Work

That's a funny title since I don't have any.

However, I am working. I'm discovering that you have to work to make a story of your life. I just read a book by native Portlander (Portlandite? Portlandian? who knows?), Donald Miller, called A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. Some of you might recognize him by his more popular book, Blue Like Jazz. I'm not going to give you a summary of the book, go and read it instead. However, I do want to go through some of the things that really stuck out to me. Miller had ridiculous success with Blue Like Jazz and a lot of us looked at him as a really solid man who was doing amazing things with his life. In this book he reveals his lack of motivation and how his laziness leads him to watch hours of television each day. In fact, one of the guys he is working with tells him that if they portrayed his life as it truly is, people watching the movie would "stab each other in the necks with drinking straws." Ouch. How vulnerable of him to admit that.

Obviously Donald Miller is an incredible, honest, Godly man. Also, he is wonderful with words, so I'm going to quote him and throw in my thoughts instead of giving my summary. Thank God this isn't a research paper with a quote limit...

"People love to have lived a great story, but few people like the work it takes to make it happen. Joy costs pain." Dang.

"Humans are designed to seek comfort and order, and so if they have comfort and order, they tend to plant themselves, even if their comfort isn't all that comfortable. And even if they secretly want for something better." I love this. I struggle with this on a daily basis. We all probably do.

"It's all that stuff about forgiveness and risking rejection and learning to love. We think stories are about getting money and security, but the truth is, it all comes down to relationships." This really stands out to me. Forgiveness. Risking rejection. Learning to love. Extremely powerful things that we love to ignore.

"Not living a better story would be like deciding to die, deciding to walk around numb until you die, and it's not natural to want to die." But it's so much easier to not feel sometimes. However, there are periods of my life that when I think back on them I have NO idea what happened.

"when you are a better character, your story gets better too" I almost didn't comment on this quote. I wanted it to stand out, but I realized that it looked more like I didn't think it was as important. I love that he makes sure we know it's not just about the outward things we do. We have to change our hearts and minds to make a better story.

"I didn't want to get well, because if I got well, nobody would come and save me anymore. And I didn't want to get well, because while I could not control my happiness, I could control my misery, and I would rather have had control than live in the tension of what if. A chance of hope is no pacifier against a sure tragedy." I can be a control freak. I don't love the unknown. I like taking physical risks, but emotional risks scare the bageezees out of me.

"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."

There is a "natural high the body creates to trick us into thinking another human being might rescue us...we make too much of worldly love...for years I'd thought of love as something that would complete me, make all my troubles go away. I worshipped at the altar of romantic completion." Welcome to my 23 years of living. Okay, maybe I didn't start worshipping at this altar until... preschool (thanks Patrick)? That's ridiculous and somewhat true. I definitely had this mindset of, once I find a man I will feel fulfilled and worth something. What a crappy way to live. It's so obvious to me now why none of my relationships have worked out. I can't look to a guy to validate me. He later talks about a couple who look at each other as a "cherished prize." "Neither needed the other to make everything okay. They were simply content to have good company through life's conflicts." Beautiful.

Now I really am simply trying to work on making a meaningful story out of my life. It's going to be hard work and I'm going to feel like crap sometimes, but it's worth it. (Thanks Jess for giving me this book. I love you!) I'm going to end with a quote from the end of the book that I'm trying to think about throughout my day, everyday.

"We live in a world where bad stories are told, stories that teach us life doesn't mean anything and that humanity has no great purpose. It's a good calling, then, to speak a better story. How brightly a better story shines. How easily the world looks to it in wonder. How grateful we are to hear these stories, and how happy it makes us to repeat them."