Story

"...I believe God wants us to create beautiful stories, and whatever it is that isn't God wants us to create meaningless stories, teaching people around us that life just isn't worth living" (Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years).

I just returned from a road trip that took us to the Four Corners region of Arizona and Utah for a bit of camping and recouping. I knew it would be cold, but I had no idea that temps would drop to around zero with the wind driving it deeper yet. We camped in a tent overlooking the impressive Mittens of Monument Valley, and, fortunately, we brought our zero degree sleeping bags which, in our opinion, kept us just from the edge of death!

My traveling companions were Curtis and Sput. Curtis is seventeen and now lives with us and is finding his place in the family. Sput, whose given name is Jon, lived with us for a while in Ireland and now is part of the crew in Colorado. He's a great road trip companion and appreciates all the road and comradere and solitude such a trip has to offer.

I've taken a relatively new interest in reading books outloud with friends. A couple months back (on another road trip with my friend Jon Stalls), he pulled out the book "The Shack" and suggested we read it aloud together to eat away the 14 hour drive to Glacier National Park. On the inside, I was a bit skeptical of the notion but was won over heartedly to the concept. Currently, I am reading "The Divine Commodity" by Skye Jethani with Jon, Ben, and Sput on a weekly basis.

When I heard that Donald Miller was coming out with a new book, "A Million Miles in a Thousand Years", I jumped on it. Sput and I are both fans of his previous books, so we decided to read his new book together -- in community. Our most recent road trip provided us the opportunity to finish it off. Here's the synopsis from the book's cover:

"A Million Miles in a Thousand Years chronicles Miller's rare opportunity to edit his life into a great story, to reinvent himself so nobody shrugs their shoulders when the credits roll. Through heart-wrenching honesty and hilarious self-inspection, Donald Miller takes readers through the life that emerges when it turns from boring reality into a meaningful narrative."

Since Miller's book is about living your life with meaningful narrative, we turned reading it into a meaningful, shared experience by reading it together and including his book on our road trip. We were making memories for ourselves -- and making important memories for Curtis, helping him to write a new story. Miller points out that even though one may have found themselves in a bad story, we can all write a new one.

Miller's metaphors of the Kingdom of God are beautifully written.

For most of my life, the road has been used to create a meaningful, memorable story for me and those in my life. Some of my earliest (and fondest) memories are when my elder brother Forest took me with him on the road...not only providing relief from the stories we found ourselves in but also creating new, memorable ones. I appreciate the change of perspective, the shared experiences, awakened senses, stirred creativity, and enlivened spirituality that such an adventure brings.

There are great stories written about when Jesus met people on the road...and I suppose the same could be written about my experiences with him. Consequently, I find it terribly important to include others in my story -- and to enjoy being a part of theirs. I appreciate meeting others along their journey of life, and the importance of such encounters and interaction does not escape me. I am learning to recognize the presence of a Third Party in every conversation, interaction, and investment in another's life. As Miller expressed in A Million Miles, "I was a tree in a story about a forest, and that it [is] arrogant for me to believe any differently...the story of the forest is better than the story of the tree" (p. 198).