Too often we let the outcomes of our experiences tell the story of those experiences

Back in January of 2018, I ran the Houston Marathon. It was part of a campaign I'd started to raise money for Hurricane Harvey victims.

A dozen friends joined me in Houston from all over the country. We partnered with a local church and school in some relief work. The church even put on a wonderful service the night before the marathon for me and my friends. It was all a blessing.

Then, there was also the race itself. An attempt to complete my second marathon ever.

At mile 18 of that race, a wall of law enforcement officers, a large street cleaner, and a few runners carrying balloons caught up with me. Without compromise, they insisted that I speed up or move off the course. At that point in the race, I was only capable of one of those.

I moved off the course.

For the longest time after that race, 'moved off the course' was the story I remembered about that Houston experience. I remembered the long bus ride back to the finish line where many of my friends were waiting - and where I watched many other friends actually finish their marathons.

For the longest time, 'did not finish' were the only words I could hear about that entire Houston experience. For the longest time, I allowed the outcome of that experience tell the story and not me.

Alexi Pappas says, "The world is not objective. It's actually up to us. No single race, test, meeting, or project exists in a vacuum, because everything that happens to us is part of a larger narrative, and we can choose what that narrative is."

While I was letting 'did not finish" tell me a story about a failure, I was incapable of telling myself the story of a group of people who'd bonded over a service project that weekend.

I was incapable of telling myself the story of a beautiful church in love with their community - who insisted on that community being the walls of their church and not the church building itself.

I was incapable of telling myself the story of how very cool it was to visit Houston for first time.

Pappas says too often we don't pause long enough between the expectations and outcomes of an experience to decide what they mean to us.

I've been reflecting on this as it relates to relationships lately. Because I've had a couple of them fail. I feel the outcomes of those relationships begging to tell the story. I hear them - loud and clear - broken, divorce, unworthy, guilt, shame....

But it's true - we do get to choose the narrative.

There are beautiful things that happened inside those relationships. Things that taught me about life and love and connection. Things that made me question my faith critically enough to discover I have nothing more important to me. Things that will forever shape the overall narrative of my life, even if the narrative of those individual relationships - looked at in a vacuum - didn't end with happily ever after.

We are all prone to this, I think - listening to our outcomes. Outcomes are fantastic story tellers. Probably because they like telling us stories about failure and we seem to naturally want to believe those stories.

But we are good story tellers, too. We are the BEST story tellers when it comes to OUR story. We have lived the experiences - felt every step of the way of them - not just the final steps.

We know the beauty at the beginning and in the middle that the end often wants to make us forget.

But don't forget this - you're in charge of your story. The whole thing. Be kind to yourself. Too often the outcomes aren't. Reframe your story as one on it's way to something beautiful. It needed those outcomes to get you there.

You're in charge of the story.

By the way, one year later, I went back to Houston. I finished that marathon. And that day, I was more than happy to give the mic to the outcome for a little bit. ?

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