​Yesterday morning, I stopped at a local 7-Eleven to grab a cup of coffee before driving to Virginia Beach to lead a training about helping people know they matter.

The irony wasn't lost on me. Sometimes, before we ever stand in front of an audience to teach something, life decides to teach us first.

As I checked out, the young man behind the register smiled and said he hoped I was having a great day. Then, almost as an aside, he said he'd come in early that morning to make sure the store looked immaculate.

"I think it brightens people's day when they walk into a clean place," he said. "Not everyone comes from a place that's clean and nice. I want to give them something nice."

I just stood there for a moment. Empathy. Not the kind we often celebrate on stages or write books about.

Just quiet empathy.

A young man stocking shelves and wiping counters before sunrise because somewhere along the way he'd learned that environments affect people. That some people carry heavy things into a convenience store. That maybe, just maybe, a clean floor, organized shelves, and a warm greeting could be one small reminder that the world still contains kindness.

I told him where I was headed.

"I'm driving to Virginia Beach to teach people how to help others know they matter."

Then I smiled and said something I hope he will always remember.

"You will make more people feel like they matter today than I can ever dream of."

His face changed. He smiled. Not the smile someone gives after receiving a compliment. The smile someone gives when, if only for a moment, they believe what you just said.

I walked out to my car. I started the engine. Then I turned it back off. Some moments you just feel are not supposed to be rushed past. I sat there thinking about what had just happened before realizing I needed to go back inside.

I asked the young man if I could take a picture with him because I wanted to share his story with the audience I was about to meet.

It honestly felt like God had placed him in my path that morning—not to give me another illustration for a presentation, but to remind me that the message I was carrying was already alive in the world before I ever arrived.

He was the presentation before the presentation.

I opened my training with his story. As I spoke, I noticed a woman quietly wiping tears from her cheeks. It reminded me that there are people all around us who don't simply understand the idea of mattering. They feel it. Deeply.

For many people, maybe that's because somewhere in their own lives they've known what it's like not to.

As I was driving home in the endless Virginia Beach Friday afternoon traffic, I reflected on the day and another thought came to me. I have to believe someone, somewhere, helped that young man know he matters. Who wakes up before 6:00 a.m. to make a convenience store beautiful for strangers if they don't believe their own life carries beauty?

Who believes a clean store can become a gift unless someone once convinced them that they, themselves, are a gift?

Mattering doesn't usually appear out of nowhere. Someone plants it. Someone notices us. Someone encourages us. Someone believes in us long before we fully believe in ourselves. Then, one day, we begin passing it on.

That's what I challenged the audience to do yesterday. Create waves of mattering.

Not because you're a CEO.

Not because you're a teacher.

Not because you have thousands of followers.

But because you happen to cross paths with another human being.

We often imagine that changing lives requires a big platform. A microphone. A title. A position of influence. But yesterday morning reminded me that influence has very little to do with where you stand.

This young man didn't need a stage. He only needed a 7-Eleven. His mission field wasn't glamorous. It was coffee, clean floors, lottery tickets, and early morning customers. And yet he understood something profound.

Every person who walks through those doors deserves to feel like they matter.

Maybe that's our calling too. Not to wait until life gives us a bigger platform. But to make the place we're already standing feel a little more welcoming.

A little more hopeful.

A little more human.

Because here's what I witnessed yesterday.

One young man cared enough to clean a store. That inspired a conversation. The conversation inspired a photograph. The photograph inspired a presentation. The presentation moved a woman to tears.

And today, I'm writing about him.

That's how mattering spreads. Not in giant leaps. In waves. And every wave begins with one person deciding that another human being is worth caring for.

We all deserve to matter.

And perhaps the greatest privilege we have is helping someone else believe that they do.

​I grew up on my great-grandfather's farm. One of the benefits of having very young parents was getting to spend my entire childhood with some very old people.

I remember spending hours on the hub of a tractor with my great-grandfather. Wide open fields. Him, a pipe in his mouth. Dottie, his Dalmatian dog, always somewhere nearby. She was no more interested in him being out of her sight than I was.

Up and down the field we'd go. The length of the field one way. Turn around. Then the other way.

I look back through the lens of my screen infested life and wonder if my great-grandfather would have traded a minute of that world for this one?

Would he have traded one minute of sitting on his front porch every evening listening to the Cincinnati Reds on a transistor radio the size of his hand for the chance to have 24-hour access to those Reds. Their own television station. The reels. The fan pages. Second by second notifications on his phone of pending trades and free agent acquisitions.

I am inclined to guess no.

Because in my great-grandfather I saw a kind of contentment I find myself longing for every time I catch my own reflection in another screen.

I am certain I never heard him use the word bored.

Arthur Brooks says, "Your great-grandfather, his life moment to moment was boring, but his life wasn't boring at all. If you're online scrolling and looking at funny reels and online because the traffic light is taking too long to change, you're never bored—but your life is unbelievably boring. Why? Because a boring life is bereft of a sense of meaning. And an interesting life is full of meaning not withstanding the boredom you endure moment to moment."

I look back on my great-grandfather's life today and think, what a gift to be sitting at a traffic life and feeling no need at all to kill the time. Just sit there. All is well. Or to be listening to a radio broadcast of a game and feel no need to find something else to watch or do in between innings to kill the time.

By today's measure, my great-grandfather had to endure endless moments of boredom that we don't have to experience. And yet, did my great-grandfather experience moments of meaning in his life many of us never have?

Or ever will?

It is entirely possible I learned more about the meaning of life in the hours sitting on that tractor wheel hub than I have learned in all the combined hours sitting in classroom desks and church pews.

For it is there that I was first introduced to a reality of life - at least my life - that I have just recently begun returning to. And that is that life is not to be answered. Life is not meant to be completely known and memorized; it is not meant to be googled and ChatGPT'd.

It is meant to be experienced and pondered—it is meant to overwhelm us with mystery and endless wonder. What a sweet and even magical gift it was for my great-grandfather to have lived the entirety of his life without believing there were robotic answers to the mysteries he pondered on that tractor.

I don't remember my great-grandfather offering me a single word of advice. No answers to the questions that were inevitably coming my way as I outgrew that tractor hub seat. And yet, in many ways, he was the most influential man in my life.

Because I watched him have a meaningful life in spite of having no answers. I watched him live life not demanding any. I watched him live a life that in many ways looked the exact same every single day, and yet, he always looked like he was living the day he wanted to live.

We live in a world full of answers. Full of opportunities for each day to look and feel a little bit different. And yet, the research and the surveys say we are as depressed and anxious and disconnected as we've ever been.

It's true; we aren't bored—we've made boredom extinct. I'm just not sure my great-grandfather would think that's a good thing.

​The past and the future have something in common: they don't require us to act right now.

The past invites us to replay. The future invites us to imagine. The present invites us to participate.

And participation is often the hardest of the three.

Regrets can be strangely comforting because they allow us to believe life would be different if only we had done something else. Dreams can be comforting because they allow us to believe life will be different once something else happens. And both can pull us away from the uncomfortable reality of today.

The irony is that yesterday can't be changed and tomorrow can't be lived. Only today can be influenced.

I think this is why so much writing, psychology, and even Jesus' teaching keeps bringing us back to the present moment.

Jesus says not to worry about tomorrow because tomorrow will worry about itself. Jesus isn't saying tomorrow isn't a thing, he simply says worrying about it will rob us of today's energy.

My work in trauma has taught me something similar. People become trapped in stories about what happened. Anxiety often traps people in stories about what might happen again. And healing frequently begins when someone starts to hold the truth today that because it happened doesn't mean it will happen again.

I've written a lot lately about mattering. The here and now is where mattering is actually experienced. Not yesterday. Not someday. Right now.

I can tell someone I mattered ten years ago and feel a little warmth.
I can hope I will matter ten years from now and feel a little hope. But what most feeds my heart is knowing I matter today.

Perhaps that's why the here and now feels so difficult. It's the only place where life is actually happening. The past is memory. The future is imagination. The present is reality. And reality asks something of us.

It asks us to forgive today.

To love today.

To make the phone call today.

To take the walk today.

To begin today.

The future is built in the here and now, but because the future looks bigger and more exciting, we often stare at "there" while neglecting "here."

Too often we want to get there without tackling the here and now. Because "there" is a destination, and the here and now is a decision.

Decisions are harder than destinations. But we aren't getting there without making them.

And sticking to them.

Decide - don't skip now.

​I am preparing for a presentation I'm going to be doing in Virginia Beach on Friday for community leaders working to promote the well being of families in that area.

My message is going to focus on helping people know they matter. This is not an insignificant message.

I have been very fortunate over the last several years to have people make me feel like my work matters. Make me feel like my writing matters. Like I matter!

The result is I pour unrelenting energy into my life each day.

Feeling like you matter feels like fuel - it not only makes you go - it makes you WANT to keep going.

And going....

This is why one of my missions in life is to make other people feel like they matter. When we have a world full of people who don't believe that, the energy of life dulls.

The atmosphere of life becomes increasingly lifeless.

And really, it's just not that hard to make someone feel like they matter.

Notice them - that can be as simple as asking someone how their day is going and being truly interested in the answer. Listen to it. Hold it.

Affirm them - notice something specific they do that adds to the value of your team or your family or your personal relationship (much relational emptiness is simply one or both feeling like they don't matter to the other).

Let them know they are needed - help them see the places where this world and your world wouldn't be quite the same if it weren't for their unique contributions.

From the earliest seconds of life, our lives depend on mattering. On seeing it and feeling it and knowing it. I can tell you there are a lot of people out there who question today whether or not they do.

Let's do something about that.

Let's help people know they matter.

Dramatic headlines can leave us feeling like the problems are too big and complex.

Some are.

Some are not.

​There is no bigger microscope than fatherhood. At least that's how it has felt to me.

Before becoming a father, I thought I understood responsibility. And I thought the burden of fatherhood would be practical things—providing, protecting, paying bills, making sacrifices, losing sleep.

And certainly there has been plenty of that.

But those weren't the burdens that surprised me. The burden I didn't see coming was significance; the moment you become a father, every action suddenly feels like it means something more than it meant before.

You are suddenly ever knowing that your children are watching.

Watching how you handle frustration. How you treat their mother. How you talk to strangers. How you respond to disappointment. How you recover from mistakes.

How you love; How you don't.

Whether you mean to or not, your life becomes a lesson plan. And with that, ample opportunity to feel like you're almost always getting one of the lessons wrong. That realization can feel heavy, no matter how old they get.

My boys are nearly grown now, and if anything, the burden has become more complex rather than less.

When they were little, I worried about scraped knees and school projects. Now I wonder about deeper things.

Did I teach them enough about love? Did I model courage? Did I help them believe they matter? Did I show them how to repair relationships? Did I help them trust themselves? Did I prepare them for a world that can be beautiful and heartbreaking at the same time?

The questions never seem to end. Neither does the wondering. Fatherhood has become a journey in realizing that every season reveals a new opportunity to question myself.

Maybe that's why Father's Day always feels complicated to me.

It isn't simply a celebration. It's a reflection. A looking backward; in so many ways my life began with fatherhood.

Some people might object to me calling fatherhood a burden. The word sounds too negative. Too heavy. But I don't mean burden as something unwanted. I mean burden as something weighty. Something important enough to carry.

The truth is, fatherhood may be the greatest burden I have ever been entrusted with. No role has stretched me more. No role has exposed my shortcomings more clearly. No role has taught me more about sacrifice, love, fear, hope, grace, and humility.

Love always carries weight. Real love always does. Love is not destroyed by burden, it is destroyed by those unable or unwilling to carry it.

Maybe that is why fatherhood feels so heavy sometimes. Not because it is a burden I resent, but because it is a burden I treasure. A burden I long to make look completely unburdened.

And if I'm being completely honest, of all the burdens I've carried in my life, fatherhood may be the only one I'd immediately volunteer to carry again. Most burdens I celebrate their passing, but fatherhood I gladly keep picking up and carrying onward.

But because no burden has given me more than it asked from me than fatherhood. No burden has taught me more. No burden has changed me more. And no burden has made my life richer.

The burden I didn't see coming turned out to be one of the greatest gifts I have ever received.

I suspect most fathers live with the same tension. We know all the places we fell short because we've spent years looking at ourselves through the microscope of fatherhood. We remember the mistakes more vividly than the moments we got it right. We carry the burden of wondering what mattered and what didn't.

But maybe that's part of the gift.

Maybe the very fact that we still wonder is evidence of how deeply we love. Maybe fathers aren't supposed to feel like they have mastered the role. Maybe we are simply meant to keep carrying it.

And if that's true, then despite all the questions, all the second-guessing, all the moments I wish I could revisit, I remain grateful for the burden. Because the burden I didn't see coming gave me two sons I cannot imagine my life without.

And given the chance, I would gladly carry it all again.

Burden and all.

​For the last two days, I have been immersed in stories.

I spoke at a problem gambling forum. I spoke to an audience about trauma. And yesterday afternoon, I had the privilege of speaking at an event where I shared the stage with Nic Sheff, whose journey through addiction and recovery was documented in the film Beautiful Boy.

At each event, the presentations eventually gave way to conversations. Conversations with people young and old. Black and white. People from different professions, different neighborhoods, different backgrounds, different struggles.

And yet, beneath all those differences, I kept hearing the same thing:

Stories of transformation.

People told me about addictions they had overcome. Relationships they had repaired. Trauma they had survived. Losses they had endured. Lives they had rebuilt.

And every time I find myself in spaces like these, I leave with the same thought:

Transformation is beautiful. In fact, I think transformation is far more beautiful than having it all together. Maybe that's because I've spent enough years trying to have it all together to realize that none of us actually do.

Or maybe it's because some of the most meaningful things in my own life have not come from my strengths, but from my struggles. Not from the parts of me that were polished, but from the parts of me that were broken and rebuilt.

A dear friend recently shared words with me that seem divinely fitting for this moment:

"Our imperfections are not our failures. They are the very fingerprints of our humanity. They are not meant to be fixed or hidden—they are meant to be seen and still chosen."

There is something deeply sacred in that idea. Because most of us spend our lives trying to hide the evidence that we are human.

We hide the scars. We hide the mistakes. We hide the addictions, the fears, the grief, the regrets, the failures.

We imagine that if people could see those things, they would see less of us. But what if the opposite is true? What if the things we spend so much energy hiding are often the places where our greatest beauty resides?

Not the wound itself. Not the pain itself. But the transformation. The healing. The becoming.

Over the last two days, I saw countless examples of that beauty. People who once felt trapped but now live free. People who once felt unseen but now help others feel seen. People who once carried shame but now carry wisdom.

The world often celebrates perfection. God seems to celebrate transformation. Perfection creates distance. Transformation creates connection.

Perfection says, "Look how flawless I am."

Transformation says, "Look what is possible."

And maybe that is why stories of recovery, healing, redemption, and second chances move me so deeply. Because somewhere inside, I recognize myself in them.

I know what it is to fall.

I know what it is to struggle.

And I live with an undying belief that change is ALWAYS possible.

For me, transformation has become one of the clearest pieces of evidence that God is still at work in the world. Not always in dramatic ways. Not always in visible ways. But in powerful ways.

Quietly. Patiently. Person by person. Story by story. Life by life.

I cannot always explain it. But I have seen it too many times to ignore it. The beauty of transformation. The beauty of a life that did not stay stuck.

The beauty of a beautiful boy.

And the beauty of all the beautiful people still becoming who they were meant to be.

You are a gift to me.

​In 1994, over 30 years ago, I felt God's call on my life for the very first time. I'm not suggesting it was the first time he ever called me, but it was certainly the first time I heard it.

I was nearly 30 years old, had just spent 11 years completing a 4-year degree in business—the prolonged nature of which I attribute largely to a nearly two decades long love affair with alcohol—when God called me to come work in the wilderness with at-risk youth.

How do I know it was God calling? Because it felt like one of the worst ideas I'd ever considered, and yet, at the same time, it was an idea I felt completely sure I was NOT supposed to say no to.

I'd felt plenty of bad ideas in my life I knew I was SUPPOSED to say no to and couldn't, but feeling called to say yes to one....?

Looking back, I know it felt like a bad idea because it was calling me to enter into a world of complete unknowns.

A brand new home state (move from Ohio to North Carolina).

Live in the woods (wait, no air conditioning or plumbing or ESPN 😳).

And with at-risk kids (did that mean I TOO would suddenly be at risk?!?!)

All that while leaving behind every single person I'd ever had any kind of a relationship with in my life.

It was all so scary because I had no way of feeling like the future was going to play out less disastrous than I was imagining in my unknowns.

I recently heard pastor Jabin Chavez say, "Everything that God does always begins in the unseen."

When it comes to a radical decision like leaving a home to move into the woods to live with challenging adolescents, I am prone to ask, tell me more. Tell me how this all plays out, God.

And God says, "I've called you. You now know every single thing you need to know."

I think back on that decision. And the truth is, if God had told me everything that was going to play out in the next few years, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have taken that job. All of it would have felt much too challenging to the man I was at that time.

But God knew, if I'd simply say yes, he'd unveil the answers as I was ready to receive them. And—he'd unveil the grace and strength necessary to navigate the entire calling if I'd only have faith the answers would come.

Today, I can look back and see just how many answers were born out of that simple leap of faith. Answers I could have never seen coming.

My vocation has been built on that experience. Some of the deepest friendships of my life are rooted in that experience. My two sons are an outcome of that experience. The deep compassion and empathy I have for people who have lived hard stories comes from that experience.

All of the things I could not see then that God absolutely COULD see - I can see them all now.

Faith is always asking me these days:

"Are you willing to believe your unseen has been already so beautifully seen by God that he would not otherwise invite you into it?"

"Are you willing to move in the directions of the answers instead of waiting for them to arrive in stagnation?"

Many of us struggle with saying no to things we know we are supposed to say no to. More willpower is not the answer. Trust me.

The answer is learning to say yes to the calls we absolutely feel in our hearts and guts and souls that we are NOT supposed to say NO to.

That feeling of "I need to know more" repeatedly landing in the same response:

"You know all you need to know."

Faith.

Yes.

Go.

​The world wants us to believe the secret to a happy life - the content life - is the path of least resistance. The commercial world is built on convincing us there is always an easier path and it's THEIR products or hacks that will make it so.

Me, though, through years of traveling paths of GREAT resistance, I've discovered the best life hack is mastering the comeback.

The secret to a content life isn't magic dust sprinkled on your lifeless knocked down body; it's quite simply the capacity and willingness to get back up.

Sure, there are a lot of things that can help us with that: Faith. Friends. Good counselors. Books. Exercise. Sleep. Coffee..... Lots of things can help with getting back up. But none of them make the decision to get back up for us.

The New York Knicks just won the 2026 NBA title. They did so by overcoming double digit deficits in every game they won. To include an NBA finals record 29 point comeback in game 4.

I have never been 29 points down in an NBA finals game. Being 5'9" tall protects you from that.

But I have been 29 points down in life.

Traumas. Divorce. Financial burdens. Addictions. Career shifts.

I have been down. But I've built a mindset that never lets me believe I'm too far down.

The Spurs, no matter how far ahead of the Knicks they got on the scoreboard, had to constantly feel like the Knicks were right behind them. Because the Knicks WERE constantly right behind them. When you know you're never too far down to get back up, you don't listen to the scoreboard. You make sure your opponent always knows the object in their rear view mirror is much closer than it appears!!

The Knicks are a reminder to all of us that, yes, it helps to be good at life. But maybe the thing to be best at is letting a life that turns bad know I will soon be getting back up.

The scoreboard may look daunting; but I am not daunted.

Some will argue, with some merit, that the Spurs were the better team in this series. It's unfortunate for them, though, that they never found a way to convince the Knicks of that.

Life will try to convince you you're done.

Don't let it.

​In 2002, Elon Musk sold PayPal to eBay. With his millions in windfall, Musk decided he wanted to buy a rocket to send seeds to Mars in a small greenhouse. He thought if people on Earth saw green sprouts pushing up on Mars, they would get excited enough to push Congress to give more money to NASA.

His partner in this idea, Adeo Ressi, a former college roommate, begged him not to do it. It would be financial suicide. They had a $50 million budget and that was not nearly enough to buy a rocket.

Musk agreed with that assessment, so he decided he would build his own.

Ressi, persistent in trying to walk Musk back from the ledge of this foolish idea, assembled a panel of space experts to convey to Musk why his idea of building a rocket was NEVER going to work.

Musk listened. Respectfully. Then went on to build a rocket anyway.

He predicted the project had less than a 10% chance of success. He said, "This is probably going to fail. But we should give it a try."

Yesterday, SpaceX, the company Musk founded to build the rocket, debuted on the stock market as the world's largest initial public offering. Today, the once seemingly bad idea, is worth over 2 trillion dollars, has launched hundreds of rockets into space, offers internet service through satellites to places around the world that would not otherwise have access to it, and oversees Musk's AI and social network, X.

I wonder, how many of us have had ideas, but then faced resistance - even if well meaning resistance - and decided to bail on the idea? How many of us have had people tell us what we should think about something and immediately stopped exploring other ways to think about something?

When Elon Musk decided he was going to build his own rocket, he was literally the only one who believed he could build his own rocket.

For most of my life, I have been susceptible to backing off when encountering the slightest bit of pushback.

But that is not me today.

I've discovered that we are sometimes called to do things in life with a calling others cannot hear. We feel dreams in a way others can't possibly feel, so of course the dream sounds foolish to them. Experts, after all, have expertise based on the things they have seen and done; but sometimes dreams are built on visions only I can see and things that have never been done.

It's probably going to fail.

But I should give it a try........

Maybe we all should.