I’m afraid I haven’t been blogging much lately.  I admit that I haven’t been working steadfastly on my children’s books either.  Instead, I’ve been engaged in living a better story.

Shortly after Christmas, friends from church gave me a book by Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.  It’s not a children’s book, but it has inspired me to fling open the blinds, allowing light to dance across the walls.

Today, for example, I stood at the top of the sledding hill, shaking my head.  “I’m not going down,” I told my husband and sons.  I stared at the grass and mud peeking out from the snow.  I saw others speeding down the steep upper hill and bumping over the lower hill.  While I was frozen in fear, my husband’s voice blasted into my consciousness.  “Live a better story!  You’re going down the hill!  Come on!  Get on that sled!”  I sat down, inching the plastic sled toward the edge of the hill, and . . .  wheeee!  I obeyed the line my husband had borrowed from Miller’s book.  “Live a better story!”  Braving the hill again and again, I made a thrilling memory with my family and our neighbors.

Miller’s book is shockingly unreligious at times and movingly spiritual at others.  After reading it, I felt inspired to go to the effort to make stand-out memories, and more importantly, to live the story God wants me to live.  Read it for the stories Miller tells, for the lessons he learns about crafting a good story and applies to living a good story, and for his compelling voice.  Throughout the reading of his words, I began to think of him as a friend.

It isn’t often that a book changes the way you think.  This one does.

May God bless all your stories!