STORY

Have you read A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: How I Learned to Live a Better Story? In the book, Donald Miller explains how our lives follow the same path as a protagonist within a story. This concept was revolutionary to me.

I had just discovered the elements of story through Teaching the Classics (yes, my early education was sadly lacking) and had begun to analyze simple stories based on these elements. (You can follow some of our parent-child literary analysis book club discussions under the Book Detectives tag.)

Very soon after, I took a short workshop titled The Bible as the True Story of the World wherein we talked about how the Bible as a whole, rather than piecemeal stories, followed the very same elements of story. This was the moment I began to realize that story was a truth about creation, and that God as our creator had indelibly written the concept of story and creativity onto our very souls. (I’m exploring the topic of biblical story in greater detail this year while reading The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story. More about that later.)

You might well imagine then what sort of epiphany I experienced while reading A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. Yes! Of course!

p. 31

I wanted it to be an easy story. But nobody really remembers easy stories. Characters have to face their greatest fears with courage. That’s what makes a good story.

p. 58

We get robbed of the glory of life because we aren’t capable of remembering how we got here. When you are born, you wake slowly to everything… The experience is so slow you could easily come to believe life isn’t that big of a deal, that life isn’t staggering. What I’m saying is I think life is staggering and we’re just used to it. We all are like spoiled children no longer impressed with the gifts we’re given—it’s just another sunset, just another rainstorm moving in over the mountain, just another child being born, just another funeral.

p. 59

I’ve wondered, though, if one of the reasons we fail to acknowledge the brilliance of life is because we don’t want the responsibility inherent in the acknowledgment. We don’t want to be characters in a story because characters have to move and breathe and face conflict with courage. And if life isn’t remarkable, then we don’t have to do any of that; we can be unwilling victims rather than grateful participants.

p. 68

If the point of life is the same as the point of a story, the point of life is character transformation… If the character doesn’t change, the story hasn’t happened yet.

I wrote my post Billboards a while after that, a year and a half ago. A year and a half ago. This is the moment when that well-known motivational quote, “A year from now you’ll wish you had started today,” starts beating me down like a relentless sledge-hammer.

But my story is not over. Life is a staggering gift. And I’m answering the call to adventure.

This is my year of discovering my STORY. In faith. In art. In writing. In health. In relationships. In home. In adventure. In gratitude. In celebration. In reading. In learning. In thoughts.

 

The STORY of one ordinary, extraordinary LIFE.

And I’ll share my story journey here at Mt. Hope Chronicles.

That doesn’t mean for one second that I am not full of fears. In many ways I am terrified of Monday, the first day of 40 days of my Storyline Productivity Schedule challenge, starting with a free week of life coaching.

FEARS:

Big picture:

• My call to adventure is mundane, prosaic compared to other people’s adventures.
• Failure. Failure to get started. Failure to persevere.

Specifically:

• I won’t be able to get out of bed in the morning. This likely sounds ridiculous to most of you, but the truth is that I simply cannot get out of bed in the mornings. It’s as if I am in a different world and no brilliant reason or motivation that I came up with the night before makes one iota of difference to me. I would blissfully sleep from midnight to 10 am every single day. I require a lot of sleep in general, and I simply find being in bed a lovely place to be.
• I won’t be able to control distractions. Control anything, really. Lack of control is a big issue for me. I hate that I can’t control my environment or myself, and the feeling of being out of control is terrifying.

I’ll let you know how my week progresses!

 

 

For more reading about heroes and the elements of story:

::  The Heroic Journey 1: Every Story is the Same Old Story @ Write at Home

“Somebody is living in the world of the common day. Ordinary day-to-day life. He’s not comfortable there, something’s… off. Then it happens: He gets an invitation, in some way, to enter a different world. Go on an adventure. A quest.

Thus the journey begins — wait. Not so fast. It’s usually the case that the person, now recognizable as the hero, rejects the call to adventure. He’s unsure of himself, even though deep down, he knows this is what he’s been waiting for.”

 

Have you answered a call to adventure?