the story...

it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. {jane austen}

in order to tide myself over until LOST begins again in january, i was doing the surfthechannel thing and getting caught up on the episodes that i'd either missed or forgotten from season 4. then one day, almost a month ago, i noticed a new show, lost in austen, and was immediately intrigued. while in calgary this summer i had purchased a book by the same title, reminiscent of the 'choose your own adventure' books from my childhood, the reader becomes elizabeth bennet, whose goal is to not only marry well, but marry for love. {let me say, that on my first journey through the book, i did indeed marry mr. darcy...sigh...}

anyway, i digress, so i checked out the show, and sure enough, it is the story of a young woman, amanda, from london in 2008, who is startled one evening to find elizabeth bennet in her bathroom. apparently there is a door behind the bathtub which leads directly to lizzie's house. while checking out the unusual occurrence, with elizabeth in amanda's london apartment and amanda in the bennet's home, the door closes and amanda walks into the beginning of what should have been pride and prejudice. and that is where it all goes wrong.

given that we all know how the story goes, when lizzie's absence and amanda's presence turns the whole thing upside down, you can't help but feel that something terrible is happening. {spoiler alert} especially when jane marries the creepiest mr. collins EVER! but as someone who fancies herself as waiting for her own mr. darcy, the ending, and generally the experience of the mini series was highly enjoyable.

but all this about altering story lines started me wondering about the storyline of our own lives. life is not a predetermined book like pride and prejudice, but rather one more akin to lost in austen, where our own decisions factor into the equation, making every one's journey unique. but because we don't have the original text to compare our lives to, we will never know how one decision, however small it seemed at the time, may have completely altered the trajectory of life as we know it.

sometimes is it easy to become discouraged by the mistakes and poor choices we've made along the way, and spend too much time wondering what life could have been had we done things differently. and depending upon the situation you now find yourself in, it is too easy to go nowhere while ruing the past. anyone who has tried it will tell you, you cannot move forward while facing behind...who are we kidding, i'll tell you. i've tried it way too often, and have the scars and bruises to prove it.

in a sermon entitled let story guide you, donald miller quotes a book that i cannot remember the title of and says that "God takes our mistake and starts from there." this is a reminder i need daily.

one last thought i'll leave you with...in the same sermon, donald miller says that when faced with a decision, a good question to ask is whether or not we want this thing that we are deciding about in our story. look at it as you would twenty years in the future looking back, is this something that you want written in the book of your life, or not...and then act accordingly.

what is your story?