A Gas Station and an Answered Prayer

A few years ago, myself and a group of friends were coming back from a road trip to Portland from Seattle when our 2002 Jeep broke down at a gas station in the middle of nowhere. We felt stuck, since know one new anything about cars, and we were still several hours from home. It was late at night, and we knew the likely hood of getting one of our friends in Seattle to drive down and fetch us was slim to none.

So, what did we do?
We prayed.

Yes, the most cliche of Christian answers to solve what seemed like an extremely minor worldly problem, in the grand scheme of things. But we prayed.

Not 30 seconds after we finished our prayer, we saw the door of the truck stop diner up the street fly open and a burly, bearded man walk out - a typical trucker if there ever was one. He looked at us from the door and immediately started walking our way. When he reached us, all he said was, “You guys look like you’re having some car trouble. Why don’t you try inserting the key into the outside, driver’s door lock and locking and unlocking it a couple times?”

As we all looked around at one another thinking, “There’s no way this works,” sure enough, it worked.

Immediately after the engine roared back to life, the guardian angel turned around to leave with a low-key, “Looks like that did the trick. Y’all be safe.”

It’s this moment that I hold onto as a pivotal anchor to my faith. A small, but truly answered prayer in the heat of the moment. Both unexplainable and explainable, but a moment that I refuse to chalk up to circumstance.

Event when it feels like God isn’t listening, shouldn’t listen or has better things to hear, He hears us.

-Cliff

Tim’s Note: “Even when it feels like God is absent, He is with us. He is always working, turning the world’s bad to His good.” - Tim Keller

For When People Let You Down

People let you down.

This is one of life’s great truths that gets harder and harder to swallow the older I get, probably because the older I get, the more trust I build with people.

All to have it torn down in an instant.

And it’s not always the people that we’re closest to that let us down the hardest; it’s quite possible that those who are far from us that we put our hope in who can let us down event harder. I’m talking about those we follow, idolize in the media or trust in faith - our heroes.

It’s these people, who have no knowledge that I (or you) even exist, who can turn our worlds upside down at the drop of a hat. It’s happened to me multiple times with different writers and musicians. I follow their art, taking it in and trusting it, building certain aspects of my own life around things they have taught, and then what happens? They change their mind, their faith or their thoughts entirely, shattering everything I ever thought about them and what may or may not be true.

And that feelings sucks.

This recently happened to me again, and I’m still figuring out how to handle it when it happens because it will undoubtably happen more throughout my lifetime. For now, I’m going to try not to take myself too seriously, along with others I put hope in, and I’m going to try to extend more grace. More grace because we are all human, and we all let people down, every day. And as I let those down around me, I can only hope that grace upholds us all.

-Cliff

Cliff’s Note: People let you down. Grace builds you up.

Time

There’s probably a device in your pocket , one on the screen you’re reading this on, or maybe even one on your wrist that’s counting today for you.

And not just today, but your entire life.

It’s counting the seconds, the minutes and them moments, and as it counts them, there’s no getting any of them back.

We spend our time texting, tweeting and talking. Working, walking and wavering - wavering on thoughts, on choices, on what to do with the time we’re given.

Do we enjoy how we spend it at the end of each day? Did we choose wisely how to allot and budget the one thing that we can never earn back or earn enough of? When you set your time tracker down for the day and lay your head to rest, does your mind really rest, or is it running a million miles an hour, counting all the time you lost, all the things you could have done or all the things that will come tomorrow?

Time comes with questions, and those questions take time. What will you do with yours?

-Cliff

Cliff’s Note: Time, rarely ever on your side, but somehow always beside you.

Markers

It felt like I was holding two small ponds, one in each hand, and as I looked down at the floor underneath the chair I was sitting, I saw two bodies of water forming from the dripping springs that were my hands above. As the artist continued to drive a needle into my wrists, my friend Cole sat next to me looking at the puddles of sweat forming under the both of us, and glancing at me, informed me that he would grab some paper towels.

Cole and I were lifeguards together at a local indoor pool, and he was one of those friends who was always up for anything. When I asked him to tag along with me to go get my first tattoos, he was all in. This was great because I knew I didn’t want to go by myself, and I would have someone to listen to angsty screamo music with the entire way there.

Growing up, I never thought that I would be someone who would get tattoos. Tattoos were only for people who rode motorcycles, played professional sports or were in rock bands. As a boy in small-town Oklahoma, my body was a temple, and I was terrified of needles, so getting a permanent marking on my skin was never something that crossed my mind. But then again, growing up never goes as planned, does it?

It’s funny how sometimes we get ideas to do things from the least expected places. I got the idea for my first tattoo sitting in a Sunday school class my junior year of high school.

We were watching a video series by, Rob Bell. In this particular video, he was planting two trees - one on each side of him. At the end of the video he stood between them and explained how each tree represented the Tree of Life found in Genesis and Revelation. The tree in Genesis representing the beginning of time, and the tree in Revelation was representing the end of time. That’s when it hit me: symbolism says a lot.

We live in funny world. It’s a world that frowns upon talking about religion, politics and things that actually matter, but adores talking about the weather, sports and neighborhood gossip. Which makes sense to an extent. The deeper the discussed issue, the more opportunity there is for disagreement. It’s easy to talk about things we know we can all agree on.

Looking back, I think the mindset of ignoring life’s ‘life-changing’ topics was engrained into us at an early age. The biggest cartoons were always filled with sticks of dynamite and falling anvils, not real-life problems that we may actually have to face one day. To talk about anything real sends up red flags. But that’s half the battle. The real war starts when we try to pull down those flags and pursue genuine knowledge of our neighbors.

-Cliff

Cliff’s Note: Symbolism speaks in ways we can’t.

Empowerment > Empathizing Emo Music

Zapped of all energy. Negative emotions. Things breaking, physically and inside you. Frustrated. Impatient. Angry and small.

No, those aren’t the lyrics to my favorite emo song from the mid-2000s. Those are real feelings, real feelings that, unfortunately, some mornings start with. For me, and probably for you too.

They’re feelings that aren’t really productive (unless you’re in an emo band), and when the weather is cloudy, stormy and cold like it is here today on the Great Plains, it can be hard to find what you need to reverse them.

What does it for you?

Is it reading and escaping to another world for a period of time? Is it getting your favorite morning beverage down the hatch, with a boost of new energy? Is it talking to someone, or prayer/meditation?

We all have go-to’s, and some days they work better than others, but when they do work, there’s no feeling quite like it. It’s a small internal victory to start your day. It’s beating back the uncontrollable chaos around you and telling it to try again another day, bringing back some sense of control, or at least some sense of feeling empowered.

Because in the end, I think that’s something we’re all after - A little bit of feeling empowered and the ability to conquer the day at hand.

-Cliff

Cliff’s Note: Seek empowerment, and when you can’t find it, there’s always emo music to empathize with.

Cognitive Bias

How do you see yourself? Not when you look into a mirror, but when you look inside.

Are you an uncertain, 17-year-old high schooler? Are you a terrified of being a leader because you fear people will find out you don’t know what you’re doing? Do you see someone who always has to be right?

The questions could go on, but we all have our own cognitive biases. We all have our own internal thoughts that reflect the life we live, whether good or bad.

For me, I’m the 17-year-old, which makes me terrified to be a leader because after all, i’m only 17 in my head, so why should I be able to lead anything?

This is something I need to flip. We all need to flip. Whatever is holding you back in your head, how can you turn that around and tell yourself the truth? Who you really are. Where you’re really at. And what all you’ve really done to make this world a better place.

-Cliff

Cliff’s Note: Sometime’s, it’s harder to change your mind about how you perceive yourself than how you perceive others.

Extraordinary Existence

Lately, I’ve been fascinated by science.

What kicked it off was a video I saw of a human white blood cell chasing a bacterium, captured through a microscope. It was like watching a real-life Pac-man, and it was incredible to see what the human body is capable of to protect itself, all on it’s own.

Isn’t it fascinating how all of natural order works and sorts itself out, even in sickness with the body, or storms in nature?

The sun goes up and down every day, followed by the moon and the stars appearing at night and disappearing at dawn. The earth revolves around the sun, year in and year out, right on time, slowly rotating at the same speed, keeping our calendars and clocks all in check.

Our bodies grow, work and rest. They’re protected by a material unlike any other on earth, equipped with other living pieces that grow, re-grow, protect and kill things likely to hurt us.

We’re born with it and into it, for better or for worse, and we didn’t have to pay a cent for any of the experience. It’s all free.

-Cliff

Cliff’s Note: How easy it is to neglect the extraordinary that’s keeping our existence intact.

A Balled from Hate & Disagreement

This morning, I wrote about disagreeing. More specifically, I wrote to try to answer the question, “Which comes first, hate or disagreement?” Which honestly felt a lot like trying to answer the question, “Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?”

I found myself writing in circles trying to answer the question and come up with an origin for one or the other (spoiler, I didn’t), but the one thing I did keep coming back to was love.

Love and creating an opportunity to love seems to de-escalate hate within disagreement.

Take for example your friends and family. Can you think of anyone who has ever completely agreed, 100% all the time, with their parents? Much less all of their friends? I don’t think I can, but if you do, please let me know.

When we disagree with those we love, it seems easier to agree to disagree, move on with life and then go get dinner afterward. Compare that to disagreeing with those that we don’t love, or better yet, those we don’t give ourselves the chance to love or opportunity to know and understand, agreeing to disagree becomes much harder, while disagreeing and moving toward hate feels easier.

Again, I still don’t know what comes first, disagreement or hate, but I do believe that taking the time to get to know those we disagree with more might just help evaporate some of the world’s hate.

-Cliff

Cliff’s Note: To know is to love.

Mark

Every Tuesday, I have a one-on-one call with my uncle, Mark. These calls started about 2 years ago, and we’ve probably only missed a hand full of Tuesdays over that span of time.

Mark is more than my uncle, though; he’s become a friend and mentor that I never knew that I needed. He’s a guy with his hand in about a million different pots, mentoring, teaching, working and making friends with just about anyone he can. If Will Rogers reincarnated, I think it would be as Mark. He’s got wealth in relationships, and he’s a man who’s love and care for others comes through in the way he hosts, the way he longs for connection and the way he is always learning.

Mark has told me time and time again that while we may meet every Tuesday, not every Tuesday is going to feel like ‘we discovered something new.’ Rather, we met every Tuesday in consistency, and it’s in that consistency that, maybe, one out of every 20 or 50 times we chat, something special might be discussed. But it’s in the other times, those other 19 and 49 times, that we’re developing a bond, a friendship and accountability. And in that, I think there’s a lot of beauty.

-Cliff

Cliff’s Note: Friendship takes consistency and the removal of expectation.

Am I Doing Enough?

Do you ever struggle with the question, “Am I doing enough?”

*Pause

The other night, I got together with a friend of mine who seems like he never sleeps. Not in an unhealthy way, but in a way that he is involved in just about everything one can be involved in. He’s built different.

Korey isn’t a ‘career climber,’ doing good for personal gain and advancement, like I know a lot of folks can be, myself included. Korey is involved in his community because he cares about it. He’s an activist, a leader of young men, a difference-maker across our city and an a lover of family. And here I am, sharing a plate of fries with him, listening, taking it all in and still asking the question, “Am I doing enough?”

As i’ll say often on this blog, comparison is a thief of joy, but that’s not to say that we shouldn’t be challenged by those around us, inspired to look out rather than in.

But how does one find the time, the energy?

After all, we only have so many hours to work, make dinner, go to the gym, do chores, be with our family and friends and all of life’s other obligations.

How does one carve time out of all of that and start to prioritize caring, not career climbing, for one’s community?

I think that’ll be the question I ask Korey next time. Hopefully I’ll have some insight to share.

-Cliff

Cliff’s Note: Caring > Career Climbing

Perfection Problems

I’ve spent the past few days trying to organize a book shelf.

To most, that’s a process that wouldn’t take days, but minutes, but for someone like me who’s ‘perfection’ meter seems to be higher than others, it takes days.

It’s all about setting a balanced aesthetic; the top shelf has to balance with the shelf below it, and the left side needs to balance the right side. The colors need to coordinate, and each space should be able to tell a small story of the stories that it contains.

Or that’s how my mind works anyway, which is why this process is taking me days.

Sometimes I wonder how much my perfections inconvenience those around me. If I put something a certain way because it looks good, but maybe isn’t as functional, who’s way am I getting in? If I put something another way, while it still looks good of course, but is set in a way that’s hard to return to its previous position after it’s used, how much am I creating stress to those around me who know that once they take something off a shelf, they won’t be able to put it back exactly like it way?

Of course, I’ll notice, and of course, I’ll put it back to the way I had it, not selfishly out of frustration that it’s ‘not right,’ but out of a sense of needing things to feel ‘perfect.’

Perfection is my problem. At times, I can only imagine how many problems it causes those around me. I know the saying is, “Strive for perfection,” but sometimes I think I need to strive more for things being okay with how they are.

-Cliff

Cliff’s Note: You can’t be perfect. Because chaos reigns.

A Song from 1995

“Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world.
Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight.
Jesus loves the little children of the the world.” 

I grew up singing this song nearly every day at daycare when I was a child. It was a regular part of our ‘choir’ portion of the day from age 3 to 7 or so. We sang it so often that I still know all the lyrics by heart, and I can still picture our teacher standing at the front of the class leading us in it, chorus after chorus, mouth along to the words so we could learn them as we went. 

I also remember that there wasn’t a single child in my class that was any color but white.

For some reason, this song popped back into my this morning, followed by the thought above. It’s never occurred to me before that at a young age, I was learning that in God’s eyes, we were all loved and equal, but while we were hearing that message, nothing in my life replicated any friends or kids in my class of any different race, nation or tongue. 

That’s not anyone’s fault; it’s just a bit ironic.

At the time, it felt easy to sing a song about how God loves everyone, all over the world, no matter what anyone looks like, while not seeing anyone from any different background other than my own in front of me. I wasn’t exposed to anyone red, yellow or black, nor was I exposed to anyone from any different part of town. Granted, I was only three years old when I was singing the song, but it still makes me think.

I’m grateful to have been taught that message, but what can we do to ensure that we’re not only teaching, but doing, experiencing and living.

-Cliff

Cliff’s Note: Keep singing those songs in your head.

Mondays

My friend Copan thinks Monday is the best day of the week. No kidding. Every week, rain or shine, hell or high water, he’ll send a Tweet out to the masses with a ,“THANK GOD IT’S MONDAY,” attached to it with some sort of excited GIF and encouraging message.

And I absolutely love this.

For so long, Monday’s have gotten a bad wrap. After all, they’re the start of the work week, which brings along waking up early, grinding on projects for eight hours, long commutes, stress, so on and so forth. But I think Copan may be on to something. While it’s true, Monday is the start of the work week, it’s also the start to a lot of other greatness too.

I was asking Copan about his perspective on his Mondays and how he seems to be one of the most positive people I know, and he spoke some truth into me that I needed to be reminded of: Any day of the week, Monday included, is the start of new opportunities. Opportunities to do good and experience greatness, while Monday’s alone signal the start to all our weeks have to offer.

Sure, that meeting at 3p on Tuesday may be something you’re dreading, but at least you have a job. And what about dinner on Tuesday night with all your friends and that a new episode of your favorite show comes out on Thursday? Oh, and there’s going to be a great basketball game on Wednesday night too.

Thank God for Mondays. Thank God for fresh starts. Thank God for opportunities.

-Cliff

Copan’s Note: Always thank God for Mondays.

Fighting for Friendship

Friendships are difficult - great, obviously, but also difficult.

Making plans. Rescheduling plans. Praying for friends. Moving away. Keeping in contact with people. Texting. Calling. Face-timing. Starting all over again.

Friendship takes work, and when it’s not reciprocated, it often feels like that work is in vain. And when working toward friendship feels like it’s in vain, friendships can fail and fall apart. Sometimes for seasons, sometimes for good.

But what about friends who don’t reciprocate friendships? The ones who don’t text back, call or try to initiate plans with you. It’s a two-way street after all. That’s hard.

It causes doubt - “Do they really value me"?”
It causes stress - “Should I reach out again? I already have twice this week.”
It causes pain - “They just don’t care.”

But those friendships are often the ones that mean the most. Our friends who are not always like us. The ones who don’t communicate like us, who have different love languages than us and who also care a lot about other people and can get stretched thin themselves sometimes. Those are the friends and the friendships worth fighting for - the ones that keep us fighting ourselves.

-Cliff

Cliff’s Note: Never stop fighting for friendship.

Five Minutes

There’s an old country song that I used to listen to called, ‘Five More Minutes’ by Scotty McCreery. It’s all about wishing for more time in life’s best moments. Five more minutes of high school football glory. Five more minutes fishing with your family. Things like that. Things that I think we would all say, ‘Yeah, life was great then, and I’d love more time in that space,’ because a lot can happen in the short span of five minutes.

You can work out.
You can take a nap.

You can get a new car.
You can get in a wreck.

You can get rich.
You can become poor.

You can make a friend.
You can lose a friend.

Your life can change.
You can change someone else’s.

It’s a short span of time, but so much can happen in those 300 seconds, so much good or so much bad. But I guess it’s about pursuing goodness in our allotted time here. So much is out of our control when it comes to what happens with our time, and we only get so much of it, but why not try to make the most of each minute if we can, whether it be resting well or giving others around us rest. It just takes five minutes.

-Cliff

Cliff’s Note: Life is made out of those five minute moments.

Experience

“I don’t know what to write.”

“I don’t know what to write.”

*Writes a sentence

“… Don’t love that.”

“I really just have no idea what to write”

The above is usually the script my brain follows every morning, Monday - Friday, starting at about 6:45a. It’s a familiar one, so I don’t have any trouble at all remembering my role; however, I’ve gotten pretty tired of that role lately.

I forgot what it was like to write consistently. The battle that it is to wake up and stare at a blank page every morning, while it waits for you to fill it with something pleasing, thoughtful or meaningful. I forgot what it was like to try to find the thoughts and the words to communicate those thoughts, all the while doing it with a passion.

Then this morning, I remembered a secret piece to it all that i’ve forgotten - experience. The driver of what shapes me, what shapes us and the world around us.

It’s the stories, the sense and the way the cosmos moves around us that make for good writing, good sharing and good living. It’s helping one another tell our stories by asking questions, listening, remembering and reflecting. Experience is what makes good writing, and it’s what gets us all out of bed in the morning.

Live it. Remember it. Tell it.

-Cliff

Cliff’s Note: Looking for passion? Look to experience.

The Island

Once upon a time, there was a man and a woman who lived together in paradise. They had a mansion on an island in the Pacific and both worked hard for what they had in jobs they both loved. They were both born on the island, and they had never seen any reason to leave it. The island had snow-capped mountains they could climb on the weekends and the best beaches the world had ever seen that you could walk to any time you wanted. The couple never argued and never had any disagreements between themselves or their neighbors because the family and friends they were surrounded by all looked just like them and believed just like them.

News from outside the island came in waves, just like the ones rolling onto the beach - steady, strong and from the same place. But the news rarely concerned them because it came from sources that looked like them and believed like them, and at the end of the day, the news from the rest of the world rarely ever effected their own island, which was far, far away from any other large landmass with people on it.

One day, the man and the woman had a child - a child with its father’s eyes and its mother’s drive. The child grew up on the island, just like the mother and father, and it went all the same places its parents went and did all the same things its parents did, much like any child. The child grew up happy. How could it not? It was surrounded by mountains, beaches, a loving family and more friends than it could keep up with that all looked like him and believed like him and his family. The child was smart and gifted, and but not in a way that would make it stand out or appear anything but normal by the island’s standards. It was destined to be on the island for a lifetime and to thrive and build a life there. But one day, when the child grew up, two questions arose after watching the same news, with the same people, in the same place: Why does the man on the news not look like me, and why does everyone hate him?

-Cliff

Cliff’s Note: We’re all on different islands. Good thing there are boats.

Nostalgic Doses

This morning, I discovered a new singer that I’m super interested in getting into; her name is Melody Gardot, and she has one of the smoothest voices I’ve heard in a long time. It’s a nostalgic sounds that’ll take you back to the mid-century crooners your grandparents used to listen to - perfect for making a cup of coffee to, while you get ready for the day.

I’m not sure why, but nostalgia always feels best in the mornings and the evenings. It a feeling that you can chase or that can catch you off guard, like it did me this morning. Either way, it’s always a feeling that leaves me with longing, but a longing that isn’t always great. A longing for the past. A longing for older times and memories. A small escape from the now.

But the now is where we’re at, and the future is where we’re going. I’m just happy there are little pieces from the past that we can not only take with us, but that inspire us for future art, future change and future growth as a people, a nation and a world.

-Cliff

Cliff’s Note: Nostalgia: Take one does in the morning and one dose in the evening, if needed. We recommend not exceeding the recommended dosage in a 24-hour period.

Beautiful Things

This month, my wife, Sarah, is keeping a journal full of the things that other people find beautiful throughout their day.

That in itself is a beautiful thing, but it’s also one of the most intentional ways I’ve ever seen an individual pursue friendship. Not only taking the time to reach out to friends daily to gather their thoughts, feelings and insights into their world, but also way it makes others think.

The first day she asked me what my beautiful thing was, it was a Monday that I had spent entirely in my office from 6:30a - 5p. That required me to really think about it. What did I actually see that was beautiful around my cubicle? Aside from my beachside computer background. Was it the cleaning women saying hello to me? Was it the way the fog was settling in over the city? Was it how technology allowed me to take an elevator instead of 5 flights of stairs?

Beauty comes to us in so many ways, and it doesn’t have to be a grand mountain scene or an ocean-front property. Sometimes, I think we can all get a little spoiled by beauty and cease to recognize its presence in everyday life. Similar to a reason I’ve heard people say they would never want to live by the mountains; they would be afraid the daily routine of seeing them would make us lose majesty.

Sarah walked in right before I started to write this entry this morning, looking beautiful (She made a rule that my beautiful thing for the day can’t be seeing her, sigh). I stopped, looked at her and said, “You’ve distracted me,” (in a good way of course"). But now I realize something, she didn’t distract me - she inspired me. And I hope she inspires you today today with the question: What’s something beautiful you saw today?

Cliff

-Sarah’s Note: Notice the beautiful things, big or small.

Journals and the Movies they Make

I started keeping a journal my junior year of high school, each of them since then all looking a little different, both in appearance and format, but all in all, I have completed nearly 15 fully bounded books to this point. The process has been somewhat inconsistent over the years, but there’s at least a few months of entries from each year of my life since I was 17.

The process of writing in journals is something that i’ve never reflected on much until the past couple of days. The (nearly) everyday ritual of taking the thoughts in one’s head that you may know or may not know exist and transferring those down to a piece of paper.

I’m sure everyone is different, but I’ve never actually done anything with those processed moments. The words sit on the pages, the pages sit in the journals, and the journals sit on shelves; I never actually go back and read any of the entries, and frankly, it’s a bit terrifying and possibly embarrassing to know what I’d find, especially inside the ones from high school.

It’s not until now that I’ve started reflected on journaling because up until this point in life, I’ve never needed to recall much from my past; however that’s changing. And the process is what I’d anticipated: terrifying and slightly embarrassing - both in what i’ve read from old entires and in how i’ve never gone back to read them. I think it points to a fear I’ve got that’s never been addressed.

I’ll let you place what that fear is and ask you, Do you have the same one?

-Cliff

Cliff’s Note: Reading old thoughts is kind of like watching old home movies, except they’re movies of your mind that you yourself recorded and have let no one else see.