Internal desire, external pressure, & "it" happens

In the middle of May, I was able to take some continuing education time within the Redwood Forest of the Santa Cruz Mountains.  This retreat focused a lot on our individual stories and the power they have in our personal and professional lives.  During my time away, I was faced with questions like: What part of my story did I write for myself? (internal desire) What part of my story did someone else write for me? (external pressures) What part of my story did life in general write for me? (it just happened)


Since I now realize that I have a significant amount of work to do in this area of my life, I won’t use my story as an example.  So…What if you wanted to become a lawyer and be a partner in your family’s law firm?  You made the decision on your own to get your law degree.  During your last semester you realized that you really didn’t want to be a lawyer.  But influenced by the spoken and unspoken pressures of your family, you joined the family business even though you knew it was not for you.  You end up working in the family business for 15 years, but it never felt right and it slowly ate at your soul. 

In this scenario you started out writing your own story which was a good thing, but later the family began writing your story for you.  Illness, injuries, tornadoes, wild fires, and “down sizing” are things that “life” might write for us; those types of things that are out of our control. 

Some would say that God writes our story for us, but that’s too predestinational or “puppet on a string for me.”  If God writes our story for us, then we no longer have the free will of choice.  I think God gives us what we need to write our own stories, and then walks with us to either reinforce our story, or help us pick up the pieces in order to continue moving forward when the story we’ve chosen takes a wrong turn.

As I begin processing my experience of the retreat, I keep coming back to the importance of being authentic within our own stories.  If we are not being authentic in our stories, then we are not being authentic to whom God created.  God created us to be uniquely authentic, and when we don’t allow ourselves to live in that uniqueness, we are not honoring God. 

When we are born, we are as authentic to God as possible, but then outside pressures get in the way.  It is time for us to embrace who God made and do all we can to become authentic once again.   

Now we are faced with some questions: What part of your story did you write for yourself? (internal desire) What part of your story did someone else write for you? (external pressures) What part of your story did life in general write for you? (it just happened) 

How can you, with God’s help, begin to intentionally write your own story as authentically as God created you?

Peace...