What’s Your Story?
Seeing Your Life Through God’s Eyes
How Joseph’s Story Can Help You Tell Yours
by Sarah Heath
Abingdon Press, 2017. 128 pages.
Review written 11/11/22 from my own copy.
My church small group has been going through What’s Your Story this Fall, and it’s been great for group discussion.
The book is short — designed to cover only four weeks of meetings, with one bonus week at the end. We did a week at the beginning, but it worked well for us, because we meet on nights when our local school system is in session, and they had lots of Monday holidays this Fall — so the book is getting us exactly through Advent.
And it’s a good study for getting to know each other. The author mostly uses the framework from Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey to look at your own life and Joseph’s life story in the Bible.
I thought that approach was just a little simplistic — but she does acknowledge the complexity of actual lives, and provides a good jumping-off place to talk about our own lives. Basically, the chapters cover the Call to Adventure or Inciting Incident (Joseph sold into slavery), then Plot Twists (Joseph thrown into prison), then Climactic Moments – or embracing your desire and identity (Joseph interpreting Pharaoh’s dreams and exalted as ruler over Egypt), and finally the aftermath and preparation for another journey. In the fifth “bonus” week, the author encourages study participants to tell their stories to each other.
Despite there only being four chapters, each chapter is rather long, and you could spend two weeks on each chapter. I felt like we were only beginning the discussion with one week. The book includes journal pages, with big questions or quotations written in calligraphy and room to write your responses. For example, I enjoyed the blank timeline where she asks the reader to diagram the positive and negative plot twists in your life and look for themes.
Now, I’ve already done a lot of thinking about my life when I wrote Project 52 — the year I was 52 years old, I blogged each week about one year of my life. I’m also sitting in a very good place on my timeline when it’s easy to see how God took all my negative plot twists and worked them out for good. So I didn’t desperately need to hear this idea of your life as a story you’re co-writing with God. But I hope that perspective made my discussion encouraging. And I did enjoy having a vehicle for discussing that fundamental idea.
Here’s a nice quotation that reflects the approach you’ll find in this book:
I think it is problematic when we make people neurotic about finding “the calling” on their lives instead of helping people look for themes and see how their passions create deep desires that can translate into many fields. What you desire matters! What makes you come alive? What would the world miss if you didn’t tell your story? These are all the questions we should be answering when we are cowriting our story with God. It’s about more than just “What do you want to do when you grow up?”
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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.
What did you think of this book?