A Better Story

I had the day off today. There are a few perks of being a state employee. My election holiday did not consist of much. I had a whole day with no responsibilities. Awesome, right? I slept in and vegged on the couch. Before noon, I ate couscous and chocolate ice cream but not at the same time. While perusing the internet and halfway paying attention to the political news on the tv, a cover of uselessness suddenly fell over me. Sitting there on the couch, I got cranky and despondent.
It's not the first time that has happened. I set out to have myself some lazy, do nothing time, and I end up feeling worthless.

I'm midway through a book by Donald Miller entitled A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, courtesy of my coworker's library card. In the book, Miller describes the process that he engaged in while creating the movie version of Blue Like Jazz. But it's so much more than that. In the process of making the movie, Miller realizes the correlations between living life and creating a story worth telling.

His writing style is quirky and somewhat random. It turned me off at first, but I kept reading. Miller is profound in a way that catches you off guard. And while I was sitting on the couch this morning, I could not help but think about my story.

"You can call it God or a conscience, or you can dismiss it as that intuitive knowing we all have as human beings, as living storytellers; but there is a knowing I feel that guides me toward better stories toward being a better character. I believe there is a writer outside ourselves, plotting a better story for us, interacting with us, even, and whispering a better story into our consciousness."     - Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

Ice cream, a comfy couch, access to the world wide web, and a day with no responsibilities. Isn't that something people desperately want?  Perhaps not. Perhaps that despondence I feel when I'm camped out on the couch eating chocolate ice cream is a yearning for something more, a better story. 

"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."   - Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

In an attempt to resurrect the day, I exercised and swept the floor. I paced the newly harvested field looking for rocks to edge the flower bed, and I discarded the newest creature that Bo drug up to the house. And I prayed.

Last Sunday, I sat around the dinner table with Kb and my parents. We talked about the respective church services we attended and the sermons that we heard. Kb and I are still searching for a "home" church. I don't like the process. Anyways, I told my parents about how the church Kb and I attended that morning was going to pack and send out two million meals around the world for the organization Feed My Starving Children. Eight thousand volunteers were required for the project. As of Sunday, they needed about two hundred more. My mom does not attend the church, but she had heard of the church's two million meal mission. Right away my mom asked what shifts needed additional volunteers and how to sign up to volunteer. My mom was all set to get to work to help a church that she does not even attend. I was taken aback. Not at my mom's willingness to serve, but at my own capacity to selfishly ignore a need.

"If I have a hope, it's that God sat over the dark nothing and wrote you and me, specifically, into the story, and put us in with the sunset and the rainstorm as though to say, enjoy your place in my story. The beauty of it means you matter, and you can create within it even as I have created you. I've wondered, though, if one of the reasons we fail to acknowledge the brilliance of life is because we don't want the responsibility inherent in the acknowledgment. We don't want to be characters in a story because characters have to move and breathe and face conflict with courage."  - Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

 Like Miller, I find myself falling asleep on life, not participating in the greatness of the story that He is whispering into me. Kb and I are at this point in life where we can take our story anywhere. But regardless of where we are geographically or what passions we pursue individually and collectively, I must have the courage to strive for and engage in a great story.