Donald Miller's Blog, page 3

What We Need More Than Your Opinion

It happened again. I opened up my Facebook feed.

I know, I know, it’s a bold move these days, what with Clinton and Trump, the refugee crisis, Black Lives Matters movement, police shootings, gun issues, etc.

It takes all of 30 seconds of perusing my “friends” comments and posts before I want to slam my laptop shut.

It’s crazy out there!

I don’t know about you, but over the past months I find myself feeling frustrated and disgusted at pretty much every social media outlet. My friends, family and social media “friends” are posting and sharing and liking and commenting on a variety of political and social hot topics.

I have found some of the links to opinions and articles helpful. And in all fairness, I too have done my share of posting my own personal opinions about the hot topics battling for social media space.

But honestly? I’m ready to shut it down.

And not because of the articles and opinions being posted.

What makes me feel so discouraged is the way people are treating one another. From my viewpoint, it seems as though we are all sitting around waiting to put others down. It’s not even about being right anymore, it’s about making sure the people we think are wrong are viewed as the worst people in the history of people.

It’s as though every American decided only their reality and their opinions and their stories matter. When in fact, using our own reality to discredit another’s will never lead to progress or result in peace.

I have a daughter who is pretty sure she is right about everything.

She spends a majority of her energy trying to convince us of her brilliance. She reminds me a lot of the culture of today’s social media…she’s five. So there’s a saying we started using in our home, some simple values we hope to instill in her.

Multiple times a day we find ourselves saying, “Truly, you need to be a listener, a learner and a lover.”

It’s that simple, really.

As I get caught up in the opinions and harsh words being thrown around Facebook and other social media outlets, I can’t help but think about the message we are trying to make a reality in our home. And I wonder what would happen if we, as adults, stopped shouting long enough to listen, and dropped our pride long enough to learn from the person who’s speaking.

Ultimately this is about showering people in love—even the people who we so strong disagree with.

What would happen if we looked at the person we so strongly disagree with or our enemy even and said, “You! Person, pumping blood through your heart. You! Person made in the image of God. You! Are more important to me than my opinions on an issue.”

What if we tried to understand one another?

What if we chose love over being right?

Being a listener, learner and a lover does not mean we have to compromise our faith, our passions or our convictions. It does not mean we have to agree with one another.

It doesn’t even mean we have to love Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.

But friends, I urge us to drop our pointing fingers and cynical spirits and with humility and grace may we listen to one another, learn from each other’s realities and even if we whole heartedly disagree may we find a way to drench each other in love.

Resist the Urge to Create Out of Anger

Hemingway could never write when he was drinking. Scratch that. Hemingway wrote a lot while he was drinking, but none of it was published because none of it was any good.

Anger has a similar effect.

When you are criticized, you are going to want to create in retaliation, but don’t.

As a creator, you are a person that feeds consumers, and you mustn’t feed consumers anger. Yes, there are reasons to be angry, good reasons, but don’t let anger evolve into the act of creating.

As a creator, you are a teacher, a role model, you are setting the moral compass of every person who interacts with your work. There are many parents who shirk their responsibility to parent, mostly because they fear the responsibility.

It’s the same with some creators.

They create, but then do not take responsibility for what they are doing.

That said, whatever it is you are angry about, and hopefully it is an injustice, can be addressed by your positive creativity. And it’s perfectly fine to acknowledge this dynamic. What you are doing, when you create something good rather than something bitter and reactionary, is displacing whatever it is that made you angry.

The public only has a consciousness so big.

And when you create something good, and it gets into the public consciousness, there’s less room for whatever it is that made you angry.

So go and create something good, and displace whatever it is that is pissing you off.

What You’re Missing on the Way Up

I recently traveled to a wedding and decided to spend the following day exploring some trails nearby.

I’d spent hours in this same region hiking over the years, but not on my own. And since I usually travel with people who have a particular trail or timespan in mind, I decided to leave this trip open-ended. I hopped onto the parkway and headed south to the highest point of elevation in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

That seemed like a good place to start.

If you’ve ever driven the Blue Ridge Parkway, you can probably imagine the scenery. Motorcyclists clustered at overlook points, picnics happening in random patches of grass, and ridges of blue mountains growing in depth and shade with every winding turn. It’s worth the drive itself.

As I made it toward the highest point, I noticed a sign pointing down a gravel road to some trail entry points. I passed an older couple picking blackberries and a couple students setting up easels, presumably trying to capture those mystic shades of blue. And after a mile or so, I noticed a couple cars parked along the edge of a trailhead, so I stopped, got out and started walking.

The trail was quiet at first.

I didn’t pass a single soul on either end for the first mile in. The path seemed overgrown and poorly maintained, at times not much of a path at all. But the charm of its wildflowers and the sound of a nearby stream made me want to keep going.

Eventually I came up behind a group of weary hikers. One of the men turned around and yelled back “Do you have any idea where this thing ends up?”

I yelled back, “Nope! But I bet we’ll get some good views along the way.”

We all decided to keep going.

And as we came up on the first stunning overlook of many, I realized my response had not only ended up being true of this trail but of my own story and maybe yours as well.

Every day we tread into unknown territory hoping to catch a glimpse of what’s to come.

We spend tireless hours trying to ensure our success or predict how our stories will unfold, and while ambitions indeed help us move forward, we cannot control what we will encounter. We don’t always know what will or won’t happen for us.

But I think if we keep moving forward in hope and letting God surprise us along the way, this whole messy-long-beautiful-hike ends up being worth it.

We will find good views along the way.

But we’re at risk of missing them if all we’re worried about is keeping our eyes down and getting to the top. Trust me—I’ve probably tripped on rocks and roots roughly 27,456 times hiking. It hurts, both my pride and my ankles, but I’m glad it’s never kept me from enjoying the view.

We have to be willing to keep moving forward even if we don’t know what the summit looks like. And if we make the most of the good we find along the way and trust that nothing done with God is a waste, we might find the path was truly the best part.

May you bravely walk forward and keep yours eyes open for any breaks in the trees this week—in your work, in your relationships and in any doubts you’re experiencing.

Life will pleasantly surprise us when we commit our steps to less worry and more wonder.

How to Know Who Your Real Friends Are

These days it seems like people have a thousand friends without really having any friends at all.

I read an article in the New York Times recently that talked about this—about how sometimes the people we think are our friends aren’t really our friends, and vice versa.

Recent research indicates that only about half of perceived friendships are mutual. That is, someone you think is your friend might not be so keen on you. Or, vice versa, as when someone you feel you hardly know claims you as a bestie. —Kate Murphy

Add to that what I’ve heard my friend Bob say several times—that there are really only room for about 8 people around your deathbed—and I don’t know about you, but it leaves me with the question:

Who are my friends—really?

A few months ago I was going through a really hard personal time in my life. And I began to notice something. There was a key difference between the friends I thought were my friends and the ones who actually were my friends.

The difference was really simple.

The real friends just showed up. It was that easy.

One night I was feeling afraid, so called a friend and she came over and sat with me on the couch. We watched TV. We didn’t even talk about anything. But she knew I didn’t want to be alone, so she came over. Another friend showed up the morning of a big appointment and brought me my favorite coffee drink and gave me a pep talk.

Other friends checked in regularly on the phone or text message, just to see how I was doing. People sent cards and gifts.

Other people disappeared.

Quite literally. It was sort of interesting to watch it happen. If you’ve ever been through a divorce or gotten a terrible diagnosis or lost a family member, I’m sure you’ve experienced this. Some people are so there. They’re a phone call away. You practically can’t get rid of them.

Other people it’s just like… they drop off the map.

And to be honest, I didn’t think much of it at the time. I wasn’t lacking for support, so I didn’t really need those other people to show up. But when I reflected on it later, I just thought that was so interesting.

Actions really do speak louder than words.

Our actions say more about who we are and what matters to us than what comes out of our mouths.

You can talk all day about how much you care for your friends and how important they are to you, but if you don’t show up for them—if you don’t show your face at birthday parties and anniversary parties and random Thursday night dinners and wedding showers and baby showers and TV viewing parties…

They’re not your friends. You’re not theirs.

This is not a dig. It’s not even a shameful thing. Nobody needs to apologize for not being friends with everybody (after all, only eight people will fit around your deathbed). It’s just the truth.

And if we can’t tell the truth, we can’t love or be loved.

If you want to know if somebody loves you, it’s simple.

Do they show up—physically, emotionally, spiritually, practically? Can they show up for you when you need them the most? Or, do you constantly find yourself wondering where they went, and why they aren’t around?

Let me say this one more time: if you want to know the truth of a person, pay attention to his or her actions—more than his or her words.

Words are easy. Actions are where our truth lives.

Also, if you have a thousand people you call friends but you aren’t really showing up for them, can you cut yourself a break? Can you make a decision to stop spreading yourself so thin? Can you choose the eight friends you’d like to end up at your deathbed and invest more fully and deeply in them?

You’ll feel more loved and more connected and more at peace with yourself.

I promise.

When Things Don’t Seem to Be Working Out for You

Some of you are going to think I’m just an idiot. If you already thought that, well, this is just confirmation.

I had a couple of ceiling fans installed in my house three years ago. The guy who installed them is a local contractor, a neighbor, and a friend. He knows more than me and has experience in these things. The problem was that only one of the fans worked properly.

In one room the fan was superb.

I could sit in a chair on a hot day and have the fan push air down at any speed I wanted. It even had a remote control so I could adjust it without having to stand up.

The other one was in my bedroom, and it only appeared to work properly. It spun just fine, and with the remote I could adjust the speed from a prone position. It just didn’t cool anything. I would lay in my bed, look at the meaningless motion of those blades, think to myself, “I should get that fixed…” then fall asleep. I wouldn’t think of it again until the next warm night when I needed it to work and it didn’t.

It was my own personal Groundhog Day movie.

Did I mention that this went on for three years?

That was until recently.

I was lying in bed doing some serious pondering about why it didn’t work right. Duh! Of course, the angle of the blades was opposite of what it should be to push any air down. I tested my theory by getting out of bed and looking at the other fan.

Sure enough, the way the good fan was working had the blades turned so that air headed downward.

The way the bad fan was working had the blades turned so that the air headed upward. In other words, it had been cooling my bedroom ceiling all this time.

Photo Credit: Steve Johnson, Creative Commons

I tried turning the blades so that they would be angled properly, but they were anchored into the hub. Which left me with the obvious conclusion: The fan was defective! What a relief! I figured it out! I had bought a bad fan!

So I called the contractor.

I asked him to remove the fan so I could take it back to the store.

“Are you looking at the fan now?” he asked.

“Yup,” I said, bouncing on my feet with anticipation.

“See if there is a small switch on the main part of the fan.”

“I see it.”

“Just move it from one side to the other.”

“Got it.”

“Now turn it on.”

O. M. Gosh.

It worked perfectly.

The fan spun in the opposite direction from before. The room became instantly cooler.

Maybe I would have eventually figured this out. But it had already been three years. In my self-diagnosis, I was ready to tear it apart and send it to the junk heap. What it took was a call to a friend who saw things a little differently. Someone who could ask just a few well-placed questions, without judgment or condemnation.

It isn’t just with ceiling fans where I need some help. Left on my own, I can come up with all sorts of plausible theories of why things aren’t working right. Sometimes I need someone who can gently say, “Do you see this? Maybe try it a different way.”

Who’s that person in your life? What’s going on in your life that you might need them to speak into today?

Love Stands in the Middle

When I finished schooling in Boston, my head was full of ideas. I wanted to do something to help fatherless kids. Fatherlessness was crushing my close friends and my generation. LeBron James just tweeted four times about how he cries when watching Will Smith rant about his dad in Fresh Prince.

A lot of people cry over it. Me too.

I wanted to do something.

Something. I researched statistics, obscure studies, and learned mentor strategies. I read every book and article, attended seminars, roundtables, and spoke at conferences. People listened and nodded.

I had the ideas, and not only ideas; I had burning passion and drive. I wanted to do something. Something.

So I started in Los Angeles and worked on it for a year.

Things were starting to happen.

One day, Kari, now my wife, asked me, “Who are you mentoring?”

Photo Credit: JAXPORT, Creative Commons

I had mentored before. I was a youth pastor in a former life. I’d mentored kids in Chicago. Hung out with another group who called themselves Misfits. But I was not mentoring anyone when she asked. Kari secretly prayed I would be.

Shortly after, a single mom in our church approached me and asked me to mentor her son.

Before that moment, I was standing on the outside. In anthropology, there are two types of field research: Etic and Emic. Etic researchers make their observations from outside the culture. Emic researchers get up-close to local customs, traditions, and beliefs.

Our temptation is to stay on the outside.

To be Etic but not Emic. To attend endless conferences, read endless books, buy endless t-shirts. To dump cold water on our heads, take a selfie and hashtag it. To be about the latest ideas, like those on Mars Hill, to be waiting to see something new, like the newest post or picture online.

Ideas, when used this way, can be very self-indulgent. All the while, we remain outside the issue, and quite possibly, outside of our own story. But the great ideas – love, justice, intimacy, reconciliation – require something of us.

The people I see changing the world are doing it quietly.

They have tenacity.

They have the courage to move to the middle: A mentor-hero named Jill. Brothers Jed and Jacob. A policeman named Cube who serves inner-city youth. Tim and Tyler, who took a burned out, horror-filled building and turned it into a place of healing. Three girls who gave up everything to love and mentor orphans in South Africa.

None are celebrities. They don’t have many social media followers. They don’t brag about it.

They simply live in the risk of the middle.

As Donald Miller writes in Scary Close:

“When the story of earth is told, all that will be remembered is the truth we exchanged. The vulnerable moments. The terrifying risk of love and the care we took to cultivate it.”

Love requires us to take that terrifying risk. To take that first dangerous step into the frigid waters. To move from head to heart and hands. To move from the outside to the inside, from Etic to Emic.

Love requires us to stand in the middle.

What Tools Do You Really Need to Achieve Your Dream?

Awhile back, I was in LA with a friend and he took me to his favorite taco shop. We were sitting there eating when I realized I’d actually been to the bike shop across the street, nearly five years before. I laughed as I told him I spent a couple hundred dollars on stuff I didn’t need in that very shop.

I could remember it so clearly. I was heading out on a cross-country trek, riding from Los Angeles to Delaware and so I stopped and bought supplies at that very store. I bought special pumps, water bottles, velcro straps to hold my tool kit, bike mirrors and more.

I wanted to be ready for anything.

By the time I got to Delaware, though, I didn’t have any of that stuff. It was all dead weight. In fact, none of the real pro riders carry around a bunch of gear. All I needed to cross the country was two spare tubes strapped to my handlebars with a cheap rubber band and a pump. No more, no less. I’ve not ridden with anything else since.

I wonder how much of the rest of life is like that? Do we really need an office and new computers and stationery to start a business? Do we need Bible software and endless seminary classes to start a church? Do we need to read a thousand books on marriage before we tie the knot?

Here’s a tough truth I’ve had to learn:

I probably won’t know what I need till I’m already on the journey. Everybody’s journey is different and everybody is wired differently so what we each need will be different. But we won’t know until we get started.

Most preparation is just a delay tactic because we’re scared.

What if we just stepped into our journey slowly and figured out what resources we needed along the way? What if you started the church and picked up the Bible classes and counseling classes as you needed them? What if you started a business and printed your business cards or bought that new computer the day you realized they were necessary?

What if?

What if the first part of the journey was to just start pedaling?

If I’d had known that five years ago, I’d have saved a couple hundred bucks.

Anybody need a rear-view mirror that sticks out from the end of your handlebars? I found it works better just to turn my head. Also, a bike horn? I have two and don’t use either. And I’ve got a Hello Kitty water bottle if anybody needs that. Let me know.

Why We Can All Stop Being So Afraid of Different

I love summer. I love practically everything about it. But as we enter the month of August my sweet, lovely and extremely needy little munchkins get restless and I begin to feel a tiny bit claustrophobic. By the time our alarm clocks buzz on the first day of school, everyone under our roof is ready to go their separate ways and conquer the world.

Honestly though? There is a great deal of anxiety for me that has built up in regards to a new school year. You see, my eldest daughter has Down syndrome. This year, she’ll be starting second grade.

Photo Credit: adreas-photography, Creative Commons

And unfortunately, as the years have gone by, we’ve been given more and more reason to begin our school year on edge.

Let me explain.

When my daughter with Down syndrome steps onto her school campus, she is stepping into an environment that is not created for her and her needs. I know she isn’t the only kid out there fighting this battle, the battle of being “different”. And we aren’t the only parents.

We’re all so uniquely and beautifully designed.

Anytime we try to fit ourselves into a cookie-cutter system, it has a way of highlighting our differences.

All day long, she’s crossing paths with people—adults and peers—who don’t know what to do with her. She is bravely and boldly bending and flexing and squeezing her way into a world that has refused to make the needed spaces for her and her unique ways of living and learning.

That’s a big task for a little girl. But she is doing it.

And to be honest, as her mother, watching the way people sometime respond to her difference—excluding her, keeping her out, sending the message that she is somehow not good enough, simply because she is different, breaks my heart.

Since when did different become a downfall?

Because what I see when I look at her is a radiant and beautiful girl who has gifts to offer the world no one else can, who sees things in a way that no one else does, and who has a smile that will change your whole life.

It’s so important we make space in our lives for “different”.

Different might seem inconvenient. It might seem frustrating. It might force us to stretch our imaginations and our comfort zones and to adjust expectations and expand our oh-so-small minds. But the truth is we are all different. Every single one of us.

Difference is where the beauty is.

Can you imagine a world where nobody was different?

As a mother of a child with a different ability, I need you to know how needed you—and your differences—really are.

Here are some things I hope we can all remember:

Don’t pretend we aren’t different: In other words, don’t ignore the fact there are kids with different abilities at your child’s school, at your churches, in your community. Talk to your kids about it. Role play appropriate ways to respond to a possible uncomfortable situation. Parents of children with different abilities are spending hours upon hours teaching our kids how to fit in and be socially acceptable. But this goes both ways and not all of the pressure of our kids fitting in at school should fall on our shoulders.
Love the underdog: and your kids will do the same. Teach your kids to have eyes that seek out the “different” and lonely students and then teach them how to be inclusive. Brainstorm activities that can be fun for everyone, and that people with different abilities can participate in.
Speak up with us: there are so few of us who have children with different abilities and so our voice, no matter how loud we yell, is still a weak whisper. Are all the kids with different abilities in separate classes at your child’s school? Talk to the teachers, administration and super intendent insisting that your child have differently abled students in his/her class room.
Build relationships: This first week of school, step out of your comfort zone, seek out the child with a different ability, and invite them over for a playdate. (You don’t have a ramp for their wheelchair? Go to the park, create fun play in the front yard, get creative!). Relationships are the key to positive change for any minority group.

We are all different but we sure do need each other.

Together is always, always, better.

Relax, You Do Not Have to Fix Yourself

If you’re the kind of person who has any problems in your life—your days get too full or your to-do list gets too long or things aren’t going the way you wish they were with your career, or you keep finding yourself in the same unhappy relationship pattern again and again and again—you’ve probably asked yourself, more than once:

What do I need to do to fix this?

You’ve probably tried 100 diets to lose the weight, a dozen “programs” to deal with your emotional issues, a handful of training programs to beef up your skills. Some of these things have worked, temporarily, but all of them have brought you back to that same place you’ve always been.

Tired. Overweight. Overworked. Frustrated. The same old you.

Is it just me, or does life sometimes feel like the same merry-go-round again and again and again?

Recently I got some insight into this.

I have been taking private yoga lessons for a little bit now—as part of my post-divorce plan to get healed and healthy “over this” as fast as possible (if only you could hear the sarcasm in my voice right now—the acknowledgment of my own dysfunction here). Anyway…

For my first lesson, I was prepared for what I expected would be basically the hardest yoga class of my life. After all, this was the point of having private lessons—right?

We talked for a few minutes about what I wanted to work on and areas where I felt like I was struggling. Then, she had me lay on the ground, do a few simple poses, and she did very light adjustments—where she would press me deeper into each pose. By the end of our time together, she was like:

“Okay, great job—see you next week!”

You should have seen my reaction.

I was like, “huh? That’s it!? Aren’t you going to make me do something that feels virtually impossible, and then hold it for a ridiculous amount of time, until I’m shaking and sweating and can hardly stand up? I mean, isn’t that how I’m going to get better at this yoga thing? Isn’t that how I will get strong?”

Her response surprised me.

She told me that her “homework” for me was to work out less, to take naps, and to stop trying to hard to fix and improve myself. She told me that my whole job was to learn to accept myself just the way I was.

You’ll make more progress doing that than you will pushing yourself so hard, she said.

We get strong by accepting our weakness.

I was floored.

She went on to tell me that when I found myself facing a problem or obstacle in my life, and I wanted to work hard to “fix” it, that I might try actually doing nothing. You should have seen the look on my face… but she continued.

I might try, she suggested, stilling my mind. I might try getting quiet, getting centered, choosing not to panic, not to stress, and letting life unfold as it was going to unfold.

She told me that she could give me a list of exercises to do—hard ones—but she knew that, for me, that would be too easy.

The hardest thing she could have me to, she said, was nothing.

Oh dear God.

She was right.

We get so focused on doing all the things to try to fix ourselves and our situations, but what if we don’t need to be “fixed” as much as we think we do? This is not to say we are perfect, or that our situations couldn’t use some fresh perspective or fresh insight, but what if what we need, more than “fixing,” is just a radical acceptance of where we are RIGHT NOW?

What if all the crazy diets and workout plans and regiments are really just distracting us from the terribly difficult work of receiving ourselves right where we are.




What if radical love is really the only medicine?

I’ve been practicing her advice for several weeks now, and I have to say, things actually seem to go much better for me when I don’t try to control them. My days are lighter when I am not trying to manage all the outcomes. My heart is lighter when I’m not constantly punishing myself for not doing enough.

As it turns out, doing nothing might be the most effective self-help program I’ve tried so far.

Why Your Weakness Gives You Strength

If it weren’t for Professor Xavier, the X-Men would be a bunch of dysfunctional deadbeats living in fear and isolation. It wasn’t until Professor X sought them out, looked each of them in the eye, and convinced them that the very characteristics they hated about themselves actually had the potential to save the world, that they began to step into their true identities as super-humans.

What draws our souls to superhero narratives like X-Men? I believe it’s because they all carry a common theme : that the more adversity someone faces, the more they are able to positively influence their environment for good.

I believe this theme transcends fiction.

There are countless real-life examples of this playing out in individuals and communities everywhere. Brokenness will always be a willing canvas for beauty. Yet for some reason, it’s still easier for us to believe in a less wondrous outcome, one that takes our negative circumstances and simply neutralizes them.

We’d rather hope the gang member just end his life of crime than dare to imagine him becoming a devoted father or running for city counsel.

It’s simply safer not to get our hopes up.

Instead, we focus on what we can control.

We focus our energy on placing a band aid on the scar with the expectation that the body will heal (bringing a negative situation back to neutral). What the superhero narrative declares about life, however, is that the scar itself actually makes the body stronger (the negative creates a positive).

Our own stories reflect this truth. Often, we see our failures as liabilities, things to be forgotten, edited or removed all together. If it were up to us, we’d tear out every page in our story that represented the negative parts of our life. In short, our shame makes us terribly boring authors.

What if we decided to step boldly into the reality that our weaknesses give us an unfair advantage? Have you struggled with sobriety? You have a unique opportunity to connect deeply with others who also struggle. Ever felt abandoned? You’re probably better at creating community because you know exactly what people need.

I know this is easier said than done.

It’s a constant fight I have but thankfully others have come alongside me to remind me of what’s true. They’ve been voices of clarity and wisdom when the villains are running rampant.

So allow me to be your Professor Xavier for a minute. Your story is your gift that you bring to the world. Please don’t censor it. Instead, bring it with boldness to the people that need to experience it most.

The most powerful words we can say to each other is “me too.”