Episode #162 Untangling Narratives: How Stories from Your Past Impact You Today – Significant Stories

Hey friends, it's Jen and we're continuing in our series today on significant stories. Realizing that as humans, we are a story people. We respond to stories. We connect with each other through stories, and we make sense of the things that we live through and the things that we're hoping for in the future based on the stories that we accept about ourselves and the ones that we speak over ourselves as we navigate different things. And so in this part of the series, I'm walking you through, really, eight different questions that we can ask ourselves to better understand the stories that we're living according to.

We live according to what we believe. And so it's helpful to take a look, to kind of step back and evaluate some of the stories that we're believing about ourselves and about God so that we can make sure we're holding on to stories that are worth holding on to and we can reject the ones that don't belong in our lives.

And we covered step one in the very last episode. So I encourage you to go listen to that one if you haven't yet, which really is an invitation to just step back and observe one of the stories that we've been telling ourselves.

And we're walking into step two today, which is to ask ourselves, how does that story apply to this circumstance?
When we feel like a story has been confirmed as true, based on our past experiences, it's really easy to build a mental pathway, to build an emotional pathway, to build an expectation that that same story is going to be proven true again in similar or sometimes even very different circumstances.

One of the verses that we included last week, comes from Proverbs 4. And in verse 26, it says, “give careful thought to the paths for your feet and be steadfast in all your ways.” (Proverbs 4:26)

So this is what we're doing with this question. When I ask, how does this story apply to this circumstance? I'm giving careful thought to the paths that my feet are walking in.

Proverbs 14:12 says that “there is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.”

One of the areas that I have seen it prove true for me is when I apply a story to a circumstance where it doesn't belong.

I've been hurt by a friendship in the past. And so I apply those same wounds to a new friendship.

I've risked something before and it didn't bear the fruit that I thought it would and so I apply that same fear or anxiety to a new opportunity.

I am navigating this exercise, really looking to better understand some anxiety that I have been feeling in different areas of my life. I know that anxiety doesn't belong there. That's not a place that I want to live, but in order to be able to overcome that lesser story, it helps me to slow down and consider it more deeply.

Anxiety is something that I have struggled with off and on throughout my entire life. And one of the reasons that it keeps coming back is because sometimes I can try and gloss over it in an area and move too quickly past it. I judge the story and I try and squash it by just refusing it. But the story keeps popping up, which means somewhere I'm aligning with it.

Somewhere in that anxious story, I'm partnering with it. I'm thinking that I'm finding some value in it or that there's some piece of truth that I really need to hold on to. And so in this season, I'm slowing down to inspect the story more closely. I don't want to judge it or just run past it.

I want to understand why this keeps coming up in my life so that I can genuinely reject it for good. For this story that I'm seeing, the story that I'm telling myself, how does that story apply to this circumstance?

The step that we're in right now isn't necessarily to figure out if this is a good assumption or a bad assumption. We're really still in that early stage of just looking to understand. How does this story apply to this circumstance? And so we're going to take that question first within ourselves. I encourage you to spend a few minutes reflecting on this question. And then we're going to take this question to God to see what else he might want to show us.

God, how does this story apply to this circumstance?

And if it feels like you're not getting clarity, another way to ask that question would be:

God, what is it about what I'm going through right now that prompts me to apply that story to this circumstance?

Have a good talk and join me for our next episode for question number three, which for many people tends to be the most insightful and the most life changing.

And if you've been encouraged by this content, please share it with a friend and help them grow in their conversational relationship with God too!

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