Story

“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. And if life isn't remarkable, then we don't have to do any of that; we can be unwilling victims instead of grateful participants.” – Donald Miller

Friday night, Lindsay and Jan met me at my apartment where I let them shower and get ready to go out to dinner and meet some other friends later. The three of us went to this great little Italian restaurant in downtown Fort Wayne where we exchanged stories from our day and shared our newest ambitions. In the middle of our conversations, I again thought that my life would make a great TV show or movie. I brought that up to Jan and Lindsay and they agreed and said they too often thought how much the world would enjoy watching our lives if only someone cared to write our stories down.

It’s not that I think my life is any better than yours or that I am any more exciting than you are. It’s just that I have always thought of my life as a story, playing out act by act; sometimes a comedy, sometimes a tragedy, and sometimes a twisted love story, and always filled with adventure and laughs. I can guarantee your life is like that too if you think about it like that. This is probably the reason I like hanging out with Jan and Linds; they are creative minds born with the passion of a good story and a good cup of coffee. And, if you are Jan, a need to be obsessed with weird things like shoulder pads. If Lindsay and Jan were into computer technology or statistics, I guarantee they would not think of their lives as any sort of a story because people living out that life don’t think that way. But, thank goodness for me, Lindsay is an artist/designer and Jan is into fashion and public relations.

It was kind of a great coincidence that on Friday night we discussed how great of stories our lives are because Sunday morning I borrowed the book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. I remember Brynne telling me I should read it a while ago, and Sunday I saw the book on my friend’s bookshelf in her house and I took it (Sorry, girls!) to read. It caught my attention because it is all about the author, Don Miller, discovering what makes a person’s story, or life, a great one. It is a beautiful book, and I finished it in two days.

He writes that a great character always has conflict and overcomes it. A character is also one who makes a contribution. It got me thinking about my own story and what I was doing to be a great character. There is so much I want to do and so many plans I have for myself, but what exactly have I done to get to some of those plans? I’m not talking about careers, necessarily, but those big contributions; working with a small group of kids, supporting a cause I really believe in, actually writing a real book. Sure, I make plans for them, but sometimes being a great character instead of just being the character that helps the protagonist is hard and scary. But is that a good enough excuse to not try?

Then I got to thinking about the everyday life part of my story. The simple little events that happen every day. These little events that make up an entire life: making coffee in the morning, buying groceries, working and everything else in between. And sure, maybe to everyone else the fact that last week one night Megan, Liz and I watched the Tigers game eating Dairy Queen and talking in dog voices doesn’t mean a whole lot to anyone else. But to me, the night was a part of a chapter in my story that added life and meaning on a Tuesday night in the middle of October. I bet you have stuff like that too, and somehow when you think of it as being a part of a story it makes it all seem so much richer. The little things, maybe even more than the big things, are what make us the characters we are.

One time, a few months ago, I was living out a great and exciting chapter in my story. A chapter I can guarantee you all would love to read. But in the midst of it, I was simply enjoying myself. I wasn’t doing anything bad, I just wasn’t doing anything. There were so many times when I had the opportunity to let others in on understanding the most important character of my story, but I just never got around to it. I didn’t think I should, so I just lived and laughed and never shared who I was at the core. Maybe I knew that it wasn’t really as accepted. Maybe I knew that people may judge when they know you have faith. But, I lived a meaningless chapter there for a bit, and the sad part was that for a while, I didn’t even care. It wasn’t until I was eating dinner with a bunch of people, the same people I didn’t let know I didn’t do some of the things they did because I was a Christian, when I saw a guy around my age sit down alone at another table. When I looked up in the middle of laughing I saw him bow his head and pray. It most definitely was not the ‘cool’ thing to do and most certainly people could see him and would make jokes about him later. It didn’t stop him though. Against the popular thought, he didn’t turn his back on the one character who will always remain a constant in our stories and he didn’t care who saw. Immediately I felt complete and utter shame. My laughing stopped and all I wanted to do was cry. That should have been me and it wasn’t. For the first time in my life I didn’t stand up the way I should have for what I believed and I let a whole chapter of my story write itself. I wondered if that is how Peter felt after he denied Christ 3 times. I knew right then that Jesus was sad and imagining Jesus sad made me want to cry. I went back to my place right after that and did just that and vowed that I would never again hide the fact that the greatest author of my life is Jesus.

I am excited for the day when Jesus and I can sit down and actually talk about the chapters of my life. I can’t wait to ask him why certain things had to happen and hear him explain them to me in an eternal way. I can’t wait to hear him walk me through the parts of my story that were difficult and to see just how much he was with me in those times even when I felt lonely. I can’t wait to hear him explain why I was so blessed to get the people in my life and why I was able to live out these awesome adventures. And I can’t wait to laugh with him over the little things in life like getting Dairy Queen with my friends and to know that even in that small moment, he was there, and he put that little event in for some purpose.

As I was reading this book I came across so many great quotes by Donald Miller. This one caught my attention because so many of my friends and I are at a point where we could go in so many different directions and it is terrifying. This quote speaks so much truth into pressing on through our fear:

“The most often repeated commandment in the Bible is 'Do not fear.' It's in there over two hundred times. That means a couple of things, if you think about it. It means we are going to be afraid, and it means we shouldn't let fear boss us around. Before I realized we were supposed to fight fear, I thought of fear as a subtle suggestion in our subconscious designed to keep us safe, or more important, keep us from getting humiliated. And I guess it serves that purpose. But fear isn't only a guide to keep us safe; it's also a manipulative emotion that can trick us into living a boring life.”

So, in the end, this book encouraged me to continue to make my life meaningful. I want my story to be lived out as one that people would enjoy reading about or enjoying watching a movie on. I think all of our lives could be that way if we lived it out with that in mind. I want to have frames filled with pictures of people I care about displaying memories from great chapters. I want to do more meaningful things and to make a great impact. And someday, I do want to get married and share my life with someone who feels just the way I do because I don’t want to go reading through the chapters of my life someday and wonder what could have been if I would have just given someone or something a chance.

Here is to continuing my story and diving into the challenges and the fears that will make my story a best seller filled with the greatest of characters and in the end understanding that the story isn’t even anything about me but about a much greater one. I think I am onto a pretty good start.

“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.” – Donald Miller

Some Things Never Change

I don’t remember if I ever wrote about the time my roommate, Lindsay, and I drove down a blocked road under construction in the middle of the night during our junior year of college right after we stole a whole plate full of brownies from the Dining Commons. I probably didn’t write about it because to this day my parents still do not know that is how my car got scratched up in the front. But, it is too good of a story to not share with others:

It was a Friday night in November and my three roommates and I were getting ready to go to one of our friend’s birthday parties. Megan and Emily made themselves dinner in our apartment and Lindsay and I decided to go to the DC on campus to eat. While we were eating, we kept eyeing the dessert table. When we were all freshmen we would rally as a group and walk out of the DC with one of the platters of homemade desserts and bring them back to the dorm. This was a job well done because the people working at the DC were usually strict and enjoyed embarrassing you and made you pay extra if you took food out of the DC (I kid you not my friends and I still had one of the DC’s platters in our apartment cupboards this past year). Well, on that particular Friday, Lindsay and I thought it would be a nice touch to take one of the brownie platters and bring them with us that night…I mean, after all, we were going to a birthday party. Besides, we thought it would be pretty awesome to be able to tell people that the two of us alone stole a platter of brownies while the scariest DC worker was there.

So, we quickly mapped out a plan, grabbed the plate of brownies and walked out of the DC casually while tables of freshmen stared at us wondering if they should go tell someone what we were doing. Once we got outside, we ran for dear life to my car. We were laughing and joking about how this night was already promising to be good.

We drove off of campus to meet our friends at Katie’s house for her birthday party. Lindsay called our other roommates to get clear directions, but neither Lindsay or myself really knew where we were headed. What do you do when that happens? Just guess. So, we drove down the dark and bumpy streets of Huntington trying to find State Street (if you know Huntington, you know the roads are crooked, bumpy, and broken). We got to Division Street where we thought we were supposed to turn. Blocking Division Street were two “Road Closed” signs with one gap big enough for my car in between the two. Behind the signs was this street with gaping holes and cones and big metal things sticking up from the ground making it nearly (and I say nearly because of what I am about to tell you next) impossible to drive down.

I don’t know why we did it or what made us think we could do it. Maybe it was the adrenaline rush from the brownie incident, but without any hesitation, we decided to squeeze through the “Road Closed” signs and navigate through the broken down street. Right after my car got through the signs, there was this giant cement block we failed to notice earlier. I went over it and then looked at how long and awful this road looked. “Uhh….Lindsay? I really hope there aren’t any cops around.”

Navigating through that street made me feel like I was playing Mario Cart or something and my car and I were one of the characters. It was terrible scary. Lindsay kept saying things like, “We are almost to the end, keep going, you can do it.” Finally, the end of the road came, but there was another even larger cement block I would have to go over head first. This would surely do some damage. Then Lindsay said, “Oh…I think we now know exactly why this road was closed.”

Right then and there two cop cars pulled out of the Dairy Queen with their lights on. Panic. I’m not going to lie to you here, but a part of me thought about running. Then Lindsay and I in utter nervousness wondered if we should just hit the cement block and try to go forward or try to back ourselves up out of the road and escape. Too late. We were in trouble.

The cop asked what we were up to and Lindsay and I explained that we got lost and were trying to find our friend’s house. He took my license, was gone for what seemed like hours at his car, came back and laughed and said he would just let us go and that he thinks we learned our lesson. He even helped us drive over the giant cement block.

Lindsay and I were scared out of our minds, but it was probably one of the dumbest and funniest times of that year.

Just two weekends ago I really realized that some things just don’t really change. I once heard that you know who your forever friends are when after years have gone by you are still making new memories and not just sitting around remembering the old ones. My friends and I have had some really, really great times in the past. I was always nervous that after college that would be it. Instead I have found, that with these people it is so far from ‘it.’ The times just keep on getting better and better and new memories pile on top of the old ones.

After a two nights of frozen yogurt, strange conversations and shopping, two Sundays ago a bunch of us decided to go to the Pioneer Festival in Huntington. It was a chilly and rainy day, definitely not ideal for an old fashioned festival. Lindsay and I (much like the incident two years ago) rode together to meet our other friends at the festival. On our way there, Lindsay made a wrong turn several times. One of the times we were turning around we did so in a creepy looking driveway with a sign that said ‘No Trespassing.’ But, I think you know by now that signs mean nothing to Lindsay and I. Of course, there was a scary man in the barn who came out and gave us a look that made us crouch as low as we could in our seats and speed off in the right direction. Then, when we got to the festival, we parked in a no parking zone and after the festival could not find her car until 15 minutes later. Oops.

But during that ride and the couple hours spent drinking cider, petting gross camels and singing along with an old man playing the ukulele, I think we all laughed so hard we couldn’t breathe. This was not the first time these last few months that has happened, but during that day spent in a muddy park walking around people dressed up like pioneers with some of my best friends in the world, I realized that some things never change: we are still crazy and we are still making great memories.

(And, I know you are all dying to hear about this past weekend...don't worry I will post again soon!)