Your Story Matters

Our lives are amazingly intricate.  They are filled with twists and turns, mountains and valleys, moments of abject failures and soaring triumph. 

And then there's the living: the daily grind of going through our day-to-day.  Sometimes we feel as if our lives don't matter or make little difference, especially during our seasons of normalcy.

The reality is all that we are is wrapped up in the roller coaster that we call life.  Hair-pin turns, towering climbs, death defying drops, hills small and great.  And yet, my favorite part of my favorite roller coaster is the moment when you've crested the last little hill and everything smooths out and for a moment you get a little break in the action, a momentary respite for your heart to recover, and then you race down the gangplank to rush around to the entrance, to do it all over again.

I am convinced that most of us, if we're honest we think that our story is of little value. Who wants to hear from me?  Who needs what I have to offer?  And yet, I believe it is our day-to-day existence, our times of strength and struggle, OUR STORY that God uses most.  The revelation of who we are, of our seasons of the mundane and the monstrous, the tragic and the triumphant, the normal and the nearly- impossible-to-believe - God uses those seasons, those moments, when shared, to bring hope to someone who's hurting, to bring peace to someone who's in chaos, to bring a ray of sunshine in the midst of a thunderstorm, a rainbow in the clouds, stability in the midst of an earthquake.

You see Paul describes this amazing process of comfort in 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 RPV - He says (RPV? - that's the Rodney Pavie Version - look for it in a blog near you😁), "Blessed be the God of all comfort - who takes care to provide comfort to us when our world is turned upside down, so that when ours hits the sweet spot of normalcy again, we can share our story with those whose world is being turned upside down and provide comfort to them in the same way that God comforted us. . ."  It's like riding that roller coaster with someone who has been on it before, who can let you know that everything is about to smooth out and over the next hill you should find a season of peace, comfort, safety.

In other words - your story matters.  How God helped you through whatever chaos or struggle or failure or turmoil or tribulation you've been through - NO MATTER how large or how small, has a purpose.  Because when you make yourself vulnerable enough to share, ultimately you are helping other to know they are not alone.  They too can make it BECAUSE with God's help you did!  Your Story Matters!  If you're really spiritual, you can call it your testimony.  It's really just an eyewitness account of the roller coaster ride we call life.  AND IT MATTERS!