Donald Miller's Blog, page 21

Two Qualities of The Best Kind of Gifts

What’s the best gift you ever received? I’m willing to bet you didn’t get the pony or the dirt bike you begged for as a kid, but there’s probably one gift or another that sticks out in your memory.

Photo Credit: John Lemieux, Creative Commons

For me, two gifts come to mind: my first bicycle and my first guitar.

The bike was a Huffy, trimmed in black and gold, presumably to achieve a menacing Cobra Kai effect. The guitar was, in hindsight, a certified piece of junk. Neither was extravagant or particularly Pinterest-worthy, but all these years later, the bike and guitar are still two of the best gifts anyone ever gave to me.

What made those gifts so great? Well, in my experience, the best gifts—not the flashiest or most expensive gifts, but the best ones—have two things in common.

First, the best gifts come with new possibilities.

When I got a guitar, I was presented with the possibility of becoming someone who makes music rather than just listens to it. Similarly, my first bike made it possible for me to go further and faster than I ever had before on foot.

Those possibilities don’t seem all that revolutionary as an adult, but to a kid they were everything.

In my eyes, my bike and my guitar seemed to vibrate with magic.

Perhaps you experienced the same thing when someone gave you your first computer, car, or set of oil paints.

Maybe it was a camera, screenwriting software, or cooking lessons.

Whatever the case, I hope you’ve known the feeling of a gift that whispers to you about the potential of new worlds.

Second, the best gifts cost the receiver more than the giver.

My bike and guitar couldn’t have cost my parents more than $100 each. That’s not insignificant, but it pales in comparison to what those gifts cost me. Each of them cost me hours and hours and hours of practice.

They cost me sweat and frustration, scrapes and callouses, fear and self-doubt.

A first bicycle and a first guitar are great gifts because you only get out of them what you put into them. The aforementioned possibilities are in there, but you have to extract them.

You have to cultivate them with intentionality and care. You have to stick with them. You have to pick them back up after you quit them. No matter their initial price tag, the best gifts cost the receiver more than the giver.

TVs and gift cards and smartwatches are nice gifts, don’t get me wrong, but they’ll never be the best. The best gifts invite us to grow in some way, and growth is never free.

How I Learned to Find Beauty in the Chaos

When you go out of town, you don’t want to come home to a bowl full of rotten bananas. Bring them with you or give them to the neighbors, but don’t leave them sitting in the kitchen. I don’t have a lot of travel tips to offer, but I feel good about that one.

So we didn’t leave anything much in the kitchen when we took our kids on a road trip last month. The only problem with that plan is you might come home hungry. Apparently people still want to eat meals, even after vacations.

“Okay!” my husband said, standing in front of the empty pantry. “What do we need at the grocery store?”

The obvious answer was, “Everything.”

The thing I said was, “We’re going to need some flowers.” Because I knew what next few days would look like.

Photo Credit: Shandi-lee Cox, Creative Commons

They would look like managed chaos, only without the “managed” part. There would be worn-out kids and travel-weary parents, and an obstacle course of jackets and suitcases and odd souvenirs to negotiate. Some of us would be back to work, some of us would be back to learning, and one of us would be back to being a toddler. (One of us never stopped being a toddler.)

I get stuck in the details, on days like that. I look around at the backpacks to unpack and the mountain of laundry to wash and the missing toothbrushes to find (where did they GO?) and I think this is all there is.

Well, I think, the world is all turned to chaos and crankiness now. I might as well go back to bed and stay there for the rest of my life.

This just seems really reasonable to me.

That’s why I need the flowers.

They’re not there to distract me from the six pairs of mud-encrusted shoes in my hallway. They’re there because every time I look up from making another peanut butter sandwich and see those flowers on the counter, I remember: there is beauty all around us, and it does not depend on me and my circumstances.

There are times we get to create beauty in our lives and through our lives… and then there are other times. Some days are just full of ordinary, everyday overwhelm. Some days don’t feel like a reflection of something beautiful.

That’s why I needed the flowers.

I needed to invite the beauty back in.

I needed to remember that it’s okay if I feel inadequate for the meal-making and floor sweeping and conflict negotiating. I don’t have to hold everything together. I can’t even make the flowers grow, but there they are anyway, in all their sweet-smelling glory.

And I needed to remember that the flowers didn’t work really hard to become beautiful. They just grew.

I’m just growing, too.

The messy days will pass away just like the flowers will wilt and fade in my kitchen. But new ones are already sprouting up in the fields.

I’m going to invite them in. (And I’m still going to try to keep rotten bananas out.)

What to Remember When You’re Devastated and Without Hope

Sometime last month a newly expecting mother contacted me, scared out of her mind because the baby growing in her womb was diagnosed with Down syndrome.

This is not a rare occurrence for me.

Photo Credit: Darren Johnson, Creative Commons

You see, I’ve adopted two kids with Down syndrome, and for various reasons, people have decided that qualifies me to offer hope and to speak reason into the lives of mothers and fathers who, like most people, feel complete devastation at the Down syndrome diagnosis of their new or unborn child.

It’s a very strange feeling for me.

On one hand, the person trusts me and my desire to parent children with Down syndrome enough to look to me for a thread of hope to grab onto.

On the other hand, the person I am offering hope to is essentially looking at my children, the ones I would jump in front of a moving train for, and communicating to me that they are traumatized at the reality that their future child will be like mine.

Such a strange conversation to have.

And while I’d like to shake them and tell them to stop feeling so sad about something so great, I am always careful to begin with grace. Always so much grace.

Because I was that person, before I knew any better.

I was dead set on doing everything within my ability to make my life one of comfort and ease, every detail planned out. Believe me when I say adopting two children with Down syndrome never fit under the “comfortable” or “easy” categories.

It simply was never in the plans.

Until one day it was.

One day I found God had pushed me off of the path I had set out for myself, straight into a pile of dirt. For awhile I sat there broken by infertility, adoption, Down syndrome. But it didn’t take long for me to notice that there, among the uncomfortable messiness of it all, was beauty to be discovered.

There is beauty in the broken pieces.

I worry too many of us are going about life looking to travel down a path brightly lit with adorable, solar-powered lights, covered in fresh rose petals. Yet, somewhere down the road, we have forgotten that those very roses would never have bloomed if not for the pile of dirt they grew from.

We wake up everyday wanting the roses without the dirt.

As my life has unfolded, by God’s goodness and grace, I’ve found myself farther and farther from the rose petal path I had been trying so fervently to travel down. God has been teaching me that true beauty can only be found in the dirt.

To understand and appreciate the beauty of a flower, we have to know the dirt from which it bloomed.

The Beautiful Necessity of Tears

I look back at my own story and I know there are times when I’ve shut down emotionally. You probably have too. It definitely seems easier to go through the most difficult parts of our lives on a sort of emotional autopilot.

But here’s the thing: You can’t pick which emotions you shut down. It’s an all or nothing process.

Photo Credit: Joe St.Pierre

When I shut my emotions down out of a response to abuse and other tragedies, the world reduces its colors.

When you shut down your emotions, you lose the color of life.

That’s why I love tears.

Don’t ever discount the wonder of your tears. They can be healing waters and a stream of joy. Sometimes they are the best words the heart can speak. –The Shack, pg 228

Tears are a part of that process, and yet, for many people, tears remain a sign of weakness.

That is a sad and dangerous misconception.

It’s a misconception flowing from the notion that success is based on personalities. And personalities—especially masculine personalities—can fold. In our society, part of the way we define being a strong, stoic man is not having layers.

Men are just supposed to be a flat representation of strength. And flat representations of strength have no room for tears.

But tears are evidence of our humanity, and without them, we lose part of who we are. You connect with people through tears that you can’t in any other way.

Tears are a conduit of the spirit.

They’re the integration of soul and body, where what’s going on inside is expressed outside. Often, you don’t even need words when you have tears. The presence of the tears themselves becomes a way to communicate without trying to form it into language. They’re just there. They’re beautiful.

The older and more tender I get, the more present they are.

When I cry or feel those emotions, I know it’s evidence of brokenness. And more importantly, it’s evidence of healing.

Have you ever been through something where you tried to shut down emotionally?

Were you raised believing tears were weak? If so, how have you grown in your understanding of them?

Want to be Happy? Forgive Your Enemies.

I confess I’m the type of person to hold a grudge. It’s not that I want power over people, which is often the motive for holding a grudge, it’s just that I want all-due glory for my suffering.

This is what I mean: if somebody is causing me some pain, I want them to know I am bearing it for them. For this reason, it’s hard for me to forgive my enemies. If people slam me on the internet, it’s hard to forgive. If people screw me in a business deal, it’s hard to forgive, too.

And for so long it seemed there was nothing I could do about it.

I knew I’d be better off to forgive, but how?

What are the steps to controlling your uncontrollable emotions?

Photo Credit: Amanda Tipton, Creative Commons

I don’t fully know the answer to that question. Part of the reason it’s so hard to forgive is pride. If I forgive someone, it feels like I’m also saying that the other person had the right to do me wrong. That doesn’t feel right. But it’s a real feeling.

Even more difficult is having to forgive someone who hasn’t even recognized they’ve done wrong.

So why forgive?

Before I say why, I should say how. Here’s how:

Go through the stages of grief.

Let the offense shock you, then let it completely hurt you. Don’t avoid the pain. Sit with it and feel it no matter how unbearable it is.

Please know it will end in time. It will get 2% easier every day. Just feel it like a toothache and soon enough it will transition into something bearable.

Then let the offense make you angry.

Don’t lash our or you’ll be guilty yourself. Talk about it with trusted friends but confess you’re angry and your emotions aren’t under control. And don’t feel bad for being angry. The last thing you need is anger and shame.

Just punch a pillow and make it through.

The anger, like the pain, will lessen over time.

Then after being angry, accept what has been done.

Just accept it as a fact and don’t over analyze it. It happened. This will still be shocking at first, but in time, you will accept it as a fact that you can’t change.

From there, you’re at a place to forgive. It will be hard work, but it’s worth it. Sit and pray for the person you’ve been hating. Sit and imagine them with a good life, them coming to realize that what they did was wrong, maybe not to you, but to somebody, perhaps to God.

Then be willing to love them in your heart.

Want the best for them. Hope for the best for them. Stop praying for God to destroy them and pray for God to bless them. Pray for God to open up their hearts so they can receive the love that will stop them from hurting others.

This is the only way I know how to forgive.

Why should we forgive?

Well, there are many reasons, but I’m only going to focus on a few.

The first is because, believe it or not, forgiveness is a pleasurable experience. No kidding, it feels much better than anger or hate. God has designed forgiveness as a powerful blessing for those who have been hurt.

The experience of truly forgiving somebody can make you more happy than if you’d never been hurt in the first place.

The second reason for you to forgive is that it removes you from being entangled in the rather dark thing that hurt you in the first place.

If it was a bad business deal, then you get to be free of it and maintain your integrity. If it was a family member talking behind your back, you get to remove yourself completely from all the complications of gossip. Forgiveness sets you free from being bogged down in knee-deep mud.

Forgiveness gives you a taste of what it feels like to be God, and it’s a terrific feeling. God forgave us because it gave Him pleasure to do so. He was happy to do so.

Love forgives, and so does God, and so can you.

The third reason to forgive is that you open yourself up to amazing possibilities for a happy life. When you don’t forgive, you draw the curtains in your soul and your life gets dark. When you forgive you let the light in again, and you go on about your life in peace. And don’t you want some peace? Isn’t it time for some peace?

The greatest thing about forgiveness is it will allow you to love again. It will allow you to love and be loved.

And believe me, it’s worth it.

Forgiveness is tough, for sure, but love is infinitely more valuable than the pain forgiveness costs. No matter what you have to go through to forgive, you’re getting a steal of a deal to be able to love and be loved again.

Pay the price and I promise you’ll be happy you did.

How I Learned Who Really Belongs

I have a confession to make that may make some of you dismiss me as having neither taste nor class. Judge me if you will:

I like the Three Stooges.

There. I said it.

Photo Credit: twm1340, Creative Commons

When Larry hits Curly on the head with a sledgehammer and it makes a metal clanking noise, I think it’s hilarious. And when Moe tries to eat lobster bisque and a huge lobster claw comes out of the bowl, grabbing and twisting his nose with a loud crunching sound, it cracks me up.

Aside from the fun of slapstick, what I love is the way these guys always show up at the wrong place at the wrong time.

They’re never appropriate and are always misfits.

Find me a party filled with snooty elites, and Larry, Moe and Curly will arrive as waiters. Within minutes they’ve instigated a pie fight. Bejeweled women in evening gowns and men in suits are covered in whipped cream. The smack of a pie to the face remains one of my favorite sounds.

When Curly’s pet mouse runs up the leg of a guy’s pants or down the back of a woman’s dress, causing a flailing domino effect of chaos in the ballroom—how great is that?

Somehow, in their foolishness, they end up exposing the crooks, the arrogant, and the self-important. Bumbling their way through situation after situation, the stooges make us laugh, and if we’re honest, we see ourselves in the people they expose.

Recently, our family was visiting an old church in England.

The parish church had been active since 1777 when it was built. Benedict Arnold was buried in the basement, which I thought was a nice touch.

The church, festively decorated with holiday trimmings, was stunning. The service, a quiet and solemn liturgy, was punctuated by music performed with perfection.

At one point during the service, the choir began to sing their anthem. Half way through it, a lone figure shuffled down the aisle. It was a young man in his 20s with Downs Syndrome. Under his arm, he carried a bongo drum.

Making his way to the front of the church, he sat down at the grand piano, stage right.

By this time, he had everyone’s attention, particularly the members of the choir. There was this “What is he going to do?” fear in the room. I’m sure there were some that felt the night could be ruined—this night that took many hours and much energy to prepare.

Pulling his drum into position, he began tapping it with his fingers, as quietly as a mouse walking across the floor.

Then his lips began to move, his singing as silent as his drumming.

I think it hit us all at the same time.

This young man woke us up to the fact that we were out of place, not him.

While we were worried about having an uninterrupted service of worship, he was actually experiencing it, living it, embracing it, and loving it.

I thought about Jesus who was always inviting the wrong people to the party and freaking everyone out. And by His invitation, Jesus said to the outcast, the misfits, and the marginalized: “You belong”

Is It Time to Change the Story You’re Living?

Someone described me recently as “a confident, outgoing mom and a successful writer.” I looked around for who they could possibly be talking about. I can’t even begin to tell you how incredibly far-off that description sounds to me.

I’ve realized in the last year that no matter what happens to me and no matter how I change, in many ways I’m still telling a very old story of who I am.

Photo Credit: Betta Living, Creative Commons

And I think I might not be the only one.

I want to start telling a new story.

A friend’s mom came to town this weekend. She’s great and difficult, both, and my friend was debriefing the visit with us the next day.

Someone asked, “how does your husband deal with some of your mom’s rough edges?” And she said, “Well, what’s helpful is that he doesn’t automatically turn into his twelve-year-old self when my mom’s around. But I still do.”

So true, right? There are people and situations that take us back to old, old stories, and even though we’re moms now, not children, or even though we’re business owners now, not adolescents, we find ourselves acting out stories that haven’t been true for a long time, or stories that were never true to begin with.

Two things were true about me when I was growing up:

I was smart and I was overweight. Those two things defined me more than anything else. I was the unattractive person in an otherwise attractive family, but my mind was quick—it was easy for me to remember things, and it was easy for me to be funny.

And so that’s what I became—everyone’s chubby, funny friend. I was easy to be around, agreeable, capable.

I knew how to make other people feel comfortable, how to draw them out, how to tell self-deprecating stories about myself.

I learned to be the punchline.

But I’m finding that story and that identity aren’t helpful for me these days. Because what that story really says is: don’t worry, just be friendly and pleasant. Make a joke. Don’t worry about really achieving anything, or doing anything hard, or being great in anyway.

What you are is a sidekick, a wing-man, a support character in someone else’s story. What you are is a punchline.

And because I’ve believed those things about myself for so long, I sometimes don’t expect myself to be anything other than a punchline. I don’t push myself the way I could. I don’t ask for opportunities or promote my work. Essentially, I don’t take myself and my life as seriously as I could.

This old story isn’t helping me anymore, so I’m writing a new story.

This new story says I can and do work hard, and that I’ve developed my skills as a writer and speaker over the last several years. It says I might have more to contribute than I thought, and that being funny and pleasant might not be the highest things to aspire to any longer.

Even as I write these words, I can feel myself sitting taller, squaring my shoulders, growing up.

I’m changing the story.

Is it time for you to let go of a story you’ve been telling about yourself for a long time?

What’s that old story?

What will you write as your new story?

A Simple Rule That Can Make Life More Fun

I wasn’t home when my daughter broke her arm.

My wife updated with me the medical news: both bones of the forearm were snapped and she could see through the skin that the bones were out of place. Her little hand hung limp from her wrist.

A cast alone would be insufficient. Surgery was necessary.

My daughter updated me with the story of how it happened.

She started with, “Dad, it was Rule Number 6: Know How to Stop.” She had just received a pair of rollerblades and was trying them out with a friend in our neighborhood. She started down a hill and loved the thrill of picking up speed.

Photo Credit: Loren Kerns, Creative Commons

She soon found herself out of control. She lost her balance, fell on her arm, and the damage was done.

Fortunately, my wife was able to stop what she was doing and rush our daughter to the hospital.

“Know How to Stop” is one of the life rules that our family talks about a lot.

It centers on understanding life’s limits. Think of it this way:

It is not until our kids could confidently stop their bikes that bike riding turned from a frightful experience to a joyful one.
It is not until they learned to stop throwing fits that they were able to resolve the issues that frustrated them. Sometimes we must end the drama and work the problem.

Kids generally do not get in trouble for being silly—they get in trouble for being silly after an adult asked them to stop. It is often that last kid to stop that bears that brunt of the punishment.

This rule applies at every phase of life.

Knowing how to stop makes eating, drinking, investing, exercising, spending, skydiving, hang gliding, and everything else more enjoyable.

Holiday parties always challenge my application of this rule.

A good rule of thumb is this: when everyone is involved and things are reaching a fever pitch, consider beginning your exit.

Whether it is the dot.com boom, a pillow fight, a bottle of scotch, a heated argument, or a funny prank, there is a moment where knowing how to stop prevents a painful crash. There is a cycle to all these things.

We need to learn how to read the rhythms and know when to stop.

There is a time to push back from the computer, silence the phone, and stop working. Sometimes we need to know how to stop being serious and engage in play or rest. Other times we must know how to stop procrastinating, making excuses, blaming others and get to work.

Interestingly, knowing how to stop is sometimes the best way to start.

Why I Quit Being Nice

When I graduated high school, a friend said something to me I’ll never forget. She said, “Ally, you’re so nice. You might be the nicest person I know. I’ve never heard anyone say a bad word to or about you. Never change.”

Honesty, it felt like the highest compliment I could ever receive. I took it as a personal challenge to be “nice” forever.

I did my best to “never change.”

Then, ten years later, I got an e-mail from a girl I didn’t remember from high school. A classmate of ours had recently passed away, and she and I crossed paths at the funeral. Seeing me again reminded her of a story.

She asked if I remembered a day, sophomore year, when I was walking up the stairs with two of my friends, and a girl in front of us tripped. She asked if I remembered what my two friends said to that girl, that they laughed and made fun of her under their breath, and that the girl ran off, crying.

Worst of all, she asked if I remembered what I did next. I stood back, she told me, eyes wide, and mouth shut. I didn’t tease. Didn’t laugh. Wasn’t mean. But I didn’t say anything to her, or to my friends.

She asked me if I knew she was that girl.

I read the words over and over, to see if the memory would come back, but it wouldn’t. I felt a little panicked, actually, trying to summon at least a fuzzy movie in my mind, so I could offer some explanation for why I had done such a thing. I was nice after all. I was the nice girl. Why would the nice girl do something like that?

In that moment, a painful realization came crashing over me: niceness isn’t everything.

For so many years I worked hard to be nice, trying to live up to that story my friend had told about me. In one sense, it felt good and right and admirable to be the kind of person who never said a bad word about anyone else, and who never gave anyone reason to say a bad word about me.

But now, as I thought through the past ten years of my life, I realized being “nice” wasn’t doing for me what I wanted it to do.

Being “nice” was preventing me from saying what I thought about things.

It prevented me from telling my friends that I thought laughing at someone for tripping on the stairs was rude (for fear of being too harsh or judgmental) and prevented me from telling the girl who tripped that I knew how she felt. I’d been laughed at, too.

I wouldn’t want that girl to feel like I was singling her out, or overstepping my bounds.

I wouldn’t want my friends to feel like I was rejecting them.

It prevented me, years later, from expressing political opinions or theological opinions or even opinions about where I wanted to eat dinner — which in turn prevented me from having authentic, meaningful relationships with people. In some cases, friends would beg me to say what I thought, but instead of being honest, I would mimic those around me, and then (of course) feel invisible.

When you can’t tell the truth about yourself, you cease to exist as a person.

Are Your Mistakes On Display?

I don’t watch a lot of baseball. But when the World Series comes around, I watch a game or two. That way when people are talking about it in the line at Starbucks, I can say something like, “How ‘bout them Mets?”

My hope is they don’t try to engage in conversation about it and talk about stats or something.

Photo Credit: Marques Stewart, Creative Commons

So when I was watching a game a few weeks ago, for some reason, they showed a clip from the 1986 World Series between the Red Sox and the Mets. In the clip, a ball was hit down the first base line, and a routine catch went through the legs of Bill Buckner.

A costly error that resulted in an immediate Mets World Series win.

I’m not sure why they showed the film from almost thirty years ago, but I was irritated when I saw it, and flipped the channel to yet another CNN interview with Donald Trump.

I was angry because I’d seen an interview with Bill Buckner earlier this year. He recalled the incident, the shame he felt, and the intense and unending ridicule from the press and from fans for years following the incident.

Tears came to his eyes as the interviewer pressed in. He still can’t watch much baseball, because his error is shown over and over again.

The guy made a mistake.

It was an error repeated time after time in baseball. Errors are a part of the game. Heck, they’re a part of everyday life. But that day, his error became more. Everyone needed someone on whom to pour out their frustrations.

And Bill Buckner was that man.

There was another guy who made a mistake a few years ago.

This one was a fan. I’m not going to name him because I want to give the guy a break. He and about six other people reached up for a foul ball at the same time a Cubs outfielder reached for it.

Apparently, they foiled the catch and the game went downhill from there.

For some reason, the cameras and the crowd focused in on the young man in a ball cap. You probably remember the image. Fans threw beer at him and spit on him as he sat there in stunned silence. Police escorted him out, fearing for his safety.

Meanwhile the other folks who tried to get the ball walked free, as did the fellow who caught it and sold it for $125,000 a few years later.

I watched an ESPN documentary on this incident.

It was called “Catching Hell” and in it they described how the guy was vilified by the media and the fans. Ten years later, he still remains basically invisible, refusing offers of hundreds of thousands of dollars for an interview.

He was a good guy who made a mistake and still pays dearly for it, blamed for a World Series loss that was not his fault.

In the Old Testament, on the Day of Atonement, the priest would confess all of the sins of the people over the head of a goat, and drive the goat into the wilderness, symbolically taking their sins and shame out of their sight.

It seems that we often assume the role of the priest.

We find someone who makes a mistake (or who is caught in a public sin) and focus our outrage on him or her, and figuratively or literally, drive them away. Somehow it’s easier to make someone else carry the weight of our own failures and insecurities.

I wonder what would happen if we practiced more grace.

What if we recognized our need to find a scapegoat, and instead offered understanding and a “there but for the grace of God, go I” mentality.

In 2008, the Red Sox organization, after winning a World Series, invited Bill Buckner back to throw out the first pitch of a new season. It was a long overdue olive branch.

He wept as he threw the pitch, as did many of the players and fans. Mercy descended over the stadium that night.

Sometimes scapegoats wander back into the city. Maybe next time, grace won’t take twenty years to welcome him home.