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Tag: stories

  • The gift of belonging to a bigger story

    The gift of belonging to a bigger story

    As a young girl, I spent many afternoons after school sitting in my grandparent’s caravan, sipping milky sweet tea, and dunking biscuits.  The challenge was to dunk those biscuits just long enough to soften them, without them landing in the bottom of my teacup. Pop needed to dunk his biscuits for lack of teeth. I did it because he let me.  

    Nan made the pot of tea; brewed with tea leaves and freshly boiled rainwater.  She also stocked up on those dunking ‘bikkies’ every pension day shop.  Arnott’s, I recall; Scotch fingers and Gingernuts. 

    My Pop was a storyteller. He loved to yarn about his childhood and his working days, along with stories of farms and family. He listened to my stories as well and answered my many questions. My grandparents gave me the gift of belonging to a bigger story- our family’s story.     

    I never got to hear stories from my Dad’s parents.  Grandad died before I was born, Grandma died when I was nine.  It wasn’t until later in life that my Dad would tell me stories about Grandma, and his childhood. Books printed for family reunions, told stories of my German and Protestant ancestry, giving me a larger framework to understand the stories of this side of my family.   

    Michael Jensen  says storytelling is the impulse that lies deep within human cultures, to the point that it is almost fundamental to the very concept of our culture itself.    We belong to bigger stories than just our own.  Both the bigger story and our own stories help us create meaning.

    I have a friend who is adopted. She has never heard stories from her biological grandparents or birth mother.  I do not understand what that is like.  She has very few stories of her birth, her abandonment, and little opportunity to gain another perspective.

    Gaining another perspective involves hearing another’s story. This is helpful to reframe some of our own negative stories and can bring new meaning and healing.  For over forty years, I believed a story that I said I was not lovable.  This story was based on fragmented memories of abandonment.  It was not until decades later, when my mother told me another story, that I realised my version of the story was incomplete.   

    I have found journaling helpful to reframe some of my stories.  Often, I get stuck on one grievance or perspective and cannot get past my story of hurt and disappointment.  By asking different questions of my day, or year or season, I inevitably end up with a reframed version of my story.   I will often ask myself, what do I have to be grateful for, what have I learned, and what is God saying to me in this?  Questions like these help me to gain a different perspective, and brings deeper meaning to the stories of my life. 

    As a Christian, I believe I belong to a bigger story; and this grand story helps me make sense of both the beauty and the brokenness of my life, and the world I live in. When I view my life through Jesus Christ, all the little stories of my life have purpose and meaning.   

    One day, I hope to tell stories to my grandchildren, just like my Pop did all those years ago.   I hope that I can share a little of the bigger story with them, so that they may know a sense of belonging as well. I want to serve them tea and bikkies, and listen to their stories too.

    Photo by pine watt on Unsplash 

  • When your story ends, what will your best chapters be?

    When your story ends, what will your best chapters be?

    When your story ends, what will your best chapters be? Will it be the last chapter of your story or will it be chapters written a long time ago?  Will your final story be a testament of flourishing or just survival?

    Sometimes it feels like my best years are behind me.  They certainly are, if the measure I use is linked to my youthful qualities.  Especially if that involves one’s skin’s elasticity and lack of grey hairs.  The body tires easily now and doesn’t bounce back as well as it did in my 20s and 30s.  I have far more aches and creaks in my joints too, and I do not expect that will lessen. 

    It makes me sad to see people give up on living when they get older and yet, I realise that sometimes you just run out of oomph!  Instead of leaping out of bed in the morning with optimism, you drag yourself out with a hint-or more of cynicism. When recent chapters of your story are lack lustre, you question if it isn’t all down hill from now. 

    Something far sadder, is young people declaring their life is not worth living.  My heart hurts when a beautiful young person’s first few chapters are filled with hardship, grief and loss instead of love and promise.  Recently I looked into a beautiful young person’s eyes, declaring that I would miss them, if they gave up on life.  And ‘so, would your friend miss you too’, I declared.   I wanted to say so much more. I wanted to say that with help you can write new chapters; better chapters.  The beginning need not dictate the end. There are different and better chapters ahead.   

    I am always encouraged when I see older women-and men, flourishing in their final chapters of their lives.  They inspire me to keep on pressing on.  My own father would plant trees, expecting to enjoy their fruit.  He would make plans for his next adventure, willing to keep writing those chapters until the very end. 

    I see older women, even elderly women working out in the gym, stepping out on the line dancing floor and joining me for a 5 km park-run, and I am inspired.  I only started line dancing this year.  Some days I despair of ever getting the steps right or being able to enjoy the movement without my brain hurting. As if sensing my frustrations, one experienced dancer, twenty years my senior told me, ‘I started dancing when I was your age. Don’t give up.’  And so, I keep going. There’s hope for me yet, I realise.  And then there’s the fact that dancing is also good for my brain. Research tells me it can even make my brain younger!  

    I want my final chapters to be my best chapters yet.  I want them to be chapters of flourishing and not just surviving. By flourishing, I mean growing, blossoming and bearing fruit.  Not just existing and staying alive until I die.  What if, the best chapters of my life are yet to be lived?  What if ALL of my experiences have prepared me for this moment and the one’s ahead?  How could ALL of that be used for good?   

    There is something altruistic about doing good and leaving behind a legacy.  Not so that we are famous or infamous, but rather so that our life is bigger than the sum of one.  I also take heart to know that my life is not my own; I am first loved by God and He has a purpose for me being here.    I take comfort in knowing that no other person is like me and I have a place here just by being me.   I want that beautiful young person to know that too. 

    No matter how much I’ve messed up or my previous chapters have been messed up, I draw comfort from these words from the Bible And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28 NIV)

    And with His help, I am hopeful that when my story ends, the best chapters will be my last. 

    Photo by Allef Vinicius on Unsplash

  • Re-framing Old Stories and Writing New Ones

    Re-framing Old Stories and Writing New Ones

    Do you remember your first day of school?  I do. I have a flashback of a little girl standing all alone underneath the wooden stairs that led to the classrooms above.  My parents had said goodbye to me on the other side of the flooded river that cut our farm off from the local township and school.  Prior to school starting they sent me to board with another family we knew from church, who lived in town.  They reminded me that our family friend and neighbour was a teacher at the same school. She crossed the flooded river just like me, in a ‘duck’-an amphibious modified truck. 

    I was four years old when I started school. I turned five the week after.  As long as I can remember I was the ‘big girl’ of the family.  I never had much of a chance to be a baby, as my first sister was born a year later and by the time I turned four, I had another sister and a baby brother.  I accepted the mantle of being the responsible older sister and a good girl, very early in my life.  This was expected of me when I started school. 

    My sister started school the following year. The same river was flooded.  This time though, my mother rented a house in town until the floods abated.  She shared that house with another church family and neighbour.  This time four children started school; two for the first time.

    They say children are keen observers, but poor interpreters.  (Rudolph Dreikurs) I observed that the year I started school I was sent to board with almost strangers. The year my sister started school, mum rented a house with friends.  What I interpreted though was different.  I believed that I was not special enough for my family to rent a house.  I found out decades later that my parents could not afford to rent a house by themselves.  The family my mother shared with had recently arrived in town and at our church.  Their eldest two children were the same age as my sister and me.  Their second child was also starting school for the first time that year.  Combined, both families could afford to rent a house.  The story I told myself for all those years was not entirely correct. 

    I have other stories in my past that have also shaped what I believe about myself and the roles I have played.  I wonder how many other stories I have misinterpreted?    

    Standing at the threshold or maybe even having crossed it into my ‘second act’ or ‘last act’ of my life here on earth, I want my stories from hereon to be different.  I am tired of always being the responsible one and the ‘good girl’. I have overdone that role to the point of enabling and exhaustion! 

    What I have come to understand is it is not so much about making external changes and trying harder with new behaviours, but rather it is an internal shift.  It is time to re-frame some of those stories and start living out the new and truer ones; from a deep place. 

    I also belong to a far bigger story that calls me into a relationship with my Creator and Redeemer.  My identity is based on His truth about who I am and who He is calling me into being.  For someone who has taken on much more responsibility than was ever necessary, it is liberating to know that I am not walking this journey alone.  And it is time to leave some of that baggage behind as I write new stories.  

    I would love to hear from you how you have re-framed old stories and what new ones are you writing?  

  • Looking in the rear vision mirror

    Looking in the rear vision mirror

    This is my father’s family. That is my dad in the middle. He is; or rather was, one of five children. He was the only son. Dad had four sisters. 

    We said our farewell to one of those sisters on Friday. All but one in the photo above have passed away.  Dad’s eldest sister survives all. 

    I never knew my grandfather.  He died in 1965; the year before I was born and while my parents were on their honeymoon.  My grandmother died when I was eight years old.  I have few memories of her although plenty of wonderful respect for her through stories told by my father.    

    When my Dad died three years ago, I went searching for stories so I could put together his eulogy. I knew very little of his story before the age of thirty-two; the year I was born.  In doing so I unearthed some notes that not only provided story material but shed some light on some of the why’s Dad chose some of the roads taken in his life. I learnt how a childhood lived in the shadow of the Great Depression and the resultant poverty shaped both his dreams and his determination to be a landowner.

    As sobering as a funeral is I am also grateful for the time to pause to remember someone’s life and reflect on our mortality.  It occurred to me that while this side of my family tree is well researched and I may know who my ancestors are, I do not know their stories.  I am confronted by the fact that time is running out, because soon, my generation will be the eldest and their stories will be lost.

    I suddenly have a desire to look in the rear vision mirror. I feel an urge to look beyond my own life and begin to really listen and understand the stories of my father’s family. Perhaps in doing so I will come to understand a little more of who I am and the whisper of stories that are in my DNA.