The same principles that make up a good story also make up a good life.

God sat over the dark nothing and wrote you and me specifically into the story, and He put us in specifically with the sunsets in the rainstorms as though to say, Enjoy your place in My story, the very beauty of it means it's not about you, and in time that will give you comfort.

And once you know what it takes to live a better story, you don't have a choice. Not living a better story would be like deciding to die, deciding to walk around numb until you die, and it's not natural to want to die.

To know there is a better story for your life and to choose something other is like choosing to die.

If I learned anything from thinking about my father, it's that there is a force in the world that doesn't want us to live good stories. It doesn't want us to face our issues, to face our fear and bring something beautiful into the world. I guess what I am saying is, I believe God wants us to create beautiful stories, and whatever it is that isn't God wants us to create meaningless stories, teaching the people around us that life just isn't worth living.

God made me, He knows me, He understands me, and He wants community.

Good stories don't happen by accident, I learned. They are planned.

You put something on the page," he said. "Your life is a blank page. You write on it".

People want to be involved in a story that is larger than themselves.

It's not that bad, Don. Don't worry. It's just that for some reason, you are letting this girl name you." "What do you mean, name me?" "Well, you are letting her decide your value, you know. Your value has to come from God. And God wants you to receive His love and to love yourself too.

It is when people do not allow God to show up through them, she realized, that the world collapses in on itself.

By writing about the community we will create or join, and by listing the ways we will appreciate nature and art, we are reminding ourselves, over and over, that life is not about us. It's about sharing our human experience with other people.