At the beginning of this month I read a book by Donald Miller called A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.
It got me thinking.
The book is about story, essentially. Miller wrote a book called Blue Like Jazz a few years back and then was approached by men who wanted to make it into a movie. They wanted to make his life into a movie. As they began to write the script he realized that a lot of his life was not movie-worthy. Naturally, he began to look into what made life exciting.
“I was creating the person I wanted to be, the person worth telling stories about.”
Rather than telling the truth about his perhaps boring life, he found himself changing the story to make it compelling.
So, naturally, I started thinking about the story I’m telling.
I started thinking about the one I’m living.
Conclusion that I came to? I realized that it’s pretty amazing, when I choose to make it so. There are opportunities every day to make our lives more memorable, but a lot of the time we simply choose not to take them.
“People love to have lived a great story but few people like the work it takes to make it happen.
But joy costs pain.”
Joy costs pain… no pain, no gain, right? I mean, it’s cliché, but I love it because of its truth. The stories that are worth telling, the stories that are worth living are going to cost something. They’re going to take hard work and initiative. They won’t be handed to us on silver platters. Yet those stories are the kind that everyone wants to have and be a part of.
Back in high school, two of my best friends and I ditched one day. We had an elaborate scheme to drive the hour past Seattle to jailbreak a friend of ours from his school. He had moved after 7th grade, a year when the four of us were great friends; unfortunately, we hadn’t seen him since. After calling his school (I said I was a parent – he had a dentist appointment – and I was going to pick him up at noon) we showed up to take him to lunch. Unbeknownst to him, we were waiting for him outside. After the initial confusion on his part, the four of us went to grab sushi and caught up on life.
Ingrid, Sam & I at the Nordstrom Rack bathroom downtown Seattle
We dropped him back off at school and drove home with the windows down, music blaring. It was one of my favorite days of that year and we still joke about it. It’s a fun story and a memorable day. Many days of high school were filled with the mundane, but that one broke the mold. I’ll never forget it.
I know that I don’t want to look back at my life and have nothing that sticks out. “Carpe Diem” is sharpied onto my journal, for crying out loud. Whenever I look at it, whenever I write, it whispers at me like Robin Williams in The Dead Poet’s Society, “Seize the day, Jenna, seize the day.”
Our lives are stories. As Miller says, no one would watch a movie about a guy whose life goal is to own a Volvo. I know that I wouldn’t.
“The ambitions we have will become the stories we live. If we don’t want anything we are living boring stories. If it won’t work in a story, it won’t work in life.”
My ambition needs to be something better than purchasing a Volvo. Fortunately, thanks to Jesus and the crazy ride he takes me on, it is. He’s been teaching me to dream big; he’s been telling me about asking for the impossible. Because of this, the story I’m living has become one worth telling.
But the enemy seeks to kill, steal and destroy. At the moment I realized that my story is worth telling, he whispered lies that it wasn’t. At the moment I knew that I needed to share it, he told me it wasn’t worthy of being shared. In the back of my head, I knew it was a bunch of baloney, but then look what happened. I didn’t blog all month, even though this month is FULL of stories.
Stupid Satan. What a douche.
Ridiculous things have happened here in Thailand. I learned to watch the clouds roll by from the back of a pickup truck and giggle at their splendor. I learned to act a fool with five of the most incredible women I know. I saw waterfalls and beaches and islands – the beauty of this country. I got my JOY back.
I should shout from the rooftops of Chanthaburi that my Jesus is hysterical. I should let you know that he brings joy to unexpected places. I should tell you that he makes me laugh. Everyday he tells me he loves me. Jesus desires that I have childlike faith. Best of all, he wants me to live a life worth living. He wants me to testify to his goodness and tell the stories he’s given me.
“What I’m saying is… I think life is staggering and we’re just used to it.”
“Fear is a manipulative emotion that can trick us into living boring lives.”
Heck-no-techno. That’s not good. Unacceptable.
Romans 15.13 says, "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit."
Filled with ALL joy and peace.
That’s the hope. Life is a wild ride, crazier than Mr. Toad’s, I assure you.
Carpe diem, folks, carpe diem.
