The place of stories...

    “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.”

     There is a place where story-tellers go.  A place where drama holds court, where the light and shadow of our characters get thrown across the room, ricochet off walls, hit the floor, and then find themselves on a page.  It’s where we first hear their voices.  We laugh with them, cry with them, argue about our rightful place, then we settle them into the skin of our people.  It’s where our words become sentences only to be tossed back into the air where they take on a whole different shape and sound.  It is a place I have loved and know well.

     “I have a story to tell…”, and I do have something to share with you. Something significant and important, but as of today, I couldn’t write it.

     My confession, which I buried deep in my heart is this. I still yearn to tell you a different story.  I want to tell a grand 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 be that.   

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

     The idea that God is the first and last most awesome and greatest teller of stories wrapped itself around me with intimate warmth.  I realized that my chapter in God’s great novel may be just a tiny one, but it was written with his heart and his breath gave it life.  
     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 it 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 the other writing down for now. Remembering too what God showed me in that place. What I learned about myself. And what I learned about Him.

      It's more than enough. It's everything.