Donald Miller's Blog, page 59

Your Fears Are Making You Weak

Have you ever had a friend witness your fear overtaking you? This happened to me when I was on vacation with friends in Florida.

Josh and I noticed the tide was down in a canal where boats were docked. Boats came under a bridge and turned toward the docks, avoiding a sandbar in the middle. With the tide low, people anchored their boats and swam a short distance to play in the sandbar.

We watched on the shore a hundred yards away.

We looked at each other and in a flash, we took off our shoes and shirts and raced for the water.

I dove in first, thinking I could get a jump on Josh. I have never been a strong swimmer; Josh, on the other hand, was basically raised by dolphins. I got out about twenty yards and felt the current pulling me toward the ocean. I realized I was swimming sideways. I was not going to make it. I turned and swam back to the shore, fearing being swept out into the ocean.

*Photo Credit: Davitydave, Creative Commons

While I swam to shore, Josh passed me and headed straight toward the sandbar. I caught my breath and walked fifty yards up the shoreline to work an angle. I watched as Josh arrived on the beach. I jumped in again and made it halfway before the current started pulling me again.

Fear set in.

My anxiety was rising and back to the shore I swam. But I wasn’t done yet. This time I was visualizing my path to the sandbar, while imagining my arms and legs in a smooth forward motion like Michael Phelps. I heard Josh from the sandbar, “You got this, you were so close!”

I jumped in and got ahead of the current. I’ve never paddled so hard in my life.

Go. Go. Go. Breathe.

Go. Go. Go. Breathe.

I’m not going to make it.

Keep going. Breathe.

I can’t breathe.

Turn around.

Fail.

I let fear overtake me again.

Meanwhile, as Josh was finding starfish in the sand, I was sitting where I started frustrated with my failure. I had the physical strength to make it across that canal, but I wasn’t strong enough mentally.

Fear is my constant companion and toughest competition. When fear drives my decisions, I make weak choices. However, when my friends offer unconditional love and stand with me in my fears, the embarrassment inside of me is pushed aside. Josh and I have talked about that day many times. I’ve told him how embarrassed I was by the whole situation. He has never once made me feel bad about it and vows to go back with me.

He does not hold my fear against me.

But fear is not going away.

I’m reminded of this in Genesis 3. After Adam and Eve ate from the tree, they hid from God. God asked Adam why they were hiding and Adam responded, ‘I was afraid.’ It was the first instance of fear and from that time, fear has been present.

However, when fears overtake the problems we are called to solve, we miss out on the stories we’ve been designed to live.

I was strong enough to swim across the canal, but my fear was more persistent than my strength.

What fears are limiting your unique design today? May we learn to overcome them with courage.

Your Fears Are Making You Weak is a post from: Storyline Blog

God Isn’t Only Good When You Say So

It was not a pleasant scene. I was chatting with two wonderful friends, Parker and Meg at their house when we were joined by two surprise guests—Mark and Abigail—who showed up to announce big news: They were pregnant with their first.

*Photo Credit: Kate Hiscock, Creative Commons

They’d just had the ultrasound and the baby was healthy as a horse. And, wouldn’t you know, Mark’s employer was giving them a house so that there’d be enough room for Junior to run around, and their parents were just thrilled, and oh isn’t God good?

That question got asked a lot. 

Isn’t God good?

It got asked until Meg politely excused herself. It wasn’t Mark and Abby’s fault. They didn’t know that Parker and Meg have been trying to get pregnant for years now, or that they have only miscarriages to show for it. They’ve told me how hard it is to see other couples have kids, and that’s to be expected. Any time someone else gets something that we want, it’s difficult.

But the pain here went deeper than just jealousy.

Isn’t God good?

Yes, I suppose so. But whenever we ask that question, it’s meant to be a rhetorical one. We only ask when our circumstances are also good.

They accepted the offer! Isn’t God good?

Mike got a raise! Isn’t God good?

The doctor called and the tests came back negative! Isn’t God good?

But what then are we to do with the rest of life?

The times when the offer is refused, Mike is fired, and the tests come back worse than the doctor thought? Or, if you will, what are we to do with the times when the answer to the question “Isn’t God good?” isn’t quite so rhetorical?

In those moments, I turn to the book of Job.

I once heard a woman say, “I don’t understand a word of Job. Not a dang word.” That has stuck with me ever since. It is the book where the question of God’s goodness is an open one, and it finds no easy answer. It’s the book of the downtrodden, the brokenhearted, the disappointed and, I would think, barren.

There are no grand sermon illustrations. No gee-whiz parting Red Seas or Lazaruses coming forth. Merely the plaintive question: “Isn’t God good? And the unsettling answer: “Who are you, oh man?”

This is why “Isn’t God good?” is of little use to us.

Or, at least, it won’t be until we have a better knowledge of who God is and what we mean by good.

In Job, we see a man who was confused by God, distraught and desperate for some answers. But he “did not sin by blaming God” (1:22) because he had a different mantra than “isn’t God good?”

It’s the same mantra Parker and Meg have held to through their heartache. It’s Job 13:15: “God might kill me, but I have no other hope.”

God cannot be made good or bad by our circumstances, but He can be our hope in every kind.

Don’t be fooled into thinking God only reveals his goodness through giving us what we desire. Keep holding on and keep looking for him, and he will help you live a story far greater than the one you’ve imagined.

God Isn’t Only Good When You Say So is a post from: Storyline Blog

What Your Gut Feeling Is Actually Telling You

I make a lot of decisions using intuition, which researchers are beginning to understand as more reliable and less mystical than previously thought. Intuition is really about pattern recognition, about subconsciously picking up on conflicting patterns in a situation.

One of the more discussed examples of intuitive decision making has to do with a fire chief who, shortly after entering a burning house, commanded all his men to leave the house immediately without really understanding why. He said the decision came from his gut, that “something wasn’t right” and he wanted his men out of the house.

That decision saved the lives of his men.

Seconds after exiting the house, the floor collapsed. If they had stayed in the house, everybody would have been killed.

When interviewed about his decision, the fire chief couldn’t explain his decision logically. Some of the men under his command attributed the command to a higher force, a sort of guardian angel. But guardian angel or not, by design our brains work to protect us from making mistakes, and often we have no explanation as to why.

On further investigation, several things were happening in that fire that worked to inform the fire chief’s subconscious. The first was that the firemen already on the scene had been pouring water into the kitchen, where the fire was supposedly focused. With a normal fire, this would have solved the problem and put out the fire.

But in this case, no amount of water helped.

The second oddity that fed the fire chief’s subconscious is that the fire was unusually quiet. Fires normally rage and are loud. But when entering the house, the fire wasn’t making a sound that aligned with what the fire chief was seeing.

Without knowing it, the chief subconsciously understood something really basic, and that’s that he didn’t understand what was happening. And because he didn’t understand, he knew his men could be in danger. By commanding the evacuation, he was pulling his men from a situation in which he did not know how to guide them, protect them, or solve the problem of the fire.

*Photo Credit: Nicole Yeary, Creative Commons

What was really happening in the house was that the fire was not in the kitchen; it was just burning up through the kitchen. The fire was actually raging in the basement, burning the underside of the wood floors. This would not be understood until later.

All this to say, as leaders, intuition matters.

But we should also understand, perhaps in hindsight, why we feel cautious about a situation. Here are some tips on better using intuition:

When something seems wrong, back off and use caution.
Look for conflicts in patterns. If you’re wanting to hire somebody but he or she has been through three jobs in the last two years, there is a pattern conflict. Inquire as to why his or her pattern is in conflict with his or her ambition to hold a job.
If you suspect something is amiss in a situation, don’t interrogate whoever you suspect too soon. Wait and watch and try to understand why your intuition is sending alarm signals. Once you identify some patterns, sit down with the person you’re dealing with and ask them to explain them.

How have you learned to utilize intuition in your decision making process?

What Your Gut Feeling Is Actually Telling You is a post from: Storyline Blog

Why You Resist Looking On The Bright Side

Have you ever done something wrong and then been irritated when someone told you to “look on the bright side?” Sometimes it just feels better to wallow in the sorrow of our own loss/failure without letting anything positive taint it. It’s like we don’t want to accept that anything good could come from the bad we caused.

In those cases, it almost feels good to feel bad.

But have you ever been on the other side? Have you ever found yourself talking with someone who went through something really difficult and you can just see down the road a little more clearly than they can, and you know that this thing they’re going through is going to make them stronger? Better? Wiser?

*Photo Credit: Dawn Ellner, Creative Commons

We can do this for other people but it never comes naturally when we think about ourselves. Here’s the problem with that:

If you never allow yourself to see the good that has come with the bad, it makes the bad even worse.

That’s the invitation we receive every time we fail.

The invitation to say “yes… and…”

“Yes, it’s bad. Really, really bad… and I’m never going down that road again.”

“Yes, I regret dating that jerk… and now I am clearer on what I want in a boyfriend.”

“Yes, I shouldn’t have yelled at my son… and now I have a chance to ask for his forgiveness and grow our relationship.”

“Yes, my divorce was the most painful thing I ever went through… and I was able to learn who my true friends were.”

It’s not about softening or even denying the truth of the situation.

But it is about realizing there are other things to be grateful for. Something beautiful is always coming from something that is broken and so we say “yes… and…”

Why You Resist Looking On The Bright Side is a post from: Storyline Blog

Jesus Wants Us To Use Common Sense

In John 7, Jesus decides to go to Galilee and avoid Judea because the Jews in Judea were hatching a plan to kill Him. I often turn my faith into voodoo like seances and emotion-filled prayers in seeking God’s will, while Jesus Himself just uses common sense. I’m not going to Judea, He says, because those guys are trying to kill me. I’ll go over to Galilee instead. I hear they have a Dairy Queen.

I remember reading a report from a church I used to go to.

It had vision statement outlining the plan for the church to grow. It involved buying new property and building a new building and more than quadrupling the size of the congregation over the next twenty years or so. When I read it, I remember thinking that the vision lacked common sense. The church was in a rural area, and there was no growth happening in the community. It seemed like, if you wanted to reach more people, you’d just send another pastor into an area closer to town and plant another church. It would be a lot cheaper to do it that way anyway.

But the vision was couched in a lot of God talk.

There’s was a lot of talk about how it was “bathed in prayer” and the sort of language that creeps normal people out. That vision statement came out ten years ago, and very little has happened, save a church split and a lot of controversy.

*Photo Credit: Nicholas A. Tonelli, Creative Commons

I find it suspect when a vision for power and glory for man is couched in a lot of religious talk.

I usually suspect that its one of two things, if not both:

Justification for doing something we really want and God didn’t ask for.
A way of defending what we want so nobody will argue with us or push back. How can they? We prayed about it and stuff.

Miracles happen and people get visions for sure. But mostly God gives us a hoe and some seeds and introduces us to the miracle of work and a lot of common sense.

Jesus Wants Us To Use Common Sense is a post from: Storyline Blog

What Would You Have Done Differently?

My friend Alicia and I used to meet for yoga a few times a week. We loved the strenuous workout, the relaxation… okay, mostly the strenuous workout. We were actresses in our forties and needed to stay fit. We were competitive, too, with the mindsets of our younger, more limber selves — a competition you can never win in yoga, by the way.

It didn’t matter how often the teacher said, “Every body is different; don’t compare yourselves to others,” I’d still end up envying some chick who was doing a hand stand while the rest of us were in child’s pose. Showoff!

One day after a workout, Alicia looked troubled.

She told me she’d found a photo of herself from twenty years ago, standing on the beach in Australia. After college she traveled the world, working odd jobs and having a grand adventure. But the whole time she was abroad, she obsessed about her body and weight. This shocked me, because Alicia is tall, naturally thin and perfectly proportioned. Alicia was troubled because the photo brought back how self-critical and miserable she was at the time. “I looked at the picture. I was so young and pretty. What on earth did I have to complain about?!”

I went home and found an old scrapbook.

I began flipping through forgotten photos from my post-college days. I was so young and marketable. I was even cute! And yet, like Alicia, I’d spent so much time obsessing about what was wrong with me.

*Photo Credit: martinak15, Creative Commons

How often do I wake up and go through the day, missing what is in front of me?

As Viktor Frankl said, “Live as if you were living already for the second time, and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!”

This doesn’t just apply to big moral choices you must make.

This may just be the choice to be happy and appreciate your breath.

There’s a line from the play “Our Town,” by Thornton Wilder, that I have never forgotten. The main character, Emily, dies, but gets to go back and live through one day. As the rest of her family stumbles about their business, she is bursting with wonder:

EMILY: Do human beings ever realize life while they live it? – every, every minute?

STAGE MANAGER: No. The saints and poets, maybe – they do some.

Learn from your past.

Photobomb yourself. Find a picture of yourself from the past (at least five years ago; preferably 10 or 15). Whom do you see? What occupied your time and heart? Write to him/her. What do you need to forgive? Now write as if you were that past self, to your present self. What warning or encouragement does your past self give you?

Now, bring God into the picture. What would he tell you, from his position in eternity? Let God speak.

Live as a poet or a saint and realize life while you live it. Every, every minute.

What Would You Have Done Differently? is a post from: Storyline Blog

Get Rid of the Takers in Your Life

My friend Ben, who is an accomplished photographer, told me a long time ago he got rid of the takers in his life. I’ve done the same, and it has improved my life and relationships for the better.

This is a harsh thing to talk about, because most of us think we are supposed to love and be accessible to everybody. But here’s the truth– if you were accessible to everybody, all the time, you’d be spent.

God did not design you to never say no.

Instead, He designed you with limitations.

And you have to manage those limitations well.

It’s a sad fact to say there are people who are takers. They take your soul, bit by bit. They use you, they make you feel ashamed or guilty when you don’t allow them to use you, and so forth. If it’s at all possible, and by that I mean if you aren’t married to them or related and responsible in some way, these people need to go.

*Photo Credit: Nathan O’Nions, Creative Commons

By letting them go, I don’t mean be mean to them or tell them they are jerks. But you can just kind of know they aren’t going to be lifelong friends and make decisions accordingly. You can get them information they need and so forth, but just know it isn’t going to be a give and take relationship.

I find I’m not a very good friend to the takers.

So they are better off without me anyway. They make me feel guilty, so I give to them out of compulsion, not out of love or friendship, and that doesn’t really help them much anyway.

Here is how you know if somebody is a taker:

You always feel kind of guilty around them, but on paper, you can’t figure out how you’ve hurt them.
They have been in a long line of short relationships.
They hurt people and do bad things, but it’s always somebody else’s fault.
They don’t make you feel good about yourself or your work.

Takers can change, for sure, but the only way they change is when the taking doesn’t work anymore. And if you let them continue to take from you, you aren’t helping them change.

Get Rid of the Takers in Your Life is a post from: Storyline Blog

Is the Advice You’re Giving More Harmful Than Helpful?

Most would agree that two people truly defined my college experience. I married one of them. The other was the guy I lived with for all four years, my roommate. Both of them have walked with me as I have transformed from an 18 year-old boy into a middle-aged man.

Twenty-first birthdays are a cultural right of passage and my college roommate’s was no different. I did not set out to be a bad friend that day – it just came naturally.

The celebration was a night on the town.

We ordered dangerous sounding adult beverages with names like, “The Green Dinosaur” and “The White Zombie.” After drinks and a pleasant dinner, we returned to our dorm, and I headed to bed. All in all, it seemed like a great birthday celebration for a college student’s coming of age.

*Photo Credit: Jeffrey Zeldman, Creative Commons

As I got ready for class the next morning, I heard moaning coming from the bathroom. My roommate was holding his stomach. He groaned, “Those drinks are killing me.”

I quickly analyzed the situation. We both had the same food and adult beverages. I felt fine and was ready for the day. Therefore, my roommate should feel fine as well.

In a display of reckless insensitivity, I decided to share my logical, but incorrect, conclusion with him as he whimpered. My counsel was essentially – get over it. If I wasn’t hung-over he shouldn’t be either; so, I headed to breakfast to meet my girlfriend (now wife).

As I went about my day, my roommate was taken to the Campus Medical Center.

It turns out that he really did need help.

My roommate lacks the enzyme that allows the body to completely break down alcohol and the half processed alcohol had turned toxic. When I arrived at the clinic, the nurse explained what had happened. Amazed, I mumbled that we had the exact same drinks last night. Nonchalantly she said, “Maybe so, but you are not the exact same people.”

The grand flaw of my response was that I allowed my personal experience to become the standard by which I measured another person. I was not walking in another man’s shoes; I was evaluating him as if he were walking in mine. This turns the Golden Rule on its head. Compassion and empathy cannot exist within this ridged, self-focused framework.

But this is no new trend.

Our culture habitually judges people by the skewed subjective standard of personal experience. This means that we generally show compassion when it makes sense to us, is convenient, or makes us feel better about ourselves.

However, our personal perception does not define reality for other people. Others often perceive circumstances and react to situations differently than the way we would. Many of us find little common ground with the people in our communities because we think their suffering is self-inflicted or looks different than ours.

If we are going to embrace our common call to care for our neighbors, we must offer more than our insensitive recommendation to get over it. Fortunately, we have a God who got into it with us instead of telling us to get over it.

That is good news.

My roommate is now an award-winning high school teacher who is loved by his students. Recently, I was invited to speak at his school and I learned that he regularly tells his students stories about our college years. After reminding him that I also have some stories about his college antics, I took questions from the students. When they asked about his 21st birthday, I told them the lesson I learned that day. Compassion and empathy require us to look beyond ourselves.

To be a better friend, we often have to let go of our own viewpoint.

How can you be a better friend by seeing things from a different perspective?

Is the Advice You’re Giving More Harmful Than Helpful? is a post from: Storyline Blog

More Money Won’t Make You More Generous

One of the greatest illusions of our day is this: More money will make me more generous.

My wife, Brandi, and I have always enjoyed hosting small-group Bible studies in our home. Over the many years we’ve been married, we’ve almost always had a group that met regularly in our house. I’ll never forget something that happened some time ago in one of those groups.

At the time, we were serving in Morgantown, Kentucky, and our group was made up of married couples and singles. One of them was a single woman who worked at a local factory. I’ll call her Peggy.

On this particular night we were talking about generosity.

She had remained quiet for most of the conversation but spoke up during prayer requests at the end. She said, “Pete, it’s no secret to most of you that I play the lottery on a regular basis. I would like to ask you and the group to pray that I win the Kentucky Powerball this week. It’s up to 47 million, and if I won that kind of money, I guarantee you I would give a lot of it away.”

*Photo Credit: khrawlings, Creative Commons

That request put me in a difficult position. After the meeting finished, I felt prompted to explore Peggy’s request a little further.

“Peggy, do you give any of your money away right now? Do you tithe or give to any causes or invest in any individuals or anything?”

She thought for a second and said, “No, not really.”

I asked, “Between you and me, how much money do you make a year?”

She answered, “I make about 21,000 dollars a year.”

“Peggy, what in the world makes you think that you would be generous with 47 million if you’re not generous with 21,000?”

When Jesus said it is better to give than to receive he wasn’t just giving us a quote we could use on greeting cards at Christmas.

He really meant it.

You’ll actually like your life more if you spend more time thinking about how you can give than how you can get. In fact, you’ll actually have more peace.

After my question, Peggy sat there for a second but really had no response. And I didn’t push the matter because, to be honest, there are times when I find myself thinking the same way she did.

This may be one of the greatest illusions about money. We think the only reason we’re not generous is because things are too tight right now and we don’t make a lot. We think, “When I make more money I’m going to start being generous.”

The trouble is, it doesn’t usually work that way.

One of the most reliable financial statistics that exists is that lower income people give a higher percentage of their income away. The more you get the harder it is for you to be generous. If you can’t be generous when you make $21,000, you will not be generous when you make $41,000. If you’re not generous with $41,000, you won’t be generous with $141,000.

If you can’t be generous with what you have now, you will never be generous with more.

More Money Won’t Make You More Generous is a post from: Storyline Blog

Resist the Urge to Create Out of Anger

Hemingway could never write when he was drinking. Scratch that. Hemingway wrote a lot while he was drinking, but none of it was published because none of it was any good.

Anger has a similar effect.

When you are criticized, you are going to want to create in retaliation, but don’t.

As a creator, you are a person that feeds consumers, and you mustn’t feed consumers anger. Yes, there are reasons to be angry, good reasons, but don’t let anger evolve into the act of creating.

*Photo Credit: Munir Hamdan, Creative Commons

As a creator, you are a teacher, a role model, you are setting the moral compass of every person who interacts with your work. There are many parents who shirk their responsibility to parent, mostly because they fear the responsibility.

It’s the same with some creators.

They create, but then do not take responsibility for what they are doing.

That said, whatever it is you are angry about, and hopefully it is an injustice, can be addressed by your positive creativity. And it’s perfectly fine to acknowledge this dynamic. What you are doing, when you create something good rather than something bitter and reactionary, is displacing whatever it is that made you angry.

The public only has a consciousness so big.

And when you create something good, and it gets into the public consciousness, there’s less room for whatever it is that made you angry.

So go and create something good, and displace whatever it is that is pissing you off.

Resist the Urge to Create Out of Anger is a post from: Storyline Blog