Adventures of Hodge

So, this week is Semana Santa here in Spain which means that I have the whole week off. Until Wednesday I don't really have anything that I have to do. Consequently, today I was in my pajamas until about 3pm when I finally decided to take a shower and enjoy the nice day. I never knew that I would spend this morning making history!


Ok, maybe "making history" is a bit of an overstatement...or a lot of an overstatement. However, I DID make personal history this morning. For the very first time in my life I picked up a book and didn't put it down until I had read the whole thing from cover to cover. Yeah, it was that good! When I told my mom she made me tell her how many pages it was. I think she assumed it was some sort of brochure or magazine. It was a REAL book with 253 pages called "A Million Miles In A Thousand Years" by Donald Miller.


I don't know why I decided to pick up that book this morning and begin reading but it was really good and held all of the encouragement that I needed. The whole book was basically talking about the the story that God is writing and how we need to play our role in it. Here are a few quotes that really stood out for me;



"If I have a hope, it's that God sat over the dark nothing and wrote you and me, specifically, into the story, and put us in with the sunset and the rainstorm as though to say, Enjoy your place in my story. The beauty of it means you matter, and you can create within it even as I have created you."


"I've wondered, though, if one of the reasons we fail to acknowledge the brilliance of life is because we don't want the responsibility inherent in the acknowledgement. We don't want to be characters in a story because characters have to move and breathe and face conflict with courage. And if life isn't remarkable, then we don't have to do any of that; we can be unwilling victims rather than grateful participants."


"People love to have lived a great story, but few people like the work it takes to make it happen. But joy costs pain."


"The reward you get from a story is always less than you though it would be, and the work is harder than you imagined.The point of a story is never about the ending, remember. It's about your character getting molded in the hard work of the middle."


"It isn't necessary to win for the story to be great, it is only necessary to sacrifice everything."


I titled this blog post "Out of control" because that is what I want to be. Not in the sense that I can't control myself but in the sense that I have gotten so sick of stepping back into my life and trying to control it that I have just, run out. I want to run out of the need to control my life and circumstances. To always make myself comfortable. I want to be able to find great joy in being completely out of control.


-Theresa