Luis Arizpe and The Truth: Blog

It must have been about 7 years ago ... gosh, this very time of year, too! Sitting on a tool box and talking to my friend, John. He was telling me "his story"; about his trip to rehab a couple of years before and the events that unfolded in his life that landed him there. "So, what's your story", he'd asked. I gripped my can of beer, looked down at the cement of his driveway, and in the glow of that little light I answered, "I don't have one," and took a long pull from my cigarette.

I just now put my kids in bed. It's almost 9:30 p.m. on a Friday night. We get to stay up late on Friday nights. Tonight, after a dinner of cheese burger patties and fries, we watched one of my all-time favorite animations, Finding Nemo! What a story! I love just about every part of that movie. The graphics are out of this world! The voice-acting is supererb ("Just keep swimmmmming! Just keep swimmmming!) The story-tellers do a great job of putting in a little something for the adults every time. Pixar. It must be great to work at a place like that.

"How appropriate," I thought as I sat there holding my almost-two-year-old daughter, Shaia, in my lap. That story is very familiar on several levels.

About two years ago, I (inadvertently) quit the music biz. That is, I didn't exactly mean to; I actually just set out to understand what God was trying to do with me. Or, to understand what God was trying to tell me about my career. So, in the middle of everything, I kinda came to a halt to figure things out. I entered into a period of deep prayer and concentrated meditation about it. What I came to understand was that I really didn't like my "self" very much. 'Smatter of fact, I down right despised me. You can imagine the surprise. After getting myself into another "program" (I'd been sober for ... 4 years up to that point), I came to hear what God's been saying to me -- well, more like whispering to me. "Tell my story." Those are literally the words I heard. Of course, if you know anything about God, He doesn't ever just come right out and tell you, point blank, what He means. It's been my experience that just about everything He says to me is open-ended. So, I was left thinking, "Ok. Do I tell His story? Or did He mean for me to tell my story?" Then I caught myself, "There I go again, over analyzing and over-thinking it again."

G.K. Chesterton, in his book, "Orthodoxy", wrote "I had always felt life as a story, if there is a story, there is a story-teller."

Hmph!

I mean, here I was, just innocently watching a children's animation and I'm struck by the truth of it, the subtlety, the over-bearing lightness of it ... story-telling! It was all right there.

The father, Marlin, in the movie Finding Nemo is singularly focused on finding what was lost, his most precious thing of all -- his child. His story preceded him wherever he went. All the fish and creatures of the sea knew of this story. It was so compelling that it took on a life of it's own. People wanted to be a part of the story, they did what they could to help! What an epic story, retrieving what's been lost!

All those years ago, sitting in John's driveway, I thought I didn't have a story. I saw my life as a blank and drawing very quickly to a close. What I didn't know then, and what I know now, is that God was writing His story into the cold stone tablet of my heart. That's what stopped me cold in my tracks two years ago when I knew that I couldn't go on anymore like I had been going; or, rather, I was pointing in the wrong direction. My career had become about me. I've spent the ensuing two years learning that story. And only recently am I feeling compelled enough to actually go out and tell it.

I have a story.

I have been written into the greatest story of all, I have a place and a part to play. I understand that the story is not about me, or even for me. That sets my mind at ease because, if you want to know the truth of it all, I'm a degenerate. But, it's not just me. "Tell my story," He said. "Tell my story" I will.

So, let's hear it. What's your story?