As I am pulling together the last tweaks to my updated course helping people capture their Life-Story in a photobook, I go back to an early inspiration that kicked me down this path in a huge swoosh forward movement.
It’s a book — Your Story Matters: Finding, Writing, and Living the Truth of Your Life — by Leslie Leyland Fields.
The summary on Amazon is this — Understanding God’s work in our stories is a vital part of our faith. Not just a book for writers, this practical and inspiring book teaches us how to sift through our experiences to find the places we have witnessed God in our journey: the mysterious, the tragic, the miraculous, and the ordinary.
In my experience and with others doing their Life-Story, no one expected what Leslie just described would happen as they “sift through” experiences but as they worked through my system, they found where God showed up in their journey – and I totally recommend you get her book solely for the inspiration in it.
Leslie starts her book with her experience in the capital of Mongolia standing in front of a hundred women in a conference room to teach a writing seminar through a translator. The women range from 19 to 75 and have come from the countryside and the city, are sheepherders, pastors’ wives, doctors, university students, mothers, tour guides, accountants.
They have come for a full day of instruction in writing and sharing their own stories.
But Leslie is tired from the travel, is in overdrive and still speaks with passion, raising hands in the air and halting every sentence or two for the translator. The women sit with heads bent taking detailed notes – she can hardly see their faces.
Suddenly the director of the school jumps to her feet and interrupts her mid-sentence “Leslie! Could you stop a minute?” Then smiling sweetly the director adds that she is sensing the women there don’t feel worthy to tell their stories. They don’t feel like their stories matter. So what could Leslie say about that?
As the translator speaks the words in Mongolian, she sees the women look at her with wide eyes as if someone has just spilled their deepest secret and they wonder what she will do with it. She sees it then – the doubt, the glaze over their eyes. Then she realizes they don’t know who she is. She puts down her notes and comes out from the podium and shares….
- She’s a girl in the woods, one of 6 kids, who had nothing anyone wanted
- Wore faded, homemade, hand-me-down dresses
- Had 4 pairs of holey underwear to her name
- Food was doled out to their plates and there was never any more
- Stringy hair because they washed their hair with soap
- Classmates made fun of her clothes & appearance
- Spent 15 years of her life changing diapers
- Summers were lived on a wilderness island in Alaska without flushing toilets or a shower
She doesn’t remember how much she shared but she says she ended like this:
I was a nobody searching for God, for something real and true. And God found me. He left the ninety-nine sheep and came out into the woods, climbed that mountain, and found me and carried me home. I am the hundredth sheep. And you are the hundredth sheep as well. We were all lost, wandering, and God found us.
Tell me about that, she said to them. They were now seeing her more clearly. “Tell me that story,” she said.
I could hardly put her book down – she writes so compellingly the stories we all know and recognize. But she inspires me as I am working on the next launch of my system which I turned into a course to help people capture their Life-Story in photos and stories.
As I engage folks looking into the idea of doing their Life-Story photobook, I so often hear something like “I don’t have an exciting story” or “no one would be interested in my story” or “what would I write about”. She really means it when she says “your story matters”. Here is how she shares it in her book:
No matter what country we live in, no matter our neighborhood, our politics, our religion, our age, no matter even our shared pursuit of God, we risk passing like strange ships in the long night. Time, busyness, the speed of life will keep us apart unless we braid word around word from our own passage, then toss it out, coiled, shimmering, toward the hands on the other deck open, waiting to catch, to coil and secure the two ships together, hull to hull. Don’t we all sail the same turbulent waters? Aren’t we longing to stop for a while, to not be alone on the high seas?
I think about my great grandmother (whom I adored – her picture is in a blog HERE) https://candymccune.com/heart-guides/ She was widowed at the age of 55. Her husband committed suicide after the Stock Market Crash of 1929 – he had put their full financial profits from the sale of their successful business into the stock market. She lived through that, worked alongside her son (my grandfather) building a business and eventually succumbed in her 70’s to being bedridden due to crippled feet (from wearing shoes too little for her as a child).
She was cheerful, encouraging, the only adult I could remember who ever asked me about my life and listened intently. She spent her time sitting up in bed or a wheelchair quilting gorgeous heirlooms. I never heard a complaint cross her lips. She was sharp, could answer all the questions on the TV quiz shows (which she loved). I mourned her loss as she entered her 80’s — I was in middle school and felt a big hole in my heart when she left.
Oh how I would love to have her personal stories today, her wisdom and decision-making values shared by her (written or oral). But I don’t. No one recorded them in any way, shape or form. And her children and grandchildren are now gone from this earth.
Yes, that stirred inspiration in me as I share just one of my faith stories in my photobook. It’s my birthday and I am driving back to Denver from West Texas. My car was worked on before I left and as I returned over Raton Pass going at least 65 mph, a car was just starting to pass me on the left when I realized my car was heading down the slope to the left across that lane and straight to the guard rail. The steering wheel spun around wildly in my hand as I tried to change the direction of the car back into the proper lane. It was useless. I could only jump on the brakes with both feet and slide to a stop as the driver’s side of the car scraped along the rail to finally come to rest.
Instinctively, I climbed across the debris that had flown forward in the car and exited via the passenger door immediately running to the right side of the road. I knew other traffic coming around the curve were in danger of hitting my car.
My first thought as I stood by the side of the road, heart beating wildly, was “OK, Lord, you are not through with me yet.” Second thought — “How in the world did my purse get on my shoulder?”
Long story short, the mechanic who worked on our car before the trip found the problem, the sheered off steering pin, fixed everything and it was not long before I was back in the car trying to drive a short distance. I froze – I panicked – I could not make my hands turn the steering wheel to get around a corner. I was shocked, distressed. I turned to the Lord and prayed around every corner. It took weeks to get back to a normal, non-panicked driving.
The life-changing lesson that emerged as I went through all my “why” and “what did this mean” questions grew clear over time. How vividly the Lord demonstrated to me that despite my thinking I was in control of the car (my life?), He was in control. I have driven Raton Pass multiple times since and noted every place where there was no guard rail or there was a sheer wall –all places which would have ended badly for me.
But God steered the car (and me). Ah, yes, control is a big one for me – and He knew it. And He gave me a physical experience that is as vivid as the day it occurred to keep me on the path He has for me, trusting Him every step of the way.
I turn to Delilah, author of One Heart at a Time, for our closing. The call to action? How would you answer her questions?
Have you ever considered that the hurts in your past are meant for something greater than you? God hurts with you. He didn’t, nor doesn’t, want bad things to happen to you. But here’s the really interesting fact: God can redeem anything, and anyone at anytime. Your pain and suffering of the past can be healed, and not only that, it can be used to heal others.
Have you ever stopped to consider how someone else may need your story? That’s exactly the point of this book, in case you forgot. Changing the world one heart, one story at a time. That means you telling your story of redemption and offering hope to the next person going through some tough stuff. If you have ever thought about preserving your life-story, or the life-story of a loved one, the worst thing you can do now is to do nothing. Stay tuned for my emails inviting you to tell your story.
