Everyone Has A Story.

When people ask me to dream, I tell them that my dream is to just love people. And I understand that that doesn't sound like much of a career. Nobody really pays for me to go around and hug people better. But I love people. And that's my dream.

I might could end my post right there, but I'll extrapolate. I love each person individually. (Perhaps not always as much as I should when driving down the road, and they make poor driving maneuvers, but as people and not drivers, I love them.) I love that each person has their own story to tell. From big to little and little to big, each person has a story. What makes me so sad is that most people don't believe in their own story because it isn't the flashy story that lands someone on the front page of magazine. But the truth is, each person's story really could be.

I have had the chance to meet and foster relationships with people from literally all walks of life - from the creme de la creme of society, to people who can't buy food for their family, from young social entrepreneurs, to elderly folks who have retired, from 'Muricans to people who left their country in a hurry and were plunged into American society to folks in other countries whose culture I want to better understand. I love how different each person's story is, but I also love that what ties every single story together is the value of that person as a person and the LOVE that marinades their story. Every person on this earth has basic desires: to be loved fully and unconditionally and to love another(s). Every single person. At the root of all motivation, there is a basis in love - the need for it, the neglect of it, the pursuit of it, the manifestation of it. People are people. Each person has worth and value and needs and love. And each person's story is worth listening to and telling.

I had the extraordinary privilege of sitting down with a young, motivated visionary yesterday and hearing parts of his story. But in his story, I was listening to this same idea rise to the surface. This inspiring rising freshman of Furman University has already done so much. And I love it even more because of how he acknowledges the Father's favor in all of the circumstances. In his early high school years, he came up with a plan to better the food in Greenville County Schools, the "Food Revolution." This and his involvement with student council created opportunities to continue to impact the community on greater and deeper levels. A social entrepreneur and brilliant young man, he has had door after door opened to him, not because he has pounded down the doors and forced his entry but simply because he asked; in some cases, because some woman happened to pass by and ask for her picture to be taken in front of a building. With the mind and passion to pursue change, it's clear that he will literally impact the world. But what will prove to be his most successful asset in the whole thing is that he does not have his eyes on the problem that faces society but the individuals that the problem affects. He doesn't just do volunteer work to improve his own hand, but sits and talks and walks a mile in another mans shoes (literally) to understand the folks that are in the middle of the problem and better understand how the problem can be solved. Furthermore, his heart isn't to just reinvent the wheel or to spoon feed the folks the answer, but to make the people the solution. Not enough fresh food in the community - utilize their talents and skill sets to grow the food, train them in how to sell the food and become micro-entrepreneurs. People are always the solution. You can fix up a broken house - new roof, new foundation, new carpet - but if at the end of the day, the people in the homes are still broken, feel invaluable, feel unloved, are living under addiction, etc... the problem wasn't fixed. It just looks prettier. The solution isn't to fix the home, it's to love and value the people enough to say that they are worth being in the solution.

This think-tank, creative collaborative, social entrepreneurial design is not a particularly novel idea. It's on the rise across the country. As the "social justice" movement leaps to the forefront of our generation, so will (and has) this community development and people growth movement. What gives Mr. Riddle's model an upper hand for even greater success lies in the foundation of His model - the Kingdom. It goes beyond seeing people as projects and communities as puzzles; it looks at people as children who are loved and adored by the Good Father and communities as homes and families. It puts LOVE at the center of the model, not justice. And it speaks to the identity and value of folks, not the capital interest from utilizing them. It takes the time to hear their stories and from them, launch people into their dreams. The limitless extent an individual has when they are told who they are and that they have value and that in Abba's love for them they have hope and future (Jer. 29:11), good plans and great dreams over their lives.

The worst thing society can do to a person is to peg them - to give them an identity that is less than they are because of circumstance or the past. As I've discussed previously (This Little Light of Mine), a person is only responsible to the identity they know, and they will operate out of that identity until they are given a new one. And this broken reality of our world surfaced just the night before I met up with Ben.

I had the honor of driving a friend of mine home from FCA on Thursday night. She is a wonderful and beautiful person, who happens to have a disability of sorts. But she is fully functional, kind, loving, joyful, compassionate, etc... That is really who she is. On our drive to her house, I asked her lots of questions. I wanted to hear more of her story. I wanted to know what makes her tick and what sort of things she loved to do. Like most young people, her summer is filled with days of freedom - going outside, watching TV, sitting on the computer. She told me about her family's trip to New Hampshire last week to see family and go to a wedding. She told me about how in a couple of weeks, she was going to get to go to Charleston and how much she looked forward to going shopping with her mom. She lives on a lake. Her family owns the same kind of speed boat that my family used to. She likes to get dressed up. She loves to be around people. She is great. We talked about Jesus and how much He loves her. How she can hear His voice and His desire to talk to her. I learned a lot about her. Then I felt the press to ask her, "What do you want to be when you grow up? What are your dreams?" Her response broke my heart. Because it is not what a young girl dream of; it's what people have probably told her are "realistic" possibilities. Now she did say she wanted to go to college, which is awesome. But her dream job was a hostess at a restaurant. Wait, what? This great girl, amazing person who was made in the image of God and is loved and treasured and adored, has capped her dreams at a hostess. Her value reaches beyond that. Not that being a hostess is any sort of issue. I spent 3.5 years of my life as a hostess, but the dreams can't stop there.

The contrast between the young entrepreneur and beautiful young girl is striking: the one who has been told that he has no limits is living a boundless life of a visionary with the drive to implement huge dreams and the one who has been told that the value mark is only that up to a hostess has dreams that are cap and the potential to go beyond that has ceased because there is no vision to inspire a drive that would reach for the stars. If you look at each individual's story you see a life marked by love. Both are greatly loved and love greatly. Both are going places and meeting people and living this same thing called life. Both have a story. Both have a future. And while one may end up on a magazine cover, and the other only 50 people ever hear, both are worth hearing. Both are worth investing in. Without the one, the other will not grow. The young man cannot change a community and not invest in the people of it. The young girl cannot remove the cap of dreaming and grow and influence her community without somebody to unscrew the cap and cherish her and build her up.

So my dream is to love people. It's to sit with people from all over the place and hear their story. That is my heart for people. That people just like these two would have the chance for their story to be heard and appreciated and told. That a person's story would go beyond what they have done and gets down to who they are. So I love people. I love to love them. I love to learn them. I love to be surrounded by them all the time. I love to build them up and unlock dreams. I love to move beyond what the world sees on paper and get to their heart. Because they are really all about love. And the way they act and are is a reflection of the love they have experienced in their life. Everyone has a story. My dream is to be a story-hearer. My dream is to be a story-facilitator. My dream is to be a storyteller.

What's Your 200 Year Plan?

What a brilliant idea. Legacy. Being a hinge for the next generation. Living each day to move my own life forward in such a way that it may catapult the generations that come after me. I dream of people living in such a way that they will be able to stand on my shoulders where I'm done and go further than I ever was able to.

I got this question from a TED talk given in April 2012 by Raghava KK. He discusses how every few years, he and his wife sit down and create a 200-year plan. They don't write it for others to execute nor for others to judge. They write it to give room to dream without restriction and create for themselves the idea of the future.

I understand that TED talks generally mark technology or business or leadership in this day and age, so the thoughts that this question spun my mind did not wander for very long within the realm of his talk. But it really got me thinking for sure. What would my 200 year plan look like? What can I be doing today that will impact tomorrow, next month, next year, ten years from now, etc...? What does it look like to live in such a way that leaves a real legacy? And perhaps most importantly, am I living in such a way as to steward all of these dreams and desires?

Raghava also discusses the past and the future and how they impact one another, or how we can recreate our past just as we create our future. He discusses the importance of forgetting our pasts in the process of creating our future. This argument is mostly where my opinions diverged from his. Although pasts do not limit the potential of our future, the past is what shapes us and equips us for the future - good or bad. Our pasts are our stories. The future is boundless, but the past cannot simply be forgotten or manipulated.

Yesterday, I was driving back to South Carolina from my family's cottage in Michigan. It's somewhere between an 11 to 12 hour drive. I drive it in one shot and by myself almost every time. Some people cannot conceive how I am able to make that drive on my own, but it is really quite enjoyable. I love people, don't hear me wrong. I am motivated and energized by people. I love to love them. I love to help them. I love to hear their stories. And aside from these 12 hour drives, I am almost always around people. So I take these drives to sing, dance, and think... a lot. Yesterday, as I was driving, I was paying attention to license plates as I always do. It's fun to imagine or guess where folks are coming from and going to. A few states particularly catch my eye all the time - Michigan (where I'm from), Tennessee (where the cars I have driven the last three years are from), and South Carolina (where I live now). So as I drive north and see a Michigan plate, I usually assume that they are also making the treck back to Michigan. And then, of course, as I drive south, if I see a Tennessee plate north of Tennessee I assume that is where they are headed or if I see a South Carolina plate, I assume that is where that car is headed. So I was driving and thinking about this yesterday when it hit me: why do I think that must be where they are going? Here I am, a South Carolina resider (not yet a resident, but soon!) with a Michigan license plate driving back to where I live but nobody by seeing my car would know that, so whose to say that all these other folks do not have similar stories. That's when the metaphor came to me: my license plate shows where I've been (or where I'm from) but it is not a determiner of my destination.

My past does not determine where I could end up in even 6 minutes from now, but it is still my past; it is part of where I have been that has led me to this moment in time. And in that realization is where or how I differ in thought processes from Raghava. I do not wish to forget my past - I did grow up in Michigan, play sports, sing in choir, experienced some crazy life events as a result of my parents' divorce, make incredible friends, get diagnosed with osteoporosis at a young age, go on mission trips, laugh hard, cry hard, get frustrated, excel in school, lose friends, attend the University of Michigan, transfer to Clemson University, have zero dollars, be financially above water, travel around the country, live in a Southern culture family in the North, etc... And those are just bullet points of my life so far. But the good, bad and ugly of my past is still mine. It has formed me to who I am today and given me a heart and passion for people who have been hurt in similar ways or celebrate with people who have accomplished similar things or given me the eyes to dream beyond my current scope because 3 years ago I would have never dreamed to be where I am today.

So what does it look like to dream up a 200 year plan to me? It looks like removing all restrictions of where I've been to be free to be 100% me in the present to grow exponentially for my future. What are some of your 200-year dreams?

(To see a few items I dream of currently visit: http://thechelseawinepress.weebly.com/dreams-and-hopes.html)