How to Live a Story Worth Telling

I love a good story.  Words and art inspire me.  I want to take what is powerful about a good story or an amazing work or art and live out those elements in my life. What if we decide to live our lives as art?  What if we decide to live a great story?  How would that look?  Today, let's look at story.  What does it take to live a really, really good one?

Embrace opposition. Every great story is ultimately a battle to overcome something, right?  I love that sense of conflict in a story, but I try so hard to avoid obstacles in life.  What if instead of stepping away from those things that seem too hard, I step up or I stand firm?

Let go of control.  Much of my life, I've only been willing to be part of a story with an ending I can predict and of which I approve.  I have needed to see the whole outline before jumping into the first chapter.  The more I practice intentionally remaining in situations where I don't know the final outcome, my trust in God grows, and the excitement of my story increases.

Be willing to look stupid.  When I was little I wanted to try lots of things.  But I didn't.  Because I thought I would look stupid.  As an adult, I'm choosing to let the risk of failure or looking foolish to others take a backseat to the risk of missing out on something really amazing happening in my life.  I'm sure sometimes I'll look stupid.  But looking cool is highly overrated, right?

Choose to risk.  God asks me to trust Him.  He often asks me to be willing to give more than I feel comfortable with.  Sometimes it's the willingness He wants to see, and sometimes it's the giving.  He asks me to go places and do things that are exciting and uncertain and amazing.  If my story is going to be worth telling, I have to be willing to risk everything and believe that the Author of my life is working out a better plot line than I could ever have written.

I'd love to know what you think about living a good story!  What are the things you think make a life story worth telling? 

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;  in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight."  Proverbs 3:5

For more thoughts on life as story, check out A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life by Donald Miller.

How God Answers Prayers

For the past year, I've been asking God to stretch me.  To help me step outside my cozy comfort zone.  To strip away the stuff of "me" and make me a reflection of Him alone.  To build my faith.  To help me leap boldly into the unknown.  To show me the hard places, the Jesus-going places, where His light is needed.  To build a fiercely trusting heart in me.

God answers prayers like these.

He doesn't answer like "I Dream of Jeannie," with a little blink and an instant transformation of my heart into some super-trusting, joy-in-trials mastering, Christian super-hero kind of woman.  

The answer is in the process.  

He allows me to be uncomfortable, and inch by inch, I walk farther from my comfort zone, and I feel the fears that held me there rise up and then slowly slip away.   

He allows me to be in circumstances out of my control, so I have only two options: panic or trust.  Looking at my own strength or clinging to Christ.  As I look behind me, I see that my first response is more calm and trusting now than in seasons past, and I know I'm growing.  

He asks me to walk through places that try my faith, because only through the testing of my faith does it grow.  Only by His Word watering my spirit and His presense in the valleys do I become strong.  

He asks me to leap, and I have a choice: "yes, if" or "yes, period." I used to be a girl with lots of contingencies for God.  My "yes" had terms attached.  Now I'm saying, "Yes, Lord.  Period."  And just leaping.  (God has me mid-air in some places right now.  I'll let you know more about where I land when I get there.  But I know it's going to be good.)

He is opening my eyes to needs around me and burdening my heart with the desire to live a life spent fully and well.  And my definition of a life well spent has been totally and thoroughly turned upside down by Jesus.  I cannot chase a dream of comfort and ease ever again.  I cannot aspire to own a bunch of stuff that impresses me more than I desire to give in a bunch of ways that impress Jesus ever again.  I know God blesses us with wonderful gifts, and he loves for us to enjoy the blessings he pours out on our lives, but my blessings are also tools for blessing others and  for living a life of offering thanks to the One who gives good things.  

So I am thankful to the Lord for answering my prayers.  For being the One who knows precisely how to giftwrap seasons of growth as beautifully and lovingly as He does seasons of ease.  And when I think of the blessings received in my spirit within times of stretching and faith-testing, I start to see it all as a gift to me anyway.  

"Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, becasue you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.  Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything."  James 1:2-4

Holding on Loosely

At times, I find my fingers tightly gripping a dream.  The appearance of it is beautiful to me.  It's what I pray for and wait for.

But God wants me to hold on loosely.  The way a dream takes shape is by the forming of His hands, if it is a dream worth having.

I learned this because of a orphan I love.  A boy in Ukraine who is part of my heart's family.  In my dream, we adopt him, and he spends weekends fishing with my husband.  In my dream, he shares the room on the third floor with Eli, and they wrestle with our bulldog together, laughing as brothers.  In my dream, he sits in the chair that has been empty at the dinner table each evening, and on school mornings, I only drink half of my coffee before rushing one more child out to the car on the way to school.

We pursue this dream.  We see in God's Word that He is "A father to the fatherless...God sets the lonely in families."  Psalm 68:5 & 6
That must mean it's God's will for him to be adopted, right?

God is faithful, both in the opening and closing of doors.  God's dream for Sasha is different than mine.  In my loosely holding onto a dream, God has taught me so much about His perfect way of shaping our lives and our hearts.  He has taught me so much about how little I understand and how unequipped I am to be the dream-designer in my life.  Certainly there are dreams I have, because God has planted them in my heart.  But as they grow from seeds, the way they spring to life and blossom is by His design.

God has shown me that He has set Sasha in a family.  He is part of our family by love.  We work hard to love on him and encourage him through letters and by a commitment to meet any needs we know he has.  We remind him the Lord loves him and has good plans for him.  We have promised to remain in his life as long as he'd like us to be there.  God has also set him in a family in Ukraine, at Sunshine, where he has lived for several years now.   Sasha is standing next to the man who has been his foster father in this ski picture.  I loved receiving this, because I am so thankful that he is being loved and cared for within the context of a family and a home.


And God is so good.  He is refining my dreams and stretching my faith all the time.  But even as this is happening, He surprises me with beautiful gifts.  In August, Selden and I will be going to Sunshine to spend time with Sasha and the other kids there.  Some of you sent them gifts this Christmas, as part of the Sunshine Christmas project we did on Facebook!  (See their happy faces, with all the gifts!!!)  We are taking gifts to the children when we go, so if you would like to send something to a specific child (you can meet them all on Sunshine Christmas on Facebook or I can send you pictures) or something for the Center, please let me know.   Please also pray for us to raise the finances for the trip (and if you'd like to make a donation, we humbly welcome that - you can "comment" to ask more info).  We are so excited to go on this mission and meet the children whose names and faces we now know.  They all are so precious!

Even though I've learned to cradle my dreams in open hands, knowing that they are only mine if God says they are and how He says they are, sometimes I know He must be smiling as He hands back to me bits of what I have desperately longed for.

The vision my heart has had for over a year now is one of Sasha and Selden, standing at the water's edge, fishing poles in hand.  (They both love fishing more than anything.)  I've said goodbye to this dream over and over.  Each time I package up things I bought for Sasha to have here and go to the post office, I let some of my dream go.  When I lost my pink fishing pole, and we unwrapped the one we bought for Sasha, because he isn't coming here to use it, I let my dream change shape.  So, I'm really excited to tell you that one of the things we'll be doing on our missions trip is fishing!  I'll take a few pictures of this, because how many times do you get a chance to stand back and look at a dream spring to life?

God wants us to be willing to hand back each of our dreams to Him.  He desires our trust.  He is worthy of our trust.  God is not a dream-taker.  When things turn out differently than we hoped, it is because we can only see things from our limited perspective.  God wants me to chase Him and His will instead of a dream.  When I open my hands and release everything in my heart back to the Lord, He is so faithful to repackage and give back to me the dreams He has created for me in exactly the way He knows is best.

"Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart."  Psalm 37:4

If Only I Loved Swimming: Thoughts from the Edge of the Diving Board

When I was a little girl, I loved to swim.  Up to the edge of the diving board I would walk, letting my toes linger briefly at the edge.  My mom taught me how to stretch my arms up high and bend toward the water, so I could slice right through the surface. Eventually I became more comfortable at the end of the board, and I wanted to feel the movement of the board under my little body.  I wanted to dive "big." Standing there, arms locked tight beside my ears, fingers pointed, I loved to spring off the board and try to swim the whole length of the pool before coming up for air.

At the ocean, my dad and I would wade slowly out into the icy Atlantic surf at Acadia.  Sometimes we'd stand still, feeling the sand rushing out from beneath our feet each time the waves pulled away from the shore.  My dad and I would swim together in that water, only coming out when we couldn't even feel our skin anymore for the cold.

Now I'm a grown-up, and I don't love swimming.  Now, I prefer to sit in a beach chair with a good book, watching the kids play in the water.  I don't think being flung from the end of a diving board into a bunch of chlorinated pool water sounds like fun (or like a good idea for preserving my hair color).  Freezing half to death in the ocean, where I might be unfortunate enough to run into a jelly fish - and I'll definitely be unfortunate enough to have bits of sand sticking to me for days - is not my idea of a good time.

And that's ok.  As long as we're talking about swimming.

But what about my faith?  I want to be someone who gets to the edge and jumps.  I want my jumping to be fearless and for there to be no lingering at the edge of my comfort zone.  When the sway of uncertainty is under my feet and growing with each step, I don't want to hesitate before stretching my arms up heavenward and diving in.

What I notice about myself is that it's not the jumping part that I'm afraid of.  It's the landing.  Specifically it's the not-knowing-where-I'm-landing part.  A lot of times, I know what God's asking me to do, but I really struggle when I don't know the "how" part of His plan.  God's reminding me daily that He is telling me the "what," but I won't know the "how" until I leave the diving board.

Where is the line of trust drawn?  Do I have a place I'll follow Jesus up to, but to go beyond that is too far? Will I only stand up to my ankles at the edge of the expanse of what God's preparing for my life, or will I rush in, even when the sand is slipping from beneath my feet and the water's really cold?

I'm asking God to fill me with the kind of faith that never pauses before leaping.  I really want it to be something that happens without the requirement of leaping first, but that isn't how faith works.  So I'm standing at the edge, and sometimes I close my eyes, because I don't dare to look.  I just have to jump.

Once in a while, my dive is graceful and sure.  Other times, I jump reluctantly, as though I'm unsure if there's even water in the pool.  There are even moments I know I've sat in my chair when I should have been swimming.  I wonder what I've missed.

God is calling us to get in the water.  What if we all held on loosely to what we have, to where we are comfortable, to our financial security, to our agendas?  I've heard the phrase "give until it hurts" several times recently, and I don't know if I've ever done that.  I've thought of the rich man in Mark 10 who was told by Jesus, "Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven."  He walked away, because he only wanted Jesus as long as it didn't cost him too much.


Today, I'm praying that all of us will be taking more steps in faith and fewer in fear and that we will be people who show our love by our obedience, whatever the cost.  I'm asking God to keep giving me reasons to get back on that diving board, so I can eventually be good at diving headfirst, fearlessly and "big" into His will and even try swimming for a while before coming up for air.

"So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." 2 Corinthians 4:18

"We live by faith and not by sight." 2 Corinthians 5:7

"For Christ's love compels us... And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again." 2 Corinthians 5:14a & 15

If you want to move more fearlessly into the adventure God's designed you to live, and you want to be inspired to stretch your faith, read this book!