Redeeming the Negative Turn

Donald Miller’s Storyline process consists of a few basic parts:

1. Documenting your Back-story. (The big positive & negative events or “turns” you’ve been thru)
2. Redeeming Negative Turns. (What did you gain/what positive resulted from the hard stuff?)
3. Roles & Ambitions. (What roles do you play and what do you want to accomplish?)
4. Inciting Incidents. (How are you gonna make it happen?)
5. Conflict. (Expect it and embrace it. It’s the stuff of Good Story)
6. Climactic Scenes / MySubPlot.com. (What does the Story’s conclusion look like?)

I’m on Step 2.

In short, I have to find “the positives” within a divorce, multiple untimely moves during my K-12 years, pushing off my Faith for stuff that felt a lot more fun after college, multiple employers going under, and my wife and I both using entirely dysfunctional and destructive methods to manage our day-to-day fears.

I know that I’m still ticked about a lot of stuff, but I’m far enough away from most of it to actually find the silver linings that are there to be had: a positive perspective on a mother’s love, knowledge that my God is with me every step of the way, increased understanding of folks that have gone thru similar experiences, and a deep connection between husband & wife.

Without acknowledging these positives I will remain closed, selfish, and unable to forgive. And, without that forgiveness, I will be hard-pressed to know what love really looks like because I’ll continue spending my time protecting my innards from more pain.

I obviously have very little “figured out”, but I’m thankful to be on Step 2 and am proactively moving thru it to get to Step 3. 

And that’s the beauty of it. 

The process illustrates, by its very structure, that the past is somewhere to visit and acknowledge, but it’s not a place to live. Where are you livin’?