A Lull

I knew this day would come. Paring down our lives to be mobile, liquid and light isn’t something that happens quickly. I’m the kind of person who gets excited about a new idea, pours a bucket of effort at it, then gets bored after awhile and wants to just go find a good, new book to read. If I hadn’t read Don Miller’s new book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, I wouldn’t know why I do that. But, I did read it, and I do know.

I want to get lost in a fictional story because I LOVE stories, and the one I’m living is currently in a sort of boring, transitional, confusing chapter. BUT, the reason we’re trying to pare down is in the hope that we will be able to grasp more opportunities to continue living a more interesting, exciting story. I want to be able to respond, “How high?” when I hear, “JUMP!”

In the mean time, here we are, still in a large rental house that could sell at any given moment. We’re enjoying the summer, the pool, the proximity to the biking trail system, but it does sort of sit in the back of one’s head — pending move… pending move… it’s coming…

So, back to Don’s book… it’s this great story about getting the opportunity to “rewrite” his own life story. These movie guys approach him about making his earlier book, Blue Like Jazz, into a movie. Trouble is, that book is really just a lot of great reflections on his spiritual journey, so they need to write the story around the character so it works on screen. This is when Don realizes (and is told in no uncertain terms) that his life is boring, so they will need to rewrite it.

Thousand Years is all about Don’s process of understanding what makes a good story — on screen, as well as in real life. He learns that for a story to be interesting, the characters in it have to experience, and be transformed by, conflict. Though I know this is absolutely true, it certainly doesn’t bring me any comfort.

My nature tells me that I really want to just sit on the couch and watch movies (stories), but my heart knows this is exactly what will ruin me — distract me from actually living life — my own story. Essentially, we’ve asked God to give us a good story and this scares the hell out of me! I know this means we’ll have some conflict, and hard times, and confusion… but, God help us, we will be transformed by it. We’re just hoping the less stuff in the way, the easier the transformation may be.

So, great book, Don! A+ for you.