This book walks you through Miller's three month journey of leaving home and discovering what it really means to be a Christ follower. He shares the ups and downs of his experience in fine detail so you feel as if you are in the story yourself. (If you aren't a big reader, no worries because I'm not either! However, Miller writes with great descriptions and really keeps you interested while reading. You should definitely check him out!)
"Here is something I found to be true: you don't start processing death until you turn thirty. I live in visions, for instance, and they are cast out some fifty years, and just now, just last year I realized my visions were cast too far, they were out beyond my life span. It frightened me to think of it, that I passed up an early marriage or children to write these silly books, that I bought the lie that the academic life had to be separate from relational experience, as though God only wanted us to learn cognitive ideas, as if the heart of a man were only created to resonate with movies. No, life cannot be understood flat on a page. It has to be lived; a person has to get out of his head, has to fall in love, has to memorize poems, has to jump off bridges into rivers, has to stand in an empty desert and whisper sonnets under his breath: I'll tell you how the sun rose a ribbon at a time... It's a living book, this life; it folds out in a million settings, cast with a billion beautiful characters, and it is almost over for you. It doesn't matter how old you are; it is coming to a close quickly, and soon the credits will roll and all your friends will fold out of your funeral and drive back to their homes in cold and still silence. And they will make a fire and pour some wine and think about how you once were... and feel a kind of sickness at the idea you never again will be. So soon you will be in that part of the book where you are holding the bulk of the pages in your left hand, and only a thin wisp of the story in your right. You will know by the page count, not by the narrative, that the Author is wrapping things up. You begin to mourn its ending, and want to pace yourself slowly toward its closure, knowing the last lines will speak of something beautiful, of the end of something long and earned, and you hope the thing closes out like last breaths, like whispers about how much and who the characters have come to love, and how authentic the sentiments feel when they have earned a hundred pages of qualification.
And so my prayer is that your story will have involved some leaving and some coming home, some summer and some winter, some roses blooming out like children in a play. My hope is your story will be about changing, about getting something beautiful born inside of you, about learning to love a woman or a man, about learning to love a child, about moving yourself around water, around mountains, around friends, about learning to love others more than we love ourselves, about learning oneness as a way of understanding God. We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting, the climax, and the resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn't it? It might be time for you to go. It might be time to change, to shine out. I want to repeat one word for you: Leave. Roll the word around on your tongue for a bit. It is a beautiful word, isn't it? So strong and forceful, the way you have always wanted to be. And you will not be alone. You have never been alone. Don't worry. Everything will still be here when you get back. It is you who will have changed."
About 2 weekends ago I got to be a part of Tupelo Methodist Church's Disciple Now. I was a leader, along with Lauren Randall, for the 11th and 12th grade girls. The weekend was a great time and full of learning. The topic for the weekend was BE BOLD and the verse we focused on was Acts 4:13 which says, "When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and then took note that these men had been with Jesus."
The first night we all shared our stories (testimonies) of how we came to Christ and what Christ has taught us through having a relationship with Him. We discussed how knowledge of the bible and of Christ is pointless without our own faith. As we were sharing our stories Lauren shared with us how her life used to be filled with nothing but routine. She would wake up, eat breakfast, go to school, then to band practice, come home and do homework, eat dinner, and go to bed. Then, she would wake up and do the exact same thing over again. How easy it is to become like this. We get so caught up in wanting to know exactly what the future holds for us and constantly looking to our planners for the next move we make.
However, even though this routine of events for Lauren may have been easy and comfortable for her, she realized that there had to be something more to life than this. She felt that she was missing something. She was not believeing that this was how her life was meant to be lived out every single day. She knew a change had to be made. Just as Donald Miller was saying, change is a good thing and it is healthy for us to allow it into our lives.
After our lesson that night, I began to think about my own life and the routine I allow myself to get into. I tend to make the excuse of not having enough time in my day to allow for a change to take place. I tell myself that there is no room for change. This is not true though. I have plenty of opportunities throughout my day to make a change in it. Better yet, maybe I need to exchange an activity I have now for something new and different in my life.
I hope that this has been as much of an encouragement to you as it has been to me! I pray that we will all allow change to come into our lives. That we would, on purpose, make every day a new and different day.
Hope everyone has a great afternoon : )
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