I love the mountains. I love their beauty, impressiveness, challenge, and strength.
Having grown up in the plains of the midwest, where the mountains were 8 or more hours away, I loved trips to the mountains.
I’d love to live in the mountains some day.
For the past several months my wife and I have had several conversations about what we want our family to be about. What kind of story we want our family to be part of. What story we want our marriage to be.
This conversation took a more intent path when we read Donald Miller’s newest book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years (absolutely worth the read). Miller proposes that life is a story and many people quite frankly live in boring stories of their own writing.
For my wife and I, we began discussions about moving to the mountains as a way to write a better story. But it quickly became evident that moving may be a reaction to current life and if we did move, we’d only be changing the scenery, not the main story.
So in 2010 we are working on the main story, not the scenery (although the scenery in our home will be decluttered and simple as possible). In other words, we’re working on the main characters.
The scenery plays a minor role, the characters carry the story.
To that end, here are some questions we’ve been working through thus far.
- Are you living for something more than yourself?
- If your life were a movie, would you want to go see it?
- What do you want in life?
- Do you find you avoid life’s conflict?
Much of life seems to be survival of the fittest and while self-care is essential for a life fully alive, and a marriage fully alive, it can cross the boundary to being only about ourselves easily. Being a part of something bigger than ourself is important to living a good story. Give of yourself to others, give your time to a worthy cause, help those around you.
This same question works for marriage as well.
This is a question many people can’t answer, in fact most people wouldn’t know where to begin. To tell a great story, you must want something. So what do you want?
Life is filled with conflict, so is marriage. It’s unavoidable. Do you find that you spend a lot of time trying to avoid conflict in life and marriage? Is life at home like walking on egg-shells? If so, what does this say about the characters in your story? Move into the conflict. Face the fear of the unknown and speak up. As John Eldredge says in Wild at Heart – “Let the world feel the weight of you, and let them deal with it.”
In 2010, write a great story. Be a good character in it. And tell a great story.
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Join Mandi Ehman, of Organizing Your Way, all this month as she posts 31 ways of organizing for a better 2010.
Photo courtesy geoftheref
Love this post! It truly made me stop when you asked the question, “if my life were a movie would I go see it”. Interesting point and well taken. Something to ponder as I gather my thoughts together and move into a new year, new possibilities and new growth for me, my marriage and my family. Thank you for always making me think!
It’s tough to imagine other people watching my life and being excited to watch the story unfold. This motivates me to write a better story.
Thanks Susan.
“Move into the conflict.'
That is so so true. And avoiding conflict only makes it worse in the long run! People believe that in order to face conflict that you have to have a confrontation, but that simply isn't true.
Thanks Hayden. My wife and I have actually begun saying the word “Conflict” in a lighthearted way whenever there is an opportunity for us to move into it.
While driving to visit family on snow and ice covered roads, my wife suggested an alternate route which of course I knew was wrong
, so right after I pointed out my idea, I hear “Conflict” from the passenger seat, we laugh, then objectively talked through both options. Turns out, she was right.
Great Post Corey! I finished A Million Miles late last year as well, and realized I need to work on my story as well! Thanks for the great questions to help focus my thoughts.
I think everyone should read this book Stu.
I agree with you about the mountains Corey. But alas, for now, my home is here. After some intense time working on myself, I stopped thinking that those wild ideas I got were things for other people to adventure into and started considering myself as qualifying for the fun. Since then, I have done a few more adventurous things like starting my business and having some small scaled adventures. This year, I am going to sky dive and I am still working on that trip to Africa. Life's too short tho think that all the good things out there are for everyone else.
These are great questions. I wrote them down so I could think about them this week and formulate a blog post about my responses. Question #2 really got my attention.
Thanks for ushering us into 2010 so positively.
I'd love it if you sent me a link whenever you post about this. Love to read what you come up with. Thanks for the comment.
Life is so much better when it's lived – no longer watching others live, but living yourself!
Or as Hayden as so aptly put it- life is too short to watch other people dance.
Great thoughts. I think that's Don Miller's best book so far. Even his writing was influenced by his experience of creating a better story.
A part of making my story better is to stop waiting for other people to do stuff to make the marriages around me better. I've challenged my friends to work together so we can all have a better marriage in 2010. It's not about me, but about us working together as a community to find something better.
Great idea James. It is so true that things are and get better in community.
I just joined the group as well. Perhaps we should collaborate some on this?
That would be very cool. Right now I'm working on 52 conversations around 12 themes. My thought is to give one conversation a week (hopefully for a date night or something) and one theme a month. I want to start January with the theme of communication, since good communication is going to set the foundation for everything else. After that I'm not sure where to go next.
I'm thinking about the 5 love language, sex, marriage retreats, goal setting, conflict, chores, religion, service, family of origin, friends/time apart, etc.
I have found this post a really great compliment to the first two chapters in your book, which my partner and I read and filled out separately and then discussed (I'm going to make a post on the forums soon, hopefully after work today, about the strengths and energy drains we identified). We had a really interesting discussion about what we're living for that's bigger than ourselves… and this discussion was a really great opportunity for me to move AWAY from the conflict (I can be a steamroller, putting words in my partner's mouth). So, anyway, I'm really enjoying this, and am looking forward to it in conjunction with reading the book over the next few weeks. Like one of your previous commenter, I'm also looking to turn this and other questions into a blog post.
The idea of living for something bigger than ourselves is a great perspective adjustment for me. It has helped me see the world around me in a better light.