Are You Defined By Your Story?

You may not think of yourself as a storyteller, but you are.

When you’re creating a cover letter for a job or answering the question, “Tell me about yourself” in an interview, you’re a storyteller. When you’re in a new social group or meeting the neighbors for the first time, you’re sharing a story. What do you say? What’s your story?

We define ourselves by the story we tell.

I had a powerful example of this at the DMV a few years ago. I had the “awesome opportunity” to spend 4 hours waiting for my turn to register a vehicle. I had brought a book to read, but while sitting shoulder to shoulder with a stranger, I couldn’t help but connect over our shared frustration with the system. The woman next to me was flipping through her papers and anxiously looking from her ticket number to the changing status screen. I smiled at her and we shared how long we’d been waiting. She expressed her worry about having all the correct documents this time. This was her second time here.

She exclaimed her frustration of having waited in line last week only to find out that the framed “birth certificate” she had all these years was not an actual birth certificate but a birth announcement.

This 62-year-old woman said, “How was I supposed to know? I’m just a foster kid.”

Wait? What?

“Just a foster kid?!” At 62, this is how she thought of herself? There was so much packed into these few words. What was her story?

Her response made me sit up and pay attention. I turned to her and asked some questions, and she spent the next few hours telling me her life story. It was quite a story, full of all kinds of hardships and challenging relationships. She would pause in between stories. But eventually, the silence would get to her, and she’d tell me another experience. I couldn’t believe so many things had happened to one person. She even had a connection to the recent murder at the gas station down the street.

By the time her number was called, I felt like I had just lived a whole lifetime with her. I also felt a desire to offer her love and hope. She was discouraged with where she was in life, but she had a newfound hope in Jesus Christ. She was just beginning to feel like maybe God hadn’t forgotten her. Perhaps she was worth something. When I stood to let her pass, I wanted to hug her and tell her how much I cared about her. I didn’t want her to leave without knowing that someone loved her. I expressed my belief that God hadn’t forgotten her.

Her story resonated with me, and I wondered why she was still stuck in the beginning of her story? Did she not recognize the part where the heroine finds the strength to save herself and become who she always wanted to be?

Was she waiting for someone else to write that into her script? Did she know she could interpret her own story?

We all have life-changing experiences and defining stories, but how do we interpret them? Are we the hero or the victim? We get to decide.

Our story isn’t just one chapter. We are so much more.

Our life story is constantly changing if we want to keep learning from it. An experience we lived through years ago may seem solid, a boulder in our past that will not change. But it can change. It changes every time we think about it. It changes every time we reconsider it from another point of view.

What if the kid that always threw rocks at you on the way home from school really had a crush on you and didn’t know how to get your attention? What if the math-facts memorization that drove you crazy became a lifesaver in high school algebra?

Perhaps a gift you received for Christmas takes on a different meaning when you find out the sacrifice it took for the giver.

The way your parents raised you changes in meaning when you have children of your own.

Or how about that woman who still thought of herself as “just a foster kid?” Perhaps that’s how her story started, but it’s not how it ended. She did many things, had important relationships, became a grandmother, provided for others, became a woman of great strength. What if she focused on who she was now and told that story to strangers? Would she still feel like she didn’t belong? Would she still question her worth?

That’s the growth part. To recognize when you are stuck in chapter one of your story. If we stay in chapter one, we’ll miss all the redeeming chapters that come next.

Your story is still being written.
You still have a chance to change the ending and interpret the meaning.

What are you going to write today?

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