It's great timing and extremely helpful that I found a book that speaks volumes to me; that makes me think about life. About where I am and if I'm just doing the motions of life or am I really living. St. Irenaeous said "The glory of God is man (humans) fully alive." Fully alive. Do you even know what that means???? I'm not sure I do.
I've just finished a book by Donald Miller called, A Million Miles In A Thousand Years. It's a book about story. About life framed as a story outside of life.
I think that's how it is supposed to be. Anyway,it made me stop and think about my life from the third person's point of view; me being the third person looking at my own life. At times when I was reading, I would stop , put the book down, stare out at the mountains and red tile roofs and wonder why I like to stay home and not take risks. I used to take risks.
I hitchhiked across the country once. I traveled to other countries....alone. I risked other stuff that I'm not so proud to talk about now. But I ventured out looking for meaning. Once, when I was nineteen, I took the money my father had saved for my wedding, packed a some clothes, dog food and and a few 8 track cassettes, got in the car with my beagle companion and headed west, to the mountains, alone. I took risks. After I became a Christian I was still willing to take risks. I traveled with some young peers in a yellow school bus with no air conditioning from the protected arms of the Midwest into Mexico and the barrio. That only prompted me a few years later to pack my things, give up all that I know, and travel to my father's ancestor's homeland, Israel. That was a trip I like to call "The Magical Mystery Tour".
My experiences weren't always fun, and they were, for the most part, totally out of my comfort zone, but I felt alive. Totally, wonderfully, alive with wonder. I didn't think a whole lot about the future. I didn't have time.
I met someone there, and married him.
The plan, my plan, was to get married, return, and live an exciting, meaningful life forever by the Mediterranean Sea, in a home that the British designed years before. That didn't happen. What happened was that my future husband, from England, came to middle America, and married a Midwestern girl, me, from a smallish city that really was/is in the middle of nowhere.
Life sometimes, most times, doesn't go as planned. I got pregnant three months after we were married and the rest is history.
I'm not sure what I'm trying to say here other than if our lives are stories, mine was pretty interesting until I was married. No, I'm not knocking that, but now, thirty eight years later, I'm wondering. I'm wondering why risk is so foreign to me. I wonder why my biggest goal is to pay my house off. (Which in itself is a great goal!!) But when the house is paid off, what then? Something deep inside of me wants to sell all, go to that beautiful city by the sea (Haifa) and have a youth hostel, as planned 38 years ago. And then there are other things....just other things I think about too. I really have to know if that is what I want, what I really want.
I think half the time the problem that people have, if they will be ruthlessly honest and admit it to themselves,is that they don't know what they really want. I want story; I want to be remembered for a meaningful life. Not just by my sweet family, but by so many others. Maybe that's egotistical of me. Maybe what I'm trying to say is that I want a life worth living, not a life spent in front of the tv watching other people's lives.
In his book Miller talks about our lives as stories. Framed in a type of script for a movie. This quote really made me think, not just because owning a Volvo was always a goal for me, but because I want my life to be a story lived with meaning:
"If you watched a movie about a guy who wanted a Volvo and worked for years to get it, you wouldn't cry at the end when he drove off the lot, testing the windshield wipers You wouldn't tell your friends you saw a beautiful movie or go home and put a record on to think about the story you'd seen. The truth is, you wouldn't remember that movie a week later, except you'd feel robbed and want your money back. Nobody cries at the end of a movie about a guy who wants a Volvo.
But we spend years actually living those stories, and expect our lives to feel meaningful. The truth is if what we choose to do with our lives won't make a story meaningful, it won't make life meaningful either." (donald miller...form "a million miles in a thousand years".)
Now trust me, I'm not saying that if you don't sell everything and go out and do something outrageous that life isn't meaningful. I'm just saying the book made me think of meaning, something I haven't really thought of for a long time. Or at least I've tucked it away in the envelope of another time, another place.
There ya have it. Words to think by, right? Good night moon.
