It’s been two weeks since I walked out into Nashville sunshine along with a couple hundred others, every one of us seeking more than the lives we’re constantly sold by a clever media.

Every one of us needing more than the bottle-fed American dream of Volvos and white fences and stock market investments.

Because those don’t factor into my pursuit of happiness.

It’s difficult to judge the effectiveness of a conference.

When a speaker’s onstage, the room is electric, and you’re covered in goosebumps, humming with anticipation.

Donald Miller brought the energy. His humor and humility made it easy to forget his NY Times best-selling author badge, and his insight proved it impossible to forget. Combined with stories from Bob Goff, Jamie Tworkowski, Amy Grant, and other guest speakers, we never had a chance.

The air felt magnetic.

But the true test of an event like Storyline happens when the host waves goodbye. When the doors open out and the attendees stretch their legs, roll their necks from shoulder to shoulder. When they take those first steps outside the building.

Two weeks ago when Donald Miller turned off his microphone and all ages filed down the aisles, I caught something in the crowd.

I caught the hope and excitement written on faces that had before looked weary and worn.

And in the unfiltered sunshine, I caught a great deal of fear, too.

Because Storyline didn’t fill us with sweet stories, leave us with warm fuzzies and high-fives. Instead the two-day course asked us if we’re ready to check out of normal, to sacrifice much, to roll up our sleeves and get dirty in the world.

To be shocked out of our comfort zones and into God’s story.

My grandmother has always said, get out of your comfort zone, and always in a matter-of-fact tone that left me wondering why I hadn’t done it before.

But then comes the paralyzing fear. You know the kind I’m talking about. The type that sets your limbs trembling, your stomach turning, and your feet static.

Multiply that by a million, and now you’re experiencing a bit of what it felt like to sit in an auditorium listening to Miller ask questions like, What if you called an estranged relative? What if you quit your job to write that book? What if you up and moved to Africa?

All things your parents never want to hear.

I squirmed in my seat.

“Storyline is a conference about living a better story. Once you leave here, you’ll likely never see the world the same. It’s not a self-help conference that is going to make you problems go away, though. In fact, after leaving Storyline, you may make decisions that increase the problems in your life. You may make less money and have fewer friends.”

And I’m still squirming now.

Since I walked out into that Nashville sunshine two weeks ago, I’ve made life-altering changes. I’ve increased the conflict in my life. I’ve cannon-balled into a better story, clinging only to my reliance on a larger than life God.

There’s more to come, like all great stories, there is still so much more to come.

What kind of story are you living?

I tied an apron around my hips, checked on my section for the night, and looked for work to pass the time.

The kitchen heat crept up my back, and I loosened the collar on the shirt.

He smiled, and I smiled back, the smile not quite touching my eyes. It felt heavy and false.

“How are you?” he asked.

“Good,” I said. No elaboration needed. He could see the weariness in my eyes. “How about you?”

His smile reached his eyes. “Good,” he said with a little more feeling but the same amount of fatigue. “I’m alive, so I can’t complain.”

He kept working while I stopped and stilled, hot plates still in my bare hands. I watched him push a few through the dishwasher, I looked for his eyes that were now down on his work, and I wondered where I’d lost the wonder of life.

The miracle of existence.

Somehow, I’d lost it along the way of living.

Victor Frankenstein described the beginning moments of creation like this:

I paused, examining and analysing all the minutiae of causation, as explemplified in the change from life to death, and death to life, until from the midst of this darkness a sudden light broke in upon me – a light so brilliant and wondrous, yet so simple, that while I became dizzy with the immensity of the prospect which it illustrated, I was surprised that among so many men of genius, who had directed their inquiries towards the same science, that I alone should be reserved to discover so astonishing a secret.

And God described it like this:

When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up – for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground – then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

In the beginning, the act of creation is dizzying. It’s pure, exciting, and full of promise.

But it doesn’t take long for the creation to demand more, to go wrong, to look different under fluorescent lighting.

Upon animation, Frankenstein’s monster changes:

His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! – Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun white sockets in which they were set, his shriveled complexion, and straight black lips.

And with life stirring in our own bones, we also changed after one bite of juicy forbidden fruit:

Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. And then they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

 

The same is true with our art.

In the earliest stages of creation, ideas pour from our hands and pens onto blank paper, and our hearts beat faster with all the excitement.

Anticipation is electric.

And then comes the task of sitting down day after day, writing no matter what your mood, your schedule, your characters.

The story changes a little with animation. The beautiful scenes initially chosen no longer work as a whole. The ending doesn’t fit the tone of the piece. The characters feel a little wayward and uncontrollable.

This is the journey of creating: Wonder gives way to disillusionment.

But if you stick with it long enough, you’ll find grace.

The messiest parts of your draft will take on new meaning. The characters most flawed will leave a reader breathless. The unexpected plot turn will suddenly work, almost as if it was meant to be from the beginning.

Artistry is a practice in grace.

Somehow, I’d lost the wonder of life along the way of day-to-day living.

But life is still miraculous, no matter my angle of perception.

And living is a lot like writing. 

It’s all a step closer to redemption.

Are you a little disillusioned like me in art and life?

I’ve always poked fun at her for it.

The way the hardwood floors thunder when she walks. And it’s not because she’s heavy. In fact, she’s a tiny little thing – short and skinny.

It’s just that she’s heavy on her feet, this cousin of mine.

We’ve joked that she sounds like a herd of elephants walking down the upstairs hall.

All my life I’ve been warned to “be careful.”

I’m not allowed to drive down the dirt road late at night because that’s where local drug dealers lurk.

I’m not allowed to run most of the back country roads in the area.

I’m not allowed to walk through the shadows on my way out to the car after a long night’s shift.

And I’ve been warned more than once not to entertain thoughts of backpacking Europe alone.

The world doesn’t need more caution.

We know to pull away from a candle flame, we know to slam on the brakes at a red light, we know to cook the pink out of the chicken on the stove.

But yet we also know to keep working our day jobs because dreams don’t usually work out in our favor.

We know not to smile at that handsome boy or pretty girl he’ll just look away and she’ll turn back to her friends.

We know not to apply for that job because we’re hardly qualified.

We’re creatures of caution.

We watch characters chase down their dreams on the screen every night from the comfort of the sofa.

But what if we lived…dangerously?

What if we loved wildly, failed vigorously, and accepted grace with the reckless abandon of the Prodigal Son?

What would our lives look like then?

Donald Miller recently wrote in a post called “What If Your Life Could Be More Engaging Than Television:”

In America, the stories we are living are boring. And people are suffering the consequences of the American  dream. They hate their lives. We live vicariously through television shows and gossip magazines because our lives are insufferably meaningless.

For far too long, I’ve played it safe. I graduated college with a plan to expand my professional resume. I’ve kept people at arm’s length in fear of getting hurt. I’ve moved about in the world, shouldering the constant dread of what others think.

And it’s cost me too much already.

It’s shackled me to a boring story.

But like in all well-written stories, characters change. Sometimes it takes divine intervention or a car accident or the birth of a baby, and then sometimes it just takes a moment of consciousness.

A shift in reality while handing over your credit card for a grande iced skinny caramel macciato.

She’s taught me something, this cousin of mine.

That life is more about living out a redemptive kind of grace than the grace of body and speech.

Life is an education in mistakes.

It’s a call to be clumsy and reckless and unfettered.

It’s a call to stop living as others see us.

It’s a call to begin living as God sees us – as beautiful, free-spirited, messy creatures.

Perhaps only with our heavy steps will we leave behind our marks on the world.

The stakes are too great to err on the side of caution.

So tread heavily.

In what areas have you been treading a little too lightly lately?

I began reading Jeff Goins‘ new e-book with the cold eye of a critic.

And that didn’t last long.

“You Are A Writer” sucked me in with the opening sentence.

I could hardly go a full page without scribbling down a quote, and I could hardly go the length of a line without wishing I had written the words myself.

The beauty of this e-book – and all of Jeff’s writing for that matter – lies in the pairing of lofty inspiration and gritty practicalities. He writes:

These words have the power to move and motivate strangers, to shake the earth and rattle the heavens. If only she would share them.

But he later admits:

Nobody ever tells you this. That writing takes more hours and energy than you’d ever be able to plan for. That no one cares about you as the writer until you’ve actually written something. That what you write isn’t as important as getting your work in front of the right people. That, above all, if you don’t love it, you’re kind of screwed.

Soaring dreams and bruised knuckles all in the same book. It sounds a little like life.

I read this at a critical point in my life.

As you’ve noticed, I haven’t posted much this week. What started with a raucous weekend fueled by two NEEDTOBREATHE concerts, ended with the realization that nothing seems to be going right in my everyday life (from my perspective, of course).

Especially writing.

And then I read this.

According to Jeff, this is nothing out of the ordinary. It’s called losing steam, feeling trapped, wondering why your passion feels more like coal than flame, and it’s normal.

But what comes next is pivotal. The moment everything in life is riding on. The point where you give up or lean into the struggle with every bit of strength.

This is where you “stop writing for accolades, and start writing for passion.”

“You Are A Writer” reads like a life or death situation, and that’s exactly what this is. We’re either living out what we’re most passionate about, or we’re stepping a little closer to death – the ultimate luxury – every day.

This isn’t melodrama. 

It’s real life.

Showing up to write is a battle we’ll wage with the dragon Resistance until the day we die.

And this e-book is your guide to brandishing that sword, lifting that shield, and charging forward with the knowledge that “the fear of something is always scarier than the thing itself.”

Behind all the professional advice and motivation, Jeff makes it personal. He chronicles his misconceptions, his failures, and his victories as an underdog in the literary world, which is where all authors start [unless you have an ego the size of TIME Magazine's circulation and were christened Jonathan Franzen].

This e-book covers pitfalls of the writing life, expert tips from the industry, and exactly what it takes to make it.

So whether or not the world hears your message – whether you leave the impact you were born to make – is entirely up to you.

So start calling yourself a writer, and start acting like one.

I’m joining you.

Buy this game-changing book here.

Photo Credit: Verdelho11 (Flickr)

Yesterday, Jeremy Statton posted “4 Things to Remember in the Face of Change.”

I mused over his writing and patted myself on the back. The last time I resisted change, I was 14 years old and giving my parents a hard time for moving me states away, far from family, friends, and the familiar.

Since then, I’ve done nothing but embrace change. I’ve lived in Orlando, Boston, Philadelphia. I’ve frequented New York City, Charleston, Savannah, Washington, DC. I’ve flown across the Atlantic. I’ve moved back home to the beach [to catch my breath].

I’ve applied to graduate programs, I’ve applied to jobs. I’ve thought about the Peace Corps.

Honestly, I can’t get enough change.

I can’t stay still. I can’t live with the routine that eventually falls into the chinks of every life.

So I patted myself on the back and almost didn’t comment.

But I did, and I said something about needing change almost as much as I need oxygen. About how all I want to do is live a good story. And Jeremy responded with this:

What keeps you from living that story, Elizabeth?

I. Haven’t. A. Clue.

Sometimes the simplest truths and questions can trip us the most.

I held my fingers over the keyboard, ready to respond, but the words never came.

I’m still wrestling with the question. What are the obstacles in my life? What stands in the way of the life I want to be living? What will get me from here to there?

There’s a danger in dreaming of the greener grass on the other side of the fence, but there’s also a grave danger in staying comfortable in familiar pasture.

We won’t admit that it’s uneventful and predictable. We take comfort in days already planned. We take comfort in the safety of our surroundings.

We don’t worry about clean water, plentiful food, war zones.

We worry about what others will think of our new haircuts.

Of this, I’m guilty. Just like you.

According to Donald Miller in A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, a meaningful life must build off four critical elements:

ONE: As the sole protagonist of your story, you must take full responsibility of your life.

TWO: You must decide what you want more than anything else in the world.

THREE: You need to anticipate and welcome conflict, as no truly epic story is without it.

FOUR: Look forward to the resolution, no matter how difficult your story becomes along the way.

With Jeremy’s prompting, I realized that I’m stuck between the second and third element. I can’t clearly visualize the obstacles. All I know is that they’re there, large and looming. And I haven’t the slightest clue about how to scale them.

But climbers can only reach the summit by first tackling the base, one weary step at a time.

My first steps deal in identification.

What do I want more than anything else?

What are the obstacles in my way?

Am I willing to sacrifice everything for those dreams?

Without a doubt, yes.

What keeps you from living that story?

I’ll be in Nashville on May 6th-7th for Donald Miller’s Storyline Conference. Register and join me in living a better story.

I’d love to see your face.

Photo Credit: Cee-Lo Knows (Flickr)

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I’ve been reading letters lately.

It seems as if everyone is writing letters to their past selves or future selves, and I love it.

But I’m not worried about the ambitious and dreamy-eyed girl I was a couple years ago in college. And I’m not concerned about the silver-haired woman I’ll be years down the road, rocking grandchildren to sleep way past their bedtime.

I’m worried about the 24-year-old woman I am now. The one I caught a glimpse of in the mirror this morning.

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Because there’s something different, something dangerous about her.

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It’s slippery and smooth like snakeskin, this lurking danger. Its tongue just happens to be forked.

And it’s called Apathy.

Cynicism, indifference, jadedness.

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You see, she’s stuck right now. Physically glued to the ground. She dreams day after day – she’s been doing it for years – but those dreams aren’t getting her anywhere. She wants to write books, she wants to live in another country, she wants to visit Ethiopia and see hope written in brown irises. She wants to kiss Colin Firth on the cheek (she’d respect his marriage status, I’m sure of that).

But the truth is that she lives on the same farm she grew up on, and she still forgets to wear shoes most of the time. She writes what she can between chores and errands and balancing trays of food night after night. She finds it hard to connect with anyone in her community, relying on good friends hours away. She can’t even look back over photographs from her recent trip to Ireland, afraid of all the longing those memories will unearth.

Her heart hurts more than it should.

She’s terrified this is where she’ll stay. For any amount of time.

Because at her core, she feels purposeless.

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Last October when she noticed this feeling, she ended her lease and her job and moved. And yet, the purposelessness fell into place, just as comfortable in the country as the city. It only needed the routine of everyday life.

And it settled. Deep into her life, deep into her soul.

It’s taken on the form of panic attacks and sleepless nights, angry remarks and hot tears.

But.

But she needs to remember that she’s not on her own. She needs to remember that her God is more than aware of the discontent buried deep within her chest, and she needs to know that He doesn’t want her to carry it.

She needs to know that there is a purpose for her being on this earth.

And she needs to know that she’s right where she needs to be, sitting by her desk at the window, shielding her eyes from the afternoon sun, watching her baby sister build a fort with sticks outside.

She needs to breathe and trust.

Trust that this will not last long.

That she will write books and live in other countries and lend her voice to great causes and camp out for U2 concerts and meet new faces and hold new hands and fall in love a few too many times.

All of this, she needs to know.

And I hope this gets to you, 24-year-old self.

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What does your present self need to know most?

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If you’re a dreamer of any sort, if you’re a timid, first-time entrepreneur, if you’re a seasoned creative itching to make a larger impact, then you should take heed of the recent cinematic flurry surrounding Blue Like Jazz.

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A bit of back story:

Back in 2003, Thomas Nelson Publishers released a seemingly innocuous book called Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality onto bookstore shelves. I remember standing in Barnes and Noble with my hand wrapped around the spine, scanning the back cover clip, wondering if I should take a chance on an author – some guy named Donald Miller – from Portland, Oregon. He could have been a mustache-toting hipster for all I knew.

And I’m so glad I took that chance.

The book sparked something within me, within readers, and it spread like something out of Contagion, just without all the mass hysteria.

Now Blue Like Jazz is opening in theaters nationwide today, and it’s nothing short of a miracle. Because the “older white guys” who fund movies stopped production in its tracks back in 2010. They couldn’t relate. When Miller announced that the movie would not see the light of projection, fans regrouped, armed with a heady dose of faith and a Kickstarter account.

And the rest is history.

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Like it or not, this movie is setting a precedence for all art to follow.

And here’s why:

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ONE: A community-driven project is magnetic.

Gone are the days of reigning head honchos drinking cocktails stirred by their secretaries. The Mad Men era is over.

And believe it or not, the people still hold the real power.

This is why fan fundraising platforms like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo work. Fans want to be part of the project, especially if they can fund artistic genius that would otherwise be muffled in the world of big business.

The Blue Like Jazz Kickstarter account set a goal of $125,000. But this grassroots project ultimately raised $345,992.

This is definitely something to be emulated.

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TWO: “Traditional” has become a dirty word.

Save it for holidays and spring weddings, but leave it out of art. It’s become synonymous with “out-dated,” “boring,” and “irrelevant.”

Indie is more than a trend. It’s the voice of our age, a mark of how we’re unwilling to leave things as they are.

Fans were unwilling to leave the film untouched. Filmmakers were unwilling to keep the plot safe and uncontroversial. And this is how revolutions begin. With ideas, with differences of opinion, with boldness.

This movie has definitely started something.

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THREE: Failure is all about staying down.

Two years ago, this project fell flat. It stalled before it even hit the earliest stages of production.

Nothing worthwhile comes easily, and as John Steinbeck once said in a letter about true love, “nothing good gets away.”

Ain’t it the truth.

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I won’t be able to see Blue Like Jazz until next weekend.

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When are you seeing it?

Make this week really count, friends.

Photo courtesy of Scrapcatz (Stock.Xchng)

Contradictory to popular thought, stories never truly end.

“And they lived happily ever after” doesn’t exist, no matter how the author penned it.

Tales end with split-second tableau vivants: the protagonist leaning in for a kiss, a few surviving soldiers surveying the field in weary triumph, the justice in a criminal behind bars.

But just as a reader’s eyes scan that last sentence, the story continues on.

Couples don’t end at the altar, battle scenes only hint at the trials of national rebirth and reconstruction to follow, and prison sentences don’t comfort wronged families for long.

And we instinctively know this.

Think of the shelves of spinoffs at the bookstore. John Gardner’s Grendel continued the Beowulf epic from the perspective of the monster. In Wild Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys delivers a prequel to the classic Jane Eyre, filling readers in on the story behind the first Mrs. Rochester before she succumbed to madness. Even Shakespeare’s famous Hamlet continues on in Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.

“The end” only signifies a break in storytelling because nothing in this world resolves.

I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn’t resolve. I used to not like God because God didn’t resolve. But that was before any of this happened.

-Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz

As a writer, I’m never done.

I put down my pen to breathe for a moment – and get another cup of coffee – and then I pick it up again. Another press release, another story, another article.

Each attempt is a step closer to genius, whether I ever reach that subjective state or not. Each blank page a second chance to create something lasting and honest and real.

As a human, I’m never done.

Days end in flannel sheets, but the sun also rises. Another cup of coffee in the morning to make me manageable, another rattle under the hood of my ’90s car, another chance to put my foot in my mouth a few dozen times.

And just when it begins to feel old, a righted wrong reminds me that each day is an act of grace, a tangible chance to start afresh with the rising Eastern sun every morning. Our human concept of time is good for something.

As a race, we’re never done.

We watch the cycle play out in newspaper headlines, evening news after dinner, and viral YouTube videos. Another bloodthirsty rebel leader replaces a done-away-with tyrant, another child falls victim to Leukemia, another single mother prays for relief in the form of full bellies.

Nothing in this world resolves.

A static state is nothing short of unnatural. As creatives, we were never meant to publish one story and retire. As humans, we were never meant to live one day and spend the rest in bed. Together as the human race, we were never meant to fight one type of justice and cover our ears to the cries from the rest of the world.

We’re born fighters.

So don’t complain when another day begins again, and don’t whine when the world forgets your last post, your last book, your last good deed.

It’s a grace-saturated call to action.

Never stop creating, never stop living, never stop fighting.

We’re undone creatures for a reason.

What do you pursue day after day? What wears you down?

Photo courtesy of Sapphireblue (Flickr)

Long before the sun spilled its color over the fields of winter wheat, I hit the road running.

I live in an area swallowed by farmland, by cedar swamps, by woods choked with stickers, and the roads are quiet and bare around the clock, especially this morning in the fog.

I turned the corner and turned up the music.

Deep into the mileage, I stopped noticing the dew on spider webs laced between branches and the shades of green in the sod fields. My steps no longer matched the beat of the song. My right shin felt tight.

I still had another mile to go before I crossed the threshold of my driveway.

My lungs felt swollen, my throat felt raw, my gait felt off balance.

Just one more mile.

A few months ago when I lived in the city, I kept myself busy. I spent evenings out with friends, planned dinners and Hitchcock movies with my roommate, walked blocks and blocks to the gym.

But then those nights would creep in, the nights where I found myself alone and unscheduled, desperately trying to keep those difficult questions at bay. I’d pick up a new book, order a cup of coffee at the nearest cafe, walk all the way to the store for nothing at all.

And then in the brief stillness of waiting in line, the split second between paragraphs, the block between 2nd and 3rd, they’d catch up to me: Is this living? Is this how I want to spend my life? Does my life have meaning?

As humans, we’re hardwired to steer clear of pain. 

We stay caffeinated, absorbed, entertained. If we feel the first pinpricks of hurt, we smother it in acetaminophen and sitcoms, chocolate ice-cream. And if it starts to hurt more, we give in.

We wave our white flags before the battle’s even begun.

Just like I slowed my pace in the last mile. Just like I filled my schedule full of meaningless distractions.

Just like I stop writing when the isolation grows too heavy, when the words I write encounter criticism, when everything I’ve worked towards ends in a rejection letter tucked deep in the mailbox.

This is the crucial moment, when the pain first seeps in and you’re tempted to cower behind your shield.

Steven Pressfield paints this fear as Resistance, a fire-breathing dragon that “belches fire and lives only to block you from reaching the gold of wisdom and freedom.” But fortunately, you’ve got armor and a pretty sweet sword:

The only intercourse possible between the knight and the dragon is battle. The contest is life-and-death, mano a mano. It asks no quarter and gives none.

 

If you think about it, we’re only skin and bones. Everything is dangerous. That pot of water boiling on the stove, that car in the next lane.

Like life, creativity is dangerous ground. There are dragons and shields and moments of bloodshed.

But you’re safer than you think.

So go ahead, roll up your sleeves, and chase down that dragon.

And may the odds be ever in your favor.

Do you have a dragon looming in your life right now?