"Escaped to the water
I stared at the stars within the sky
I was lying on my back with my fingers in the sand
Alone in my only
It sounds so phony
And yet here I am
It's funny how life is seldom what we plan"
I said that I would never go to a Christian school and I just graduated a few months ago from Samford University, a Baptist college. I said I would never work for a church because they box you in and only surround you with everyone just like you and now I am on staff at Mosaic Birmingham (which I absolutely love by the way). I told myself the one state I would never live in is Alabama and now this is my residence after college. I never really thought making it to LA would actually happen for me (as did everyone else in my life) and yet I ended up living there for 3 months last summer. I never dreamed this good thing in my life would end, but it did. It's funny how life is seldom what we plan.
But this is what makes for a better story right? I think that is all I really want when it comes down to it at the end of everyday. That I know my day was a story to tell. Now, of course I don't have very many "story telling" days, but I know I live everyday to create one. I just got finshed reading Don Miller's new book that came out this week "A Million Miles in A Thousand Years". I don't think I have ever been so moved by words before. I have had endless conversations and experiences that well up inside of me and then move me, but words don't do that as much for me. Yet, reading a Don Miller book is like having a conversation anyways. A very powerful and empowering one at that.
The best stories are the unexpected ones right? We don't like to hear the same ones over and over again. Well, some stories are worth telling over and over and will never get old,especially the Disney and Bible stories, but most, in general, are good when it is somthing you didn't really see coming or didn't know how it was going to resolve. I just laugh at my life sometimes when I think of how I got to where I am. How God has put the people and places in my life that he has. And how he has also taken away lots of things. I would like to say my life is so different from everyone else's and that no one can really understand the things I go through and how crazy I really think. And to be honest, it's the truth. Everyone lives a different life, even if many look the same. I think this is what I love about people so much. It is the stories that we have to tell. It's the things that happen to us that we could have never imagined that create our character. It's the dreams we dream (if we let ourselves) that wake us up everyday to make them into a reality.
Dreamer –noun
1. a person who dreams.
2. a person who lives in a world of fantasy; one who is impractical and unrealistic.
3. a person whose ideas or projects are considered audacious or highly speculative; visionary.
I LOVE this. My entire life I have been called a dreamer. And when people call me that, they usually refer to definition number 2. I know I dream of things that are very impractical, logically spekaing, or unrealistic, but I would like to think the things I dream of can be real. My gift is seeing the potential in the world and people and what they have to offer. I love very easily. Probably too easily because then I realize that everyone will let me down sooner or later because no one is Jesus. But I always like to bypass the negatives of where things could go. I live in relationship to people and the world in such a way that I only want to see what we are capable of. It is a painful gift to have.
One of my dear friends says that I live in the world of conclusions and that I am really good at that. He means it in a positive and negative way. I am really good at seeing the end result, how the vision should look, how the future could turn out. But many times it distract me from making today the best in how to get there. I forget today leads to tomorrow. Yet, this is my gift that I am learning how to be better with. I am learning more and more I need people to remind me of my steps today and not always living in what is to come. I don't know very much at practical, but I am great at how things should or can turn out. I know that I am also good for people to. Dreamers are needed. If we don't have people thinking crazy thoughts of how things could be then movement would stop. Life would not stop, but the movement I am talking about would stop. It is the beauty of heaven that can be brought here to Earth. No, it's not a utopia I want to bring because we all know that can never be and really i don't think we really want that. But a better tomorrow. Joy. Love. And a better story.
Honestly, I think God has got a gift for narrative. I think we should leave the writing to the professionals.
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