​One thing I know about the stories people will share here on Facebook today: some of the stories will be stories about their lives, and some of them will be stories they will tell to protect them from the grief of facing the stories of their lives.

Dr. Curt Thompson says, "part of the ways we tell our stories the way that we do is to enable us to cope with our grief."

Sometimes we will see the things people share and think, they are pretending. Maybe that judgment is too simple. Maybe it's more on point to say they are coping.

There are parts of my childhood that were certainly good, that were healthy. And there are parts of it that were really unhealthy. For most of my life I protected myself from the unhealthy parts by simply telling myself the childhood story that it was ALL healthy.

I wrote hero stories about people who didn't always show up in heroic ways. I hid from my grief stories by telling myself stories that looked and felt much better than grief.

It's our nature. We are all story tellers. That can be a curse and that can ultimately be a cure.

When I got divorced a lot of people expressed disbelief. Some even said they were shocked. This was based on the stories they saw of my marriage online. The stories they saw of my marriage as it carried out in many offline gatherings. It turns out when at a young age you learn to tell made up stories that feel better than your real story, you use that skill - or coping mechanism - all of your life.

One can get really good at telling false stories. One can even get addicted to telling them. You never have to face the pain of the real world when you can tell stories of a world where pain doesn't exist. You don't have to reveal ugly stories when you can tell stories that are much more beautiful.

In that way, your false stories can become your alcohol or your drug.

Until the day when you become overwhelmed by the desire, the craving, for just one chance to live out your life as you. The non-fiction you. The unedited autobiography you.

YOU!

I have discovered the hardest part of living out my real story is saying no to the old stories. Saying no to the old stories means coming face to face with the stories those old stories were hiding, protecting me from.

It's like being sober and suddenly having to face the world drunkenness hides me from. Part of the challenge of being sober is giving up a substance, the other part, maybe the more difficult part, is facing the stories alcohol so kindly protects me from.

But on the other side of saying no, that's where reality lives.

Authenticity.

And even though living out my real life doesn't always look and feel as magical as the stories I have told myself and others at times to protect me from - hide me from - the challenges of my real life, there is a freedom in authenticity, in reality, that maybe in some ways is better than magic.

Magic requires people to buy into stories that aren't there; there's a lot of pressure that can in an instant become unbearable keeping up with those stories.

Freedom, on the other hand, comes when there are no expectations that anyone buy anything.

Freedom comes when the only expectation is I tell the story of me just as I am.

That's been a difficult place for me to get to, for sure. But writing the story of me has been infinitely easier than writing the stories of who I wished I was.

Or wasn't.

If you're struggling to tell yourself a new story about your life, the REAL story, maybe part of the struggle is not being able to say no to the old ones.

​I woke up yesterday morning and looked out at a brilliant sun rising over the ocean waves.

It made me quite happy.

It turns out, though, that when it comes to predicting how long I might live, what I do with that sunrise means more than what I feel looking at it.

A recent study (Which Predicts Longevity Better: Satisfaction With Life or Purpose in Life?) found that having a sense of purpose plays a more crucial role in promoting longer life compared to merely being satisfied with life.​

I have had a long week. Three days in a row I led 3-hour trainings in the morning and in the afternoon. That's exhausting, especially when you pour your heart and your passion into the trainings, which I do.

Driving two hours home yesterday, I don't know that I felt happy about my week, but I sure felt full.

Full of purpose.

The older I get, and the more studies I read, I come to believe that the greatest source of our collective unhappiness is our pursuit of happiness. The older I get, the more I wonder if happiness isn't a great distraction pulling us away from our purpose.

Don't get me wrong, I loved the feeling I experienced looking out at that sun. But if I had to make a choice, the sun or the trainings, I'd pick the trainings.

Maybe because I spent so much of my life without purpose, or at best, dabbling with purpose in the middle of an all out pursuit of all the ways life could satisfy me.

Which leads to a very destructive cycle.

Seek satisfaction. Wake up unsatisfied. Double down on search for satisfaction. Wake up more unsatisfied than ever.

All the while, purpose is following behind, waving frantically, I'm right here.

Satisfaction with life, well that's a hard calling to get out of bed for. Because life satisfaction is fickle. Some days the sun doesn't look quite so brilliant over those ocean waves.

But purpose, once you know that, you can be sure it's waiting for you every single morning you wake up. When you find your purpose, it quits following behind you waving and starts walking right beside you - a forever friend.

Purpose might leave you exhausted.

Purpose might even leave you feeling a bit unhappy at times.

But purpose will never stop being a reason to get out of bed in the morning. And really, is there a greater gift than having a reason to get out of bed in the morning?

And as a bonus, as the research shows, purpose actually increases our chances of having more mornings to get out of bed.

That's pretty satisfying to know 😊

​Our current federal administration, along with many state administrations following their lead, have banned and discouraged the use of many words.

One of them is trauma.

I met two full days with some beautiful humans in Farmville, Virginia this week. We all had a common denominator. Our lives have been greatly influenced by trauma.

Trauma is not a buzzword. Trauma is not a theory. Trauma is a biological response to our experiences in life. Trauma forever influences the way we see the world, the way we anticipate the world, the way we sleep or don’t sleep, and the way we do and don’t connect in relationship with the people around us.

I am one prone to saying, I don’t have near as much interest in knowing where you are as I am in knowing how you got there. In other words, tell me about the traumas in your life.

I am this way for two reasons.

One, I’ve come to know you have no idea who someone is if you don’t know what they have been through. I think of my own personal story, how for many years – decades, really - I presented an image of someone far more likeable than the person I was hiding from the world, than the person I was hiding from myself.

And two, as I evidenced once again this week, people are longing to talk about the hard stories they have lived through in life (hard stories – one of the creative ways people will reference trauma soon to avoid using language banned in our country). People long to talk about their hard stories because they are stories that have been lost in time.

Bessel van der Kolk, author of Body Keeps the Score, says trauma fragments the stories we tell about ourselves and our experiences. Because the brain’s narrative capacity is impaired during traumatic events, these experiences often become "lost" or inaccessible through traditional storytelling.

Van der Kolk's point is that trauma remains profoundly present until these stories—lost in silence, fragmentation, and timelessness—are reconnected and told, becoming part of a coherent personal history that one can acknowledge and ultimately own.

People long to have safe places to talk about their stories because those are the places where they find healing and repair. Because erasing the burdens of trauma isn’t as easy as erasing a word from our vocabulary.

Many therapists and counselors understand this.

Strong friendships and families and marriages are built on understanding this.

Many pastors and priests and spiritual leaders understand this, even if not nearly enough.

I am surprised, frankly, that more of our politicians don’t understand this. Afterall, it takes very little research to uncover the trauma – I mean, the hard stories – in their own childhoods. Stories very much influencing the way they respond to perceived threats in their worlds today.

Our shared traumas are very much at the root of our fears of one another, our lack of acceptance of one another, our deporting of one another, our anger and wars with one another.

Oh my, the billions upon billions of human beings that would be infinitely healthier if easing the burdens of our shared traumas was as simple as banning the word trauma.

But it is not. We will be discovering that as our words disappear, but the hurts keep growing.

Me, I will continue to show up in people’s traumas. I will write and speak into and about their trauma stories and mine. I will not be hindered from calling them what they are, because for many people, that is what allows them to feel seen and known for the very first time.

And trust me, THAT, that showing up, comes a whole lot closer to 'erasing' trauma than pretending it doesn't exist ever will.

​If the secret to life is indeed tied to depth—and I've come to believe more and more that it is—it explains a lot about some of the struggles in my life.

This week, I listened to a podcast that felt like a fantasy come to life. Rich Roll, whose book Finding Ultra inspired my desire to see how far I could push my body, interviewed Steven Pressfield, whose The War of Art poured fuel on the fire of my love for writing.

Listening to these two men talk about overcoming the very real and intimidating forces of resistance in our lives was powerful.

Pressfield said depth is the key to creativity. Acknowledging that Roll is an accomplished endurance athlete, he said the same is true of ultra-fitness—the key is depth.

Pressfield went on to say that anything we do for an hour is much different than if we do it for ten minutes.

I think about that.

I think about how we live in a ten-minute world. A world of shortcuts and surface-level exchanges. A world that rewards speed over substance. A world where we skim instead of sink deep.

But life’s most beautiful moments don’t happen in the shallows.

I think about my ultra-running experiences. Pressfield is right. I think about running the Georgia Jewel last September. I was out there for 13 ½ hours to cover 37 miles. The most beautiful hour of that experience—the hour where I learned the most about myself, about life—was hour 13. It wasn’t at the start, where I was fresh and eager. It wasn’t even in the middle, when fatigue set in. It was in the deep, when I had to reach beyond what I thought I had.

I think about my writing. Some days I sit here, and after five minutes, I want to quit. The words feel forced, the thoughts scattered. But if I keep going, if I stay in it, something shifts. Words don’t just come from my mind; they come from my soul. Writing gets deep.

I think about my work. My joy doesn’t come from crossing off the superficial tasks on my to-do list but from the deep work—learning, understanding, sharing. My fulfillment isn’t in the mechanics of a job but in the meaning found beneath it, in helping people navigate trauma, substance abuse, and mental health struggles.

And I think about relationships.

I wonder if the secret to a life-giving relationship is not found in a world of quick and endless likes, but in the deep places—face to face, sharing the hardest conversations, the truest stories, the rawest moments. The kind of moments where silence speaks, where tears are exchanged without embarrassment, where laughter echoes because it comes from somewhere real.

I wonder if joy in life comes not from relationships that skim the surface, but from those that plunge to the ocean floor.

And I wonder if my most meaningful connection to God is not found in reading the first chapter of my Bible reading plan this morning, but at the end of a prayer where I have let Him into my deepest wounds—my hurts, my regrets, my fears.

I wonder if my connection to God is strongest not in memorization or in the structured commandments, but in the depths of my soul, where He is not a distant judge but an ever-present love.

I wonder if Pressfield is right. Right about creativity and ultra-fitness, for sure. But more importantly, right about life. That the secret to life is deep.

And I wonder if, like me, many have missed out on that secret. We’ve lived on the surface, afraid to go under, afraid to let life—and people, and God—fully in.

Maybe we all need to resist a little more the temptation to live ten-minute lives when life’s truest meaning is found after an hour.

​A friend asked me recently if I dance. Hearing that question felt like being shocked with a strong current of electricity, and I quickly responded, "trust me, you'd never want to see me dance!"

Why not, she asked.

Because there is little I suck at more than dancing, I told her.

She looked at me and then said, "the point of dancing isn't to be a good dancer, it's to dance."

Those words lingered.

The point of dancing isn't to be a good dancer, it's to dance....

I do wonder, how much of the good in life do we miss out on for fear we won't be good at that something? How much good in life do we miss out on because we think the point of everything we do is to BE good at it?

I think about all the TikTok dance videos that pop up in my feeds. All clearly well choreographed, practiced, shared to showcase just how good one is at dancing.

I love watching people do things they are good at, it's inspiring, but having so many platforms available for us to see all the best of the good, does it inhibit us from tackling things we might enjoy, or that might be good for us, because we know we can never live up to TikTok?

I was a runner once. I still dabble in it from time to time 😊- but at my peak, if you ever wanted to find me in a race, you were well served to look to the back of the pack.

I ran a lot. Sometimes very far. But never very good, at least not as far as the awards ceremonies were concerned.

But running was good to me. It was good FOR me. It added something meaningful to my life that was missing when my life was missing meaning. Never once did I do it because I thought I'd one day be good at it, I always did it because I thought I might one day be healed.

Maybe we miss out on a lot of healing in life because we are waiting to be good at life.

Maybe we miss out on a lot of happiness in life because we're afraid we're going to fail at the things that might indeed make us feel happy when we're doing them.

Maybe dancing just to dance would make us happy; maybe happy and healing share a dance floor from time to time?

The world has plenty of people showcasing the things they are good at. Maybe the world needs a few more people showcasing things they do just because they CAN do them.

Do you dance?

It's a simple yes or no question.

Maybe we overthink the simple out of it too much.

Yes or no.

Just say yes.

​Most people view perseverance, hope, and commitment as virtues (because they are). Yet, there are times when clinging to these virtues keeps us from moving forward.

I have discovered, in some hard ways, that before a new beginning, there often has to be a necessary ending. That can look like ending an old mindset, a relationship, a job, or even a version of myself that no longer aligns with who I am becoming.

Who I am called to be.

I think sometimes we lack the courage to make necessary endings because too often endings are called failures.

Failed marriage. Failed job. Failed project.

The more we personalize our endings as failures, the longer we will hold onto situations that might be harmful for fear of being seen as a failure.

I have learned a hard lesson in life. I have spent a lot of time holding on to things that were in reality - holding on to me.

While I was holding on to things in the name of perseverance and hope and commitment, an evil force in the world was smiling - big - in recognition that those very things were holding me back from contributing real light and hope to the world.

Paul had to let go of his former identity as a Pharisee and a persecutor of Christians to become the great apostle who carried the Gospel to Gentiles.

Abraham had to leave his home, all of his people and belongings, to step into God's promise.

Jesus had to die to introduce everlasting life.

Richard Bach once said, "What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly."

There are times when we absolutely need to persevere, when we need to do everything in our power to heal the things that are fraying our commitments. Ending is not always the best alternative to doing the hard work of continuing.

But sometimes it is.

And I know, discerning the difference isn't easy. So how can I possibly know?

If prayer plays a role in your life, pray for clarity. Maybe talk to a pastor or trusted friend.

Differentiate between struggle and harm. Struggles are temporary, and if the relationship or situation is strong, you will likely be able to persevere through a struggle. If the foundation is not strong, a struggle may turn to harm; poor mental or physical health, constantly feeling depleted - depleted of energy and hope - or a compromise of one's well-being in general.

Is not making an ending about fear? Fear of the unknown. Fear of the hard path and growth ahead? Fear is rarely a great fuel for decisions.

I would also play out the end game of perseverance. If I persevere through this, what is the best-case scenario? What is the best way this possibly ends?

Also, what is the worst-case? And how do those scenarios align with who I long to become?

This is not an easy message. So many of us have been raised to believe that the brave and right thing to do is hold on.

And indeed, sometimes it is.

But there are times, I am here to assure you, that the brave thing to do looks like an ending. Sometimes letting go of something that is no longer serving you, or worse, is tearing you apart, is not giving up; it's making space for what is next.

Sometimes, endings really are the bravest and healthiest choice.

​I saw this image widely shared on Facebook this week. It left me wondering if what separates humans from animals is also what separates humans from humans.

Our prefrontal cortex, our capacity to think and plan and rationalize and strategize. We have that; for the most part animals do not, and certainly not with the complexities that we have.

I thought about the garden of Eden. God and Adam and Eve. Paradise. God told these first humans, don't ever overthink this. What we have here, us, our shared togetherness, LOVE, it is more than enough.

There will never be a heaven more heavenly than togetherness, he assured them.

Of course a serpent came along and convinced the pair to 'think' about what God had told them. He had them consider the possibility that God was being irrational with his plan, certainly there must be more to paradise than togetherness.

And of course humans have been re-thinking God's plan ever since, determined to find something wiser, something that makes more sense than togetherness.

Elephants don't do that. Is it a gift that they really have no idea that there are options other than togetherness?

When a member of an elephant herd is sick or injured, elephants show remarkable care, often adjusting their pace to accommodate the weaker member. They’ve been known to assist struggling individuals by using their trunks to lift them or by forming a protective circle around vulnerable members, such as calves or the elderly. Their ability to mourn the dead—pausing by remains, touching bones, and even covering deceased members with branches—further demonstrates their innate sense of connection.

Humans can indeed show this kind of care to their herd. Humans, however, have spent a lot of time deciding who their herd actually is. They have largely decided there is a lot of screening of the herd that needs to take place before tending to the weak.

It turns out humans are far more picky about the definition of herd than elephants.

In the garden God's plan was for ALL humans to be included in the herd. Humans went off to a tree with a serpent and began redefining the herd.

But God's definition continues to look a lot more like the elephant's definition than the human's definition.

You know elephants communicate using low-frequency rumbles, touch, and body language—an instinctual language of survival. When danger is near, they don’t stop to think through an individual response; they rely on one another, moving as a unit, often placing calves in the center of the group. Their ability to sense distress in others—reacting with comfort, patience, and reassurance—reveals a depth of connection that doesn’t require analysis, only presence.

Somewhere along the way our low-frequency rumbles have become roars. Our longing for touch has been replaced by out of touch. Our body language is somehow more threatening these days than it is an instinctual invitation into survival.

I wonder - I wonder how much of the human herd crawled into their places of rest last night feeling a deep sense of connection to their herd.

I confess, I crawled in bed last night somewhat envious of the elephant.

I in some ways found myself longing to be one.

Elephants don’t overanalyze whether they should support one another; they just do it. Their survival depends on it. And maybe, in ways we often overlook, so does ours.

​You were made for another world.

If you're like me, you didn't first encounter this truth in another world, you encountered it in this one.

You encountered it when you discovered that no matter how much you chased the good life here, the fulfilled life here, the more you chased the filling of your cup from all that this world has to offer, the more you came to realize that this world is completely incapable of filling your cup.

You encountered it when you realized the more you addressed your emptiness by chasing something to help you cope with emptiness in this world instead of turning to the one who deeply loves us in another world, the more your emptiness became a darker kind of emptiness.

Paul tells us in the bible, don't turn to wine, where you will only find excess, but be filled instead with the Holy Spirit.

Jesus didn't scold the woman at the well for all the empty ways she was trying to fill her cup, but instead offered to fill her cup with a love that would always leave her feeling filled.

So many of us get left feeling empty not because we aren't trying hard to fill, but because we are trying hard to fill with things that are incapable of filling.

Alcohol can fill a glass, but alcohol also leaves you feeling like I need another drink.

And another one.

It's the nature of most addictions - they lure you in with a promise of filling you before turning on you with their truth, the truth that they never want you to be feeling like you've had enough of them.

We have a lot of systems and institutions that take advantage of this reality.

Churches, politics, even our interpersonal relationships with one another - they often start with the promise that I will fix your world, I will make you feel whole, I will be the one who will always look out for you - only to in the end leave you feeling as incomplete as ever.

Yet, having no other world to turn to, we often double down on the broken promises of this one, why not, we might concede, at least these broken promises look and feel like someone or something fighting to fill me.

I confess, I did not discover another world in my life - I did not discover the Holy Spirit - by first walking through the doors of that spirit and introducing myself. I found it by trying every other door in this world - I don't know that I left any un-knocked on - and becoming exhausted by the emptiness found behind every single one of them.

It is the nature of this another world, I believe, to not be threatened by the places we turn to instead of it in our search for love and fulfillment. It is the nature of this another world to know that it is in our deepest emptiness we often discover our greatest fulfillment.

It is in our deepest thirst that this another world has a chance to show up and leave our thirst forever quenched.

Quenched, that is, with the exception of the thirst we come to have for the love of a God who understands greater than any other world the true nature of the thirsty and often painful lives we have lived.

The God who understands better than any other world what it feels like to be forever lost and then forever found.

The God who loves nothing more than to have his creation overcome with the feeling of never having to chase again.

Never having to feel their worlds toppled by this world.

I discovered that coming through a back door to another world, I am sure.

But I am sure I am no more thankful for any door in my life.

​Partnering with two dear friends and colleagues, I led a three-day experience this week designed to help people understand the implications of childhood experiences on long-term health.

Physical health. Mental health. Spiritual health. Relational health.

One of the main goals of this experience was to help people see that these four areas—often thought of as separate aspects of health—are far more interconnected than we sometimes realize.

Healthy relationships often contribute to better physical health.

Poor mental health often leads to declining physical health.

Stronger spiritual health is often a salve for all areas of health.

In this training, we came to understand that health is health. And that so much of our well-being can be predicted by—or traced back to—the kind of experiences we had in the earliest days of our lives.

For some, this realization can feel overwhelming. Some have lived through deeply challenging early childhood experiences.

Others find great hope in it. Because the brain, which adapts to unhealthy experiences in ways that can leave us living with anxiety, depression, or an overactive stress response system, can actually be rewired. No matter how old we are, it can be rewired to see the world as less threatening and anxiety-inducing.

At the end of our experience, one of the attendees told us it had been life-changing. They said they had always known there were hard things in their life—difficult histories, complicated family dynamics—but they had always believed they could keep barreling ahead, strong enough to overcome them.

“But now,” they said, “I know I need to seek professional help. And I am going to seek it when I leave here.”

One of the primary goals of these experiences is to grow compassion and empathy for others. When we understand the implications of what people have been through—especially in childhood—we are far less likely to judge their choices or behaviors.

Further, I often say that we are far more equipped to understand others when we fully come to understand ourselves.

And that is where hope comes from.

Connecting the dots to a more hopeful future often begins by connecting the dots of our past—not as a way of “going back” or “fixing” the past, but as a way of recognizing that we may have failed to take a step forward because we were unknowingly handcuffed to the hopelessness of our past.

And quite often, we don’t even realize the past has been holding us back.

That, I suppose, is the power of these shared experiences. When one person reflects with openness and vulnerability about their past, it implicitly gives others permission to do the same.

Dots begin to connect. And as one starts to see the connections in their past, they can also begin to imagine—with new hope—the connected dots of their future.

That is my life these days: new hope.

And when I hear someone say they, too, have taken their first steps toward new hope, I feel deeply fulfilled.

I am also reminded that entering into another’s struggles is the pathway to hope. Not hiding from struggles. Not retreating from them. Not rushing in with our own answers.

Simply entering in—with a heart for hearing and healing.

Hearing and healing—the pathway to restoration.

Often, in ways greater than we have ever seen before. 

​The boys and I went to see Captain America: Brave New World yesterday. I left feeling more uneasy than entertained.

In reflecting on it, I realized it's because there was a time when superhero movies felt like pure entertainment—spectacles of impossible feats, clear lines between good and evil, and crises that could be neatly wrapped up in two hours. But yesterday, sitting in the theater watching Captain America: Brave New World, I felt something different.

I wasn’t just watching a superhero battle villains. I was watching a world where trust is eroded, where power is constantly shifting hands, and where technology and surveillance are used as weapons.

It didn’t feel like science fiction anymore.

It felt like the news.

I realized that the movies of my youth that were once obvious science fiction are more than ever the very real non-fiction worlds my boys are growing up in.

Superhero movies that once borrowed from real-world anxieties are now movies where those anxieties have caught up with the fiction.

Government corruption and political power plays were once exaggerated in movies but now mirror the reality of shifting alliances, deep-state conspiracies, and leaders who manipulate fear.

The idea of governments or corporations monitoring every move used to feel dystopian, but now, it’s just everyday life.

Once upon a time, villains were obvious. Now, the real world—and superhero films—are filled with gray areas where truth is manipulated, and no one is sure who to trust.

I don't know if I felt more comfort or concern that my boys don't see and feel the reality in these movies that I do. That they haven't lived life long enough to see the lines of science fiction blur into the reality of the real world as drastically as I've watched them blur.

I do find myself wondering this morning, as a Christian, if maybe this is a natural and not accidental progression of things?

The best superhero films used to transport us into worlds far from our own. Now, instead of being an escape, they feel like an eerie reflection of the reality we live in. Captain America: Brave New World doesn’t just ask what it means to be a hero—it forces us to wrestle with the uncomfortable question: Can a single hero even save a world like this anymore?

Maybe we are all supposed to get to a place of knowing the answer to that question is no. Maybe it's in a mass recognition of that reality that we all have a mass recognition of the hope that can only be found in Jesus?

That would make sense to me personally, as my own faith journey has been one that could be described as the lines of science fiction blurring into the very truths of the foundations I now stand on.

Still, I do miss the days when science fiction felt more fiction than it felt yesterday.

I miss the days when science fiction felt like escape and not a reminder of the world waiting outside the theatre doors.