​I recently listened to a conversation where two sides debated whether pet pigs count as children when celebrating Mother's Day. On one side of the conversation was a mother with no human children who faced criticism from family and friends because she wanted recognition for considering her pet pigs her children.

She found this to be very reasonable. The other side of the conversation responded as if they'd never heard anything more unreasonable.

Me?

I found myself wondering why both sides felt such an intense need to win this debate. Why they poured so much energy and stress into winning the other side over. The truth is, I felt quite grateful I had no opinion on the matter.

It feels risky to say,"I have no opinion." Because somewhere along the way, we began treating constant opinion as proof of intelligence, engagement, morality, or identity. As if silence means weakness. As if uncertainty implies ignorance. As if every question requires immediate personal positioning.

Opinions matter. Convictions matter. Discernment matters. But about everything?

To carry an opinion about everything is to carry emotional weight about everything. Every headline. Every controversy. Every social issue. Every celebrity conflict. Every parenting debate. Every political argument. Every viral moment. Every question about pigs and Mother’s Day apparently.

And many of these conversations are not actually invitations into understanding. They are invitations into tension. Into camps. Into identity defense. Into proving. Into winning.

A dear friend recently told me she has been working on trading in "always" and "never" for possibilities.

“Always” and “never” are often attempts to create certainty in an uncertain world. They simplify complexity. They close loops emotionally. They help us feel safer, clearer, more in control. But they also shut doors.

Absolutes often leave room only for judgment; if we created a law regarding pets and mothers and Mother's Day, we would know who honors the holiday and who disgraces it.

I do understand this need for absolutes. They often stem from emotional exhaustion, fear, hurt, or accumulated experience rather than objective truth. The nervous system loves certainty, even painful certainty, because certainty can feel safer than openness.

Possibilities, on the other hand, often require vulnerability. But vulnerability can be the gateway to humanity.

I am not suggesting a world without conviction. But I do wish we could loosen our grip on absolutes just enough to allow for mystery, growth, nuance, and maybe even a nice surprise or two in life.

I often say I am living in my age of wisdom. So much of that wisdom has come from letting go of things I once absolutely held onto. Too often we think wisdom is gathered; it is often more about letting go.

​Is it possible that many of us wrestle with challenging feelings that come with not getting things we never really wanted in the first place?

Is it possible some of us were pointed to a career path we never wanted to follow, and now wrestle with not getting there - or worse - getting there and hating every minute of being there?

Is it possible that some of us live pursuing a bigger house we never in our lives wanted until our best friend got a bigger house?

Is it possible that some of us wrestle with being single only because the world tells us we have too much going for us to be living alone - as if NOT living alone validates our worth?

Is it possible some of us STAY in relationships for the same reason?

Is it possible some of us show up to church every Sunday because someone said we need to show up to church every Sunday, and yet, in doing so, never come to know the God who we supposedly go there to see?

Showing up can check a box, but is it the box we long to check?

To know what you really want you have to know who you really are. How many of us take time each day - or week - or even this year reflecting on who we truly are?

How much does the life I live, the things I have, the things I say - how much does any of it really reflect who I am inside? The closer those answers are to everything, the closer we likely are to peace and contentment. The further away they are, the more likely it is we need someone to help us understand we don't really want what we think we want.

The world makes a lot of money convincing us we want things we don't want - through advertisement and comparison. A lot of people feel deeply fulfilled when they see us achieve the dreams they dreamed for us. But all of that often comes at a great cost.

The cost is us.

​At the end of day three of a training experience I led last week, one of the participants confided that they had spent most of their life in physical pain. “But today,” they said, almost cautiously, “is the first time in recent memory that I feel pain free.”

In hearing that, I suppose there are two easy reactions available to us. Skepticism or awe. Dismiss it as coincidence, exaggeration, placebo, or lean toward something that feels much larger. When I heard the participant describe their experience, I leaned instinctively toward the latter. It felt miraculous.

But it was also a miracle that, at least to me, made perfect sense.

There was a time in my life when it would not have made sense at all. Pain was pain. Bodies were bodies. Emotions were emotions. Different categories, different systems. But the deeper I have wandered into the science of stress, trauma, attachment, and the nervous system, the harder it has become to maintain those neat separations.

Pain, it turns out, is not merely a structural event. It is a protective experience generated by the brain. It is influenced not only by tissue damage, but by context, memory, fear, safety, and perception. The brain is constantly asking a survival question beneath our awareness: Am I safe?

When the answer is no, everything tightens.

Muscles brace. Breathing shallows. Vigilance rises. Pain often increases. Not because the person is imagining anything, but because the nervous system is doing exactly what it was designed to do in the presence of threat.

And threat, we now know, is not limited to physical danger.

Isolation is a threat.

Rejection is a threat.

Silence can be a threat.

Living unseen for years at a time is a threat of a very particular kind.

What made the training powerful was not simply the content. It was the environment. For three days, people did something our nervous systems rarely experience in modern adult life. They spoke honestly. They listened without fixing. They revealed parts of themselves usually kept hidden. There was laughter, emotion, recognition. There was, perhaps most importantly, a palpable absence of judgment.

In other words, there was safety.

And the body responds to safety just as surely as it responds to danger.

Heart rates settle. Defenses soften. Breathing deepens. The parasympathetic nervous system, our built-in regulation system, becomes more active. Even pain perception can change. This is not mysticism. It is physiology.

Which brings me, interestingly enough, to Jesus.

Regardless of one’s theology, the healing narratives in the Gospels contain a striking and consistent pattern. Before or alongside physical healing, there is almost always an encounter of profound human dignity. The unseen are noticed. The untouchable are touched. The ashamed are addressed with tenderness. People are not treated as problems to be solved, but as persons to be restored.

“Daughter.”

“What do you want me to do for you?”

Simple words. But relationally seismic.

Modern neuroscience would not be surprised by the power of such moments. To be deeply seen and met without threat is one of the most regulating experiences available to a human nervous system. It quiets alarm systems. It changes internal states. It can alter how the body feels.

I am not suggesting that first-century miracles can be reduced to neurobiology. That would miss the point entirely. But I am suggesting something both scientifically grounded and spiritually resonant:

Perhaps part of what made those moments so powerful was not only divine intervention, but the radical experience of being fully seen, fully safe, and fully accepted.

We tend to think of miracles as violations of natural law. But what if some miracles are, at least in part, expressions of laws we are only now beginning to understand?

What if the human body has always been this responsive to love, safety, and connection?

What if healing has always been, in ways we underestimate, relational?

I am not Jesus. No illusion there.

But moments like this training make me wonder if participating in environments of genuine safety, presence, and human connection is its own quiet form of miracle work.

Not supernatural.

Not explainable away.

But deeply, beautifully human.

Social media can begin to feel like a catch-all for rage. It's an easy place to unload rage without any obligation to articulate where the rage is really coming from, and - more importantly - what direction one plans to go with it, what changes will one fight for to change that which enrages them.

As Mrs. Obama suggests: rage without reason or plan is just more rage.

I know our world is running short on some things, but rage sure the heck isn't one of them.

I actually value people who share their rages - even rages born in circles I don't and likely never will belong to - if they are thoughtful and articulate well where it's coming from and where they are going with it. From that rage, I get to learn and grow. And even become more empathetic and understanding.

But rage for the sake of rage, where it feels like I've stumbled into an audience where rage is the main act, I personally find that enraging. Which isn't healthy. And makes me oh so grateful for the unfollow feature on social media.

Rage can be good. Useful. A great motivator.

Unless of course the motivation is simply rage.

I've seen the rage for the sake of rage approach.

I fail to see the value.

It seems to destroy more than it fixes.

​I am preparing for a presentation later this week. I used this slide in a presentation to a local college psychology class a few weeks ago. Although the data only runs through 2011, the trend is striking. While I am cautious about extending conclusions beyond the study, I think there are reasonable cultural and social conditions that suggest the pattern may not have reversed.

So what does the slide say?

Over a 25-year period, the percentage of college students identified as having secure attachment styles declined by seven percent.

Why does that matter?

Attachment patterns influence how we experience all relationships, not just romantic ones. When two people both operate from relative security, the relationship has a greater likelihood of feeling stable, trusting, and emotionally safe.

But when insecurity dominates - whether expressed through fear of abandonment, discomfort with closeness, chronic guardedness, or chaotic relational patterns - connection becomes more difficult to establish and sustain. These dynamics do not automatically doom relationships, but they surely introduce predictable challenges.

I often teach, and sometimes even preach, that relationships are among our most powerful sources of health and healing. When you examine the lives of people who report high levels of well-being, supportive and meaningful relationships almost always appear prominently in the picture.

Which brings me back to the data.

If fewer individuals experience relational security, it raises important questions about how easily people can form and maintain deeply supportive bonds.

What is a central requirement for secure attachment within relationships?

Safety.

Not perfection. Not constant agreement. But a consistent sense of physical and emotional safety - the experience of being able to exist in another person’s presence without excessive fear, guardedness, or self-protection.

I look around and wonder how intentionally we are creating that sense of safety for others, both in person and online.

If our capacity for secure human connection truly is one of the strongest predictors of well-being, then even modest shifts in these patterns should grab our attention.

The world is full of struggling people. Disconnection is rarely the only cause, but it is very often a giant part of the story.