A Better Story in the New Year

There is nothing that I would love more this year than to work on making my story better. The story of my life, my everyday. I am reading a book right now that unexpectedly is the absolute perfect book to read at the beginning of a fresh new year. It is called, " A Million Miles in a Thousand Years" by Donald Miller.

If you look back on your life so far, are you living a great story? Great, not just average. Living a great story encompasses my entire list of resolutions or goals for 2010. But it is much more that that to me. I have been trying to figure out for the past three days how I would write about this, how to explain it. I have all these big ideas in my head of how to live a better story daily, but my mind spins so fast that it is hard to explain it into words. And then this morning, I read this quote from the book that described exactly what I've been trying to say the whole time.

... he didn't think we should be afraid to embrace whimsy. I asked him what he meant by whimsy, and he struggled to define it. He said it's that nagging idea that life could be magical; it could be special if we were only willing to take a few risks.

We all feel it, that idea that just keeps coming into our head. Some ideas are small like you should be helping that person that is struggling, or that you could be reading a great book but it's easier to just watch some mindless tv. Or the ideas could be huge like a trip that you have always wanted to take, or a race that you would love to challenge yourself to train for, or even a career that you would much rather be in than the one you are in now. Every single day we get these little (or big) thoughts in our head. I know many times, I ignore it. I push it back and tell myself that someday I'll do it. But when is someday? Why not now? I want to be able to look back at my life and know that I lived it to its fullest, no excuses.

So, while I sit here with a long list of goals for the new year in front of me, I know they all will help me live a better story. It will not be easy. I cringe just reading some of them knowing I will be completely out of my comfort zone. But, I am going to embrace a little whimsy into my life.

And because I want to have something pretty for you to look at too, I was trying to think of an image to show you and thought of this moment last year that describes this all perfectly. All fall, I would drive past these absolutely beautiful corn fields that would just glow in the fall sunlight. I kept saying in my head that I needed to stop sometime and photograph them, but I never had the time or was too busy to get where I was going. It was finally the middle of October, and I still had not done it. I was on my way home from an early Saturday morning photo session, when the voice kept telling me to stop at a corn field to take some pictures. I had my camera already in the back seat and the sun that day was gorgeous. But I wanted to get home so badly to spend the rest of my Saturday with Trevor so I kept ignoring it. Finally, all of a sudden I just pulled off onto a country road and took these images. Now, honestly, it took me less than five minutes to do this. Why hadn't I done it sooner? Why can things like this be so hard sometimes? Why don't we just do it? I am so glad I finally did. Now, I don't have to say, "I'll make sure to do that next fall", and I have these beautiful images to look at. Enjoy!