Tag: leadership

And I’ll find strength in pain

And I will change my ways

I’ll know my name as it’s called again

~The Cave, Marcus Mumford

“It’s empty in the valley of your heart.” Philosopher and poet Marcus Mumford penned these words. Little did the lead man of the band Mumford and Sons know he was summing up so much of my story.

My primary residence for much of my life has been a cave, a cavern absent of light. It was decorated with picture perfect moments of shame and Polaroid snapshots of disappointment. It is made cozy and comfortable by the fear failing. It is neatly kept tidy by the nervous belief that I was never enough.

I have held the same emotional address since I was a boy. Occasionally visiting the land of light just return home to the well worn space in the dark. It is an interesting thing that when all you know is darkness you have a fear of light. But light was the longing and light was the enemy.

Shame shackled me to the lie that life had to always be this way because it seemingly has always been this way. So rather run to the life giving source of radiant rays that break into the mouth of the cave I would retreat from them. The sources of shame echo off the deep cavern walls reminding me of the image I saw of myself. An image that could never be worth loving, worthy of success, worth more of life than what was currently being offered to me. It was life where the little bit offered was enough. Not because it was enough but mostly because I failed to believe that I was.

You may ask yourself “how do you become cave dweller?”

It is quite simple, you quit risking being seen. Cave dwellers live everyday normal lives. They attend church, jobs, and school functions like everyone else. They marry and raise kids. While the physical exterior is on display, who they truly are stays hidden in the cave. It is not a physical facility for the body, but an emotional prison for the heart.

Cave living is quite simply not letting the world see your true self because the fear of exposure tells you no one will love you, accept you and give you what you need.

It is a true paradox. I would remain hidden while my greatest desire was to be seen. I would remain lonely while all I wanted was to be loved. I stayed in the shadows of pain instead stepping into the light to find healing.

It said of Adam before taking the forbidden fruit of the garden he was naked and unashamed. He lived in the open, seen by Eve, the animals and God. The moment he takes the fruit that God forbid shame enters the story.

What no one tells you about darkness of shame is that numbs you to the light. The cave becomes a place where feeling are negotiable. You shut down the feelings of hurt, pain and disappointment. But what I never knew is I was exchanging the absence of those emotions for the feelings of joy, happiness and love. As long as I could guard the hurt I wouldn’t feel, but then I began to feel nothing at all.

At the age of now 39, I finally realized that neighborhood I had called home for so long was no longer ideal. I knew I would have to quit. The cave has all the comforts of New York City 500 square foot studio apartment shared with 4 starving artist and singer who thinks she will make it on Broadway. It’s charming for a minute, but no place to call home. I knew I had to leave. I knew I need to move out.

And I came to the same crossroads in the cavern I had reached so many times “this is not the life I want, but I don’t know how to leave”.

It started surrounding myself with three little words “I AM ENOUGH”. Well to be honest, those three words were sprinkled in a book I for some reason ordered off Amazon called Daring Greatly by shame researcher Brene Brown.

I had no intentions on reading a book on shame. I was trying to build a better performance so no one would see the hurt. The cave teaches you to be a great liar. You lie to yourself. You lie to others. You’ll lie to the dog simply to avoid the truth being seen. But as the author unpacked story after story, theme after theme, the reflection in the mirror was me. And the me I saw was filled with this poison called shame.

Day after day I would ink my hand with those three words. I would scribble in dry erase marker over the mirror where the man I had been stared back at the man I was trying to become. The stacks and stacks of stones representing moments of life I had seen as hurt and harm that laid at the front of the mouth of the cave were now being removed one by one with the belief that the words of hurt they did not define me.

As I journeyed up the deep cavern to the place of light, I found a guide to help get me out. That guide began to teach that being enough was enough, but there was a more than enough that my life contained. I literally had to retrain my brain to take steps out of the darkness into the light of life. The mixtape of my brain would be on repeat with the negative words and hurtful moments that had filled my traveling bags into the cave. In order to move out meant leaving behind those heavy trunks of entrapment.

I had to force my brain to reframe the thoughts that played like a needle stuck on the scratch of a vinyl record. The thoughts of hurt, harm, and beliefs of being not enough didn’t simply need to be removed. They had to be replaced. One of the writers of the bible said it this way:

whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things.

My guide literally had to force me to start telling myself the truth. Scribbled filled pages began to become my new voice as I battled the devils in my own head that called me out to me proclaiming I was not enough or I was unworthy or not lovable. I had to undo years of patterns of thinking. I had to unconvince myself of lies and believe the truth.

So my truths on those pages began to look like this:

Yes, mom and dad divorce but they still authentically love me.

Yes I have fallen short of dreams and goals, but the truth is a I am gifted, talented and called by God.

Sure, I am hurt and broken, but I am worthy of healing.

I have failed in many ways, but the truth is it does not make me a failure.

I have fallen short of God, but the truth is God still loves me.

I am divorced, but not disqualified from God using me.

I am a good father, friend, follower of Jesus.

And on and on the truths were written, spoken and believed. And with penned and spoken belief, I began to move out of the mouth of the cave, step by step, into the light facing the greatest fear of my life being completely seen. As truth became my anthem, the man looking back at me between the expo marker and the looking glass was the man I had longed to see. The hurt boy, damaged teenage kid and devastated son had found truth and truth set me free from the cave.

My new address is one of security, confidence, and love. I have cried more tears in the last 6 months than in the previous 30 years. With the tears came the ability to feel joy and love, hurt and empathy. At many times they happened at the same moment.

I have found love and life in a beautiful woman. I have found certainty in my calling. I peace with myself and those who hurt me. More than anything, I have found assurance in who God calls me. He calls me son and I am secure and safe calling him Father.

The cave will always loom darkly in my past but it will never be an address I desire to move back into. Because who the son sets free is free indeed. And I am happy to be free.

‘Cause I have other things to fill my time

You take what is yours and I’ll take mine

Now let me at the truth

Which will refresh my broken mind

Marcus Mumford, The Cave

“Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
Jesus, Matthew 11:29-30

I was captured by the poetry in motion that was the men’s synchronized diving in the Rio 2016 Olympic games.  My personal aquatic claim to fame is the one time I dove off the 3 meter spring board in high school.  So standing on a platform 33 feet about a pool does not sound like my idea of good Sunday night.

I noticed something even smaller than the splashes made by the aerial acrobats of the pool, but possibly even more important.  The men moved in unison, but only one voice counted them off.  In the silence of the Maria Lenks Aqautic Center, you would hear 1-2-3 or uno-dos-tres or Yī-Èr-Sān.

These men moved in near perfection as if tied together by an invisible cord.  Then as if attached by an unbreakable bond twisted, flipped and vent vertical into the pool below.

Jesus said these words “my yoke is easy”.  Unless you are living in an Amish community you don’t use a yoke on the regular.  It was a farm tool that hooks up to animals such as oxen to employ the power of both animals.  These animals will be linked together until released or the yoke gets broken.  No matter the struggle with bond around the neck of the beast he will be hooked to going where the other animal goes.

All of us are “yoked” in some way.  Our life is linked up to someone or something that is leading us.  Marriages are yoking of two lives.  Friendships are forms of ways we are connected by the ties of love.  But we also get all tangled in the yokes of addictions, complicated relationships, and vices that are leading us to destruction.

So often the biblical context of a yoke (especially in the Old Testament) was one of slavery and bondage.  It was often depicted as Israel greatest struggle.  My mind runs like a movie projector as I read these words.  I see the men and woman of God with a bar around their neck that they are unable to break free from in constant struggle to undo that slavery.  Led by the master into more and more heartbreak.

I have often felt that same emotion in my life.  Yoked to the wrong thing or person.  Fighting and flailing to get free.  Being led wherever that thing or person wants to go despite my fight.  Unable to ever really get free.  Bound in a slavery of poor relationships, personal struggle, and even near depression.  I have fought and fought to get my neck free from he clamp of the yoke, only to get worn out from the struggle.

What I am discovering is that the God who spoke of Israel’s bondage is the same God that wants to set you and me free.
 I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt so that you would no longer be slaves to the Egyptians; I broke the bars of your yoke and enabled you to walk with heads held high.

The yoke, the tie, the bond you are struggling with it can be broken in the power of Jesus.  Time after time the Lord spoke of his people his desire to “break the yoke”.  And at that moment you walk out of the bondage with heads held high.

God said through the prophet Isaiah in reference to the breaking of the yoke of slavery:
Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
    and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness^[a] will go before you,
    and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.
 Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;
    you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.
When the bar breaks you get your THEN…you get your healing, you have righteousness restored, God will answer you with “here I am.”

Back to the platform in Rio.  What captured my attention was the ease with which the divers moved.  Nothing they did was a struggle.  It was gliding.  Jesus said that his yoke “would be easy and burden light.”  That when we break the yoke of our bondage and take up the yoke of Christ the neck breaking bar that had existed is not there with him.

It is simply as if he says 1-2-3 and we dive in sync with him.

 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. James 1:17

It was the Christmas I was 10.  During an intense game of hide-and-go-seek with my brother, I stumbled upon a panoramic picture of the University of Illinois Memorial Stadium just like the one I had asked Santa for.  Suddenly my 10 year old mind chased.  If the picture is here, then surely there are other gifts here too.  Pretty soon I had discover nearly everything I had asked stashed in all my favorite hiding spots in my parents bedroom.

Lacking legit street smarts, I confessed my discovery to my mom.  My mom covered her tracks by telling me she was holding it for a “friend” whose son wanted it for Christmas.  I still held out hope it was mine. Come Christmas Day, my panoramic picture was nowhere to be found.  I was destroyed, devastated and upset that what I had asked for was not there.

This got me thinking about my role as son.  I have often come to my heavenly Father with requests and desires.  Not simply wants, but many time legitimate needs.  My struggle has not been making the request, but as much my heart behind the request.  More than that my belief is God’s response to my request.

Jesus said this “ If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” As son of the Heavenly Father, I have struggled with my ability to see God opened handed with his blessings.  To often I have felt more like a beggar.

The distinction is that a beggar is not looking for blessings but bumming some small scratch to get by.  A son has access to the inheritance of the father.  The blessings of a son are only limited by his asking.  And the blessing of the father is a lifelong access to all that he has.

A beggar is just looking to get by.  A son is requesting what the Father already has stored up for him.

So my praying has had to shift.  I ask not as a beggar looking to the tiny bit to get by, but as a son with access to a Father wealthy with blessings already stored up for me.

I have been a bad son with a good father.  But I am learning he just wants to me to ask and act like a son.

And by the way, the picture was mine.  Thanks mom and dad!