This is My Story

You’re one stammering silence away from a complete failure of a conversation.  Face to face with someone you’ve just met; racing brain to racing brain with someone who is just as much at a loss to think of what to say; clearing throat to clearing throat, but not much of value is coming out.  Cue crickets. 

 

So you do what you can: you keep the conversation going at all costs.  If you’re anything like me, you have standard questions you resort to, faithful stories you tell, solid answers you’re ready to give to the questions you already know they’ll ask.  And you keep the conversation going, which is a skill in itself. 

 

But it’s at moments like these, walking away from a conversation heaped with job-jawing and school-speaking with a good helping of hobby-haranguing and a sprinkle of weather-warbling, that these words that I pinned on Pinterest a few weeks ago fill my mind:

“You know my name, not my story.  You’ve heard what I’ve done, not what I’ve been through.”

 And more often than not, the other person is probably thinking the same thing.  Because we all have stories that make us who we are.  We all have experiences that shape our very core.  And those things are more a part of us than our name or our resume.  But this weekend, God dug a little deeper into my paradigm of just how to take that leap from weather-warbling to story-sharing from the heart. 

 

I was at a graveside service, my coat pulled tight against the chill, the rain pouring the tears of Heaven down around those who loved the man who was now with the Lord.  My gloved hands awkwardly turned to the song we were about to sing, “Blessed Assurance.”  My tongue intoned the words, settling into the comfortable grooves of the melody I had sung so many times before.  But then I came to the chorus, and I had one of those lightning bolt, tear-inducing moments of truth from the Lord. 

 

“This is my story, this is my song, praising my Savior all the day long!” 

 

It hit me like an exploding pressure cooker lid barrelling the ceiling.  I am not the protaganist in my story.  I’m not the supporting character in my story.  I’m not even the actor in the movie version of my story.  Instead, my body and soul are the vehicle and backdrop of my story.  The place where God has chosen to stage the greatest adventure, the greatest romance, the greatest history, and the greatest mystery, all at once. 

 

I Corinthians 6:19-20 tells us,

 

“Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?  For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's.”

 

That’s why my story can be a masterpiece, because I’m not the hero.  God is.  That’s why, from now on, right after you know my name, I’ll want to ask, “Would you like to hear my story?” 

Photo Credit: Natalia Osiatynska

Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.