My Life in 1,000 Words

When we meet people, we usually get a snapshot of their lives as they are in the present.  Sometimes they reveal where they were born or where they spent the early years of their lives. Depending on the circumstances, we get a picture of them as a person, but more often than not, our interaction does not allow us to find out how a person got to be who they are.

We wrote essays in when we were kids in school.  The family vacation, the winter break, the best book ever and heroes were great topics.  How many of us have written a synopsis of our lives, an elevator speech of who we are here on earth?  Few have been through the Navigator course.  This is a Christian course designed to help people share their faith.  The course taught us how to tell our testimony.

Fewer still have tried to distill their lives in a short story or an article for the world to read.  Exposing one’s true self is scary.  Vulnerability is hard.  It is so difficult to know what to add, when there is so many important parts.  What shapes us as people is so complex; so etherial and emotional that words are frequently insufficient.

Even though no other person has walked the same path as we have and even siblings had differing experiences, I think we underestimate the power of our unique testimony.

I was always trying to be quiet.  I stood still in the corner of the room.  I would apologize for taking up space.  My goal was to be invisible.  I couldn’t escape though.  My big blue eyes reached out to everyone around.  Sometimes, I wondered if I exuded a victim notice.  It was almost as if those who would do me harm had an unseen notice that I could be taken advantage of.

Recently, I was asked to write my testimony of overcoming life’s adversities in a thousand words.  A thousand words is not a life story.  A thousand words can certainly give a picture of how a person became who they are, if written carefully though.

At first, I wrote about my mom, and then about my kids.  It actually took a great deal of effort to write about myself.  I haven’t finished it yet.  It has been edited three times.  Thankfully, I have two weeks left to the deadline.  I will leave it and revisit.

What kinds of things would you write about yourself?  How many edits do you thing you’d need?