Thoughts on Icing My Butt and Ice Cream

It is a rare thing when I finish a book in less than a month. I’m a fast reader, but have such a short attention span, I typically leap from book to book to book (to book to book) within a month or two’s time frame.

It’s even rarer when I finish a book in a week. That’s when you know it’s really hooked me.

So, for me to finish a book in two sittings, which occurred in less than 24 hours, is like the world reversing its spin on the axis of the universe. It just doesn’t happen. Or, it would take some kind of mystical divine force.

Speaking of the mystical and divine, I didn’t believe in the Book Fairy (the literary version of the Tooth Fairy) until last Tuesday. I received an email early last week from a magical power in the book world which essentially allowed me to put a copy of Donald Miller’s newest work, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years on my Kindle.

The Book Fairy is real, y’all.

Tuesday night came and I was so excited to lay down before bed to begin reading it, and when I lifted the cover to reveal the screen on my Kindle my heart literally shattered when I read the words.

YOUR KINDLE IS DEAD YOU NEGLECTFUL FREAK.

And what was worse on top of my already grievous soul was the fact my charger was in the car and the car was in the midst of getting tree branches dropped on it, courtesy of Tennessee severe weather.

I placed my Kindle gently away (as opposed to throwing it against the wall and cursing my lack of assertiveness) and decided I should probably finish the amazing book Everything Belongs by Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest, as it had been two months since I started it.

So I finished it. Loved it. And went to sleep.

The next evening, knowing I would have a few hours on planes on Thursday for a trip to Baton Rouge, I plugged my Kindle back into the wall and allowed a new breath of electronic life to be breathed in it.

On Thursday, from Nashville to Memphis and Memphis to Baton Rouge, I never quite looked up from A Million Miles. When the flight attended asked what I wanted to drink I merely grunted something that must have sounded like Diet Coke, because that’s what he handed me.

I don’t realize what happened exactly, but somehow, although the plane was pointed to the Bayou, I was transported to the Northwest and I became the girl who lived across the street from Donald Miller. But not in a crazy stalker way. It should be noted that I don’t even know if there is a house or a condo or apartment or a Walgreens that is across the street from Donald Miller but whatever it is, that’s where I lived. I could see and hear and feel every experience he described in the book.

For example, on the odd snowy day Portland had at the beginning of the book, I saw the two film makers, who are interested in making a movie out of Don’s first book, Blue Like Jazz and Don and his roommate sled dangerously around the snowy streets. I could see Don and Ben, the cinematographer, out smoking their pipes. I tried to imagine what Steve Taylor looks like now, as opposed to the CDs and cassettes I would arrange at the Christian bookstore I worked at when I was sixteen.

And in the midst of being a fly on a wall, I simply became caught up in a story of a story of a story. Which sounds like it would be rather confusing but it’s really not. It brings so much depth to what Miller is writing that you feel you can’t escape it. And as I read this story of a story of a story in the back of my mind I began contemplating my own story over the last two years. Risks I have taken and times I have let fear win and my story stopped.

59% of the way through the book, I landed in Baton Rouge and waited until the last possible minute to close my Kindle and pick up my beaten and bruised teal suitcase from underneath a pile of other beaten and bruised suitcases in baggage claim. As I walked through the airport and drove the still hurricane-ravaged streets a narrative continued in my head as I’d try and imagine what stories were walking around me, breathing around me.

For instance, there was a lady in McDonalds as I was leaving the airport who was there with a young boy. She was very tired looking. Like she had missed the plane to whatever her last resort was. I began telling myself that the man who was in her life, possibly the boy’s father, had abandoned them somewhere, and Baton Rouge was where she had family and she had felt safe for a while. But now it was time for them to go home. A place that had no hope.

Or she could have just been really tired and wanting a Big Mac. But regardless, the narrative in my head never stopped.

After a fun evening with friends, around 11pm, I retreated to my hotel room and crawled under the fluffy white duvet with? A Million Miles. Knowing I was fighting a losing battle with sleep, I focused in on each word, each page, at times laughing at loud. At times tearing up. At times having to take a moment and realize that much like Miller in a previous life, I eat too much ice cream and watch too many stories on TV about other people living lives when I become afraid to live my own.

As he talked about his journey with the Ride:Well tour, I thought about my heart surgery on Friday – yes, THIS FRIDAY – and began to get nervous. You see, I had spent a couple of days with some of the Ride:Well team this summer and somehow had convinced myself that if my heart surgery was successful, and they did a trip next year, I would ride. Verbally, I suppose, I have already committed myself but as Donald talked about icing his butt and used words like “Arizona” and “Summer” and “Elevation” and “Broken Tail Bone” and “Sleeping in a Gas Station” my will to make this a part of my story began to fade.

There’s that fear again. Wanting to stop a story.

That can’t happen. So I texted my friend and soon to be cycling partner Spence telling him we needed to go look at bikes TODAY. I am not going to let myself get out of this one. And Spence is about a foot taller than me and quite a bit more muscular. I don’t think he’d let me get out of it either. So we’re going to look at bikes later and I’m going to pick one. One that, once my surgery is determined successful, I will purchase. And I truly hope it will be orange. Or maybe green.

Don’s story as a writer in A Million Miles challenged me as a writer, as there are certain lies and tendencies those of us who type our fingers into cramps day in and out have. Especially his consistent reiteration (and therefore mine) of eating ice cream and watching TV. Because seriously, that is my story more often than I’d like to admit.

But it also made me stop and more intentionally consider the things I say yes to and the things I say no to and why I say yes and why I say no. Most of the time whenever I say one or the other, it’s out of a selfish rather than a noble, life-giving motive. And realizing that about yourself makes you want to change because selfish is never lovely, and I want to shine in a lovely, redemptive, hopeful kind of way.

It was well past midnight when I finished A Million Miles and I went to sleep worried about having to ice my butt from riding 120 miles in Arizona next summer. But at the same time I was looking and appreciating the risks I have been taking over the last two years — leaving a comfortable job at a great church to move to Nashville on a whim. Downsizing to an 800 square foot home in order to save money to pursue our dreams and give more away. Swearing I would never speak in public because it makes me so incredibly nervous and sick to my stomach but taking the stage time and time again even though I know I sweat and spit far more than what would be considered ladylike. Committing to write another book, which people could likely hate (or love) and sacrificing other comforts in life (like a salary and health insurance – I’ll tell you more about my transition into a full time writer in a few days) in order to have the freedom to write and travel and help friends and speak and give a voice to the voiceless.

So I’m heading in the right direction. I think.

A Million Miles gave me confirmation that it’s an effort of my human will to want to live in a supernatural story, perhaps with less ice cream and TV and also a conviction that our life is but a vapor. That death is something we can’t control – and staring at the words “Hospital” on my calendar for this weekend makes that more of a reality than ever, although it is just as likely I get hit by a car walking home from a friend’s house.

Through Donald’s words I have no doubt you will experience the same kind of hopeful challenge. I know just three hours after putting? A Million Miles down I woke up abruptly at 3:46 am almost audibly hearing the words “WRITE.”

One should understand I never wake up at 3:46 am to write, much less do anything, but there was something new inside of me and with cloudy eyes, my bloodstream still half full of Lunesta, I wrote. Whatever came out of my soul and through my fingers was something new and inspired.

I was kind of sad when I finished? A Million Miles. I didn’t want the story to end. But I know in many ways it’s not over. Don will continue living his story and hopefully sharing it with others. And I will continue living mine, now with fresh perspective. And everyone who reads this book will be more intentional about their stories. It will continue. And I believe when something continues and is passed on, that’s called legacy.

And for that I say thank you, Mr. Miller, for sharing with us an infinite gift – the legacy of story.

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