Donald Miller's Blog, page 60

The Only Religious Formula That Ever Helped Me

Not long ago a friend introduced me to a religious formula. He’d discovered some kind of method for interacting with God that had greatly helped him and he wanted me to try it. To be honest, I don’t fully remember what the formula was. I didn’t try it.

*Photo Credit: simpleinsomnia, Creative Commons

I confess I might be a cynic, but I’m convinced there aren’t any religious formulas that work.

I mean if you pray more you’re certain to see results, and if you sacrifice more it will certainly make you a more caring and humble person, but those aren’t the kind of “formulas” I’m talking about.

I’m talking about the formulas that give you a feeling you can control God.

I once heard a Christian speaker say that if we do “such and such” God “has no choice but to respond by doing such and such.” Really? God has no choice? He’s just a remote control Deity we manipulate with our actions?

Having grown up hearing these formulas about once each week, I feel as though I’ve tried them all. But it wasn’t until I walked away from them completely that I started experiencing the presence of God. I’m not sure how to describe it except to say the presence of God feels very normal, and really cool things seem to happen every so often that can’t be explained. There’s no sentimentality involved, no worship services that resemble a seance summoning spirits, just normal life like the one I have with my wife and my friends, only God is invisible and more vague.

I’m starting to think the more fearful a person is, the more controlling he or she is.

And the more controlling he or she is, the more he or she is drawn to religious formulas.

And I don’t blame people. The thought of not being okay with God is frightening, for sure. I’d want to control Him too. That is, if I could. But I’m convinced I can’t. God is going to do what God wants regardless of whether I read the Bible, pray, take communion, attend church, or anything else. I can’t control Him or change Him. All I can do is submit to Him. And that’s frightening. Because by blindly submitting to Him, I admit He gets to do what He wants with Himself and with me.

So what does my faith look like?

It looks like just the other night, lying in bed with my wife asleep, reflecting in a somewhat rare way on what a selfish person I am, feeling a supernatural guilt about it, and raising my hands to Jesus and whispering I’m yours. Do with me as you please. I’ve got no hope outside you. God have mercy.

For some reason, that single prayer gives me more hope than all the formulaic actions we can loosely pull from scripture and act out as a way of manipulating God. God have mercy indeed.

The Only Religious Formula That Ever Helped Me is a post from: Storyline Blog

Why You’re Terrible At Goodbyes

A friend of my sister’s once told her you must grieve everything. Anytime you have to say goodbye to something, someone or some place, grieve it. When you’re in a transitional phase in life, this can mean a lot of goodbyes. To things like: college, your first job, your apartment, your hometown, another town, another job and before after and in between, relationships. People are in and out of your life before you can blink and get their phone number.

So when you find something in your transitional life transitioning yet again, you have two choices:

Avoid saying goodbye, or face the goodbye.

For a long time, I was an avoider but didn’t realize it. For example, if I broke up with someone, I hurled myself into a new hobby. I trained for a marathon or joined a volleyball team. One time when I moved away from one of my favorite cities in the world, I immersed myself in my new job and tried to ignore the big, city-shaped hole in my heart. I’ve avoided literally saying goodbye, too. I rushed through a quick goodbye conversation with one of my best friends in that city, while on a busy sidewalk in the freezing cold. He handed me a parting gift and I took it, said thanks, and hurried away.

It’s like the fight or flight reflex, and I always flew.

But this is harmful to yourself and others.

When you run away from goodbyes, you prevent yourself from grieving.

And grieving is what allows you to move on.

*Photo Credit: Nadine Heidrich, Creative Commons

If you don’t acknowledge that person, place, or thing is gone, you live in a suspended denial and have a harder time being without that thing than if you had just acknowledged the goodbye in the first place. What you are running away from ends up following you for a long time. How can something really be gone if you’ve never admitted it is?

On the other hand, if you address the goodbye, you open the door to the grieving process.

Facing the goodbye feels harder at first.

But in hindsight you will see you are a healthier person. You won’t be shoving sadness so deep down that it eventually bubbles to the surface at weird and inopportune times. Trust me, you want to avoid those bubbling emotions.

So how do you do this grieving thing when it’s not actual death we’re talking about? I guess it’s different for everyone.

For me, that time I joined a volleyball team I had a couple of friends call me out and tell me I needed to sit in my sadness for at least a few weeks because I was the type that ran from sadness. I had their accountability and I told them I would allow myself to cry when I needed to and I would journal and I would make sure I was conscious of my grieving a couple of nights a week.

This really sucked.

Those journal pages are dark and will probably never be shared, but after those few weeks, I noticed the weight of being sad had begun to lift. I began to see the journal pages reflect hope again. And after a little longer, I even felt joy reappear in an unexpected way.

I think that’s the best part about grieving: if you chip away at it, it’ll make a crack, allowing joy to seep back in.

Why You’re Terrible At Goodbyes is a post from: Storyline Blog

You’re Not Giving Yourself Enough Credit

Success isn’t how far you got, but the distance you traveled from where you started. — Steven Prefontaine

Too often, we live our lives rejoicing only in the destination.

We mark the major accomplishments as the milestones that define our lives: a graduation, a new job, a wedding, a move, or overcoming a tragedy.

We look back with fondness on these significant events. As a result, we desperately look forward to the next: the accomplishment of a life goal, a significant desired award, a major life transition, a big promotion, or simply emerging from one of life’s dark valleys triumphant. We surmise that because we found joy in the previous accomplishment, we must find it again in the next.

Unfortunately, life is not lived exclusively in these major destinations.

In reality, we actually spend far more time in the pathways between them. The significant achievements are few, while the journeys between these major destinations are long.

*Photo Credit: Les Chatfield, Creative Commons

These spaces between destinations are where we prepare ourselves — and are prepared — to accomplish the next goal, to weather the incoming storm, and to choose the next destination carefully. But because we live in a results-oriented world, finding joy in these gaps can be difficult.

Not long ago, my 5-year-old daughter walked into our living room carrying the book Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss. She climbed into my lap, asked if she could read to me, and began opening the front cover. With little hesitation, I agreed. I looked forward to helping her through it.

Little did I know my help would not be needed.

Using the sight words she had learned from her kindergarten teacher and simple steps to get through the tricky words, my daughter successfully navigated every single word in the book. When my daughter closed the book, she looked at me with a huge sense of accomplishment. And when she did, she looked directly into the eyes of the only person smiling bigger than her.

I remember looking at her with a feeling of pride I could never communicate with words. The compliments were genuine and the hug was sweet. My daughter was learning to read. She knew it. I knew it.

And there was great joy to be found in this growth.

Now, just to be clear, I know full-well her journey in becoming a reader is not complete. Being able to sound out every word in a Dr. Seuss book is hardly the culmination of her education. I will still challenge her to reach new heights and seek higher accomplishments.

But, in this specific moment, overwhelming joy was the perfectly accurate response. My daughter had grown in her ability to read over the previous weeks and months. She had worked hard to reach this point. The progress from her starting point deserved to be celebrated. And she understood there was joy to be found in this journey.

Very likely, your life deserves more celebration than you offer it.

Learn to celebrate the progress, not just the accomplishments.

In the end, our lives are not measured by the accomplishments.

They are measured by the little steps and decisions we make every day.

Strive forward to become a better person, a better parent, a better follower of God, and a better contributor to the world around you. Strive for the great accomplishments the world will use to define your life. But don’t be so quick to discount the progress you have already made. Because that is where life is lived. That is where joy is to be found.

You’re Not Giving Yourself Enough Credit is a post from: Storyline Blog

Another Tip for Good Writing

Last year, I caught my favorite poet, Billy Collins, at a reading in San Diego. In the interview section of the evening, Dean Nelson from Point Loma University asked him to share some advice he gives to his poetry students. Without having to think about it, Collins said, “Dare to be clear.”

Why is this significant?

He said writers who often want to come off as smarter or better skilled than they are will beat around the bush or spend too much time trying to convince the reader they are smart or interesting and fail to directly and clearly communicate whatever their point is.

*Photo Credit: Public Herald, Creative Commons

“You know what my poem Fishing on the Susquehanna in July is about?” Collins asked. “It’s about Fishing on the Sisquehanna in July!”

The audience laughed, of course.

But I couldn’t help but think he was right.

Often what we want to say should just be said, not argued for, waxed eloquently around, or turned into a rhyme. We can just say it.

A good writer dares to be clear.

Another Tip for Good Writing is a post from: Storyline Blog

Why You Settle For Less When You Know There’s Better

I think we have a lot to learn from trees. I don’t say start with that to segue into some sort of environmentalist stand, I just think it’s true. It seems like there are few things, if any, that God hasn’t planted around us to teach us something good about who he is.

Just last week, I was listening to an episode called “Things” from my favorite podcast and there was a story about a tree that caught my attention.

In the episode, a man was sharing about a big maple tree.

His dad had planted it in the yard of the house he grew up in when they moved in. The man adored it, but sadly, years later, his dad ended up having to chop it down because it’d grown so big that it was putting the house’s foundation at risk.

*Photo Credit: bark, Creative Commons

At this point, the man telling the story was now an adult and living thousands of miles away from home. But when his mother called about the tree, she could sense his devastation. She then went out into the yard and gathered the remaining seeds from the maple’s removal and sent them to her son so he could start over and plant his own.

Right in his grown-up backyard, he watched a new maple of his own sprout up and grow to be big and beautiful.

The story continued, but I paused.

I actually physically took a break at this point in the podcast because I found myself driving and crying, which felt like a bad 80′s song. The mother’s gesture in the story seemed simple, but it struck a deep chord in me.

The idea of having to uproot something we’ve planted with sureness — to end a season that’s created memories and shade for so many years — reminded me a lot of dealing with necessary change.

We don’t like saying goodbye to things we’ve found comfort in. But sometimes, if we don’t, we end up ruining our foundation, creating bigger problems than before and never making room for anything new to take place.

The man in this story didn’t want to say goodbye to the tree that was so much a part of his past.

But with its death, he got to watch a new tree grow.

A new tree that allowed him to let go of what had been and look forward to what was ahead.

How many times have I been afraid to let go of a relationship, job or opportunity because it felt hard and I wasn’t sure if God was going to really provide something better?

I’ve been afraid to cut down trees and plant new ones.

I’ve forgotten that with every loss, I can still walk away with a handful of seeds.

What’s beautiful about this story is the seeds; they are the lessons learned and truths found that stay alive from one season to the next, if we’re willing to remove them from the remains of the rotted tree and use them to plant a new one.

But instead, we often spend more time convincing friends, family and ourselves that our old trees are fine — that our hearts, values and futures aren’t really at risk if we don’t chop them down. We find ourselves resting under a delusional shade.

We end up being the wrong kind of tree huggers.

But what if your fearful grip is ruining your foundation and keeping something better from being planted in front of you? A job you find meaning in, a significant other that adores you as much as you adore them, or the time to finally take that trip you’ve been dreaming about for years.

What tree are you holding onto that needs to be chopped down?

Time to gather the seeds and go let something better grow.

Why You Settle For Less When You Know There’s Better is a post from: Storyline Blog

The Problem With Black-And-White Thinking

Generally speaking, you are either a Republican or Democrat, a Calvinist or Arminian, you either believe we are shaped by nature or nurture, you either like Neil Diamond or you don’t, and even as you read this, you either agree with the statements I just made or you disagree. We think Fox News is brainwashing or truth-telling, we are Democratic or Marxists, evolutionists or creationists. There is either right or wrong, good or bad, beautiful or profane, right?

*Photo Credit: Geraint Otis Warlow, Creative Commons

Such thinking wouldn’t make it through the door of an undergraduate course in logic, yet it’s commonplace in our arguments.

And it’s a problem.

Black-and-white, either-or thinking polarizes people and stunts progressive thought.

Moreover, we begin to believe whatever thought camp we subscribe to is morally good and the other morally bad, thus demonizing a threatening position, further stunting our ability to think and find truth. Instead, we are armed with ammo from the twenty-four hour news cycle that helps us defend our identities rather than search for truth.

There are places where this sort of thinking doesn’t prevail, however. I remember hanging out at Reed College back in the day and wondering how odd it was that people’s identities weren’t attached to their ideas. In fact, ideas weren’t even their ideas anymore than artifacts found in an archeological dig belonged to their finder.

So how did we become so polarized?

It’s true that humans have a need to categorize their thoughts in order to make sense of the world. And yet few of us would realize our categories are largely utilitarian, based loosely in fact and largely in fantasy. Austin Cline suggests that when we fall victim to black-and-white thinking, we reduce an endless spectrum of possibilities to the two most extreme positions, saying, in short, that home is either north or south, when home may indeed be southeast or northwest, or in some cases, both, depending on the necessary route.

Black-and-white thinking is attractive because it’s reductionistic; it simplifies everything so we don’t really have to comprehend. It allows us to feel intelligent without understanding, and once we are intelligent, we feel superior. People who don’t agree with us are just dumb.

What about you? Do you think in black and white?

Here are a few ways I’ve had to train myself to not think in black and white.

1. Disengage your ego from your ideas. Our ideas aren’t really ours; they are just ideas. They may be true ideas, which makes them important, but they aren’t our true ideas, and people should have the free will to either agree with them or not. It is very difficult to be honest with ourselves about whether our egos are involved, but it’s the territory of a better thinker.

2. Understand there is much you don’t understand. We begin to think in black and white when we assume we know everything. But this is an illogical assumption. Those who think in black and white and defend their camps will have a hard time engaging new and valuable information because they have already built their home halfway across the desert.

3. Walk away from black and white conversations. When the conversation becomes about defending one’s identity, it’s time to politely move on. If the conversation is calm, and nobody is defending his or her ego, you’d be amazed at what information unfolds in the discussion.

4. Choose your words carefully. Use phrases such as: At this point, I’ve come to believe, or, I’ll never stop learning, but I’m attracted to the idea that… Some will read these statements as weak, but I see these as strong and humble statements. When you make statements like this, your listener hears that you are objective and have sought truth. You are, as such, thought of as more trustworthy, and your argument is given more weight.

I’ll never stop learning, but at this point I’ve come to believe black-and-white thinking isn’t the best way to engage ideas.

It should also be noted, I do believe some things are black and white.

Murdering an innocent person, for instance, is always wrong. Killing somebody, however, is not always wrong. Some actions are right or wrong depending on context. This would be considered a gray area. If you’d like to read more about this, I suggest checking out G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy. Chesterton asserts that mathematicians go mad, not poets, because mathematicians try to build a bridge across the infinite, and poets simply swim in the sea.

Is there right and wrong, absolute truth and so forth? Absolutely. But is life complex? Absolutely. Are there grey areas in life? Yes, there are. At least this is what I’ve come to believe. And I’ll hope we’ll explore them.

The Problem With Black-And-White Thinking is a post from: Storyline Blog

What You Miss When You’re Afraid Of Messing Up

Recently, I was watching my youngest son, Brewer, fly his kite. He has always had a thing for kites.

It reminded me of a time over a year ago when he had received a kite as a gift. It hung there in our laundry room for months, and almost daily he would beg me to fly it in the backyard. Every time he asked I would remind him that our backyard was full of trees and it would inevitably get stuck in a tree.

Well, he eventually wore me down.

And in a weak moment, I think on the 138th ask, I finally gave in.

I was getting ready to go out of town and I thought to myself, “if the kid wants to fly the kite in the backyard, we’ll fly it in the backyard.”

*Photo Credit: keith.bellvay, Creative Commons

As you might imagine, about 10 minutes into our little kite adventure, just as I had predicted, the kite got caught in the tree. I thought for sure he was going to be crushed, but instead he just laughed.

As we headed inside, he grabbed my hand and gave me one of those smiles letting me know he had a blast.

It was a great lesson for me that I still haven’t forgotten.

It’s better to fly a kite and it get stuck in a tree, than to not fly the kite at all.

A friend of mine once said: Every opportunity has an expiration date and the cost of missing out can be greater than the cost of messing up.

You do realize there are some things worse than failure, right? So what’s your kite?

Time to face your fears and fly it anyway.

What You Miss When You’re Afraid Of Messing Up is a post from: Storyline Blog

Finish That Thing You Need To Write (Without A Cabin)

A few months ago, my newest book released to the public. Seeing as I had already submitted its first draft over a year ago, it was such a relief to finally have this baby of mine out in the world and available to sit on other people’s shelves. (It’s amazing how long the book-publishing process still takes in the twenty-first century.)

*Photo Credit: Walt Stoneburner, Creative Commons

I wrote that book in my office with the door shut while my husband fed our three kids on his own accord for about a month straight. I also wrote it on an unimpressive table on the second floor of our town’s public library, at a dozen random coffee shops, on our kitchen island as I watched the soup simmer, and on my lap in the passenger seat while Kyle drove us to the in-laws’ for Thanksgiving.

No writing cabin here, in other words.

I guess you could argue that I figuratively enjoyed a cabin-like experience, with my husband overseeing the child-feeding and laundry-folding tasks for that last month leading up to my deadline. I had my nose to the grindstone, and I didn’t do anything but work on my book for those four weeks – I ran guest posts and reruns on my blog, got off social media, and wrotewrotewrote. But I always emerged by dinner time every night, ate with the family and bathed the kids, and essentially lived my routine amidst the insane work of book-writing.

Don’t get me wrong, I would have loved to escape to a cabin of solitude. I totally get how that would make my writing better, my book more polished, my mind clearer. But it’s just not realistic in my life stage with three little kids and self-employment. And what a shame it would have been if I had let that stop me from trying my darndest and hitting the submit button to my publisher.

No matter how you slice it, book writing takes sacrifice.

For some, that might mean finding a cabin, even if it’s a dump — that’s certainly one way to write. And I very well may do that one day.

But it’s not the only way to get it done.

For other people, that sacrifice might be saying no to any form of free time for a season, choosing instead to make friends with the blinking cursor instead of barstools at the pub. It might mean an agreement between spouses on how to temporarily set aside normalcy while still keeping a brood of children alive and well. Or it might simply mean acceptance that a book’s completion will take longer than is preferred.

Madeline L’Engle once said, “Inspiration usually comes during work.”

Agatha Christie also said, “The best time for planning a book is while you’re doing the dishes.” Both of these women wisely speak to the reality behind many a writer’s work:

Our efforts are often blessed in spite of our lack of free time, not because of an abundance of it.

It doesn’t often make sense, but it seems to be true in the lives of many great talents.

Just like that cliché about the best ideas usually barreling into your brain while you’re in the shower, so, too, have I found that my writing seems to happen amidst laundry piles and weekly runs to Costco. It’s the sexy part of my life as an author and entrepreneur.

We all work differently.

And that’s more than okay — that’s how it should be, because we’re all wired differently. So don’t be discouraged if life hasn’t enabled you to write from a cabin right now. Hard work and sacrifice are often blessed in spite of that. Keep at it.

Finish That Thing You Need To Write (Without A Cabin) is a post from: Storyline Blog

My Favorite Tweet Ever

Last week somebody sent out a tweet quoting an old Polish proverb. It went like this:

Not my circus, not my monkeys.

*Photo Credit: euno, Creative Commons

I read it and laughed.

I laughed because I happened to be visiting some friends in Chicago not long ago who were up in arms about the location of a proposed playground in their neighborhood. In fact, the proposed playground had the entire neighborhood at each others’ throats. No kidding, the argument about the playground was causing tension families, churches and even school boards.

Why?

I’ve studied enough psychology to know people don’t actually have that many purely objective opinions. Mostly, we think in tribal patterns. That is, “our people” subscribe to an idea and we adhere to that idea in order to feel a sense of belonging. The “issue” then doesn’t matter as much as we think it does. What we’re really doing is getting involved in a fight because our sense of security is involved.

So how do we navigate these dynamics?

Well, that’s why I love the Polish proverb. Most of the time, it doesn’t serve anybody’s interest to get involved.

I hate to sound like a politician, but I find myself constantly asking “what’s the good in joining this argument?” and I rarely have a good answer. At that point, I just walk away. Whether or not a playground gets built, or baptism has to happen when a child is an infant, or for that matter what celebrity broke up with whatever other celebrity doesn’t affect my life in the slightest.

Why fight about a playground when children are being trafficked, slavery is still prevalent in the world and so on? Isn’t it a trick of the devil to start wars over nothing so people won’t fight the actual wars that need to be fought? Not my circus, not my monkeys indeed.

That said, it’s hard.

We want to take sides. We want to join a tribe and be loyal. But in doing so, we forfeit something.

In the end, those who do not join petty battles are seen as wise.

Just like children will finally stop fighting and look to parents, those who involve themselves in petty arguments look to those who don’t to help them resolve such things. In other words, those who hold their tongues (and opinions and nerves and so on and so on) are seen as above the fray. And as such they should be seen. They are indeed above the fray.

I’m wondering, then, what battles you can let go of.

Can you become an objective observer who sees both sides? Are you one of the few who can mediate conflict rather than involve yourself in it? I think we need more of those kinds of people. Let’s become them.

My Favorite Tweet Ever is a post from: Storyline Blog

What Are You Telling Yourself That Isn’t True?

Now that worry has proved such an unlucrative business, why not find a better job? – Hafiz

I’m writing this in the midst of a week long vacation on a friend’s farm in the rolling hills of North Carolina. My wife and I are spending our days reading, napping and walking the numerous trails on the land. Every morning, I wake up early and hike the farm’s perimeter. By the time the morning mist lifts, I’ve encountered quite a few forest critters.

*Photo Credit: Prachanart Viriyaraks, Creative Commons

Over the first few days, I saw a wild turkey, a herd of deer, a turtle, a toad, a raccoon, and more birds and squirrels than I could count. And upon each encounter, I was reminded anew of something:

Wild animals are freaked out by me.

I scare the wits out of them! When I came upon them, the turkey flew into the woods screaming, the deer dived into the dense forest, the turtle closed the doors of his shell, the toad backed quickly into his hole, and the raccoon shimmied up an oak tree.

After a while, I began to get my feelings hurt. I wanted them to know that not only was I a nice guy, but I also didn’t carry a gun. While I was quite willing to be Francis of Assisi-like, having chats with them and rubbing their little backs while we talked, they in turn saw me as a menacing mortal threat.

Our perspectives couldn’t have been more different. I was intrigued by their beauty and their place in the natural world, but in their imagination, if given the chance, I was certain to do them great harm.

In fairness to my animal friends, I understand them.

I, too, make up things about people, and most of the time, what I make up is neither accurate nor true.

For instance, I’ll write someone an email and suggest we get together for coffee. If I don’t hear from him for a day or two? No big deal. But by the third or fourth day, I begin to wonder what’s going on. “Was it something I said? Did I do something wrong?”

And by the fifth day, I’m convinced he won’t give me the time of day and he doesn’t like me, but is afraid to tell me. By the sixth day, I imagine him throwing darts at my photo or sticking pins in a little doll with a striking resemblance to me.

All of this I have completely made up.

In reality, I have no idea why my friend hasn’t written back. He may be out of the country, on a social media fast, or simply forgot to return my email. It happens. For all I know, he could be in some deep crevasse with his arm trapped under a huge boulder, trying to decide whether or not to use his dull Swiss Army Knife. Meanwhile, I’m wasting an inordinate amount of time making up a story that has a 99.9% chance of being untrue.

Let’s face it – we all make stuff up! While we have legitimate questions — Why didn’t they call back? Why wasn’t I invited? I wonder why I wasn’t chosen for this or that? — we often answer them with a negative and active imagination.

How much more interesting would our lives be if we lived the story we knew to be true rather than engaging in an imaginary story where paranoia crowds out the truth.

Let’s commit to living the real story we know, leaving fairy tales to folks who write fiction.

Have you been “making up” anything this week? If so, try to step out of this part of your imagination and step into what you know to be true.

What Are You Telling Yourself That Isn’t True? is a post from: Storyline Blog