Untold Stories

“Sometimes our own stories are the ones we can never tell. But if a story is never told, it becomes something else - forgotten.”

These words begin the movie Sarah’s Key. What whisked me into this anything but cheery movie was how it illustrated the stories of our lives, particularly the untold stories. “We are shaped by our history,” a father tells a son who doesn’t know his history because he didn’t know his mother’s history. We can’t change our stories, our histories, in some ways. They are what they are. But what we do with them, where we chose to go next, this we choose.

The main character of the story chose not to tell her story. Not to those around her, not to her son. In the end, this drove her to make a drastic choice. I feel very passionate about this, telling our stories. As someone who has kept a part of my story untold for years, this movie struck me to the core. I was more fully me – for lack of better way to explain it – after I shared. Free from the weight of the past. The past was still there and unchanged. But I was changed and experienced freedom by telling my story. The last three years of my life were very, very dark as I struggled through the lies of my story to get to the truth. Now, after that hard work and wading through those dark years, I rest in my freedom, in God’s restoration and healing. But there were many times the last three years I could not see hope and I much rather would have been in heaven than here.

I did a lot of hard work in trying to share (and gain freedom) from the grip and prison my untold story held over me. Counseling, groups, talking, journaling, sitting in the pain. Choosing to move forward instead of being overcome by it, trusting God was really leading me towards more life instead of this death I was living in.

One of the biggest steps was sharing my untold story and having trusted friends support, listen and lead me to God’s truth. Please, if you are in a dark time now, unable to see hope – reach out to trusted individuals until you find help. The right people are willing if only you tell your untold story.

It won’t be easy. There will be a price to pay for speaking the truth. Yours and other lives will be changed – some for good and some for bad. But for me, there came a point where it cost more to stay where I was in lies than stepping into pain and darkness, groping for truth.

If you seek truth in God, He will grant you freedom in His time and way. There is always healing and forgiveness for those who seek God. Not instantly. Not without pain or cost. Not on our timetable. But remember in your darkest time it is there.

“When a story is told, it is not forgotten. It becomes something else – a memory of who we were, the hope of what we can become.”