That's courage

"I didn't want to get well, because if I got well, nobody would come and save me anymore. And I didn't want to get well, because while I could not control my happiness, I could control my misery, and I would rather have had control than live in the tension of what if." -Donald Miller in A Million Miles in a Thousand Years
(This post is brought to you by the fact that I finished this book last night and my mind is reeling with good thoughts to think. Thank you (again), Donald Miller.)

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We need breath-taking stories in our lives. We're made for these stories, and too often we don't choose them. We don't write the book or apply for the job or propose or adopt that child or take that trip or dance because we're scared. And then we stay just where we are and wonder why life is boring and we just simply rev our engines and a whole lot of the time that makes us quit trying at everything. We lose faith and we lose courage because we're so easily bored.

Entertain me, something! Please keep me interested, someone!

There is so much trying involved in both reaching for epic stories, and in finding contentment in the mundane and ordinary things. We need both, and satisfaction in having a balanced life of both takes courage. To live both ends of the spectrum with a fierce determination, who does that? To believe either your epic or your ordinary are exactly where you should be? To trust your conscience and your heart-gut to lead you to either the peaks or valleys or the quiet in-between, to simply keep going inside of both? If a person can do that, strive to do that, they have courage.

Happiness in trials, in joys, and in the mundane. Courage.

For me, when life is spinning its days of repetitive sameness with nothing much happening, I have a harder time continuing to choose to do the right thing, every single day. There's no catalyst, and so I stall and go numb and quit caring, quit trying as hard.

When we do that, we often create drama, even subconsciously, providing our own catalysts, building up an inauthentic plot until we've made a huge mess. Or we get depressed or try to fill ourselves up with the wrong things until we are addicted to those wrong things.

What am I trying to say? I'm rambling my way to my own thoughts again. Here's what I'm saying is the balance: Contentment when there's no catalyst for change, allowing the change to be slow while setting up the pins and knocking them down, day after day. And then saying yes when life is asking for a bigger commitment or adventure that you know is right for you. The ability to listen to yourself in both the times of bigger things that bring fast change, and the quieter times of repetitive sameness, this is what we seek, I think. Being content either way, because both the big and small are inevitable. This is balance. This is courage. Continuing to move forward, to do the right thing, either way. Exciting or not. New or not. Mundane or not.

Isn't this what makes sobriety, motherhood, employment and marriage so very hard? We embark on these adventures believing we've found it, whatever new excitement we've been looking for. We celebrate with feasts and toasts and we truly feel and believe. We're living a grand story. But then we find out how much everyday in and out work is involved in these beautiful big things and sometimes we just don't want to keep going, we want to back up to the joy or even feel the sorrow of loss so that we can have that feeling of starting again, or being rescued. Unless, of course, we're choosing courage. The courage of contentment.

The really exciting and dramatic times are good, even if they're painful for a time. They shape us. But right now I think that the most excitement and joy ends up happening in the ordinary, but only if we're choosing to live our every day stories out loud, no matter how boring they may be perceived by the world. We are the ones that will feel the fulfillment and awe even within what may seem like a cookie-cutter existence, if we live from our heart-guts, obey our God-given instincts in both the big and small things, and just keep going.

That's courage.

And I want it.

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"The experience is so slow you could easily come to believe life isn't that big of a deal, that life isn't staggering. What I'm saying is I think life is staggering and we're just used to it. We all are like spoiled children no longer impressed with the gifts we're given--it's just another sunset, just another rainstorm moving in over the mountain, just another child being born, just another funeral....If I have hope, it's that God sat over the dark nothing and wrote you and me, specifically, into the story, and put us in with the sunset and the rainstorm as though to say, Enjoy your place in my story. The beauty of it means you matter, and you can create within it even as I have created you. -Donald Miller


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