What Do You Want?
“What do you want?”
This is one of the questions Donald Miller asks at Storyline, which I just attended for the second year in a row in Chicago.
If you stop and think about it, it really is a doozy of a question.
Last year, while attending my first Storyline conference, this question was a major hangup for me. It required me to be brutally honest with myself. It required me to deal with shame, and ask for things I didn’t think I deserved. It was incredibly challenging.
The truth was, what I wanted was a different life. For over a year, these were words my husband heard me repeat over and over. He knew I wasn’t discontent — it wasn’t about that. I was incredibly happy in the present moment with our home, our family, and our lives. But he knew I wanted better for our marriage, our kids, and our family.
And in our case, better meant different.
Our house didn’t really hold enough guests. Our kitchen wasn’t really functional for the life we wanted to live and the hospitality we wanted to offer folks.
Our kids weren’t really getting the education we wanted them to. We didn’t want it to be traditional — we wanted it to be very different. But we weren’t sure what different looked like — we honestly just didn’t know.
We knew we didn’t have a community. After eight years of marriage, we still hadn’t landed on a church that provided the kind of community we wanted.
And we both had career dreams.
We left that first Storyline conference inspired.
It had been a great time for us to connect. It was great for our marriage, standing in as the one weekend that year we’d had away, with just each other.
After the conference, we played around with the idea of selling our house, but knew it wasn’t the time, and didn’t feel called to make a move on listing it. We decorated our home for Christmas, enjoyed the holidays, and then, early that next year, it hit.
We started to feel like maybe it would be time to move.
It was in February, after a couple’s event in Tulsa, that we took a detour and drove to a charming little new rural neighborhood on our way home. I’d been there twice before, but David had only heard me talk about it. As we turned the corner and pulled into the small, sparkly, four-year-old town, a man in tortoise-shell glasses made his way across the median to greet us. He waved.
“I want to live here,” David said. Words that changed our life.
From that moment forward, the wheels were in motion. We didn’t know it yet, but choice after choice led us down a road that we couldn’t yet see the end of. We had no idea where this journey would take us, but we knew we had to keep going down the path.
We put our house in Oklahoma City on the market. Our house sold in three days, and by May first, we had moved into a rental home in Carlton Landing. The first night in that home, I told David that I couldn’t believe we were there. I couldn’t believe we had made all the crazy, impractical choices and there we lay, on a mattress on hardwood floors, in the most charming rental house you could ever imagine, with the most amazing new neighbors we could possibly dream up.
This weekend we sat again at Storyline, and I found myself asking the same question, challenged again by Don.
What do I want?
And how is it that, a year later, I sit here again, and I have what I wanted? Isn’t that enough, or do I really need to ask the question again, and be honest with myself again?
Maybe I want to chase this untraditional education thing for my kids harder. Maybe I want them to start traveling with me.
Maybe I want to write a book. Or ten. Maybe I want to sort my thoughts out by writing them down and processing them “out loud” in written form.
Maybe I want to host a retreat in our home. Maybe I want to be a better cook and have more people over for dinner and invite people in and just let it be a revolving door.
Clearly there are still more desires down in my heart.
When I’m honest with myself in engaging that question — What do I want? — it surprises me that there seems to be a bottomless pit of answers. But maybe that’s a good thing.
It’s not about feeling discontent or unhappy. It’s about reaching for more, digging deeper, growing stronger.
So I want to pose the question as a challenge to you, just as it was presented to me a year ago. What do you want?
If you take some time to really think about it, you might find that your answer sets the course for this next season of your life. You might just find yourself a year from now having achieved what you wanted. But it all has to start with identifying and acknowledging it. So…
This is an amazing story and great testament to what following your gut and pushing through fear and change can accomplish. Thanks for this, Whitney. I think I want my dream job, just not sure what that looks like yet.
Hi Whitney! This is such a wonderful and timely post. I haven’t really given this a thought because I feel overwhelmed. But after reading your post, it made me feel more ready to really dig deep and to reflect about what I really want, especially at this point when I feel that every thing is out of place in my life. Will take some time to think about this, but once I’m ready I will make a post on the blog and let you know. Thank you, Whitney for inspiring people like me. Continue doing what you’re doing and know that you are touching so many lives from across the world. *hugs*
Ahh this is great! I just love that you share all of the “real stuff” without hesitation. what do you want? – It’s quite possibly one of the hardest questions I’ve had to answer but I drilled deep down, way down, and decided what those were. Now looking back almost a year later I’m well on my way to accomplishing many of them. It’s an awesome feeling!
Now it’s time for some reflecting and asking that same question again and quite honestly, I can’t wait. 🙂
Thanks Whitney!
Xx,
Morgan
ooooh – so good whitney. i’ve felt that tension between appreciation (deep appreciation!) for what’s in my life and a pull towards what’s greater – thanks for articulating this…and for giving me the idea to go to storyline with my husband 🙂 xoxo, -m-
Wow – thought provoking post Whitney! After a year of many changes – leaving a great corporate job and starting a company and my husband losing his father, retiring, and having a serious accident can certainly create a frame for change. But rather than control this adventure, which is my safe place, I am going to let it unfold in a more organic way and watch without judgement.
Who knows, we might get that RV and travel the country (I could work out of an RV) and see friends and family for more than a day or two. Maybe I will take my nieces to their favorite concert or pack my life into 50 boxes or less. Perhaps we will leave the safety and security of great friends to find more…
This made me excited for the day. Thanks Whitney
Thank you for this very insightful blog post and the links to the conference and to the free eBook by Jeff Goins. I’m inspired to explore my life and what I want my life to look like.
Wow, loved this post about your past year. Very inspirational! I will have to think about this question, and I’m thankful you’ve put it on the radar for me. Thanks for making a difference in my life this past year. XO
I LOVE hearing this story. Thank you so much for sharing all of this with us. You have a gift. I feel encouraged by this not to give up on dreaming and not to feel “stuck” by the way things are right now.
xoxo, friend!
Hi Whitney,
Thank you for this post. I have been thinking about what I want lately, and I am well aware that of what that is. I want to build my career, so that at 40 I have enough seed money to work for myself, I want to finish my senior year without accumulating anymore debt, I want to buy a car/truck before my 35th birthday in May and I also want to buy a house before I turn 38. I also want to provide my son with an alternative school life.
Thank you for allowing me to share that with you, your readers and declare it out loud!
Xo
-Simone
Oh Whitney!
That crazy, healthy, not-so-easy to ignore tension is such a good thing.
My husband and I were also at Storyline this year (and are also from Oklahoma!). Know that you’re not alone.
I love the way the Lord pushes us to more. We should all be asking ourselves what we want every year. But it’s uncomfortable and it sometimes means change. It probably always means change when we actually listen.
I love your dreaming though. More hospitality, more time traveling with your babes, more dinner around the table with the most important people (your 8). I think those are good plans. Really good plans.
Praying for you as you keep asking.
Whitney!
I did not know you and your family were in Oklahoma! I am in the city and probably 40 minutes away from where you just moved. This is awesome, considering I have just discovered your blog!
Your post about feeling stuck and somewhat depressed moved me. I had been feeling the exact way you have described and I’m glad to know I was not the only one feeling a bit “off” in the beginning of November.
Keep up the good work! I hope you and your family find a great alternative way to share your new space. The dinner guest idea is a great one!
Much love and blessings,
Star Montgomery
Hello
Thank you for thos i need to ask.me.some.questions and start the process moving
“It’s not about feeling discontent or unhappy. It’s about reaching for more, digging deeper, growing stronger.” I really needed to hear this. Many times when I start to dream I immediately feel guilty for not just loving what I have and feeling like it’s selfish to want more. But it’s not. Because, as you pointed out, if I dig deeper and grow stronger I have more to give to others. Over the next couple of days, I’m going to spend some time with pen, paper and the question “what do I want?” And I”m NOT going to feel guilty about it.
Asking this question and answering out loud is just like taking out a piece of paper and writing down your goals for the year. It’s amazing to see how much of it comes true when you dig it out and look back on it. Never stop asking, you just never know what treasure you will dig up 🙂
Gabby, that’s the truth! I love your words!