Book Review: A Million Miles In A Thousand Years by Donald Miller

I have known for some time that a review of Donald Miller's latest book A Million Miles In A Thousand Years would be the final entry in this blog.

It seems fitting.

This blog began some eighteen months and 160 entries ago with a Donald Miller theme. It will close with one as well. Along the way, I have thrown out a dozen or so other posts that have been tagged with the "Don Miller" label.

I actually received an advance copy of this book from the publisher. I was one of 100 people whom the publisher decided came up with the best creative reason why I deserved to get a copy of the book first, weeks before it went on sale.

This was my entry:

"I've been pretending Don is one of my best friends for a couple of years. It all started when in reading his four previous books I felt like he understood the longings of my heart for God in a way no one ever has before. Since that time I became one of his first blog readers. I've sponsored him on his cross country bike ride (even meeting him briefly as he came through my town). I leave occasional insightful comments on his blog, and respond in pithy brilliance to his tweets. Alas, I have not found a hidden manuscript. And when I signed in to the blogger site a few minutes after the email went out the allotment was already gone. Yes, I could wait and buy a book in a month like everyone else. But how then will I feel special? It appears the only way that my little delusion can continue is for you to hook me up.

Thanks for your consideration."

I think the reality is just a few more than 100 people submitted requests and I just got lucky.

The odd thing is how hard it has been for me to pick this darn book up. It has sat on my bedside table for nearly six weeks. The reasons are a bit personal. Don Miller's work has a deeply personal meaning to me. The above note to the publisher is not far off. I have gotten a bit too wrapped up in it all at times. I've tried too hard to find identity in some of the similarities between the author's stories and my own.

There is no denying that Miller has put words to some of the deepest longings of my heart. And as I have read his work I have felt a bond that has seemed to me at times more than coincidence. It has taken me the last year to learn that Miller's casual and deeply authentic and transparent writing style has led many MILLIONS of people to feel this same affection for him. Unfortunately, my enthusiasm has led to a couple of comments on his blog that I later came to regret as they were overly transparent in nature. And when Mr. Miller and his cross country biking team came to Tyler last summer I embarrassed my wife deeply with some of my fawning.

For a time I spent too much time hanging on every word Don put up on his blog, and often I had to fight some urges to comment too often. I sent him an invitation to ride in a bike race. I forwarded him a first edition of a Hemingway short story compilation just as a thanks for what his writing had done in my life. For the most part I have settled down... but the truth is that for reasons I can't explain, I have wanted somehow to be a friend to THE Don Miller and there is a tension in the fact that clearly can't happen. I know I am not normal. It is not a matter of me being truly unbalanced, or stalking or anything. I just deeply identify with his writings and for a period I was just certain he and I were going to be friends.

I think I somehow needed to actually have the book and wait six weeks to read it in order to show myself that I actually have some self-control.

Tonight was the night to dive in.

I discovered Miller's work in early 2006. I had heard the buzz about a book called Blue Like Jazz but was a couple years behind many in reading it. I read it at a time when I was deeply lost. After fifteen years of marriage I had just moved out of my home. I was living in a tiny apartment, trying to maintain a life with my kids and struggling to find my way in a new world that was clouded in shame and guilt.

As a backdrop to all of this I had for years felt lost in my faith. I had been living as a closeted free thinker / pseudo-liberal surrounded by a world layered deeply in conservative, traditional religious belief. In Blue Like Jazz I found written words that were frighteningly parallel to the tensions I had been working through. I had long been tremendously in love with Jesus, but a very reluctant Christian.

My passion for Christ has not often manifested itself in the ways that it should have. I have lived a very flawed life. Yet tensions played out in roller coaster like fashion with sin, guilt, repent, sin cycles repeating again and again and again. Blue Like Jazz started me down a road that has begun to free me. I next read what I previously believed is Miller's best book, Searching For God Knows What. In it I discovered the Bible in an entirely new light. I embrace now that it is a love story, a romance novel written by the Author of our lives, not just a list of rights and wrongs. Few concepts have had more practical benefit to my daily personal life.

Miller's other two works, Through Painted Deserts and To Own A Dragon were also consumed with equal verve.

A Million Miles In a Thousand Years may well be Miller's best book to date.

I consumed it tonight in about four hours. It was accompanied by about half a bottle of 2006 Highflyer Aviator Red and a bowl of Penzance English Blend in my favorite Radice Rind pipe. I read on the screen porch in 56 degree weather while the acorns pounded the roof above. It was a great night. I got a near perfect first light and only required a half dozen relights on a very deep bowl that carried me through the entire book. Fun stuff.

One frustration I have with Miller's writing is that it can seem a bit light at times. There are 35 short chapters in the book, each anywhere from two to a dozen pages long. The book flies by. Sometimes it kills me that I could pick up every book by my favorite author and now have all five books read in the evenings of one Monday through Friday work week.

And yet hidden in the quirky casual writing style and the laugh out loud funny random comments are deeply moving stories about how to live a life that tells a better story. There is nothing truly light about this reading. It is deeply meaningful stuff. It has the potential to be life-changing stuff. In a world of hyperbole, this is the real deal.

Miller's brilliance is his disarming transparency. He writes great stories. Painfully personal stories. His word choices are subtly profound and often texturally deeply layered and illustrative. I often find myself flying along only to be caught holding my breath, pulling back the pace of my reading, going back over a paragraph again, and suddenly moved to tears, caught off guard by the emotions brought forward as he describes meeting his father, the heart breaking loss of a relationship he knew was meant for marriage, or even his admissions over his insecurities about his weight.

More often still I am moved to feel disturbed that in his story I find my own. That where he is lost I am lost. Where his fears lie, so do mine. For me, what has always been most troubling is how easily I fit into his stories. And in that also, where his hope lies so does mine. Miller never beats you up with a lesson. He tells his story. And you are expected to draw your own conclusion and learn your own lesson through how you work out your own relationship with his writing. It is the center of his success. He never tells you what to do. In sharing what he has done, he expects you will figure it out yourself. I don't doubt this is how his legions of fans all have come to feel like he reads their minds and knows their hearts.

I wanted to include a more inspiring passage to illustrate Miller's style, but as I flipped through the book tonight looking at my highlights I was struck again and again by this passage. It speaks to me. This is how my mind works.

"I put my pen down on the bed and waited. Then another thought came that said I would be living the rest of my life alone because I was unlovable. The thought that I could no longer eat or drink would have been less devastating. I sat in a haze for a minute and was startled when the yellow pad slipped off my knee onto the floor. The bones in my chest turned their sharp ends outward and made a tent of the skin over my heart. I told myself it wasn't true, that I was a perfectly good person and God could change whatever it was that made me contemptible. I told myself there was still time. But counselors from hell spoke to me from under the pillows and behind the chairs until they had the big voice."

I know that voice. I live with it daily. And for the rest of my life that voice will now have a name... "counselors from hell."

The book is darn funny, but in a different way than previous writings. I found myself laughing out loud less, but smiling a knowing smile more. It is a more mature book. For Don Miller cartoon lovers, yes there is even a cartoon, with much the same dark humor that made the rabbit and astronaut cartoons in previous books so impacting. It does seem a bit forced and perhaps out of context but it is funny, and telling.

This is a book to be read again and again.

The premise is a simple one. Don is stuck in a writers rut. He wrote the tremendously successful Blue Like Jazz but his subsequent two books have not done as well. When a director and cinematographer contact him about turning Blue Like Jazz into a movie he agrees to meet with them, only to be later troubled by the fact that they find his actual life quite boring. Much of the book alternates between technical aspects of story telling (what makes a great story) and Don's retelling of rich stories he has now lived or experienced through those he has come to know.

As he learns what makes a great movie story, Don is compelled to realize that his own life can be edited as well. Much of the remainder of the book is an exploration of what comes next for Don as he strives to live a more compelling story.

Truth be told, prior to finally picking this book up, I have read too many other reviewers insights on this book. To a degree that I thought I was not going to like the finished product.

I was reassured within the first three dozen pages. I have heard many say that the books starts slow. I disagree. The entire book is slow. It is not as much of an "action flick" as some of his previous works. Much like the movies Don claims to love, this is more the independent artsy flick. This book is more about slow character development. Fewer explosions. More subtlety. I found it a richer and deeper experience.

I think if you identify with Miller you will find his stories deeply reassuring and inspiring. If you don't you may well find them off putting and narcissistic. If you are moved by the nature of his journey, you will likely be moved to move your own journey along. If you are not so touched, you may respond like some reviewers have, criticizing the premise that we can or should try to affect our lives to the degree that Miller prods.

I expected to read a book that seemed grandiose. How many of us can really afford to stop life and embrace the life changing events that Miller takes on? We have families to raise and jobs to attend. Yes Miller talks of his journey to hike Machu Pichu in Peru and ride across America, but I was personally affected to a greater degree by the conflict overcome as he sought out his father, suffered the loss of his one greatest relationship with a woman, and allowed an idea to become The Mentoring Project.

I was ready to rail against this need for "drama" and claim that there is great value in living quiet and humble lives. But in truth, Miller does not argue against this. He simply asks everyone to look at their lives and dare not give up on living a better story. One that steps away from our oft-centered journey toward buying a better car.

I expected to struggle with Millers premise that we direct most of our lives. I have always lived a life striving to find "God's will". And yet the truth is that much of my life has been miserable as the tension of not finding that place has led to profound insecurity and disappointment.

So I found comfort, not disillusionment in Miller's writing that Jesus is not intended to be our fulfillment on this earth. That our questions don't really get answered here. But we will find beauty and dance and drink in the great wedding feast in heaven.

I came to embrace the idea that God simply wants us to get caught up in living our lives and loving Him. Much of the book speaks to the nature of God as the ultimate Author and that we are a "tree in a story about a forest". That we are a chosen character in God's rich play and that we are called upon to impart our own acting in this grand theater. I found less conflict in that open-ended our role vs. God's role than I expected.

This is a deeply spiritual book. And I defy anyone to suggest that Miller has strayed from a Christ centered focus. No one can walk away from reading this book without an explicit sense that Don believes that God is our Author, and that he is a devoted follower of Christ. There is a mature understanding expressed that life is hard, and God does not fix the hard, and that again Christ is not the answer to every question here on earth. Some in conservative circles have labeled Miller a heretic, and I guess if that is true than I have come to be one also.

Finishing this book I am left with a profound sense of discomfort. Part of me is deeply troubled by how much of life I have thrown away. And yet stories of Mike Barrow and many others in the book bring me to a place of tremendous encouragement.

Things I now know:
- God is deeply excited to join me in my journey of living my life and making the best of my story.
- I am far from powerless to enact change in my life.
- I can impart deep value in my children's lives by creating rich and memorable experiences for them.
- That the journey I have lived in the last three years... that of surrender, acceptance, repentance, and confidence have moved me into a uniquely new place of being able to embrace my future and move forward in the second half of my life.
- That my failings and mistakes are just a part of who I am and should be looked at as part of my character building arc.

I look forward to waking up tomorrow. I look forward to beginning to flesh out what I want the rest of my life to look like. I need not feel paralyzed. I need not feel stuck in the place I am.

Even some of my darkest secrets, my deepest regrets, my greatest blunders, and most shameful sins now hold promise. In the story of my life, I have always lamented that my own sins have created my greatest conflict. And yet that is now the challenge in which I get to strive to overcome. And perhaps my greatest achievements will rise out of those very things which I have feared the most.

Of course, I want that life to be authored by God and to be focused on those things that are rich in Christ. Yet I see now that I need not fear moving forward in confidence. I know that the still, small Voice will be whispering... guiding me in the journey.

So, thanks Don. I wanted somehow not to like this book. I feared I would not like this book. But I found it deeply meaningful. For a f----- up guy like me, it is great to find such hope.

Thank you. Thank you.


So, this entry closes the Surrender blog. Thanks to the handful of you have followed me through this part of my journey. I will hope to start up a new online presence in the coming months.

Take care. Blessings to you all.

Colorado Vacation Pics

Just for the sake of friends and family (does anyone else come here anyway???) I wanted to share a few quick Colorado vacation pics. This is the first summer I can ever recall taking two weeks of vacation. And we did it on a budget!!! I feel very blessed. While the Florida trip was fun, I am much more of a mountain person than a beach person. I love cool weather. Our week in Colorado was blessedly cool. In Rocky Mountain National Park, highs were in the low 70s and nighttime temps sunk into the high 40s. It was great. The kids did very well, and all praise to Jen for making it through 4 nights of tent camping with no shower, a stomach illness and few complaints.

35 degrees on top of Pikes Peak.

The new to us vehicle loaded up with camping gear. Very comfy on the road. Horrible gas mileage. Especially with the roof top bags.




Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs.




Our view from our Rocky Mountain National Park Moraine Park campsite. 14,000+ foot Longs Peak in the background. That is our cool new REI Kingdom 6 tent. Looks smaller in the photo than it is. 6 feet high at peak. 10 feet long by 8 feet wide plus extra room in the vestibules. I have never been a "big" tent fan, but this one is great. Had the rain fly staked out in this photo for ventilation. Can roll it up further if needed. Then can buckle it down in a storm. Stable even on a very windy, stormy night. A bit of a hassle to set up alone.

Family trail ride.

Various wildlife.

Views from our hike to Alberta Falls.

Just a couple more shots of the kids.

What happens to one's wife on a 14 hour marathon drive home.

Surrender Blog: Best Posts

I have written nearly 160 entries here. I count fewer than a dozen as being worth much. In fact, I thought it would be fun to create a sort of "top 10" posts lists as I close up this blog soon. Yet as I read back through them, most are just total crap. Self-indulgent, rambling, bloated crap.

Yet, since the blog is going to go away soon, IMHO... these are the highlights of my musings here:


I guess based on impact, there is no doubt my post honoring Lyle Hillegas is the blog highlight.

In fact, that really may be the only post I am actually truly proud of writing. It may be the only one worth really reading.


There is one poem on the site. You probably won't get it.


I have written a few movie reviews. I am not sure if any are particularly good, but according to the traffic report on the blog, the one reviewing Facing The Giants and Flywheel gets read a lot.


I liked this review of every car I have every owned, titled "Crash".

I tried real hard to be a good writer with this one titled "Mornings".

It is long, but I like what I had to say about my church, and me in "Vineyard Church, Tyler, TX (AKA 15 Lessons for Mike)".

It is also long-winded, but I took on Focus on the Family and the way many approach religion in America in "Focus On Your Own Damn Family". It needs a good edit but I thought I made some decent, though perhaps not profound, points.

I wrote once about my struggles with disciplining my kids and observations of a Pokemon tournament in "Alien Worlds". Yep, it is also long. But pretty funny.

In terms of a topic that is important but NO ONE wants to read about try, "Christians Abort Their Babies Every Day".


These last few aren't necessarily well written. They are more self-indulgent, and more for those who just want to get to know me.

If I am feeling down sometimes I go back and read this one, "It's a 'good thing'." This post also says a lot about who "I am."

Perhaps my best post of self-analytical ramblings was the first, titled "Surrender". Or perhaps one called "Why I am really weird...and need a Savior!"

In terms of the two posts that were the turning point in the blog, read "Killer is Me" and "Despair No More."

Just for fun, check out the list of all the movies rented from Netflix in the last three years.

Thanks!

Transitions

In the next couple months this blog is going to kind of go away. It has served its purpose really well. But it lost its heart about four months ago.

And to tell the truth I am really tired of it. I realize that so much of this blog represents a period of my life that I now want to move past.

Yet, it has been a very important period for me.

In this blog I found my new self. I told my story to the world. I shared my deepest pain. I vented. A lot. This blog has shown me at my most vulnerable and most transparent. And I needed to do that. I needed the world to see my soul. This blog has served as a form of public accountability for me as I worked through so many things.

Most certainly this blog has shown me GROW. And that is a great thing. From a soul tortured by recent past sin. It detailed all my efforts to make amends with all the wrongs I had ever done. And it revealed my process of discovering surrender as an idea to finally letting go and coming to a truer understanding of grace. I can't fix the past. I can't make it all right. I can just say I am sorry. And let God meet me in this place and move forward.

And that is where I am at right now. In a place of wanting to move forward. This blog leaves me feeling too stuck in a place of self-pity. I see that now. So much of what I have written here reveals a man with deep seated insecurities, longing for something more, trapped in a place where I am self-absorbed and preoccupied with what is being done to me.

At times I have been so incredibly and utterly selfish here.

I have seen the traffic on the blog fall off dramatically in the last months and that is good. It is a public place. Yet some unexpected folks found there way here and that created some issues. To those of you who have been offended or hurt by what you have found here, I am sorry. Yet, I don't think you understand. What was written here was never for you.

For those of you who have come here to see a bit of my heart, I thank you. Thanks for your prayers and support. Thanks for tolerating the long posts, the rants, the self-absorption and all the rest.

I have written about 150 posts here and I think about a dozen entries were worthy of being read. Maybe I will carry those forward.

I want to move this story, my story, to a different place. So I will.

I am studying fervently right now. Have to get past this damn Board exam in October. At some point thereafter there will be a new blog. It will have a different address. Maybe there will be some tiny link to this place... but probably not.

It will have a much different look and feel. I hope it will really be a place that people that know me would want to come and hang out. We will see.

Life: An Update

I have not posted in about six or seven weeks. I have been tempted to write in those moments of "crisis" when I always feel the world is caving in around me. I have resisted because so many of my posts have been written that way. I hope to be less prolific and more focused when I write. To write at least as often in my periods of confidence as in my periods of weakness.

Life is fine. I struggle with many of the same issues and anxieties. Money. Work. Relationships. Normal things that everyone experiences. I am trying to learn to surrender each thing each day. I succeed on occasion and fail often. Yet I don't think I tend to get bogged down as much as I used to in the past.

There is probably as much on my shoulders right now as has been in any period of my life, and I still feel a sense of overall peace and surrender and joy. There are moments of panic. But I am managing. And that this is all occurring without medication, and hopefully without great consequence on those around me is a tribute to a loving God, and perhaps my learning to give much of the burden to Him.

At times I panic over the ongoing level of debt but there is no single act that is going to solve that, so I continue to learn to just persist in the work of doing what I can. I may be in practice until I am 80, but all I can do is just take it day by day. Work is good and income is as maxed out as it can be. The budget is lean. All that can be put toward debt is being put there. I wish there were a lot fewer financial surprises... tax implications from years ago, auto repairs, etc., but they are largely out of my control.

Much of my time has been consumed by studying for the retaking of the Pediatric Board Exam in October. I probably have three or four hundred hours of studying put in since March. I pray that all the effort will pay off this time. I feel anxiety about the test, but know that there is no more that I can do than put in my best effort in studying.

Jen and I are doing some couples counseling and much is being revealed in that. I still make many of the same mistakes every day.

I reached a point of being down to about 185, which is 33 pounds of total weight loss. I have hovered around this point for the better part of the last month or so. I got REALLY tired of dieting, so seem to have reached a place where I know how to eat and maintain my weight. Further weight loss will require exercise. There won't be time for that until after the test in October.

The kids are good. Enjoying summer. Julia ruptured her ear drum at some unknown point and started having symptoms in early June. It has not healed so she is having surgery to repair it on Tuesday. I have normal parent worries about that but trust that it will go well.

We just returned from a week in Destin, Florida. It was my first vacation in a year and while it was a good bit of work watching and managing the kids at the beach, it was certainly great to see them enjoy themselves and also just be away from the office. I took the week off from studying.

Jen is having a major surgery at the end of August and will be down for a few weeks after that. I am hopeful that she will not be disabled to a great degree and that she can return to a place of full functionality without ongoing pain. She hopes to return to work when recovered.

We just learned her brother has had a relapse of his Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma after seven years of remission. All are positive that with treatment it will be put into remission again, but hearts are a bit heavy there.

I spent part of my afternoon today online looking at Donald Miller's blog. I hadn't been there in a couple weeks. I have tried to avoid things that suck up time and steal my focus from studying. There was a great conversation there about the meaning of the Christian story. In the comments were several heart wrenching expressions of people who have struggled with life and church and so forth. I felt somehow led to share the following. I always write too much, but I hope somehow it helps someone.

I know that in the writing, I am ministering to myself as much as anyone else. And I hope that today will be the first day of many more days where I can surrender the daily as much as I write it is important.

Stephanie:

I fret over many of the same questions you have. Especially those about the real purpose of this life, how to work out the practical aspects of faith after a lot of disappointments, and how to help my kids to have a different perspective than I did growing up.

You mention some involvement in a church and I REALLY pray that you can find a community of loving believers that can help you heal and move forward. You can’t fix all those around you and change what they have done. But you can heal. And become better equipped to handle each new challenge. I think God does much of His best work through the healing power of His people.

I grew up in a family of faith, but what I got out of my youth was this belief that sin is really bad, sin separates you from God, SO STOP SINNING. And since I could never do the not sinning part well enough, my life and faith became a process of constant self-deception.

I used all sorts of tricks to cover the shame and guilt of all my sin. And this lasted well into my thirties, when I had a “give up” moment and messed up big. Insert story of messing up most of life, work, family, etc. here.

I think now that most of my trouble was based on my selfish need to have all the answers and control life. There is nothing wrong with the questions. But how you handle the lack of an answer may be one of the most important challenges in life. I had become an island, didn’t really allow anyone close to me, so I had come to believe the deceptions that ran through my head.

When I came out of this period, I first went back to what I knew best and found a church that reinforced all my old patterns of performance based faith. Fortunately I was guided instead to a community of believers that recognized sin for what it is, just a symptom of a larger disease. Now in finding a slow cure for selfishness (with plenty of daily relapses…) I have finally made strides to find meaning and purpose and a true relationship with my Creator based on love.

What I realize now is that sin is still the problem. We humans, when acting on our own, suck at just about everything. To me, there is NO shame in saying that. The difference in wisdom between the smartest and most foolish human is minute compared to the chasm between humanity and God.

When I was a white, twenty something year old, just out of a Christian college, etc. I thought I could somehow beat the sin problem on my own. I just KNEW I could. It was still all about me.

Now older, slightly wiser, and truthfully somewhat beaten down by the things that do suck about life (and mostly by the consequences of my own sin), I have a new perspective.

That nothing in life, not having a child, not a marriage, not some spiritual epiphany, not anything will take away the core gut-wrenching mystery in life. I will go to the grave with many of the same questions I have today yet unanswered. But I also believe that if I persist in the struggle and focus less on the “doing” and more on the “be-ing” that my life will be very rich.

And if you can somehow let go of the angst of not knowing, there is a way to find GREAT joy in that. It is like you get to watch a great story play out in your life almost every day.

There was a period in my life where the “why” questions seemed most appropriate. Now I just ask, “Okay Lord, what today?”

And that is what love and grace and the cross have come to mean to me. It is not about figuring out all the big questions. It is that God is a constant. I think I am really starting to believe in my heart that He loves me, and that I am good enough for Him. To quote Phillip Yancey, “that there is nothing I can do to make Him love me more and there is nothing I can do to make Him love me less.”

Obedience is still something I strive for. It is an act of love now though, not an act of fear and guilt. And that paradigm shift changed everything for me. I still screw up all the time, but breaking out of the sin-guilt-repent-sin again cycle has allowed me to be much more productive FOR HIM. I just have figured out that life works better if I keep it simple, remember the Yancey quote and try to do it better each day.

So the purpose in life: finding joy in serving and worshiping God in the small ways of daily surrender, obedience, and relationships with others. And I believe from that an even greater story will unfold.

Ultimately, the great payoff does come in heaven. And while life on earth is not complete, I think one can live a life that is far more than just bearable if you embrace the joy of living daily with Him / for Him. I always lived a life looking for the next big thing. I wonder if that is the “more” you are seeking? It lead to my ruin. There is great joy in the daily process of just “be-ing.”

I understand why you and others who have posted here have sought other forms of spirituality. There is a great question in all of us. I trust you will find the right answer.

And I think if you can raise your son in a home where he witnesses the small daily miracles that occur in someone who lives with that attitude of daily surrender, the answer adds up. You don’t need a big huge know it all intellectual response to his questions. Your son will know the answer because he has lived it for all those years.

Just live.

I've been thinking too much lately.

I carry a lot of stuff around like heavy baggage.

I am ready to stop.

I commented here recently that I was in about the same place as I was a year ago when I started this blog. That really is not true. I have made a lot of progress.


At that time, I was absolutely buried under the weight of my past. The weight of the affair, divorce and every other bad thing I could ever remember in my past was like a pair of lead boots. I felt stuck...

A few months ago, I finally came to a place where I learned to accept God's Grace for the past. And that was a good thing. I really feel like I have moved on. I don't think so much about all those things. And when I do, I am able to just sigh a bit and move on.

As you have heard me discuss lately, I have still been a bit stuck in my present. So the weight I carry around now is more about the here and now.

The trouble seems centered on two main issues:


First, feeling like I am paralyzed by a lack of discernment and confident decision making. Having lived a life where I have made a lot of bad decisions, it is sometimes hard for me to move myself forward. I am not feeling the weight of the past sin as much as a lack of confidence in the present. It is really hard for me to judge what is God's plan. I used to live in a way where I trusted "my gut" and that God guided my gut. But I see now that many of those times I was just doing what I wanted to do.


Second, I have just not been comfortable in my own skin. And this is not about the physical. I just don't like my life all that much. I have always been a guy who thrives on a need to do and accomplish. And that is not the way life is lining up for me right now. Life right now is about living quietly. Humbly. Learning to live within my means and repaying debt. Life is just about going to work each day. It is about taking care of family. It is about studying for this damn test in October. There is nothing flashy about my life. So in being a guy who has always thrived on the next big thing, well there just is not a lot of validation.

So... what do I do?

A favorite author of mine has shared some thoughts that will appear in an upcoming book and it has really got me thinking.


Here are some selected passages:

"If you watched a movie about a guy who wanted a Volvo and worked for years to get it, you probably wouldn’t cry at the end of the movie 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 and sit in a chair to think about what you’d seen. The truth is you wouldn’t even remember that movie a week later, except to feel robbed and want your money back. Nobody cries at the end of a movie about a guy who got a Volvo. But we spend years living those kinds of stories and expect life to feel meaningful. Maybe that’s why we go to so many movies, because our real lives don’t feel meaningful anymore."

"You’d think God would just come out and tell us what to do in the Bible. But He doesn’t. He mostly tells stories, and He rarely stops the story to say what the point is. He just lets the characters and the conflict hang in the air like smoke."

"I’ve noticed they don’t make self-help books for dogs. Lucy just is, and she’s fantastic at it. I can’t say for sure, but I don’t think she ponders a better way to be a dog. Dogs don’t read books about how to be dogs. They say humans are the most evolved of animals, and I suppose our bridges and furniture prove this to be true, but sometimes when I watch Lucy look for the toy I’ve hidden, her little body joggling behind her wide eyes, I wish life could be so pleasurable for the rest of us."

"And part of me feels like God is more pleased with the dogs’ interaction than He is with ours, as though they are the ones having fun with the scenes He gave them, and we are still trying to figure it out."

All from Don Miller's upcoming book A Million Miles in A Thousand Years.

I guess the bottom line is that I just realize that I am so hung up on worrying about screwing up that I am not really living. It's kind of like the guy who was given an amount of money to invest when his master was away and rather than doing something he just buried it because he was scared.

I am also just too darn fatalistic. Waiting for the next bad thing. And worried about what happens if I screw up.

Common recent thought patterns of mine:

"Woe is me... I hate studying. What is going to happen to me if I fail this test? Will they fire me? Will I be shamed in some further way? What will I say to people? All these people know? Woe is me..."

"What do I do about money? Things just seem to get worse and worse. When am I going to get out of this hole? I work and work and it just doesn't seem to get better. Maybe it will never get better? Maybe it will always be this way. I will never retire. I will work until I die. I will never get to do missions or anything else. I am stuck with this piece of crap truck...yard... (fill in blank depending on day). I am trapped."

And none of this stuff is terribly profound. I don't even think Don Miller is always that profound. He just says basic truths in new ways that make me think.

The bottom line is that God created me for some purpose. I just need to live and do my best. And that is it. End of story. No more hand wringing. No more lamenting. Just live and do my best. Leave the rest to Him.

Please pray that I can do this.

30

I feel like such a girl... no offense intended to women. But I got on the scale today and saw 188.0 pounds. And I wanted to jump up and down like they do on those Jenny Craig commercials.

So I have lost 30 pounds. I am really encouraged by that. That was my original goal. I feel a lot better. I still own a bit of a gut (which tells me how really HUGE I was if I have lost 30 pounds and still have this gut). And I am not in good shape. I haven't really exercised at all to get to this place.

So I really need to get on my bike. I will never be a work out guy. But maybe I can get to 168#. 50 pounds of weight loss seems like a fun idea.

I never take off my shirt for photos but perhaps I can come up with some sort of before / after comparison at some point.

I still hate dieting.