What’s brown and sticky? A stick.
It’s a dumb joke, but it’s one of my faves. I am a dad after all.
It also happens to be the best metaphor I’ve found for something that has taken me years to name: the way our strengths and weaknesses are bound together, inseparable, like two ends of the same stick.
This post is a short introduction to the idea. My wife says I need to write a book, and she claims it will be a NYT best seller. She also married me, so her judgment is questionable. For now, a blog post will have to do. It’s a simple way to show how this little metaphor can help us live with more honesty, humility, and hope.
The simplest tool in my toolbox
We live in a world full of frameworks for personal growth. Some are helpful. Some get heavy fast. The Stick isn’t trying to compete with them. It’s not a system to master. It’s a lens you can try on.
Here’s the concept: your weaknesses are often the shadows of your strengths. You can’t get rid of the shadow without also getting rid of the thing that casts it. Or to put it another way, your weakness and strength share the same root.
Perfectionism can produce excellence, but it can also sabotage peace. Generosity can make you a giver, but it can also blur your boundaries. Confidence can lead to courageous leadership, but it can also slide into pride.
When you finally connect both ends, you stop pretending that the “good” side can be kept without touching the “bad.” That’s the stick. You can’t have one without the other. And you can’t throw the stick away. It’s part of who you are.
Where this idea clicked for me
I’ve been involved in Celebrate Recovery since 2007. One of the core practices is a Spiritual Inventory: a slow, honest look at our histories, patterns, hurts, and sins, alongside the places we are growing.
Years ago I was walking another man through his inventory. He shared about his struggle with people-pleasing. As we talked, it became clear that this same tendency was tied directly to his empathy and attentiveness. His ability to listen and care deeply was the same soil that fed his approval addiction. Both came from the same gift: the ability to read others, to sense what they’re thinking and feeling. That skill can be used to genuinely understand and serve people. Or it can turn inward, becoming a constant monitor of whether you’re measuring up to what you think they want.
That moment landed hard for me because I couldn’t see the connection in myself until I saw it in him. The mirror effect was strong. My empathy and my approval-seeking came from the same place. The strength and the weakness weren’t separate. They were a single stick.
Once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it. The stick started showing up everywhere. Not just in my own patterns, but in other people’s too. I began seeing it in situations as well: what looked like a hard season for someone often had a growth edge I hadn’t seen before, and what looked like comfort often had a hidden cost. Same stick, different angles. But that’s a post for another day.
Why it matters (and why it is good news)
If you think your weaknesses are just stains to scrub out, you will live in constant shame or denial. If you think your strengths are pure and untouched, you will live in pride or blindness. The stick tells the truth about both ends.
For me as a Christ-follower, that truth leads to grace. Redemption doesn’t begin with pretending to be whole. It begins with honest acknowledgment of the whole self: the gifts, the flaws, the shining ends, and the muddy ends. Shame produces hiding and denial, keeping us stuck and unable to grow. Honesty breaks that cycle. When we admit what is true about ourselves, both gifts and weaknesses, we finally have honest ground to stand on. From that place of genuine self-awareness, we can actually receive God’s grace more fully, and from that grace-empowered place, we can begin the real work of growing and changing.
God doesn’t love us in spite of our brokenness, but with it. He sees the whole stick, not just the polished end. It’s often at the blunt, muddy end where His work is most visible.
That perspective shifts everything. It invites humility. It creates space for compassion, both toward myself and toward others. It changes the question from “How do I get rid of this part of me?” to “How do I let God redeem the whole of me?”
The stick in everyday life
This isn’t just a theological idea. It’s intensely practical. Here are a few examples I see all the time:
- The planner whose discipline keeps everything running, but who struggles to be flexible.
- The visionary who inspires everyone around them, but who forgets to slow down and tend the details.
- The peacemaker who brings calm to conflict, but who avoids hard conversations until they explode.
If you can name both ends of your stick, you can begin to balance them. You can honor the strength without excusing the weakness. You can address the weakness without despising the strength.
So what now?
The invitation is simple: pick up your stick. Look at both ends. Name them. Begin learning the art of balance.
Keeping the stick balanced takes practice. When you’re struggling with the bad end, pause and acknowledge the good. It helps release the shame and reminds you this is still one stick. When you’re coasting on the good end, feeling like you’ve got it figured out while others clearly don’t, that’s your cue to remember the shadow, the balancing reality. The goal isn’t to cut off either end, but to hold them both with open eyes.
If you do, I think you’ll experience a more grounded self-awareness, a gentler honesty, and a deeper sense of hope. I know I have.
If this resonates with you, I’d love to have you along for the journey. You can also hear me and Mark (my co-host) unpack this idea on the How I See It podcast. The stick is simple, but it has a way of changing how you see everything.
Thanks for reading.
