So I was giving this talk, and I held up a blank newspaper that I had picked up from the printing plant. When a printing press revs up, the initial copies roll off blank. Eventually, the ink gets pressed to the plates and then to the paper and magic happens: words and pictures appear on the newsprint and a newspaper comes to life with all sorts of stories about oil in the gulf and crocked politicians and tall guys who are moving from Cleveland to Miami.(This, again, was back in the day, before we got our news on our phones.)
The point was obvious: This is your life, right? Blank. What story are you going to write to fill out the pages?
Life as story. It’s long been one of my favorite metaphors, and I’m not alone. John Eldredge wrote about it several years ago in Epic: The Story God Is Telling and the Role That Is Yours to Play and, more recently, Don Miller wrote about it in A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life. God wrote about it His bestseller, too.
It’s Miller who has my interest today, because he’s come out with this clever marketing ploy to drum up interest for a “Living a Better Story” seminar he’s putting on this fall in Portland. He’s having a contest and the winner gets a free trip to Portland for the seminar, complete with a hotel room and bottled water and fresh mints.
Living a Better Story Seminar from All Things Converge Podcast on Vimeo.
It just so happens that I want to go to this seminar. When I first read about it about a month ago on Twitter, I went to Miller’s Web site and looked into it. Then I decided I couldn’t go because I don’t have the money for the airfare and the hotel and the bottled water and the fresh mints. So I prayed about it. “God,” I said, “It’s me again. I’d like to go to this seminar but you know I don’t have the money. You interested in funding the trip?” He didn’t answer immediately, at least not that I could discern, but then today he sent me a “maybe.” He said, and I’m paraphrasing, “Enter this contest and see what happens. Even if you don’t win, you’ll learn from the exercise.”
It also just so happens that today, before Twitter told me about this contest, I was reflecting on a verse from the Bible that actually tells me God’s will for my life. This is amazing, because most of us really struggle with this one, and yet, there it is, big as Alaska, in 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18. Look it up if you don’t believe me. I’ll wait. …
Any questions?
I’ve got a few, mainly because I tend to take the simple and make it complicated. Here’s my main question: What’s that look like for a 47-year-old follower of Jesus who just went through a divorce he didn’t want and who is 20 pounds overweight and who has gray hair he refuses to cut and who doesn’t have much money and who gave away pretty much everything owned but the debt to his now-ex-wife?
I’m looking for the answer. I want to write a book about the experience of looking for the answer. I also want to live a great story in this new phase of my life. I want to live a story that includes glorifying God as a writer, father, grandfather, missionary-minded follower of Jesus, and, who knows, maybe some day, as a husband again. I want to live a story in which I’m joyful, prayerful and thankful.
Three of the books I’ve read this summer have inspired me toward this end. One, as you might guess, was Miller’s. Another was a book on writing called The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. And the other was a book on life and faith (among many other things) by Anne Lamott called Traveling Mercies. I recommend them all (with the warning that Lamott is irreverent enough to need an R rating).
Those books, along with a devotional called Jesus Calling and a book called the Bible and the encouragement of friends and family, combine to give me hope about the story I’ll write on the remaining blank pages of my life. They also give me hope about the stories I’ll write for other people to read. Literature, or some close approximation thereof.
I like Donald Miller as a thinker and author, so I want to go to this seminar and learn what I can about living a great story and writing great stories. Plus, I like bottled water and fresh mints.
