​Yesterday, quite out of the blue, I received a message from a dear friend that said, "I thought you might like this." And then attached to her message was a Paulo Coelho quote that states:

"Not all storms come to disrupt your life, some come to clear your path."

Much more than liking her message, I needed it.

We hadn't spoken in a few weeks so she had no idea that life has indeed been stormy recently, so the timing of her message felt divinely orchestrated.

Then this morning I wake up and an article I wrote 4 years ago showed up in my memories. A portion of the article said this:

An exhausted mind wants you to stop - stop and find cover and find rest. An exhausted mind doesn't want to try any more doors, and the easiest way to skip trying more doors is convincing ourselves that no more doors exist.

How much of your life have you left behind because you missed going through doors you convinced yourself didn't exist?

How much more of yourself will you discover today if you convince yourself there is always one more door, at least one that you haven't tried to open yet?

When you believe there is one more you keep going.

The real exhaustion in life is believing there are no more doors. That's a belief fueled by giving up. Giving up is as close as one can get to dying while still breathing; there is little difference between death and giving up.

I read those words this morning from 4 years ago and have been reflecting on them. And these thoughts came to me: sometimes giving up can be greatly disguised by a lot self-talk convincing yourself you haven't. Sometimes you can convince yourself you're opening new doors when all you're really doing is going through old doors to nowhere while painting the doors a different color to convince yourself they are new.

Don't get me wrong. I know in the grand scheme of things I have not given up. And won't. But to a degree, when we don't explore doors that have been calling us, when we don't explore them for fear of leaving behind doors that have been comfortable, or for fear of walking through doors into a complete unknown, maybe that is not actually giving up, but I believe it's something very like it.

"Not all storms come to disrupt your life, some come to clear your path."

Storms can clear the path, but storms don't make us follow them. That's our job.

I am writing this today because when this article pops up four years from now, I don't want to be reflecting once again on doors I did not open, on cleared paths I did not walk. I don't want to reflect on the possibility that I've given up more than I think.

I want to reflect back on this storm and declare that what I went through wasn't really a storm at all.

It was a door.

​The future is always an opportunity.

Until we decide it's not.

It's interesting. If I look upon my life today, so many of the opportunities I have this day are built on experiences and days that I would have considered threats in my life. Built on things that at the time made me fear the future - debate whether or not I even WANTED a future.

Many of you who have been reading me for some time don't need me to tell you that many days I am writing about the life I am trying to make of the broken parts of me, and not about a guy celebrating an unbroken journey through life.

What a gift it is to come to know - to believe - that even the things that make us fear or mistrust the future can be the blocks on which we build a future.

What a gift it is to come to know that time isn't waiting for me to decide what I will do with tomorrow before tomorrow comes barging into my life. In fact, tomorrow has barged into my life in spite of my objections enough times now that I can no longer consider tomorrow some kind of a surprise party.

Maybe some of us need to get better at surprising tomorrow. Surprise it by standing at the door waiting for it instead of hiding in a closet hoping it won't notice you're still around.

Hoping it will give up on the knocking and simply go away.

Tomorrow is here. And we can now make something of it.

It might be a scary day, a day filled with challenges, a day we had planned to look quite differently when we were planning for its arrival - but we CAN still make something of it.

Or not.... 

​In the aftermath of divorce there has been an autopsy. An autopsy performed by me, and an autopsy performed by people outside of my marriage.

The autopsy sounds a lot like questions:

What did you do wrong?

Where did you miss the signs?

Why didn't you see it coming?

The reality is - a reality very difficult for many of us to embrace - is not every bad outcome is the result of bad decisions and mistakes. We like to believe this isn't true. We like to believe if we can pinpoint where we screwed up, we can protect ourselves from ever landing in a place that feels all screwed up ever again.

But here's some truth. Sometimes you didn't mess up. Sometimes you just showed up and life did what life sometimes does. Sometimes what you're feeling isn't evidence of failure - sometimes it's proof that you cared, you risked, you tried.

Sometimes our kids going through struggles isn't because we've failed as a parent.

Sometimes a divorce doesn't mean the marriage was a bad decision to begin with.

Sometimes changing jobs doesn't mean we didn't have what it took to succeed in the last one.

Sometimes standing in the wilderness of life doesn't mean we didn't do a great job of following God.

Just because an outcome feels like failure doesn't mean WE are the failing that landed us there.

Outcomes aren't always the best way to evaluate our choices along the way. They shouldn't be dismissed, for sure, but we are often too quick to use them to indict ourselves for every decision we've ever made. Sometimes an outcome isn't an invitation to come up with a better decision, but instead an invitation to tell ourselves a new story about ones we've already made.

Let me encourage you. It's very possible that what you're feeling isn't because you failed. Sometimes life just takes a turn. Now you get to decide: do I continue to beat myself up for that turn, or do I find the courage to boldly face the next turn?

One choice gives your outcomes the power to say just give up. The other choice gives your outcomes the opportunity to say you keep going.

So I want to encourage you,

keep going....

​At dinner the other night, Solomon and I reflected back on the Summer of 2020. That Covid summer. That summer we did a virtual race across Tennessee. And back.

1,240 miles over the course of 4 months. (An average of over ten miles a day - as in if you skipped a day you had a 20-miler like the one below on tap the next day to jump back on track).

I told him I recorded 60 total miles last month, the most I'd completed in almost a year. But that summer of the GVRAT, 60 miles was a routine five days.

Every five days.

For 4 months.

How, I asked him. How was that even possible? How is it that only five years later I can't begin to fathom such an undertaking?

The thing is, I look back now and know the miles weren't the story. A memory like the one below pops up that when posted five years ago was about a race, was about miles, when today I know that wasn't the story at all.

That summer was the darkest period of my life. Without question. Which is a pretty dark label given I've experienced a few pretty dark periods in my life.

I look back and know that summer was all about running. Not a race, but literally, running. Running every day from the dark into the dark.

There was no escaping it.

It was the summer of Covid. The summer a marriage was rapidly approaching THE END. The summer my bad back gave out, never to fully return. The summer of losing the most meaningful friendship of my life. The summer of trying to do a work life from home that I'd become passionate about doing out on the road. The summer of watching my two boys hole up in their bedrooms, me wondering if they were ever coming back out.

Were any of us ever coming back out?

I didn't run that race across Tennessee and back to distract myself; many runners know you don't escape your thoughts out on the road. Running simply quiets the world such that many of those thoughts show up louder than they do anywhere else.

I didn't run that race across Tennessee and back to save my life, but I honestly believe it did. Because when dark thoughts get their loudest they are always begging you to make a choice - quit or keep going.

Many runners know that running is one of the best ways to live out the choice to keep going. Running is often the greatest reminder that you CAN.

And it was also the summer I started writing. Every day. I'd been writing for years, but this was the summer I REALLY started writing. The summer I started REALLY exploring the meaning of life. The summer I stopped pretending darkness didn't exist and started wrestling with it out loud.

Or at least on paper.

My life.

My journey.

Not the one I'd spent my whole life running from, but the journey I was actually running. Fiction turns non-fiction.

In many ways, that is the race I am still running. I had no idea that summer, in the midst of running from the dark to the dark, that my story was about light on the horizon.

I had no idea that horizon was in me - it had been living in me all along - simply waiting for me to discover it.

I think of that often as I read your posts on here. I find myself wondering, is this post your light, or is this post your search for it?

I think about that because as my daily memories pop up about my Great Virtual Race Across Tennessee story, I know now that was never actually the story at all. Not even close.

People around us are living out stories here and there every day.

It's always helpful to consider - with compassion - that might not be the real story.

It's possible they are simply running (or writing) their way to it. 

​There’s a scene early in Jerry Maguire where Jerry has a crisis of conscience and writes a 25-page mission statement titled, “The Things We Think and Do Not Say: The Future of Our Business.”

Jerry thinks his colleagues will celebrate him for his honesty and boldness.

They do not.

In a dramatic (and forced) quitting scene, Jerry bags up the office goldfish and proclaims -like he’s accepting an Oscar -“I am starting something new and the fish are coming with me. If anyone else wants to come with me, this moment will be the moment of something real, and fun, and inspiring in this God-forsaken business and we will do it together. Who's coming with me?"

His colleagues stare at him like he’s lost his mind (in fairness, the audience probably agrees).

No one follows. No one except the meek and mild Dorothy Boyd.

The scene ends as these two lost souls walk out of the office together.

On one hand, you’re left thinking, What are you doing, Jerry? Especially those of us who’ve made emotional decisions that later proved to be FOOLISH emotional decisions.

But on the other hand, those of us who’ve been the foolish underdog can’t help but root for them.

Mike Birbiglia once said, “I find that if I write in my journal what I'm saddest about or angriest about, I can start to see my life as a story. And if you start to see your life as a story, you can start to encourage the main character to make better decisions.”

I think that’s great advice.

To start seeing ourselves as characters in a story.

Because so many movie scenes pull us from our seats - anxious and relieved, saddened and hopeful - because we care about the choices the characters make.

We leave the theater totally invested in their outcomes.

But how often do we look at the story of our life with that same intensity? That same hope? That same cheering-them-on spirit?

How often do we pause long enough to celebrate our own boldness - or ask ourselves, what are you doing?

Yes, Jerry Maguire is just a movie. But it resonated because parts of that story are tangled up in our own.

Maybe we turn to movies for escape a little too often when they instead could be reminders to lean back into the plotlines of our own stories.

In the end, Jerry does rebuild his career. And Jerry and Dorothy discover they “complete” each other. It’s a happy ending.

We all deserve that kind of ending.

And no one should be a bigger cheerleader for that happy ending than you.

It’s easy to say to a screen, I’ll go with you, Jerry.

But are you willing to go with yourself?

I hope you are.

I’m cheering you on. 

​I’ve come to believe that the most terrifying part of Good Friday wasn’t the nails.

It wasn’t the crowd shouting for Barabbas, the crown of thorns, or even the betrayal from a close friend.

It was the complete surrender of control.

That’s what Jesus gave up when he stopped defending himself. When he remained silent before Pilate. When he didn’t call down angels. When he healed the ear Peter cut off instead of picking up a sword. When he looked at the one begging to be remembered and whispered, “I assure you.”

He surrendered control not just of his body, but of the story’s appearance.

He let it look like he lost.

That’s hard for me. Because like many of us, I want my story to look like a win. I want healing to look like wholeness, not a scar. I want redemption to look like applause, not crucifixion. I want transformation to look like triumph, not trauma.

But Good Friday is a bold declaration: God does his best work in the worst moments, and he rarely asks our permission to do it that way.

The hardest part of my own story hasn’t been the betrayal, the divorce, the failures, or the scars. The hardest part is accepting that healing doesn’t always come in the form of a miracle—but in the form of a cross I have to carry, in surrendering the narrative I’d rather write.

Jesus didn’t avoid Friday. He didn’t edit it.

He entered it fully.

Because he knew something we forget in our pain—Sunday was coming, but not without Friday.

We want to skip to the good part. Jesus didn’t.

He stayed in the hard part. He bled in the silence. He loved in the betrayal. He forgave in the pain. He assured a thief before assuring anyone else.

He knew what we’re still learning: that the worst thing is rarely the last thing.

So maybe today, the invitation is this:

Don’t rush through Friday.

Don’t numb it. Don’t theologize it away. Don’t skip to Sunday.

Let Friday do its work. Let it remind you that some of the best things come not by conquering the darkness, but by trusting God enough to walk through it.

Not with answers. But with assurance.

"I assure you," Jesus said.

That your brokenness isn’t too broken.

That your shame isn’t too deep.

That your worst isn’t your end.

That Friday might look like death—but it's only the prelude.

​You create life, or you continue journeying through life discovering what life is making of you.

I am one, who with great experience, can say that what life makes of us isn't always a bad thing. But what might be a bad thing is life missing out on all the things I was capable of making of it.

Every time we create something that looks like our future, we take a step toward THAT future.

A future of our design.

Of our contribution.

I am proud of what life has made of me. But I often wrestle with all that I might have made of life. I often wonder what my future would have looked like if I'd taken a more active role in creating my future.

That used to feel a lot like regret. These days it feels more like motivation. Inspiration. For as long as I have breath I am capable of creating.

Creating a future that will look like a father and sons who can belong to one another.

Creating a future that will be filled with the many words that have come to me in some past that I have taken the time to jot down and share.

Creating a future that will look like love and acceptance. Sometimes we receive what we long for by first creating it.

Creating a future that will look much more like my design than life's surprise.

I often say that one of the big reasons I believe in the God of the Christian story is that God's heart for being a creator. That God's story started with him imagining a future and then creating it.

And constantly re-creating it as that future unfolds.

I believe all who have been created inherited that part of the heart of the creator. In our quietest moments we are all, one way or another, dreaming of that which we might create.

Contribute.

Leave behind as some meaningful sign that we were here.

What best turns life's surprises to your designs? Create what you dream.

Take your step into YOUR future, not life's future.

We all crave control but often hesitate to create all that we long to create. Creating IS our greatest opportunity to have some control in life.

We all have an opportunity to create our future and not show up for the one that is somewhere out there waiting for us.

Take your step today.

Create.

​If you think I can't change, you are clearly not familiar with how much I already have.

If it sounds like I am directing that at you, I am not. I am having a conversation with myself. Out loud. Maybe for the possibility it's a conversation that will be helpful to you as well.

To me, life is always about change and growth. It's taken me a long time to realize that. A lot of my life I imagined a sweet spot where one lands and life no longer demands so much adapting and shifting.

So much daggone changing.

But the more I looked for that sweet spot in life the more life seemed to turn up sour. Until I realized the sweet spot is accepting that life is a journey of change and not a journey pointed to some predefined idea of what the sweet life must surely be.

Living the sweet life is much more about how you DO life and not so much a place where you land in life.

With that said, full disclosure, although I cognitively understand that truth about change these days, I still struggle with the reality of it. There are areas in my life that still invite me to change, some invitations are actually quite persistent and loud, and my response is too frequently, that is a change I cannot make.

It's too hard. It demands too much.

Yet here I am. A man whose life could be best defined by hard changes. In many ways I am nothing near the person I once was. Not decades ago. Not years ago. I am not even the man I was last week.

In most ways, that is a healthy revelation. Not all ways, but mostly.

So I remind myself, if you think you can't change, you are clearly not familiar with how much you already have.

And I remind you, if you think you can't change, it might be helpful to take a close look at just how much you already have.

As long as I am changing, I hold out belief and hope that change is possible for everyone.

For me.

For you.

For them.