A Love Letter to my Healing Voices
In my writing about being intentional in the voices we allow in our space, Miles Adcox comes up again and again. It’s striking to me that out of the countless incredible voices that have crossed my path these past five years, he is the only one who consistently comes to mind as someone I would want to be my mentor.
In truth, he already is, whether he knows it or not.
So what is it about this man I have spoken with exactly seven times, not a single one of which was for more than three minutes?
I know it’s been seven times, because I can still clearly remember every single moment.
I have no idea how I came to know who he was and follow him on social media four or five years ago. I had been to Onsite years earlier, but it was long before he was there. I had read Donald Miller’s Scary Close which brought Onsite back to my consciousness, but I don’t believe that’s where I made the connection. I was regularly watching Dr. Phil, but I don’t know that that’s where it was either.
I have no idea, and I love that mystery.
What I do know is that some time after I followed him, he tweeted these words:
“Love doesn’t hurt. Expectations do.”
Those words were a game changer for me.
I remembered learning the phrase “Love doesn’t hurt“ in my time at Onsite, and while it seemed obvious, it was completely contrary both to my experience, and the vicious lies that our culture screams at us.
So much of our culture screams that love hurts, and so much of our conversation around love centers on the terrible risk of opening ourselves up to it.
Words matter.
Clarity matters.
The way we talk about this - endlessly repeating that it’s “love” that hurts - has done a huge disservice to every single one of us.
It keeps us in abusive relationships.
It teaches us to settle for less than we deserve.
It leads us to hurt our children, believing it’s what’s “best” for them.
Love. Does. Not. Hurt.
Ever.
Ever.
Other things hurt.
Loss. Betrayal. Control. Fear. Obligation.
And definitely expectations.
These things hurt.
But these things are not love.
They are no part of love.
Miles’ words that day snapped into sharp focus for me the importance of our language and understanding what’s truly happening.
So, long before I met him, his words had shaped my healing journey and my understanding of the truth of love.
Never underestimate the power of 140 characters.
I then had occasion to meet him at an event for The Onsite Foundation. I was completely stunned when upon introducing myself, he knew me from social media.
You could have knocked me over with a feather.
The following year, he randomly showed up at my church one Sunday, because this is totally the way my life works. Still imagining that he would have no memory of me, I was once again stunned when he remembered me from both the Onsite Foundation event and social media. I was further stunned when he had beautiful things to say to our mutual friends about my online presence.
Then there was this moment.
A couple of months later, I had a really hard time with Father’s Day. My heart was shattered into a million pieces, and I could barely walk through my workday that following Monday. I put on a video of a talk Miles had done, because his kind presence was what my heart needed, to continue breathing, frankly.
It turned out to be exactly what I needed, and I was finally able to walk through the rest of that hard day.
The next night, I went to a show to hear the man I have long loved from afar. I don’t always go to his shows, because seeing him - particularly seeing him with his beloved - can be really hard. It was a benefit for my sweet Thistle Farms, however, so I decided I would go.
In one of the most extraordinary moments of my lifetime, as I sat in the silence before the show still feeling the echoes of Father’s Day plus the additional weight of longing and grieving what’s missing with my beloved, I looked up to see the people walking in to fill the empty seats at my table.
Taking the seat directly across from me was Miles.
Are you fucking kidding me right now?!
I remember just staring at him mouth agape, and then saying “I can’t believe you’re here.” I told him the story of the previous day and the gift his presence in that video had been as I was barely able to breathe.
Contrary to everything I experienced from the people who mattered in my young life, he didn’t judge, punish, or advise me in my pain.
He didn’t dismiss or minimize the gift his presence had been to me, something we can tend to do because we think it’s “humble.”
While we think it makes us “humble,” what it truly makes us is a shattering presence, because we’re throwing people’s love back in their face, and telling the people who love us that they’re stupid and wrong.
Like so many shattering things we do, we truly do it because we believe we are unworthy of being that gift for others.
He didn’t do any of that.
Upon hearing that his presence had saved my heart in a really hard moment, he wrapped me up in a big hug.
This was completely miraculous to me.
He then proceeded to introduce me to Mike Foster who was with him for the evening, and later introduced me to Donald Miller, whom I had wanted to meet for ages and happened to be at the next table.
How is this my life?!
In another moment I will never forget, he stood with his hand on my back telling this man whose book Scary Close had been a changing presence on my journey, “She’s good people.“
He conveyed that same message to one of my dearest friends - the one who set me on my healing journey more than a decade ago - when he told him I was something special and thanked him for setting me on the path that would lead me to his world.
The people who mattered in my young life, despite what I promise you were their very best and most loving intentions, wielded shame and the disapproval of others as a weapon.
In their attempts to change my behavior and shape me into what they believed the world required in order for me to have a happy life, they taught me that not only were they unhappy and disappointed in me, but that everyone else would be, too.
In general and specific terms, they threatened me with the abandonment and disapproval of the world at large and of people I held dear.
It was horrific.
These wounds are so deep that at 46 years old, it is completely surprising to me that someone I love and admire could have beautiful things to say to others about who I am in the world.
I wish we grasped how deeply we are damaging our precious children when we endeavor to shape who they are, rather than endeavoring to discover and embrace who they are.
We are tragically wrong in our belief that children are blank slates.
They are not blank slates.
They are books already written.
When we endeavor to write who they are, we are writing over - obscuring and destroying - the beauty that was already there.
Everything I’ve discovered on this journey comes down to the distinction between control and love.
Children have been controlled for generations.
Even the most benign and seemingly noble thing - having a dream and a vision for your child - is 100% control.
It is running your own agenda, and completely disregarding their mind, heart, and being.
All of us “want the best“ for our children and the people in our lives.
What we don’t realize is that all we can ever see is OUR VISION of “the best“ for them.
Since they are a different human, our vision will never, ever be their vision.
From our earliest moments, then, wars are planted in us between who we are and who they want us to be.
Those wars inside us are the root of every single problem in the universe.
This is the fundamental reason Miles is such a powerful presence on my journey, and a voice I hold so dear.
Just like parenting, therapeutic models have long been built on a paradigm of control.
Our culture tells us that we go to therapy to “fix what’s wrong with us.“
My mother was actively in therapy and on medication when she took her life with a gun in a hotel room in Reno.
In her journey of more than 25 years in therapy, she never grasped what Miles says so often.
“It’s not what’s wrong with you, it’s what’s right with you.”
She never grasped that the work of healing was about embracing exactly who she was ... Not about “fixing“ who she was or becoming someone different.
I always walk a fine line when I talk about ways of healing, because I know that there are very real chemical things happening inside us that medication absolutely helps, and I would never take anything away from that.
But I also think we profoundly underestimate the power of the conversation we are having with ourselves, and our ability to change that when we simply have an unfailingly kind and grace-filled space in which to heal.
I know this, because while I thankfully have not spent my life in the darkness where my mother spent hers, I have seen and felt that darkness.
I have seriously contemplated ending my life.
Let me promise you, those moments were not born of “sadness.“
They were born of self-hatred.
Of believing that my absence was infinitely more valuable than my presence.
Those moments were born of vicious and terrible things I was screaming at myself.
We have to grasp this.
We have to grasp that self-hatred is born in that paradigm of control, where the voices who matter endeavor to direct and shape us rather than embracing us ... Because those messages teach us that WE ARE NOT ENOUGH as we are.
On the flight home from my mom’s memorial in 2007, my best friend Brandon and I read her journals her husband had generously given me.
Her words about herself were vicious and heartbreaking.
I was taken aback a couple of years ago when I came across some journaling I had done in the first days of my healing journey.
My words sounded familiar.
I put them next to my mother’s, and discovered that our voices were virtually indistinguishable.
Indistinguishable.
It was shattering.
I had indeed been in that very same darkness.
What changed for me was not the right therapist or medication.
Don’t get me wrong, I had a wonderful therapist, I spent an amazing week at Onsite, and those things gave me the tools I have needed to do this work.
What made my healing possible, though, was simply a space.
A space that was filled with unconditional embracing, celebration, invitation to speak whatever lives and breathes in me, and unfailing kindness.
The space created by the music of Enation and Matthew Perryman Jones and Steven McMorran.
The space created by the words and presence of Miles and Mike and Don and Jamie Tworkowski and Jeremy Cowart and CJ Casciotta and Harris, III and Rob Bell and Brad Montague and Ian Morgan Cron.
I could weep with gratitude every time I hear Miles say that our job is not to push or pull people where we think they need to go ... But to walk alongside them.
He’s one of the few humans I’ve encountered who truly grasps this powerful distinction between control and love, and knows which of them leads to true and sustainable change.
I have no doubt that that understanding was born in his focus of first, foremost, and above all else - in the words of his mentor, so my grand-mentor, as my dad would say - getting a PhD in himself.
The people who have been the most profoundly healing on my journey are those who say yes to themselves ... Even when that means saying no to me.
I grew up understanding that “love” was an obligation and a duty; a terrible and painful sacrifice of your own joy.
I learned from this that I could never, ever trust love, because I never knew if people “loved“ me because they wanted to, or because they felt they had to.
When love is an obligation and a duty, you show up in the room with rolled eyes and gritted teeth.
I cannot tell you the profound healing I have experienced from people who show up exactly when they want to, and no other time.
This aforementioned man I’ve long loved from afar shows up once in a blue moon. When I send an email or text, I may receive a reply, but it’s far more likely to land in an abyss where I never know if he even read it.
When I ask for something I want, if he answers, he says yes when he means yes, and no when he means no.
For as few conversations as we’ve actually had, they have been some of the most profoundly changing of my life.
I have learned countless amazing lessons in that space.
First and foremost, I have never once questioned whether he wanted to reply or show up when he did.
If he didn’t want to, he wouldn’t.
If he didn’t want to do something I asked, he would say no.
I know this, because he has.
He keeps healthy boundaries and shows up when it’s good for him ... Because what he needs is 100% his to create and ask for, and 0% mine to try and figure out.
It’s amazing how powerful that is.
There is a depth of trust in that relationship I’ve not experienced anywhere else ... Simply because he honors his own heart rather than trying to be what he believes anyone else wants.
Including me.
It’s not “noble“ to say yes when you mean no.
It’s dishonest.
It breeds distrust, and erodes love.
I won’t lie, those conversations where he’s said no have been hard. They’ve sent me down spirals of terrible beliefs about myself, and deep questioning of whether I had any right to ask for what I wanted in the first place.
(I had every right.)
Every bit of that was mine.
It was my work to do, and it had nothing to do with him.
He had no responsibility for keeping me out of those spirals ... His only responsibility is to honor his own heart and speak what’s true and healthy for him.
Those conversations were hard.
They’ve also been some of my proudest moments.
It takes courage to show up with your whole heart.
It’s infinitely easier, though, in a space of love.
The courage I’ve carried in that relationship - speaking the full depth of my truth and feelings even as as far as I know his are not the same - has only been possible since I’ve discovered spaces that are filled with love and free of control.
It turns out that boundaries are the antithesis of control.
They allow us to be unfailingly kind and loving even as we say no.
As he has heard the truth of my heart these past five years, he has simply engaged with me or not, based on what’s good for him.
He has never once told me not to feel what I feel, or even not to share it with him.
That is completely miraculous to me, because those kinds of controlling paradigms were all I understood until these past five years.
Control is Just. Not. Love.
Ever.
I am grateful beyond anything I could ever express for voices like Miles who are speaking that truth into a world that so desperately needs it.
I am still learning the truth of love.
It takes a long time to unravel the lies I grew up with, and to fully embrace what my heart knows is love.
It’s not guiding someone where you think they need to be.
It’s not “nobly” and painfully sacrificing your own joy to show up in places you don’t want to be.
It’s not trying to “fix” people’s pain.
It’s sitting on a stage and seeing the tears streaming down the face in front of you, holding their gaze for the tiniest moment that simply says “I see you, and your tears are allowed.“
I can still physically feel the healing in that moment I shared with Miles the other night.
Honestly, it was so tiny that I’m not even sure I didn’t totally dream it up!
But I know this: That moment is what love is.
It’s what we need in our pain and in our joy and in our lives.
Not only are those other things not love, they destroy love.
They are so shattering to our hearts that they make it impossible for us to experience love even when it’s there.
I believe it was Rumi who said our task is not to seek for love, but simply to seek for the barriers within ourselves we have built against it.
There is such truth in those words.
It’s also deeply true that we have built those barriers precisely because of the “love“ we experienced in our young lives.
Nearly everything that happens in a family is called “love,” but vast expanses of what we experience in our families are absolutely not love.
This is not to say that there was not loving intent, but it absolutely is to say that countless numbers of us have no concept of love.
I have had to learn love from scratch over these past five years, and a monumental part of that work has been unraveling the things I had learned to call by that name.
The things that have nothing to do with love, but people continue to insist on calling by its name.
Duty. Control. Fear.
These things are no part of love.
Kindness. Mystery. Connection. Grace.
These things are love.
It turns out we have to give up our illusions of control in order to experience love, and that’s just too big an ask for many in our culture.
We like to say how things are going to be, and if we can’t do that, we at least like to know how things are going to be.
I hate to break it to you, but both of those things are complete illusions.
No one on the planet knows what the next moment holds.
It’s a shame that we are so married to our illusions of control, because the fact that no one knows what the next moment holds is completely fucking miraculous.
That mystery of every moment after this one truly means that everything is possible.
That does, indeed, mean that terrible things can happen.
And they do.
Things we like to think are forever disappear before our eyes.
Homes and careers and marriages and entire towns are lost.
Children die.
Far more often, however - FAR more often - amazing things we never even imagined were possible happen.
Things that looked or felt or WERE impossible a moment before can become possible in an instant, and materialize before us like magic.
I have watched it happen, over and over and over.
The mystery of every moment after this one is an unimaginable gift.
No one, even those we believe hold all the power over our dreams, knows what the world will look like a moment from now.
This means something truly life-changing.
As we walk through our lives asking for what we want, sometimes we get a yes, sometimes we get a no, and sometimes we get no answer.
The first thing to know about this, another of the countless lessons I’ve learned in relationship with the man I’ve long loved from afar, is that no answer does not mean no.
The mystery of every moment after this one also means this:
Even an actual no can only ever mean not now.
Think about that.
It is fucking miraculous to contemplate.
So, I don’t get to say or know what’s going to happen with my beloved.
I also, though, have no idea what in the world or my heart will shift and change, or what wonders may unfold that I can’t even conceive of yet.
In one of my favorite sermons, Ian Cron said that the key to peace is acceptance.
And that acceptance is not resignation.
Such. Powerful. Wisdom.
Acceptance understands what is in this moment, without railing against things that are beyond our control.
Resignation believes this moment is forever.
Whatever this moment holds, I promise you it is not forever.
I just can’t even tell you the dreamy moments I have experienced since I embraced the truth of love and the infinite possibility of the unknown.
Control is highly overrated.
Love, mystery, and openness are so much better.
The world feels infinitely lighter when we are not desperately holding onto things, strangling the very life out of them.
Our lives are infinitely better when we can simply rest in grace and kindness, rather than endlessly trying to control things that will never, ever be within our power.
I could weep when I look around the exquisite wonder that is my life ... The profound peace that abides in my home, and the beauty that surrounds me in this space I have created.
My life has become a long love letter.
To every voice named here, and one heart in particular.
Despite the countless ones here, I truly have no words for the gift of those voices and the healing space they create.
My heart is full.