into a future that will NEVER arrive as expected.

I love hearing people's resilience stories. Stories of how they kept going when life tried to talk them out of it. Those are stories I can relate to. Find inspiration in.

I find those stories more useful to me than the stories of people who've created lives that come with no surprises. Because the reality is, those aren't stories at all, they are fairy tales.

Surprises don't upend life, they define it. The less we understand this, the more at risk we are for the upending.

I expect that unexpected challenges will show up in my life this week. I also expect that will make something unexpected out of them.

That is my life.

That is resilience.

​I recently listened to Dan Rather interview Billy Bob Thornton. Thornton described his father as abusive, but still expressed appreciation for him - not because the harm didn’t matter, but because he could see the values his father was trying to instill, even if he had no idea how to instill them.

I found it compelling that the weakness Thornton identified most in his dad's inability to transmit these values was his dad's inability to communicate.

It's true. When we don’t know how to communicate our values, we often resort to enforcing them. What could have been a conversation becomes control.

As a tangent I won't follow but don't want forgotten in my reflecting: are there broader implications here culturally? Have we become prone to looking for ways to enforce our values upon one another because we can't talk to one another about the values we hold within us?

But back to Thornton: I related a lot to his conversation with Rather.

I have personally wrestled with this most of my adult life. Trying to see through the destructive ways good values were transmitted into my life by good people who used a lot of bad ways to transmit them. And in most cases, because their lives were groomed by bad transmitters.

Should understanding and grace be strong enough to allow one to see through the bad to get to the good? Is it wrong that one appreciates in hindsight what one struggles to love in the here and now?

And me, even as I have gone out of my way not to transmit my own good values in bad ways, have my own ways been any better even if vastly different? Will I too have people in my life wrestling with the things with which I wrestle?

It does make me wonder, when I am questioning the value systems of people around me - because I do question - what is it actually that I am questioning?

Their values, or the systems in which they received them?

Because I have lived a life, and heard hundreds of stories of lives beyond mine, that often look like stronger reflections of the WAY values were instilled in them more than the nature of the values themselves.

I don't offer that as excuse - not for me and not for others - but I offer it as understanding.

Appreciation.

While acknowledging that appreciation doesn't often heal the wounds incurred at the hands of bad transmitters.

​I used to hear God say to me, "they call me father."

It sounded like bragging.

Arrogant.

Authoritarian.

Then I became a father. And now I too say, "they call me father."

Not because I am bragging. Or arrogant. Or want my sons to know who is in charge.

I say it because there are no more meaningful words in my life that I can possibly utter than, "they call me father."

I say it because there is nothing that has taught me more about life, nothing that has GIVEN me more life than "they call me father."

I say it because there is no greater form of love, no more powerful way that I have ever received it than "they call me father."

I used to hear God say, "they call me father."

Then one day God decided beyond the objections of my own indecisiveness that he wanted me to be able to say those very same words.

"They call me father."

They do, and because they do, there is nothing I am more grateful for than the chance to turn to God each and every day and say, thank you.

Thank you for the chance to call you father.

Happy Fathers Day for all who are blessed by the chance to say, "they call me father."

​Yesterday I said, "Hard conversations can indeed be hard to have, but no meaningful relationship will survive without them." I stand by that. But I was reminded yesterday afternoon that laughter is a personal assistant to hard conversations.

Elliott and I went to Kings Dominion yesterday and tackled the new roller coaster, the Rapterra: The world’s tallest and longest launched wing coaster. (We gave it a 9 out of 10 btw). And from the very second that ride launched us into a wild series of ups and downs and twists and turns, all I could hear was Elliott laughing.

Loudly.

You don't think about it in the moment, but there is something inherently soothing about your child's uncontrollable laughter.

Phycologist Alan Schore suggests that shared joy, especially between parent and child, is a critical building block of emotional well-being. It's a kind of interpersonal regulation - your kid's joy brings peace to you, and vice versa.

In trauma theory - the world where I spend a lot of time - laughter and joy is considered one of the clearest indicators of felt safety. When another close to us is laughing, our nervous system responds with contentment and calm.

I say all this because sometimes we overlook the real meaning and value of certain elements in relationships. Like laughter. And when you overlook the meaning you can also come to overlook the potential.

Sometimes when we are feeling down or anxious, we don't need a pill or a drink, we need a roller coaster ride with our kid.

Sometimes when life isn't feeling so fun in a relationship, we need to intentionally go do something that's going to be fun.

Be laughter.

We often struggle in relationships because we start looking for things outside of the relationship to make them work, when it's the inner gifts of a relationship that truly make them meaningful.

That bring contentment.

Like the gift of hard conversation.

Like the gift of laughter.

Like the gift of felt safety. 

​Elliott graduated high school yesterday. And for the better part of the last couple of years, I had no idea if I would be there to see it. Not because anyone was going to lock me out, but because I didn't know if I'd have it in me to break through the locks I felt like I'd have to break through to get in to see it.

There's a lot of things you don't know about divorce when you get divorced (much like there are a lot of things about marriage you don't know when you get married). And one of those things is the risk you run of becoming an outsider.

An outsider in friend groups.

And outsider in the town you spent 15 years in.

An outsider in your kids' lives.

I have been an outsider since my divorce. Whether that is truth or a feeling, whether I am to blame or someone else is, it really doesn't matter. At least not when it comes to things like attending a graduation.

Outsiders find little comfort in knowing why they are an outsider.

But I have had dear friends along the road of this journey encouraging me, and some expressing what I am sure many of you are thinking: You can NOT miss your son's graduation. You will regret it, they said. I would remind them that I am not one who lives with regrets, while knowing the decision to not attend might indeed be one regret that would haunt me forever.

A sweet friend reached out yesterday morning. The timing divine, I believe. Because even yesterday morning, even with the graduation ticket in hand, I felt on the edge of a panic attack. Even a mere few hours before the graduation, I had no idea if I could break through the locks.

I told her, you don't see it coming when they are kindergartners and you are imagining high school graduation day. You don't even consider to imagine feelings other than celebration. You surely don't imagine you will attend your son's graduation without any idea who will be sitting beside you. You don't imagine you will attend your son's graduation sitting among strangers feeling like a stranger.

My friend told me, I’ll be thinking of you. Everyone around you will be there with the same love and joy they have for a child out there. Feed off of that mutual energy.

And the panic left.

I walked into the graduation. Found a quiet corner high in the stadium seating where I could see it all without being seen. Still, the intense anxiousness was settling in. Then a woman comes bounding up the steps toward me. A stranger. A stranger with big floppy ears mounted on her head. And on the ears there were words: PROUD MAMA

"Everyone around you will be there with the same love and joy they have for a child out there. Feed off of that mutual energy."

The graduation rolled on. And for the first time, it felt like a celebration. Not just a ceremony. A shared joy between me and my son - and between thousands of friends and families and their kids. For that moment, I wasn’t an outsider.

I was a dad.

Afterward, I stood alone, leaning against a traffic barricade, watching graduates stream past in every direction. I started to wonder if Elliott had already come and gone. The outsider feeling crept back in.

Then I heard the magical words: "hey loser."

And there he was. My graduate. My hug.

Elliott knew I wrestled with this graduation. We had talked about it. When I mentioned I wasn't sure if I could come he tried to console me by saying he himself wouldn't go if he didn't have to. (I actually believe there was some truth in that).

But I knew Elliott would feel bad if I didn't show up. Not so much because I didn't show up, but because he would somehow come to believe he contributed to the reason I felt like I couldn't.

And that - in the end - was the regret I couldn't imagine living with.

I was sitting at home last night. Alone. Many hours after the graduation. I was sort of lost in processing the day. And the message alert sounds off from my phone. It was Elliott. And the message, just two words:

Love you.

I will keep that message forever. Yes, because it was like a very rare coin - just not many of them in existence in this world. But more, as a reminder.

A reminder that I am not an outsider. Not in the world that matters most to me.

I am grateful - SO grateful - for all of the friends who encouraged me along the road to this graduation (even those of you who did a little shaming and dragging).

Thank you.

And I promise right now, I won't make it as hard on you when the next one comes along in two years....😊

​It is possible, I suppose, for me to believe that life had no creator. That life is in one way or another an accident of sorts.

I don't believe that. But there is no great distance between those who do believe it and me who does not.

What I can't come to see as an accident, however, no matter how far my imagination allows me to go, is love. Love to me feels too far beyond an accident; love just had to overwhelm one so deeply that the one couldn't help but long to share it.

Couldn't help but re-create it.

I feel quite lucky to believe that, honestly. Lucky because I never wanted children and yet there he was, my firstborn, me staring at him just a few hours old, overwhelmed by something I had never in my life experienced.

Not like that.

Love.

And in the very midst of that wave, as if they were one in the same, the only thing I could think and feel was God. I didn't invited God into the emotion. I didn't intentionally ponder if this feeling was somehow connected to God. God simply showed up, barged in, as if dying to make sure I knew there is no difference in this thing I was feeling and the God who created it.

As if needing, in the most powerful way he ever had, to make sure I knew that my own life was a creation made out of God and this love.

It has been over 18 years since then. And today I will watch that first child walk across a stage and accept a high school diploma. There will surely be many emotions. But my intention will be to sift through them to find the one I most want to focus on.

Gratitude.

Gratitude, for even though in many ways I still have no idea what I believe about this life, I know beyond any doubt of my own what love is.

And I do know that if God created your life, he most certainly must love mine.

My life changed drastically just over 18 years ago. No graduation will add even a single thing to that. But it will indeed serve as a powerful reminder. A reassurance beyond any assurance one could ever see coming....

Love.

Love beyond anything I will ever be able to see as accidental.