The Reason God Hasn't Fixed You Yet

Excerpt from A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

Donald Miller

Chapter 29 “The Reason Why God Hasn’t Fixed You Yet” has to be my favorite chapter from the book. He is so poetic with his writing. I couldn’t have said it any better.

I’m convinced that the most fantastical moment in story, the point when all the tension is finally relieved, doesn’t actually happen in real life. And I mean that seriously. I’ve thought about it fifty different ways, but I can’t figure out how a human life actually climaxes so that everything on the other side of a particular moment is made to be okay. It happens all the time in movies and books, but it won’t happen to me- and I’m sorry to say, it won’t happen.

Maybe the reason we like stories so much is because they deliver wish fulfillment. Maybe we sit in the dark and shovel sugar into our mouths because in so many stories everything is made right, and we secretly long for that ourselves.

Regardless how passionate the utopianists are, I simply don’t believe utopia is going to happen. I don’t believe we are going to be rescued. I don’t believe an act of man will make things on earth perfect, and I don’t believe God will intervene before I die, or for that matter before you die. I believe, indeed we will go on longing for a resolution that will not come, not within life we know it, anyway.

If you think about it, an enormous amount of damage is created by the myth of utopia. There is an intrinsic feeling in nearly every person that your life could be perfect if you only had such-and-such a car or such-and-such a spouse or such-and-such a job. We believe we will be made whole by our accomplishments, our possessions, or our social status. It’s written in the fabric of our DNA that life used to be beautiful and now it isn’t, and if only this and if only that, it would be beautiful again.

All of this may sound depressing to you, but I don’t mean it to be. I’ve lived some good stories that have improved the quality of my life. But I’ve also let go of the idea things will ever be perfect, at least while I’m walking around on this planet. I’m trying to be more Danish, I guess. When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are. And when you stop expecting material possessions to complete you, you’d be surprised at how much pleasure you get in material possessions. And when you stop expecting God to end all your troubles, you’d be surprised how much you like spending time with God.

What I love about the true gospel of Jesus, though, is that it offers hope. Paul has hope that our souls will be made complete. It will happen in heaven, where there will be a wedding and a feast. I wonder if that’s why so many happy stories end in weddings and feasts. Paul says Jesus is the hope that will not disappoint. I find that comforting.

A Father's Love

I love Reading Donald Miller's Blog because his writings are so heart felt along with the other writings he shares.


"I would have given anything for my father’s love to not be a secret. Anything. A boy needs a father to show him how to be in the world. He needs to be given swagger, taught how to read a map so that he can recognize the roads that lead to life and the paths that lead to death, how to know what love requires, and where to find steel in the heart when life makes demands on us that are greater than we think we can endure. A young boy needs a father who tells him that life is a loaner, who helps him discover why God sent him to this troubled earth so he doesn’t die without having tried to make it better.


He may not know it, but from the moment he first glimpses his baby boy’s head crowning in the delivery room, a father makes a vow that with stumbling determination, he will try to get a few of these things right. Boys with fathers who keep their love undisclosed, go through life banging from guardrail to guardrail, trying to determine why our fathers kept their love nameless, as if ashamed."

To read rest of the excerpt visit:  http://donmilleris.com/2011/11/09/excerpt-from-jesus-my-father-the-cia-and-me-a-memoir-of-sorts-by-ian-morgan-cron/ 

Pain is What Binds Us

 Adapted from A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

Donald Miller

So much of our lives are spent trying to avoid conflict. Half the commercials on TV are trying to sell us something that will make our life easier.  Part of me wonders if our stories aren’t being stolen by the easy life.

Pain and conflict is what binds us.  Any sort of conflict and any sort of common purpose being arrived at through a tough middle that brings people together.

After a tragedy, I think God gives us a period of numbing as kind of grace. Perhaps he knows our small minds, given to easily to false hope, couldn’t handle the full brunt of reality.

Life, even amid the absurdity of human suffering, still has meaning. Suffering as absurd as it seems, points to a greater story in which, if one would only construe himself as a character within, he could find fulfillment in his tragic role, knowing the plot was heading toward redemption.

Olive Oil

I just read in a magazine that olive oil is the best makeup remover and that it’s good for the skin. Have you tried it? I’m going to.

So last night for once I stuck to my goal of going to bed by 10pm.  There are just so many distractions like my iPhone. I’m always answering emails and texts even though some don’t respond to me as quickly as I do or never for that matter. The “never ones” piss me off with their unresponsiveness so I make a mental  note to not get back to them the next time but I can’t be that person.  I tried turning it off but I need it on for my alarm to go off in the mornings and hubby always takes my phone to play games so me turning off my phone when I get home has not been successful. Maybe I’ll accidently leave it at work. No, I can't do that. I'm just not gonna try not to not...

I annoy myself sometimes by constantly trying not to do something. I can drive myself crazy thinking about the things I shouldn’t do that I end up doing.  Mr. wonderful makes fun of me for it all the time. I don’t blame him though. After running around in crazy circles, I catch myself being my own big critic trying to improve this and not do that and this is when I hear him say "Told you." I finallythen just sit still, smile agreeing with him that everything is just fine and I should just chill and then we have a good laugh. I’m the biggest dork you’ll ever meet.

Tonight’s goal once again is trying to go to bed by 10pm and remember to try the olive oil.

Pumpkin Spice Latte

I love watching Emma waking up in the mornings. She is the cutest when she does her little stretches and slowly opens her eyes to find me staring at her beautiful face and that’s when she flashes me the biggest smile.  Today she woke up before I left for work so we got to snuggle in my bed and play together. She is so funny when she puts her face under my neck and makes these baby sounds. I just want to eat her. I fed her milk instead, changed her and put her back to sleep until the nanny came.

For once, I enjoyed driving in the rain this morning. Maybe because I thought getting the Pumpkin Spice Latte from Starbucks would be the perfect thing to do this morning. I got my Grande Pumpkin Spice Latte in the honor of our friends’ anniversary. It’s an inside joke and I don’t need to get into it but I thought of them as well. Ok, I’m over pumpkin spice lattes. I don’t know why I kept saying this in my head:  I’m Pumpkin and your Spice (meaning my sexy husband) and together we make Pumpkin Spice Latte (that would be our daughter Emma) I can be very random. Can you tell?  

Love is like Peeling Pomegranates

After a long day at work yesterday, I got home to my amazing husband, sweet little daughter and yummy lentil soup and salad prepared by my wonderful husband. What more can a girl want? These kinds of things make me happy and are so romantic that all I want to do is kiss my husband’s face for being so good to me. He had spent the day taking care of our angel while running errands for the family and on top of that had dinner ready. 

When he went to take a nap later, I thought of all the wonderful things he did for me and wanted to return the favor so I took out the pomegranates from the fridge and started peeling them. Something I hate doing to which I would say “hal chukka” because it is so time consuming and requires a little more effort.  But yesterday I did it with love and a smile on my face knowing that when my honey wakes up he is going to be so happy to see one of his favorite snacks all peeled for him. 

Love is like Peeling Pomegranates. There are things that love costs and some things that we don’t normally like doing like peeling pomegranates but the person we love is worth so much more that we end up doing it for them with love and a smile on our faces.  That’s love.

Up All Night

A lot of people mistakenly get married hoping marriage will solve their problems. Marriage actually creates more and bigger problems. If you don’t have a strong foundation, any little wave can come crashing your house down. Before marriage, life is one exciting date after another. True love is tested when you get married making the biggest commitment of your life, living together finding all the faults of each other and yet loving waking up and going to bed with that person every day. True love is when you’re crazy in love about the person and to show it you:  make the morning coffee, take out the trash, vacuum, pay the bills, make the bed, get her flowers, buy him basketball cards, watch football with him,  and drink Armenian coffee with her even though you hate to. 

You now not only have each other’s relationship to maintain but you both have sets of friends, families, siblings, cousins, coworkers; and to maintain those relationship you’ve got to invest time.

Unfortunately things with friends and family change because now you’re a family of your own and you’ve got to make boundaries and prioritize to first nourish and maintain your relationship of a husband and wife and if you have a baby then you know your life becomes smaller but better. This is the transitional time that you might offend a lot of people especially single friends. But it’s ok, because soon enough they will write their own stories and meet you at your page.  

Our weekends are now spent playing with Emma, visiting our parents, attending family gatherings, and helping them out with things like setting up the backyard umbrella, church, laundry and grocery shopping. This might sound like a boring life to some but for me it’s the ordinary simple things that bring fulfillment and happiness at the end of the day. Even though we don’t see our friends as much as we used to and like to we are always thinking of them and trying to create opportunities to see them as we do with cousins. We no longer stay up all night clubbing, partying, or bar hoping but we stay up all night telling stories, watching movies and laughing together. 

EC