Living A Better Story

For the last three years I've been at the University of Minnesota Morris, studying English. It took me three years to figure out that I had no heart for being an academic, that I was there because I didn't know what else to do, because it was the safe option after high school and because none of my friends weren't going to college. I went for the experience, but I can't say I loved the experience I had. It was three years of heartache and confusion as I fought my way to the surface, to reality.

Now that I've decided that I won't be attending UMM for my final year and am home in Sartell for good, I've been doing a lot of thinking about my life. Maybe it's because I'm German, but I've always felt uncomfortable with wanting or needing things. I don't like to ask people for things, and it's taken a lot of brave introspection to get to the bottom of, well, my life and me.

I've always thought I was meant to do something important. I'm sure most people feel that way, but when I look at my family, I can't say the same for them. Part of me wants to be successful just to prove to them that it can be done- to show them that they can't give up, that there's hope and meaning and purpose. That trying doesn't mean failing.

I work in a pharmacy in town. I'm still new. I feel the impending sense of responsibility that comes with no longer being a trainee, and I have to say- I am dreading it. So much. I can honestly say I don't want to work there for the next five years or even tomorrow. I'm realizing- fully realizing- that I don't want to work a job that has no heart. I need something to put my heart in. I need to do something that matters.

This isn't what I want my life to look like, and it's killing me. For most of my life I've stepped back from the spotlight. I've listened to my family tell me I can't; I've let them talk me down from every inspired idea I've ever had. I've let them convince me that having a stable job (whether I like or want the job or not) is more important than anything else, no matter how amazing the other opportunities. They've taught me to always have a plan, and well- for the first time this spring, I had none. And I still don't.

I feel like it's all coming down to it now. I need to start making decisions, making choices, getting excited about things without allowing outside influences to talk me down. I don't want to be talked down from the ledge of inspiration and hope anymore. I need to believe that I can live a life that isn't boring and safe and mediocre. I don't believe I've ever desired to be a mediocre person who does mediocre things. I want to show my family that there still is hope for living the kind of life they've always dreamed of living. I want to show them what it is to live.

If my life were a story and I was the author, I would write about a character who met with challenges and had enough bravery to not back down. She would be determined to make things happen and be kind to strangers. She would be like a pawn on the chessboard of her life, being moved where God instructed. She would work in a church, planning and organizing church events and retreats. She would play guitar in worship on Sundays and use her pictures to help promote the church. She would be a source of hope and comfort to those within the church who are hurting by making them realize that they are not alone and are not crazy because they don't look like the average joyful Christian. In her spare time she would write short stories and perfect her cooking skills, to the delight of her small group. She wouldn't be afraid. She wouldn't shrink back from blessings because she feels she doesn't deserve them. She wouldn't reject love because she doesn't understand it, but would turn for clarity to her Friend and Savior in trust and love.

Ultimately, I need a way out. I need to get out of the rut I've always been in. Risk breathing for the chance I might choke. I don't want to live like this anymore. The thing is, I'm finding that I have no idea how to go about living a new life. I'm used to having a plan, remember? A step-by-step guide would be nice.

I guess the closest thing to that would be this conference in Portland that Don Miller's putting on in September. I told my mom about it last night and I got the usual response. I think deep down my parents would rather I did nothing if it meant I risked nothing. Success doesn't come without risk, right? It would be ridiculous if I went, because I don't do things like fly to Portland for three days in the middle of my non-plan plan. But honestly, I've been thinking about it so much and it's been making me think even more about my life and where I want to be a year from now, or even a week from now. For me, Portland has become a sort of symbol of hope to me, that life can be more than it has been for me over these last 21 years. I have a lot of faith that Don Miller and his ideas about living a better story could really help me. I've been very shy this summer in asking God for things, but Portland is one thing I have directly asked Him for.

The thing is, this conference is expensive. The whole shindig would set me back at least $800 when you throw in airfare, hotel, registration, and meals. But- there's this contest. If I win, it's all free...which would solve my dilemma. AND I would get to travel on a plane for the first time, with a friend. I think I need this, or at least something like it. When I told my mom about it, she asked me if there was anything else I could do to get the same result that I would from the conference. I told her Don's book A Million Years in A Thousand Miles is kind of what he's basing it off of. She suggested I just read the rest of the book and leave it at that. I told her she was missing the point. I think my family, in general, is missing the point- and I don't want to miss the point of life anymore. This is one thing I don't want to let her talk me out of because I have so much hope that it could change the course of my life. With that kind of clarity hinging on this conference and this contest, I put my faith in the fact that God knows best. That I've entered the contest with a deeply prayerful, wounded, and in-need heart. I pray He would give me the direction I need to move forward in His plan by attending the Live A Better Story conference in Portland. I genuinely think that He has things to say to me there that I need to hear. I keep feeling more and more that I want to escape my current life, and I think an experience in Portland could help me gain new perspective and the tools to change my current life into something that is fulfilling, valuable, and important. For those of you reading this, I ask that you would pray with me for this event! If you want to know more about this conference, go here: www.donmilleris.com/conference

Also, here's a video about it: http://donmilleris.com/2010/07/15/win-a-trip-for-two-to-portland-for-the-living-a-better-story-seminar/

Living a Better Story Seminar from All Things Converge Podcast on Vimeo.

Move

Don Miller is making me think today. Seriously think.

I thrive on being inspired. It picks me up off the ground enough to see what could be on the horizon, and gives me perspective on where I left my footsteps back on the ground. But, what a waste it would be to not act on such inspiration. Right? That's like being content with being in love with love versus being in love with a person who loves you back. What a great risk, life is. I've been content on yearning, on being inspired to inspiration, instead of being inspired to action. Inspiration moves me, but doesn't make me move. I guess I have yet to introduce myself to Courage, Inspiration's counterpart.

What am I willing to risk? What stakes would I raise to take Courage's hand and MOVE? What kind of life am I looking to live?

I'm getting better at admitting what I want without feeling bad or wrong about it. I need to be honest with myself if I'm going to do anything of great importance in my life.

I'm pulled in several different directions- between things like TWLOHA and authorship, photographer and musician, world traveler and homebody. There are a great many things I put value in.

I'm realizing that maybe it's time to grow out of old attitudes. The old ones that keep me back. I feel like shedding that skin. I feel like embracing new ideas, new possibilities, new opportunities.

Over the last couple of weeks, a few things have become more clear to me. One of them being that I'm the one holding myself back. I always fear what other people will think, but most of them really do believe that I can do what I dream of. I think I need to start believing them too. For me it keeps coming back to the whole walking on water thing. He can't make me get out of the boat. But He believes in me- He knows my potential and He knows what He can do with me if I let myself become someone He and I can both respect. Peter believed God could do anything, but didn't have that kind of faith in himself- that he could do miraculous things because God believed he could, because of his faith that Jesus wouldn't ask him to walk on the water if He wasn't God, if He wasn't in control, if He wasn't capable of catching Peter when he started to sink.

And in this moment, sitting on my bed, looking out the window, I can hear this small voice in my chest and feel the tears in my eyes as I say to God, "please, please, please, please, please..." and I watch a bat fly by in silhouette with a smile, "...ask me to come out to You on the water...I want to know what it is to live." The lamps in the room smile their warm light on me, even to the corners of the room, as my 53 second song becomes louder than the water around my small boat.

He wants me to move.

53 Second Song

I watched 500 Days of Summer. I'm a bit surprised that I liked the concept behind it. I guess for me it's kind of summarized in this song from the score of the movie, called Train Ride Home (because it plays during a scene in which the characters are, ahem, riding the train home) by Mychael Danna and Rob Simonsen. It's only 53 seconds long. But I think it sort of embodies, to me, what the movie it about.

It's about what I love: inspiration. It starts on a blank canvas of quiet sounds, and builds with the piano and strings into something uplifting and hopeful. It lets you see into something that you couldn't see before, and then- it ends.

As I go along in life, I'm realizing that I'm starting to measure the time passing in years. I look at things and want to parenthesize everything into segments of organized and logical time. But life isn't meant to be measures that way- time is just how we keep track of it, like ledger lines. This 53 second song is an idea that encompasses the whole movie- 500 days. I'm thinking that maybe there are moments in my life- only brief, passing moments, that encompass my life to date. Maybe there are brief less-than-a-minute melodies floating in and out of the years I anally keep track of. I think those melodies are important, and I think that maybe I should be writing them down.

He sketched skylines. He took what he saw and put it down on paper. He created and moved. He used his heart- poured everything into what he believed was true. But isn't it the case that sometimes, no matter how badly we want something to work...it just isn't meant to? It seems out of place and unexpected for something to build so much and then just stop. I don't know why that's what I like about this movie, this 53 second song. The 500 day journey Tom went on with Summer were human, and some might say that in the end, it was all for nothing.

But there are melodies there in the bylines of the pictures we take. There are driving beats and thoughtful piano that belong to the moments we can't forget.

Maybe a 53 second song is worth 500 days of...yearning in the wrong direction, for the wrong person. Take the melody with you. Leave the rest.

currently.

It's been a rough twenty hours for me, I won't lie. Last night everything sort of hit the fan. I regretted the fact that I had started thinking about it, because once I've thought about it, there's no "unthinking" it. And usually, well, it tends to go downhill from there. Why does thinking have to be a healthy thing? Sometimes it feels like insanity.

Since being home from school this summer, I've managed to keep myself together okay. Yeah I've not slept well, eaten well, or socialized well, but if I ever did cry, it was only for a minute- my breakdowns were small and compact, usually fitting into the size of an eight measure line in a song on the radio. But last night...I don't know what happened. I just broke. It was good I guess. But, let me tell you, going to work broken is NOT ideal. I found myself crying before I was out of the house and before I walked into the building. I hate that.

The whole self-assessment thing is next I guess. I've established that I feel dead at my job. Now it's time to address the whole feeling-dead-all-the-time thing. Sometimes it's easier to not be honest with yourself. Sometimes it's just easier to long for something else completely and think that doing that something else will make all your problems go away. I think I might have potential though. To be great. I just feel rather shipwrecked now. Or, well... I guess I feel more like I'm stranded on an island. Like November was the storm and ship wrecking, and I've been treading water and directionlessly back stroking ever since.

Back to the self-assessing. Generally, I self-assess about every five minutes all day long. And generally, it's always floating around in the back of my mind waiting for a pointed voice. I've been saying a lot that I'm not in a good place to make, or even keep, friends. I might as well be on an island, with the way things are for me now- the way I'm choosing them to be. As silly as it sounds, watching the Bachelorette makes me realize that one of these days when I'm ready, I'll have to go out on a limb and take a chance on someone- take a chance at being happy. I'm looking forward to it. But. I'm not so good at limbs.

I feel distant from my friends. I never talk to them and when I do I find myself sugar coating and fluffing up the conversation with "oh well"s and "but that's okay"s, subconsciously and mutedly taking on their more positive, happy, attitude. I feel very different from them. It isn't difficult for them to be happy. As a consequence, I've been wondering if I should see a counselor. And I look at the drugs I package into bottles at work and wonder if they really work. I'm figuring out that I love blind inspiration because I don't feel like the usual me when I'm inspired. I don't feel like the blah sort of weighed-down me. I feel like, what I like to think is, the real me- the me I love being. Whoever said "just be yourself" didn't realize how impossible it can be for some of us, how complicated it can be.

I keep thinking there has to be a reason for all this.

I keep begging God that on the other side of this year, something truly amazing is waiting for me- something epic, something big- something that will make all of this worth it. Because the truth is, if I was promised that in a year I would have something awesome, I would work two unfulfilling jobs. But right now, I'm not promised that. Yet I have hope of something good because I have to. If I didn't, I couldn't do it.

Anyway. Look at me wandering through this blog. I never know what I have in mind to say when I start writing on here. Guess that's what happens when you let your thoughts off its leash.

I need to get up early. :/ Wish me luck.

this may be a bit negative?

I was thinking today at work that life is about finding within ourselves what it means to have freedom, to be free. Isn't that what we're all really after anyway? Half of the battles and conflicts we'll face in our lives will be breaking out of self (or not) imposed barriers. We all want to be around people who free us- people who give you a hand up and tell you not to be scared- people who dare you to draw outside the lines, to create, do, be- breathe in healthy things and breathe out unhealthy things. We need to be with people who want good things for us, people who mean us well.

The horrible thing is, there are some of us who function without those kinds of people- or even worse: without anyone at all. There are some of us who are frightened of people, even if they are good. Because, despite the fact that they want encouraging people in their lives, these timid people have been beaten and broken down, so much so that they would rather they risk nothing at all if it means they won't get hurt. Not everyone means the world well. It's sad that there are some of us, the hurting ones, who will decline and reject and self-preserve themselves into a lonely life-less life devoid of freedom, happiness, and love. They take their paranoia in stride and settle for captivity, coping, and loneliness.

Life is too short to fill our time with coping mechanisms, excuses to sit out, and chances not taken.

But I sure don't blame the hurting ones for doing just that. I will not judge them based on their actions or lack of actions. Because I'm one of them.

I used to think that life is supposed to look something like the "American Dream" ideal that it seems so many people are chasing after. But now I realize that the "American Dream" isn't the definition of "life". Life is not picture perfect- in fact, most people lives aren't very photogenic at all. A real life falls apart at the seams like cliffs crumbling into the ocean. A real life has issues and heartbreak and disappointment. And living is in there too somewhere. Living is those moments when there is panic and disorder and pain- and you stand there in the middle of that intersection and choose the last remaining street: continue. Living is when you are standing in the middle of the mess, and choose to take another step.

I think that step is more important and more powerful than any of the cliche moments that people associate with living- you know, the dancing-in-the-rain, jump-out-of-a-plane, midnight-spontaneity, "live-laugh-love" kind of living that most people seem to think is really important and worthwhile. I agree that those moments are awesome, but I would argue that they don't build character because there is no decision being made about your life, just you flitting around in a good mood. Life isn't about good moods- it's about fighting through the bad moods. It's about fighting off the cage in an attempt to find YOUR freedom. A fight has more life in its little finger than does a slow dance in the rain.

That's what I think at least.