Story Time

Hey y'all!

Let's cut right to the chase: My Spring Break was wonderful! :) Because I got to see this guy.

Corey came to visit me in California for Spring Break. It was fantastic. Among our adventures included Corey's first trip to both In N Out Burger and Yogurtland. That is some good stuff. :)

We visited UCI too, but didn't ever make it to the beach because the weather was awful. Who would have thought that if you choose to spend your Spring Break in California, it will be colder and more rainy than it is in Kansas just for that week? Haha!

He got to hang out with my family and meet my roommate (Erin) and some of my friends. I know they were all really excited to meet him. It was really fun and exciting, even if we all didn't get to hang out for super long. 

It was so awesome to have him here, since we haven't been in the same place since December, and won't be in the same place again until maybe July. Oh my beard. But God is so much bigger than 1600 miles, and (risking being extremely sappy) I'm super blessed to have Corey Tindall in my life. :)

The rest of my break was fun too. I got to sing in a high school friend's wedding. It rained and the wind was insane, but both the bride and the groom were beaming and that made the messed up hair and blue limbs worth it. It was truly gorgeous to see them exchange their vows and devote their relationship to Jesus. :)

Now commences the grueling last quarter of my college career. I've got to be honest, I'm really not a fan of getting back into the swing of classes. Spring Break was so great, and now I'm having to force myself to be productive again. I'm sure you all know the feeling.

I think the most irritating thing for me is that I'm super impatient about where my life is going. I've found myself looking forward to all the cool things that are coming, and being very frustrated that I have to wait for them.  Not that being excited about the future is wrong, but I'm not just excited--I'm pining. It's not the best the feeling.

Interestingly enough, I found wise words and solace from a book. Nope, not the Bible, folks. A textbook for my Beginning Fiction Writing class.

That may sound strange, but that's what happened. Tuesday afternoon I was sitting in my room trying to focus on reading this textbook, while all I wanted to do was get to what's next in my life, (without even fully being able to visualize that). I stumbled across this and it hit me like a ton of bricks.

"We live in a society that doesn't offer any support or approval from ventures that aren't clearly articulated and alligned for a goal. A writer gets past this. It's going to be a mess before you're finished, and you may not have a name for the mess or understand it's utilitarian purposes." -- Ron Carlson Writes A Story

Nuggets of wisdom from a textbook on how to write a compelling story.

And it got me thinking about how often we don't think of our lives as being a story. On Project we focused so much on figuring out our testimonies, but at Keynote they prefer to call them "stories". Testimony implies something grandiose and intimidating--a giant tale of how God rescued you from the depths of a heroine addiction after losing your entire family in some house fire.

And that isn't to say that things like that don't happen, because they do, and God is faithful to rescue us from them. However, most people don't have a testimony like that. This is where the story comes in. Stories are small episodes of your life, not the whole thing. One moment where God made Himself so real to you that you couldn't ignore Him.

And yet in ALL of that, we as humans are discontent in not knowing the ending of our stories. I know I am. I have to have every detail planned out. And if I don't get it just right the first time, I have trouble reassessing.

So when Ron Carlson (the author of my textbook) tells me that I need to approach writing a story without knowing the ending, without knowing the details of the plot, without even knowing the main characters' names...well, that's a foreign concept to me.

And yet that's how God asks us to approach life. He wants us to trust that He has your best interest at heart. He wants us to hold tightly to Him, rather than try to plan out our 5-year plan. (Not knowing the end of the story.)

Not that God wants us to all go out into some field wearing clothes made out of hemp, waiting for Him to come out of a cloud and drop us into the middle of a successful career or loving relationship. He does however, ask us to move trusting that He will direct and correct our paths. Kind of like a loving, omnipotent editor, if we're continuing with the short story analogy.

Anyway, I hope this intrigued some of you. :) 

If any of you out there are keeping score I would love prayer in this area of my life. That I would be clinging to God and not to my own plan for my life. (Because I'm slowly seeing that plan disolve. Haha!)

Also, on a more concrete note, I can already tell my Post Tonal Music theory class is going to be miserable. I have sat through 2 lectures and understood maybe 10% of what out professor is talking about. It's like someone took Calculus and shoved it into music.

Thanks for reading everyone! Until next time!

--Hannah