Restoring your life is about re-storying your life

​Every moment, life happens.

Sometimes it happens small and simple. Breakfast maybe.

Other times it might happen much bigger. Divorce for example.

Either way, some event is always happening in our lives.

It happens, and then it is gone.

Some events feel like they tag along with us long after the event is over. But they don't.

Events in our lives are like those messages that disappear in social media apps once they've been opened and read. All that remains is the story we tell ourselves about what we just read.

Last night, I was sharing some pictures with the boys that popped up as Facebook memories from ten years ago. Pictures of a family vacation to the Grand Tetons.

I remember the story I told myself about those pictures when they were taken. Stories of gratitude. Stories of what it meant to be a dad who could gift his boys with a sense of awe. Stories of adventure.

I've experienced the event of divorce since the event of that trip. And in showing the boys those pictures last night, it felt like that divorce event uninvitedly jumped up into my lap like a wet dog running in from the rain, totally derailing the moment.

The divorce event showing up to derail the meaning of that Grand Teton event a decade ago. How can something that happened years later have such an impact on something that happened so many years before?

The answer is, it doesn't. Not at all. The impact comes from the story we tell ourselves about that event. The story we tell ourselves about one event arriving to somehow destroy another.

These events didn't even know each other, yet I tell myself a story that connects them?

Ian looked at the picture of him holding the river otter. Oh, how that little boy insisted he would see a river otter on that trip. To satisfy that craving, because we couldn't find the real deal, we ended up buying him a stuffed version of the creature.

Ian said, "I remember wanting that otter so bad, then I immediately left it somewhere and mom had to go hunt it down." He said this laughing as he disappeared into the bathroom.

I was telling myself a story about a trip ruined. Ian was telling himself a story about a trip memory that made him laugh a decade later.

Same event, different stories.

I heard a pastor recently say that 'restoring' our lives is about 're-storying' our lives. There's so much truth in that.

Because once an event is over, the good and the bad and the ugly, the event is over. Gone. The only thing left is the story we tell ourselves about that event. And in that, there is a lot of power.

Last night I had the power of choice.

Tell myself a story that a divorce that happened years after my kid's river otter moment somehow damaged that river otter moment, or, tell myself the story about a kid running off to the bathroom laughing about that river otter he still has stashed away somewhere.

I chose the latter. I chose the latter because so much of my life is about restoration these days. And all restoration starts with re-storying.

What stories are you telling yourself today?

What stories are you telling yourself today that you need to re-story?

We are all great story tellers; but I think we could all get a little better at re-storying. Take it from this story teller, it's not easy, but it's absolutely possible.

Absolutely possible - and healing.