He’s fine now, but a few weeks ago he just started feeling dizzy out of nowhere, and kind of weird like he couldn’t see straight. He tried to shrug it off like it was no big deal, and kept working, but within a few hours he was getting worse. Finally, by that night, he asked his wife to drive him to the hospital.

He told me later he actually thought he might be having a stroke.

The doctor admitted him immediately, and ran several tests. Within a few hours, he was diagnosed with what he described to me as a stress-induced migraine, without the headache. They kept him overnight to keep an eye on him, and released him with instructions to take better care of himself — take time to exercise and maybe take more frequent breaks from work. He agreed, and was back at the office the next day.

I was telling the story to a mutual friend of ours, and when I got to the part where I said he was back at the office the next day, she said something I’ll never forget. She said, “If he were a character in a book, you would know so much about him based on that single piece of information.”

I agree with her, and it has me thinking.

The tiniest piece of information can say so much about us, don’t you think?

The smallest decisions I make during my day say a lot about me. Where I choose to spend my money, how I choose to spend my time, if I bend over and pick up a piece of garbage or walk right past it, the conversation I hold with the grocery store clerk — each of these things gives me valuable information about myself if I’m willing to pay attention to it.

But sometimes I ignore these things because I don’t like what they’re telling me; I don’t like what they say about my character.

I love the fact that the word for “character” in a book, and the word we use in English to mean “the essence of who we are,” is the same. It makes so much sense. They are connected, if you ask me. A character in a book develops over the course of a story, and we develop as characters over the course of our lives too. Our “character” isn’t some mystical or intrinsic part of us we can’t change. 

It’s simply the compilation of small actions and experiences over time.

And of course we can’t control all of our experiences, but the closer attention we pay to our “character,” the more power we have to carve it into something we can be proud of in the end.

I think most of us understand this intrinsically, and this is why we are so concerned over what pieces of information we share with others. We’re worried about what it says about our character. Nowhere is this reality more prevalent than on social media. Thanks to Facebook,Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram, we all understand how what we eat, where we live, and what we do on the weekends says something about us.

There is an incredible pressure to perform.

The problem I keep encountering is this: the pressure to perform is the one thing that keeps me from gaining great character. It is the thing that blinds me from the actions and experiences that don’t represent the character I am trying to become. It is the one thing that keeps me living under the shadow of fear and comparison.

Fear of not “having what it takes” all because I’m comparing myself to people who are a different character, in a different story, than I am.

As I consider the takeaway from all of this, I think it’s fairly simple.

I can know a lot about myself based on my actions. Not just the actions I put on Facebook, but the ones I do in private, while no one is watching. And if I’m honest with myself, and willing to put in the hard work to change, I have what it takes to carve a story, and a character, that will live much longer than me.

If You Were a Character in a Novel, How Would You Be Described? is a post from: Storyline Blog

It’s not that I don’t have thoughts about things. I have plenty of them. But these days as I edge toward my sixth decade, many of those thoughts simply do not need to be expressed. Most of my black and white firm opinions of my youth have faded to gray, and with the fading has come a quiet grace that doesn’t need to force its way out front.

Being right, making my point, or being heard and noticed, is losing its appeal. I find myself quieter these days, desiring an economy of words. I want my words to matter and bless and help.

I’ve learned more about this from my wife, Nita, who is gifted with many creative things. Often she tries ideas out on me. I love being her creativity guinea pig. One Saturday morning, she introduced me to a writing exercise, giving me a random page from a long essay. My assignment – read the page several times, underlining certain words and phrases that stand out. Then, interact with those words for a while. And after that, black out the unnecessary words. “Something,” she said, “will arise from the page.”

Here’s what it looked like before (left) and after (right).

And here is what formed from the remaining words:

This brief exercise taught me something. Out of the plethora of words available, there are a few which – if unearthed, selected, and spoken – truly matter. But more than that, they bring with them a beauty that calls the heart to more.

When I consider the creation story in the first few verses of the Old Testament, it tells how God hovers over the swirling chaos and the void, and then he speaks into it – one or two sentences a day – bringing beauty, order, and a place for relationships to flourish. One or two sentences a day.

I think he was onto something.

There’s more that I could say. There always is. But I think I’ll stop here.

Why It’s Often Better to Say Less is a post from: Storyline Blog

The thing that was the hardest to get used to, though, and I swear it’s true, is that when you have any kind of notoriety people honestly feel like they have the right to be mean to you. Seriously. They will write a blog or a tweet and twist your words around or take your ideas to an extreme to make them look stupid and then call you stupid. And that’s fine and that’s not a problem because we all went through that in junior high, but the no fun part is you can no longer punch back. In junior high you could just find them in the hallway and have a “conversation” and it would end, but when you write books about the grace of Jesus it gets harder to call people morons on Twitter without making yourself look bad.

Here’s how it goes:
1. I write a blog or send some tweet with a thought.
2. Somebody writes a “response” that is filled with vague, passive insults.
3. I respond in an angry way.
4. They play victim and act confused as though they were only sharing their opinion.
5. I pace around in the backyard wishing I was still in junior high and I could just smash somebody’s head against the locker (okay, I never did that in junior high. I mostly ate donuts I kept in my pocket and tried not to be noticed.)

Anyway, here’s the point. People who teach stuff about Jesus are going to be judged more harshly. That’s just a Biblical truth. It stinks but God has no problem with it.

I’ll usually turn the other cheek about 90% of the time unless I’ve had a glass of whiskey or didn’t get a good nights sleep the night before. And then I feel like an idiot.

All in all, it’s a terrific trade. I love what I do, and even though I hate “pretending” I’m not mad because that feels fake, I am starting to do a better job turning the other cheek and accepting the responsibility that comes from deciding to talk about Jesus. If you want to talk about Jesus, just be ready. It’s coming. And when it comes, remember, they’re attacking you because you’re leading. Don’t take it personally, if you can help it.

All that to say, if you insulted me recently and then played the victim when I called you on it, I’m really sorry. I’m not sorry like I’m sorry, I’m sorry but more like that cost me something and I wish I wouldn’t have done that because now I look bad.

Maybe someday I’ll feel bad for real. Maybe someday we can eat donuts together. I’ll keep them warm.

Learning to Turn the Other Cheek (Even Though I HATE Critics) is a post from: Storyline Blog

Happy Father’s Day, guys! Without you hundreds of millions of women would still be searching for something, hundreds of millions of kids would be without a role model, millions would still be wondering what love is, what strength is, and what God is like. There are few stories better than the story a dad lives out with and for his wife and kids. We celebrate you today!

Sunday Morning Sermon – Cheerleader Reunited With Her Father. Happy Father’s Day! is a post from: Storyline Blog

Saturday Morning Cereal: The Best Viral Videos We Found This Week is a post from: Storyline Blog

I wasn’t digging a hole. Rather I was preparing a smooth surface, free from obstacles, small and large. Daily I tore into the ground, breaking rocks into small pieces, cutting down trees, and tearing out roots that would find their way to the surface again. Sometimes my boy would work alongside me, not knowing what we were building or why, but glad to be with me and a part of the task.

I don’t remember the day I realized we were constructing some sort of path. Perhaps it was when I saw that it was not deep enough for a foundation and too long for a garden. The path was wide and never meandered. It was smooth and level.

There were difficult years, particularly when hills had to be cut through. But time and patience saw them open wide and finally welcomed the path as an old friend.

A few weeks ago, a little more than eighteen years after I began this project, I realized what it was. It was when my eldest son began to gather his things in boxes. And one by one, he placed them at spot where my work began. His belongings were all there – his instruments, his books, his trophies, his mattress – stacked up at the path’s starting point. As he stood there, tall and manly, he looked down the path beyond its end and toward the horizon, bright with the morning sun.

Then it came to me. There before us was a runway, wide and long and smooth. And he, with an eager heart and a long wingspan, was ready for takeoff.

This morning, we will load the truck and Hunter will be moving into his own apartment. For the first time in all of his years, he will be leaving to return only for visits. While my grief is profound, it is overwhelmed by gratitude for his tenure with us and with hope for all of his adventure-filled flights to come.

I can hear the pilot’s voice, “Ladies and gentlemen, prepare for liftoff.” It is a voice I have dreaded since the day he entered this world. And it is a voice that I embrace for all that will be his.

-Al Andrews, a grateful father

Preparing to Let Go of Your Kids Starts When They’re Born is a post from: Storyline Blog

At our wedding, his best friend pulled me aside and told me a few things he thought I should know about Darrell before we were married. One of them was, “He will give anything to anyone. He’ll give the shirt off his back. He is the most generous person you will ever meet.”

Sure enough, in our first year of marriage I found this to be true, which was endearing until he started giving away my things (after all, what’s mine is his) and revealed how generous I actually wasn’t.

Before I knew it I was having flashbacks to elementary school (hey, that’s mine!)

My husband is teaching me what it looks like to be generous.

One day, as we were talking generosity and why it was hard for me, my husband said something that totally changed the way I thought about generosity altogether. He said, “If you want to become better at giving, you need to become good at receiving, too.

“We can’t give gifts we haven’t received first.”

At first, I was skeptical. Really? I can become more generous by receiving? That seems like a total copout. But as I started paying attention to the way I received gifts, favors, or even compliments from people — sure enough, I saw a connection between giving and receiving in my life.

Someone would offer to pay for my meal, or buy me coffee, and I would refuse.

Someone would give me a gift, and I would feel guilty.

Someone would do me a favor, and I felt like I needed to repay them.

Someone would give me a compliment, and I would shake my head.

It took me months to discover why I had such a hard time receiving gifs. Each time someone offered to help me, or do something nice for me, or just told me I was beautiful, I had to ask myself — why does this make me so uncomfortable?

Over and over, my answer was the same: I don’t deserve it.

Not only was I operating under the assumption that gifts had to be earned, I felt like I hadn’t done enough to make myself worthy of earning the greatest gift of all — grace. No wonder it was hard for me to be generous.

I didn’t feel like I had anything to give.

Everything I owned, everything I had, was being held back to compensate for what I perceived to be some personal detriment.

These days, I like to think of resources and gifts like the flow of water. You can’t stop the flow in one part of the stream, and not have it impact the flow in another. If I cut off the flow of gifts into my life, no wonder there wouldn’t be a flow out.

Likewise, if I stop the flow of blessings out of my life, it makes sense that it would be difficult for gifts and blessings to flow in.

Receiving gifts is humbling. So is giving them.

Both remind me how little, and how much, I really have.

A Surprising Way to Become More Generous is a post from: Storyline Blog

Instead of adjectives, great writers often use verbs. Their characters do, and they are always doing. In this example from Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, a Mother and Father have recently lost a child to crib death, and the doctor has pronounced the child dead. Notice how the paragraph feels descriptive, but is actually more full of verbs than adjectives.

“My father shakes his head. Doctor says he’ll have to take her to examine her and Dad signs a paper. My mother begs for another few minutes with her baby but the doctor says he doesn’t have all day. When Dad reaches for Margaret my mother pulls away against the wall. She has the wild look, her black curly hair is damp on her forehead and there is sweat all over her face, her eyes are wide open and her face is shiny with tears, she keeps shaking her head and moaning, Ah, no, ah, no, till Dad eases the baby from her arms. The doctor wraps Margaret completely in a  blanket and my mother cries, Oh, Jesus, you’ll smother her. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, help me. The doctor leaves. My mother turns to the wall and doesn’t make a move or sound. The twins are awake, crying with the hunger, but Dad stands in the middle of the room, starting at the ceiling. His face is white and he beats on his thighs with his fists. He comes to the bed, puts his hand on my head. His hand is shaking. Francis, I’m going for cigarettes.”

I’ll highlight the descriptive sentences in green and the sentences pronouncing action in red so we can see which the author feels is more important:

“My father shakes his head. Doctor says he’ll have to take her to examine her and Dad signs a paper. My mother begs for another few minutes with her baby but the doctor says he doesn’t have all day. When Dad reaches for Margaret my mother pulls away against the wall. She has the wild look, her black curly hair is damp on her forehead and there is sweat all over her face, her eyes are wide open and her face is shiny with tears, she keeps shaking her head and moaning, Ah, no, ah, no, till Dad eases the baby from her arms. The doctor wraps Margaret completely in a  blanket and my mother cries, Oh, Jesus, you’ll smother her. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, help me. The doctor leaves. My mother turns to the wall and doesn’t make a move or sound. The twins are awake, crying with the hunger, but Dad stands in the middle of the room, starting at the ceiling. His face is white and he beats on his thighs with his fists. He comes to the bed, puts his hand on my head. his hand is shaking. Francis, I’m going for cigarettes.”

A novice writer will transpose the colors in this paragraph. They will describe the dead baby, the father’s look, the doctor’s white coat, the children’s fearful aspect. Frank McCourt spends little time worrying about it. He trusts the readers mind to imagine details. Instead, he captivates his audience with action. If people are moving and doing, it’s hard to look away. Indeed it is. Nearly every paragraph in this book would be this red. And look at the description he does use. It isn’t flowery. It’s matter of fact. Her face was covered in sweat. Her eyes are wide open. Really? No prose at all, no flowery description.

None needed.

So, if you’re working on a writing project, do readers a favor and cut out the “white as snow” and “cold as a meat locker” and tell us what your characters are doing. Perhaps, like McCourt, you’ll win the Pulitzer for your effort.

(this is a re-post from the archives)

What Makes This Paragraph so Great? is a post from: Storyline Blog

I am a Founder’s Syndrome survivor. I have fought internal and external battles to ensure that I overcome it. It is not a favorable condition, and it is not an easy one to admit having, nor to be cured of. 

I don’t have children, but I have birthed a vision into the world to empower communities to work together against the HIV/AIDS and water crises in Africa. Since the age of 21, I have poured everything, and I mean everything, that I had into ensuring that the vision could become a reality. It was a 24/7 kind of job that didn’t sleep, and so neither did I. It felt incredibly sacrificial and was genuinely satisfying. Whatever it took, I gave what I could. It defined me, it filled me, it fueled me and it guided me.

Like those who I have seen raise their children, there comes a time when the differentiation of child and parent happens. We all know that it must happen, and it is best for the child and hopefully ultimately for the parent as well. But the process is painful because it feels like a part of you is being cut off. The living, breathing, vibrant part of you. You are still the child’s parent, but you have to start letting go.

Maybe you can relate? Perhaps you are a part of an organization or a church whose founder is unaware of the syndrome he or she has acquired? Or maybe you’re a founder who needs to acknowledge that which you are holding too tightly? Founders, for a season, are indispensable. But if that belief of indispensability persists past its time, founders simply become a liability to the health and flourishing of the very thing they have founded. 

About two years ago, I began a conversation with my board about Founder’s Syndrome and ensuring that we, as an organization, were aware of its implications especially as we are growing. We have been on a slow and healthy process of taking the training wheels off. We have rotated off all of our founding board members after they faithfully served two terms of three years each, and have invited new voices into the board room. We have hired employees who come with new energy, different perspectives and a wealth of experience. We have spent a lot of time re-defining my role and my co-founders’ roles in ensuring that they align with the future growth and vision of the organization. There is inevitable grief involved as you watch your small start-up grow up, and as you continue to hand off responsibilities to people who can steward them better than you. It is humbling, difficult, painful even. And yet, it is incredibly gratifying. And it is the right thing to do.


I am blown away by the quality of people who are serving this mission across Africa and here in the US. I am honored to have such an incredible team and, as a result, a very promising future for this mission. I am confident that if I had not made the conscious decision to let go and let others in, we would not be tasting the fruits of flourishing growth like we are today.

For anyone who is a founder or working with a founder, I highly recommend a resource provided by Board Source called Moving Beyond Founder’s Syndrome to Nonprofit Success. For founders, may you find the courage toward self-awareness and change. And for those working with founders, may you give grace as they move through it.

Are You Willing to Admit You Are a Liability to the Project You Started? is a post from: Storyline Blog

I’ve read a few books on becoming more efficient, but they all read like Greek to me. I’m not a linear thinker. I’m not going to create an elaborate filing system.

All I want to do in my professional life is get important things done. It would be easy for me to get bogged down.

So as a creative, how do I manage?

Turns out I have a system. It’s a patch I learned a long time ago.

I do this: I focus on one ball and I hit it.

What I mean is, on a given day I’m asked to coffee twice, asked to review and endorse at least one manuscript, receive more than one-hundred emails and about twenty text messages. That’s per day. Per week, add in a few invitations to speak, a few friends coming to town, requests to talk on the phone and so on. I’d say I get between 500 to 1000 requests per week that claim to need a response.

I see each of these requests as a baseball coming at me from the pitchers mound.

And I decide NOT TO HIT THEM.

That’s right. I do the incredibly rude and offensive thing. I let them pass by.

Right now I have thousands of unreturned emails and hundreds of unopened text messages. It’s rude. It’s insanely rude. It’s not nice. In a culture that takes pride in people who get their inboxes to zero, I’m a complete loser.

And yet, year after year I get an enormous amount of work done.

The thing is, I see all those baseballs coming at me from the pitchers mound and instead of trying to hit them all, I choose one and I swing for a home run. Of the dozens of pitches thrown at me on a given day, I focus on one and I hit it. When I’m done, I pull the bat back and hit another.

After I hit a few pitches a day (a daily quota) I try to respond to some of the others, but I don’t worry about it if I can’t get to them all.

Here are the steps in my “two step process” to getting things done, broken down:

1. Pick your pitch: This means knowing, as opportunities are coming at you, which one you should hit. I hit the ones that have to do with furthering my calling as a writer. That means I write the blog, work on the new book, interview that guy who’s been elusive and so on. That’s the ball I want to hit consistently. The others are extra. If I have time, I have time, if not, it doesn’t matter cause that’s not my pitch.

2. Let the others go by: This is incredibly hard for some people to do. They feel like they are morally obligated to respond to everything. And maybe we are. Maybe in heaven Jesus will be mad because we didn’t return our emails. But I doubt it. I have nearly 200 unreturned text messages and several thousand unreturned emails. I take no pride in getting to zero because I’m not on the planet to get my inbox to zero. I’m on the planet for other reasons. I explain to people I can’t respond to all the requests and I go back to step one. I pick my pitch and try to hit it out of the park.

Will this system frustrate people? Yes, it will. And I don’t like that, but that’s not the point, the point is I have to hit my pitch. Is this the best system? No, it’s not. But it’s the system that works for me. If I had a more linear mind, I’d have a different system.

Anyway, I miss a lot of balls, but I hit a lot of home runs too. I hope for some of you creative types this is helpful.

Why I Don’t Bother Getting my Inbox to Zero, and Why I’d Lose Out if I Did is a post from: Storyline Blog