Writing our stories....

I'd like to share a little excerpt from an e-mail I received this morning:

You are writing a story with your life. Think of the days like pages and the years like chapters. What is the theme of your story? What is the plot, and who are the main characters?
What pieces of your story are working, and which aren't? How does your story inspire others; what do people learn from it?
If you continue on the current course, how will your story turn out? (Dondi Scumaci)

Have you ever really thought about how much our decisions, attitudes, beliefs, and actions affect our life stories? I love thinking about it. I'm not just living day to day, I'm creating a story with my life. What do I want the theme to be? Who do I want to play leading roles? What adventures do I want to be sure are included?

We have a tremendous amount of input on the stories of our lives. I know we're pre-destined by God, and I don't pretend to understand where one begins and the other ends, but I know we have a lot of control over the direction our lives take. Think about it. We get to choose most of the characters we let become part of our world. Most of our story lines are shaped by choices we've made or even by responses we've had to things that were beyond our control.

And the beautiful thing is... if something isn't working, we can make choices to change it. We don't always have control over how long it will take, how difficult it will be, or even if we'll reach our final destination. But we have total control over how hard we'll try, when we'll give up, what our attitude will be along the way. AND we can weave in as many sub-plots as we want, and declare as many victories as we want along the way! It's our story. It's our lives. These should be the most creative manuscripts of all.