Live An Interesting Story

My daughter has been wanting to read a book that I'm not so sure is age appropriate.  So, I'm reading it to see what it's like rather than just saying "no" without really knowing.

I asked her why she wants to read this book, knowing the general themes of it.  She said, "Because it's interesting."  Reading between the lines of her comment, I hear her saying, "Because it captures my attention, my imagination, it draws me in and takes me to another place."  That's what a good story does, right?

Her comment made me think.  I said, "Maybe the story of our lives needs to be more interesting. Perhaps one reason why this book is so popular is because not enough of us are living out our own interesting stories."  She just looked at me as if to say, "Why can't you just let me read the book."

I do think about life as a story.  Would the story of your life, if it were written in book form,  be interesting enough for anyone to want to read? Would YOU want to read your story?  Would anyone want to read MY story?  What I'm not advocating for is living carelessly just for the sake of a great story.

Speaking of Great Stories....

A couple years ago, my daughter and I took a mother-daughter adventure to Washington D.C. for spring break.  I'm terrible with directions. While traveling in a new place I tend to rely heavily on the GPS.  Late one afternoon, after having spent the day seeing the sites around the National Mall , my daughter and I  drove back to our hotel, which was in Maryland.  I could see on the GPS that my turn off was coming up fairly soon, so when the GPS lady told me to "Turn right",  I obeyed.  Immediately I found myself driving down a long, narrow lane through the deep, dark woods.  By design, there was nowhere to turn around, and  at this point I realized that I was not on the freeway I should  be on. Clearly, I had taken a right hand turn too soon.

Eventually, in the middle of the deep, dark woods, I came to a paved clearing.  Immediately my van was surrounded by men in black uniforms brandishing what looked to me like some really big weapons.  Where the heck did they come from, I wondered.  Suddenly I realized that not only did I make a wrong turn, but I must have made a significant and serious mistake by the looks of things.  Even my daughter had a man in black with a weapon standing guard on her side of the van.  I guess we  looked pretty scary with our flaming red hair.

Eventually, after much interrogation, I learned that we had inadvertently landed right in the center of certain  government headquarters.(I'm not gonna tell you which... I don't want to get in trouble!  And, just for the record I couldn't find that place again if I tried.)  Who knew.  Apparently, I had unknowingly trespassed on highly restricted federal property.  Uh-oh.  This isn't  good, I thought.  I tried to make light of the situation and crack a few nervous jokes with the men in black brandishing big weapons, but they didn't think any of it was funny at all.

Finally, we were let go.  With knees knocking and heart  still pounding I started my van back up and drove, escorted of course, out of the property.  Never have I been so happy to be free.

Back to What I Was Saying

 Great stories keep us on our toes, keep us wanting to turn the page to see what's going to happen next.  And, great stories often have similar themes: . of being in a near death situation, of being rescued, of risk, of redemption, of unconditional love and acceptance, of hope, of overcoming forces of evil and triumph.

 G. K. Chesterton said, "Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten."  There are reasons why we are drawn to great stories.  We find truth in them.   And we long for those truths to be our truths.

You Can Live an Interesting Story


I want to live an interesting story, and I bet you do too.  So how do we do that?  In part, if we are living out the dreams and passions in our hearts the best we can and bringing who we are to bear on the world around us, I believe  that our stories will ring true to the truths that we often read about in great stories. We can live out a great story.  I think that each of us need to figure out how to live a good story.  I know  for myself that as my story has intersected with God's story (God has a story going since the beginning of time replete with all of the themes we love in a great story), that's what has made my story have meaning and purpose and hopefully a story worth telling.  Without that, I'm pretty sure my story would be so boring no one would ever care to hear it.  It would be a story where the main character doesn't get rescued, never knows unconditional love, gets swallowed up by the evil in the world and dies a hopeless and helpless lonely old woman.

So go live today, and as you do may it be a page worth reading in the interesting story of your life.