​If I look back over the decades of my life, it’s true that where I am today is largely a reflection of the people I’ve surrounded myself with along the way. And when I reflect on the seasons when I wasn’t living what I now call my “right” life, one thing becomes clear: I wasn’t surrounded by the right people.

What is a “right” life, you might ask?

I believe we are all born with a purpose - an inner compass pointing toward a path that allows us to uniquely contribute to the right direction of the world. I’ve also come to believe that much of my own angst, my struggles, my anxieties and depressions, were born from resisting that direction. Fighting it. Distracting myself from it.

And one of the easiest ways to fight that inner compass is to surround ourselves with people who have little interest in where it’s trying to take us. People who aren’t chasing direction at all.

We need friends who care as much about where we’re going as where we currently stand. Friends who are curious. Friends willing to look beneath the surface to find the hidden threads of who we’re becoming. Friends who see the potential we’re often too afraid or too wounded to see in ourselves.

Because the truth is, good friends are usually much better at imagining who we can be, while we are often experts at imagining all the reasons we can’t.

Life has changed drastically for me this past decade. I feel closer to my right life than ever before.

Is it a coincidence that the people in my life look drastically different than they did ten years ago?

I don’t think so.

When life feels like it’s not going right, it might be worth standing in the middle of your circle of friends and asking: Do they look like my right life?

Sometimes the best way to change direction is to change the circle. 

​What kind of man sends an open letter to a college football team that will never read it? The kind of man who’s less interested in telling them something and more interested in telling himself something.

Many of you know writing is my way of processing life. To include disappointment.

And - many of you know I am a diehard Notre Dame football fan. Have been dating back to the days of playing high school football for Knute Rockne's grandson. We weren't very good, but he was still Knute Rockne's grandson!

As such, I had many friends reach out yesterday asking my opinion about Notre Dame being left out of the college football playoff. I don't know, honestly - my son Elliott and I exchanged a lot of text messages yesterday after the announcement, and I'm sure I included some opinions in there, but with age I've become much more interested in the lessons available in conflicts and unpopular decisions than I am with opinions.

Which gets to the letter. Because more than anything, my heart hurt for the kids this decision impacted. I know fans assume no one is more impacted by sports decisions than fans - but that's a myth. The folks actually playing the games have a little bit more invested in the outcomes. Hard to believe, I know, but it's true.

And the young men on this Irish football team had every reason to believe that for the second year in a row, they were headed back to the college playoffs. And, like last year, when they made it to the championship game, they believed they could make a run at winning it.

When your mind gets to believing a plan and the plan is suddenly swept away, spirits can be swept away as well.

My heart for this team got caught up in that sweeping yesterday. I don't know a single one of them personally, but you get to know a team over the course of a season watching every second of every one of their games. Not REALLY knowing them - but enough so to wish away disappointment in their lives.

With almost perfect timing, I heard Steven Furtick say today, "God often sends a problem as an answer to a prayer." The idea being that sometimes our plans being swept away IS part of the plan.

God's plan, not ours.

I look back on my life and I can see it - more times than I can count - disappointment that my Plan A didn't work out being transformed to a Plan B - or C - that made disappointment suddenly feel more like a gift.

This team is lucky. They have a coach whose greatest gift might be helping young people see the path ahead when the path they're on seems washed away in a storm. They have a coach in Marcus Freeman who helps people - players and fans alike - see sunshine where there is none.

None present and none in the short-term forecast.

Only one team will win the college football playoff. And after they win, their lives will take on a direction influenced by that outcome.

And our beloved Notre Dame players. They are not included in the playoff. That will influence life direction as well. I don't have an opinion about that, really. There is too much wrong with the world for me to be too opinionated about what is wrong with college football.

But I do have a prayer for the players on this year's team. That they will one day walk a path on which they can look back at this moment, and even if not find beauty in it, they will at least come to know that disappointment is far more often a building block than it is destruction.

Plan A is nice when life goes according to Plan A.

Life rarely does, though.

Which makes embracing the Plan Bs in life - or Cs - one of the keys to embracing a fulfilling life.

When it comes to Notre Dame football, Plan A for me is still living long enough to see the team win another National Championship.

Plan B has given me something a championship alone never could - countless Saturdays with my boys, watching young men chase something bigger than themselves.

For that, I’m deeply grateful.

So, to the Irish players and coaches, thank you. May your plan B work out as beautiful as mine, even if today it is hard to see.

And forever, #GoIrish🍀

​A friend once told me, “I think we’ve lost the art of friendship - and that’s truly devastating.”

The saddest part was that she sounded devastated. She said she, and she believes many of us, are craving relationships that fill our souls as much as we try to fill the souls of others.

That sat heavy with me.

This morning, I found myself reading in the book of Job. Maybe you’re familiar with the story: Job is faithful, strong, blessed… and then suddenly stripped of everything - his wealth, his health, even his ten children. It is heartbreak layered on heartbreak. A season that would make many dark seasons seem like a party.

But here’s the part that has me reflecting this morning:

Job 2:11-13:

Three of Job’s friends heard of all the trouble that had fallen on him. Each traveled from his own country - Eliphaz from Teman, Bildad from Shuhah, Zophar from Naamath - and went together to Job to keep him company and comfort him. When they saw him from a distance, they hardly recognized him. They cried, ripped their robes, and threw dirt on their heads. Then they sat with him on the ground for seven days and seven nights. Not a word was spoken, because they saw how great his suffering was.

Before they ever said a word, these three men did something almost unimaginable:

They heard their friend was hurting… and they dropped everything. Jobs. Families. Responsibilities. They coordinated a trip across borders just to be with him.

And when they arrived?

They sat in the dirt with him for seven straight days.

Not one pep talk. Not one solution. Not one “have-you-tried-this?”

Just presence.

Just sorrow.

Just listening - the kind that happens without a single word.

The most interesting part of this story, and maybe why God decided to weave this tale of friendship into a message on suffering, is that as the story goes on, these 3 friends became far less helpful once they actually started talking to Job. When they started offering their opinions about why he's suffering. When they started giving him advice about how to get his life back on track.

The moment they started talking is the exact moment they stopped helping. Once they shifted from presence to opinion, the friendship began to unravel. They were so determined to be useful, to be the fixers, that they forgot the most healing thing they had already done:

They showed up. And they stayed.

We underestimate that. We underestimate the soul-feeding power of someone who simply sees how rotten we feel and chooses to sit in the dirt with us anyway.

I’ve been blessed lately with friends like that. Friends who didn’t try to rescue me from anything - they just refused to leave me alone in it. It made me feel less rotten. It made me feel grateful.

And it made me more mindful of the people in my life who might be waiting for someone to sit with them.

I think there’s a reason God included this piece of Job’s story, a reason the friendship was strongest when the friends were silent, and a reason it started to crumble when they felt a need to do more than show up.

Because I think that’s what we all want. We want relationships and intimacy with people who will show up, sit down, and stay.

And maybe that’s all God ever wanted from us too.

Maybe God craves what we crave - not constant talking, but quiet presence. Not answers, but availability. Someone willing to stop in the middle of their busy life, sit down in the dirt, and simply be there.

Sometimes the most spiritual thing we can do is the thing Job’s friends accidentally got right:

Be still.

Be present.

And listen.

(re-written from an article I wrote in 2020)

​It's that time of the year again. Thanksgiving is over and now, to use a baseball analogy, we round third and head for home.

Many of us with much velocity.

Thanksgiving is a reminder. A reminder to be grateful. And today I am wondering if maybe it is well positioned on the holiday calendar to be quite a LOUD reminder: the year is coming to an end, don't forget to tap the brakes or you'll once again miss it all.

I've thought about that a lot lately. Gratitude as a brake pedal. Because when it begins to feel like I'm being swept away in the currents of life - both the joyous and the challenging currents - gratitude is always the way I come back to the here and now.

Which is important, because the here and now - that will always be the only place where peace and stability is found. It's never found in reliving yesterday; it's never found in dreaming about tomorrow - it can only be found in the way we look at the here and now. By tapping the gratitude brake and taking a gratitude break.

How many times have I wondered it the past week or so - how did we get here so fast again?

I joked with Elliott the other day. I said it's that time of the year as I plugged the lights in on the Christmas tree that stood in the corner of my living room all year in absolute silence since unplugging the lights the day after Christmas last year.

The tree came instantly alive.

Like magic.

And the real magic was that even though the tree had been dark for 11 months, it felt like the lights had never gone out at all. How does a whole year go buy, EVERY year, in what feels like a day?

Maybe I don't tap the brakes enough.

The gratitude brakes.

Many of us wish we could slow down time. Maybe gratitude is the most effective way to do that.

When life starts dragging us backward into the past, or pulling us forward into the uncontrollable hustle of Black Friday, White Elephant parties, and all the haphazard (and maybe even drunken) momentum that carries us into Christmas - maybe gratitude is our way of pulling on the reins...

Whoa, life!

Life often leaves us feeling like time is our captor. Gratitude is our way of saying, I'm not a big fan of being held captive.

Yesterday, many of us paused and reflected on all that we are grateful for.

Might I suggest that we do that again today.

Might I suggest a gratitude brake.

​I remember receiving a phone call from a young man I worked with at Eckerd Youth Alternatives. Jimmy. He was 12 years old when he came into our care. I was his counselor. He was a kid with tons of struggles in life, and he handled none of them well.

The kid threatened to kill me daily and cussed at me more often than that. After spending a year with us, he graduated the program. Most kids did.

The adult staff and the 9 other boys he lived with at camp all stood up at this ceremony and shared fond memories of their time with Jimmy. I'm not sure where any of them came up with those memories. They wished him well, and stated how sure they were he was going to be a great success in life.

I'm sure I lied and said something along those lines as well. But in reality, I knew the only success Jimmy was going to have in life was the possibility of parole attached to the multiple life sentences he was sure to collect within minutes of departing our lying eyes.

Nearly 5 years later, I inexplicably answered a weekend phone call in the main office building - something I never did on the weekends. It was Jimmy. He told me he had been locked up in a detention center in Florida for the past year. But before I could think or say "I knew it", he told me this:

Chief Keith, (we were all called "Chief" at Eckerd), he said, I know you didn't think I'd make anything of my life when I left camp. And until now I really haven't. But I'm going to. I've spent the past year thinking about all the things you told me about life, and now I'm going to change. I just wanted to say thank you.

Then he hung up.

That thank you has haunted me. Not because of who said it or how little faith I had in that kid, but because it is the starkest reminder I have of how few people I have thanked for helping me along the way.

People who never gave up on me.

Several years later I was sitting in my office pondering how ill-prepared I was to become a father. And since I was less than a few months away from becoming a father for the first time, this depressed me.

Until that day, I had been able to convince myself that raising a child couldn't be any more difficult than tossing a ball or putting a worm on a hook. But the due date kept closing in, like a fire, and as it did, I could hear a baby crying and I had no idea how to stop it.

I began to see images of a boy who needed direction through a world I was far from figuring out myself. I began to wonder what I had gotten this innocent child into.

To distract myself I rifled through the day's mail. That's when I came across a letter from a young man I had worked with several years earlier. Tyler.

Unlike Jimmy, I always knew Tyler would be successful. I often wondered what he was even doing at camp. Most days I was sure my life was more screwed up and at-risk than his.

As I ran my fingers through the envelope to open the letter, it struck me that it was stamped in Samoa.

Tyler began the letter by telling me he was working at a surf shop in Samoa. I wasn't surprised. Then he told me he heard that I was going to be a father. He said that was a great thing - that I was going to be a wonderful dad.

He went on to tell me how I was always a great father figure to the guys in his group. And he said thank you.

I was floored - that from a far away place - he would think enough of my contribution to his life to send a letter. More than that, though, I wondered how many people in my life may have needed some timely reassurance that I could have provided with a simple thank you - and they never got it.

I don't know, but thanks to Tyler's thank you, I never worried about my ability to be a father again. Or at least, not with as much panic.

On December 18th, 2006, Elliott Cartwright arrived. In no simple fashion. In the words of Dr. Knelson, who delivered him, he was born with little more than a heartbeat. But Dr. Knelson pounded our baby's chest and shared breath with him for the next several hours like he was his own son. He saw life in a lifeless baby and willed our boy to see a world beyond that delivery room.

I watched that man, old and graying, steal our boy from the determined arms of death and hand him to us like it was just another day at the office. Elliott spent a couple of weeks in the NICU, but he came home with us.

Today he is a healthy college student.

A couple of days after he delivered Elliott, Dr. Knelson walked into Elliott's mom's hospital room. The timing of his visit was a little unexpected and sent me scrambling for the speech I had rehearsed over and over in my head since witnessing the miracle he had performed. The one that allowed me to be called a father.

My mouth got tired of waiting and without permission spit out the following words: Thank you.

From across the room, Dr. Knelson stared me straight in the eyes and said, "don't thank me, thank Him. I'm not good enough to do what happened in that delivery room."

With his response came two lessons:

One, I do not thank God nearly enough for the blessings in my life. Too often, because I don't think beyond the rush of emotion that comes from receiving an act of kindness, or a miracle, I fail to look for God's hand in the sometimes miraculous but often quite simple moments that construct this astonishing life I live.

Two, God knows what he is doing in my life. He uses each of us to do his His will in our intermingled lives. And although I don't believe He is ever more glorified than when we thank Him personally for our connectedness, he doesn't need it.

I imagine God feels like I feel when I watch one of our boys do something kind for the other that I have secretly directed. And the other, completely unaware that I've had a hand in the act, thanks his brother. I always feel the joy of that thanks as if it is directed at me.

I believe God celebrates each and every time we thank someone for the contributions they have made to our lives.

I remember sitting down at my desk and writing out a thank you note to an old high school football coach. It surprised me that I was doing so. Until I began taking a mental inventory of the people who had made contributions to my life that influenced who I was to that day, I hadn't thought much about him. That's because life had lulled me into some sense of belief that it was me and only me responsible for any good in my life.

I thanked coach for the day he piled the entire team into the backs of a herd of pick up trucks and drove us out the country roads that surrounded our school until we were 10 miles or so from where we left. He then told us to get out and run home. This was troubling. I didn't know how to get home, and I knew there was no way I was keeping up with my teammates who were sprinting away like they were the only ones who did.

I made it home. I ran sprints after practice for a month or so because I didn't make it as fast as coach wanted me to, but I made it.

Many years later I would embark on a career working with at-risk youth. Many times these kids would get upset with me because I was asking them to do things they felt were impossible to achieve. I grew fond of telling them that it's not the people who are asking you to do the impossible you need to be upset with, but the people who aren't asking you to do anything at all - because that's exactly what those people believe you're capable of.

When I finished the note to coach, I began to search the internet for his address. I hadn't talked to him in years so I had no idea where I'd find him, but I was determined to get him this note. I suppose that's what hurt the most when my search turned up that he had died of cancer several years earlier.

He would never receive my thanks. He would never hear me admit that what I once called the dumbest thing I had ever heard a coach ask his players to do clung to me long enough to become a valuable life lesson for others. A legacy of sorts, I suppose.

I think people deserve to know their legacy.

I think they deserve to know it before they unknowingly part from our lives forever.

Maybe that is one of the things a thank you does best. It writes legacies.

It's never too late to say thank you, until it is.....

(re-written from a 2012 article I wrote)

​While traveling this week, I heard Elon Musk say in an interview that in ten to twenty years, work will be optional. AI will do everything.

My first reaction was, well isn't that just great. At the end of my work life, we're going to create a world where no one has to work.

But then something else hit me, something more troubling than the excitement of imagining a life of leisure.

Almost every job I’ve ever had has added meaning to my life. Not because of the title or the paycheck, but because of what happened in the work. The relationships. The sense of contributing something good. The moments when someone’s life crossed paths with mine and left me changed.

Work hasn’t just been employment for me. Work has been identity. Work has been healing. Work has been connection.

So when Musk said work will be optional, a question came to me that felt larger than all the technological predictions: If work becomes optional, where will people find meaning?

I worry we aren’t ready for that question. Because whether we admit it or not, work has become the place most of us go to feel like we matter. We feel useful because something in the world needs us to show up.

What happens when that disappears?

I don’t think the biggest consequence of voluntary work will be unemployment. I think it will be un-purposeness. And I honestly believe that a society without purpose is far more dangerous than a society without jobs.

Maybe humans can survive without employment, but can humans survive without meaning?

If AI ends up doing everything, the real crisis may look more internal than economic. It may look like people waking up with nothing to give themselves to. Nothing to struggle for. Nothing to build. Nothing to contribute that feels uniquely human.

And that scares me more than any robot ever could.

Work has been a steadying force in my life. Even in my darkest moments, work anchored me. Training people. Telling stories. Sitting in rooms full of folks trying to heal their communities. The work itself didn’t fix me, but showing up for others reminded me I wasn’t alone.

The irony is that the job I have now - helping people understand trauma and connection - ended up revealing just how much healing I needed myself.

Work has been part of my redemption story. And I know I’m not alone in that.

For many people, work is the only predictable place where they are needed. It’s the only arena where someone is glad they showed up that day. It’s the only community they trust. The only identity they understand. The only challenge that still makes them feel alive.

Take that away, and you don’t get a peaceful society. You get an anxious one. You get a drifting one. You get people who have leisure but no purpose, and leisure without purpose becomes isolation, addiction, and despair.

But here’s the part that gives me hope: If work becomes optional, meaning will have to become intentional.

We’ll have to build it on purpose instead of inheriting it from the workplace.

We’ll have to find identity that isn’t tied to productivity.

We’ll have to create connection that isn’t tied to shared office walls.

We’ll have to learn that contribution doesn’t come from job descriptions - it comes from showing up for one another.

In a world where AI does everything, humans will have to do the things AI can’t: love, heal, notice, listen, create hope, build belonging.

Maybe work becoming optional forces us to reconsider what our real work has always been. Maybe it invites us back to the basics - to connection, compassion, and community. Maybe it leads us to rediscover what matters when productivity stops being the greatest measure of our worth.

I don’t know if AI will make work obsolete. But I do know this: If the day comes when work is optional, meaning can’t be.

And if we are wise, we’ll use that moment not trying to escape meaning, but to redefine it. Not to relax our way into emptiness, but to connect our way into a deeper humanity - one built not on what we accomplish, but on who we become and how we love.

​I have shared this story before, but several years ago I had a scary dad moment. I was sitting in my chair doing something on my laptop when my 6 year old son Elliott came in and told me a story about something that happened at school that day. He finished the story and began walking away, turning around as he walked off. I looked up just in time to see a face, sad and dejected, that upended me.

The face of a child who knew an important story in his life wasn't Important enough to draw his dad away from his work. Or more likely, away from some social media or a sports website.

I made a commitment in that moment of shame and embarrassment - when I hear one of my kid's voices I will look up and listen. I'm sure I haven't been perfectly faithful to that commitment, but the awareness I gained in that moment has helped me be a part of conversations I'm sure I would have totally missed in the years since.

And that goes beyond my son.

I am a part of a training this week: CHATS (Connecting Humans and Telling Stories). I've been a part of several of these. But one thing about these experiences that never stops amazing me is just how important it is for people to feel listened to.

It's always rewarding, and yet, at the same time sad, seeing subtle looks of disbelief on people's faces as other people embrace their stories. As if they have spent most of their lives telling stories to people who refused to look up from their laptops.

I told the group yesterday that it is always fulfilling for me to see beauty come alive in a diverse group of people sharing stories with one another and not one story is too diverse to be heard and treasured by the collective diversity. But, I also told them, it breaks my heart for the giant world of people outside our little room carrying stories they long to share with people who have no longing whatsoever to hear them.

Being unheard. It may be one of the quietest forms of torture.

Being heard. It may be one of the sweetest kinds of relief. A relief that is so ever pervasive in these CHATS experiences.

On the way to my CHATS experience, I stopped at Virginia Tech and took my now college freshman, Elliott, to lunch. Sitting at lunch, I had no laptop or phone open, and I asked him, "What's been the hardest part of transitioning from high school to college several hours away from home?"

We had a nice talk. And it wasn't lost on me just how different the look on his face was in that moment than it was on the face of that dejected 6 year-old walking away unheard.

It's never too late to be curious.

It's never too late to ask questions.

So many people base their worth on the willingness of others to hear their stories.

Please, ask someone to hear their story today.

Let someone know today that they are worthy of shutting the laptop, putting down the phone.

We need to know, that as we scroll through the stories on our devices, we are missing the most important stories of all.

​Yesterday, I heard a presenter say, "If you're listening to someone but hearing your own voice, you're doing it wrong."

I instinctually wondered, is there anything we do more wrong? And, is there anything that would bridge our many divides more than getting that right?

Listening.

Too often, when someone else is talking, we aren't listening. We're reloading. We're preparing. Preparing a response, or a defense, a personal story, or a way to fix.

Listening is hard because it requires us to let someone else's story take priority over our internal narrative. Really listening is quite an unselfish act if you think about it.

Have you ever noticed someone who is feeling truly listened to - truly heard? They soften. They open up. They share without trying to figure out what's the right thing to say. They just simply say.

People don't need your voice as much as they need your presence. Listening is one of the strongest ways we have to say "you're safe here" without saying a word.

But too often our way of listening makes people feel more hijacked than safe. We hijack someone's words by inserting our own. Our own assumptions, past experiences, interpretations, and projections.

Listening well is really all about stepping out of the spotlight so that someone else can step in. Listening well means surrendering the need to relate everything back to ourselves. It’s choosing curiosity over commentary.

Have we become a society that believes we already know everything that needs to be known about one another, so we in turn skip curiosity?

And have we come to believe that everyone but us needs fixed, so it's a waste of time to hear what someone else has to say because what they really need is to hear us tell them what they need to do?

A lot of people turn to places and groups they wouldn't ordinarily turn to simply because they know someone will listen to them there. From the moment we come into the world as little babies, we are craving someone to simply hear our voice. And when that craving isn't met, a lot can go wrong.

As babies.

And beyond.

I think if we'd just work harder at getting listening right, a lot of good would follow.

​I have found my path. It's a gift to be able to say that. It's also a gift to remember that rarely does a path start as a path. More often than not, if we're being honest, our current paths started as our previous messes.

It's easy to forget in moments of saying, "man this feels good" - that we were once standing in a similar place in our lives saying, "man this sucks."

This sucks to this feels good - it is such a frequent order in my life.

It's easy to forget when you're out talking to a group about the power of meaningful relationships that your life has been filled with a pattern of broken relationships.

It's easy to forget when you're out talking to a group about the ease with which we can turn to unhealthy habits to ease the pain of unhealthy circumstances that we have spent a lifetime turning to unhealthy habits to deal with our unhealthy circumstances.

It's easy to sit and write as if writing is your calling, to forget how frequently you once refused to write when you felt called to write.

It's easy to promote healing and forget just how much broken you've had to navigate to even begin to know that healing is a thing.

It's easy to forget - but we must not.

Because the day is coming, maybe even today, when life will once again feel like a mess. And when that day comes, oh what a gift it is to know you are not standing in a mess, but at the beginning of a new path.

I have come to believe that God is not big on creating our paths, but he is especially big on showing up in our messes pointing us to them like an angel pointing to heaven.

Maybe we miss the angels when we get overwhelmed by our mess.

Maybe we miss them because we can't begin to believe a mess is the beginning and not the end.

Take stock of the good in your life today. My guess is - somewhere along the way, that good once looked like a mess. And so, my guess is - your next mess will one day look like a path.

From mess to path - it just seems to be the direction of my life.

​I work for the state of Virginia. Which means, in a sense, the people of Virginia elected a new boss for me last night. A new boss who has a different political party than the old boss.

This isn’t my first time experiencing that kind of change. I’ve been at this job long enough to know that when leadership shifts, so do strategies. Visions. Priorities.

Sometimes policies do, too.

But what doesn’t change, or at least doesn't have to, is my capacity and commitment to show up for the people I serve. At my job and in my life.

What worries me, though - more and more - is how much the way we show up for one another seems to rise and fall with the political tides. Politics has always been an ebb and flow - right and left, up and down, victory and loss. That’s the rhythm of politics.

But should it be the rhythm of our humanity?

I don’t think so.

If we only show up when our side wins, or if we find our hearts demoralized when our side loses, then we miss the bigger calling.

We aren't elected to care, we choose to. It's not a blue choice or a red choice or an anything in between choice.

It's an OUR choice.

I watched the election results with interest last night. But none of that interest was based on figuring out how I am going to show up for the world today.

We put a lot of stock in who is in charge. I get it. Leadership matters. But when who is in charge of a city or a state or a country starts to diminish my knowing that no one but me is in charge of my heart - well, that can become problematic.

It can come to mean my heart has to wait until the next election to fully show up, and that's just now how humanity is supposed to work.