A book review of: When You Don’t Like Your story: What if Your Worst Chapters Could Become Your Greatest Victories by Sharon Jaynes
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How many of you would like to rewrite certain chapters of your life? Probably the ones you regret, the ones you’re ashamed of. Probably the ones that portray the most hideous things done to you and the most damaging things done by you of your own free will. I know what my chapters are. I’m sure you have your own. This is the assumption behind the title of Sharon Jaynes new book, When You Don’t Like Your Story. Her subtitle, What if Your Worst Chapters Could Become Your Greatest Victories, shows how God, the master author of all our stories, can use our most difficult chapters to redeem what was lost, destroyed, or broken, not only to showcase his glory, but to rewrite the lives of others.
Her chapter titles pave the way for this process, starting with: “Why Me? Why This? Why Now?,” “When Forgetting isn’t enough,” “The Scab You Won’t Stop Picking,” and “Leaving the Shame Place.”
But Sharon doesn’t leave us with just forgiving ourselves and others by claiming our holy, chosen, and beloved identity in Christ. She makes a compelling case through numerous anecdotes and Biblical examples that demonstrate how our shame-filled stories and the specifics of God’s healing in our lives are exactly what others need to hear in order to trust him and be healed as well. She touches on issues of divorce, abortion, sexual abuse, prostitution, domestic violence, alcoholism, suicide, depression, and more.
And here’s where the rubber meets the road for me, and perhaps for those of you who are also writers, she says,
“You may feel that you wasted part of your life because of failure, but the greater waste would be not telling what you learned from that failure. How God picked you up after you fell down. How God turned you around when you were headed in the wrong direction. How God drew you in when you had pushed him away…”
All this to say, I struggle with telling the unflattering truth about myself even when I feel led to do so by the Lord, so Sharon Jaynes’ book was exactly what I needed to hear as I’m promoting my first book, Teacher Dropout: Finding Grace in an Unjust School, and sending out proposals for my next memoir, feeling vulnerable, unsure and unqualified.
But “Listen,” she goes on to say, “the devil does not want you to tell your story of what God has done in your life. He wants you to keep it bottled up and hidden away in the back of the pantry where no one can find it. He doesn’t want you to tell how you traded in your angst and resentment for God’s grace and forgiveness. How you traded in your feelings of condemnation and self-loathing for freedom and a new beginning.”
This doesn’t mean we all have to be authors, but we all can tell our stories to those who trust us and need to hear living proof that they too can overcome what feels irreparable by the immeasurable power of a God who loves them to the moon.
Finally, Sharon reminds us of Rev. 12:11 “By the blood of the Lamb and the word of their witnesses, they have become victorious over him.” (VOICE) Meaning, sharing our painful chapters is right up there with the very blood of Jesus in defeating the devil’s schemes.
So do it afraid, sisters.
Tell the tale of your defeat and God’s triumph. And if you’re not brave enough to do so yet, check out Sharon’s Jaynes’ book, When You Don’t Like Your Story: What if Your Worst Chapters Could Become Your Greatest Victories. It’s a great read aimed at a more meaningful life, so turn the page and let God rewrite a beautiful new ending that demonstrates what his amazing grace looks like in an ordinary life.
Cover Photo by Daniel Schludi on Unsplash
