Rewrite your story

”Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; And in Your book were all written The days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was not one of them.“. Psalms‬ ‭139‬:‭16‬ ‭

Maybe you have heard the advice of learning to rewrite your story. This is common in a person who is experiencing trauma, complex, grief, recurrent nightmares, and other themes where persons get stuck in their life due to past experiences. Many people struggle with this because they know the past can’t be changed. They also don’t want to sugarcoat what they have experienced. That’s not the point of the exercise, God has all of our days written in His book, even before we experience them.

The exercise reminds me of some advice I was given on our first cruise. We were all standing with cameras out facing west to capture the setting sun. It was gorgeous, but the Director said you’re missing the best view. He encouraged me to turn around. And he wasn’t joking. The colors were completely different, the sky in the east was just as gorgeous.

When we pause and turn around to look back at our past, we might recognize the beauty of the lessons learned or how we grew in that experience. It is not that the past changed. We are just turning back for a different perspective. We can change the story we are telling ourselves from one of victimhood to one of being a survivor. There is beauty in human resilience.

God sees our story from the finish perspective because He is outside of time. He knows the end from the beginning. He sees the growth that comes from our experiences. I believe when we look back we can see Romans 8:28. He doesn’t cause our bad experiences, but we know God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.