It was tempting to post about N being for NOTHING, or NIHIL, or NADA or NONE.  It would be easy to note that and be done.  But I signed up for this challenge, so I’m NOT giving up or giving so little so easily.

“NOT giving up” isn’t really a very original idea, though, is it?  Who needs another blog about perseverance?  Let’s go with something a little more edgy…like NIGHTMARE.  To keep on theme, we could even call it a “Recipe for a Nightmare,” but that’s not really what it is.  You could toss all the ingredients it took for my nightmare into your brain bowl, and you wouldn’t come up with the same result.

My nightmare was me being in college – some college, somewhere – none that I ever attended – and realizing that I had forgotten my schedule and missed all my classes.  I’ve had this nightmare before – several times.  It’s always either high school or college and I’m like a mouse in a maze trying to find my way to some classroom when I realize that I’m already too late.  I will have missed the class. I will have failed to be where I was supposed to be and will have no good explanation for it.

I don’t know why I consistently have this nightmare.  This never happened to me in real life.

But dreaming about college last night actually does make sense in way.  I went to see a movie that was about a guy’s experience in college.  I couldn’t stop thinking about the movie, so I guess it makes sense that I would find myself on a college campus in my dreams.  The movie was based on one my favorite books, and even though I knew going into it that the movie had to be different to make the best possible movie, I couldn’t help but keep making comparisons as I was watching the movie.  This was a lot of work for my little brain.  The movie provides plenty for one to think about, so in this case, it might have been better if I hadn’t read the book.  I could have just watched it for what it was.  Still, I appreciated so much about it.  It made me think about some hard things, but it also let me think about them in ways that allowed me to draw my own conclusions and see the beauty and the truth of a situation just through the imagery and dialogue (or lack of it.)  It didn’t tell me what I was supposed to think, as if I couldn’t figure it out for myself.  And in the end, the breath-taking end that it is, there is an element of “NOT giving up” on something.

If you haven’t seen the movie, Blue Like Jazz, based on the book by Donald Miller, I hope you’ll go see it.  It’s NOT your average “Christian movie.”