Today's Unshackled Echo was previously published on
January 1, 2016.
My instinctive reaction was yes, I want to make this year a good one and write a great story. Then I remembered. I spent years writing my own stories, and they were never good ones.
When I hold the pen of my life the story never turns out to be much worth reading. My life has never been worth living during the times when I insisted on holding the pen and ruling my own life. I have written horror stories, crime novels, plenty of noir and the sad tales of the junkie and the drunk. Disasters? Yeah, I've written plenty of those as well. Depression, angst and suicide were common themes of the stories I wrote on my own. My teen years could have been scripts for after school specials on how not to live your life. In my twenties I graduated to bad Lifetime movie scripts where I starred in my stories as the bad guy who wrecked his own life and the lives of everyone around him. The thirties turned into a prison drama.
Looking back at the books I have written does not inspire me to pick up the pen again. Yesterday I wrote of the First Step to freedom and a life worth living. It's a journey I began seven years ago by putting down the pen and giving God permission to be the author of my life. The way my story went began to change, and within a few chapters I discovered a life worth living. The books God has written since have been so much better for me and the lives of those in my life.
We simply can not control our own lives. It doesn't work out well when we try. We find ourselves in various forms of slavery and bondage, leaving destruction and chaos scattered throughout almost every chapter. We can't set ourselves free or write a great story for ourselves. Steps two and three are all about the sequel being better than the first series. Once we realize that our books have at best been less than satisfactory reads, we come to a place where we realize there is an Author much better qualified than us. He is the most creative and talented writer ever. His words spoke the creation into existence and breathed life into the world. His tales are glorious and full of love, hope, peace and joy.
It's like writing a series of books for years where even the best ones are amateurish and full of mistakes. Then, when you start thinking it might be better to scrap the series and start over, the greatest writer imaginable reaches out and says He's interested in your story. He wants to take it over, write a masterpiece. He's not going to scrap the stories that have been. They will be incorporated, and the story will still be uniquely flavored with your original style. But when we surrender and let God hold the pen, the writing becomes beautiful.
I can't write a good story with my life. I have tried and failed so many times. God can. He has proved it. I think I will let Him continue to write it, a simple expression of steps one through three toward a new life, a better life, a life of freedom, a life worth living. Today as the new year begins and we imagine the *365 days as a book of blank pages, let us all lay down our ens and let God write the story. I promise it will read so much better than anything we can write on our own.
* 2016 was a leap year, and the original version of the Unshackled Moment reflected that.
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