Your Life Story-- A Pastoral Perspective

1. Bukal Life Care 2017 www.bukallifecare.org Your Life StoryA Pastoral Counseling Perspective

2. Try to Picture in Your Mind Your Life Story as a Piece of String • How long would it be? • What color is it? • How thick is it? • What is it made of? • What makes your “life string” unique from that of others? • Is it a source of Pride? Embarrassment? Frustration?

3. Sorry... but it is a trick question. • No one has a life story (history). Each of us has life stories (histories). • Also, these stories are not things we “have.” They are things we create. These stories come in all sorts of colors, lengths, and thicknesses.

4. How Do We Make These Stories? • We take specific moments, circumstances, or relationships in our lives.

5. How Do We Make These Stories? • We connect them with a running narrative based on recurring themes or causal relationships we feel that we can identify. • “Well, ___________ happened. And then _________. And other time there was __________, and that caused me to ________.”

6. How Do We Make These Stories? • We thicken the story with supporting details and feelings. • The “thicker” the story, the more we are justified to say it is an important story. “Thin” stories we may or may not think are important. Regardless, they have little support.

7. How Do We Make These Stories? • We “color” the story... is it a good story or bad, happy or sad. • We then label the story. “I am a success!!” or “I am a failure” or “I never give up!” and so forth. “I never do anything right” story

8. We CANNOT change our past, but we can ALWAYS change our histories (our life stories) That is because these stories are only interpretations of our past. Some Important Thoughts • No one has a life story or a history. We have many many potential life stories or histories. • It is not so true that our past affects our present and future so much as that the stories we make of our past affect our present and future.

9. On the other hand, we don't confuse their stories with reality. Their stories express their interpretation of their experiences. How does this affect us as pastoral counselors? • We should spend less time trying to determine the FACTS of their past, as much as we want to hear their STORIES of their past.

10. Paulo the generous Paulo the selfish Paulo the depressed Paul the hopeful seeker. We also remember that every person has many stories. Here are some stories that Paulo has: • Paulo the Great Success. • Paulo the Failure. • Paulo, everyone's friend. • Paulo the unlovable.

11. Help Paulo “thicken” stories that challenge his focus on failure. Thickening means to add details and events that show a story is more important in the life of the person. “Thin” the failure story by helping him reinterpret (reframe) aspects of it. (After all, success comes from learning from failure.) Some people can get “stuck” in one life story. How does one help Paulo who is stuck in the story... “Paulo the Failure” • Listen to his story, but challenge aspects of it. Is his entire life one of failure? Or are there other stories he is ignoring? • Change the “color” or title of the story. Should the title be “Paulo the Failure” or should it be “Paulo learning and growing through mistakes” or “Paulo never giving up.” • Help him develop other stories such as “Paulo the success” and “Paulo the good friend.”

12. One might imagine all of the stories of one's life being woven together into a tapestry. If so, WHAT DOES YOUR TAPESTRY LOOK LIKE? Threads as Life Stories can be useful. But we can also change the metaphor. • Think of each story... each thread being related to every other thread. • That makes sense since these stories all come together to make up the life each of us lives.

13. We Don't Know What the Tapestry Looks Like. Why? • We are too limited. Limited in knowledge, understanding, perspective, and time. • We can only see bits and pieces of the pattern that the stories of our life form.

14. To Understand our Life Tapestry, We Need Help. • Others can help us see more. They can help us broaden our perspective. • Of course others are limited in their perspectives too. • Johari's Window speaks to this... removing our blindspots with the help of others.

15. Johari Window

16. We Don't Know What the Tapestry Looks Like. Why? • With help, we can gain a better understanding of ourselves... who we were, who we are, and who we are meant to be. • For this, we need more then self-reflection, and help from others. We need divine illumination.

17. Ultimately, However, it is Only God Who Has the Knowledge and Perspective to Judge the Entirety of our Lives. • When the Bible says to let God be the judge, not us... that is more than showing respect to God. • It is an admission of our ignorance and lack of competence to judge.

18. Tapestries (and most visual arts) are More Appealing with Many Colors • The pain, the sadness, the failures of the past, do not destroy the pattern. • The scars of the past have a potentially redemptive aspect, adding value and demonstrating God's power to make all things beautiful in His time. • Even brokenness can be beautiful in the hands of a Master craftsman. (Consider, for example, Kintsukuroi, “Golden Repair,” Pottery.)

19. References • Alice Morgan, What is Narrative Therapy? An Easy to Read Introduction. (Adelaide, Australia: Dulwich Centre Publications, 2000) • Robert Munson, Theo-storying: Reflections on God, Narrative and Culture. (MM-Musings, Baguio City, 2014) www.bukallifecare.org www.munsonmissions.org