Inspiring Ideas

I have been so confused lately. About all sorts of things, but mainly centered around what I want to do with my life! I know I'm still young and have plenty of time to figure it out, but I'd like to have a pretty good idea and be well on my way towards making it happen by the time I'm married with kids and complicating my life in all sorts of wonderful related ways. And as some of the ideas I'm bouncing around include going back to school for various lengths of time or taking out student loans in various amounts, I've been stressing over the decision a bit lately.

In a word, I would say I am just restless. I've pretty much come to the conclusion that what I thought I wanted to do isn't in fact what I want to do anymore. I am not happy in my day job anymore. I am envious enough of my brother's brand new adventure to be asking God for forgiveness most nights. I find myself wishing for adventure but hesitating to pick up and just leave the things that I have going for me right now.

I think I have a good idea of what I want to start pursuing, but I have to find a way to fit a beginning for that life into my current life. And it's all just got me mood-swinging like crazy! One minute I'm weepy over my indecision, the next I'm taking control of my life and making bold decisions about what my next steps should be, only to find myself second guessing it all again a few hours later.

Luckily, I've had the chance to sit down with the people that mean the most to me in life and talk with them about everything that's been on my mind. One of those people I spoke with regarding all this chaos lent me a book I mentioned earlier: A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller. And I just have to say that I am LOVING it!! Has it solved all my problems? No- absolutely not. It probably hasn't solved anything at all. But it has given me a wonderful perspective on what I'm going through. And it has just given me some insights into life in general that I think I was desperately lacking. I can't highlight all the wonderful tidbits that I find as I want to return the book as I received it, so I've decided to record them all right here! So that you can all benefit from them as well, and so that I can come back and remind myself of them whenever I need to. And who knows- maybe somewhere along the way you or me will have some inspired epiphany of our own!

Some of these are longer passages, some shorter. Some thought provoking and some just refreshing observations. Enjoy:

"We get robbed of the glory of life because we aren't capable of remembering how we got here. When you are born, you wake slowly to everything. Your brain doesn't stop growing until you turn twenty-six, so from birth to twenty-six, God is slowly turning the lights on, and you're groggy and pointing at things saying circle and blue and car and then sex and job and health care. The experience is so slow you easily come to believe life isn't that big of a deal, that life isn't staggering. What I'm saying is I think life is staggering and we're just used to it. We all are like spoiled children no longer impressed with the gifts we're given--it's just another sunset, just another rainstorm moving in over the mountain, just another child being born, just another funeral."

"I've wondered, though, if one of the reasons we fail to acknowledge the brilliance of life is because we don't want the responsibility inherent in the acknowledgement. We don't want to be characters in a story because characters have to move and breathe and face conflict with courage. And if life isn't remarkable then we don't have to do any of that; we can be unwilling victims rather than grateful participants."

"I also knew from the McKee seminar that most of our greatest fears are relational. It's all that stuff about forgiveness and risking rejection and learning to love. We think stories are about getting money and security, but the truth is, it all comes down to relationships."

"If the point of life is the same as the point of a story, the point of life is character transformation.
...
in nearly every story, the protagonist is transformed. He's a jerk at the beginning and nice at the end, or a coward at the beginning and brave at the end. If the character doesn't change, the story hasn't happened yet. And if story if derived from real life, if story is just a condensed version of life, then life itself may be designed to change us, so that we evolve from one kind of person to another."

"'People get stuck, thinking they are one kind of person, but they aren't.'
...
'The human body essentially recreates itself every six months. Nearly every cell of hair and skin and bone dies and another is directed to its former place. You are not who you were in February,' he told me.
...
I also wondered if he wasn't right, that we were designed to live through something rather than to attain something, and the thing we were meant to live through was designed to change us."

"My friend went on to say he was more in love with his wife than ever, which is not something men usually say to each other, even if it's true... So I know he must really be crazy about his wife.
...
'She's amazing,'...'A baby came out of her body, for crying out loud. And now she produces food. She keeps the baby alive.'"

"I realized that the idea a character is what he does makes as much sense in life as it does in the movies... the stories we tell ourselves are very different from the stories we tell the world."

And my absolute favorite idea from this book so far:

"You get a feeling when you look back on life that that's all God really wants from us, to live inside a body he made and enjoy the story and bond with us through the experience."

As cliche as it sounds, I think a lot of my anxiety is currently coming from not knowing what the meaning/purpose of life is. Because if we really knew, we wouldn't have to figure out our priorities, would we? They'd be set:
~"The purpose of life is to find love? Well ok then! The people I love are all right here. I'm set! I'll just find a job that provides the most so that I can provide the most for them."
~"The purpose of life is to learn as much as we can about the world around us? Well then screw the cost, I'm going back to school! And I'm traveling! And I'm going to see as much and learn as much as I possibly can in the 80-some odd years I have on this planet."
~"The purpose of life is to grow as close to God as humanly possible? Then I'll quit my job, go to seminary school or get a position with the church and sign up for as many missionary trips as I can."

See what I mean? Ok- so maybe I was a bit extreme in those instances, but the point still remains that if I knew exactly what it was I was supposed to be trying to achieve, or what I was supposed to be trying to find, I'd have a much better idea of what I should be doing at this point in my life. I know no one has an answer they can give me, and I'm not expecting a letter from God to show up in the mailbox explaining it all to me just because I whine a bit.

So I'm just trying to pray as much as possible, get guidance from the people God DID put in my life, and open myself up to any direction He may subtly throw my way. And that last tidbit from Donald Miller did a HUGE amount in helping to ease my worry over such an epic question. I hope you found it as inspirational and thought provoking as I do!