Dear Donald Miller

Dear Donald Miller,

I mostly have my friend Sara to thank for the fact that I have read anything of yours after I abandoned a journey through Blue Like Jazz about five years ago. I thought you talked too much about yourself in that book and I got bogged down with flow-of-conscious writing. I'm not entirely sure if Sara liked it much better, but somehow or other, she stuck with you and followed your writings and heard you speak here and there.You've changed since you wrote that book and I've changed since I tried reading it and along the way and as I've stumbled across bits and pieces of your quotes and writing lately,  I've been encouraged. But, until today, I hadn't finished any of your books.

A while back, Sara informed me that she thought I'd like your newest book because it was about stories and I'm a  bit of a story geek. She didn't say that exactly, but she probably mentioned the story bit because it seems to be a word that creeps in when I talk about what I want to do with my life, despite the fact that I think there must be a more sane way to approach such grown-up issues. Since I think Sara is cool and I respect what she has to say, hearing her say this piqued my curiosity and made me think I might like it. When I came across your book the other day I picked it up and now I've read it. All of it.

And I'd like to say "thank you". Thanks for weaving together the elements of story-making into the threads of your story and giving us eyes to see our own looms. Thank you for saying what needs to be said- that sometimes we tell boring stories with our lives and that we are often the only thing that holds them down and sucker punches them into remaining boring and meaningless.

I don't really have a boring life, not when you're looking at it from the outside. I've moved overseas to work with a charity, for starters. I rub shoulders every day with people who are certainly not boring and not leading boring lives- who have created new organizations, new ways of thinking and are changing lives along the way. But that doesn't make my own story more interesting. It just makes me a good reader. I could go to the office of the Organization For Non-boring-make-things-happen-intentional People and yet be boring and unintentional and forget why I am doing what I do.
Thankfully, the other employees of OFNP help to keep this from happening. As I think more and more about what God might want me to do with my life, in terms more detailed then simple plot structure, I'm realizing how much I want to help people tell their stories.

I've said that before. (See my mention above of being a story geek.) And I've thought a lot about stories. I even was prepared to answer the question "Why are stories important?" with a verbal blue book essay the other day. Still, when I've been saying "I want to help people tell their stories", I feel like it doesn't get at the bottom of it. For most people, it doesn't answer the question "Why does their story matter?" or "How long will the story really last anyway?" Reading your book helped the light go on. You put in concrete words the haze of nebulous intuitions I had regarding the importance of stories. God made stories and he gave them to us to show us himself and to allow us to write and participate in His story. That's a  big deal.

Maybe that's why I get angry and frustrated when I run across people or  groups that don't think they have something to say, have never dreamed about what their own story might be, or who refuse to let others develop their character, find conflict and have victory. When we refuse to enter into the Story and we refuse to let others do so, when we reduce life to clear cut structures of comfort or control, we thumb our nose at one of God's most intricate mediums for making Himself known to us and making us a part of His world. We wall God out when we try to contain our stories.

So, when I grow up. I want to be a good story teller and I want to be a good story teacher. I want to help people realize that God is there and He loves them and He's the most complex and interesting character they'll ever know, that He gave His life and got it back to win a bride. That's a great story. That's the best story. And I want to help people, especially women, realize that they aren't boring or ordinary or unimportant or less than human,  but that they are beautiful characters in the Story God is telling. I want them to know that they see the world in ways no one else does, face conflicts that make them stronger, and can live for a reason that's worth risking everything and in the end gain that "Everything". I want to help them tell their stories with their lives, their art, their words, their craft, their music- whatever it is they have, so that they are able to stand up in their hearts and say "I am carefully crafted by God and I am part of His story.... and I know Him!"

Yesterday, I heard a man say that we are all parts of an epic- God's will being done on earth as it is in Heaven- and that we're not two-bit players, we're seated in the restaurant, not as extras munching in the background, but seated at the table across from the star of the show. That's beautiful- we get to look at Jesus and be a part of what He is doing in this world and Jesus looks at us and wants us in His story.

So, all that to say, thank you for writing, for sitting your butt down at the computer and waking your writer-self up to write. (And for reminding all of us writers that this's honestly what it takes.) Thanks for passing on what you've been learning and helping us engage with this Story we're in.

When we get to Heaven, I think it will read more grandly than we could ever imagine.

R