Childhood Stories of Delight and Harm

1. Make a list of 10 stories from your childhood or early adulthood (before 21 years of age) that you would say had a profound effect on your life. 

Stories of Wholeness - The first five stories will be about wholeness...a time when you felt wholeness and goodness...justice, delight and belonging.
For Stories of Wholeness, 1 is of the least amount of joy and delight and 5 would be the time in your life when you felt all the world was right, the happiest day you remember, etc.

1. Skiing with Anita, Michael, Neil, aged 20. Rank 2.
2. Prowling at night with Matthew, aged 12. Rank 3.
3. Becoming the leader in the final project for my Bachelor of Information Technology, aged 21. Rank 2.
4. Being delighted in by my Uncle Max, aged about 3. Rank 3.
5. Being invited to dinner by Michael, Shane, and Don. Rank 3.

2. Stories of Harm - The second five stories will be a wound story involving an experience of loss, betrayal, powerlessness, or shame.
For Stories of Harm, 1 is of the least amount hurt and heartache and 5 bears the almost overwhelming heartache and impact.  3 is significant but not overwhelming.  For the first Story of Harm, we recommend not writing a story ranked as a 1 or 5.  Our suggestion would be to pick a 3 or a 4 story.

1. Rejected after refusing to be sexually assaulted, aged 8. - Harm rank 10/10
2. Thinking I was shown friendship by Darren, yet being bullied. - Harm rank 3/10
3. Rejection by Guy and popular sporty kids and entire year group in year 5. - Harm rank 8/10
4. Rejection by year group at the end of year 10. Harm rank 10/10
5. Embarrassed by Dad1: Pulling my pants down in front of a friend and his Dad 

For both categories of stories, they don't need to involve all the elements listed about (justice, delight or betrayal, loss, shame, etc.) but there may be overlap.

3. Pick one story and write a narrative that is between 750-1000 words. We suggest you don’t attempt to write the story first. Instead, let yourself return to the event in imagination and allow yourself to recollect as much as you can. It is often a good idea to write out what comes to mind in phrases or clauses rather than attempt to write in full sentences. 

Consider the context.  Where are you?  What does it look like?  How would you describe the place?  Who was there?  Who were the characters in this scene?  How did the event move—or if thought about in terms of plot what happened and then what happened next, and then next, until you end the story?  What was spoken/said by you or the other characters?  How did you feel?  What was going on in your mind?  How did it end? 

For many people that brings up the question:  What if I don’t remember beyond the fact that an event occurred?  We will address the issue of memory in far greater detail in our group time, but for now rather than being stymied by an absence of memory, my suggestion would be to ‘fill in the possibilities’ by writing what may feel like “fiction”.  Instead of asking the question: what exactly happened?  We’d prefer you to ask, “What is possible given the time, situation, and the people involved?” 

You know these characters.  You know how events unfold.  Allow yourself to use your imagination and skills of deduction to write a plausible way the event unfolded rather than stop when your memory seems unable to take you any further. 

If you find yourself writing a report: this happened, then this happened, and then this occurred—stop and ask yourself why you are writing at such a distance.  This writing is the invitation to suffer your story and explore how it was instrumental in shaping the trajectory of your life.  I’ll explain later in our teaching time why this is not only important but utterly biblical.