​In Ephesians 6, Paul talks about putting on the full armor of God. But the very first piece of the armor?

The belt.

The belt of truth.

The world would be easy, that belt quite unnecessary, if the world was built on truth. But it is not. Not entirely, at least. There is a spiritual enemy out there intent on overwhelming us with deceptive ideas. Ideas wrapped in just enough truth to feel familiar. So familiar that we start to make deceptions the heart of our truths.

"You’re not enough."
"You’ll always be that addict."
"No one really wants you here."
"You’re too broken to be used by God."
"You're too late. Too old. Too far gone."

Without our belt of truth, these spiritual deceptions become real-life identity theft. A belt doesn't just accessorize, it secures, it stabilizes, it keeps the rest of the armor from falling off.

Without it everything starts to sag.

In today’s culture, there are all kinds of lies disguised as freedom:
You are only as valuable as your productivity.
Love is a transaction, give just enough to get what you want.
Success means being busy, being seen, being envied.
Feelings are facts. If you feel it, it must be true.

Truth is whatever works for you in the moment.

Those are cultural deceptions and they’re everywhere. They don’t show up with flashing red lights, they show up in ads, algorithms, comment sections, and even our own inner narratives.

So what is truth?

For me, it’s the unshakable truth that I am a child of God. That I’m not what I’ve done. I’m not what I fear. I’m not what the culture says I must become to be worthy.

Truth is that I am already loved. Already chosen. Already known.
Before I write the first word. Before my boss declares that I am worthy of a promotion. Before the scoreboard says win or lose.

But I also must acknowledge my truth is not everyone's truth. Not everyone believes in God. Not everyone names Jesus as truth. Not everyone finds their value in the belief that Jesus came and died and rose again - all as supernatural testimony to a worth impossible for me to secure on my own merits.

So what’s their belt of truth?

Maybe it’s the truth that:

You are inherently worthy, not because of what you produce, but because you exist.

You matter. Your story matters. Your pain matters.

Healing is possible. You are not beyond redemption.

You are more than what was done to you.

You are loved—by someone, somewhere—and you’re not alone.

We all deserve a belt of truth. Because life without one leaves us exposed - vulnerable to lies that tell stories of us much uglier than the stories we truly are.

The stories this world truly needs now more than ever.

Maybe that’s the invitation here: Not just to wear our own belt of truth, but to help others find theirs.

To name their worth until they can speak it for themselves.

To hold space for someone else’s truth, even if it's still unraveling.

To remind them they don’t have to believe every thought that crosses their mind. Humans can often be the most beautiful mirrors, reflecting back upon someone the truth of beauty they will never see in themselves.

Because the enemy doesn’t come roaring with swords.

He whispers.

And the belt of truth, it's what allows us to hear him loud and clear.

“You’re just waiting for joy to catch up.”

I heard that line in a podcast interview recently. The guest was facing the host as she responded to a question, but it felt like she was looking in my eyes when she answered with those words. 

Sometimes you are going through motions in life you have no idea you are going through until someone names those very motions.

I’m still here. Still doing the work. Still writing and showing up and walking my trails. Still being a dad, a friend, a helper. I’m not broken down on the side of the road - but joy? Joy has been trailing behind. Like Siri mapped it a much longer route to avoid the tolls, indifferent to the possibility that someone was desperately awaiting its arrival.

The word for this, I recently learned, is anhedonia - the inability to feel pleasure from things that used to light you up. It’s one of the quieter signs of depression, especially high-functioning depression.

That makes it easy to miss.

When you're still meeting deadlines, still showing up for people, still producing - no one thinks to ask if you’ve stopped feeling. In a world where wellness is often measured by productivity, being productive can often be quite counter productive to your health.

But that’s the ache. You’re doing more “right” than ever, and still, something’s missing.

The spark. The joy. The full emotional yes.

In this interview, Dr. Judith Joseph said: “You’re not a human being anymore. You’re a human doing. You’re trying to outrun something you haven’t fully resolved.”

That one landed, too.

Because the truth is, unresolved trauma doesn’t always leave behind chaos, it often leaves behind busyness. Productive people, achievers, givers… many of us are just trying to stay ahead of a pain we don’t want to sit with. We don’t even realize how much we’ve built our lives around avoiding what hurts.

Until joy doesn’t show up. And like standing at the bus stop waiting on a bus that's ten minutes late, you start wondering - where is it?

I’ve spent years learning how my trauma shaped me. Childhood experiences I once downplayed or couldn’t name have explained so much of why I’ve kept myself busy. Not just productively busy, but protectively busy. As if constant motion could keep me ahead of the ache.

Side note, world - constant scrolling is one of the way MANY have adopted busyness to stay ahead of the ache....

But here’s the thing: you can only outrun yourself for so long.

I’ve started to understand this as a different kind of crisis, not dramatic, not loud. Just a quiet erosion of aliveness. The moments where you just know something should feel good, but it doesn't. This absence of joy doesn’t always mean failure. Sometimes, it’s a signal that our body, mind and spirit is tired of trying to outperform our pain.

It’s tempting to dismiss this. After all, the world loves functioning. Especially high-functioning. But what if the quiet erosion of joy is a crisis? What if our inability to feel pleasure, to engage deeply, to be present - what if that’s more urgent than we’ve allowed ourselves to believe?

I’ve come to believe it is.

We were wired for joy. It’s our birthright. But trauma rewires us for survival, for vigilance, for going through the motions without ever truly being in them.

And healing? Healing begins by naming what we’ve tried to outrun.

So I’m naming it.

I’ve been waiting for joy to catch up. Maybe you have, too.

The good news? I believe it can. Joy may be late. But it isn’t lost. And it’s not punishing you. It’s just been waiting for you to stop running long enough to be found.

Not by pushing harder. Not by performing better.

But by finally giving yourself permission to feel again. To rest. To receive. To be.​​

​The apostle Paul was one of the earliest practitioners of mindfulness. Some Christians will think that sounds a little too woo-woo. But it makes it no less true.

Paul was in prison when he sent a letter to a Christian community living in the ancient city of Philippi. He founded a church there and had a heart for its people. In the letter he told them he had a secret for a peace that surpasses all understanding.

Last week I found myself in a place where I couldn't begin to locate that kind of peace. Paul's letter felt more like a fairy tale than an invitation. But if this man was writing about a peace he was experiencing in a prison cell, there is no hiding from the invitation within his words.

There is no denying his longing for all of us to experience such peace.

Paul said, "whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things."

If I am being real, the source of my distress last week - at the heart of my lack of peace - was my focus on things that were ONCE lovely. It was my focus on how lovely I thought that things could and should one day be.

While going back and forth - yesterday and tomorrow - I spent very little time focusing on all that IS lovely in my life right now - a form of mindfulness.

Steven Furtick often suggest we are time travelers. Minds wandering off into the future or into the past. This is a problem, he suggests, because true peace comes from being mindful of the here and now.

Monday. It's always easy to feel ugh, where did the weekend go?

Monday. It's always easy to look to the week ahead. What can and must be done? And how fast will the next weekend arrive?

But Monday. Peace CAN be found in Monday. It can be found when we don't think of Monday as the beginning of a new week or as the end of a weekend, but as a day full of things lovely in and of itself.

A peace that surpasses all understanding isn't found in fixing yesterday. Or in stepping into a better tomorrow. A peace that surpasses all understanding is found in all that IS.

All that IS right now.

Monday.

Time travel is the great robber of peace. Mindfulness returns us home, to all that IS, to the God of peace so ready to meet us there.

God knows yesterday. God has seen tomorrow. But God is living with us here - today - Monday.

Close your eyes. Think about something that IS lovely. There you will find a peace that cannot be stolen by yesterday or tomorrow.

There you will find a peace that surpasses all understanding.

There is where I need to spend a lot more time this week than I did last.....

​Today, I am presenting at the Overcoming Trauma Through Connection Conference in Danville, VA. I will start by asking the question, "How Steep Is Your Hill?"

Many years ago, the University of Virginia conducted a study. They put a group of students at the foot of a large hill with a loaded backpack and had them estimate how steep the hill was they were about to be challenged to climb.

The catch is - the students were divided into two groups.

One group of students got to stand next to a friend while they looked at the hill. The other group, well they stood staring at the hill alone.

The research revealed that the students looking at the hill standing by themselves estimated the climb was going to be much greater than the students standing next to friends. Further, the closer the students felt to the friend standing next to them, the less climb they saw in the hill.

How steep is your hill? The answer usually has nothing to do with the hill; it almost always has EVERYTHING to do with who is standing with you when you look at your hill.

There is a lot of talk about the impacts of loneliness in our world today. Maybe the greatest impact is just how many people see the hills in their lives as much more daunting than they really are simply because they look at those hills alone.

Looking at daunting hills equals stress. Sleeplessness. Depression. Thoughts of suicide.

I know.

And I also know just how much hills shrink when someone looks at that hill with you.

The bible tells us: “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”

Sometimes having faith the size of a mustard seed isn't easy to find. Sometimes the mustard seed seems as big as the mountain. Until someone stands beside you and takes your hand as you talk to your mountains.

Sometimes the mustard seed is US.

Us coming along side someone lost and staring at their mountain. Us, pouring the faith that runs through our hearts and minds into theirs.

Us who say, together I think we can move this mountain.

How steep is you hill?

Rarely is the answer about the hill.

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

I mean, I really got it.

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

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

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

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

Spiritually.

Internally.

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

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

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

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

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

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

And isn’t that all of us?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And maybe that’s our calling, too.

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

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

And sometimes, that begins with an island.

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

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

​I heard this in a sermon recently and it's stuck with me.

“Comparison collects evidence about someone else’s life to tell a story about your own.” ~Chet Pete

Isn't that the silent, sneaky way comparison works? It doesn’t knock on your door and announce, “Hey, I’m here to make you feel less than.” No, it creeps in quietly, like a lawyer gathering selective evidence from someone else’s highlight reel while building a case against your life.

Steven Furtick once said, "The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel."

I’ve done this. I STILL do this. I see a happy couple posting anniversary photos and feel the ache of my failed marriage. I watch a friend’s TED Talk and wonder why my words haven’t traveled further. I see fathers on vacation with their kids and question whether I’ve done enough, been enough.

And here’s the most dangerous part of it all: None of those stories are mine, but I let them shape mine anyway.

We all do it. Social media has made sure of that. We scroll through curated images and polished captions, not realizing we’re not just consuming content—we're unconsciously comparing it to our private, unfiltered lives. And the brain does something both fascinating and harmful: it fills in the blanks.

It assumes their joy is constant. Their love is easy. Their success is sustainable. And then it quietly whispers: Why not you?

A study out of the University of Copenhagen coined the term “Facebook envy,” pointing to the way we feel worse about our lives after seeing others' seemingly perfect ones.

But here’s some truth.

Their story doesn’t invalidate yours.

Their joy doesn’t erase your worth.

And your timeline isn’t late; It’s yours.

We were never meant to write our stories with someone else’s pen. We weren’t designed to measure the substance of our lives against someone else’s surface. God doesn’t do side-by-side comparisons when He calls us beloved.

He sees us.

Fully.

Completely.

Uniquely.

If I’ve learned anything in these last few years - through the heartbreak, the rebuilding, the parenting, the long walks - it’s that I rob myself of presence every time I compare myself to someone else’s progress.

I don’t need more evidence from someone else’s life to prove something about mine.

I need grace.

I need grounding.

I need to come home to MY story, messy and beautiful and still unfolding.

Home, where the only story I compare my story to is mine.

All. Mine.

​I confess, I have been stressed lately. People working all around me in the field I work in have been losing their jobs. Ellen Langer says, stress is believing something is going to happen and that when it does, it's going to be awful.

Langer goes on to say there are two ways to deal with this stress that are healthier than just accepting stress.

One, think of reasons the thing you're sure is going to happen might not happen at all. And two, think of reasons that if indeed the event does happen, you'll somehow gain an advantage.

I've been practicing this lately.

First, it is definitely single minded to assume the funding cuts that have led to people losing their jobs around me will lead to cuts in funding that supports my job. That is not a given, so to give all my energy to that one solution - as if it's inevitable - isn't healthy.

(Side note: I've come to accept that inevitability thinking has not been a friend of mine over the years. It's possibly been my greatest enemy).

There are also cases where an organization or agency has found new funding or internal resources to keep people. That hasn't been possible in many cases, but certainly has in some.

But what if it does happen, this awful event?

Is it the end of the world?

I have had jobs end abruptly in the past. Some on my terms, some not. And the result is that today I do the most meaningful work of my life. It fulfills me. It fairly compensates me. It allows me to live out my faith mission as a professional mission: to bring healing to the world. What a gift.

So the end result of me losing every job I've ever left or lost in my life is that I now have the greatest job I've ever had. Who am I to assume losing this job would be the end of that progression in my life?

I have also had people suggest to me the last several years that I should go out on my own. Take my work show on the road. Work for me and not for someone else.

A lot of me knows that is a good idea. Maybe a great one. A lot of me knows I could and would make that work.

A LOT of me, but not all of me.

Working for someone else is a great security blanket. Especially when it comes to health insurance - for me AND for my boys. I have obligations AND desires to support them every way I can. So it's not like cutting the cable cord and going all in on streaming. It's much more complicated than that.

However, if someone indeed cuts the cord on me while I sleep, I will wake up knowing there are possibilities. Sometimes not having a choice is the greatest motivator there is to make some of our best choices ever.

So I am stressed, yes. But I am not debilitated by my stress. Which hasn't always been the case. I am a story-teller, and the stories I used to tell most were stories predicting the worst possible outcomes in my life.

Additionally, I used to be really good at making those predictions come true.

But no more.

We can all wake up believing that life sucks.

But I have learned, thankfully, that on the other side of believing that, we all have the power to ask a follow up question:

Does it really?

Maybe you are stressed about an event you are sure is going to happen?

Are you totally certain it's going to happen? And even if it does, maybe it's not the end of the world, but the beginning of one you never saw coming.

Stress is often inevitable.

Staying there is not. 

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

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

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

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

The land owner paid them a denarius.

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

1 X 12 = 😮💰💲

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

​One 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 was beaten as a child.

I don't think the people who beat me would use that language. They would likely say I was whipped.

Or spanked.

​Or paddled. 

I understand that, because for most of my life that is the language I myself used to describe the beatings.

Almost always, I was told the beatings were a demonstration of love. And to me, spanking sounded much more loving than a beating. That language helped me navigate the confusion that lived at the intersection of violence and love.

Labeling a beating a spanking made the people in my life that I was supposed to love a whole lot more lovable, at least in story. But it's hard to actually and fully love people you are afraid of, and it's hard not to be afraid of people who beat you.

Isn't that the intention of a beating - or a spanking - to instill fear? Isn't it to make one more instinctually afraid of making a poor choice - (poor choice as defined by the spanker) - than it is to help one develop their own reasoning and decision making skills.

Because let's be clear - being afraid to do something and choosing not to do something are not nearly the same things. Someone who is navigating life trying to navigate their fears of something or someone has far less capacity to think logically about anything. Mainly because our brains are designed to feel safe and connected before they will ever shift gears to healthy thinking.

Fear triggers instincts, not rational thinking. Instincts like people pleasing, hiding, avoiding conflict or confrontation. Fear leaves one emotionally ill-equipped for most problem solving, so one develops instincts that will help them avoid problems all together.

To be clear, I don't think one person who ever beat me did so to hurt me. I absolutely DO believe every person who ever beat me BELIEVED it was a loving thing to do; you quite often love the way you learned to love as a child.

A generation of beating children to show love grooms another generation to love via violence. (Because again, let's be clear, parenting is the only example I can think of when we will not instantly call striking another human - outside of self-defense - an act of violence).

Oprah Winfrey talks openly about being 'whipped' as a child. She recalls having to retrieve the switch that was used to 'whip' her. In an interview Oprah shared the following:

"I remember doing a show on the Oprah show years later, talking about should children be spanked and a black woman stood up and said, well, I got beat every day by my father, I was in the choir and my father beat me in front of the whole congregation in church and I turned out okay. And I'm like, did you really? Because nobody, anybody who's ever been hit, realizes the humiliation of that. What you feel more than anything, even as a little kid, is the humiliation of it. And what you are being told in that moment is that you have no value, that you are worth nothing, that you are so worthless that I get now to lay my hands on you and physically beat you."

I know that sounds harsh, especially to folks who have spanked or are currently spanking their children. But for many children, and many adults who have wrestled with this reality all of our lives, like me, Oprah's story hits too close to home to feel harsh.

It feels more like a way to better understand why I have always been so prone to feeling humiliated - to feeling like I am not valuable enough - in almost every relationship I have had beyond my childhood. Because, you see, once humiliation is where your instincts go, once your instincts are to question your value in a relationship, many responses to actions in a relationship that are not nearly as attacking as physical violence, can still feel like humiliation.

Can still feel like my value is being questioned.

When I talk about this in public, many parents feel judged. Or feel defensive. Or feel regret for what they might have done to their child. That is not my goal there; it is not my goal here.

My goal is to have these discussions from the viewpoint of a child. From looking at the impact on a child's development. Quite often these conversations are limited to morality, right or wrong, many will even turn to the bible to justify the striking of a child. Yet, I rarely here anyone talk about the true impact on a child.

(Side note: the Jesus of the bible, who is personally my greatest example of right living, never once struck someone to encourage or uphold right living. So any leaning on the bible to support striking a child assumes Jesus would want us to do something with our children he never once did with one of his - as we are ALL his children).

I have come to know that nothing hides the brokenness of a child more than a child who lives in constant compliance for fear of ever looking like they have done something wrong. (That can also become true of partners in a marriage).

Brokenness can be well hidden by people-pleasing. Lying. Manipulating. All things one gets very good at - it becomes their instincts - if it helps them avoid the physical pain and humiliation of being physically struck in childhood.

It turns out, it's very difficult to believe others who have zero interest in striking you don't want to strike you when you have instincts built on living in fear of the people who actually did strike you. You can live in a world, largely unknowingly, that looks like everyone wants to hit you.

Again, it's important for me to say, I have no resentment toward the people who struck me. It is indeed very difficult to feel a sense of love and connection with them - fear is actually the opposite of connection - but I have come to accept you can NOT feel love and also NOT feel resentment and judgment at the same time.

Knowing how others got to the places they got to is as important to me as understanding how I've gotten to the places I've gotten to.

I also know this; I have not been a perfect father. Not close. But even though I can recall snagging hold of my boys' little wrists a time or two, shooting them some angry glares, all which makes me cringe with some shame, neither of my boys have ever experienced me striking them. I believe that no matter what my boys come to ultimately think of me as their father, they will not live in fear of me.

I believe that is an underappreciated gift in relationships; no fear.

I am not sure that would be the case with my boys if I hadn't experienced what I experienced as a child. So I am nothing but grateful for every single thing I've been through.

It is also my mission, it is at the heart of this very difficult article to write, that any normalcy that remains in our culture about adults striking children, any ideas that this is a good and loving thing to do to our kids, that I can help us at least explore a sense of the abnormal and the unhealthy in that conversation.

Help us explore our beliefs about adults striking children through the lived experience of childhood relationships turned adult relationships.

I believe we all have done and are doing the best we can with what we have and know in this moment. I also believe we always have it within us to make the next moment better.

I believe this is especially true when it comes to our kids.