Last night as I sat in a TreeHouse support group I sat in awe.

There surrounded by junior high teens I found myself grateful for their patient listening, gracious sharing and genuine compassion.

Most of the teens in my small group had been part of TreeHouse only a few weeks, yet directly and indirectly each teen reminded the other that “this is a safe place.”

Safe places are too few and far between. Those safe places, cared for and nurtured by safe people are safe harbors for the strong and the able, the weak and the wounded, and the lost and the wandering.

Secrets, we all have them.
Secrets, we all guard them.
Secrets, we all fear their exposure.

Yesterday I mentioned Josh Groban’s song – Hidden Away.

If you haven’t had a chance to hear it, give it a listen. He opens the song with:

“Over mountains and sky blue seas
On great circles will you watch for me?
The sweetest feeling I’ve got inside
I just can’t wait to get lost in your eyes
And all these words that you meant to say
Held in silence day after day
Words of kindness that our poor hearts crave
Please don’t keep them hidden away”

Todd Hunter’s Our Favorite Sins: The Sins We Commit & How You Can Quit

Diving into Hunter’s book gives us freedom to acknowledge our struggles…

“Beating temptation requires struggle because it always involves sorting out rightly ordered desires for good and godly things from our disordered desires for wrong things. We often experience these disordered desires as our most powerful and deeply rooted desires. Uprooting disordered desires involves personal, psychological, and spiritual suffering.”

…struggles that don’t come easy and temptations that don’t fall willingly…

Author Sheila Walsh believes that we should know that God “calls broken people not only to place their faith in Him, despite the darkness, but also to dare to reach beyond themselves and, through faith, bring the healing, loving touch of Christ to other hurting men and women.”

She writes for those of us who “have struggled with admitting to myself and others I’m broken.” And those of us who add, “I know I’m broken, but have struggled with how to deal with it.”

One of my all-time favorite television shoes is Columbo.  I love how the seemingly dimwitted detective relentlessly unravels the mystery.

Consistently Columbo faces intelligent murderers who dismiss Columbo as a nitwit who they can easily outwit.

In one of my favorite Columbo episodes is Bye Bye Sky High IQ Murder Case.

Wikipedia explains that, after Bertie Hastings discovers that his friend, Oliver Brandt, a senior partner in an accounting firm, has been embezzling money to support the lifestyle of his wife, Brandt kills Hastings at the Sigma Society, a club for geniuses. 1

I’ve met many people who forget that, “God made everything with a place and purpose.” 1  It’s when we think we’re better than other people that our ignorance is most obvious.

In a small rural village in Central America I realized that all of my education, books, tools, and toys were far less important than time spent in a relaxing, thoughtful conversation with loved ones.  There in a dusty impoverished village of a couple hundred people I was taught through word and deed that while education, books, tools, and toys have value, relationships — and specifically people — are most valuable.

I’ve made many mistakes in my life.
Many of them could easily have been avoided.

Fortunately, not one of my mistakes has ended in the headlines.

Headlines

Dallas Morning News reported today that Major League baseball player, “Rangers’ Josh Hamilton has relapse with alcohol at area bar.”  USA Today, Washington Post, Fox Sports, it’s on the news, it’s filling the headlines.

“Someone went to a bar” is hardly news. “Someone had a few drinks” isn’t either.  Unless that someone is, as Jeff Passan described him, the “most famous addict in sports.”  Then, everyone who knows about you knows that that’s a problem.  Josh Hamilton’s story of self-destruction, sobriety, redemption and success have been well-documented including his autobiographical Beyond Belief: Finding the Strength to Come Back.

You learn from your parents, and your children, nieces and nephews will learn from you.  What will they learn?  Will they see success or will they see you slide? Will you reject accountability and let your pride slide you away from what really matters into an unseen hardships?

Continuing our series on freedom using quotes from the movie Braveheart, allow Princess Isabelle to lead the query, “The king will be dead in a month and his son is a weakling. Who do you think will rule this kingdom?”

That’s the question that faced David as he passed his kingship to his son Solomon. 

Tonight I mentioned that I would like to live and to die with self-respect.  I have made many mistakes, but I do not settle for “that’s the way I am.”  Our world is filled with low expectation.  It’s too easy to have low standards.

I intentionally live the way I wish that other people did.  Rather than complain and judge others for not being this or that I strive to fess up when I screw up, or blame no one for my choices. I am accountable and want to help others by my example first, my words second.

One day while clowning around with my skateboard I rolled it across the floor.  I ran up to my deck and launched myself chest-first onto my deck like I was running in the water and diving onto a surfboard.  It was a cool idea…in my head; until I hit my head.

I didn’t account for the fact that when I landed my neck would flex.  It did.  My head snapped down.  My chin hit the floor.  I split my chin to the bone shearing off a chunk of my chin bone.