Redeeming Your Story

We all tell ourselves stories; narratives about why the future is going to look a certain way and reasons for why the past turned out the way it did.

Sometimes our stories take unexpected left turns.  Which is why I found myself first fighting back tears, before eventually just letting them flow, while listening to this sermon during last year's Christmas Eve service.
Funny, I re-listened to that sermon later and it felt much less direct than it did that night.
Pastor Tim talked about Jesus stepping into the story-gone-wrong for the people of Israel and how that act of Incarnation 2,000 years ago is still allowing Jesus to step into, and redeem, our broken stories.  I found myself in some serious need of redemption last Christmas Eve.

The following will be a brief summary of how I've found some of that redemption.

One way is in reshaping the narrative I tell about myself.  For years, I saw myself as The Good Kid.  The one who could perform and follow the rules, even when no one else could.  If I wanted to keep my scholarship, keep my ordination, keep my social standing, keep my....   I had to follow the rules.  And I was good at it.  Mostly...

During the above mentioned Christmas Eve service, I sat next to someone I'd been friends with since high school, attended seminary with her husband and served with in starting a "New Married" Sunday School class way back in the day.
During a college reunion in 2005, she joked to the rest of the group that, back during our church camp days, Donnie (i.e. The Good Kid) was always the only one who, unlike everyone else, didn't have a bunch of sins to confess. Yep, that was me, The Good Kid.
Just as in the other example I'm about to share, she and I talked through that recently because I had to go back and revisit that conversation, over a decade later.  While she graciously apologized for making that off-hand comment, the simultaneous pride and shame that her statement birthed in me was all on me, not her.

Ten years previous to that college reunion, exactly ten years to the month, I was sitting in the back of the school bus with a close friend as we were returning home from being the sacrificial lamb to Washington High School's homecoming sacrifice to the football gods (I'll forever be sans a big toenail thanks to the 300 pound lineman I unsuccessfully tried to block during that game).  Just like me, this friend grew up in a strong, Christian family.  He spent his high school years, however living by a slightly different moral code than did I.
"Donnie, I respect you, man.  You're always the one who can be counted on to make the right decision, even when everyone else is going the opposite way."

Yep, that was me, The Good Kid.  

Not surprisingly, he and I revisited that conversation.  It happened 21 years later, when coming back from a Royals game.  I had to be honest about how that conversation had shaped the identity as The Good Kid but how I'd fairly recently arrived at a different identity, how I'd been able to change that narrative.
The new identity (what was actually true all along) and the narrative I'm trying to live by is that I'm just A Kid.  No qualifier or adjective, I'm just A Kid.

So much freedom to be found in living into a role rather than living by rules.


Another part of this story, a recent development that I in no way saw coming, is this new role of helping others who are finding themselves in the midst of their own hard left turn (also known as a divorce).
Within an hour of sharing my first blog post via Facebook, I was overwhelmed by people reaching out to me, sharing their own stories and even asking for advice (as if I really have much good advice to give, other than to share my own experience).
The power to help others redeem their own story isn't found in my amazing advice-giving skills, though but in the simple fact that I'm publicly discussing such a difficult topic.  Facebook messages, phone conversations, prayers and counselor recommendations are just some of the activities I've recently found myself engaging in.

To quote the friend who sat next to me during the Christmas Eve service, "Donnie, it sounds a lot like ministry."
Or a good friend who pastors in Central California, "Don't waste your pain, Donnie."
Or a good friend who pastors up the coast in Northern California, "Donnie, in speaking with a pastoral voice but with a freedom no practicing pastor actually has, you are living into your calling."

Well, that was a little unexpected, especially when all I wanted to do was write.  But I believe that's how God's Incarnation-into-Redemption usually works, it comes as a surprise.  A baby?  A blog post?  Okay... that might be a stretch...


I think though, that it could be understood how I felt like this theme of our story being redeemed came, at least somewhat, full-circle when Pastor Tim preached this sermon on the first Sunday of Advent about our good and generous God who is writing a good and generous story.

And it was no stretch at all to feel like things had come full circle last night, when sitting in the same balcony, next to the same friend and preparing to once again light the Christmas Eve candles.  Even though it was just less than 24 hours ago, I can't remember anything about Pastor Tim's sermon.  I can, however remember the presence of peace in my heart, the acknowledgement of newly earned wisdom in my brain and the new sense in my spirit of how God truly is redeeming my story.

I gave my friend a hug before leaving and told her it was nice to sit next to her and not cry this Christmas Eve.  She agreed.