“What’s your story?” How would you answer this question?
You may have a ready answer, or you may feel like many who find the story of their life a complicated tale to narrate. Either way, there’s always room to grow in the way we understand and tell our personal life stories. I’m a Christian counselor who regularly asks this question, and I’m persuaded that studying and sharing our stories is work worth doing.
What is story work?
Story work is the practice of studying the book of your life: the characters, events, themes, and patterns that have shaped and formed you into who you are as a person. It is speaking or writing about these stories with someone who is equipped to guide you through the process. It is learning to tell and retell your stories in the context of God’s love and character. It can be an instrument we use to recognize God’s faithfulness and goodness to us despite the hardships and weaknesses we inevitably face.
For my clients, story work can provide a great relief from the isolating burden of holding on to pain. Often, unspoken stories can wrap a person up in shame and cause difficulties in relationships. Story work can bring a steady light into the dark, shadowy corners of memory and experience so that a person realizes it is possible to be known, yet still accepted and loved.
In my own life, listening to and talking about my story has helped me to grow in self-awareness so that I can share more of who I truly am with others, in turn bringing a deeper intimacy to my relationships. It has also helped me to make sense of suffering and to see the places where my life is taking the shape of Jesus’ life, as I seek to follow him.
But story work is work, make no mistake about that.
On the one hand, we may feel so overwhelmed by the depth of sorrow and pain in our stories that it seems impossible to get started or ever sort it out. On the other hand, we may want to minimize our experiences and avoid looking at the hard things in our lives.
Story work requires time, effort, fortitude, and above all, fellowship. One should not brave the wilderness of story work without a wise companion to orient and uphold you when your courage wanes. We need brothers and sisters to help us see our lives through the lens of God’s love and faithfulness. This is true especially when we feel tempted to despair or when we are in danger of getting lost in the tragedies either of our own making or those inflicted upon us.
We need faithful friends who understand the grace they have received to help us clearly see the grace which threads its way through our lives. This guide can be a pastor, a counselor, a mentor, or a wise friend. It needs to be someone who is honest, trustworthy, humble, and gentle; someone who listens well, sees you well, and is guided by God’s Word. These personal qualities help to create a context to see yourself with compassion, wisdom, truth, and love.
The Master Storyteller
Story work assumes that God, as Creator, is in the particulars of our lives. The Lord is the Author of all that has come to pass, the Master Storyteller. Because we believe that Jesus is King, we can be confident that our lives are not random. Rather, there is a divine intentionality in all of the details. As Ephesians 2:10 says, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
God is also our Redeemer, and he is inviting us into a renovated life. When we become more attuned to the patterns and themes of our life stories, we can see more clearly the way evil has tried to steal or destroy the goodness God has made. But we can also identify how God has rescued us from harm’s way.
Over time, we see how the Lord beckons us to join Him in the greater story of his Son. Our stories of rejection, abandonment, grief, loss, pain, and trauma find healing alongside our Savior’s same experiences. We find comfort and confidence in the Father’s faithfulness to his Son, trusting that just as suffering gave way to glory for Jesus Christ, so will we come to taste the sweetness of God’s bounty at the table He is preparing for us. As the Bible says, “But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed” (1 Peter 4:13).
Story work primes us to long for the resurrection because it inevitably brings us into contact with the way our lives are marked by loss and death. This is one reason why it makes us better disciples of Jesus. It is one thing to affirm the resurrection intellectually, but it is another to depend on the resurrection in a deeply personal and intimate way. When we come to know our stories, we grow ready to articulate our personal longing to be raised with Christ.
John Calvin organized his theology according to the knowledge of God and the knowledge of self, observing that these two are “connected together by many ties.” Calvin’s observation still provides a fruitful matrix for pursuing story work in the name of Christian discipleship. Your life is a beautiful bit of poetry that God is crafting. You can read it a hundred times and still see something new.
I hope that you will share the poem of your life with someone safe and good. The church is a richer place when we know and tell our stories to one another – the stories of his redemption and the stories of his bountiful grace.
Rachel Vendsel is a professional counselor with Caritas Counseling and serves as women’s care director at Colleyville Presbyterian Church in Colleyville, Texas.