I once thought of myself as an optimist, but now I go beyond looking for the good in the bad. I now see the bad as good. Bad makes good better. The pain, the heartbreak, the conflict, it all has served a purpose in my life.

When I was a junior in high school I learned about Freytag’s Pyramid. If you are not familiar with Freytag’s Pyramid, essentially it is an outline of what a great story should look like. Freytag was a 19th-century German playwright and novelist. In 1863, he developed this idea that a story can be broken into five basic acts, the exposition, the rising action, the climax, the falling action, and the denouement. I remember sitting and listening to my teacher explain this story structure. I knew I had heard about Freytag’s Pyramid before, but I guess it didn’t matter to me until now. 

I was a pretty quiet kid. I’d like to think I was nice too. When other kids asked if they could cut me in the lunch line, I would usually say yes. I had two best friends growing up, and they’re my best friends to this day. Beyond those two goons, I pretty much kept to myself. I grew up in the suburbs of Kansas City with my two loving parents and two wonderful siblings. My father a pastor and my mother a teacher. I had good grades, and I played sports. I was a portrait of your Midwest Kid. My life was by all uses of the word, “good”. But, there were many times I didn’t feel good.

The Act that captivated my interest more than any other, as I sat there in 11th grade English, was the rising action. Storytellers often call this the conflict. Everything in the story hinged on the conflict. The whole essence of the story is a character overcoming conflicts. Without going through some kind of pain the character could not grow. The story just never happens. It begins and ends with the character living their life just like they always had, never content with where they are at.

I read this book by one of my favorite authors, Donald Miller. The book is titled, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. Somewhere buried in the pages Miller goes on a pilgrimage to the ancient Incan village Machu Picchu. These beautiful ancient ruins were built almost 600 years ago on a mountainside in southern Peru, but the road to Machu Picchu was long and treacherous. There is also a river that runs along the trail that was used for commercial use, but people on pilgrimages were forced to travel on the trail across the Mountains. Miller tells how the Incan villagers made the pilgrims take this road instead of taking a boat up the river. The villagers knew the pilgrims would find Machu Picchu all the more beautiful when they had to endure the pain to get there.

As I sat at my desk staring at a drawing of Freytag’s Pyramid on the whiteboard, I realized this was more than instructions on how to write a great story, it was instructions on how to live a great life, a life I hadn’t lived. I wanted life to be easy but I didn’t want it to be boring. A story without conflict is boring. 

At the end of our lives, all we will have is our stories. No home, no money, just a wooden box, and someone saying, “remember when”. I don’t want to live my life afraid of getting hurt. I want to experience the pain, the heartache, and the fear, and I want to overcome.

I think when we get to the end of our lives God wants us to be able to look back at what it took to get where we are. I think he wants us to see how our pain shapes our lives to tell a beautiful story. I want to be able to look at him and say it was worth it.