Are there pieces of your life you’d rather forget? Events that feel too frustrating to make sense? Too purposeless to belong? Whole seasons, perhaps, that you wish weren’t part of your story? I think we all have those, but, if the time is right, God can revisit those memories with you and shed healing light on them. He can, in fact, do something I like to think of as re-story your soul.
A couple of months ago, an acquaintance contacted me, saying, “I’m reaching out because I’m holding your book in my hands right now and I’m going to have a very hard time putting it down anytime soon! [My friend] just sent it to me and I’m unspeakably grateful. To her–to you! She knew it would put so much of my own story into words. Words I haven’t had the capacity to write myself yet.”
I was totally humbled by the significance of her comment. She was referring to Colliding with the Call: When Following God Takes You to the Wilderness, a book I wrote as more of a search for healing and meaning in my own story than for any other purpose. I’ve hoped and prayed that my story of wrestling with my faith while following God to teach in rural Alaska would resonate with readers, but I’ve also hoped that it would give others the courage to revisit their own spiritual wilderness and find God there.
My friend may not be far enough away from her own wilderness to write about it just yet, and neither might you, but I think the process I found of allowing God to re-story your soul is worth sharing.
THE MEMORIES THAT MAKE US
You see, the landscape of your soul is a composite of your personality, your body, and your will, but it’s altered–for better or for worse–by your experiences. And not just by the experiences themselves, but by how you perceive those experiences.
But what if your perception is skewed? What if the story that you’ve framed in your mind looks like rejection, when from God’s perspective it’s redirection? What if you look back on an event as failure, when God sees it as preparation?
The words and images you use to recall an event are more influential in your life than the event itself.
Your Father is writing the story of your life with meticulous care and detail, but more than that, He has written Himself into every word. Even the ones you want to erase. So then, rather than trying to forget or gloss over those memories, I want to invite you to discover the nearness of God in them.
There are countless instances of wounded people who have found freedom and healing once they saw the presence of Jesus in a painful memory. I believe this can be true for you, too.
Before we go any further, let me pause and say that diving back into a truly traumatic memory should always be done in the safe and guiding company of someone who knows how to walk you through it. If you know you have unresolved trauma, I would suggest talking to a counselor, spiritual director, or pastor about it first.
ALLOW GOD TO RE-STORY YOUR SOUL
True writing is about both finding yourself in your words and finding God at work in your life. As C.S. Lewis (my all-time favorite author) says, “We do not write in order to be understood. We write in order to understand.”
In this Writing as a Restorative Practice blog series, I’ve suggested how to facilitate spiritual growth through the use of lists and journaling. Both of those methods of writing help us create space for and recognize God in the day-to-day. Today’s method is a way to open up a memory and discover where God was at work in the past.
The premise is simple.
- Write out a complete description of the memory, incorporating as much detail and emotion as possible.
- Invite the Holy Spirit to reveal His perspective as you reread what you’ve written.
- Now, with His help, write God into your story. You may need to rewrite it entirely or you may just need to add the truth and purpose He revealed onto the end of it.
- Share your testimony with a friend, solidifying how you now recount this memory with God in the midst of it.
AN EXAMPLE
“CIRCLES”
Adapted from p. 163-169 of Colliding with the Call
I glanced at the clock while changing my son’s diaper. He stretched his pudgy fist into the air and fussed.
“I know, Tiger. Hang in there. You get to take your nap in the stroller today.”
Chanan smiled at my playful tone and squirmed at just the right time to make me lose my grip on the Velcro tab. Sheesh. You’d think that after doing this diaper thing umpteen times a day for the last four months I’d have it down. I refastened the tab and stuffed my son into a fuzzy, full-body suit complete with ears on the hood. He was now a living teddy bear.
I nestled him into the three-wheeled, large-tired stroller and quickly yanked on my snow gear. November in Alaska is no joke, but after a week of sideways-blown sleet, today’s sunshine was too tantalizing to resist. Stroller hood down, additional weather cover secured, and we were ready. I peeked out the window and saw Rachel exit her house with her one-and-a-half-year-old son strapped in his own armored tank of a stroller.
“Let’s go, Buddy. I sure hope you fall asleep quickly,” I murmured. Getting this colicky kid to sleep had become the most brutal training ground in patience I had ever experienced. One of the only things that soothed his temperamental tummy and feisty spirit was bouncing. Up and down and up and down while I paced the house back and forth and back and forth. “Since you didn’t sleep much last night, you can make up for it with a nice long nap, okay?” I sighed. Wishful thinking.
I opened the door and was greeted with nose-biting air and gleaming light angled from the sun’s sleepy position just over the horizon line, even though it was midday. Pale blue sky, mottled brown and white snowy tundra, and grayed-wood buildings complimented each other’s muted tones. Rachel and I pushed our go-anywhere strollers onto the road and chatted while the gravel and ice chunks bounced our boys to sleep. The “loop” took us past the school, up the hill that overlooked the bay, around the corner to the straight stretch near the runway, and to the Post Office, which marked halfway. We knew there wouldn’t be any mail since the plane hadn’t come yet today, but we stopped at the Post Office anyway to greet Carol and let our cheeks thaw.
Wanting to finish the lap before a hungry baby woke up, we walked a bit faster as we completed the circuit that curved past a cluster of homes and the old airport before arriving right back where we started. One big circle. But it sure beat the dozens of smaller circles we had done in the gym a few days prior. We would likely wear the floor finish into a groove before winter was over in an attempt to maintain our sanity and stave off cabin fever.
Circles, pacing, bouncing, and the endless cycle of diapers and feeding made my life feel like a rerun day after day. Can I get an amen from every new mom in history? And as we’d now entered our fifth year teaching in the bush, even the school year felt predictable and redundant. This was a season of repetition. And for a girl who styles her hair differently every single day, the monotony did not settle well with me.
We like to map out life on a timeline, but it’s rarely linear. Life is marked by ups and downs, twists and turns, two steps forward and three steps back. We think we’ve learned something only to find out we need to reassess our knowledge from a completely new angle the next time we revisit it. We get stuck in negative cycles and spiral downward in our spiritual or emotional journey. We go in circles.
Walking in circles is as old as time, and it’s not without its purposes as God Almighty slowly and patiently retrains us to see things more from His perspective. With each lap, each loop, and every strand wound around the ball of our lives, we more fully feel the nuances and shape of God’s intentions and plans.
This reminds me of the experience of the Israelites as they wandered in the wilderness.
Only they weren’t really wandering, were they? They were being led. “In all the travels of the Israelites, whenever the cloud lifted from above the tabernacle, they would set out; but if the cloud did not lift, they did not set out—until the day it lifted. So the cloud of the Lord was over the tabernacle by day, and fire was in the cloud by night, in the sight of all the Israelites during all their travels.” These are the concluding verses of the entire book of Exodus (40:36-38). God directed them as they did their wilderness laps; and with every set-up and tear-down of their camp, their obedience to the Lord was being reinforced.
Every time I choose to trust God in a difficult situation, I reinforce in my spirit that He is trustworthy. Soon, I’m no longer reminding myself that He’s trustworthy; I’m unwaveringly confident in it. My spirit remembers His faithfulness.
So, what was God reinforcing in my spirit through the redundancy of the laps I paced with our first born during this season in Alaska? Well, unrelenting, sacrificial, tireless love, for one. A glimpse of His father-heart that never gives up, that holds us when we’re unsettled and too tired to sleep, that sees the fleeting days of our current stage and holds on expectantly to the joy of the next new milestone ahead. Just as He was with the Israelites during their wilderness laps, He was with me in mine. And He is with you in yours.
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