Let me tell you what I wish I’d known
When I was young and dreamed of glory
You have no control – Washington in Hamilton
How will you spend your July 4th? My family hopes to shoot fireworks six feet apart. Yes, six feet from each other and at least six feet from firework to firework. Hopefully.
While we eat hot dogs and watch fireworks boom, I wonder how many of us will actually remember our country’s independence. I’ve never heard a friend mention the Boston Tea Party or the shots fired at Lexington and Concord amidst sparklers and beers (not a recommended combination). Independence Day gatherings give us an excuse to invite people over, douse ourselves in bug spray, and drive just outside the city limits to a firework tent where we burn money faster than a fuse stays lit.
Tomorrow is for fresh cut watermelon and seed-spitting contests. It’s also about celebrating our country and remembering the stories that got us here. On July 4th, 1776 the Continental Congress chose to enact the Declaration of Independence. Paul Revere rode through town. The French secretly jumped in to help. Saratoga changed the momentum of the war. Washington’s leadership kept his soldiers’ hopes warm through the winter at Valley Forge. 1776 gets all the attention, but it was not until 1783 that our adversary across the pond finally recognized our independence with the Treaty of Paris.
Don’t I sound intelligent?! I watched Hamilton (which opens today in movie form today with the original cast). I also spent two months in quarantine with elementary kids watching “school” on a screen. These about sum up my dip into the American Revolution.
If you love the USA, it is a good story. Our story of independence started like most good stories begin:
Something is not right. We want more.
While I am not an expert in my country’s origin story, I do love to help people live great stories. Most personal stories worth living (and re-telling) start this way, too:
Something is not right. I want more.
Take a look at your life now. What is not right with you?
Going deeper, what do you feel when you assess your life? As Larry Crabb puts it, “What lingers?
If you are human, you will feel a sense of angst (at the minimum) when you take an honest look at your life. Things have not turned out as scripted, to say the least.
Then another voice surfaces, “Is it okay to want more?”
I spend a good bit of time encouraging people not only to recognize this question within but also encouraging them: Yes. Want more. Please want more. Your life, hopes, and dreams depend on wanting more and knowing what you want. It’s okay if you do not know how to get it. Start with want. Start with desire.
Desire and hope bring up other important questions and doubt. It’s okay. It’s all part of the beginnings of a great story. It was true in the colonies, and it is true in your own heart.
What do I want?
Do I have what it takes?
Am I enough?
Where in your life have these questions been knocking?
As long as what you want is a worthy pursuit, you have the beginnings of a good story.
If you have the courage to start this story of yours, fear and toxic-shame will show up quickly. They may fly in like pesky mosquitos in the backyard. Or they will surface like the boom of the grand finale at the firework show. However they show themselves, and they will, don’t be surprised by their intrusion. Expect them. The danger lies not in their presence but in how you respond to your fear and toxic-shame. Herein lies the problem: These three ingredients to the beginning of a good story can also be the exposition to a tragic story.
What do I want?
Do I have what it takes?
Am I enough?
I don’t know what I want. Or, I won’t let myself be worthy of dreaming.
I don’t have what it takes and never will.
I am not enough nor do I even know who I am.
Forget it. I give up.
I bet you know that storyline. I do.
But.
“Fortune favors the brave,” the old proverb assures us. Can you envision what bravery and courage would do for the story you want to live?
George Washington knew a thing or two about courage. In the days leading up to our Independence Day, he spoke these words upon entering leadership: “I beg it may be remembered by every gentleman in the room that I this day declare with the utmost sincerity, I do not think myself equal to the command I am honored with.”
Assuming he said this in humility…Our first President did not know he had what it took to lead us. Today we still tell his story because he impacted our own.
It’s time to take command of your own life, the one you have dreamed about launching. If you (1) know you want a worthy desire and (2) don’t know if you have the ability or (3) feel you are worth it, then you are officially qualified and ready to start. Stated desire, questioned ability, and doubted worth are all prerequisites.
You will need a plan. Following the plan will take crazy effort because you will live out the plan and repeat it over and over again until you make progress. I wish there were another way. Unfortunately the only way forward is through the fear, toxic-shame, and whatever other obstacles come your way. Stick to this plan and you will live a new story:
1. Accept who and where you are
2. Tell the truth about what you want
3. Identify old ways which no longer move you forward
4. Surrender gracefully to a new good and healthy way
5. Trust God and the process
What would your first brave step be? Are you ready to live and write the first line in the story?
No doubt the haunting whispers of fear and toxic-shame make it difficult to take the first step. They burn us and our plans. In the movie The Patriot, a British general on the hunt for rebels traps a group of innocent Americans. His troops force them into a town church. Holding them hostage, he promises freedom if they will reveal the whereabouts of the men he seeks. But once he attains this information, he locks the doors and burns the church to the ground. It is a picture of how your toxic-shame and anxiety set fire to your dignity and dreams. The only difference is your ugly feelings burn from the inside-out.
What dreams have allured you but also eluded you?
Stop reading if you have not taken time to honor this question. Please. For the sake of the image of God in you that has big dreams and hopes to love this world well. Know what you want.
What story awaits you now? If you do not know, ask yourself these questions:
What do I want? Where do I have desire (even if you do not know how to act on it)?
Where am I not sure I have what it takes?
Where does toxic-shame whisper: You are not enough?
The world needs you to pursue a story worth living. You won’t find your story on social media, in the news headlines, or solely in the approval of others. You will find it when your heart beats faster and the ache of desire whispers a hope for which you believe yourself incapable and unworthy. This is the call of your good story.
What do you want?
Do you have what it takes?
Are you enough?
If you need any more guidance, take President Washington’s words:
“Let us therefore rely upon the goodness of the Cause, and the aid of the supreme Being, in whose hands Victory is, to animate and encourage us to great and noble Actions.”
Go live your story.
