Reading between the lines of her comment, I hear her saying, “Because it captures my attention, my imagination, it draws me in and takes me to another place.” That’s what a good story does, right?
Her comment made me think.
I replied, “Maybe the story of our lives needs to be more interesting. Perhaps one reason this book is so popular is that not enough of us are living out our own interesting stories.”
She quietly looked at me as if to say, “Why can’t you just let me read the book.”
I do think about life as a story. Would the story of your life, written in book form, be interesting enough for anyone to want to read? Would YOU want to read your story? Would anyone want to read MY story?
What I’m not advocating for is living carelessly and doing crazy things just for the sake of a great story.
Speaking of Great Stories…
A couple of years ago, my daughter and I took a mother-daughter adventure to Washington D.C. for spring break. I’m terrible with directions. While traveling in a new place I tend to rely heavily on the GPS. Late one afternoon, after having spent the day seeing the sites around the National Mall, my daughter and I drive back to our hotel in Maryland.
I can see on the GPS that my turn off is coming up fairly soon, so when the GPS woman tells me to “Turn right”, I obey. Immediately I find myself driving down a long, narrow lane through the deep, dark woods. By design, there is nowhere to turn around, and at this point, I realize I am not on the intended freeway. Clearly, I have taken a right-hand turn too soon.
Eventually, in the middle of the deep, dark woods, I come to a paved clearing. Immediately my soccer mom van is surrounded by men in black uniforms brandishing what looks to me like some really big, scary weapons. True story.
Where the heck did they come from, I wonder, still oblivious to where I am.
Suddenly I realize that not only did I make a wrong turn, but I have made a significant and serious mistake by the looks of things. Even my 11-year-old daughter has a man in black with a weapon standing guard on her side of the van. I guess we look pretty threatening.
As the agents search my cell phone and review the history of our GPS, we wait for the verdict on my fate. My mind races with all kinds of possibilities but the biggest question is, What will happen to my daughter if they take me in?
They interrogate me about my purpose for being in the area, what sites we visited, when we arrived, etc. Finally, one of the uniformed men tells me where we are and for the first time I find out that we are right in the center of certain high-security government headquarters. (I’m not gonna tell you which… I don’t want to get in trouble! And, just for the record, I have no idea where I was…I promise.) Who knew.
Apparently, I have unknowingly trespassed on a highly restricted federal property. Uh-oh. Federal Trespassing. This isn’t good, I thought.
I try to make light of the situation and crack a few nervous jokes with the men in black brandishing big weapons, but they don’t think any of it is funny.
Finally, we are let go. With knees knocking and heart still pounding I start my van back up and drive, escorted of course, out of the property. Never have I been so happy to be free.
Back To The Point
Great stories keep us on our toes, keep us wanting to turn the page to see what’s going to happen next. And, great stories often have similar themes: near death situations, rescues, risk, redemption, unconditional love and acceptance, hope, overcoming forces of evil and triumph.
G. K. Chesterton states,
Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.
[bctt tweet=”There are reasons why we are drawn to great stories. We find truth in them. And we long for those truths to be our truths.” username=”viaMarbleTracy”]
You Can Live an Interesting Story
I want to live an interesting story, and I bet you do too.
So how do you do that? If you live out the dreams and passions in your heart, using your unique gifts and abilities, and bring who you are to bear on the world around you, your story will be an interesting story. You can live out a great story. In fact, you are meant to live a great story, which will always be an interesting one. Each of us needs to figure out how to live into the story we create with our lives.
I know for myself that as my story has intersected with God’s story (God has a story going since the beginning of time replete with all the themes we love in a great story), that’s what has made my story have meaning and purpose and hopefully a story worth telling.
Without that, I’m pretty sure my story would be so boring and tragic no one would ever care to hear it. It would be a story where the main character doesn’t get rescued, never knows unconditional love, gets swallowed up by the evil in the world and dies a hopeless and helpless lonely old woman.
So go live today, and as you do may it be a page worth reading in the story of your life.
Great thoughts! God’s plan for our Life-Story is awesome.
I have it all planned out plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for. Jer. 29:11 The Message
Awhile ago I wrote the following comments and I thought they coincide with your thoughts:
I believe we all have a story. It’s there waiting to be told. We can choose to find it by fully developing, living and loving the life we have or instead live vicariously through the lives of others we deem more exciting. I discovered this when I was somewhere between the age of nine and eleven. During those years I lived, ate and breathed mystery stories and had just finished reading a great one. I rolled onto my back on a blanket under a Maple tree in our back yard, gazing up into the blue sky, relishing that after-a-good-book feeling resonating through me, wishing my life were as exciting as the books I read: mysteries to solve, foreign lands to travel, exciting people to meet. Then the realization came. My life is exciting. It is just that when the characters in a book face a dull moment, they turn the page and start a new chapter and in real life I had to live through those boring moments. At that instant, as my body lay on the blanketed grass and my eyes gazed through the leafy maple branches past the fluffy white clouds to the blue sky beyond, I knew that if all the exciting moments in my life, were compacted together, they would create an exciting story. It was all in the point of view. My life was a book.
Aleta, thank you for sharing these paragraphs from your own writings! Very good… You seemed young to me when you first gained insights into your life as a story. I’m sure it wasn’t until later in life that I began to understand that and I feel its still unfolding in my awareness in some ways. Let’s keep living good stories!