​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.

​A friend asked me recently, and it's a question I get a lot living personally and professionally in the trauma world, but she asked me, why do siblings who grow up sharing similar challenging circumstances go on to live very different lives?

At the heart of that question, basically, is why do shared traumas impact individuals differently? Why would one sibling come out on the other side of a shared experience, especially a really difficult experience, in a healthier place than another.

One answer I've come to understand about that question is that even though many experiences might FEEL shared, they are often experienced quite differently. Our hearts don’t experience trauma as collective stories; they experience it as deeply personal gaps in our individual souls. It's not the situation itself, but how those gaps do or don't get filled in the aftermath that shapes who we become.

Dr. Bruce Perry, a trauma expert, beautifully articulates why this is true. He says healing from trauma is possible, but it hinges on relational experiences—being truly seen and heard by someone. It's not about simply enduring an experience; it's about connection. While siblings might share parents, they often don’t share the same connections, the same moments of attunement and love, with their parents or with non-parents who show up in their lives during or after adversities and traumas.

In my life, when the home felt silent and distant, I had grandfathers who filled those spaces with gentle presence and reassurance. They never needed to say much. Their presence whispered louder than the chaos. That quiet assurance—“everything will be OK”—provided an emotional anchor.

Looking back, I realize these two men unknowingly put me on a path toward healing I still fight to navigate every day. They were my first glimpses at experiencing the power found in changing what comes next.

Trauma thrives in silence, but healing thrives in the safety of relationship. The critical difference isn't what happened to us, but what came afterward. Were we met with silence - were our experiences stuffed into secrecy - or were we met with presence?

Did someone notice us struggling or did we learn early on that silence was our best friend?

I've learned in my own journey that our scars might shape us, but they don’t define our future. Healing isn't guaranteed by shared suffering but by individual moments of connection that break through isolation. If people have different outcomes from a shared hardship it often means one found that connection while the other remained locked in silence.

So, the key isn't to rewrite our past—it's to rewrite our relationships. That is certainly the current chapter of my own healing journey.

Sometimes the pain can still feel impossible, but I do know this: no trauma is beyond healing. We are not destined to live broken, but called to live connected.

Life is not an experience to conquer on the way to a place called healed; life is discovering that peace is best experienced lovingly helping each other conquer demons.

We heal not by changing history, but by changing what comes next. Especially when what comes next is someone showing up in your life wanting to embrace your struggles and not to help you bury them. Especially when someone shows up loving us in a way silence never could.

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

One of them is trauma.

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

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

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

I am this way for two reasons.

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

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

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

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

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

Many therapists and counselors understand this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who I am called to be.

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

Failed marriage. Failed job. Failed project.

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

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

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

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

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

Jesus had to die to introduce everlasting life.

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

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

But sometimes it is.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And indeed, sometimes it is.

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

Sometimes, endings really are the bravest and healthiest choice.

​You were made for another world.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And another one.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Never having to feel their worlds toppled by this world.

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

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

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

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

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

Healthy relationships often contribute to better physical health.

Poor mental health often leads to declining physical health.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that is where hope comes from.

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

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

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

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

That is my life these days: new hope.

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

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

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

Hearing and healing—the pathway to restoration.

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

​In the aftermath of a broken 22-year relationship, a life partner accused me of being emotionally abusive. I am certain in her mind it didn’t sound like an accusation, but in my mind, she might as well have been accusing me of murder.

It's hard to be called an abuser.

But I am here to tell you there’s something even harder than being called an abuser. It’s coming to accept the truth in that accusation. It’s hard to accept that harsh accusations are harsh truths.

On my way to Atlanta earlier this week, I listened to part of Mel Robbins’ book, Let Them. I am stuck on Chapter 7. Chapter 7 of her book may end up being one of the most significant chapters of any book I have ever read. At least as it pertains to my own personal growth.

Chapter 7: When Grown Ups Throw Tantrums.

Robbins started the chapter by suggesting that most of us are walking around with the emotional maturity of 8-year-olds in big people bodies. She suggested that we are to some degree, many of us to a large degree, emotionally immature.

She didn’t say that as belittlement. She actually said it with great compassion.

Robbins said, “growing up, you were probably taught to repeatedly repress what you feel. You know, when you tell a child to get over it or stop crying or calm down, you're training them to suppress how they feel. You're teaching them that you're not supposed to feel or react. You’ve got to distract, avoid, or numb those normal healthy emotions.”

Robbins would go on to share that a therapist told her that this is why so many people live with anxiety and depression and addiction and chronic pain because they have avoided all the emotions over the years that then build up inside of them without any outlet.

Then she went on to address the silent treatment. And I went on to hit that replay button over and over.

About the silent treatment, Robbins said, “silent treatment is what an immature adult does when they're upset, and they don't know how to process their emotions in a healthy and respectful manner. So, what do they do instead?”

They stop talking.

They pretend nothing's wrong.

And often, they ignore you.

Robbins added, “and if you’ve ever been on the receiving end of the silent treatment from a friend or family member or coworker, it’s painful.”

My personal guess is, if you’re on the receiving end of it, it may feel abusive. And if you’re someone coming to realize this while reading chapter 7 of Let Them, you can start feeling like an abuser.

But then comes once again the compassion from Robbins. The compassion that can grow from emotional intelligence and emotional maturity.

She said, “an immature adult uses the silent treatment because they don't know how to process their own emotions. And so, they go silent and just drop this guillotine and cut off all contact because they hope you're gonna come over to them. They want you to ask what's wrong so that they don't have to deal with their emotions by themselves."

In those words, I came to understand me in a way I don’t think I ever had. Because most of my life that’s exactly what I did, use the silent treatment in hopes that someone would ask me what is wrong. I didn’t KNOW that’s what I was doing, but it IS what I was doing.

Somewhere inside of me I always longed to release all of the pain that had built up over the years, but didn’t have it in me, not by a longshot, to say to someone, I’d like to talk about all of this pain I have built up inside me.

I had NEVER seen anyone do anything remotely similar to that, I sure as hell had no idea how to do that myself.

Hearing chapter 7, and these insights from Robbins on the silent treatment, I realized I had spent most of my life using the silent treatment in that manner. Using it to beg people to ask me what is wrong because that felt easier than talking to someone about everything that was wrong.

I used the silent treatment as a kid, and as a teen, and in every relationship I ever had.

Robbins says, “until a person does the work to build the skills of emotional intelligence, they're always going to pull the silent treatment. They will always play the victim, and they will always be passive-aggressive. This isn't a personality trait, it's a pattern.”

Again, not easy to hear. But on the other hand, when you hear the way you’ve handled your emotions isn’t about a broken personality, but instead just the carrying on, over and over, of the patterns of your childhood, there is almost something freeing about that.

Freeing to understand a lot of who you are is who you were patterned to be and not who you decided to be.

Patterns built into you by abuse that was likely just the continuation of someone else’s patterns and not their personality traits.

How much harm is caused not by malicious intent, but by people unknowingly repeating the emotional patterns they inherited? Patterns they never learned to name—let alone break?"

How much abuse is simply carrying out patterns of emotions people have no capacity at all to interpret, let alone interpret as abuse?

I don’t offer any of this up as an excuse. Excuses have no value at this point.

But I do believe there is value in helping people understand themselves and understand the people across from them.

Robbins says to people who may be reading chapter 7 and realizing to some degree this chapter is about them and their own emotional immaturity: “You're not alone. I had that realization about myself too. And it takes a lot of courage to admit that you got work to do. It's so easy to see this immature behavior in other people. But it takes a level of bravery and emotional intelligence to see it in yourself.”

I also want to suggest that when we are on the receiving end of the silent treatment, emotional maturity may help us lean with compassion into the possibility this abuse isn’t at the hands of an abusive personality but rather a continuation of a pattern that goes back decades.

When we are on the receiving end of the silent treatment and receive it as an attack, it’s easy for silent treatments to breed more silent treatments.

Until a relationship becomes nothing BUT silence.

And the one thing that thrives in silence is resentment. Resentment until no one really cares at all about what is going on inside the person across from them. You come to resent the silence more than you have any compassion for the patterns beneath it.

Silence becomes an attack, it becomes abuse, not a call for help.

Not everyone can break the patterns of their life to the point that they can break their dependence on the silent treatment. I never could, at least not until I became painfully aware of my patterns. I am grateful that my emotional age is higher than 8 today, even if I have a long way to go to reach maturity.

I will also acknowledge there are certainly times to realize you are indeed the victim of a silent treatment you can no longer allow yourself to be a victim of. You need to allow for one's emotional immaturity while allowing yourself to no longer be a victim of it.

But there are also times, maybe, that being aware of emotional patterns offers an avenue to helping someone explore their patterns. Patterns they have unknowingly, often, used the silent treatment to hide from.

Patterns that have resulted in them abusing themselves while at the exact same time abusing the people around them.

Breaking generational patterns takes courage. It takes even more courage to enter into another person’s silence—not as a victim or an adversary, but as someone willing to see beyond the silence and into the pain that created it.

That kind of bravery could change everything.

​I told someone yesterday—someone who was once significant in my life—that I regret not taking the chance to repair a rupture when the opportunity came. I balked at it. I wish that choice had been as simple as yes or no, repair or not, but to say it was more complicated than that would be an understatement.

Dr. Curt Thompson says, “When it comes to ruptures, to repair them we must first imagine doing it, and without the imagination to do it, we never attempt it.”

In the moment of that choice, I had never in my life focused on repairing a rupture.

Not. Once. Ever.

So not only did I lack the capacity to imagine what repair even looked like, I had no skill set whatsoever to pull it off.

In my world, for all of my life, rupture looked like something you ran from, or yelled over, or crawled in a bed in the back room of the house pretending there was no such thing as rupture.

Repairing the ruptures that tear two people apart is hard work. And if you've never experienced the beauty on the other side of that work—or even understood how the process works—what motivation do you have to enter into it?

If you have only ever known the pain of rupture, why on earth wouldn’t you run from it, hoping the pain would just disappear? Especially when disappearing pain feels like a far more realistic option than building something from it.

But here’s the truth: the pain of rupture never truly goes away. We carry it from one relationship to the next, and before long, every slight tremor in our current relationship feels like the 9.0 earthquake from the last one. Until there are no such things as tremors—every conflict, big or small, becomes an earthquake indistinguishable from earthquakes of the past.

And eventually, everyone learns to run and hide under their heavy furniture at the first sign of an earthquake.

I have had to work hard to reach a place where I can feel these tremors and remind myself: This is quite possibly NOT an earthquake. I have had to work hard to recognize that just because the ground shakes, it does not mean the earth is about to fall apart.

I have had to make up for decades of NOT imagining the beauty on the other side of repair just to feel the slightest hint of hope that such beauty does exist.

It is my hope to help people understand that what feels like an earthquake may simply be a tremor.

It is my hope to help people stop running from the earthquakes that have rocked their lives—to help them see that their past ruptures are not the greatest predictors of disaster in the here and now.

It is my hope that by helping people imagine repairs that have maybe not had that repair kind of imagination, that they too can begin to build a life on the foundations of ruptures and not on the run from them.

Because if I have learned anything in my long life, it is this: You never outrun your ruptures. They will always find you. And when they do, you will have a choice—keep running or imagine repair.

I know it can be hard to imagine repair, but beauty often comes on the other side of hard things.

​I’ve shared this high school memory before.

Back then, like now, wars were raging around the world. And in the early 80s, there were murmurs about reinstating the draft.

I remember friends who were almost giddy at the idea. They had this bring-it-on attitude, ready to go off and fight.

I didn’t get it. That wasn’t my reaction. My reaction was Canada. And how fast I could get there.

That memory stayed with me—not in a way that haunted me daily, but in a way that subtly shaped something inside me. I think that was the first time I came face to face with the possibility that I wasn’t brave. That somewhere inside me I had adopted coward as part of my identity.

I don’t think that way anymore.

Because I’ve come to understand that bravery doesn’t always look like running toward war—even as I recognize that doing so may be one of the bravest things a person can do. Sometimes, bravery looks much smaller. At least on the surface.

Bravery is getting out of bed in the morning—soaking in the first breath of the day when you’d rather not breathe at all. You get up not because you want to, but because if you don’t, something in you will wither. Because you know there are people who need the pieces of you that you still have to offer, even when you don’t feel like you have what it takes to offer them.

Bravery is getting up and being a good and loving dad to your kids when you've lost all belief you can ever be that good dad. You do it not because you feel some sudden reassurance toward that belief, but because you'd rather feel like an incapable dad than a missing dad.

Bravery is getting up and writing and sharing the insides of your heart, not because you need to prove you can share them, but because you so deeply refuse to ever go back to the place where you had no idea how to share those insides at all.

Bravery isn't proving to the world who you are and what you stand for, bravery is being unable to sleep living out any version of you that doesn't look like who you are and what you stand for.

It’s taken me a long time to get here.

It's taken a long time to get from being a high school kid completely unaware of who he was to being a man who knows exactly who he is. There are still many days I'm not brave enough to be that man, but when I am feeling those less than brave moments, I don't lean into a need to prove I am that man, I lean into a fear of dying my way back to the man I used to be.

Be brave today.

Not to prove who you are, but out of a fear of turning into someone you are not.

Jesus often spoke in parables. He did so because he longed to reach people's hearts more than people's minds. Our hearts best connect at the intersection of each other's stories.

I've been playing around lately with turning some of my 3,000 articles into parables. Stories reach the heart sometimes in ways mere articles cannot. And my desire, like Jesus, is to reach hearts.

With that said, I have turned an article I wrote last year into a story I want to share today. I'll link the original article in the comments. I'd love to know your thoughts.

Stories always resonate with me, so this was fun to do.

***
I sat on the edge of my chair, fingers gripping the neck of my guitar, pressing into the same old chords I had played a thousand times before. The wood was worn, the strings stretched thin, but it still felt like home. Safe. Predictable.

Mr. Ellis sat across from me, listening, his fingers tapping on the music stand in front of him. When I finished the song, I let the last note hang in the air, waiting for his usual nod of approval. But today, he just sighed.

"You play that well, Liam," he said, tilting his head. "But why do you never play anything new?"

I shrugged, looking down at my guitar. "These are the songs I know."

Mr. Ellis leaned forward. "I know. But are they still your songs?"

His words caught me off guard. I frowned. "What do you mean?"

He stood and walked to the shelf, pulling out a crisp piece of sheet music. He placed it in front of me. "Try this."

I barely glanced at it before shaking my head. "I can’t play that."

"You haven’t even tried."

I sighed, feeling the pressure mount in my chest. "I just… I don’t know it. And I don’t want to mess up."

Mr. Ellis watched me for a moment before speaking. "Keith, do you love music?"

"Of course."

"Then tell me this—when was the last time you felt something when you played?"

I opened my mouth to answer but hesitated. I thought back to all the times I sat in this room, playing the same songs over and over. I told myself it was because I loved them, but now that I thought about it… maybe it was something else. A habit. A routine. Something I could control.

Mr. Ellis nodded, as if he could see the wheels turning in my head. "I think, somewhere along the way, you stopped playing for the love of music and started playing for the safety of what you already know."

I swallowed hard. "These songs… they remind me of when I started. Of when my grandfather gave me this guitar. Of when music felt… easier."

Mr. Ellis softened. "I get that. But music isn’t meant to stay the same. It grows with you. And if you keep playing the songs of the past, you might never hear the music that’s waiting for you now."

I stared down at my guitar, my fingers thoughtlessly tracing the strings.

"Just try," Mr. Ellis said, tapping the new sheet music. "Not because you have to. But because maybe, just maybe, there’s a new song inside of you that’s been waiting to be played."

I hesitated, then slowly set my fingers on the frets. I strummed once. The chord was unfamiliar, a little shaky, but there was something about it—something alive.

And for the first time in a long time, I played not from memory, but from possibility.

*Story is based on the following article written in 2024: ​https://www.rkcwrites.com/rkc-blogs/dont-let-the-emotions-of-your-past-write-the-songs-of-your-future