I promised to write this post a few days ago, but I never got around to it.
Battle of the Bands auditions, reading, and other events of life got in the way.
I'm sitting at the desk abandoned by Melisa. She's off living a great story at Oxford this semester. I am incredibly jealous and I miss her, but I am here now for this time. I have responsibilities and opportunities this semester, and I cannot change that now.
I've been using this desk for the past week because I have never learned how to keep my own clear.
It's something that I was determined to change, but I'm not great at following through when I make promises to myself.
I'm drinking the first brewed coffee of a new can, watching "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring," waiting for dough to rise so I can finish making cinnamon rolls, and trying to psych myself up to read about fifty pages of my US History books. I have Music Theory homework to do, two devotional books on Ephesians to start, Shakespeare to read and summarize, a song to finish writing, a cave to clean, laundry to do, dishes to wash, notes to type up and email, and probably a dozen other things to check of my nonexistent to-do list.
All that is beside the point (well, not completely, but that's yet to be seen).
Sunday night, my parents and I went to Wheaton to hear Don Miller speak. the topic was something about "life calling" blah, blah, blah. Really, it was about story. Don has learned, through the process of turning his bestselling book Blue Like Jazz into a movie (to be released April 13), how to live good stories. He has learned that the elements that make a good story, in a book or movie, are often the same elements that make a good life. I learned this from him when I read A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.
But not much has changed. I often think about the need to live good stories and to cut out the junk that keeps me from doing that, but living good stories isn't easy and I like things to be easy.
If you seek comfort, you will not be satisfied when the credits roll.
That's a paraphrase of one part of Don's talk on Sunday. And it smacked me in the face.
I really hate it when that happens, and it happened several times over the course of the hour and a half that we sat there and listened.
"A story is a character that wants something and overcomes conflict to get it."
Now, I'm not entirely sure what I want. I want a lot of things.
I want to know what I'm supposed to do with my life.
I want a husband.
I want to live in a way that I am worthy to be called a child of God and the Bride of Christ.
(I wrote about cute couples almost two years ago.)
I want to bring change to someone's life.
Each of these is a separate story, all intertwined in the great story in which we all play roles.
I have learned much about conflict in the past twelve months. I have experienced it firsthand as I have struggled with God to learn about His love (just over a year ago), confession (the anniversary of that comes in about three weeks), rejection (March), anxiety and fear for my own life (May, as I traveled to England), my grandpa's death (June), frustration with people (July and August as I worked four days each week in a hot warehouse, and September as I adjusted to living with people I didn't really know), confronting my anger and bitterness (mid-semester), my desire to find a guy to love me with a forever kind of love (my entire life, really), homesickness, wondering about my future, struggling to assert myself in healthy ways, facing my critical spirit and insecurity and arrogance, and so much more. It has been, as I believe I have written before, the most terrifying and exciting emotional roller coaster I have ever ridden.
I learned in my Marriage and Family class last semester how important conflict is if it is handled well. It can deepen a relationship. It creates a bond between those involved. Conflict isn't necessarily negative. We were created for conflict. Seriously. There was conflict before the Fall. For example, there was no mate suitable for Adam in all the creatures that had been created. (That's something I learned from Donald Miller. "Next time you complain that you can't find a date, think about Adam.") Take conflict. Give it to God. Let Him turn it into something beautiful. Use that beauty. Be a "wounded healer." (This is the idea of using what you have learned in overcoming your own struggles and experiences to help others over come theirs.)
So. That's what I'm processing right now. I'm thinking through the conflicts I'm facing right now. They are many, but none that cannot be overcome. My God is for me and He will not be defeated.
More to come later in the week.
Battle of the Bands auditions, reading, and other events of life got in the way.
I'm sitting at the desk abandoned by Melisa. She's off living a great story at Oxford this semester. I am incredibly jealous and I miss her, but I am here now for this time. I have responsibilities and opportunities this semester, and I cannot change that now.
I've been using this desk for the past week because I have never learned how to keep my own clear.
It's something that I was determined to change, but I'm not great at following through when I make promises to myself.
I'm drinking the first brewed coffee of a new can, watching "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring," waiting for dough to rise so I can finish making cinnamon rolls, and trying to psych myself up to read about fifty pages of my US History books. I have Music Theory homework to do, two devotional books on Ephesians to start, Shakespeare to read and summarize, a song to finish writing, a cave to clean, laundry to do, dishes to wash, notes to type up and email, and probably a dozen other things to check of my nonexistent to-do list.
All that is beside the point (well, not completely, but that's yet to be seen).
Sunday night, my parents and I went to Wheaton to hear Don Miller speak. the topic was something about "life calling" blah, blah, blah. Really, it was about story. Don has learned, through the process of turning his bestselling book Blue Like Jazz into a movie (to be released April 13), how to live good stories. He has learned that the elements that make a good story, in a book or movie, are often the same elements that make a good life. I learned this from him when I read A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.
But not much has changed. I often think about the need to live good stories and to cut out the junk that keeps me from doing that, but living good stories isn't easy and I like things to be easy.
If you seek comfort, you will not be satisfied when the credits roll.
That's a paraphrase of one part of Don's talk on Sunday. And it smacked me in the face.
I really hate it when that happens, and it happened several times over the course of the hour and a half that we sat there and listened.
"A story is a character that wants something and overcomes conflict to get it."
Now, I'm not entirely sure what I want. I want a lot of things.
I want to know what I'm supposed to do with my life.
I want a husband.
I want to live in a way that I am worthy to be called a child of God and the Bride of Christ.
(I wrote about cute couples almost two years ago.)
I want to bring change to someone's life.
Each of these is a separate story, all intertwined in the great story in which we all play roles.
I have learned much about conflict in the past twelve months. I have experienced it firsthand as I have struggled with God to learn about His love (just over a year ago), confession (the anniversary of that comes in about three weeks), rejection (March), anxiety and fear for my own life (May, as I traveled to England), my grandpa's death (June), frustration with people (July and August as I worked four days each week in a hot warehouse, and September as I adjusted to living with people I didn't really know), confronting my anger and bitterness (mid-semester), my desire to find a guy to love me with a forever kind of love (my entire life, really), homesickness, wondering about my future, struggling to assert myself in healthy ways, facing my critical spirit and insecurity and arrogance, and so much more. It has been, as I believe I have written before, the most terrifying and exciting emotional roller coaster I have ever ridden.
I learned in my Marriage and Family class last semester how important conflict is if it is handled well. It can deepen a relationship. It creates a bond between those involved. Conflict isn't necessarily negative. We were created for conflict. Seriously. There was conflict before the Fall. For example, there was no mate suitable for Adam in all the creatures that had been created. (That's something I learned from Donald Miller. "Next time you complain that you can't find a date, think about Adam.") Take conflict. Give it to God. Let Him turn it into something beautiful. Use that beauty. Be a "wounded healer." (This is the idea of using what you have learned in overcoming your own struggles and experiences to help others over come theirs.)
So. That's what I'm processing right now. I'm thinking through the conflicts I'm facing right now. They are many, but none that cannot be overcome. My God is for me and He will not be defeated.
More to come later in the week.
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