How Movies Have changed my life. Not only changed, but Directed.

Tom Cruise to Ken Watanabe: “A life of service and discipline.”
It was this exchange- this line- that set my professional life in motion. I knew, right then in the United Artists Theater, what I would do with my life. (And no, it wasn't to be a frustrated civil war veteran who embraced the inner healing he found in Shintoism.) The next morning, I awoke earlier than usual in order to catch the sanctuary before the morning clean started. It was a Tuesday. I was 18. I snuck in through a side entrance, turned on the stage lights, and found a seat in the middle of row 8. I was sitting there on the northeast section, surrounded by 1500 chairs, and I merely bowed my head and prayed. My prayer was simple. “I give you, God, the rest of my life.” I knew what I meant. I did not quite know what it would mean. I would live and I would die in ministry. A life of service. A life of discipline.

Months earlier I had rented Meet Joe Black. As the credits rolled, I knew I had to make one of the most important decisions of my life. 18-year-old private school students shouldn’t have to make these kinds of decisions. But I did. I grabbed my phone. I left my shoes. I walked into the cool, September air. I walked past my elementary school. I walked past a field in which I had rode my bike and played war with the neighbor kids. I walked past my brother’s childhood best friend's house. And somewhere, on Rosemont street between 13th and 15th street, 8 blocks from where I grew up- I decided who I would marry. I called her. I told her I loved her. I started on my way home- barefoot. I did not tell her that night what I had chosen, nor have I ever.

But today, as I sit in my church office after just getting off the phone with my wife- I am happy. You see, choices are the hardest things in life. They are hard because they have consequences. They have lasting effect. And there are rarely do-overs.

What makes life decision choices so hard is the difference between dreams and fantasies.
We choose our fantasies. We construct them. We add to them. We perfect them. We even sometimes go as far as to plan them. But our dreams choose us. We do not control them. We do not get to edit them. We simply experience them. They are a mix of what has gone before, what is, and what might be. They are our reality in a not-yet-real state. We construct fantasies because we are afraid to chase our dreams. In actuality, there is no chasing involved. Rather, it is an act of taking. Taking the opportunities that lie in front of us, rather than running towards the myth of a future life filled with opportunity and ease. Dreams require action. They require reality. They require a decision.

My decision, both professionally and privately, was to live my dream. To jump in. To allow it to be messy and meaningful. Painful and poignant. I chose my life. The life God set in front of me- inside of me. And here I am living it. And my life…is good.