Sitting on a Park Bench

I recently finished Donald Miller's A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: How I Learned to Live a Better Story, and let me tell you, it is life changing. First of all, let's talk about the author. Donald Miller is probably best known for Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality, which is a great book that I haven't read in years. Even though I've only read two of his works, Donald Miller now sits alongside Neil Gaiman, J.K. Rowling, and Ray Bradbury as one of my favorite authors. I find Donald Miller's honesty and practicality to be refreshing. He is eloquent and descriptive, yet he doesn't sugar coat. I feel like we're friends, like I really got to know him and I like that.

I read this book over a span of two days. One was spent in a Starbucks and the other on a park bench. The day on the park bench is what I'm here to talk about. The book, as a whole, relates life to a story. Donald talks about the time spent turning one of his books into a movie. He had to move parts of the story and even add to it in order to make it something a person would pay money to sit and watch for an hour or two. The main concept of story, as Donald learns, is that:

1. There must be a character.
2. We must like said character.
3. The character must want something.
4. The character must overcome hardship and make sacrifices in order to obtain this something.

And this relates to life in many ways. It was going through this process that Donald realized he wanted to make his life into a better story. In the book, he tells us some of his "practice stories" like when he called his dad after thirty years or when he biked across the U.S.

As I was sitting on a park bench in Sugar Land, Texas (not far from his former home in Pearland, TX), the scenarios and feelings he described kept hitting home in deep ways. I read about his breakup with the girl he thought he was going to marry and thought about my recent breakup with a guy I thought I might marry one day. He wrote of the numbness that followed and I examined my own numbness. Then, he shared with us the day he decided to let go and feel the pain that he knew was there. To let the bones break and the blood from his broken heart spill onto the floor. My friends, I sat on a park bench in Sugar Land, Texas and wept over the loss of someone whom I loved more than anyone else before. Someone I loved more than I thought I was capable.

I realized I had been pretending that I didn't care. Pretending that I thought he was scum and not worthy of my tears. But on that bench, under the sun, I allowed myself to grieve. And the release is beyond words.

I learned so much more in the two days that I spent reading this book than I learned in the last four years I've spent in college. I learned  that there is no good story without hardship. That the trials we face and the pain we endure make our story better. They make our character better.

Reading about the elements of story applied to life caused me to reevaluate the way I've been looking at my current situation. I just moved back to Houston from Waco because things got rough in school, I broke off my serious relationship, and I felt like no one loved me or cared about me. It was all about me, me, me. Everyone was so mean to me. Now, I want this sadness and loneliness to make my story and my character better.  I want to become stronger. I am stronger than I think I am. It took courage and strength to end that relationship. It took a strength that I didn't even know I had. I guess that's what risk and sacrifice do. They show you that you're stronger than you think.

I am strong. I am beautiful. I am brave.

I will take risks in life. I won't settle for a mediocre story. I want an epic.

So I will make it.