A Better Story

“You can call it God or a conscience, or you can dismiss it as that intuitive knowing we all have as human beings, as living storytellers; but there is a knowing I feel that guides me toward better stories, toward being a better character.  I believe there is a writer outside ourselves, plotting a better story for us, interacting with us, even, and whispering a better story into our consciousness.”

Donald Miller - A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

Here comes my better story.  


For the last 2 years, I've kind of just been wandering around with nothing to do and nothing to really look forward to.  I have been directionless with no hope of finding any sort of direction.  I tried thinking of what I could go to school for, but nothing ever popped out at me and anytime I looked into it, I got mad, like, really mad to the point of wanting to throw my computer out the window.  That would not have been a good thing.  So all I have been doing with my life is waking up at 4:30AM to go to a job that I'm ready to be done with, then go home, take a nap, eat some food, watch television, then go to bed early just to start it all over again.  That's no life.  Where's the purpose in that?  So when this opportunity came to go to YWAM, I immediately knew, finally, that this is what God wanted me to do.  All the pieces have finally been put together and things started to make a little more sense.  

“As soon as you point toward a horizon, life no longer feels meaningless.”

Moving to California almost 2 years ago, has definitely been the hardest thing that I have ever done.  Colorado is home to me, it's where I grew up, it's where I learned to love God and to love others, it's where I found unexplainable joy, it's where I learned to serve, it's where I learned to live.  So why would God want me to leave that behind for something that turned out to be just the opposite?  Rude.  I feel like I've never been able to be myself here.  But looking back on everything that has happened, and everything that has NOT happened since I've moved, it seems like just one big practice run for what I'm going to be doing.  I've gone through the loss, through the loneliness, through the homesickness, through the depression and I've survived and God is still very much with me.  Now I'll be able to go to England (still a crazy thought) and not have to worry about those issues as much (though I will never stop missing things) and be able to truly be there and truly experience it.  

“The character has to jump into the story, into the discomfort and the fear, otherwise the story will never happen.”

This is such an incredible opportunity to go to this place where I can learn more about God and grow closer to Him, live and work in community, and serve others.  As well as going to England, which is a place I have always wanted to go.  That place is quite literally in my blood.  I can't wait to get there.  This is just the beginning of this crazy journey that God has for me.  There is so much unknown but that's the great adventure of it.  It is so great to finally be excited about something, finally have something to look forward to, finally have a direction to go and finally feel that God is telling to do this.  God knows the desires of my heart, and it seems He has found the perfect opportunity for me.  He hasn't been silent this whole time as I have thought.  He's been speaking, I just wasn't listening hard enough.  I wasn't seeing what He was doing to prepare me for the next chapter in my story.  I'm seeing it now.  

So here I go.  I'm jumping into this with all that I am and I could not be more excited.  Like seriously, could NOT be more excited.  The next 3 months need to go by faster.

“I admitted something other than me was showing a better way.  And when I did this I realized the Voice, the Writer who was not me, was trying to make a better story, a more meaningful series of experiences I could live through.”