Story Matters Podcast
In the Story Matters Podcast, Hosts Ryan and Emily Baker discuss the intersection between theology and psychology helping listeners to better grasp how their particular stories have shaped them.
Story Matters Podcast
34. Why Story Work: For the Lovers, the Haters and Everyone Not Sure.
We make a clear, biblical case for "story-work" or anything under the umbrella of understanding your narrative in view of God's redemptive story. We explore why people resist it—from theological objections to fear of feeling—while offering a simple, practical exercise to begin writing memories with courage. We move through four response categories and end with an invitation to set road markers and continue the work.
We look at four audience categories in regards to Story Work: You love it, You like it, You say you I like it but are actually resistant, You hate it.
You may love Story work but have plateaued after a few stories or maybe you have binged podcasts without putting pen to paper. We give a simple assignment that will help you. This gentle doorway accesses implicit memory and could get you moving towards stories that need to be engaged. We talk embodiment, why some of us hide in left‑brain analysis to avoid emotion, and how compassionate curiosity toward your younger self softens contempt and opens space for change. Jeremiah’s invitation to set up road markers becomes our guide: consider the road by which you went so you can recognize old terrain and recognize patterns from our past affecting our current life.
If the church has felt strong on doctrine but weak on tending wounds, this conversation offers a grounded alternative: courageous remembering that leads to truthful naming, care, wise navigation, and a longing for restored peace.
So we find ourselves in the situation of giving an apologetic for story work quite often, whether it's to people that we work with that are loving it but still doubt what we're doing, or it's to naysayers or to our own selves because it's hard work. And anytime you you hit hard work, you think, why are we doing this again? And what does story work even mean? And why does it matter? Most of us know this, but somewhere between 45 and 50% of the Bible is narrative.
SPEAKER_01:And it starts with in the beginning.
SPEAKER_00:In the beginning. So it's a story. I'm so thankful that the many writers of these stories did not believe the lie of our culture that it doesn't matter, that we shouldn't look back. I'm so thankful that the writers of scripture were obedient to the call to be honest, to tell on ourselves, to tell the details that are not pretty. And so we have great stories. We all love the Joseph story. I've never met one Christian that doesn't love the Joseph story. And yet we wouldn't know the Joseph story if Joseph wouldn't have told someone his story.
SPEAKER_01:Welcome to the Story Matters Podcast. I'm Ryan Baker.
SPEAKER_00:And I'm Emily Baker.
SPEAKER_01:We believe people grow and heal through understanding how our stories are rooted in God's redemptive story.
SPEAKER_00:We hope our conversations encourage you to engage your story and the world around you with a new lens.
SPEAKER_01:We're glad you're here.
SPEAKER_00:When I tell people what we do with story matters, coaching and counseling, we use the term story work. And that's the nickname to narrative-focused trauma care, but also to an umbrella looking into your stories of harm, your life story, really understanding how your body has been shaped and your brain formed around certain things within your childhood in those early years. I have found there to be four categories of responses. The first category be I love it. I'm all in. Second category, I like it. Third category, I say I like it, but I'm actually super resistant to it. And I have some interesting Christianese language around how I do know my story, but I actually don't do story work. And then the fourth category is completely resistant and I hate it.
SPEAKER_01:So can I trump my own version of those four? I want to go backwards to forwards.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:So the hate it's true and it's strong, but I would just say either I don't get it, I don't think it's important, I'm not amused, all the way to like it's wrong. So that's I'm against it. I want to hit that next category. A lot of people will say, Oh, I like it, but they're not really understanding what it is that narrative-focused trauma care teaches. They maybe like the word story, maybe have read something of Alander. What we probably would say about that category, especially if they're therapists, often these are the ones that haven't actually done their own story work. They like it. It's a theory they believe in.
SPEAKER_00:That's the key word theory.
SPEAKER_01:They like the theory. But they haven't actually written stories, which then leads us to your second category. I like it, but a lot of people have never actually written or engaged a story. It's sort of like looking in from the outside, thinking someday when everything aligns, I'll sit down and try that. That's the category I think we want to talk to today, especially with this assignment. I want to give the first category I think you and I are in. A lot of people, I mean, man, we love this. It's very formative. But even that category of person, and I would include myself, we can get stuck with like, yeah, I've written my three or four stories, or I have a general sense of it. And I think often we forget we need to continue to write and engage and go deeper because there's so many memories and stories that we can explore.
SPEAKER_00:I would also add to that first category that we love it, we find ourselves surrounded by people that don't like it. And so we begin to question ourselves. Like maybe we're a little bit far out there, maybe we're a little bit extreme, maybe we're kind of sniffing up the wrong path. You know, we've missed the gospel somehow. We're trying to do something new and improved. And I think there can be some shame, even in that category of I love it, when people around you might say things like I heard someone recently say to a friend of mine who was exploring some things, well, what do you hope to accomplish in doing this? And you could sense there was almost a threatened feeling of like, I don't really like what you're doing. I don't want you to do story work because then it makes me feel something. Another group of people I have found that I think are in the I I think I like it category. I'm not opposed to it, but I think I like it, are the people that don't really know what we do, but they love stories of redemption. People are standing on the stage and they were an alcoholic, but now they're a father, an amazing person. So they'll even send us like, you know, reels of like, oh, look at this great story. This is what you're doing. And it's not at all what we're doing. And and so maybe the category of I think I like it is really I don't know at all what it is. I don't even know that I ascribe to much trauma. I think there's trauma in the world. I'll use that word from time to time, but I don't think I had trauma. But I do love stories of redemption, and that's skipping over any of the grief and any of the hardship that we really push people towards. So what I'd love to do today, Ryan, is a stump the chump moment. I remember doing those back when you were in RUF. It was a really fun night that it was like, hey, anyone gets to ask any question. I want to pose for a minute as someone in each of those categories. And I want to ask you to give me like a quick summary of why you think story work matters. Why do you think it is actually an important thing to do? I listed love it, like it, think I like it, hate it. You went through yours and went, hate it, think I like it, like it, love it. Either way, there's four categories. I want to start with the one that you started with. Hate it. I'm opposed to it, I think it's stupid. Whatever the reason is, I'm now gonna pose as a person that hates it and I'm gonna challenge you. Why do you think your story matters?
SPEAKER_01:I do want to answer you and I want to be succinct, but honestly, if this were real life, I would want to ask you a lot of questions. Like, what's the perspective you're coming from?
SPEAKER_00:That's so good. Because we just did our podcast on listening. You'd be like, no, I would want to ask.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I'm not just trying to be philosophical. For example, are you a person who is a Christian who hungers and thirsts for righteousness and believes in the doctrine of depravity and holds to the idea that we are not just up against evil? You know, how do you describe evil? Satan, your flesh, and the world? Are we in that category? What category are we?
SPEAKER_00:Right, Christian, non-Christian. Are you just a person that has experienced a lot of depression and you're stuck and yet you don't think knowing your story and looking back is important. That's not where you're interested in looking.
SPEAKER_01:The reason it's a hard question is when I have come to understand this modality more, to me, it's one of those things, and we've shared this before, that it's more like, oh, why aren't we doing this? Rather than defending it. If I were to say, okay, to this person, you're telling me that what you think is the best thing to do in life is to start today fresh with somewhat of an amnesia from everything in the past, especially if it was a little bit hurtful or problematic. You would say, Well, no, I don't think that. Probably you're the same person who would say history, if it's not learned, is doomed to repeat itself. So we have these lofty views of say history. We would say things like, When there's a crime, we want the truth. Many people love to watch shows that get at the truth and unpack all the possibilities. So the hard burden would be okay, why when it comes to my life? I have a date I was born. I had a family of origin. We had our years in life and family, whatever that was, and we had our roles we played in that family. All these things are who we are. And so here you are born and raised in a world that is fallen, right? We're raised outside of the Garden of Eden. At some point, you've aged into adulthood. Why would I not want to understand my early wounds? Why would I not want to know the things that happened to me? The way I would start with this answer is first of all, what it's not. The person you define is like, why are you going there? That person, I would say, and this is very important. We do not do story work to out people. That's not the goal. It's nowhere to be found in story work. And we do not do story work to confront people. Now, can you do those two things? Of course. You're free to do what you believe God's calling you to do in your life. But when we move toward our stories and whether you're doing it through the Allender Center, through Story Matters, one-on-one in group, the goal is that you're understanding your story. The idea is you're gaining insight into your own inner workings. What you do with that is your own choice that you can pray through and seek wisdom. But if you can take those two off the table first, maybe that person feels a little bit safer. Like, okay, so we're not going to air our dirty laundry out.
SPEAKER_00:Well, one of the biggest rebuttals I hear against it is that it's in a category of therapy. And there's a lot of quotes that go around social media from pretty well-known Christian leaders that are saying, Hey, stop this madness. You don't need therapy, you need repentance. And so I think that's one of the concerns in the category of I hate it, that's what they hate.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. And again, I do know the quote you're referring to, and maybe we're making the assumption that that speaker was speaking to all forms of therapy. But I again, broadly speaking, if you are an Orthodox Christian or Jewish person, I think you have to name there is such a thing as evil, and there's really two categories, the evil we do and the evil that's done to us. Those are your two broad categories. And most of what the church focuses on is the evil we do. And if you really want to peel that back even more, certain documents like the Westminster Confession of Faith will say to repent or confess your particular sins particularly. Again, so you're not you're not just like broad brushing, oh, I did this. You're actually seeking to understand what you did and why you do it and particularly. Well, so what we're saying is let's go a little further and explore, okay, since you know we weren't born the day we were baptized at like 14 or or you made a profession of faith at 13, 20. That's not the day life began. Everyone knows that. We carry into our life all sorts of patterns and personalities and if you want to use the word triggers, sensibilities. We're so fully formed by the time you make this commitment to be a Christ follower, and there's nothing scripturally that would say all the stuff that went on before was erased. And so, in our estimation, one of the major ways we are growing sanctification is we're not just dealing with things in the present, but we're looking at things in the past. We're looking at things that were formative. When we find the pattern in the present, it's very helpful to find the formation of it. Most likely, these are things that were formed to protect us. And that just all of a sudden does something different, I think, because so many people shame themselves around their sin. You know, I keep doing this, I think I'm just a lazy bum. And we I hear these kind of things all the time. But to begin to actually have compassion on your young self, Jesus has compassion on the crowds longing for food and they're starting to argue. We can have compassion on our self. We can begin to explore the origins of things. What was it like in my home? What were the ways my parent or caregiver or siblings, how do we interact? What things harmed me? How did I protect myself? What did I do to stay safe emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually? And all of these answers are very hard to come to without story. If you just start trying to put words to it, it's very difficult. But with story, you actually discover things that you wouldn't discover if you were just trying to fill it in like with left-brained categories.
SPEAKER_00:So all of that you just said is great for someone like me that loves it, and maybe even for those that like it. But if we're gonna start with this category of I hate it and I think it's useless, there's other reasons, right? We we've said there's maybe someone feels the danger in what you just said. Like it is a dangerous, slippery slope to start really looking at how you've been harmed because you're gonna just become the victim. You're just gonna become a blame-shifting Christian that really needs to just repent of your own sins, the sins of your youth.
SPEAKER_01:Are you equally concerned with the person who is so focused on their particular expression of sin that they have no category for the fall and for the way depravity came to them, and that anybody else on this planet could do any harmful thing because they must start with themselves and end with themselves and everybody else gets a pass?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I think there would be people in that category that would say, Yeah, focus on your own responses, not how it came to you.
SPEAKER_01:Then what do you do with injustice?
SPEAKER_00:Hmm.
SPEAKER_01:Whenever there's a leader that's harmful or you're in a situation where you're like, maybe that's just me. Because here's the reality. We know that all humans fall under either self-contempt or others' contempt. And there's no doubt that if you're an other's contempt person, story work and fuel you. And we all need to do the plank and the spec and look at our own expression. If you're self-contempt, that can look more noble. Like I'm just looking at myself. That can also be because um I'm scared. I'm actually more of a coward. See, if it's my fault, I don't have to even name it to other people. I don't have to confront it. It's only my fault. I just have to figure out my own thing with Jesus and I can avoid conflict.
SPEAKER_00:Why do you think people hate the idea of doing story work? Tell me.
SPEAKER_01:Evil likes secrecy. Evil likes to keep things in the dark.
SPEAKER_00:But these are righteous religious people we're talking about. We're not talking about evil people.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, they may be righteous in their eyes, but they're not righteous in this area whatsoever. There's nothing remotely biblical about the idea of not wanting to make the truth known.
SPEAKER_00:And first John, he said, I think people would go toe-to-toe with you on that. I can be a strong Christian and not look at my story.
SPEAKER_01:You can say those words just now, but give me a scriptural basis for them.
SPEAKER_00:Love covers over a multitude of sins. I now live. No, no, no. Love covers over what? Say it. A multitude of sins.
SPEAKER_01:What's that last word?
SPEAKER_00:Sins. Something that I used to do, but I've been cleansed by the blood of Christ.
SPEAKER_01:But you're saying love covers over them. So I'm assuming you're the one loving the person who's sinning against you.
SPEAKER_00:No, God's love. God's love covers, and so why look back?
SPEAKER_01:Jesus' death on a cross and propitiation and the removal of wrath, taking it on himself, is true, but that's not what that verse is saying. Right. I think what you meant is the person saying that's like, hey, I felt offended by somebody, but I chose love.
SPEAKER_00:That's exactly how that's used.
SPEAKER_01:That's how it's used. And I would say you chose love over their sin. What does that mean? You can't use that scripture. Love covers over a multitude of sins if you haven't identified what they've done as sin.
SPEAKER_00:Or just like they hurt my feelings, but I'm not going to get hurt. I'm just going to love them.
SPEAKER_01:So that you're not covering over sin.
SPEAKER_00:I'm choosing to give them the same grace that was given to me.
SPEAKER_01:Jesus calls what you did sin. He died for it.
SPEAKER_00:He died for their sins too. So I don't need to dig up old past stories.
SPEAKER_01:But here's the thing everything you're saying is avoiding the naming of sin and discretion. So if a person's like, hey, love covers over a multitude of sins, and that and i.e., I'm not going to even name that that person did an injustice or hurt me or abused me. I'm just not going to even name it. Then don't call it a sin. What's happening is you're choosing to ignore problems.
SPEAKER_00:Well, can you call it a sin, but say it's been covered by the blood of Christ? And so therefore I don't need to dig it up and deal with it.
SPEAKER_01:I would say, of course. As I said in the beginning, doing this work never requires that you go to the person. What any of us as followers of Christ do after we've named that we've been sinned against is between us and the Lord. We pray, think through that, pray through that. Matthew 18 is not necessarily like just, hey, I'm going to confront every single person that sins against me. But the point is, I am going to name what happened as sin because I can't be whole. If you've done something to me and I don't have the freedom to name that it was a breaking of shalom, then all I'm doing is I'm changing shalom.
SPEAKER_00:I think that's key. And obviously for the last couple of minutes, I've been that the devil's advocate and pushing back on what we hear quite a bit in the Christian world. I think that's probably huge that I want to just sit on for a second. That if we don't name the brokenness of shalom, then we're moving that plumb line of truth or shalom. And we've unpacked that obviously in our first season.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, isn't that peace, peace when there is no peace? We're just saying this is not really a problem.
SPEAKER_00:This category of hate it that we're dealing with first hates the terminology therapy or therapeutic. And there's a real resistance to that, any kind of psychology. It's like, oh, that's modern, new age, whatever. But the word therapy is basically describing Ezekiel 34 as to how the sheep are to be cared for, the wounded, the lost, the strayed. Like I'm caring for, I'm bringing back. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01:So so the word therapy or the word for counselor, counseling. It's the most biblical thing we've got. We're not defending the industry or those words. Jesus sent the comforter, the one who would come and counsel and care. Jesus himself says he is the great physician. I I saw one of these memes, you know, if you talk about like a sickness and not like a sin, uh, you're unbiblical. I'm like, Jesus says, I came for the sick.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think our, if I may say, modern Western-minded Christianity has gotten so far away from caring for the wounded, it's become so much more in dealing with sin and the theology behind things that we need to learn that our world is moving more towards therapy because we're hurting people and the church isn't necessarily been the place for that kind of care. And I think Ezekiel 34 really describes it. The shepherds of Israel have failed in their role. But obviously, we're not defending the whole industry. There's a lot of therapy out there that misses the mark and does not point people back to the true healer. But Christian therapy is in essence what I mean by it's the most biblical thing we've got is that's the heart of God. He's constantly throughout scripture coming for his people, caring for his people, pulling them into his bosom, giving them peace, giving them healing.
SPEAKER_01:I want to do maybe a switching of gears and say, and you and I had this conversation just the other day, and it came out of your mouth pretty quickly. We talk about being embodied. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul is incensed at the thought that anyone would think you would be disembodied in the resurrection. You do get a new body, right, in heaven and glory, but it's a body. And on earth, we have a mortal body. In Romans 8, we see that Jesus took on this mortal body. Paul also teaches that the Holy Spirit brings life to our mortal bodies. And what this means is we need to be connected to our body. Now we can't go too long into this in this episode, but one of the effects of dysfunctional homes and traumatic upbringings is people are their heads become disengaged from their body in the sense that they've moved into their left hemisphere and they live out of a very much categorical theoretical framework. The academia breeds this. We love books. It's a plausibility structure of our age. What's your training? What category can I put you in to trust you? And to tell those people, oh, actually, we're going to venture into our right hemisphere and even into our feelings and emotions. It's anathema to some people. And to them, I think that's the same group that doesn't want to go into story because stories make us feel. Now it's ironic, they'll go to the movie tonight and they'll cry their eyes out over something, or they'll watch a historical, you know, some documentary. But we don't want to deal to our own stuff. I don't want to know my own story because I don't want to feel.
SPEAKER_00:They don't want to feel. And so they've made up theological reasons as to why it's wrong. But I think there is a massive resistance of don't make me feel. Let's move into the category of I like it, but actually super resistant to it. I think it's a category I want us all to be aware of just as we interact with people, that there will be people saying they like certain things about story work or the work of Kurt Thompson or John Eldridge's work, you know, like, yeah, yeah, I like it, but you find they're not willing to really engage or they're not willing to actually do the work. There is a resistance. So, Ryan, what do you think about this category? What do you think causes this?
SPEAKER_01:Well, and so whenever I flipped over your four, I was thinking like a pyramid. So at the bottom are those that don't like this idea. It's just not floating their boat, the haters, you might say. We've already discussed that. And even within that, there can be different categories. Now we're moving up the pyramid. We're saying, hey, this person's saying, no, I actually like these theories. And in that category, some will like it, kind of, some will like it a lot. I'm gonna start by saying I was in this category, introduced to Dan Alender's writing and seminary. We read The Healing Path and Wounded Heart. I remember when it came out buying and reading and loving and recommending to be told. That's the book where Dan really starts to explore telling your own story. So here he has given these great theories that we're now calling narrative-focused trauma care. And he's moving into okay, but how do we engage our own stories of harm? It's a great book. Read the book, did not do story work. So if you would have known me then, all the way up until 2016, 2017, I would have told you if you're talking story, I'm with you. If you had been at, let's say you it had existed at the time, the Allender Center, and you come back, I'd be like, that's really great. I love his writing. We would be on the same page. It wasn't until I was given the opportunity to go write my own story and be in a group, it was then that I realized that, oh, this is not easy. I love my left-brained categories that I've developed. I worked very hard. I knew my left-brained analyses. And this is one of the number one things I find when talking, whether it's clients or friends about our own lives. We will make quick snap categorical assessments. But my point is we have this left-brain analyses. If I want to get personal for a moment, I've shared some of my story. My parents were divorced when I was very young. So I grew up in a home with my mom and my brother. So all the way up until the islander world, I would have put myself in the category of, like, yeah, I didn't have a dad. That was what I needed to learn about and grow in. And it's still very, very true. But I never had done deeper dives into what it was like being raised with my own mother and my brother and my other stories. It wasn't until this work that I had to go into those spaces. And so I think what I would say is within the category of those that say they like it and even acting like they're doing it, I think what's really at root is that the question would just simply be, have you done it? If you come into contact with a person who says they do story work and you're seeking someone to help guide you, that's the question I would ask. Have you done your own work? Specifically, have you written and engaged stories of harm? That doesn't make it ironclad, but that means we're finding out if this person has really bought into this deeply or if it's just something they think is a good idea.
SPEAKER_00:And the keyword to what you just said was stories of harm. Because my category I put myself in was that I did like it and I had finally engaged one story. So I finally realized I have a story, and I was really cool to get to engage it. And then I was completely content to be what our good friend called me the cheerleader at the door, cheering everyone else through the door to go do their story work when I had done one story. And I had been challenged, but it wasn't gut-wrenching. It's gut-wrenching to do multiple stories and go places that you don't really want to go and open doors in the house that have been locked away for a while. And I think that's the category I would like to ask you about next. If you like story work, maybe you have done a story, maybe you are kind of a podcast guru and you've listened to everyone possible that talks about this topic, but you haven't done it in a long time, or you haven't really gone on a journey. It was maybe like a weekend experience, and that's about it. What would you say, Ryan, as an encouragement or as a challenge to someone in that category that they like it? Yeah, they've done it. They have an experience with it.
SPEAKER_01:It's a tricky one because we went from haters to I like it, but I've never really done it. Although those people I want to admit it. And I want to add to that category people who actually don't really get the theory either. I was giving them credit. You know, they maybe have heard of Alan Dor, but yeah, I do, I do story work or I've done narrative stuff. But now we're moving into, okay, no, I actually love the content that I'm hearing. It resonates with me. You know, I've listened to your podcast or Adam Young or I've read Alander. Yeah, I'm I'm in. I like these theories. And I've met people like this, like I binged that podcast, you know. Well, have you written a story? And the switch on the face of like almost throwing up in their mouth. I've seen it. And it's like, ooh, like I'm not gonna do that. And that's who I want to take that category. If you're in that category, you've been tracking with some of these podcasts or others, you're sort of vaguely aware of some of the things in your life, but you've never put pen to paper. So in a minute, I want to talk to that group, but I would just say it's helpful to at least pay attention to where you fit. Like, is this something that I just am saying I like, but I don't really like? Because I would even say, here I am, we've been doing this, we've gone through the training, you know, you facilitate a story group with story matters. I facilitate with the Allender Center. Every time I come to a weekend, I have to read one of my stories to this group. And there's four of those. And I have found that it's very easy to just kind of land on four stories. The question is, am I continuing, are we continuing to write our stories to engage early wounds? Or do we plateaued? I think a lot of people in this realm plateau and they say, you know, I've done that. That was really helpful. And I really would say this if it's worth doing, if this, if there's anything to narrative-focused trauma care at all, then what I think it would require is a lifelong commitment to always being willing to explore as I'm learning who I am in the present, then also going back and looking for places in the past to look for origins or look for expressions, places where it's vivid, these things that you're feeling now, because that's where these were developed. That's where we can see these more clearly.
SPEAKER_00:I think as I listen to you talk about the category of I like it, I think I would put in that category people that have done somewhat of some story work, but it was kind of like a thing they did. Like, yeah, I went through a phase of story work. I like it. It's good. I can see why you like it. They haven't bought into the I love it as seeing it as life work or partnering with Christ and exposing current issues that come up. Cause as we do the hard work, the integrative work of what I experienced in my daily life currently, how is that connected to my story? It's absolutely going to bring up new memory.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So let's go to the last final category, Ryan. I love it. You love it. What would we say to people in that category that are actually doing it? We have a lot of listeners that are our clients that are doing story work, but yet we live in a world that kind of shames it or makes you feel something of questioning as to why do you do this? What would your encouragement or challenge be to someone in that category?
SPEAKER_01:The first thing I wanted to say as we kind of brainstormed the idea of this podcast is even the people in the category you just named doubt this at times. I remember one of the teachers at Allender, really phenomenal instructor back when I was going through an FTC, as she came to do her teaching, she took a picture from her childhood and developed her presentation. And she just honestly said to the group, like, even as I drove here, I questioned, is this real? And isn't that what we do with the gospel? The reason I say this is I don't think story work is anything other than a type of repentance. Whether the thing happened yesterday or 10 years ago or 50 years ago, it's it's the past. And we've all heard the famous quote by Faulkner: the past isn't dead, it's not even past. We know from great writings like Siegel on memory that the way it's encoded, it's not really time-bound. You watch someone recall a memory and weep like it happened yesterday. There's no, well, that happened so long ago, I'm not really sad anymore. That's the reason we don't go there, is because it feels present. And so I would say, first of all, let's be honest by naming the fact that all of us probably resist this. Because what we're resisting is not just harmful things to us, but what we know from abuse and trauma is when hard things happen to us, our bodies respond. And we're then all of a sudden faced with the ways our bodies responded and the ambivalence of that and the disgust and the arousal and all sorts of ways. I think it's hard. It's the same thing. It's like once you've had an argument with the spouse and you've said, we'll circle back tomorrow. And tomorrow comes, I don't want to go back to that. We're getting along right now. Like, why would I want to rehash that? And we we've been there, right? And I get that. I think the biggest stalling point for any of us is I don't want to be sad right now. I don't want to go to hard things. And I would just say this to all of us as we think about this work. We need to reclaim the central truth. We keep saying the way up is the way down. Grief is the fulcrum, it's the thing. And I think as we think about what grief is, grief is not the ending, it's the beginning. I'm longing so much for the future that I'm groaning now. That's what we see in Romans 8, right? Creation is groaning in expectation. We ourselves groan inwardly as we wait outwardly. So I think what we're doing in story work is we're looking at places and groaning freshly for that little girl, that little boy. That's so good. So I want to give just a few closing thoughts and then an assignment, an exercise that we can do. I just want to name something that may or may not be clearly stated. One way we can find areas of difficulty or areas we need to grow is by, you know, you're living your life and you notice this is a hard thing. This behavior keeps coming up for me, this situation. So that's, I would say, the most common way the church deals with okay, so you're struggling with this, do the work around that. What we're doing in story work that's different is we're not starting with anything but the story itself. You're saying, oh, Okay, this was a particularly difficult episode in my life, a moment in time. You write the story, all of a sudden you're going, Oh my goodness, that's where I developed this vow, this agreement, this protection that's not good in the present day, but at the time I needed it. If you can learn and begin to write a lot more than you do, one author, Julia Cameron in The Artist's Way, prescribes morning pages. And I tell a lot of my clients about morning pages. It's not journaling because it's just putting words on paper. Ideally, it's long hand and it's what's coming to you in your mind, your heart. The reason we say that is there's no expectation. You don't want to think, well, who's going to read this? Or is this going to be theologically oriented? It can be poetry, it can be a shopping list, it can be anything to just get words on paper so that you're getting comfortable and used to writing. Not that we're trying to become writers, but rather we're trying to open up the medium of words on paper. It's a slower pace. It accesses parts of our brain and brain waves that we're not usually using. It can help us process things. So that being said, that's the backdrop to this exercise, whether you ever do that or not. I do that in the mornings. And so when I saw this exercise, I thought, I'll just do it. And that's pretty new for me. I often just glaze over these things. And the author wanted to give an exercise just again, get the pen moving. And I did it. And I want to give this to you guys. And it's called I Don't Know Why I Remember. Dot dot dot.
SPEAKER_00:Hmm. I don't know why I remember this, but yeah. Okay.
SPEAKER_01:So the goal is to pinpoint some previously unexplored material that remains hot for you in some important or emotional way. It doesn't have to be traumatic. One of the things I like about it is you don't really know why you're remembering this. It's like I don't know why I remember fishing with my granddad, and he always brought the skull. I never noticed he'd chewed tobacco until we were fishing. Whatever, you know, some memory pops up. And so what you want to do is just scan back over your life and think of things that have stuck in your mind, but for no reason. That'll be hard to do. You'll you'll have to jump around from maybe relative to relative, age to age, setting to setting. You're gonna write, I don't know why I remember, and then you're gonna name it. And you want to render this precisely on the page using concrete details. And don't try to explain why they stuck. Rather, just start to say what it was. I did this exercise. I don't want to go into personal detail, but it started with what I would call not anemic, but it didn't have any particular vibrancy in the moment. Really quickly, I started going to some deep, fun. It was fun. I felt like I was exploring memories were coming up, and it just seemed like a new way or a different way to access implicit memory, the memories that you don't naturally think about all the time. Maybe you've not thought about them since then. The reason I mentioned morning pages, no one's read this. Emily, you've not read it. I don't think I've even gone back to reread it. It was just a way to get these thoughts on paper around not just that memory, but around that time. And I think I can just honestly say there's so much healing that happens when we look over the terrain of our own stories.
SPEAKER_00:That's so good. The terrain of our own stories. I think based on what you said and the call to those of us that love this work is to keep writing, keep looking at the terrain. I think that is the call of scripture. Jeremiah 30 and 31 ends with this quote Set up road markers for yourself, make yourself guideposts, consider well the highway, the road by which you went. It's not saying future. It's saying look at where you've been, name where you've been, and you'll know when you're back in those terrains. You'll know when you're back in those same weeds. And I think that's the power of story work. As Story Matters Coaching, we firmly believe that seemingly disjointed aspects of our present life are rooted in your personal story and the narrative of the gospel. We'd love to help you explore your story by doing individual or group work with us. Storymatterscoaching.com or Story Matters Initiative on social media can point you to us.