January 4, 2010

We get one story.
photo by Erin Doyle

“So soon you will be in that part of the book
where you are holding the bulk of the pages in your left hand,
and only a thin wisp of the story in your right.
You will know by the page count,
not by the narrative,
that the Author is wrapping things up.
You begin to mourn its ending,
and want to pace yourself slowly toward its closure,
knowing the last lines will speak of something beautiful,
of the end of something long and earned,
and you hope the thing closes out like last breaths,
like whispers about how much
and who the characters have come to love,
and how authentic the sentiments feel
when they have earned a hundred pages of qualification.

And so my prayer is that your story
will have involved some leaving and some coming home,
some summer and some winter,
some roses blooming out like children in a play.
My hope is your story will be about changing,
about getting something beautiful born inside of you,
about learning to love a woman or a man,
about learning to love a child,
about moving yourself around water,
around mountains, around friends,
about learning to love others more than we love ourselves,
about learning oneness as a way of understanding God.
We get one story, you and I, and one story alone.
God has established the elements,
the setting and the climax and the resolution.
It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn't it?"
- Donald Miller
(Through Painted Deserts:
Light, God, and Beauty on the Open Road)