I Came Here to Tell My Story
One day you wake up and realize that you have written a book! Not just any book, but the story of your life growing up in the wilderness! The morning sunlight glows through the cranberry curtains, filtering a brilliant red light cast across the room. You try to register the moment, take it in, and then the tears flow. Because it didn't just happen, just like that.
You didn't just wake up one day and have a book.
You started on a journey to tell your story. Years ago inside of your heart, a faint whisper spoke, "Follow me to finding out who you are." You were terrified, you wanted to run in the other direction as memories came flooding back—memories of the pain you would have to face, and the daunting thought…
Me—tell my story? Who am I to tell my story? Who am I, that anyone would listen to my words? I'm not even a writer. Writers are born writers, some cynical voice inside your head pops up loudly.
But you have learned to shut that voice out, to quiet it down, so that the real message, the real truth, the real God, can get through to you. You spend seven years quieting that loud voice that tells you, "You can't do this."
Who am I?
And the more words you write, the more mornings spent with pen to paper, the more winter days with cloudy skies hovering over you, the more summer heat melting against your skin, the more fall days with leaves swirling around you—words, words and more words swirl inside, and finally outside onto the page spills an answer to the question…
I am, a woman, a child, a girl, a mother, a warrior, a voice that is so pure and true, even the darkest shadows lingering beneath the surface cannot stop me. I AM UNSTOPPABLE!
The work is not done until it's done and you rise every morning, no matter the circumstance: kids crying, spilled milk, husband yelling, "I want a divorce." In this moment all the broken parts of your parents’ relationship hit you in the chest. This is the story you must face. Your heart cracks and the page cracks before you, the paper withers up and blows out the window… and while you’re standing in the kitchen over a pile of dirty dishes, you cry. The tears cleanse you, the rain falls, the water is healer, and you remember that all things can be healed, renewed, restored.
You breathe air into your lungs, gasping for life, and you remember that you came here to do the work of a warrior. To fulfill a purpose. To write those words, to tell your story, to live your answer to the question, who am I?
