missashleyis...

So my friend wrote this tonight and I wanted to share because I completely agree with it:

“I still remember my first rock concert. Back in junior high, my mom took me to go see Amy Grant’s Heart in Motion tour. I remember that, at one point between songs, she said, “if there’s one thing I’ve learned, one piece of advice I have, it’s this: life is weird.”

As a naive thirteen year old, I was terribly disappointed. This was my childhood role model, my idol whose cassette tape I had listened to in the wee hours of the morning until it wore thin and the notes warbled. This was all she had to tell me? Life is weird?

But the older I get, the more I begin to understand what she meant. I think we all grow up with these fairy tales and movies about how life is supposed to work out - a script we think life is going to follow. It normally read something like this:

Page 1: Enjoy a charmed childhood, full of laughter and games.

Page 2: Work hard, get good grades.

Page 3: Go to college, spend late nights bonding with good friends.

Page 4: One day, realize that you are in love with your best friend and you can’t live without each other.

Page 5: Shortly after college, get married and have children.

Page 6: Live poorly as a young couple, make more money as you go.

Page 7: Work hard, retire, spend the rest of your years spoiling grandchildren.

Page 8: And, most importantly, live happily ever after.

The thing is, Amy Grant was right. Life is weird. It almost never works out like the storybooks say. What’s more, we are so familiar with these fictional scripts that they turn into our expectations. And then, when our lives don’t meet those expectations, we figure something must be wrong. We must be wrong. And we can quickly spiral into frustration, shame, and depression.

There’s no room in the script for dropping out of college when life gets rough.

The script doesn’t know that society is changing and there aren’t as many “good ones” as there used to be.

The script breaks down when your best friend doesn’t fall in love with you.

There’s no script solution when you find yourself falling for an old friend you reconnect with on Facebook… seven years into your marriage.

The script never includes a married couple that doesn’t want to have kids.

The script has no consolation when loved ones are tragically taken away.

I’m not sure what Amy Grant’s point was, but I think I know what mine is: we don’t write the script for our lives. God writes our story. And the truth is, God doesn’t write stereotypical, predictable romantic comedies. He writes the greatest, most surprising stories ever told.

He wrote that one about the teenage virgin that gave birth to the Savior of the world. And the one about the guy who stole his neighbor’s wife and killed him to cover the deed… yet still got to be king and was a man after God’s heart. And the one about the dude who went around killing Christians… then ended up converting half the world to faith through his writings. And that one single guy who loved more deeply than anyone has ever known or imagined, yet never had a single known date and was killed when He was 30.

Instead of following a script that centuries of societal expectations have written, we might learn to embrace the story He is writing for us. We could stop trying to predict the ending and read each day with awe and anticipation for the literary, spiritual, and emotional masterpiece that He is creating. And we might be delighted that, for some reason, God loves each of us enough to make us the main character in one of His stories.

So I’m going off script.”

It’s just so awesome :)

listening to…

Ghost Town : First Aid Kit

Hands : Fences

The Cave : Mumford and Sons

Ragged Wood : Fleet Foxes

We Used To Wait : Arcade Fire