Want to Make Even Your Hard Story into a Good Story?

You can only write your own lines in the story. 

Sometimes, the bravest thing you can do is still write your best, into your lines, in the hardest story

You can’t control how anyone else’s lines in the story will go, you can’t control how the whole of the story will unfold — but what you can control is how you will write good with your lines of the story. 

During the course of one long painfully tender year, the marriages of two friends imploded, while the family of another fractured. 

I sat on my front porch with one friend, and ached for all that just kept breaking. We had known each other since high school, known each other’s families since we were teens with all the teased hair. Life had worn us all down and all I could just quietly offer was gentle hope:

“You’re doing it even now. Sometimes, the bravest thing you can do is still write your best into your lines in the hardest story… ”

You can’t take people’s pain away — but there’s always a way to somehow offer people withness and witness. 

When a friend I’ve known for more than a decade-and-a-half calls me every morning for nearly a year, I pick up, like I’d want someone to pick me up when everything’s falling apart. We all need someone we can count on to be there when we’ve lost count of the heartbreaks.  

She’s woken up to yet another day in the valley of the shadow of sadness and she’s desperate for someone to walk with her, to somehow walk less alone. 

You can’t take people’s pain away — but there’s always a way to somehow offer people withness and witness. 

You only get to write your lines in this story. What would it look like today to write more good into this story with your lines — the only lines you get to write?

When someone gives us withness, it mends a bit of the brokenness, and when someone gives us witness, we see how healing can happen here.  

So I sit on the other end of the line and walk with her through the depths of questions and worries and sadness. We have history together: She called me more than a decade ago to ask whether I thought she should think about more babies, and when that baby now blows out more than 10 birthday candles, I grin, thinking he was one of my best prayers for her. When you’ve got years of friendship behind you with someone, you walk with them through whatever they have ahead.   And I’m a slow learner of Jesus: Sometimes the best way to be a good friend is simply to be a good listener. 

When there’s space for my line in the conversation, that’s the line I keep returning to: 

“You only get to control your lines in the story. You only get to write your lines in this story.…

How do you write your lines in a way that you have peace at the end of the day, at the end of your life? And what would it look like today to write more good into this story with your lines — the only lines you get to write?”

No matter what the gurus may say, your life isn’t a story you alone fully get to write: Your life is a story that, in part, you are given.

You don’t get to write the whole of your story — you don’t get to write whether you get sick or whether your family breaks apart. You don’t get to decide whether the economy crashes or a business files bankruptcy or someone rear ends your car or if the call comes after your tests with a diagnosis that you don’t want. 

You get to make every single one of your lines, in your story, into a line of love.  So your story, no matter what, reads like a love story, on your part. 

And true: You don’t get to put words into anyone else’s mouth, you don’t get to choreograph their next move, you don’t get to craft or manipulate or dictate anyone else’s next response in the story that is your actual life. 

You don’t get to write all of your story —- your story is given. 

But? What you do get to do in that story that you’re given — is write your own lines. 

You get to decide how to make your lines into the best lines. You get to decide how you’re going to respond, how you’re going to forgive, how you’re going to live cruciform and sacrifice, how you’re going to reach out with grace, how you’re going to let love be your goal, how you’re going to set up wise boundaries, how you’re only going to speak words that make souls stronger. 

You get to make every single one of your lines, in your story, into a line of love.  So your story, no matter what, reads like a love story, on your part. 

Agency is the ability and autonomy to act — and in every act of your life, you always have agency for good, for love, with your lines in the script.  

Agency is the ability and autonomy to act — and in every act of your life, you always have agency for good, for love, with your lines in the script.  

By God’s grace: You have agency to make your lines into good lines — which makes the hardest stories, into redemptive stories that point to a good God.

And by God’s grace: You can walk someone through a valley, through a hard chapter of their story, and their story may not at all turn down the roads you hoped or earnestly prayed for, but the grace of every story is:

You always have agency to be an agent of love.

In Christ, it’s always in your power, to be a powerful agent of the Jesus’ love in every chapter of your story.

You always have agency to be an agent of love.

And love isn’t about agreeing in every way with someone, but finding meaningful ways to somehow sacrifice for someone.

So no matter what the scene or scenario, every single one of our stories has an Author, and He is the Word, and He ultimately only writes good stories… and He’s giving us courage to keep writing goodness and cruciform love into every single one of our lines in His sovereign, redemptive story of grace.

Winter slowly gives way to spring, the tulips bloom, the peonies bud, painfully tender seasons give way to better ones.

And hard stories soften into beautiful ones…. one brave, good line of ours at a time.

Thinking about how to move from one chapter to the next?

Even when others may choose lines in the story that you wish were different?

Jessica N. Turner, a long-time very kind friend, who’s shown me nothing but real grace and much love when I’ve chosen very different lines and roads, choices and decisions, in my own story and life, than she has chosen, transparently shares her own personal journey and choices she’s made, and how she’s moved forward with grace, forgiveness and empathy, during a very hard season in her one life where she endeavors to always love large.

Learn more about Jessica’s tender story and heart here.