I feel like the last few months I’ve been captivated by the idea of a story. I’m beginning to believe it’s one of the most powerful tools in life for an innumerable quantity of situations. Donald Miller discovered this long ago, and I’ve been greatly influenced through his capacity for both teaching about stories and telling them. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’d love to live one of those stories people can’t stop sharing. A story that leads you to lean in, eyes wide, with an insatiable palate for each phrase, word by word. I want to be a part of an adventure, one filled with deeply impacting relationships, seemingly impossible struggles overcome, eye opening discoveries, and a vast outpouring of a love I’ll never fully understand. Even now, my heart seems to gravitate and expand in ways that communicate an unfulfilled desire for a new tale. I’ve fallen in love with those painfully clear moments where reality manifests itself wonderfully in a dream of how life was created to be lived.
Here lies the problem: With every sun soaked afternoon, with wave after wave of heart warming light kissing the corners of every wrinkle, there lies a shadow behind, harboring the darkest parts of us we’d almost prefer to stay hidden. If we are pursuing a truthful reality of life and our true behavior, these shadows must taken notice of, and must be boldly confronted.
I guess its time to discuss mine… oh joy. As most of us have to come to realize, our stories are far from interesting, let alone remotely close to what we’d prefer they’d sound like. A resounding sigh of disappointment echoes into the unexplored corners of my brain; an endless sea of neurons, rendered bored and useless in response to routinely practiced stagnancy. What sort of messy fears and insecurities have been planted inside my heart and called it home? And why are we so afraid of taking risks in a story we don’t even actually like telling?
My mother used to pay my sisters and I pennies for each weed we’d find and pull out of her garden. Sometimes I wish it were easy to persuade my head into sending a million little helpers for a small price into automated pruning. Unfortunately, these types of barriers are much thicker and deep-seeded than the measly roots of undesired plant life. I’ve come to believe there are practical ways of combating the shadows and improving the stories that are our lives. First off, I think practicing honesty with both others and ourselves will greatly improve our abilities to change, since we’ll be able to stop lying to ourselves and witness our failures for what they are. There is no better place to grow than ground zero. The second idea that has helped me following honesty is intentionality. The deliberate devotion of energy can be a powerful tool. Regrets are minimized, and you start living for the things you actually want to live for. I hope with these things in mind, I can propel the 22 year old story I’ve lived and watch it bloom into something incredible.
Now that I’ve got your focus on your own stories, think about the billions of others living out their own parallels to your life. I look up from my computer screen and see the 18 others living out their own story in a coffee shop this afternoon. I’m a terrible judge of character. I don’t mean this in a sense that I’m bad at reading and interpreting personalities and good intentions; I’m terribly fantastic at taking a look at the surface and determining exactly how deep the water is. I’m quick to strike down my own worst traits in others. This is where stories have helped me edge away from this type of behavior. I’m coming to believe that once we learn the stories of others, we start to see how and why people are the way they are, and that is something incredibly beautiful. I stop distancing myself through prejudice and arrogant judgment, and can start to accept, to welcome in, to uplift, and to ultimately love. My friend Eric Palmer and I don’t talk much about feelings, though he has deeply impacted me with a phrase a few years back. He told me the more he tries to love those around him, the more he finds himself loving. As simple as this idea is, it has impacted my heart for years following. Aaron Gillespie (The Almost, Underoath) captures the simplicity of this in a single line: “Learning truth, it’s all coming back to what you knew.” Truth for me seems to rarely be new ideas, but the same old ones diving deeper into the black of my heart, reforming and bringing the dead parts to life. The truth is, the more time we spend in relationship, learning the depths of our brothers and sisters, the better we can love and understand them in a way we never could dream of before. We begin to further internalize that when Jesus says the most important action of all is to love God and to love each other, he means it.
So where does all of this come together?
I’m starting to see the real adventures are lived in relationship and fellowship, and risks taken in love are some of the most important steps we will ever muster up the quivering bravery to take.
This July I’m hoping to change my heart with a new story. Out of my reluctant fears and insecurities I’ve found the same meek boldness rising up inside. It drives me to take risks like travel to India with a group of people I don’t know very well. While I’ve never been to India, nor witnessed the poverty of the Dalit population, I see the eyes of those in my team who have seen theirs. I witness the raw and ruthless passion of a group that can’t simply sit still. This is the driving force behind my devotion to this group.
My heart will follow theirs to some of the most desolately poor areas of the world. We hope to bring their story home with us, and we hope to share it with you. In regard to the ragged, the run down, the broken-hearted: there is a love that awaits you, a healing embrace unlike any other; it is life truly lived. I’ve come to know the specificity of this source, and it has changed my life forever. If you’re interested in this, be sure to ask me about it.
Here begins a new story of our little group, and a bigger story of an entire people. You’re more than welcome to join us- but more importantly, join each other. Here’s to creating beautifully adventurous and messy tales, and to learning the stories of men and women around us.
Let’s do life together.
-Nick Green
