Donald Miller's Blog, page 5

How I Found Happiness In An Unexpected Place

It was one of those days where everything sucks.

Portland had hit freezing temperatures all week. I had to scrape ice off my windshield while trying to warm up with reheated, 3 day-old coffee. The holiday season had barely begun and already, I’d been hit with a tidal wave of work and stress.

Now in my car, I was driving and beyond pissed. Anxiety, fear, fatigue, hunger.

I’d slipped into that place where I just hate the person I was becoming more and more every minute.

At a stoplight ahead was a maroon Cadillac Deville.

I slowed up behind it, waiting for the light to turn. Green means go, but the Cadillac didn’t move. I waited, gave a light honk – maybe he was looking at his phone. Nothing. Then an elongated blast. I was seething.

I poured all my frustration cathartically into the blaring of my car horn.

The Cadillac door opened and an elderly man steped out onto the icy asphalt. His face was stern. 

“Oh s**t,” I said to myself and locked my doors, expecting an oncoming barrage of abuse for my tactless honking. Cars were lining up behind us as he shuffled to my driver’s side window. I cracked it an inch, just to be safe.

“Can you give me a push?” he asked.

He was defeated, frustrated and fatigued. Just like me.

“Um, ya, of course.” I pulled the emergency brake and hopped out into the street. Putting my gloved hands on the back of his car, I looked back and saw the guy in the car behind me get out. So did the guy behind him. As a team, we steered the broken-down Cadillac through the intersection and into a curbside parking spot.

We all nodded to each other, guy stuff, playing it cool. The old man gave us all a wave of thanks and remarked how he had a tow truck on the way.

Back in my car, the light turned green and I drove through the intersection. I fiddled with the radio and then it hit me – I feel better. Wow. And not just a little better, like all the way better.

Instantly, my stress, fear, and dread leveled off.

It was a miracle, almost supernatural. How is that possible?

Five minutes before I hated everyone on earth. Then I pushed an old man’s Cadillac Deville thirty-five feet with three strangers and suddenly I was cured. Really?

As it turns out, the science on this phenomenon is quite robust. Social connections, like the one I had, that engage the physicality of our bodies and the empathic centers of our brains, release the reserves of a chemical called Oxytocin.

On a macro level, Oxytocin is the chemical that helps us bond with others and handle stress. It’s most famously known as the chemical released during sex, but it also helps mothers bond with their children, reduces social anxiety, relieves pain, fights depression, and even promotes generosity.

I’m not a doctor.

I’m not a therapist.

I’m not a psychologist.

But serving others and exercising your empathy muscles will make you feel better. Honestly. (tweet this)

Studies show that volunteering can boost happiness, decrease depression, relieve stress, and help you live longer.

The same is true for charitable giving. In 1989, an economist named James Andreoni theorized the Warm-Glow Giving phenomenon, concluding that people received positive emotional feelings activated by helping others. On average, people who gave away more of their money reported significantly higher levels of happiness than those who didn’t.

In 2010, more than 253 million prescriptions were written for anti-depressants in the U.S.

That’s 253 million in a nation of only 311 million people.

I’m not against anti-depressants. I think they’re important, helpful, and often times necessary. But supplementing pharmaceuticals with concrete acts of service, charity, empathy, and exercise is the sure fire way to feel better.

Want to make this day happier than yesterday?

Give your money away. Give with your time. Volunteer. Serve. Exercise the empathic centers of your brain. Not only will you start feeling better yourself, you’ll impact the lives of others at the same time.

“For it is in giving that we receive.” — St. Francis of Assisi

Four Tips on Tackling Jealousy

The good news about jealousy is it means we want something. We’re trying, we’re competing, if you will. A jealous person isn’t a satisfied person. But that’s about the only optimistic thought I have about jealousy.

Mostly, jealousy is a soul killer.

If we have a competitive personality, the dark side is often a jealous streak.

Jealousy is often a passive-aggressive mental reaction to a feeling of inferiority, which is a lie. It’s true you may be inferior in some area of your life, but it’s a lie that it matters in eternity.

I have a personality easily given to jealousy. I’ve gotten much better over the years, but it still comes out from time to time. Normally, my jealousy doesn’t look or feel like jealousy, it feels more like I’m annoyed with somebody or I think a person is getting attention they don’t deserve. It feels innocent enough, but it’s really just jealousy.

Here are 4 ways I contend with my jealous streak:

1. I repent and acknowledge I am not, in fact, the greatest writer in the history of man.

2. I thank God that He loves me whether I write well or not.

3. I go for a walk in the morning, before I write, and pray for other writers who I feel jealous about. (This is an amazing technique because the jealousy subsides immediately.

4. When I am wrongly tempted to jealousy, I turn the other cheek. I count this emotion as a blessing because it calls me back to step one, to humbly repent for the entitlement I feel.

Another drawback of jealousy is it negatively affects the quality of our work.

The goal here is to wake each day and till our field like a humble farmer. If God sends rain, then so be it. But if He does, our ground has been tilled and our seeds have been planted. The rest is up to Him.

Jealousy is a trick. I don’t know of a single benefit to the emotion. Jealousy will have a farmer sitting at his breakfast table till noon, checking Twitter and Facebook and Amazon rankings, all the while the professional farmer is out tilling his field, only thinking about his portion.

Why You Must Learn to Disappoint People

Some people are very uncomfortable with the idea of disappointing anyone. They think that if you are kind, you’ll never disappoint anyone. They think that if you try hard enough, if you manage your time well enough, if you’re selfless enough, prayerful enough, godly enough, you’ll never disappoint anyone.

I fear these people are headed for a rude awakening.

I know this, because I was one of those people.

For so many years, I was deeply invested in people knowing that I was a very competent, capable, responsible person. I needed them to know that about me, because if that was true about me, I believed, I would be safe and happy.

If I was responsible and hardworking, I would be safe and happy.

Fast forward to a deeply exhausted and resentful woman, disconnected from her best friends, trying so darned hard to keep being responsible, but all at once, unable. Something snapped, and my anger outweighed my precious competence.

Something fundamental had to change.

This is what I know for sure: along the way you will disappoint someone. You will not meet someone’s needs or expectations. You will not be able to fulfill their request. You will leave something undone or poorly done. Possibly, this person will be angry with you, or sad. You’ve left them holding the bag.

Or maybe instead of sadness or anger, they’ll belittle you or push all your shame buttons—maybe they’ll say things like, “I guess you’re just not a hard worker.”

Or, “I guess you’re just a low-capacity person.” Or, “I thought I could count on you.” These are basically sharp blades straight into the hearts of people like me, people who depend very heavily on meeting people’s expectations.

But here’s the good news: you get to decide who you’re going to disappoint, who you’re going to say no to.

And it gets easier over time, the disappointing.

What you need along the way: a sense of God’s deep, unconditional love, and a strong sense of your own purpose. Without those two, you’ll need from people what is only God’s to give, and you’ll give up on your larger purpose in order to fulfill smaller purposes or other people’s purposes.

To be sure, finding your purpose can take a long time to figure out, and along the way it is tempting to opt instead for the immediate gratification, the immediate fix, of someone’s approval. But the sweet rush of approval, the pat on the head, can often derail us from real love, and real purpose.

Time always helps me make these decisions, because if I’m rushed, I always say yes. When I have time, I can instead say to myself: Go back to being loved; go back to your purpose.

This thing I am being asked to do will not get me more love. And this will not help me meet my purpose.

Some of us have trouble disappointing people in authority.

Or people we want to impress, or people who seem fancy or important in some way. I’ve realized one thing that makes it hard for me to disappoint people is my tendency to overes- timate how close I am to someone, and then how imperative it is that I don’t disappoint this dear, dear friend. But upon closer inspection, I am probably not this person’s dear friend.

This is probably not a deep heart wound, but probably more a small professional disappointment. Those are very different. And there’s a difference between forsaking a friendship or family relationship and speaking the truth about our limitations. I’m finding that many of our friendships actually grow when we’re more honest about what we can and can’t do.

People who don’t care much about what other people think of them don’t generally struggle with disappointing people. Frankly, I’m not there yet. I think this is harder for women than for men, and harder for moms than for other women, possibly because we’re in that mode—that nose- wiping, cereal-pouring, need-meeting season of life.

I remind myself:

This will not make me feel loved, so if that’s why I’m saying yes, that’s not a good reason.

The love I want will not be found here, and what I will feel in its place is resentment and anger.

I’m committed to a particular, limited amount of things in this season, and if what’s being asked of me isn’t one of those, then it stands in the way. That’s why knowing your purpose and priorities for a given season is so valuable— because those commitments become the litmus test for all the decisions you face.

Picture your relationships like concentric circles.

The inner circle is your spouse, your children, your very best friends. Then the next circle out is your extended family and good friends. Then people you know, but not well, colleagues, and so on, to the outer edge. Aim to disappoint the people at the center as rarely as possible.

And then learn to be more and more comfortable with disappointing the people who lie at the edges of the circle—people you’re not as close to, people who do not and should not require your unflagging dedication.

To do this, though, you have to give even the people closest to you—maybe especially the people closest to you— realistic expectations for what you can give to them.

We disappoint people because we’re limited.

We have to accept the idea of our own limitations in order to accept the idea that we’ll disappoint people. I have this much time. I have this much energy. I have this much relational capacity.

And it does get easier. The first few times I had to say no were excruciating. But as you regularly tell the truth about what you can and can’t do, who you are and who you’re not, you’ll be surprised at how some people will cheer you on. And, frankly, how much less you’ll care when other people don’t.

When you say, This is what I can do; this is what I can’t, you’ll find so much freedom in that. You’ll be free to love your work, because you’re not using it as a sneaky way to be loved or approved of. You’ll be free to love the things you give to people, because you’re giving them freely, untangled from resentments and anger.

My knee-jerk answer is yes.

My default setting is yes.

But I’m learning that time and honesty and space and prayer and writing and talking with Aaron help me see more clearly what I can and can’t do, with a full heart and without resentment or hustling.

A friend I don’t know well asked for help with something recently. And all the old impulses kicked in. Of course! I’m your girl! Anything for you! And then I waited and breathed and prayed and waited some more, and then I lovingly, kindly disappointed her, and I’m happy to report we both survived.

Baby steps.

Shauna has been a part of the Storyline family for years. She’s spoken at the Storyline Conference and helped countless people with her contribution to Creating your life plan. She’s an author of these amazing books: First book, Second book and Third book

If You Turn Down Your Noise, You Might Finally Hear The Truth

I like to sleep with the radio on. But not because I listen to it. It’s the noise I need.

That constant hum of static, chatting and breaking news helps me block out everything else. It keeps me from thinking about actually needing to fall asleep. It prevents me from reeling over the details of the day or what needs to happen tomorrow.

But there’s a cost to sleeping with the radio on all the time.

It means without it, I don’t sleep at all.

There are other costs too. The radio also blocks out some of the good stuff, like rainstorms and wind in the trees. I can’t hear the faint cries of my daughter down the hall or the bubbling fountain out on my patio. And honestly, it probably leaves me more vulnerable to not hearing a thief trying to quietly slip into the house at 3 o’clock in the morning.

But I need a way to escape the silence, so I take that risk.

I need my noise.

We’re like this with a lot of things. We get so used to the convenient, low hum of our white noises of choice that we are no longer comfortable just sitting still. Quietness and being alone with our thoughts can be scary. We need a little something extra to drown out the silence.

The noise is often just a Band-Aid to pain. The low hum helps us from facing the deeper parts of our story. The incomprehensible chatter in the background fills the lonely space.

At the core, noise is escapism, yet it keeps us from being free.

And the only way to overcome escapism is to stick around. To stay in some of the silence. To allow yourself to sit with what hurts. To grieve what has been lost. To allow your thoughts to move to the deeper, unexplored places of your story.

It won’t be easy.

Trust me, I know. I have tried to turn the radio off at night, and quieting my life often feels virtually impossible. But what might happen if we bravely embraced the quiet?

I believe on the other side of our discomfort with silence is a symphony of new sounds waiting to be discovered. It might be where you discover a new truth of who you are and a song of freedom that you’ve been waiting to hear.

Two Types Of Pain You’re Going To Experience

Avoiding pain was my default mode for a decade or two. I avoided pain like it was my job. I steered clear of situations and relationships that might’ve been painful, and I tried to keep my emotional investment at a minimum.

Obviously, this was a disaster.

Not only is it impossible to completely avoid pain, avoiding pain means avoiding life.

One of my biggest challenges as an adult has been realizing that not all pain is created equal. So, I created two terms that have helped me healthily process and respond to different types of pain in my life:

Stove Pain vs. Bicycle Pain

The difference between stove pain and bicycle pain is one helps me know when to back away and the other when to lean in.

Stove pain is simply what happens when we touch a hot stove — it hurts, but hopefully we learn to stay away from this source of pain in the future. This is healthy. This is how we stay alive — stove pain alerts us to dangers in the world and encourages us to avoid them. We experience stove pain when we get speeding tickets. We experience stove pain when the person we knew was trouble breaks our heart.

Stove pain is what teaches us that moderation is better than excess. Stove pain is what teaches us to prepare differently for the next test or interview or presentation. Stove pain teaches us that there are some things in life worth avoiding.

But not all pain is stove pain.

Not all pain teaches avoidance.

How tragic would it have been if the first time you fell off your bicycle you interpreted your scraped knees and elbows as stove pain? You would’ve kept your bicycle in the garage or sold it to a neighbor kid, and you never would’ve learned to ride. You would’ve missed out on the adventure and freedom that belong to a kid on a bike. You would’ve been safe in your driveway with your Etch-A-Sketch (it has rounded corners, which are especially safe), but meanwhile, life would’ve passed you by.

The message of bicycle pain — that first time you fall off, that first time you fight with your spouse, that first time your boss squashes your idea — isn’t to back away; it’s to lean in.

Bicycle pain is an invitation to push through.

It’s an invitation to get your knees scraped up now and then, and then to keep riding. Bicycle pain says that life, real life, is found in the scuffs and scrapes and scars — bicycle pain says they’re worth it.

There’s nothing on the other side of stove pain — it’s just more pain. Putting your hand back on the stove or leaving it there longer will not make your life more meaningful.

We’ve already said adventure and freedom await us on the other side of bicycle pain.

But that’s not all.

On the other side of bicycle pain, we form scars that give us stories of riding, falling, bleeding, healing, and riding again.

Bicycle pain means we lost our balance, which we all do from time to time. But good stories aren’t about avoiding this type of pain. Good stories are about mustering the courage to face our bicycle pains, find our balance again and ride on.

You Don’t Need More Talent Or Time

Dear Glennon,

I want to write, but I feel like I’m not special enough. Also, I have no talent or time. Still, I feel this yearning…

YOU! YES! You are the one! Please write. The most important quality in a writer is her certainty that she is not special.

We do not need more artists using art to prove their specialness.

“Special” artists don’t move us.

What moves us are artists who show us that our shared, ordinary human experience is special enough.

No talent? Good, that’s one less thing that might distract us from your message. Art is not for the talented; it’s for the honest.

It’s for folks brave enough to show us who we are and kind enough to love us anyway.

No time? Perfect. Give us raw and hurried over polished and careful. We humans are neither polished nor careful. We are raw and hurried, so we will recognize ourselves in your delivery. Don’t give us someone who knows how to string together lovely words—as if words were flowers and writing simply a matter of arranging them attractively. Give us someone who fills up her trembling hands with her dirty insides and holds them out to us and says, “Are we sure this is dirt? Might it be gold?”

Because after that question—that question that all good art poses—it becomes clear that the magic is not in the art itself.

The magic is the moment after we encounter good art.

It’s the moment when that question hangs in the air between us and the artist—unanswered. The magic is inside that in-between in which we are stunned by the artist’s audacious forgiveness of herself and of us and so we stand there, shaken and flung far from our usual understanding of how alone and dirty we are. While we try to find our balance again, we can’t help but wonder, is it possible that instead of being filled with dirt—I might also be filled with gold?

When I was in second grade, I wrote my first poem. I was a good girl then, all smiles and nice hair and decent grades and always “fine,” you know. But when my teacher asked us to write a poem, I found my pencil scratching the word MAD onto my crisp, clean sheet of lined, white paper. I traced over the word again and again until each letter was thick and black and until there were scratches through the not-so-neat-anymore paper and there were marks all over my desk and the lead from my pencil was worn completely down and my hands were covered in black dust.

Then I put down my pencil.

I stared at my art like I was seeing an x-ray of my insides for the first time.

My teacher walked over and while all the other children had their heads down writing words—long, fancy, impressive words—she stopped behind my desk and lingered over my shoulder. In this moment—immediately after reading One True Word from the insides of a little girl—my teacher was shaken and flung far from her usual understanding of how alone and dirty she was. She leaned down and whispered into my ear, “me too.”

And of course, I looked back at my dirty paper and my tiny, dirty hands and wondered, could this dirt be gold? It’s thirty years later and I’m still trying to write as brave and true as I did when I wore a plastered-on smile and pig tails.

You, the one without time or talent, you are the one. Write, paint, dance as a public service to our human family. Be a servant with your art.

Don’t use it to say “Here I am!” Use it to say “Here we are. We are okay, you know.”

Forget talent and just use your hands.

Large swaths of time are not needed. It took me three minutes to create the most honest piece I’ve ever written: MAD.

Show us how beautiful and brutal we are and love us for it. Give us that moment in which we wonder if we might one day forgive ourselves for this state of being we seem stuck in—this dirty, golden state of humanness.

The only requirement of an artist is this: You must try to love and forgive yourself completely before you create.

If you are ashamed of any part of yourself, you will hide the one thing from us we most need to see. If you keep from us the dirty gold, there will be no in-between moment for us. And the in-between moment is everything.

Only the forgiven and loved can help others be forgiven and loved. Only the free can free others. Don’t be talented, be free.

Write on, friend.

What To Say When Everything Is Not “Fine”

She came up to me while I was in line at the bakery. I hadn’t seen her for years. “Hi Al!” she said. “Is life treating you great?” The way she asked it, there was only one acceptable answer.

I wish you could have seen the contortions my mind was going through in the several seconds between her question and my answer. I knew there were a couple of options for my response.

I could lie.

“Yes, life’s treating me amazingly! And you?” And she’d say, “Yes, life’s great!” Then we’d move on, get a cinnamon roll and go about our day.

Or, I could tell the truth. “Actually, life’s treating me crappy. One of my cars is leaking oil like the Exxon Valdez, and the other one is making a terrible noise. My dog found the mouse poison and liked the taste of it, which meant an emergency trip to the vet. Chipmunks chewed through the wire that powers our landscape lighting.

My gas grill died. Some crook stole my identity, racking up $30,000 worth of bills on credit cards they opened in my name. And last week, I hurt my shoulder and my knee at the gym.

So to answer your question, “No, life is NOT treating me great. How are you?”

I realized neither answer was a good representation of my story.

And I couldn’t do the first response any more.

Life wasn’t treating me “great” and to say “fine” was neither truthful nor genuine.

I’ll admit, the second potential response was a little overboard, and frankly a bit rude. While technically accurate, my energy was to expose her shallow question in light of my present experience of life. Yes, I can be tacky.

Here’s what I said instead, “Good to see you! Ya know, I’m finding these days that life doesn’t particularly treat me great. But I’m actually doing OK.”

She looked at me like my dog Hobbs looks at me when I talk with him. He cocks his head with an expression that says, “I know you’re saying something I should understand, but I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”

We exchanged pleasantries and moved on.

Every day, we’re given the choice to tell our real story or a story that people want to hear.

Telling the truth or telling a lie. I’m practicing telling the truth these days.

When someone says, “How are you?” (a daily occurrence usually offered with sincere kindness), I have one of two responses. I either say, “In many areas I’m doing quite well.” Or I respond with a question, “In what area?” (i.e. what do they want to know about?)

Usually those responses evoke a chuckle, a pause, and then a conversation about the story I’m living at the moment.

Inevitably the conversation turns to their story.

And then we connect.

In the late 1800’s, Scottish pastor and author John Watson wrote: “Be kind to everyone you meet, for everyone is fighting a great battle.”

What if we were to live with that understanding about one another? Every day, we have the opportunity to connect about the stories we are going through. Even if just for a few moments. A chance to say “I know you are fighting a great battle, and so am I.” To say, “I’m a fellow sojourner. I’m with you.”

A chance to commune with compassion.

Every interaction we have is a holy one.

And if we knew the real story of the person in line at the grocery store or the friend we pass on the street, we’d speak differently to one another.

So the next time someone greets you with, “How are you?” – make it real. That person needs to hear a true story, and deep down, they long to tell you their own.

Why You Don’t Need to Find Yourself to Be Happy

I was at the DMV a few weeks ago, changing the name on my driver’s license. I just recently went through a divorce, and let me tell you, nothing adds insult to injury after a divorce than waiting in line for hours and paying money to change your name.

But anyway… that’s beside the point…

The point is that when I got to the front of the line, the woman behind the counter asked me why I was there. I told her I’d had a legal name change and needed to update my license.

“Marriage or divorce?” she asked. I told her it was a divorce.

“Congratulations” she said, and smiled.

I laughed a little at that, but told her I wouldn’t wish divorce on anyone.

“It’s pretty miserable” I said.

“I know” she told me. “I’ve been there… twice.”

Suddenly the mood shifted a little bit.

She was looking down at my paperwork, signing things and checking little boxes and trying not to make eye contact. I knew how she felt. Divorce, at least for me, has felt like the ultimate failure of my personhood, let alone my womanhood. Admitting my one divorce—saying the word, letting it be what it is—has been hard enough… but two…?

I could only imagine the pain and even shame she must have felt. I wanted to say something, but honestly, I wasn’t sure what to say.

When she spoke up again, a minute later, she didn’t seem pained… or even shamed. In fact, she said something quite profound. She said, “you know, it took me a long time to figure out who I had been all along.”

Wow. Take a minute to let that sink in.

It took me a long time to figure out who I had been all along.

Deep thoughts from the woman at the DMV.

That will stick with me for a long time.

I’m not sure what it is about relationships that make us feel like we should pretend to be somebody we aren’t. Maybe it’s that the thought of being alone—really alone—is just too devastating for us to wrap our minds around. We think, “oh, I’ll just change a little bit of this, and a little bit of that—it’s not that big of a deal, really.”

We tell ourselves we can make this work and that we’re “finding ourselves” when really it’s more like losing ourselves. New experiences. New aspects of ourselves. Maybe.

But then we wake up one day and think… where have I gone?

It’s taken me a long time to figure out who I’ve been all along.

We spend so much time and energy talking about “finding ourselves”.

And I get it. There is a certain extent to which, in our twenties especially, we are collecting experiences and relationships and all these things are shaping who we will become. We go visit places and meet people and eat things and drink things and “find ourselves” in those moments… sort of.

But what if you don’t need to be found?

What if who you are—who you truly are—has been with you all along?

My nephew is a year and a half and It’s so fun to see his little personality shining through already. He loves playing basketball and reading books and he’s a little bit shy but he’ll giggle like crazy for you once he gets to know you. I think about his little heart and spirit and how evident and transparent and available and RIGHT HERE it is, even at his age.

Does he need to find himself? No. He just is himself.

And thankfully, because he has great parents, he knows he doesn’t need to perform to earn love.

I wonder what it would look like for us to embrace who we’ve been all along.

I wonder what would happen if we stopped trying to pretend we were stronger than we are, or that we have it all together, or that we aren’t scared or questioning or that we don’t know what you’re talking about when you are talking about Pokemon.

What if you were just you? What if you knew that that was enough?

What if who you are has been with you all along?

What We Get When We Trade Fear for Curiosity

It was a voice out of the wilderness.

I was on a path in the mountains in Haiti recently, walking next to a waterfall as the sun was going down. There was just enough light to get some photos, so I hurried to get a good vantage point.

I saw a smaller path that looked like it could get me even closer to the falls, so I took it, heading further into the trees and underbrush.

Just before I got to the falls I heard dogs.

At first it was only barking, but then it became snarling, with a vicious sleep-apnea kind of inhaling. They weren’t big dogs, but they weren’t crushable Yorkies, either. I saw enough of their teeth and saliva to know they could do some damage.

I said “Go home” in a stern voice.

I figured they understood the intent, if not the language.

They stopped, but it was clear they were planning their next move.

They were barking, circling, snarling, and baring their teeth. Just when I conceded that at least one of them was going to sink its canines into my leg, I heard some shouting behind them.

A girl—I estimate her to be around 12 years old also came charging out of the woods and apparently told the dogs what I had told them, only in Creole, not English. They obeyed her, and slunk away.

I thanked the girl, pointed to my camera, then to the falls, and tried to mime that I was there to take some photos. Another girl appeared – I assume they are sisters. They simply stared at me. So I went to the falls, got some great photos, and saw that the girls had followed me. I made my way past them, said “Merci,” and headed back toward the main path.

After a few steps I heard English.

“You,” one of them said.

I turned around and the two of them pointed at me. Then they pointed at my camera.

Then they pointed at themselves.

I gladly took a photo of them, then showed it to them on the display. They smiled. Once again I said thank you and goodbye, and headed off. But they said it again.

“You.”

They motioned to themselves again, and then pointed at purple wildflowers growing nearby. They picked some flowers, posed, and pointed at my camera again. So I took the photo, and showed them. They seemed very pleased.

Before I could walk away, they said it one more time.

“You.” And they pointed to all three of us. A selfie!

They were VERY happy with that photo.

The photos of the falls turned out great. But those aren’t the photos I keep going back to. I return over and over to the photos of these children who wanted to be seen.

It’s amazing what can happen when we give up our fear and instead practice curiosity.

I thought I was alone in the looming darkness.

Then I thought I was in danger. Then a voice calmed the trouble. Then the voice spoke to me: “You.”

My guess is that there is a voice – a Voice? – that is calling you, too, today, summoning you to see what else is around you, the beauty you overlooked. Maybe the voice will quiet the snarling around you today, and beckon you.

Let’s all get in the frame together, it says. I am always with you, it says.

The Secret to Deep Relationships

Everyone wants to have great relationships. This desire to be deeply connected to other people transcends the typical societal divides of class, culture, and status.

On a recent trip overseas I was pondering what a great relationship looks like.

I took the trip with a good friend.

We have known each other since we were kids navigating puberty and middle school lockers, and we have remained fairly close over the years. He was in my wedding and I was in his. We visited each other in graduate school and welcomed each other’s kids into the world. During our trip, we were reunited with other friends from our youth and we all belly laughed late into the night recounting tales of the past.

What I noticed is that our conversations were the opposite of Facebook.

I have heard it said that Facebook is like a highlight reel of how we want to be seen by others: people post about the fun times, interesting events, and accomplishments.

I am no different. I have shared cute photos of our toddler and none of him throwing fits or refusing to eat his vegetables. That is the nature of social media—but it is not the nature of deep connections.

During the trip our conversations were the exact opposite.

They ranged from girlfriends leaving us broken hearted to episodes of public embarrassment. I did not need to hear the humiliating story about getting body slammed by a State Campion wrestler into a boxing ring filled with chocolate pudding while the entire student body laughed at me . . . but my friends could not resist reliving the side-splitting moment.

I was once again mocked for how my voice cracked while leading a group in a song and for not getting into my college of choice.

I, of course, shared plenty of stories too.

It wasn’t all embarrassing moments.

We recalled our misadventures with legalism during the early years of learning about God. We remembered shedding tears as adults when dealing with painful betrayal, unmet expectations, and parenting challenges. We never discussed our good grades, professional successes, or awards we have won. In a serious moment, my friend smiled and said, “We have weathered life together.”

I think great friendships arise through more than a series of good interactions.(tweet this)

What really built our friendship were the difficult and painful times.

We were with each other when things were not going well and when we made big mistakes. In a sense, our friendship was forged in the fire of trials as well as in the joy of successes… and that is the secret.

It may seem counter intuitive that successful relationships are more about being authentic than having it all together. Intimacy comes more quickly when we move beyond relational polish into the reality of life.

Not every relationship is meant to be deep or long lasting, but more should be. Let pretence fall away and authenticity rise up as we move into deeper relationships.

Let’s weather life together.