It was a typical week for me for the most part. School. Homework. Church. Soccer practice. Soccer was a huge part of my life since I was six. I moved up through the ranks and landed a position on a select soccer team and practiced twice a week with games every Saturday. I loved it! I loved the sport and I felt like I was somebody… a professional footballer at age 12.
One Thursday we went to practice. Practice began with the team warming-up. The warm-up formation was two single file lines, in which we jogged around the perimeter of the field in this formation. I was running next to my teammate, Stephen. We were talking back and forth when all of a sudden Stephen said to me, “You have a girl’s voice.” POW!! It was a shot I didn’t expect. I responded with (not sure how I came up with this), “Well, if you don’t like it, you will have to take it up with God because he made me.” From that point forward, Stephen and I were pretty good friends, and I didn’t really think too much about it.
I am now 38 years old. I don’t really think about Stephen’s statement “that much.” Just every time I present in front of a group, talk into a microphone, get excited and yell, say certain words, and talk to others. I don’t really think about the statement much. Yeah, right!!
Most people hearing my story of Stephen wouldn’t think much of the story and would consider it typical and mundane. I do too. It is something that happens to little kids all the time while growing up. Though for this story to linger so long with me tells me it had more impact than I ever thought or knew.
We can all think of the high and low stories in our lives, and can feel the way these stories affect us but we don’t give much additional thought to them. Though I believe it is the minutiae of these mundane, typical, stories that have had more impact on us than we give them credit for. It is the tender words whispered in our ears. The tense skin on the forehead and piercing eyes. It is the touch of a hand on our cheek. The laughter on the playground. It is the words spoken to us in our abuse. It is the smell of pine trees in the summer. These are the details of our stories that help shape us and name us. Our task is now to decide what we will choose. Will we choose not to name or tell the mundane stories thinking they are meaningless, or will we kindly enter into the details by naming the truth of these stories? Whichever choice we make will have great impact how we will give or not give ourselves to others and what we will or will not receive from others.
So, what have I chosen? I have chosen to worry and feel insecure after I speak, fearing that others think I sound like a girl or worse, disapprove. Shame comes and I immediately want positive feedback or to hide myself. My desire for positive feedback is a demand for others to console me. My hiding is an attempt to protect my image and to be my own savior.
My mundane story is now not so mundane because it sheds light on the truth, and that is, down in my heart I do not really believe that the Truth will save me and set me free.
God of the Scriptures calls us, his people, to REMEMBER. Remember what? EVERYTHING! Everything about your story and how the Lord your God has written it, is in it, and has saved you. Therefore forgetting (refusing) to remember your stories, even the mundane ones, blinds us from knowing who God is more fully, how He has designed you uniquely, and where He wants you to go.
Which mundane stories have lingered for you, but you have always considered them to be typical or not important?
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