LIFE TAPESTRY - CHARTED

(The instructions for charting your Life Tapestry (“Gospel Story”) are contained in the body of this material. Please feel free to print off the instructions and charts (or copy and paste them) for your personal use. The instructions include both charting and color coding.)

 WRITING YOUR GOSPEL STORY

You have to know how to tell the events of your life as a story, or life becomes meaningless. Most of us struggle to tell our story which presents a great challenge. In a life without a story, important things have nothing to attach to and keep slipping off our radar. We survive one day at a time doing what has to be done in a need-driven way (food, bills, shelter, etc…) until we escape through entertainment. This is how many of us also do work and relationships: a pressure motivated, need-driven mindset (satisfying requirements) alternating with entertainment escapes.

In light of this dynamic, we must realize that if we’re going to make a lifestyle change, it needs to connect with our life purpose – our call. That is bigger than most people expect. We are told that we are made in the image of God and that we are to subdue the earth and to rule over it. This “ruling” over the earth is our day to day activity of work and creativity done to the glory of God.

A story is more than a purpose statement. Most of us have tried to write a purpose statement before and seen it fade in relevance with time. Purpose may capture a season of life, but rarely captures our whole life. In the same way that Scripture talks about seasons of life (“to everything there is a season”), we’ll change enough to have multiple purpose statements over the course of lifetime. 

This is why we are speaking of “story” not “purpose statements.” A single story can have many chapters, each with their own meaning and key events, contributing to the same narrative. Whatever is used to give meaning to your story must have this kind of adaptability if it is going to remain relevant throughout your life.

As you learn to tell your story, we will look at telling it in three sections: (1) birth to adulthood; (2) adulthood to present; and (3) future dreams and fears. After you have taken the time to record your life story, go back and learn to identify the gospel themes that are meant to be the “grand narrative” that defines your life.

Learning to Tell Your Story

Stories are made up events, but a story is larger than the events that comprise it. This will be a guiding principle as you learn to tell your story. You will begin by listing formative events in your life. But telling your life story is about more than building a chronologically-arranged list of events.

Events: Begin the first worksheet below by writing in the key life events which shaped you in the order in which they happened.  Questions to prompt you in this part of the exercise are included below.

Experience: After you list the key events, it is helpful to assess how you experienced those events. A simple “-5” to “+5” scale has been provided. These represent pleasant (peaceful, joyful, excited, etc…) and unpleasant (i.e., angry, anxious, grieving, etc…) responses to each item. From this you should begin to be able to see what the major seasons of your life  have been like: good seasons (+3 to +5), bad seasons (-3 to -5), mixed seasons, and “blah” seasons (-2 to +2).  

In this part of the chart place an “x” where that event ranks on the unpleasant-to-pleasant spectrum. Once you have completed the list and rated the experience of each event, connect the dots to give yourself a visual of how that section of your life story has unfolded.

You should begin to notice whether the major shifts (good or bad) in your life have been the result of your choices or situational changes outside your control. You can probably begin to notice where your instincts towards trust or mistrust gained their current force. 

Meaning: There is a “comment” box beside each event for you to summarize how you originally understood the significance of that event upon you. Comments can be serious or playful, but they should accurately represent the way that event actually impacted you at that time.

What were the common themes you used to interpret the pleasant parts of your life? What were the common themes you used to interpret the unpleasant parts of your life? These are probably the same themes that you use to interpret the pleasant and unpleasant events in your life today. Until we see that we are interpreters of life, we are slaves to the interpretations that come to us naturally.

You should begin to notice how you responded to things “in the moment” compared with the significance you give them now. Too often, we only attribute this difference to the passing of time, but most often it is not time that creates change  but a change in perspective (which is just a more common phrase for looking at the same facts from the vantage point of a  different “story”).

We will come back to this column when we begin the process of making sense of our life in light of the “Grand Narrative” of the gospel. We cannot change the “events” column. We cannot change the “experience” columns, at least not our initial reaction. But we can, by God’s grace, change the “meaning” column. Even in light of the gospel, not everything in this column will become pleasant (that is the prosperity gospel, which is a false gospel). But we can interpret our successes and failures, blessings and trials, in a way that protects us from the threats of pride, insecurity, and mistrust.

Birth to Adulthood

This section addresses the factors that shaped your early life. What should you include in your life story?

∙ Key events – vacations, accomplishments, tragedies, moves, family changes, secrets

∙ Key people – family members, teachers, church leaders, coaches, friends

∙ Major interests – hobbies, sports, organizations

∙ Significant decisions – good and bad

∙ Spiritual markers – good and bad

∙ Accomplishments – goals/dreams set, disappointments, points of progress, and completion

∙ Jobs – skills developed, key connections established, life-direction determined

∙ Maturation markers – personal, emotional, relational

Adulthood to Present

Agreeing on how to divide the major sections of your adult life is the first part of telling your present story. Moves and jobs are common dividers. If you are married, this is an exercise that would be valuable for each of you to do. Your lives became joined and created another story in the process. Marriage and children become additional dividers. But you may think of others.

After you think of the key chapters or headings for your life, begin listing the key events, people, decisions, spiritual markers, and accomplishments for each chapter like you did for your birth-to-adulthood story. Mark the ups and downs of each experience and trace the line that is created. 

Remember, the point of these exercises is to build connection (emotional and narrative) in the recounting of your story. So, talk about the things you write. Reflect on how you see events differently now from when they occurred, and consider what that says about what God has done in your life. Talk to God your Father about this as you do this. Discuss this at length with your mentor after you have completed it. If you are married, share it with your spouse.

Too often, we think of our Christian testimony in exclusively individualistic terms. This exercise will help you and those with whom you are closest see how God has worked in your lives and brought you to where you are today.

Future Dreams and Fears

Your story is not just about where you have been or where you are, but also about where you are going. God created our temporal lives with a glorious suspense called “the future.” When we fail to appreciate this God-given suspense we either surrender to anxiety or apathy.

As you write this part of your story, there will be a couple of key differences from the prior two exercises. First, you are writing fiction not history, because you are writing about things that have not happened. Don’t get caught up in merely trying to make plans and map out steps. That is something that can and should be done later.  Here you are expressing the vulnerability of hopes and fears. That is profoundly bonding. Don’t allow the logistics of implementation to rob you of the romance of dreaming. Once you finish reviewing this page, prayerfully consider what God may be nudging you to pursue.

This page is the fuel for a prayer life. Post this in your house in a place that you see frequently or where you pray regularly. Revising this page annually can be a great exercise. Once you have a history of what your dreams have  been over a number of years, it can be a sweet time reflecting on God’s faithfulness, provision, and reminding yourselves  how God’s ways truly are better than our ways (Isa. 55:8-13).

Gospel as the “Grand Narrative”

Most people are unable to talk about the gospel as the theme of their life because they have never thought through their life as a story. Hopefully, your work in the previous sections has removed this obstacle for you. This section moves the three story exercises from merely reflective-relational exercises to tracing the hand of God through your life, fears, and dreams.

The gospel doesn’t rewrite your story; it reinterprets your story. The facts of your life will not change, but the significance of those facts has (or, at least, can) change significantly. For this reason, it is suggested that you use color, more than words, to identify where the core themes of the gospel appear in your life story. The “x’s” and line will not move, but they will become three dimensional and multi-colored.

The chart below contains the major themes of the gospel and a color-coding system. Use these colors to trace lines through your charts. In some areas the colors may stack like a rainbow as you see multiple themes surrounding the same event.

Now that you have completed tracing the gospel themes through your story, examine what you wrote as the significance or meaning of each event in the “comments” column. What did you learn, re-learn, or unlearn about God, the gospel, and your story?

(Many thanks to Dr. Brad Hambrick for permission to use and to adapt material for this Life Tapestry - Charted section. Dr. Hambrick serves as the Pastor of Counseling - The Summit Church (www.bradhambrick.com). Dr. Hambrick in turn credits Dennis Rainey, co-founder of FamilyLife, a division of Cru, as a material resource.)