Donald Miller's Blog, page 69

Why Dreaming Sometimes Leads to Discontentment

I was that kid who climbed a tree one day with a pillow in one hand and a book in the other so I could sit on the branch more comfortably to read. I would lie (not jump) on my trampoline alone and stare at the sky and think whatever important thoughts I had at age nine.

I had what my mom called “an active imagination” and I exercised this muscle often. I would catch myself daydreaming in class all the time. Listening to a sermon was nearly impossible. Over the course of those 20 minutes my head had been in so many different places I would worry I had been talking aloud during church.

I think an active imagination is a wonderful thing.

Stories and characters and made up games and alternate universes – that’s the good stuff. It’s why fiction writers are my heroes. And there are moments when daydreaming is great and propels us forward in our lives, like when we take our dreams and write them down and figure out a way we could actually achieve them. But I don’t tend to be productive in my daydreaming, and I’ve realized once I return from my time in space, I’m less content.

*Photo Credit: Elin Schönfelder, Creative Commons

You see, in my daydreams I am this really incredible, fearless person who travels constantly and has foreign boyfriends who financially support my gypsy, writing lifestyle. Then I wake up, and I’m sitting in my cubicle with a half-written email staring back at me and a calendar and a printer and a mug of cold coffee that’s hours old. And I’m unsatisfied with my life.

I’m ungrateful because nothing is measuring up.

I could have pranced into work that day completely happy and humming as I wrote my to-do list, but a few minutes in lala land sets me back for the entire afternoon.

Sometimes that feeling of discontentment is good and means we are supposed to move or make some sort of change in our lives. That’s not what I’m talking about here. This type of discontentment is rooted in ingratitude and feels sort of poisonous to the soul.

The instruction in scripture to take captive our thoughts has to be the most difficult thing Paul ever asked us to do, but I keep discovering more and more reasons why that part is included in his letter to the Corinthians.

So I’m trying to be better at this.

One way that seems to help is keeping a prayer book on my desk at work that I reach for as quickly as possible when my mind starts to slip. This prayer book (mine is called Yours Is the Day, Lord, Yours Is the Night, but any would do) has morning and evening prayers for each day. I read one of them very slowly and sometimes over and over again until I’m refocused. It is so hard. Harder than working out, but, like exercise, it’s so rewarding.

Why Dreaming Sometimes Leads to Discontentment is a post from: Storyline Blog

View Suffering This Way to Change the World

I get to meet human trafficking victims on a regular basis and hear their stories. These modern day slaves share powerful and painful accounts of the challenges they must overcome as they shift from being victims to being survivors. Here is the story of a slave I never met.

M. was a teenage boy who was abducted from his hometown by a group for foreign men that preyed on the vulnerable. Like cargo, he was loaded on a ship and taken to a land not his own. There, a wealthy landowner forced him to work on a farm taking care of the livestock. M. was alone, exhausted and powerless. As the years of forced labor passed, he embraced the faith of his parents . . . a faith he had long ignored. 

M. realized that if he did not take bold action to change the trajectory of his life, he would die a slave.

He may have lacked every material and social advantage, but he made a plan and acted on it. M. ran away from his trafficker and began an arduous 200 mile journey to the coast where he boarded a ship bound for somewhere else. It didn’t matter where. It took several voyages on different ships to make it back to his home country, but he persevered and was reunited with his family. The boy was now a man. The slave was now free.

*Photo Credit: kevincole, Creative Commons

That would be a fitting end to any good story about human trafficking. But for M., it was only the beginning. He knew there was more to do. He worked, studied, and learned. Rather than bury his painful past as ugly scars to be hidden from view, his story of survival and newfound faith birthed in him a clear-eyed vision for justice and righting wrongs. Remarkably, M. once again left his home and returned to the country where he had been exploited – this time, of his own free will – this time, to serve the people that once oppressed him. Together, they built schools and churches to care for the poor. He stood up for the weak and spoke out against slavery. The boy slave with no future had become a brave servant and inspiring champion of justice.

Before he chose to return to the dark place from which he had fled, M. became a priest, and when he was ordained, he took the name Patricus – “noble father.”

M. spent his days loving and serving the people of that land as if they were his own, and when he died, those touched by his life of courageous sacrifice declared him a saint. Today, we know him as Saint Patrick.

I love to hear stories of people who are unwilling to let awful circumstances or self-inflicted wounds define them. They take risks to redeem their past by dreaming big about the future. Those are the people I celebrated this Saint Patrick’s Day with.

View Suffering This Way to Change the World is a post from: Storyline Blog

What Are the 3 Things That Create a Meaningful Life?

Years ago a psychologist named Viktor Frankl stood up to Sigmund Freud. Freud was teaching what man wanted most in life was pleasure. But Frankl believed man wasn’t seeking pleasure as much as he was seeking a deep sense of meaning.

In fact, he went on to say “When a person can’t find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.”

*Photo Credit: Oleh Slobodeniuk, Creative Commons

“When a person can’t find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.” -Viktor Frankl (tweet this)

I believe Frankl was right, and I think it’s obvious. Everybody around us is seeking pleasure, but pleasure rarely satisfies. In fact, the most contented people I know have found something more satisfying than pleasure, they’ve found a humble sense of gratitude and are actively participating in work that is difficult, beautiful and good.

Viktor Frankl spent most of his life studying the mystery of meaning, and amazingly, he came up with a prescription for how we can experience it ourselves.

His prescription was remarkably simple:



Have a project you’re working on that requires your unique skills and abilities. And preferably a project that helps others.



Share your experiences within the context of safe, loving relationships.



Find a redemptive perspective on your suffering and challenges.

I discovered Viktor Frankl’s work during a dark season. I’d written my first bestseller and yet the experience didn’t satisfy me. I’d wanted to be a bestselling author all my life and I assumed when it happened I’d experience some kind of actualization. It’s an absurd thought, but I think we all have these mystical hopes that if we only had such and such we’d be satisfied.

After reading Frankl’s thoughts, I began to structure my life differently.

I woke up every day and identified a few projects that needed my attention and made a to-do list for each. I realized that if I gave myself enough time to “think about life” I only got depressed, but if I actually started working I was too distracted to get depressed. In other words, I realized we weren’t meant to sit around and stare at our belly buttons. We were supposed to be distracted with a worthy pursuit.

I also began to pay more attention to my relationships. I stopped looking to “join a community” and created one of my own. I walked away from unhealthy relationships and started spending more time with people who were non-judgmental, kind, supportive and loving. This had a terrific effect on my stability and I found myself feeling more contented and confident.

And lastly, I took a reflective look at some of the challenges I’ve faced in life and while acknowledging there was plenty to grieve, I also acknowledged I’d been blessed by some of those hard experiences. By that I mean some of the painful experiences I’d had had made me more humble, more tender. This may have been the most healing exercise of my life and I highly recommend it.

Life looks very different for me now. I don’t wake up wondering what life is about or where I fit. I don’t have unhealthy relationships and I don’t pick at old wounds so they won’t heal.

Viktor Frankl’s prescription works.

Sadly, Frankl passed before he could create a formal process people could go through to analyze and organize these three areas of their lives. But the process was so healing to me I began working on a way to explain it to others and take them through it.

That process became Storyline, and so far we’ve taken about 25k people through it. The feedback has been stellar. We’ve heard from people who’ve told us their marriages have been saved, their depression has subsided and their lives have gone from mundane to adventurous.

•••

Our goal at Storyline has always been to take one-million people through the process, so we’ve got a long way to go. But we’re about to release a tool that will help.

On March 31st, we’ll be releasing Creating Your Life Plan, our online course that allows you to create a life plan based on Viktor Frankl’s prescription to experience meaning.

The course consists of 11 videos in which I sit with author Shauna Niequist in my kitchen and help her create her life plan. As you take the course, you simply fill out your plan along with Shauna and I, watching and listening as we talk about the most joyful and agonizing seasons of our own lives. I was amazed, even as we filmed the E-Course, at how powerful the process was. Let’s just say there was a lot of laughing and a lot of crying.

You can take the course by yourself, in a small group or, if you own a company, you can get a corporate license so your entire staff can go through it (While Shauna and I talk a little about our own faith, there’s no forceful religious content in the course.)

Nobody is more healthy, productive or clear-headed than a person who has planned and is living a meaningful life.

The course was beautifully shot and very expensive to produce but we’re offering it at a great price. For the entire month of April, it’s actually 33% off.

If you’ve not experienced Storyline but have always wanted to, would you take the course? We believe the more people who are living healthy, meaningful lives there are, the better we will become as a culture. Culture really can heal from the inside out, and we think planning and living a meaningful life is a step toward making that happen.

It’s been more than a year since we’ve released anything new at Storyline so if you don’t mind, would you spread the word? Will you make Creating Your Life Plan your next small group experience? Will you take all your employees through it? Your family? Yourself?

We think your story is worth it.

Best,

Learn more about Creating Your Life Plan by visiting our website CreatingYourLifePlan.com. While you’re there, you can sign up to learn about a major discount during the month of April. Click here to learn more.

What Are the 3 Things That Create a Meaningful Life? is a post from: Storyline Blog

Sunday Morning Sermon — Endless Grace

Forgiveness is one of the biggest principles communicated in the gospel message, yet it continues to be one of the hardest to practice in my everyday life.

The story below is of a young woman who faced her mother’s killer and chose forgiveness instead of countless other and easier options. I have so little to say about this video because I still have so much to learn.

My prayer for myself, after seeing this video, is to choose to show God’s endless grace in my marriage, in my friendships and in the rest of my life, through forgiveness. Today I pray the same for you.

Endless Grace: A Story of Forgiveness from Sovereign Hope Church on Vimeo.

Sunday Morning Sermon — Endless Grace is a post from: Storyline Blog

Saturday Morning Cereal: The Best of the Internet This Week

On the weekend we pour a little more cereal in your bowl. We hope you enjoy some reading from our regular contributors, some viral videos and other great finds from the internet. This is what we loved this week. Share your favorite articles and videos in the comments below.

The Best From Our Contributors

3 Questions to Avoid Spreading Gossip by Mike Foster

Expectations that were never yours to meet by Tsh Oxenreider

Losing Ourselves Along the Way by Brian Gardner

The Best From Around The Web

This week our friend Steve Moakler is going to be releasing a new album. If you were in San Diego, you had the chance to hear Steve open for Ben Rector. Steve has been a long time friend of Storyline, and we really love his music. If you pre-order his new album you can get his previous two albums and a bunch of other awesome goodies. You will not regret the purchase, and you will love his music. You can pre-order his album here, and check out all the free stuff you get when you pre-order.

The Best Viral Videos We Found

Last week, the homeless lottery winner won the majority vote. What about this week? Vote for your favorite below in the comments.

Saturday Morning Cereal: The Best of the Internet This Week is a post from: Storyline Blog

One Way To Approach Relationships That Feel Impossible

I don’t know about you, but I get easily overwhelmed by problems. I know not everyone is this way. Some people are undeterred by problems. Some charge forward in their life, despite problems. Others confront the problems, head on, with an air of confidence that they’ll figure out a way to solve it.

But not me. For me, problems always seem kind of delicate.

I could confront the problem, I think to myself, but I don’t want to make the problem worse. I could charge forward with my life, but I’ll know that problem is there, and sooner or later I’m convinced it will come back to haunt me. No matter what, I never feel totally sure about the “right” way to solve a problem.

The other day, I had an argument with a friend.

This wasn’t the first time we had argued. In fact, our friendship has been up and down, back and forth for awhile now, and although I love this friend and really wanted to salvage the relationship, I wasn’t sure how we were going to solve our problem.

After the last conversation with this friend, I hung up the phone feeling sick.

*photo credit: what_marty_sees, Creative Commons

It seemed like, every time we talked, things got worse, not better. And while I probably would have sat around all day, trying to figure out what to do, my husband suggested I stop thinking about it for a few hours and do something neutral. “Maybe the answer will just come to you,” he said.

So I found a project.

For weeks now, there has been this huge cardboard box sitting in our bedroom. Inside the box was a beautiful mother of pearl lamp my father-in-law bought when he was in Guam many years ago. And when we moved into our new apartment in January, he offered to give it to us, and we were honored.

But since it had been in a box for years, and was fairly tangled, we just hadn’t gotten around to hanging it.

So I pulled it out of the box and got to work.

At first glance, I’ll be honest, the untangling job seemed impossible. In fact, you could tell the lamp would be beautiful, but it didn’t look beautiful all tangled up and sitting on my bed. All the tiny pieces of the lamp were obviously delicate—each of the pearls strung together with a thin piece of string. I worried that, if you pulled any one piece too firmly, the whole thing would fall apart.

But I started the only way that seemed logical—with one knot, at the bottom, because I figured it would be better to work my way up.

One knot at a time, I untangled that lamp.

I would get one knot untangled, and that would reveal another knot that needed to be untangled. At certain moments I wanted to pull hard, out of frustration or because I figured it would be faster that way, but I resisted the urge, knowing if I pulled to hard it could break the whole thing.

So gently, delicately, I just dealt with one knot at a time.

It took me more than an hour. Halfway through, my husband came to help. We worked together on that lamp, untangling and untangling until it was back to normal again.

We hung it in our bedroom, and it was beautiful.

The whole experience it made me think about how the best way to approach problems is often the most counter-intuitive way to approach them—slowly, calmly, one thing at at time. The problem might seem impossible to solve. It might seem too delicate. But if we’re willing to approach one knot at a time, we’ll eventually make progress with our problems.

I called my friend and told her I was sorry. I told her I wasn’t sure exactly what to say, just yet, but that I loved her and wanted to make things better. I asked if we could just focus on one thing at a time. “If there was one thing I could do to rebuild trust with you,” I asked, “what would it be?”

I asked her if we could just start there.

And suddenly, what seemed like an impossible situation didn’t seem so impossible anymore. It’s not all solved today. It won’t all be solved tomorrow. But slowly but surely we’ll untie one knot at a time.

And before we know it, we’ll be beautiful.

• • •

From Storyline:

Allison has released book called Packing Light. Today her book is on sale for $1.99 (eBook version). Buy a copy here.

One Way To Approach Relationships That Feel Impossible is a post from: Storyline Blog

Four Tips on Tackling Jealousy

The good news about jealousy is it means we want something, we’re trying, we’re competing, if you will.

A jealous person isn’t a satisfied person. But that’s about the only optimistic thought I have about jealousy. Mostly, jealousy is a soul killer.

If we have a competitive personality, the dark side is often a jealous streak.

Jealousy is often a passive-aggressive mental reaction to a feeling of inferiority, which is a lie. It’s true you may be inferior in some area of your life, but it’s a lie that it matters in eternity.

*Photo by Linda, Creative Commons

I have a personality easily given to jealousy. I’ve gotten much better over the years, but it still comes out from time to time. Normally, my jealousy doesn’t look or feel like jealousy, it feels more like I’m annoyed with somebody or I think a person is getting attention they don’t deserve. It feels innocent enough, but it’s really just jealousy.

Here are 4 ways I contend with my jealous streak:

1. I repent and acknowledge before God I am not, in fact, the greatest writer in the history of man.

2. I thank God that He loves me whether I write well or not.

3. I go for a walk in the morning, before I write, and pray for other writers who I feel jealous about. (This is an amazing technique because the jealousy subsides immediately.

4. When I am wrongly tempted to jealousy, I turn the other cheek. I count this emotion as a blessing because it calls me back to step one, to humbly repent for the entitlement I feel.

Another drawback of jealousy is it negatively affects the quality of our work.

The goal here is to wake each day and till our field like a humble farmer. If God sends rain, then so be it. But if He does, our ground has been tilled and our seeds have been planted. The rest is up to Him.

Jealousy is a trick. I don’t know of a single benefit to the emotion. Jealousy will have a farmer sitting at his breakfast table till noon, checking Twitter and Facebook and Amazon rankings, all the while the professional farmer is out tilling his field, only thinking about his portion.

Four Tips on Tackling Jealousy is a post from: Storyline Blog

What Do You Do When Your Career Is Failing?

Four years ago I got hired to teach a class at a local Christian university. Saying “yes” to part-time adjunct professorship felt like the end. “Goodbye, Hollywood. The dream is over.” Maybe the dream had been over for a while. Hollywood ageism probably eliminated me years ago; I just hadn’t accepted it.

You know the Eric Liddel quote from Chariots of Fire: “When I run, I feel God’s pleasure.” That’s how I felt performing or writing. How was I supposed to encourage young, aspiring comedians to pursue their dreams, when I knew how it could turn out for them: like it had for me.

I sucked it up and took the job.

Then I was asked to teach screenwriting, then sketch comedy writing and acting. My sketch comedy class writes, acts in and produces an SNL-type show at the end of the semester. We are now working on the third annual show, and it’s a huge hit.

photo: Courtesy of Susan Isaacs

I got asked to direct a mainstage play. Guess what? I loved it! I loved focusing on the big picture. (An actor focuses solely on his character.) I got to collaborate with others: lighting, set and sound designers, theater managers, actors, crew, et al. We put on a fantastic production.

Saint Irenaeus said, “The glory of God is Man fully alive.”

Driving back from a performance one night, I caught myself laughing. I felt fully alive. So, I was working in a small theater at a private Christian university. But my heart was full, and I experienced joy. I almost didn’t experience it. I’d been so focused on one thing: getting the next acting job that might grant me a nanosecond of feeling alive (or at least a paycheck). I never allowed other abilities a chance to grow. They’d been held hostage by my expectations.

My friend Sara saw a life coach when her career tanked. The life coach got Sara to identify the specific tasks she loved about her previous career: Being creative? The field? The relationships? The point was for Sara to separate the specific actions that brought her joy from the field or circumstances in which she was accustomed to working.

If you live long enough, you will experience failure and heartbreak.

CS Lewis said, “The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.” That’s true of any risk you take in your life. Get up and do it anyway. As Anne Lamott said at the Point Loma Writer’s Symposium, “The hard thing is, you just gotta do it. Keep failing. Fail better.”

What thing makes you feel like you’re alive – that you’re doing what you’re born to do?

What specific actions are at the root of your joy?

Is that activity held hostage by your expectations (how or when or with whom you should do it?)

Where else can you do that thing?

What Do You Do When Your Career Is Failing? is a post from: Storyline Blog

Small is the New Big (and Big Isn’t Always Bad)

Small—this has been the word on repeat in my brain this past month.

My family and I are currently on a road trip to both celebrate my recent book’s release, and to meet readers over a glass and conversation. We’re inching our way upwards and down parts of the U.S., meeting readers and enjoying life with often-distant friends, and I gotta tell you: over and over again I’m hearing what seems to be on everybody’s minds. Smallness.

From the Christian author to the stay-at-home dad to the diplomat’s spouse to the insurance agent, people have whispered to me lately that they’re craving, yearning, longing for more small in their life, small in their relationships, small in their pursuit of faith.

Yet the messages they’re hearing right now are shouting the opposite—that if we are to be people of faith, we need to think big.

I think this is party reactive to an ever-pervasive trend, particularly on the Internet, to glorify Doing Big Things For God. We might use our mouths to say such sentences as, “Even the mom changing diapers is changing lives for Jesus,” but when it comes from the podium in front of a well-coiffed woman standing before thousands in awe of her wit and wisdom, it’s not the easiest to believe.

It’s the big-time charity causes and the conversations with celebrities that get all the likes on Facebook. Even the blog posts about being content where you are still ultimately celebrate the writer who wrote them, and not the freedom behind the message to roll up your sleeves and be at peace with your day’s task of mowing the grass beneath your feet.

*Photo Credit: natalielucier, Creative Commons

And so, we crave actual smallness—not just the idea of living everyday, small lives as though they mattered, but to actually swallow, digest, and live out that worldview as though it were true.

If we were to truly believe that the pursuit of small is not only an okay thing, but a wise approach to life that echoes Jesus’ lifestyle, we probably wouldn’t be so quick to elevate the Christian speaker as though they were given superpowers, or to feel ridiculous when we feel content in our neck of the woods, making soup and bringing it to our neighbor.

There’s something in our soul that longs for the freedom to be okay with not pursuing more, doing more, being more. (tweet this)

To rest with the thought that God’s plan for me might, just might, involve me doing the next thing in front of me, day after day, for years to come.

I admit internal conflict between small and big.

I thrive on change, and my long-term goal to raise a family unconventionally reflect that—traveling around the world isn’t small on the surface. And so my knee-jerk reaction to all this small talk is guilt for adding to the echo chamber on social media, shouting at people to “Think bigger! Be braver! Go farther!,” quickly followed by guilt for being judgmental towards that podium that rallies thousands to Do Big Things. How can I both crave small and sometimes do big, and not be a big ol’ hypocrite?

When I shared my internal struggle, my husband Kyle offered these wise words: actions could be big or small, but smallness is always a frame of mind, a way of thinking. We could pursue a small life, and then God could hand us something big—or we could pursue a small life, and God could have us live out that life that, well, looks small. The real conflict is wanting big things and not getting them. Believing fame is a necessary ingredient for a life with purpose…that’s where we’ll be disappointed in bigness.

I’m guessing it’s okay to wrestle with both big and small.

After all, Jesus said to go into all the world, yet he himself never walked very far on earth. Small and big can look like a lot of things, depending on who we are. This is when I remember that we humans aren’t all one way, that we can be beautifully bereft with contradictions and dichotomies, and still kinda make sense at the end of the day.

It’s very intentional that this trip of ours has smelled of grassroots—since my book is about living slowly, and since there’s a whole section dedicated to the importance of travel (especially when your kids are young), we thought we’d embody the message quite literally and, well, travel as a family all over and say hi to readers, ten or twenty at a time. This doesn’t make me a better person than the author with an auditorium, but there is something missed, I think, when we value a room crammed with fans more than a table between a few new friends.

I know it’s been teaching me something, at the very least—that there is beauty in everyday, small pursuits, and that most of our days are made up of the sum of them. Thinking small, being small, yet not apologizing for any big dreams we’ve been given… this is the stuff of life.

Small is the New Big (and Big Isn’t Always Bad) is a post from: Storyline Blog

How to Fight Feelings of Futility

A few times each year, it happens. I go into a funk. What I’m talking about is that first, initial feeling of depression. I’ve been depressed before, maybe ten years ago and then again about twenty years ago. It’s a terrible feeling, of course. Essentially, the feeling is that life is meaningless and there’s no reason to contribute anything.

I’ve learned from experience the funk, for me, only lasts a few days but it’s ugly when it happens. I’m not talking about depression, now, I’m talking about those dark days that occasionally come for a visit.

Of course, my normal brain would never get tripped by the thought that life is meaningless. I know it isn’t. My faith attributes great meaning to every moment, and so it’s strange that the same truth can sometimes miss me that most often seems obvious. Of course the work we do matters. And all that we say and do matter, too. If one thing matters, everything matters. The problem is, though, my brain isn’t working right.

*Photo Credit: Oleh Slobodeniuk, Creative Commons

Most of the depression we experience isn’t rational. It’s just that our brains are too tired to think accurately about life. (Tweet This)

The brain is complicated, and when it’s tired or not functioning at its best, we begin to believe things, feel things, subscribe to ideas that make no sense. But they can take you down all the same.

But I’ve come a long way. The existential funk doesn’t threaten me as much as it used to. For starters, they are few and far between, and as I’ve gotten older, I’ve been able to predict them.

Here’s what I mean: I go into this funk, almost mechanically, after a long trip in which I’ve spoken more than once and lost at least one night of sleep. If this happens, I can count on being in a funk for at least three days after returning home.

So here’s what I do during the funk:

1. I get some rest. I literally sleep as much as possible. The real problem isn’t that nothing in life matters, the real problem is my brain, which is a muscle, is fatigued and not functioning very well.

2. I don’t work. I give myself at least one, if not two days in which I don’t work. That’s a tough one for me because I get great joy out of my work. But when the brain needs rest, the brain needs rest.

3. I tell myself the things I’m thinking about the nature of life simply aren’t true, no matter how true they feel. Certainly there are existential dilemmas in life, but the issue isn’t life itself, the issue is control. I want to know everything and yet God has not given me all the information. I just have to trust Him, and I have to trust that the work I do somehow matters to Him in the way it mattered to God that Adam named the animals. Futility in life, then, is a lie. I may not know why it’s a lie, but I know it is.

4. I start working again. About three days in, I can come back to life a little bit. It’s hard at first, but about two or three hours into the work, those old feelings of life being futile fade away and I get lost, once again, in the puzzle that is my work, my marriage and my community.

Of course, not everybody’s brain comes back to life so easily.

Some people need more than just sleep. My aching sympathies go out to you if you’re reading this and these solutions seem too simple. I’m so sorry. I know there’s help in other areas and I hope and pray you’re seeking that help. Lies are powerful and deceptive.

For the rest of us, sometimes the best thing to do is hunker down and weather the storm until it passes. In hope this gives you something to think about as the feelings of futility mount up. May they wash over you and somehow feed the crops, producing humility, faith, trust and an iron discipline to press on when the sun is shining.

How to Fight Feelings of Futility is a post from: Storyline Blog