Are the facts of your life your friend or your enemy?

​I have a friend who is a passionate runner. She has been battling an injury and is wearing a boot and hasn't been able to run for many weeks. I know her story is distressing. Yet, the story she's been telling has been quite the opposite.

I've seen her posting pictures of being a mom having fun with her daughters and pictures of riding a stationary bike instead of running and pictures of family camping trips.

What I have NOT seen from her is a story lamenting the loss of something really important to her. Even as I know there IS lamenting going on.

Something important to her IS missing, that's a fact. But my friend isn't letting the facts of her story stand in her way of telling a hopeful story.

I sat with a friend on a deck last week. I told her some of the list of events in my life. Some of that list is ugly. Some of it I'd like to take an eraser to. Some of the events I never include on the list when I talk about the list of events in my life.

But I included all of them. I didn't edit the list, but in many ways I found myself editing the story. I found myself, like my friend, speaking my list onto the pages of a more gentle story.

We can use the facts of our lives against ourselves or for ourselves. We can call the facts of our lives our friends or our enemies.

The facts of our lives are just there. Immovable. What is mobile, however, what is hopeful, is how we carry those facts with us. What is hopeful is how we interpret the facts of our lives.

I told my friend recently that she is quite a running story. But her 'not-running' story has been quite a testimony as well.

We all have our facts of life. Facts that are no longer up to us. What is up to us is how we interpret those facts. How we share them with others.

What is up to us is our story.

Be kind to yourself with your story. And in turn, you may find your story being kind to others.