What’s Your Story? Donald Miller’s A Million Miles In A Thousand Years

Do you stay up all night with thoughts running through your mind wondering:

Things must change; I need to do something with my life?

Consider yourself alive. A story in progress.

Do you dreamingly go through your day directionless, only knowing the steps you will take, the minute you take them? Are you engaging in unintentional movement and action driven by the wind? Picking you up and putting you God knows where and then abruptly slamming you against the wall; the impact springing your eyes open, causing your mouth to gape and a scream to escape the conclave of your mouth? Consider yourself brought back to life.

Do your eyes see darkness in front? Do your limbs feel stiff making movement and vision almost impossible? And yet you still move like the walking dead, people and things passing you in a blur. Do you think you are alive?

Last breath escapes.

Consider yourself flatlined. The pages remain blank.

What’s your story?

Are you alive? Have you been brought back to life? Or have you flatlined lying lifeless and unaffected.

Huh? Cat got your tongue? Is that a stutter? What? Speak up! You don’t know yet? You’re unsure? You’ll find out as you go? What do you mean it doesn’t matter!? Oh hell no! Sorry you have to excuse me, sometimes I go off.

Let me try again.

It’s okay you’re not alone.

Donald Miller in A Million Miles in a Thousand Years had his eyes sprung open by a smack into a wall SO BIG that it jolted him awake from a near death experience.  He saw the light and lived to create his story with the help of The Writer and the writers (including himself).

Imagine.

Picture for a moment.

The opportunity to rewrite your story the way it was suppose to be written.

The way you wanted your children to read it.

The way you wanted your husband or wife to read it.

The way you wanted your parents to read it.

The way you wanted your closest friends and mentors to read it.

The way you wanted to read it.

The way you wanted to experience it.

Imagine them being transformed, inspired, sad, angry, encouraged, intrigued, kept captivated throughout, and propelled toward greatness.

Imagine them wanting a story just like yours. Or better, the power to create their own.

Imagine being able to answer the question “What did you do with your life?” proudly and succinctly.

Donald Miller got this chance, the opportunity to edit his own life; he created and lived the story he chose for himself.

He wrote the book Blue Like Jazz. He was approached by scriptwriters. They didn’t want to write his story, but the story of another character; more exciting, more engaging, more interesting to watch; a  caricature of sorts, not the real thing. Donald Miller decided to mesh the two and intentionally created a story worth watching and worth living.

There is a purpose in every scene of a movie. There is a purpose in every line of dialogue. The movie has an intentional direction that it is heading in.

Where are you going?

“The reasons our lives seems as muddled is because we keep walking into scenes in which we, along with the people around us, have no clear idea of what we want.”

What’s your purpose?

Start writing. Start living.

“In creating the fictional Don, I was creating the person I wanted to be, the person worth telling stories about”

“Good stories don’t happen by accident, I learned. They are planned.”

What conflicts are you experiencing?

What great fears are you facing?

Have you had a character transformation?

Is your story evident by your actions?

What’s your story?

I lay the page in front of you as Donald Miller did to me.

Is that music I hear?

The melody of pencils scratching the surface of paper

The love taps of fingers on black or white keys of letters

Producing chords of stories that have me swaying, snapping, and humming.

Donald Miller’s A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

Related posts: