On a Quest to Find Your Life Purpose | Ep. 70 with Chad Demiguel
We all have a story to tell, and you are the main character. Typically we have an envision of how our life script should play out, but often it looks a whole lot different than what we initially planned.
Nothing the author places in a story is there by accident, and the same principle stands for your life. Every character, conflict, and climax is there purposefully to grow you in your story.
This week we have film and screenwriter, Chad Demiguel, on the No Grey Areas Podcast to discuss the significance and power of all stories. He also provides us with who the constant hero is in our story time and time again. You won’t ever see stories the same after this insightful conversation, so listen now to hear the elements & significance of what makes a great story so spectacular.
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Transcript
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We all have these scripts for our lives,
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story we want to play out a certain way,
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then being disappointed
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when things don't work out exactly as we had hoped or planned
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this week. We have a film guru and screenwriter Chad de Miguel here to talk about the power and pattern of stories in our lives and
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why knowing all these elements will make you live out your life story differently.
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Let's dive in.
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Chad,
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it is so good to have you on the No Gray Areas podcast,
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mainly because we've known each other for some days. I think it's going on over 15 years.
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Yeah, right.
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Yeah, It's been. Which means that we were both young when we met. Yeah. Rings around the tree. Yes. There. There are a few more rings around the tree.
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Yeah, that's right. We were
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there for a couple of different reasons, but ended up we were working on a project and ended up being roommates.
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And I And that was an accident. That was an accident, was it? Yeah, it was. Yeah, it was kind of. We were both supposed to have our own rooms and they made a
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in high school.
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joke. Sarcasm. But. But.
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conversations, too.
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it was. It was. It was really neat. I would. I'd come in and, you know, share footage of what I had been capturing that day being. And it was in Uganda. And, and I would say, Pat, what do you think of this shot?
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Do you think this is working? And that just developed, um, a friendship that we've had to this day and I
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I'd be like. I think we need a good reflection shot,
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right? So I definitely tend to work better. Yes, yes,
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yeah, whatever.
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you and I had both
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deeply.
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Like just,
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Yeah.
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Phenix, and we
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trafficking.
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time,
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Thailand
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So I
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about, I think
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it. Yeah. Yeah. And
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Yeah. Use those words on purpose very intently. Yes. Yeah, that was that was an amazing season. Working together and collaborating to create a feature documentary that had an advocacy and awareness about the plight of sex trafficking of minors in the Phenix area. And it was an incredible time. We worked with government officials, nonprofit ministry leaders, really an idea that, um, you had had led and spearheaded around what would it look like if the city came together in a way to be a voice against this kind of evil that was taking place and became an advocacy tool that we use to help raise that, raise that awareness and amplify those those children that had been and
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continue, unfortunately, to be impacted by sex trafficking. Yeah.
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We thought,
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but
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and
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and was one of the
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awareness on that
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that was
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that. It was remarkable to see the power that happens when when people of faith come together, when the city comes together, and
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really harness and leverage and see the impact that the person story has and how when that's told, it has the impact to to make a great change to to really to change the world.
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don't know for sure. I mean,
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Mm hmm. I have a good friend. That's, um. He has a background in photojournalism, and I remember that he picked me up at the airport, and he said
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really looks like that you're. You've been wearing this this experience in a way, because you do. When you. When he could see that on you. Yeah, he could. He could sense that. I think
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when you live in the world of of telling these kinds of stories, um, that certainly is, is its own kind of burden in a way.
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And I think that he could tell that that had been, you know, having an impact. And I think I think for all of us, when you, when you experience that kind of evil, um, that's just unfathomable. It definitely it definitely has an impact. Um, you know, certainly we're in no way like those that work every day in and out of that.
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But, um, yeah, I think know, I think it made a mark on all of us that, that worked on that for a time.
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There's no doubt. Like,
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Yeah, like that was that. That was one of those markings in
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of our life. That
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yeah, that changed
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it's really interesting you mention that because, you know, as we as we get into talking further about this idea of story and story principles and understanding our own lives through that lens, you often find in a story where as a character makes or begins their quest or their journey, they realize that they'll never be the same again.
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Yeah, that there is a transformation that can happen. But there's also many deaths that
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take place along the way. Many deaths? Many deaths. Yeah. Okay. So let's jump into this. And Chad, this is why this I'm so excited about this.
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good segue way. Yeah, it was perfect how you transition to that. So this is going to be the easiest
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I promise you
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movies the same again once you
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two, Act three, the Inciting incident.
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someday. Okay. So
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just
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Yeah, well, you know, unfortunately, yeah, it can have an impact in terms of am I going to be able to enjoy movies the same way again? So hopefully this is not a spoiler alert, but but enhances that. I'll back up a little bit.
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When I first started out my career, I was teaching screenwriting and filmmaking at the college level and kind of looking at these storytelling principles that are used in Hollywood, storytelling principles that you'll see really used in like TV shows and whatnot, storytelling principles that are based on timeless ways of connecting with an audience. And it was interesting, as I was sharing these, I thought this this is a helpful way to to also look at our lives.
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And and I think, you know, when we hear about God saying that he's the author and perfector of our faith, there's these kind of eternal rules that are written into a story, if you will, that seem to transcend time and space. And so every story tends to have with it, or at least those stories that we know and we love it when we go and see a movie, effectively a three act structure or some kind of a structure where you could you could call it it's it's set up where you're introduced to an ordinary world and you meet a character or a series of characters, and their ordinary world is their status quo.
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So it's the way that life has been for some time. So if you look at like the movie Rocky, Rocky was a as he called himself, a two bit boxer in Philadelphia, just trying to make ends meet. You think about a movie like Finding Nemo were introduced to this dad who's a clownfish, and he's kind of neurotic, overly protective.
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And that's that's his status. And they and they
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Just a few. Yeah. Usually. Usually it's about ten to 10 to 25 minutes. And you get a sense of this is the way that this character's world has been for some time. And then something happens and it's an event which is often referred to as the inciting incident.
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It's a catalyst that disrupts that character status quo. It does it to such a degree that they can no longer go back to the way things were. So Rocky is offered the chance to fight Apollo Creed, kind of a once in a lifetime opportunity. Marlin and Finding Nemo. Most of his children are killed by this barracuda except for Nemo.
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So the world is radically disrupted. As a result of that, the character is offered to go on to a quest to pursue a goal that helps to, in fact, reconcile that disruption. So for Marlin in Finding Nemo, it's Finding Nemo. His son is taken by the scuba diver after this inciting incident, and it is completely
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on that
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coral
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self.
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Yeah, son, it changed everything. His life can
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longer go back to the way it was. And Rocky, it's. It's him wrestling with. Do I have what it takes to go the distance with Apollo Creed? It's Luke Skywalker being asked to become a Jedi with with Obi-Wan Kenobi. And so and so with
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Yeah,
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I used to. I used to joke when I would
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They're just not in them. Yeah, no, I would not preach in a kilt, but I would somehow we would. But it
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in.
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It's the
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Yeah. And
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and that's like
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Yeah, yeah, yeah, he would be that. And
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but every good
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Every good story structure has that. And so
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the character there in the pursuit of this goal and as they're pursuing this, things get harder and harder.
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And the conflict escalates to where this is resolved at the end of act two and three go in a kind of Yeah. Resolution.
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more.
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Yeah. Okay.
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a movie at home because we get into it also
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incident, Colonel.
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If I wanted to sound like a know it all. But but it is fascinating. I really think
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we're going to start paying attention to
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Yeah,
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It does, yeah.
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And we often ask ourselves, like, why? Why would this be
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the case?
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Why are these the tools? If you will, that that Hollywood will deploy? And when we see the movies and the shows that we love, there's this, there's this consistency or a pattern. And I think there's a couple of eternal clues that we can look at that speak to our own life story. So George Lucas, when he was writing the first Star Wars, based it off of this book called A Hero with a Thousand Faces.
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And Here With a Thousand Faces is written by Joseph Campbell, a mythologist who effectively said there's you know, when we look at through through time and space, there are all of these different myths and it's effectively a hero that has a thousand different faces. But each of these stories really share the same features, all of these different myths, what really kind of help me to to get there and understand this is when C.S. Lewis was coming to Faith.
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He was good friends with Tolkien, who wrote The Lord of the Rings, and they both love stories and creating Story meets World. They were both masters of writing and weren't they? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of storytelling. And
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Tolkien, a man of faith, was engaging with Lewis early on in his academic career. And and he said he said he said to Lewis, he said, What is it that you love most in this life?
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And Lewis said, Well, it's it's the stories that I inhabit and the stories that I love to tell. And it's these myths that we spend so much time in and talk and said, Well, what if there was one myth and this myth was true and all the great myths and stories pointed to that, And that really became a kind of inciting incident or catalyst for Lewis to become a man of faith and to discover Jesus.
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And so when we we look at we look at the great story that our lives point to, it's it's the story of God who is coming to the world, a world in Act one, which you could say is Genesis one, the ordinary world, the way that the world should be. And there was a great disruption. And that disruption happened in Genesis three, the fall, and everything was turned upside down.
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Every day
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Like it's
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Yeah, things are things are not the way that they're supposed to be. And so enter in the hero, the ultimate hero Jesus, we we can make the mistake of thinking we're the hero of our lives, or that these various characters in the Bible are the hero.
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But it's really it's Jesus as the hero who's in pursuit of a goal to rescue and reconcile and redeem the whole world. And that is most of scripture is act two, where we see the resolution of that, where he redeems and makes all things new. And so we're drawn to these stories. I think, because, as Tolkien said, they speak to the greater truth and as as characters.
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We are caught up into this great myth, this great myth. It's true, this great story, and our lives echo that. So stories often, I think, are a clue to what's eternally written in our hearts.
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hearts. Yeah. So
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right now,
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And someone's telling a
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someone who's
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to
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it is.
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saying?
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Yeah. And that's what
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Yeah. That all these stories are echoes of the great story where you have and this is true if you if you read here with a Thousand Faces, there's a character that experiences a death that goes to the land of the dead, that that is is remade and is reborn. And it's well, what is you know, what what story does that ultimately point to?
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We look at the cross and the resurrection and how there's a redemption and a renewal that happens as a result of that. And so if it's true that that God is the author of our stories, and if we're part of the great story, then then how how does that impact how we look at our lives through that lens?
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If he's authoring that, how is he authoring it? What exactly might he be up to as as the author of our own stories?
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One of them is just going to
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watch movies, pay
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about today,
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in the sense
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in a lot of ways,
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or a good
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Like
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by reading about
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Yeah. So there's two
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Yeah,
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movies
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Okay.
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You
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If
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friends or spouse like I was
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it's always
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Right, right,
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So a story is built around a series of these, which you could also call reversal.
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So. So when a character is moving forward and as Marlin is in the pursuit of Finding Nemo and things get harder and harder, he he comes upon these events that take him in directions that he did not expect, did not anticipate and usually don't often want. So for him, it's getting caught up with like the sea turtles and being dory, who annoys him.
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But also is the sharks
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program sharks as well. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Just to our friends. Yes.
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but these are all necessary to help propel the character along in their story. Um, and it's, it's often true in our lives where we have these kind of reversals, where we think that life should play out a certain way.
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We probably all have life scripts for ourselves where we think that this is the way that life should unfold. For me, these are the kinds of things that I expect to happen or should happen. And when that doesn't happen, we can often ask this question. It's a question that Frodo asks off in the Fellowship of the Ring, and he said, I don't understand why this is happening.
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I wish none of this would have happened. And this is as he's starting on his journey and he's trapped in a mine. And Gandalf says to him, It's not up to us to choose the events that happen in our lives. What's up to us is to choose how we will respond to that. And that's so true because each of us have these these moments in our life where we may be asking the question, God, why is this happening to me?
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Why am I experiencing this tragedy, this event, this this moment of brokenness? And the author is deeply invested in that. That question is important. But the all the author is also asking another question. And that question is, who is this person becoming as a result of this? That each of these experiences are reversals that that move a character along in their story, counterintuitively, unexpectedly serve a greater purpose.
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And the purpose behind that is to transform that character. Um, we, I think we often think of ourselves as, I think sometimes living a kind of static reality that I'm just getting up and life is about to do list and achieving things. But what an author understands is that a person in a story is never static. They're in the process of becoming.
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And as Babette Buster, who's a screenwriting guru and lecturer, she says, you know, characters are often either becoming more fully alive, meaning they're becoming more human, more of themselves, that the best part of who they are
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or
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they're becoming the Walking Dead,
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not
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necessarily becoming a zombie, but becoming someone who is, um, more embittered, more cynical, less human and less alive.
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And so these stories speak to that reality as we do is can us, as we do, have a choice with how we will respond in that moment? Will we continue to to follow God and trust that the author is good, or will we abandon the quest and potentially become less fully human and less fully alive?
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on what you're saying.
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he said, I wish I wish none of this would have happened to me.
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your life
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and we don't know
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I don't know,
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chapters
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yeah, why is this happening? Yeah,
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I didn't, you know, you get
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You have? I mean,
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go on and on and list
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Yeah.
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Yeah,
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stories, right?
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yeah,
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we had what
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Yeah, you get that choice along the way. And, um, what's what's I think so powerful about this is we we look in scripture and we see that, like in the story of Joseph, one terrible reversal or inciting incident happened to him one after the other. And you can imagine what he was thinking in those terrible, lonely, dark years when he was imprisoned and wrongly accused and wondering why I don't understand this.
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Like why is this happening to me? Years of silence that I think is is any of us might, you know, rail against the darkness wondering, you know, God, I don't understand. This makes no sense. And yet we get the benefit, as did he, where he was able to see after a lot of very painful, difficult, terrible years where God was able to do the seemingly impossible, which was to bring beauty out of ashes, light out of darkness and redeem a seemingly impossible situation.
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Why? Because God was authoring his story in a way that was bigger than I think he even could have anticipated. We think about in Romans God works all things for the good of those who love him. What's particularly powerful about looking at that from a storytelling perspective is an author cares deeply about every detail of a character's life.
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Nothing is there by accident. In fact, those things that plague and hurt and seemingly harm the character the most, that is where a good author will use those events, those experiences in a character's life to bring about a potential transformation. The greatest good. And that's ultimately what they're after. A character thinks, Hey, the story really is about, you know, Rocky is saying it's really about me trying to beat Apollo Creed.
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But truly that story is about a man who has to overcome his own sense of insecurity, to say, do I have do I have the ability to go the distance? Am I just a bum? Am I just that is that my identity or is my identity that I'm heroic and I'm a champion? Yeah, and that's true in our lives as well.
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We can think that life is is solely about the pursuit of really good things, but God has a much bigger idea in mind, and that is transforming us into the kind of people that he wants us to become. And more often than not, he will use those very difficult, painful, confusing, disorienting events in our lives. Oh, there's
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Yeah, and I hate. I hate that that's true. I really do. Because if you've
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Chad, this is one of the things
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or when you
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Yeah.
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later like a movie
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in 2 hours.
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Four weeks or
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Yeah,
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Yeah.
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Yeah,
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Yeah,
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And that's what makes
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lives. Yeah.
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I think, I think it's, it's one thing that makes a really wonderful movie or TV show so compelling for us is that stories have the ability to to take good point emotion in seemingly random events and bring meaning out of that.
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I mean, if you and I have you know, if we have an experience today that's that's really hard or really great, probably what we're going to do is tell that and share that in the form of a story. We're not going to like bring up our spreadsheet or, you know, we're not going to like put this on a PowerPoint.
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We make sense of our lives through story.
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from the inciting
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you've
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status quo,
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And then you see
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Yeah, the
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story. Same
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and just life is
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It changes
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that. Yeah.
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in books, you read, you see it in
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read. And
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life or this is
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let's jump
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themselves.
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That's right. Right.
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So a character has a way that you get a sense of when you meet them in the inciting incident. So in the movie The King's Speech, um Birdie
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as he was known by his, his close friends and family, was the air.
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It was the second in line to the era of the to be the next king of England. He wasn't the next direct he was the he was the second in line and he was someone as a result of a speech impediment that he he had struggled with and was filled with a lot of shame over also in part because of how he was treated, really felt comfortable living in the shadows, sitting on the sidelines, um, living and living his life in the margins.
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And that's that was kind of his mask, if you will. He felt comfortable being, um, you know, being, being less than I think that he really saw a new in of himself. And as we know from history, his older brother abdicates the throne and he's now thrust into the limelight, put into a position that he did not want his inciting incident was his brother leaving the throne.
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And he now has to become the public face of the monarchy. And for someone who struggled with a speech impediment, this was just nothing but an utter horror to him. And so he had this way of living life that was, you know, this this way of coping with the world and getting along in the world. That kind of worked for him for a time.
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But the author steps in and orchestrates events that will no longer allow him to live like that. He's confronted with a choice. Am I going to step into this journey of becoming the king, having to live and become heroic and courageous and face this thing that I'm so ashamed of that has so much weakness for me? Um, and in doing so, you know, will he step into that and become more fully alive, become more human, or will he continue to live in the shadows?
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So for him, the worst thing imaginable happening becomes the catalyst for his story, and interestingly enough, the greatest act of redemption in his life.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Yeah,
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you could call it the, the, the false self, if you will. We think about Paul when he talks about the old man, you know, this inner civil war that he has with himself all the time. And he says, you know, why do I do the thing that I hate to do? It's it's the old man and me.
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Well, from a storytelling standpoint, you could use the words the false self. So It's it's the way that we cope in the world. That is how we frankly, how we pose, if you will, how we do what what other people expect of us, how we behave, whether it's religious or irreligious. It's the way that we put on a kind of show for the world that's not really authentic to who we are, but it's the way that we survive and we cope in.
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An author knows that a character won't really thrive insert in live and flourish well, if they continue to live from that, that that mask. And that was Bertie's mask. It was, Hey, I'm just going to live in the shadows and be this kind of guy that doesn't really disrupt the status quo and that is no longer left him.
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Yeah, and that happens all the time in our life. Or will we continue to live from the false self? Um, what, you know, society or my parents expect us or will we follow God into the dangerous unknown and
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become more real, become more full? Isn't it interesting,
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which is why,
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those masks
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without
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use the word
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but these
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survive
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them, What do you think your internal
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And what I mean
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someone
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vow and
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Yeah. So
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my forties was. I'll prove you wrong. Hmm.
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to survive.
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And it works for a while. Yeah. Until it doesn't. Yeah. Some
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And
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but it's affecting
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Yeah.
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Yeah. That
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Yeah,
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them on a
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things that you've gone through or are going through
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off.
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Right.
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be absolutely that that's such a such a
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powerful and compelling way of
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describing it. It makes me think of the movie Good Will Hunting and Will Hunting, played by Matt Damon, was someone who went through a lot of trauma and pain in his childhood. He grew up in the foster system, experienced a lot of physical and emotional abuse.
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So, you know, rightfully so. Here's a guy that's that's orphaned who, um, is just trying his best to make his way in the world. But he came to a place before we meet him in that journey, which is I'm never going to let anybody get really close to me. And really see me, because if they do, they're going to abandon me.
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They're going to reject me. And that story is about the unmasking of Will, because his mask is he's really intelligent, off the charts, brilliant, and he's able to, um, he's able to keep people at arm's length. And so his story is there, these characters, these relationships that come into his life that confront him with that Skyler, the woman that he's dating, and Sean, his therapist played by, um, I'm forgetting, is that Robin Williams?
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That's just such a masterful job. Yeah. And they lovingly confront him and say that, you know, you're living from this place of inauthenticity where nobody can get close to you. And so that's so true in our lives. We all have these these these areas of hurt and woundedness and trauma and pain that we can respond to life and say, you know what, I'm never going to fill in the blank like you're saying.
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And what can often happen is God will often use the events in our lives to help free us from those mass that are effectively prisons that we live in. We think that there's life to be found. We think that there's a way to flourish. But the author is going to use what feels so counterintuitive to us, um, to to free us from those mass so that we become
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more real.
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And that's what's
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masks, is they actually did
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for they
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Yeah.
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in. Yeah.
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Yeah. So
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Yeah,
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sometimes. Yeah. To their life. So let me do that with you. Okay.
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Yeah. I think
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one of the biggest is, is trusting that the author that God is a father who deeply cares and who's so involved in the details of my life. But my worth is not built around what I do. It's not built around productivity that he he loves me for me. And I think that the mass that that I have had and still have and silken Russell with at times is that my worth and value comes from my productivity.
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It comes through what I do, it comes through my success and boy and our culture that that sure is something that our culture feeds into that. Well yeah, it's usually like when you're at a get together a party, it's, Hey, what do you do? You know
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we can inadvertently sort of measure each other up by our especially as men, as areas of of success or not success where God has such a bigger and deeper paradigm.
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It's it's not that those things are unimportant, but you are absolutely immeasurably treasure. It is my son. It doesn't matter what you do, it's ultimately who you are. You know, you think about when Jesus was launched into his public ministry, the first thing that God did was he said, You are my son and who I am. Well, please.
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Before Jesus did anything, he had no ministry record up until that point. And I think that he hadn't
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accomplish. And
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You're the beloved. Yeah. Before you, before you do anything. And I think
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it's for me, it can often be a lifelong battle of will.
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I have to do something.
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before over coffee. You're in
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I think so. Yeah. I think I'm a three.
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you probably are since you struggle. Because,
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us. I mean, any game three,
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Yeah that that's,
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that's the way we feel about life. But
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Three
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Yeah. Yeah.
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with God
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close to us
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that's a
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through failure, through our all the fun stuff of life, right? I wish it was like you and I could
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Yeah.
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So where did you learn that lesson?
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winning really matter that much. That's not the way it
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Yeah, it's
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or. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So,
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when we met once you said there's
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Yeah, I had a teacher years ago. Her name is Barbara Nicole O.C. And she. She shared this. And it's from a book by Flannery O'Connor, who was a she was a novelist, a woman of faith. And she she wrote this book that that kind of shared her own understanding of storytelling principles. And she said the most powerful stories that we have been told that we've experience use a principle called using a an unwilling devil as an instrument of grace and saying what that what does that mean?
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And so I think one one neat example of that is at the end of the return of the King in the Lord of the Rings series, Frodo, who his quest was to take this this small, insignificant, seemingly insignificant ring, this ring of power and take it into a really dangerous place, into the heart of a volcano and and drop it there, because that was the only way it would be destroyed and save his world.
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Save, save the lives of those that he knew. So it was a really treacherous, hard, difficult journey. And he gets there. And Frodo is someone who was really kind and decent and courageous. Um, and he gets to the to the end of the journey and he can't do it. He's the ring had the ability to corrupt
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anybody and he's been I'm literally picturing
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this sea head right now.
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I know exactly
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about. Oh, it's so, it's so good, it's so visceral and so
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so Frodo. He gets he gets to the volcano and he can't bring himself to do it. He's becoming more corrupted by this ring. And Tolkien, when he was writing this, he said, as I was writing this moment, the little author, a step back and the big author a stepped in.
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And one of the primary antagonists of the story is this character named Gollum, who's been fighting and following after Frodo to try to get the ring himself. And he attacks Frodo. He in this really kind of gnarly moment, bites his finger off by Frodo, finger off in the ring of power, drops into the volcano along with Gollum, the villain.
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It's a traumatic ending. It's something that Frodo has the inability to do. And it it takes this unwilling devil Gollum, this this villainous character to do something horrible that becomes a means of grace, because Frodo himself can't do it. He has the inability to do it. And my goodness, I think we all have those experiences in life where we, we think, um, that it's about us striving and pursuing the goal and sometimes really good things.
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I want to, I want to make an impact or, or start this nonprofit or help someone. And that's really good. But, um, what stories can teach us is that we don't have the ability in, out of ourselves to fully complete it. We need an incredible act of grace and mercy and ongoing act of grace and mercy in our lives.
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And that's that points us to the to the ultimate story, to God's that, um, that in those critical moments, it's the big author that steps into our story. It's the big Arthur that that carries the our shoulders, that carries our burdens. It's it's he's the one that comes in those dark nights of the soul that does the seemingly impossible.
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He takes the worst thing of our lives if we let him um. And can bring something truly beautiful and redeeming out of it. And that's the ultimate picture of that is on the cross. Yeah. Yeah. In that moment, as Jesus hung on the cross, it was considered in the Roman Empire. For those that saw him the most humiliating.
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Grotesque. Unbelievable. How could a God, a God man die like this? Jesus was most likely naked when he hung on the cross. It was. It would have been conceived. It was utterly astonishing and humiliating and and I'll
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here because I've,
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mean,
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running
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and it would have been just.
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That created a completely if you look through the growth.
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Yeah,
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but but far worse than that, it was the utter abandonment from God, uh, that, that caused him to say, my God, why have you forsaken me? And what's really fascinating is Tim Keller had pointed out he was he was quoting David from the Psalms. He was literally bleeding scripture. He was quoting that. Why? Because he he had the full, fully formed story of God in his mind, in his heart, even as he was dying on the cross.
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And so God took the worst thing imaginable. And that was the defeat of evil in the world and in our lives. And so if we look at that and we look at what Jesus has done and we say, gosh, that was I can't believe that would happen, then we then then it gives us the ability to look at our lives and go in those situations where we say, how could anything good come of this?
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How like, yeah, that's great. That happened to a story and a character movie that's really interesting. But we have the ultimate example of that to look at and point to.
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that all of us have, right? Yeah, I
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Yeah, but.
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Yeah. And I
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Yeah, I can
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sometimes, but you'll look
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yeah,
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I didn't
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in that job. I wanted
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Yeah, but.
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Yeah. That
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Yeah,
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you're absolutely right. We can have, we can have these experiences, and I think more often than not, life can feel really random and disconnected or really just seemingly ordinary.
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And my wife and I will often joke, It's like, does life just feel like one long, like to do list? Like you get to get this done and just on and figure out the 41k and this, that and the other and and that's true like those those are like the details of our lives. But I think what's so powerful about this is as as Scripture calls us to, to remember, like there's something bigger and deeper that's always at work and there's an author who's way more involved and invested in your life than you can hardly imagine and comprehend.
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And then it gives us cause to go in those moments where life feels really dark and really hard and really confusing. Will I trust the author? Will he bring about good? Um, or am I on my own on this? Mm.
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And
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have gone by. Yeah. So there's a lot of pain in there. What he didn't know when
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Why why is happening?
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harm. Yeah, God worked for good, which is
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were used to
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So let's go to the last one. Conflict. Yeah.
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Mm.
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Yeah.
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Yeah. Which
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Yeah,
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yeah. My, my wife has shared.
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She's a really talented musician and how, you know, music is made with tension and the parallel for stories is, is conflict. Or you could use the word tension, too, is that you can have a minimal amount of settings, you know, minimal amount of characters, but if you don't have meaningful, intentionally designed conflict, you don't have a great story.
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It is the skeleton of the story. It's the main ingredient, if you will. And I think it's it's not just conflict from the standpoint of things that are happening to the character or bad things. It's intentionally designed conflict that the author is going to move a character forward in their story. Events are going to take place that oftentimes are disorienting and confusing and will will allow the character to have choices along the way that they are active agents in the unfolding of their own personal dramas and stories.
::Unknown
But the author will bring in characters and situations that continually confront characters, like with their mask, and have them have to deal with their own issues and their own baggage. And the story becomes way more about who that character is becoming, who they're transforming into than their goal. So Good Will Hunting, the author used intentionally designed conflict. So it's its will.
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The therapist confronting I'm sorry it's Sean the therapist confronting Will when he's sitting on that bench and he's saying, you know, do you know what it's like to look up at the Sistine Chapel and stare at that? You know, you're a guy that can just quote and know all about Michelangelo. But do you know what that's like? That's an intentionally designed moment for Will for him to have to really wrestle with himself and his own false way of living life.
::Unknown
Um, and that's really true is that the author is going to use intentionally designed conflict. So the parallel for our lives is it could be that that coworker that's really frustrating or annoying to you wondering like is this just someone to deal with? And that's sort of one lens or one perspective to look at it? Or is this someone who's been orchestrated in my story and me for them and how my God want to be changing me through this, through this experience or just the ordinary hassles of everyday life?
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We could just look at it like that. Or is the author up to something bigger in our lives? And I think as we continue to kind of press into that perspective, we start to see that there's a lot of, um, there's a lot of really beautiful and interesting and dynamic things that are happening in our lives. As John Piper has said, there's probably a million things that are happening in your life at any given time.
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You know, all the different strands that the author is is weaving together. We don't realize we don't realize we probably only see a few, but this helps us to get, I think, a little bit closer to that.
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or the lens
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accidental things,
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been to them,
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again, the author
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Yeah,
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Mm
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broken world, so there's some
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but he's allowing it. But. But he's going. But I'm not going to waste it. Yeah.
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or whatever it might be, and we
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my story in
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Yeah,
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You know the truth of it. That's so good that the truth of it is there's.
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We're always telling ourselves a story. We're always making sense of the world through a story. I mean, the word worldview is effectively a story of the world. And so, you know, one of those those false stories can be is I'm really just on my own here to make it work.
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And life is about getting what you can. Or another story that we're often told is, you know, life is about living the designer life, right? Meaning like I want to and again, nothing wrong with this. But, you know, it's about having the spouse and the several kids and the white picket fence and, you know, building up the 41k And those are all really good things.
::Unknown
Um, but if, if that's your story, if that's all that reality is for you, um, that's really the measure of what life is and its significance. But if life is bigger than that, it's greater than that. It's more dynamic and compelling than that, then it really opens up things to a dimension that we go that others those other stories are not true, but this one that God's inviting to is eternal and energizing and transforming.
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And even the worst things in my life will somehow be good in the end, even if I can't see it.
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Yes, that's going. He won't waste to hurt. Yeah.
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again.
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You're going to be looking
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and you
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trying to peel back from
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about, right, where there's these
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going to make it?
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Are they going to
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Yeah.
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incidents?
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Yeah,
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when you go through
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What
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that's really good.
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Yeah, I'll I'll have my my info
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here in the show notes. Okay. So, yeah, I do.
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brand and creative solutions for nonprofits and businesses and really help them to to tell their stories
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in a variety of different that's perfect
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this entire podcast was a power of story and you're
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right?
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do? So that's what you do.
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right
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and a lie.
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Okay. We've known each other for 15 years. There's no way you're going to stop me. Give me two
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Yeah. So, um,
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I've taken a kayak down, kind of a series of rapids, like class four rapids just by myself. Um, my grandfather was the first person in Arizona to receive penicillin, which was considered an experimental drug.
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And both of my grandfathers stole John Wayne's cigarets and got in trouble from him for it.
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idea
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there. Yeah, Yeah. Okay. That is true. That is so. They both
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iconic Western actor, I don't know.
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Probably over a hundred films he's been in. Oh, they both stole the cigarets.
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They were like 18 and at Slide Rock Up near Sedona and they see this truck shot a lot of westerns. Yeah, he did a lot of Westerns up in that area. And
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so my grandpa, my both my grandfathers, funny enough, were friends with one another and they saw this truck and there was like cigarets on the dashboard.
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And they're like, Yeah, these are free, let's take it. And so they started smoking it and thinking they're lords of creation and they hear this, this voice behind them saying, Boys, do you know whose cigarets those are? And they turn up and it's
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John Wayne was like eclipsing this. Yeah, like we're sorry, Mr. Wayne. And so we always tell that it like family get together.
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And
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out this very intimidating. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
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That is the lie. I got it. That's good. That's good. I spent some time doing, like, whitewater rafting and whatnot, but never on a kayak.
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Yeah, Yeah.
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Yeah. Than
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that you saw? The first one was my grandfather. It was true. My. My. Oh, the penicillin. Yeah, He was the first person in the state of Arizona
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to. He got in a terrible car accident when he was in his early twenties and he got rushed to the hospital and they, they administered penicillin.
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At the time it was a experimental drug. They weren't sure, was it? And isn't that crazy to think that
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It's pretty one where they were
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now, but it was getting a bottle now and I was like, Is this thing even going to be safe? Wow.
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Yeah. Wow.
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And
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this can be
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So thank you. You bet. It's been great. Thanks, Pat.
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Wow,
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what a transformational message Chad de Miguel leaves with us.
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To see more incredible guests like Chad in the future,
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make sure
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Thumbs up this video and
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one or two
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of your most powerful inciting incidents is,
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as Chad discussed.
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Thanks for watching and listening.
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See you next time.
