Maybe this won’t be typical,

…but I have a feeling it might be.

I’m a cliche person, but I do try to avoid it at all costs. My biggest fear for this blog is sounding overdone, unoriginal. That’s a huge fear of mine in life, too. I want to be honest and truthful in discussions across a classroom, in conversations over bowls of soup, and through these words read on a screen. They will almost always start on paper, though. On scraps I find in my notes, in a journal, on a page someone else wrote. Hopefully the things I am inspired by will resonate with you here.

So, here we go!

Cliche moment: My first post. Typical.

Pause with me for a moment, before I begin. I want to explain the meaning behind this blog’s title, it’s significance to me. I have this favorite author, named Donald Miller. He wrote in one of his books these words:

The closest thing I can liken life to is a book, the way it stretches out on paper, page after page, as if to trick the mind into thinking it isn’t all happening at once. Time has pressed you and me into a book, too. This tiny chapter we share together, this vapor scene, pulling our seconds and minutes into hours. Everything we were is no more, and what we will become, will become what was. This is from where story stems, the stuff of its construction laying at our feet like cut strips of philosophy. I sometimes look into the endless heavens, the cosmos of which we can’t find the edge and ask God what it means. Did you really do this to dazzle us? Do you really keep it shifting, rolling round the pinions to stave off boredom? God forbid Your glory would be our distraction. And God forbid we would ignore your glory.

This compels me to write. In my mind, I have so many “strips” laying at my feet that I don’t know what to do with them. I begin to put thoughts into words to form sentences to design paragraphs to craft an art. I pull the freshly printed pages from the printer, clasp it with a staple, and hand it to the professor. And it becomes redundant. I become tired of it, discouraged by red or purple ink marking up mistakes I think I shouldn’t be making, ever. So for me, to be reminded that life is like a book is one of the strongest driving forces that keeps me writing. “Time has pressed me into a book.”

What am I doing with this time?

Mister Miller, as I affectionately call him- since we are best friend in my imagination, continued to write the phrases that inspire me most:

Life cannot be understood flat on a page… it has to be lived; a person has to get out of his head, has to fall in love, has to memorize poems, has to jump off bridges into rivers, has to stand in an empty desert and whisper sonnets under his breath: I’ll tell you how the sun rose a ribbon at a time…

What is my life if I am not jumping into rivers, falling in love, and whispering beauty, creating beauty? God forbid I would ignore His glory. God forbid I would ignore the words he presses into my heart and says, “Now take your pen…” and I bleed over my desk through words. May I more passionately than ever before, each day, pursue His glory through ordinary experiences made extraordinary. May I listen to His voice and pick up my pen. May I capture beauty as I rub against time, as I am pressed into His book.