I Am Not My Story

I am not my story. I emerge from it like a phoenix, rising from the ashes and residue of broken promises and unfulfilled dreams. I rise above the memories of my successes for they are only one page in the adventure drama called life. I rise, free to soar, to be fully me.

Scarred? Yes. Broken? No! Battle wounds remind me, not of the times I nearly died, but of the times I defeated death.

I’m grateful for my story because it gave me a glimpse of who I really am. It showed me strengths that may have gone undiscovered. And, every day I become more me, shedding the vestiges of ill-fitting, absolutely inaccurate, well-intentioned definitions of who God intended me to be.

I am not my story but I use it, not to keep myself captured in chapters where I was lost, alone, frightened, weary, wounded…. I tell it, not to play the role of victim or martyr or saint.  I speak so that some other person might know her story is ever unfolding, to help someone see he is a page turn away from overcoming.

I am not my story but it has value. And I’m grateful because I am strong enough to own the story and not let it own me.