Introduction

   

     There is a place where story-tellers go.  A room where drama holds court. In this room, the shadows of  characters and stories ricochet off walls, then fall to the floor and lay there. 

     It is where we dress them up, or dress them down. It's where we first hear their voices, and  finally, place them on a page. 

      We will laugh with them, cry with them, argue about our rightful place in their story, then,  we settle them into the skin of our people. It’s where our words become a tale only to be tossed back up into the air unfinished. They then land re-arranged with a whole different shape and sound. 

     It is a place I have loved and know well.

     But buried deep in my heart is my confession.

     here is my confession.   

     It is this. I still yearn to tell you a different story. A suspenseful fictional tale of mystery and drama that would drop you deep into the walls of that story-teller room and I know my blog posts will never do that.   

      But something changed this morning in my heart when I read this quote from Donald Miller.   

   “If I have a hope, it’s that God sat over the dark nothing and wrote you and me, specifically, into the story.  And he puts us in with the sunsets and the rainstorms as though to say, ‘Enjoy your place in my story.  The very beauty of it means that it is not about you, and in time, that will give you comfort.”

     Quoted from Donald Miller’s book, “A million miles in a thousand years.”

     So this idea that God, the first and last greatest teller of stories wrote mine just for me, settled over me and gave me comfort. I saw my life as a beautiful chapter in God's great book. One that was compiled by his love and whose breath gave it life. I knew that He set me apart and called me his before I ever knew my name, and suddenly I was back in the story-teller room. But this time, my God-written story was inside the walls with me. So when the light and shadow of my very own tale began to shift around me, it was beautiful and powerful. Its drama pulled the breath from me, the joy of its laughter made me weep, and the walls pulsed with its mystery.   

      So I can lay down the other writing for now, remembering what God showed me in the storyteller room with him because it is more than enough. It's everything.

      

     So now, come walk with me down the Glory Road where there will be tears and laughter. Beautiful things and ugly things. soft things and hard thing. But in the end, joyous beautiful redemption. 

     And so...   

     'Blisters or not, we will trudge up hills and pull thorns from our feet because the road ahead leads to the Valley of Glory. Where babbling brooks will sing in Worship, and the Mountains will bow down."

     It will take our breath away.