Hi. Remember me? I'm the guy who said he was going to "blog more because I can do it on the go with my fancy pants phone and all that nonsense". Well here I am and its been WAY too long but I'm here none-the-less so let's just go with that for now. 

As many of you know I recently had the good fortune to travel with my boss as well as my great friend JMG to Portland, Oregon to attend the Storyline Conference hosted by Donald Miller. Many of you know Donald Miller through his various works (Blue Like Jazz, Searching for God Knows What, etc...). His most recent book "A Million Miles in A Thousand Years" takes a look at the idea of story and how our lives (both spiritual and otherwise) can be painted as a narrative in order to help us realize the potential inside of us and to achieve in greater respects what God has created us to do. The conference was an expansion of the ideas and the book and was especially helpful for me on a personal level for sure but also on a professional level as I aim to use these ideas and structures not only with my youth group but also in the new Sunday night coffee house worship service we have started. 

I can't begin to tell you on this blog everything I learned at the conference so I am going to hit you with a few of the bullet points that really spoke to me and if you would like to discuss further or go more in depth about any of it I offer you an unconditional "backporch beer and chat" at my house to go deeper. Seriously its a whole month full of conversational nights that could be had and I'll gladly share it with any of you, just holler. 

-A good story has a character who wants something and overcomes something to achieve it. As humans we are pulled towards stories of people who overcome (Rocky, Rudy, the Dillon Panthers...okay so I'm getting sports heavy here but you know of tons of others) and the reason we are is because we have to overcome things in our lives all the time. The difference is there isn't someone here to film it and make a movie about it, because 1) George Clooney doesn't have time to star as all of us in our personal movie stories, and 2) a movie about getting out of debt and making sure your children have everything they need to succeed in life, while utterly admirable, isn't going to be selling out the theaters when "Sexy Exploding Vampire Bieber's from Mars" is showing next door. 

-"Man fully alive is the Glory of God" - this quote by St. Irenaeus really struck me because how many times do we see people that we know who are "walking zombies" through their lives just being worn down, and never at home because of a job and a pursuit of bigger and better and the Jones' (no actual Jones' were harmed in the creation of this post). We are called to live not be shackled by earthly things, and that's tough because we still need things (clothes, cars, etc...) but when do we choose what we want and what we need because there is more life to live?

-Joseph (of the many colored coat) was transformed by the negative turns in his life. The things that drove him forward and allowed him to have the ups that he had were because he chose to be faithful to who God created him to be (which just happened to be young, handsome, smart, and likeable) and that brought him through his dark times. Many times we decide to give up at the hard parts and "try again later" after we weather our storms. We weren't created for that. 

-Sometimes we have to embrace a negative turn in our story. It's going to happen. On any number of levels we are going to face difficulties and hard times. When you boil it down "conflict is the heart of any good story." Choosing to accept our hard times and seek out how to turn them into learning and growing moments makes us better characters in our stories. 

Seriously I've literally only scratched the surface of this, but I've got to go now (writing this post while at work while my youth are in their small groups right now). Come porch it up with me and we'll talk more I promise. I did attach some pictures from my trip (mostly Hipstamatics) for you to enjoy. JMG and me were pleased that we got to eat at two establishments featured on Diners, Drive-Ins, & Dives while we were there (hence the pics of food). Enjoy and I'll try not to be a blogging stranger.