Satisfied.

I had a conversation with God a while back. Now, you might think that’s a very strange thing right off the bat, or you might think that’s just the most logical sentence ever written. “Of course you did,” you’re thinking. “What did he say?”

Well, I’ll tell you what he said. It came at a very hard time in my life and I was crying, sitting on the floor in my kitchen, feeling every ounce of sorry for myself and my circumstances. Relationships have always been very hard for me. I never know the right ones to pursue. I usually choose wrong – my current single status is my witness. I had someone tell me one time, metaphorically of course, “It just seems like you want someone to burn you with their cigarette.” Maybe I did. Maybe I do. Maybe that’s all you think you deserve when that’s all you’ve ever been given.

For some reason, a lot of women I know, we all try to pick the ones who don’t want us. Guys do this, too. It’s the chase - the game. Like it’s better if you have to prove yourself to them. Like if they finally pick you after you’ve proven yourself, then you’ve really won. Then you’re worthy and they finally see your value. It sounds silly even now as I type it out. Maybe we all need counseling.

But in the midst of another poor decision, another bad relationship, another choice I wasn’t supposed to make but did anyway, I just heard the real words in my soul say,

GIVE IT UP. WHAT I’M OFFERING IS BETTER.

Wait, what? Excuse me? Are you there? I was crying, like I said, but this sudden thought caused me to catch my breath and hold back the tears. Are you talking to me, God? Now? I have cried to you so many times and heard nothing but stinging silence and NOW you want to speak up. He wasn’t yelling like those caps suggest, but how do you differentiate between my feeble voice and the one who spoke Light? The voice was steady, like the sea when he spoke calm into it. Like Lazarus walking out of the tomb all those days later, just very nonchalant like, “Hello there. Here I am.”

Well, when you hear a voice deep in your soul like that, do you talk back? I thought it would be rude not to, so I just said out loud to nobody in my kitchen, actually very defiant and angry,

“You promise there will be something better. You say, ‘Just give it up and there will be better.’ Well, I HAVE given up and there’s never been anything better. I never get the better.”

Don’t we hear that a lot – in the midst of heartbreak and tragedy and hard things? In the midst of sadness and grief. In the midst of loss and shattered dreams. “Don’t worry, what he has for you is better.” We love to comfort ourselves with cherry-picked verses and quaint phrases and sometimes they’re just the words we need to hear. We hang on to that hope with a white-knuckled death grip and wait. And wait. And w a i t. We’re waiting for the better to come because we think we know exactly what it looks like. It looks like all our dreams come true, of course! Well, that little voice spoke to me again. I told you early on that this was a conversation, not on a one-off moment of clarity.

I’M THE BETTER. HAVING ME IS THE BETTER.

Well, isn’t that just a super Christian answer, God. How nice of you, I thought.

But then I responded, “Yeah, I guess.” I guess so. “I guess having you is better,” I said all non-committal to the God of the universe.

WHY AREN’T YOU SATISFIED WITH ME?

When the God who created you is speaking to your soul, giving you a stern talking to about your life choices, when he’s doing that and you know it, you can’t turn your back. Now that I was sure it was him I was hearing, I was ready to have it out. I had waited for this conversation – waited to hear from him, to know that my prayer and desperation wasn’t bouncing off clouded ceiling. I thought, You know why, God? Because you gave me dreams. You gave me these things in my heart that I’ve wanted so badly for YEARS. And I’m just sitting here alone on my kitchen floor crying. Again.

I answered, “Because I want someone to love me and hold my hand.”

Something Christian people like to say to middle school/high school/college girls when they’re longing for a boyfriend or a husband is something along the lines of, “God is the only man you need.” Maybe they say it to guys too – that he’s the only relationship you need. So we hang on to that for a little while but then it turns stale because if you’re like me, you want a hug – a very real, warm hug from a man who will kiss your forehead and tell you you’re beautiful. Your friends seem to be finding that, no problem. Some of them aren’t even Christians, God, so how dare you give that to them before me. I’m on your team, God!

I DO LOVE YOU.

We hear that from the time we are three years old in preschool. “Jesus loves me / This I know / For the Bible tells me so.” It does say that. If you’ve read even a few pages, ‘God is love’ is the whole story, the prologue and the epilogue. It occurred to me the other day we should never really tire of what the Bible has to say because every time you open it it’s like you’re sitting down with God and saying to him, “Tell me again the story of how much you love me.”

I know this is true in my head, but the distance between my head and my heart was vast in those moments and so I had the gall to say back to God right there in my kitchen,

“And that’s it? No one else will ever love me?”

Love personified is offering us himself and often we’re scoffing in the corner. I might as well have said, “You’re not enough, God. You’re not enough.” At least it would have been more honest. I wanted more than just Love reaching down from heaven. I’ll have what she’s having, I found myself thinking about my friends who were married and having babies. About my friends and sisters and cousins and seemingly everyone getting all the things I wanted for so long. Like I had any idea what I was really asking in those moments.

WHY AREN’T YOU SATISFIED WITH ME?

Yes, God, you already asked me that, thank you. I’m not sure if you remember or not. We’ve all been down this road before. He asks us to find satisfaction in him and we go ahead and try to find it in relationships, career, sex, money, fame, addictions – all of these things that only ever lead to our own destruction and we know he’ll find us at the end of that road. Waiting. Ready to ask again and again. He’s like that for some reason.

So I give up.

“I don’t know…” I said, sitting there in my kitchen.

I don’t know, God. I don’t know but I want to know. I want to believe that you’re the better my soul, our souls, long for. I want to know for sure in my heart that even if none of my dreams for myself come true that ultimately having you is better. You’re the goal. You’re the main event. All we ever do should only be to that aim. More Jesus, please.

So why isn’t it enough? More Jesus should be more than enough no matter what brought me to that end. But, if I’m honest, the better I want, the better I’m perpetually waiting for is a new, better boyfriend/spouse, I want a better house, a better job, a better family. I want the redemption story. I want the Joseph-gets-out-of-jail moment so I can really stick it to whoever wronged me and shout, “See! This is why all of that happened.” Mascara-stained white pillow cases attest to the fact that I’ve been crying out for that better for years.

So I had a conversation with God a while back. He came to me right there in my kitchen. We had it out for a bit because of who I am and who he is in spite of me. I know I’ll need the lesson again. We seem to be pretty dense, the whole lot of us, humanity. We need reminders and do-overs. Luckily for us, all of us,

“…but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more…”

There’s a better our busted souls can cling to. More Jesus, please.

Enough.

There was one summer where I had to take a break from Pinterest. This was a few years ago now, but every time I opened the page I felt like I was going to have a nervous breakdown. My feed felt overwhelming – the barrage of photos of things you could buy or do or wear or, mostly, eat. This sensory overload came from the distinct disconnect I felt between what I was seeing and the current cruising altitude of my life. I don't think I'm alone in this. All of our boards are filled with expensive clothes or exotic vacations or home décor and yet our reality is a usually a far cry from "Contour like pro" because dang, that makeup is expensive or “95 meals to make for your family" because honestly, cooking is a lot of work after a whole day of desk chains at the office, or maybe you don't have a family and you desperately want one so you have someone to eat the casserole you carefully scooped into zucchini boats. So we sit there and quietly bottle those lessons and pin them somewhere for our someday life.

At that time and even still I can catch myself too concerned with the idea of arriving - with the thought that I can make it to the best version of myself if I just do enough, grow enough, learn enough, then I'll be the person that people really like, the one that people are proud of, the one that deserves success and happiness and gets 349 likes on that Insta post. Maybe then I will feel accomplished. Maybe then I will feel like I belong. Maybe then I will feel valued. Worthy. Sometimes you can’t help but dream of arriving - of getting there - reaching the crest of your own self-ideal. Doing enough. Trying enough. Being enough. 

Since I can’t seem to arrive at this mythical enough where I finally feel fulfilled - complete - then there has to be a reason. There has to be something I can do to make the waiting stop and the arriving start. See, we like to be doers, fixers, difference makers. We like to feel like we have some semblance of control. So maybe if I listen to enough podcasts and read enough books and tweet out every single thought in my head and have a whole slew of followers. Maybe if I have enough college degrees and a high GPA and a lot of letters behind my name. Maybe if I have a decent place to live, one that looks like Chip and JoJo brought their Fixer Upper crew right into the living room. Maybe if all my bills are paid, and I eat enough healthy food or I become all out vegan, gluten-free, paleo-only, please! Maybe if I pick up some interesting hobbies and habits. Maybe I can feel like I’ve arrived if I can make a Pinterest-perfect recipe that actually looks like the picture and host parties worthy of Martha Stewart Living and go to the gym on a pretty regular basis because look at Kayla Itsines, you guys. Maybe if I can say “Where’s the bathroom?” in three different languages and have seen enough of the world. Maybe if my wedding is worthy of Style Me Pretty. Maybe if all these things, then I can arrive. Then I will have made it. Then I won’t feel like I am constantly waiting for something, the next thing, anything.

I’ve noticed we silently have benchmarks for things we feel we should have accomplished or arrived at by a certain age. Maybe that’s society or maybe that’s our own internal clock. I think it’s a little bit of both. Our whole lives have been set up by these markers: at six you start kindergarten, at 16 you drive a car, at 18 you’re a legal adult, at 21 you can get rid of that fake ID, at 65 you can retire. So then at 26 you should be married? At 29 you should for sure have at least one kid or consider quitting birth control? When should I know how to handle a crisis without calling my mom? (Never.) When should I buy the house?

Buying a house. It seems like the next grown-up thing to do – or at least the next grown-up thing you can semi-control when you can’t control so many other unknowns. Some of my friends are in this stage. Let me tell you the number of times I’ve recently heard, “Have you thought about buying a house?” Really? There are so many things to consider when it comes to buying a whole house! Like what if you don't have the means to maintain a space that large? Listen, all I have to do when my sink starts to drain slowly is call up maintenance and never think about it again. Apartment perks! What if you’re worried about bad guys coming through the basement window of that house you now own? Asking for a friend, obviously. I understand that owning a home rather than lighting money on fire, wait, sorry, I mean renting, makes more investment sense.  But, maybe everyone needs to relax for a minute, you know? Stop rushing around looking for the next thing you can body slam with your illusion of control. Don’t white-knuckle your way through life trying to reach the benchmarks. I read this quote the other day, “People move because of the wear and tear of anxiety… because of the feeling that nothing will change, that happiness and prosperity are only possible somewhere else.” I think people make a lot of decisions because of the wear and tear of anxiety that nothing will change - especially if we feel like we aren’t hitting the marks and maybe they can be reached if we just do this or that. Maybe I’ll feel like I’ve made it if I buy a house. Maybe I'll find happiness and prosperity if ____.  Maybe I’ll feel like I’ve arrived and I’m deserving if I just invest better, eat better, look better, become a living Pinterest board of accomplishments.

The lie is that when I feel like I have arrived - when I feel like I have accomplished everything, when I've graduated, when I've landed the job or earned the raise, when I've moved to the new town, when/if I do have a spouse and a baby keeping me up at night, the idea we all cling to is that then the waiting will be over. Maybe I won’t be waiting anymore when the loan is paid off and my car is brand new and I have the dog I always wanted or the house on the beach. Maybe when the kids are grown, the retirement account is full, and the grandbabies come. Maybe then. But, it’s a lie. You will still be waiting. There will still be that longing - that internal tug to become more. To embark on a new endeavor that might make you feel more complete. And maybe then you'll look back nostalgically and wonder if these were the days you should have relished and enjoyed instead of waiting to arrive at the next big moment because the next big moment arrived and left you wanting.

I know there is no silver bullet. There is no magical formula that suddenly makes the stars align and causes me to finally get there - to be at the pinnacle where I'm no longer waiting or wanting or hoping to be better. There is no thing, no trip, no life event, no person who will complete you (I'm looking at you, Jerry Maguire) because the longing in our hearts to arrive, to be enough, is put there by God, the one who created the very intricacies of our hearts. The desire to be better and feel better and look better to the world is the desire to be admired and enjoyed and beloved by the King of the universe. Ecclesiastes says, “He has set eternity in the human heart, " which means we will always be longing for more and we won’t arrive, ever, this side of glory. C.S. Lewis put it this way, "If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”

I know these truths. I know the magical enough I so desire will never come. But, knowing the truth doesn’t always make the feeling go away. I can put these words on the page with just enough wit and the right amount of insight to make you agree with me (or not), but then I’ll walk away from this screen and go out into the world and wonder if I'm the only one who might feel like they're waiting for something - hoping, praying, wishing to arrive and feel like enough.

Pinterest and I are back together. We apologized to each other and decided to move forward on new terms - terms where my boards don't tell me how to feel and the photos I see aren't the measuring stick of my life. And instead of the waiting and the wondering and hoping to arrive at enough, I decided to arrive at every day with the fresh perspective that all that I am and all that I might not be is already enough. I may never hit the marks but I’m done striving, spinning myself in circle after circle hoping I can make some gold out of this straw in my hands. Instead I fall back to the arms of the One who can make something from this dust. I throw myself at His feet every single day I wake up to a waiting world. And even if every single one of those days are filled with questions and waiting and wondering, I know He has said I am enough - all that I am and all that I'm not and all that I may or may not become - and if that's the case, how could we possibly be in need of more?

Snail mail.

There’s something about the process of choosing thank you notes and cards that makes me excited. Maybe you're already thinking, "Process? What process?" Trust me. It's a process. There's so much to consider: it’s the font and the colors and the photo (if there is one) – the whole look of it that has to be perfect. It has to feel like me - fit my style. Some people collect shoes or coins or pogs (hey, you do you!) but I collect wrapping paper, tissue paper, and thank you notes. I always like to have something cute on hand, so I pick them up at the store now and then and before I know it I have a whole drawer full of ways to wrap up little gifts and cards.

All of this is because I love snail mail. In a world of full of text and email and staring at a screen, it's fun to receive something in the mail that you can hold in your hands, something that's not a bill or a past due notice that makes you want to have a stroke right there at the mailbox. I love to see people's handwriting – a little piece of them on the page. Handwriting is so personal, isn't it? When the only font we all operate in is our smartphone's Helvetica Neue, it’s nice to see the creativity of handwriting, pen to paper, there in front of you. Snail mail also holds to standards our digital world doesn’t quite hold anymore. You’re generally not going to find abbreviations for because or laugh out loud in a handwritten card – at least you won’t when it’s coming from me. Snail mail, the kind where you actually lick the envelope and buy a stamp and send it off, takes time and money and care that an email doesn’t. It requires that you’re not in the rush or the hurried fluster you are when you shoot off a text that says “Thx, g2g.”

My grandpa was a mailman for many, many years when mail still went to each house - when you put that person’s mail in their own little box. It think it's out of convenience for our mail carriers that most of us don’t have individual mailboxes anymore – we have these big metal squares somewhere in the middle of the suburban block that holds all the mail for the whole street. But I remember when we had our own mailbox and my dad took ours off the wooden stump it was on and painted the whole thing black except for the flag. The flag was red, for flair I guess, and maybe so the mailman could know for sure that we had mail waiting to be picked up. Remember when you had to do that - notify your mailman that you had mail to be picked up out of your box? Raise the mail flag! We've got mail in here! There was a time when you knew who your mailman was and maybe you left treats in your mailbox for them to pick up on a cold day. I don't know, but I hope you had to raise your mail flag for that kind of thing too and then when your mailman arrived thinking it was just another stack of letters, boom, a plate of sweets! Maybe people still leave gifts in their metal square of a mailbox, but the whole transaction seems to be less personal these days. With online shopping, banking, ordering, EVERYTHING, we have lost the relational aspect of a lot of life. Relationship is always the sacrifice on the altar of convenience.

Think about it: Microwaves, for example. We can warm our food up in three seconds and eat it standing at the kitchen sink, or in the car on the way to the next event because HEY! THIS IS FAST! But, what about meals at the table with your people, and the conversation that happens as you cook slowly in the kitchen? And the blessed Internet. We can look up ANYTHING really quickly and we never have to wonder or even think because we can just read it ourselves from a Google search that returns 628,000 results in .49 seconds. Do you realize you could sit at your house ALL DAY and do everything from the Internet? Order up your favorite food, buy something to wear, read the news, watch a movie, have everything delivered directly to your door and you never have to have a conversation with anyone. Ever! Such convenience! I’m not saying these things are bad. Common grace has allowed us so many wonderful things for the sake of convenience.  But, these conveniences do distract us and we now have to intentionally make space for relationships if we want to have them at all. They don't come easily in a world where we can hide behind any number of screens each day.

So, for all of these reasons, because it’s inconvenient and takes time and thought and going out of the way, mailing thank you notes and cards is my jam. It started when I was a senior in high school. There was a period of time where every week I picked out one of my friends, made them a card and stuck it in their locker. Texting didn't exist at this point (yes, I'm practically a fossil) so it wasn't unusual to get handwritten notes, but I wanted it to be separate from the notes we folded into those paper football shapes and only contained questions like, "What are we doing this weekend?"  I wanted them to know they were special to me and I was thankful for their friendship. The world is full of takers and I want to fight against that in the fiercest way possible. I don’t want to be a taker – I want to be a giver. I want people to know that they are appreciated. Maybe a friend saved a seat for you in the lunchroom. Or maybe they put you up at their house for the weekend. Maybe they drove across the city in the middle of the night to hold your hand when the boy/girl suddenly decided not to choose you or maybe you were in the depths of despair for another reason. I just think it’s important to recognize when people show up. I don't know if you realize this or not, but show up is basically the only thing I can say to you - the only thing I will say to you forever and ever. It's my theme song. Broadcast it over every channel. People need each other.

I told you about Hannah Brencher when I started my contentment challenge. We are from the same cloth I think because her whole career has been built on the mailing of letters. Well, one time she put out a request on Twitter and asked her followers to write letters to anyone who might be in the midst of heartbreak. She planned to use the letters as part of a digital project so that anyone could read them when they needed a word of encouragement. I took the time to sit down and write a letter, but then my letter never made it to Hannah or her project. So, as my own little snail mail letter to you today, in case you haven’t received a letter in a long time, or in case you don’t know just how worth it you are - if no one has appreciated you lately or you feel like the world is heavy and dark - here’s the letter I wrote to whoever might need to hear this today. I guess this kind of goes hand in hand with the last post I wrote about the importance of our words. So, here are some words for you or for someone you know and maybe they are the words a soul out there needs right now. And I encourage you this morning, on a regular Wednesday, to write a note to someone who needs it. Write a love letter. Write a thank you note. Be a giver of love in loud and intentional ways. 

Dear beloved,
Did you know that you are exactly that - beloved? It means 'treasured' + 'adored'. It means 'dearly loved' and you are just that. You are precious to so many, even though you may not feel it today. See, I have been there - in all of the ache and desperation. I've been there - in all of the tears on the bathroom floor. I've been there where the light escapes your eyes and the minutes of each day linger like their own separate eternity. I've been there in the depths of sorrow, swirling in the feelings of worthlessness and longing. But if I could shout one thing to you through that hazy fog of brokenness, it's that you are not alone. Do you hear me? Don't believe you are. Not for one second. These feelings will fade like the ocean pulls the waves back from the shore. And you will breathe again.  Crisp air in your lungs, you will live again. Hope again. Dream again. Keep fighting. Every day, it's just one second to the next. One foot in front of the other until one day you realize you're not counting the minutes any longer - you're too busy building something beautiful to care anymore for people who refuse to see what you're worth. Because what you are is BELOVED. Pure gold. Cherished with every beat of your fiery, fighting heart. You are worth every fierce second of your one beautiful life.

Grandkids.

I’m training for my first half marathon. I told you this a few posts back and I shared my true feelings on Instagram just last week. While I joke about hating it, to be honest, it has been going pretty well. My sister and I are following this running plan and the increase in miles each week has been gradual. I’m actually amazed at how my body has increased in endurance and speed over the last five weeks. Talk to me in another month when we're cranking out eight miles and I'm sure I'll have more thoughts about this. Eek! Half credit to my playlist for singing me through the miles. I put it together for you on Spotify if you’re interested in having a listen on your next run.

So, I was talking to a friend of mine recently about my training. I was driving to the gym while we were talking and I said I wasn’t looking forward to the run.

“I don’t even know why I’m doing this,” I complained. Ask anyone who knows me and they’ll tell you I have always said that a marathon, even a half marathon, was something I would never do. I felt no need, like why would anyone need to run that far? There’s a reason Ford invented the Model T and I say we give him all the praise hands for that. Well done.

“Just imagine the story you’ll tell your grandkids about the time you ran a half marathon. Do it for the grandkids,” he said to me. We joked about it a little bit, about how I’d sit in my rocking chair and the grandkids would sit around and listen to my tales. I hope running a half marathon isn’t the apex of what I accomplish before I have grandkids, but you never know. So, he and I throw that phrase around.  “Do it for the grandkids.” It started as a joke, but then it got me thinking. What if we thought about that before all of our life decisions – about the grandkids? What would they think about what you're doing now? What do you want them to think about you? Would it change what you're doing today - the choices you make, the places you go, your attitude, your heart?

Matt Chandler is a pastor in Texas and I have listened to his sermons for years because I like the way he preaches. He isn’t afraid to stand on truth, even in the face of it not being cool, and he does his best to point people to Jesus. In one of his sermons he was talking about how he likes to imagine his life forty years from now – when his kids are grown up and out of the house, when he has retired from his job as a pastor, when he and his wife are sitting on the back porch, drinking sweet tea and talking about life. I don’t remember the specifics of what he said next but it was along the lines of wanting his family to be proud of him. Of wanting his wife to be the person next to him all those years later. Of wanting his kids to still love him and look up to him. Of wanting his grandkids to come over and play. He shared his dreams for the future and then talked about how those dreams shape his life – how they affect the decisions he makes right now. Every day.

I don’t know if we think about the future often enough because we’re always told, “Live for today! It’s all you’ve got!” Yes, that’s true. I’ve seen too much sudden death to ever believe otherwise. I live right next door to a cemetery, and I mean right next door, as in ten steps away. When I got home from the gym the other morning, a bobcat was turning over the earth, digging a new hole in the ground. It’s not hard to be ever aware of the brevity of life when it stares you in the face – when you watch a new green tent pop up and loved ones gather underneath to mourn loss. When plastic flowers and flags and momentos constantly blow across frozen ground into my parking lot.

But, we get so caught up in ourselves sometimes, in doing what would make us most happy in one single moment, we forget there are years ahead of us and that our decisions today will impact those years. I wish I would have realized this sooner. I spent a lot of time in my teens and twenties making decisions that affected me in the immediacy of twenty minutes, rather than thinking about how that might change the course of my years. I didn’t think about my grandkids.

I saw this quote the other day in my Twitter feed, but then it popped up again on Pinterest and if I see something multiple places maybe I better take note. I pinned it so that I’d always have it and hopefully remember its truth. The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be. Who do you want to be? Who do you want your kids and your grandkids and your neighbors and your coworkers to say that you are? On the one hand, we talk about how we shouldn’t care what other people think of us, but on the other, isn’t the legacy we leave essentially what other people think of us - the stories they tell when we’re no longer here to tell them ourselves?

So often it’s hard to think about the future when we’re in the moment because the moment is so heavy in front of us. The future seems intangible – will I ever be 60? 90? I don’t know, but right now I want to do this. Whatever your this might be. So we make these decisions and maybe they’re wrong, and it’s okay to make mistakes, don’t hear me say that. But my own pastor said once, “No one wakes up in the morning and decides to ruin their life.” It’s one little decision at a time until you wonder how you arrived in this place.

The biggest problem with life choices we make that we know we shouldn't make is we don’t feel like we have a way out of that moment. Maybe it’s peer pressure or coworker pressure or your own internal pressure making you feel like there’s only one way to handle what’s in front of you.  Like the Bible talks about having a way of escape but I'll tell you, I usually feel trapped in those moments before a wrong decision. Surrounded. Pinned down - like the guy whose arm was stuck under a boulder and he couldn't get free so the only thing he could do was hack away at his own flesh. I don't know how you work through the hard decisions any other way than to just start, real steady, preaching the gospel to yourself. Find a way to tell yourself in those moments that there are people and experiences and joy ahead. Preach to yourself and then cry real hard afterward because sometimes the hardest thing and the right thing are the same and The Fray wrote that before I did, but I don't think they'll mind if I borrow its truth. Make the hard decision. Do it for the grandkids.

Maybe you've already considered all of this. Maybe everything you've done in your life is map out your tomorrow and you're set now with everything you've ever dreamed. The struggle is to find a balance. Don’t miss today because you’re constantly living for tomorrow, but let the choices of today be underscored by your dreams for tomorrow.

Where do you want to be when you’re 60? Want a house with a back porch for drinking sweet tea with the love of your life? Cherish your relationship. Do what you can to help it flourish so you're still there at 60, in it ten times deeper than you are today. Want your kids to love you and still hang out with you? Show up for them over and over and over again. That’s all they really want anyway – not your money or your stuff. Take care of your body. Kick the addiction. Get out of the bad relationship or go all in on the one you know is right. Go to counseling. Connect. Learn. Let go of your pride. Tell your closest friends that you need them to help you dig your way out of whatever struggle you find yourself in right now, today. Find a way to serve others. Show up for people. Be vulnerable. Be brave. Do what you can to love well, and that includes yourself.

Maybe you'll never meet your grandkids. Maybe you won't even have them. But what will people say about you in 60 years? The man who _____. The woman who ______. I hope my grandkids know I ran a half marathon and that I thought of them the whole way.