​I don't know if I physically heard it or if my intuition picked up on it, but I received this late night text message from Elliott. 

"I doubt you're awake but this game is crazy."

He was right. I wasn’t awake. Anyone who knows me knows I'd been sound asleep for hours. But one way or another - maybe love - that message woke me up and I caught the end of Game 7 of the World Series. 

There was something deeply satisfying about watching it, knowing that he too, a couple hundred miles away at Virginia Tech, was watching. Somehow, in a world that feels too distant to me, the two of us were sharing the same moment, the same awe, the same game.

After I told him I was now awake and watching, he responded: "we're gonna be up all night." I felt joy in that, mainly because I felt like he too felt joy in that. Like maybe that was the point. 

Sports do that. They pull us together - father and son, fanbases, strangers who will never meet but for a few hours feel like they belong to the same community. The World Series MVP from Japan couldn’t speak a word of English without a translator, but he didn’t need to. His teammates loved him, and he loved them back. 

That kind of love doesn’t require language.

I found it interesting that so many of the post-game interviews, no matter what the language, were filled with one phrase: “I dreamed of this moment as a kid.”

Maybe it’s our dreams that unite us. Latin, Japanese, White, Black - I don’t think we dream in color, but in aspirations.

We dream in hope.

In longing.

In that pull toward something bigger than us.

And maybe that’s the truest kind of connection, not just sharing the game, but sharing the dream. The chance for grown kids to bring each other's childhood kid dreams to life. 

Isn't that often the moral of sports - that the most magical dreams are the dreams we share, chase, and celebrate as one?

Yep, I was sound asleep. 

But sometimes it's worth being lured from our dreams to be reminded of the magic of dreams. And when you can share that reminder with your kid, well, there's no lack of magic in that. 

​I heard someone say recently, “I am seeking appreciation, not toleration.” This person said this in the context of dating, and more specifically, in the context of dating challenges.

It made me think about how often, in relationships, we settle for toleration. We call it patience, understanding, even love, but often, it’s just endurance. We learn to manage one another instead of marvel at one another.

If it sounds like I am writing this from a place of experience, I am.

I saw this in my marriage. Without ever naming it, we began to put more energy into tolerating than appreciating. The small quirks that once felt endearing started to feel irritating. The little differences we used to celebrate became things we quietly worked around. And before long, we were living alongside one another rather than with one another.

Toleration, I’ve realized, can masquerade as maturity. It can look like restraint, like grace, even like peace. But it’s a peace built on distance - an unwritten agreement not to bump into each other’s rough edges.

Appreciation, on the other hand, requires closeness. It asks us to lean in. To remember what first made us curious about one another. To see what’s still beautiful, still unique, still worth admiring, even when the shine has dulled a bit.

And that’s not just true in marriage. It’s true in friendships, families, communities, and yes, dating. We say we want connection, but sometimes what we really want is compatibility, someone we won’t have to tolerate. But maybe what we actually need are people who invite us to grow our capacity for appreciation.

Because toleration is survival mode, appreciation is life.

Maybe the real work of love is learning to shift from enduring one another to seeing one another again.

I hear it often in our divided world, we need to be more tolerant of one another. I am wondering now, though, if we might need to move well beyond toleration to appreciation. I wonder if we are settling by simply putting up with one another when we could be striving to find the good in one another.

I do worry about this, actually, because again, I know from experience, there is an end to toleration. There comes a point where simply tolerating one another makes love feel more like endurance than joy, and frankly, that's an endurance that eventually becomes impossible to endure.

Appreciation on the other hand - is there ever a good time to stop trying to find the good in one another? 

​I've had two meaningful dinners this week with friends. And at the heart of what made those dinners so meaningful, what made them feel so life-giving, was that during both of those dinners I got to show up and be who I am. Maybe that doesn't seem like such a big deal for many of you, but for this guy, a guy who has previously maintained significant relationships in his life by pretending to be someone else - by LYING - that's a big deal.

In the bible, one of the seven things God says he hates is lying. It’s an interesting word to land on in that list, especially in a world where lying feels almost ordinary.

Studies show that most people tell at least one lie within minutes of meeting someone new. Most of them are small white lies, harmless exaggerations, softened truths meant to make us seem a little better, a little more likable, a little more put together. But maybe that’s exactly why God hates lying. Not because it’s a bad thing to do, immoral, but because it breaks the very thing he loves most: connection.

Every lie we tell, big or small, builds a thin wall between who we really are and who we want others to believe we are. Over time, those walls become thick enough to keep us from being known at all.

Here’s the harder truth: sometimes we don’t lie simply because we want to. We lie because we feel like we have to. Our culture prizes image over authenticity, perfection over honesty. We live in a world that rewards performance, not presence. Even when we don’t mean to, we create environments at work, in church, online - where people feel pressure to be who they think they need to be rather than who they really are.

And I can attest, it is possible to start lying so frequently about who you are that even YOU can come to a place where you have no idea who you really are.

We long for connection, but we hide behind the very words that make it impossible. God made us for relationship, with him and with one another, but honesty is the foundation of both. When we trade truth for image, we settle for fitting in instead of belonging.

Maybe God hates lying because it keeps us from the one thing he designed us to need most, community built on truth. The irony is that many of us lie to fit in, when in reality, truth is the only way we’ll ever truly belong.

Dinners where you feel like you totally belong are dinners you show up to knowing you don't have to bring an alternative version of you to the table.

Find the community where you can belong, the community that lets you show up in truth.

And be that community for someone else, the community that makes truth something we celebrate in one another, not something we hold against one another.

​I have come to know this - the more important an action is to you becoming who you are meant to be, the more difficult that action is to perform. Steven Pressfield, author of The War of Art, calls this difficulty resistance.

Pressfield writes about the artist's struggle to complete meaningful work, whether it be a painting or a book or other, in the face of distractions. Distractions that seem to magically show up to keep one from completing projects this resistance doesn't want offered to the world. As if the resistance somehow knows this work will make some beautiful kind of difference.

I know this resistance as the devil, and I think it has much broader implications than art.

I believe we are all created to be someone and something. We have a design. A unique and beautiful fit in the puzzle of the world. I believe this because I have a voice inside me always pushing me to become someone just a little different than I am right now.

Not a better me. Or a more right me. Just a different me, as if always being pointed toward me.

The real me.

This is not a voice I have asked for, but one that just seems to have always been a part of me. And yet, this voice always has an opponent. An adversary.

Resistance.

The devil.

I have certainly felt this as I work to complete my memoir. A project that has long faced this adversary. The more the devil throws distractions and resistance at this project, the more I am absolutely convinced it's a project that must get into the world. I don't fully know why, but I do know it must.

I have felt this often when pursuing a healthier me. The voice inside me long ago forced me to see the me that tackles the world with the most clarity is the me who tackles the world without the influence of substance. And yet, this adversary, this resistance, this devil - is constantly dangling the lure of alcohol in front of me.

I have gained some weight lately. Not because I wanted to. And not because I don't know how NOT to. But because the resistance lately to exercise and eating the way I know I personally need to eat has shown up with the resistance of an army. A heavily armed army hell bent on total occupation of me.

And so, what do I do about this resistance - this devil - that stands between who I am and who I am meant to be?

Steven Pressfield would tell me: turn pro.

An amateur waits for inspiration. A professional builds habits that create it. When we turn pro, we stop asking how we feel and start asking what needs to be done. We stop letting our moods determine our movement.

We stop negotiating with the devil.

Pressfield warns there’s a cost to this shift. The moment you begin to take yourself seriously, others may not. Some will mock your discipline, your sobriety, your focus. Some will feel threatened by your growth, because your transformation exposes their own resistance to change. Turning pro often means walking away from those unspoken agreements to stay small together.

But is there a cost too big to pay to come in alignment with the you that you were designed to be?

I don't think so.

So whatever your resistance looks like - fear, distraction, addiction, self-doubt - meet it like a professional. Show up anyway. Do the work anyway. Trust that the voice calling you toward your real self is not your imagination. It’s your invitation.

And when you finally turn pro with your life, you’ll find that the devil no longer has to be defeated, he just gets outworked. And the devil shows up less often in spaces where he knows he'll get outworked!!

​"I wonder if it might be healthier to desire to be missed by a few when we are gone than to be liked by everyone while we are here."

I wrote those words several years ago. I've been thinking about them a lot lately, especially as I finish my memoir. I think about them because it's such a theme of the early years of my life - maybe even MOST of the years of my life - this need to be liked by everyone.

It turns out that being liked by everyone can be a great coping mechanism to deal with the reality you aren't really known by anyone. You can get very gifted at gaining popularity while at the same time becoming quite ill-equipped to get close to anyone.

Being popular doesn't always equal being connected. Honestly, how often does popularity EVER equal connection?

They are quite opposite in many ways. To be popular and well liked, we often feel pressured to portray our best sides. Even make up best sides that really aren't a side we truly possess.

Connection, on the other hand, requires us to share our "worst" sides - our failures and our flaws. It requires one to feel free to share tears as readily as smiles and laughter. It requires shared empathy and compassion as much as chest bumps and high fives.

Maybe more so.

Social media allows us to count our "friends". But it's us who have to ask, how many of those "friends" do I truly miss - how many of them miss me - when the "friends count" one day drops from 1000 to 999?

We live in a virtual world where people are appearing and disappearing at rapid rates, largely unnoticed. We are not designed to be humans who do not notice when those around us disappear.

I have reflected and wondered often about this idea of "missing". How many emotions do we feel that are more powerful than missing someone? What does it say about a person when they disappear and you spend days and months and even years grieving their disappearance?

What it says is connection. We do not miss PEOPLE in our lives, we miss all the feelings and experiences that connected us in the first place, and throughout that relationship. We do not miss the body, we miss everything that often made two bodies feel like one.

One conversation. One hug. One hand. One puddle of tears.

In writing my memoir, I've come to face over and over again that I have experienced great popularity in life, but little missing. And it has left me wondering, when I am gone, will I be remembered as well-liked by many, or deeply missed by a few.

And as I grow older, and wiser, is there anything I wouldn't do to trade the former for the latter?

We live in a world that helps us count our connections. The sad irony in that, quite often the larger that count gets, the less connected we really feel.

​There’s a line in the song Come Out of Hiding by Steffany Gretzinger:

“And oh as you run, what hindered love will only become part of the story.”

They are words that speak to me. Because most of my life I’ve seen the things that hinder love as the problem - the fears, the mistakes, the detours, the unhealed parts that left me feeling unlovable. Unable, even, to love.

I used to think love could only begin once I got all that right. And maybe I'm still prone to thinking that way.

But it's possible I don't give love enough credit. Maybe love is far more patient and creative than that. Maybe love isn’t waiting on the other side of our healing but quietly working miracles and magic through the parts we thought disqualified us.

Maybe what feels like running from love might actually be the long, winding path of running TO it. We just don’t know it at the time. The fears that make us hide, the heartbreaks that make us cautious, even the failures that make us ashamed - maybe those are all the very things that prepare our hearts to finally recognize love when it arrives.

Because I confess, I have wondered at times - would I even recognize love if it was in front of me?

I am growing to believe that love doesn’t erase our story; it redeems it. Maybe it takes what hindered and even destroyed and weaves it into what heals, a healing that makes love suddenly recognizable. Like magic.

I can see a bit of that in my own story now. The seasons I once labeled wasted weren’t wasted at all. They were classrooms where I learned empathy. The relationships that broke me open didn’t break me apart, they broke me open, like a long awaited doorway.

With some measure of hope, I am wondering if the things I thought stood in the way were actually SHOWING me the way.

Love doesn’t wait for us to be perfect. It meets us in our running, in our confusion, in our learning. And somehow, by the time we finally stop running, love has already turned every hindrance into part of a story worth telling.

Life gets beautiful there, I believe, in this place of I have a story worth telling....

​Seth Godin recently wrote: “Our biggest commitments, the things we are most dedicated to, rarely pay us back in equal measure. That might be the point.”

I couldn’t help but think of those words as I reflected on Jane Goodall’s passing. Goodall devoted her life to the chimpanzees of Gombe, and to the larger cause of conservation and compassion for the natural world. It’s difficult to imagine a more lopsided exchange. She poured in decades of her life, enduring isolation, hardship, criticism, and the relentless grind of advocacy. What did she receive in return?

Certainly not wealth in the conventional sense, nor a life of ease.

But maybe this is the kind of commitment Godin was pointing toward. The point was never about a balanced ledger. Goodall didn’t enter the forest with her eyes and heart on dollar signs, she entered with curiosity and stayed with conviction and commitment.

The return she received was something deeper that wealth: the joy of discovery, the widening of human understanding, and the quiet assurance that her life mattered beyond herself.

Does money ever really assure us that our lives matter? Is there any form of wealth greater than having that assurance?

That’s often the paradox of our greatest commitments. They don’t pay us back in equal measure because they’re NOT supposed to. Parenting, faith, teaching, healing, conservation, the scales never balance. But in the imbalance, we discover meaning. In the one-sidedness, we become more fully human.

I do believe the world needs more of that imbalance these days. To me, we feel sadly less fully human than ever.

Goodall’s life reminds us that chasing after equal return is the wrong question. The right one is: What will I so fully give myself to that the return becomes irrelevant? Because the measure of our lives isn’t found in what we accumulate but in what we dedicate ourselves to.

Ms. Goodall seemed to fully get what Godin was saying: The fact that our commitments don’t pay us back in equal measure isn’t a flaw. It’s the point.

​I was at a large work gathering yesterday. I finished my lunch quickly and decided to return to the large conference room where we were meeting for some quiet time. Because there are times when we all NEED some quiet time.

But on my way there, I noticed a dear friend and colleague sitting in a chair in the corner of a nook in our conference area. She was alone, but something told me her alone wasn't out of a search for quiet time.

So I approached her.

I hadn't seen her in quite some time. So I asked her, how are you? The answer was quite evident to me before I asked, so I wasn't surprised to hear her say, I've been struggling.

She went on to tell me she'd been battling health issues.

I asked her if the health issues were significant. Looking back I wish I hadn't asked that. Her sitting alone in a chair and the worried look on her face was all I needed to know about significance. I should never pressure another to rate their struggle as significant or insignificant. Struggle is struggle.

With that said, though, my friend's health struggle is indeed significant and complicated.

As she told me what she is battling, I found myself taking one of her hands with one of my hands and placing my other hand gently on her head - much without thinking - and I told her that I am praying for her.

I was praying for her in that moment. I am praying for her in this writing.

I don't know what the answer to those prayers will be. But I could feel in our exchange that I was a momentary answer to her worries. To her anxiousness. I could tell I was a necessary reminder that her health is more important than her work - helpers are often the worst at slowing down and taking care of themselves the way they tirelessly encourage others to take care of THEMSELVES.

I am glad that on my way to chasing alone time God pointed me to someone alone who didn't much care to be alone.

We live in a world where issues and struggles are often loud and amplified. They are attacking and in our face. That makes it all the more important for us to be ever mindful of those quietly struggling. Those sitting in a corner far away from the fray but not far away from the fray of their own inner turmoil.

We live in times where it's easy to be grateful for the silence - for ours and the silence of others. I understand that. But we also need to understand that silence isn't always a desire, sometimes it's an invitation.

​Several months ago, after finishing a presentation about the connection between trauma and substance abuse, a young lady approached me. She told me she worked in a correctional facility filled with men battling addiction.

“They need to hear your story,” she said. “Will you come talk to them?”

I said sure.

It’s easy to say sure when you don’t really believe it’s going to happen. Sometimes “sure” feels like a polite coin you toss into the fountain of good intentions, never expecting to return to it.

But yesterday, I found myself driving down foggy backroads to that facility. The fog felt fitting. Fog and fear make good companions, and fear was riding shotgun with me.

I’d never spoken to prisoners before. “Prison” is a word we toss around so casually, yet inside that word are people. Real humans. And sadly, once humans become prisoners, they put on the prison uniforms of our perceptions: dangerous, mysterious, unrelatable.

My fear wasn’t just about them. It was about me. I usually count on my gift to grab an audience’s attention. But how on earth would I grab theirs? Surely, we had nothing in common.

And then God spoke into my fear. He told me to lead with the one thing we all share: brokenness.

So I did.

I told them I’d never been a prisoner. But besides that, I could relate a lot. Because what we do have in common is this: we are all broken. I told them I’m a broken man, still stumbling forward on a journey toward healing and wholeness, knowing I’ll never fully arrive there this side of heaven.

I admitted something else: I was there as much for my own healing as I was for theirs.

Before I spoke, I whispered a quiet prayer: Your will be done, God.

And then I watched God answer it.

To my amazement, this may have been one of the most attentive groups I’ve ever spoken to. A couple of men had tears in their eyes. Many had questions.

Is it possible to reconcile with the people you’ve hurt?

Is it possible to reconcile with the people who’ve hurt you?

I’ve never been good at connecting with people, is it too late for me?

One young man pulled me aside afterward. He told me the story of what landed him in prison. In his words, I heard the panic of a mere kid who has spent countless hours trying to figure out why he did what he did - desperately afraid that if he couldn’t find that answer, he might never figure out how not to do it again.

Another man asked me if we could connect when he gets out. “I’ve never had a male role model in my life,” he said. “I think you’d be a good one for me.”

I did my best to answer their questions with love and compassion. But honestly, my answers didn’t mean nearly as much to me as their questions did.

We too easily write prisoners off, maybe unaware of how many of them are sitting in their pods and their cells trying desperately to rewrite their stories. We've too often written the end on the stories they don't want to be over.

I was reminded again that there is no stronger connection than our shared brokenness. The moment I started talking about my own shattered dreams, my mistakes, my destroyed relationships, they were all ears.

The broken don’t need our advice as much as they need our understanding. And understanding often starts with this confession: I am broken too.

When my “talk” was over, I stayed an extra half hour just listening. I didn’t ask what crimes they committed. Instead, I listened to the lives they had lived, the traumas they carried, the stories that brought them here.

Nobody wakes up in prison. Nobody wakes up wanting to go to prison. There are stories that lead us there.

And while I’ve never been behind the walls of a state prison, I told them the truth: I have certainly made a prisoner of my own life.

Walking back outside, the fog had lifted. The fear was gone.

The walls and the razor wire fences may have been built to keep men inside, but for a few hours that day, they couldn’t keep out connection, compassion, or hope.

I went in wondering how I could possible relate to these men. I left realizing we shared the most important thing: our humanity, fragile and broken, but still reaching for healing.

Oh Lord that we would all come to know we are best when we reach together, no matter what uniform we are wearing.