What Story Do You Live In?

What story do you live in?

What story do I live in?

I imagine myself in some sort of fancy play on a stage with red velvet curtains. The artists have drawn different backdrops to be unfurled during the scenes of my story.

There’s the red brick house on an inner city street in Kansas City; the Victorian home on a hill in Saint Joseph, Missouri. A painted version of our black English cocker spaniel stands near the front porch.

When I’m 18, the scene turns into a hospital converted into a college dorm. It’s old, but stands in downtown Minneapolis with the lights of skyscrapers towering above.

The scene designers tried their best to capture the feel of foreign soil with paint on canvas, but I’m disappointed with their rendition. Armenia and Estonia have their own smells, sounds, stares and stresses that a two dimensional version cannot capture.

And the final scene shows me today–in a small white house with green shutters in Saint Paul, Minnesota. They paint a version of my constant shadow—a shaggy dog named Rue—laying at my feet.

The director found actors to play me at different stages of my life. They always have long hair and sensitive eyes—likely to wipe away tears during some point in the monologue.

But, in the Saint Paul scene, I play myself and I’m getting kinda old–nearing 50. I’m typing at a standing desk because the carpal tunnel syndrome in my right wrist makes my fingers go numb when held at the wrong angle. I wear new Hoka running shoes with three-inch rubber soles—prescribed to pamper the arthritis in my right knee.

To those of you sitting in the audience, I’m sure it seems like I’m pursuing the great dream of writing. In your version of my story, I daily close my laptop with a smug smile of success; one that comes from reclaiming my life.

But that’s not the story I live in…really.

It’s been 10 weeks since I last created with words. Why? I got lost in a story that cannot be painted, but lives inside of me.

That story is not delusional. It’s based on the past–themes my psyche predicts will appear in my story arc over and over again.

I killed my love of songs by following a dream to be a professional musician in college. In that plot, there is a distinct before and after picture–every ounce of my confidence leaked out by the time I held a diploma. Thirty years have passed and I still feel the ramifications. The innocent love of singing in the shower or on car rides has yet to return.

In that void, I determined to help other people’s dreams succeed instead. Those “other people” would have moved heaven and earth to help me if I’d only been able to articulate my own aspirations. But, I no longer trusted my heartbeat; didn’t even know how to listen to its thump until it eventually screamed at me.

Thank God that buried dreams learn to shriek or yell; to not be satisfied buried in dust.

But screams are painful and they rip apart the scenery of the dead-kinda-life one nestles into as home.

So, as I stand at my writing desk in my purple Hokas and try to force words to fly off the ground, I find it hard to believe in a new story—that I can paint a new backdrop for the next decades of my life.

Aren’t the artists tired of rendering my story? Too busy with the shiny people performing in the new theater across the street?

The repetitive themes of my old story play on loud speakers instead.

Just give in. Keep doing what you were doing the last 20 years–you’re good at that. You help others with that. You’re too old and hardened to accomplish a dream. You’re setting yourself up again–all the sacrifice and effort that end in a burial.

That’s the story I’ve been living in the last 10 weeks.

Why? I have proof that painful things happen to dreamers. And lies are easier to believe than truth.

Someone screams offstage: “There is a greater story!”

I pause in the middle of my monologue. Rue’s startled from her sleep and growls in the direction of the intruder.

Deep down, I know. That scream is meant to save me.

I know there is a greater story.

This great story requires a ton of work and time, my fingertips pounding laptop keys. It demands risk. And it’s fuel is grace–tons of grace.

I am grafted into the Great Story that paints a backdrop of extravagant generosity; of reclaiming dry fields and creating a harvest of green. It feeds generations to come.

It asks me to flee the slavery I’ve known and walk across the sandy path as God, somehow, does the impossible and parts deep waters.

I have a choice. Which story will the final chapters of my life be lived in?

I massage my wrist and think a bit. Rue stares at me and seems to sniff out the correct path…

I choose to follow.

I demand the playwright change the ending and order the artists to paint a new background.

The red velvet curtains are opened, and I stand in front of it. It’s a work-in-progress—being painted as I speak, write, sing and risk.

I still have long hair and big eyes that cry.

I’ve moved out of countries and learn to uproot old, stubborn mountains that have blocked my path.

I’m living in the Great Story that says not even death is able to separate me from the writing of dreams or the love of the Dream Maker.

So…

What story are you living in?

_______

Here is a song that has been helping me live in the Great Story—sent to me by a friend.

Thanks to all of you who have chosen a paid subscription. It really helps me to keep going. Your generosity is part of an extravagant story.