I just finished reading a fantastic book - A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller. It's about the stories and 'story' of our life, and how we can make the story one that is worth retelling. Most days I don't really think of my life as much of a story, as I mindlessly go through the motions - wake up, eat breakfast, go to work, come home, make supper, wash dishes, relax, watch some TV, go to bed, and then wake up the next morning, and do it all over again. But I want my life to be full of meaning, even in the ordinary and the mundane. I dream of the big adventures - but I want to be better at recognizing all the little adventures too. And more than anything, I want to be able to look back at the end of my life and know that I lived a great story. That I embraced opportunity, worked and played hard, fought for things worth fighting for, and above all, loved well.

Even before I read this book though, I had been thinking a lot about the stories in my life. One of the things I seem to fear most about moving is that I feel like I won't get to take my stories/memories with me, with my reasoning being that nobody knows them. It can be hard to go someplace new where people don't know your stories, and feel like they just assume that you and everyone else are the same.

Over the past couple months, I've been working on putting together photo boards to hang on my walls. These boards contain several hundred pictures from the last year or so of my life. Basically if you've played any sort of role in my life in the past year, you're likely somewhere on one of these boards. :) It was a good exercise for me, because not only did I get to relive hundreds of fun memories, but I was reminded how many amazing stories I have in my life so far, and that I'll always have them. They make me who I am - I wouldn't be fully 'Jill' if I didn't have them. In being reminded of this, I relearned that there is no basis for this fear - and that each new place I go becomes just as much a part of my story as all of the other places.

Back to the book - 0ne part that really stuck with me was when he talks about how life is truly staggering, but we've become so numbed and accustomed to it that we don't really see it that way.

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 'job' and 'health care'. The experience is so slow you could 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 agree. Life is staggering. And beautiful. And I want to live with those truths in mind EVERY DAY. I never want to get too comfortable in my life that I miss all that is going on around me, and pass up an opportunity to create another amazing story. Miller goes on to say:
If I have a hope, it's that God sat over the dark nothing and wrote you and me, specifically, into the story, and put us with the sunset and the rainstorm as though to say, 'Enjoy your place in my story. The beauty of it means you matter, and you can create within it even as I have created you.'

How incredible is that thought? Not only am I written into a beautiful story, I have the freedom to attempt to make it even more beautiful. Wow. So, here's to stories, big ones and little ones, and to the story of my life that brings them all together, and to the even bigger Story that I am humbled to be a part of.