“And once you live a good story, you get a taste for a kind of meaning in life, and you can’t go back to being normal; you can’t go back to meaningless scenes stitched together by the forgettable thread of wasted time.”
Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life
At 5:55 Monday morning, as my alarm insisted I wake up, I rolled over to be inches from 5 of my Y squad girls. A tangled mess of sleeping bags, arms, and legs began to roll and slowly come back to life in our 8 person tent, as we all sleepily made jokes of “just 5 more minutes.”
A few yards away, a pen full of ducks and chickens made their own sleepy groans, somehow managing to sound both hilarious and pitiful at the same time. The small waterfall and bathing pool a few yards in the other direction was still splashing loudly, wondering if anyone would be brave enough to jump in for a natural shower in the chilly morning air. I’m pretty sure they weren’t.
Cream of corn cereal and a cup of some of the most delicious coffee you can imagine waited for us in the outdoor kitchen, and soon after breakfast all of our teams split up to get to work. The sun had just finished rising over the mountain range view.
The pen full of chickens and ducks; our tents are in the background…the waterfall and bathing pool we are using this month.
Sam and I are taking turns pairing up with all of our different teams this month. The whole squad is living together on a mountain in Lajas, Dominican Republic for the month of February, so we have the rare opportunity to live and serve as an entire squad.
I paired up with Hijas Del Rey for “work duty”, which involved lots of cooking, cleaning bathrooms and living areas, and washing clothes by hand.
Other teams worked on the grounds, hauling rocks from the river bed to create paths, while another team taught English classes to about 30 local children excited for free lessons. The remaining teams went on a prayer walk, or taught English and prepared food in the children’s center near the city dump.
Later in the afternoon, my co-leader and I ventured off to the town internet center, where we were reminded that nothing on earth can challenge your patience like Windows 95 dial-up internet, and I kept turning around to the teenage boy running the itty bitty place and asking for “quince minutos mas, por favor.”
On a hunt for fresh produce, I managed to find a fruit stand and purchased a pineapple for a little over a dollar. The vendor and I both laughed at my terrible Spanglish as I attempted to barter with her, having been told a whole pineapple should cost more like 70 cents.
Either way, I am coming to terms with picking my battles when it comes to bartering. I mean, let’s be serious, I do have the extra 40 cents to spare, and it certainly will mean more to her than me…even if it means I have to pay the “white person price.” Plus the pineapple seemed to burst with juicy sweetness when I had our groundskeeper, Blanco, help me cut it.
A huge pot of beans, cooked over a wood fire, delicious! Scattered tangerine trees make healthy, free snacks.
The night wound down as we ate an unusually large Dominican dinner of boiled green bananas, boiled yuca, and slices of fried queso. The normal dinner for people in this area is simply a dinner roll and a cup of juice, so this dinner was a treat.
Finally, I washed my face in the water spicket out back, and gave out a few goodnight hugs and kisses to my squad mates.
Why am I writing all of this? Why am I dragging you through my day, maybe trying to throw in a couple of adjectives to keep it interesting, as if there aren’t 30 other blogs popping up in your email or on your facebook newsfeed, most of which are more informative, more interesting, and probably more inspiring than this?
Because I need to. For me.
Because the truth is, for the past couple of weeks, I fear I haven’t done my best at living my own story.
In his book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, Donald Miller humorously and honestly tells the story of a season of his life in which he, as a story teller, realized he was only writing great stories…and never living them.
To give you my own brief book report version of the story, he sets out to live some great stories, sharing his own process along the way.
He observes that a good story is about a character that sets out to accomplish something, undergoing a personal transformation as he overcomes conflict to get there.
As the main characters in our own stories, we have the freedom to choose our own responses, attitudes, and often story lines in any situation.
Y squad prayer-walking and exploring the 13 acre wild mountain country side we live on this month.
We have the ability to choose, and even simply recognize “scenes” of our lives in which we embrace the power that lies in our hands to live a story worth telling.
Donald Miller, for example, began committing to things that he knew would be uncomfortable…intense hikes, cross-country bike rides, mending broken relationships…because he knew that through the difficulty his life would be creating a story worth telling.
For me, after the first month and a half of squad leading, I am realizing that I have to stop and look around or I risk missing my own story. Although I love what I am doing, with 45 people to think about at all times, I can let precious details slip by unnoticed in busy 14-16 hour days.
A shower in a waterfall can turn into a quick chance to bathe while I have a minute, an authentic meal cooked over an open fire can become just another lunch while planning the afternoon, and a walk with an incredible view can turn into just another run up to the internet center to email the AIM office.
I find myself in the ironic opposite position of Donald Miller, in which I know I am living a great story but can get so distracted by the tasks of squad leading that I fail to fully embrace the thrill along the way. This, to me, is almost as frustrating as not living the story to begin with. Almost.
Squad beach day at the end of debrief. Snorkeling buddies!
I definitely still stop myself and have those “reality check” moments where I say to my squad, “Hey, guys, you are teaching English to a bunch of Dominican kids on the side of a wild mountain…right alongside a bunch of other people who are becoming your best friends and learning to love Jesus more. Awesome, right?”
Those moments, I have decided, are going to start happening more and more, both in pointing them out to my squad and to myself. I love the uniqueness and excitement of my day-to-day story here, and refuse to look past it any more.
And luckily, the whole point of my story is to follow the man who lived the greatest story ever told.
I love to think of how Jesus must have continually looked to heaven, a small smile on his face, and thanked His Father for thoughtful little things most of us overlook. I love to imagine Him choosing love and truth in every situation, living as a character that any one of us could wisely choose to emulate in our own stories.
If you haven’t read it, I would highly recommend A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. Donald Miller has a way of highlighting the potential in all areas of life that could be easily overlooked.
It isn’t necessarily about traveling or adventure-seeking. Miller frequently points out the beauty of the story in the typical small-town American family, if you just choose more love and more courage every day–the sort of story I might like to find unfolding in my own life one day soon.
Now get outta here and go create a great scene for the main character in your own story.
