As I close this little series based around Donald Miller’s book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, I see how far I have come but still see how far I have yet to go. This series lasted over seven posts, yet I wrote all the posts in one day. Even as I sit here, putting all these thoughts together…I still hold on to feelings of discontentment, lack of purpose, and sadness. I get it but have not quite embraced it yet. And so as I close this series of posts with some of Miller’s last words in his book, I cannot say that I am at a place where I am closing one book in order to open and live my own story. I want to start my story but I feel the weight of the world keeping me from getting up and actually living it.
I wonder if even this post is keeping me from living. The fact that I sit here in my kitchen typing away. When there are so many other things I want to be doing right now that would help me live out a better story.
I had so many good intentions with this series. I was excited to share what I learned and ask thought provoking questions. Yet as I sit here, I feel unsatisfied. I am nervous to even put this all out there.
Donald Miller states, in speaking about his dog:
Sometimes when I watch her I think about how good life can be, if we only lose ourselves in our stories. Lucy doesn’t read self-help books about how to be a dog; she just is a dog. All she wants to do is chase ducks and sticks and do other things that make both her and me happy. It makes me wonder if that was the intention for man, to chase sticks and ducks, to name animals, to create families, and to keep looking back at God to feed off his pleasure at our pleasure.
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I don’t ever want to go back to believing life is meaningless. I know there are biochemical causes for some forms of depression, but I wish people who struggle against dark thoughts would risk their hopes on living a good story—by that I mean finding a team of people doing hard work for a noble cause, and joining them. I think they’d be surprised at how soon their sad thoughts would dissipate, if for no other reason than they didn’t have time to think them anymore. There would be too much work to do, too many scenes to write.As I type this all out I am realizing that I need to step away from the computer. Step away from writing about season after season of getting my priorities straight. It is time to actually live that out. No more talking about it. Rather it is time to live it.
I am not sure what that means but I believe I need to step away for a minute. I need to give myself the freedom to allow myself to find my story. And trying to write about a story that isn’t being lived is not much of a story.
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.I hope to not be around here as often…showing proof that I am living a greater story. And it hurts me to think that I cannot connect with each one of you. A burden I put on myself. But I have to let go. A sacrifice I have to give in order to live out my story. And if I do not hear from you, I hope you are doing the same.
*This is the final post in a series of snippets of thoughts based on Donald Miller’s book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. Read the other posts here.
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