The Story God Has Been Writing All Along
by Lori Wilson
An Invitation to Your Sacred History
There's a practice I first used with high school students on Kairos retreats, teenagers sitting in silence, doing something most of them had never done before: looking back.
I asked them to write down the pivotal moments of their lives. Not a journal entry. Not an essay. Just the moments. The ones that changed something. The ones they still carry.
And then I asked them to put those moments on a line.
Above the line if it was a high. Below the line if it was a low.
What happened in that silence was always holy. Even teenagers, maybe especially teenagers, could feel it. The weight of their own story. The shape of it. The surprising beauty of seeing your life laid out not as a series of random events, but as something that had a shape, a movement, a direction.
I've done it myself, many times since. And every time, it opens something in me.
Here's what a piece of my own timeline might look like:
My birth. First communion. Confirmation. My marriage. Moving to New York. The birth of my first child. My second. My third. The death of my gran. My divorce. The death of my husband. The beginning of something new.
Some of those go above the line. Some go well below it. And the lines connecting them, the lines that trace the journey from one moment to the next, those lines are where the real story lives. Because here's the question that changes everything:
Where did you feel God?
Not in theory. Not in the abstract. In that moment. That particular high, that particular low, was there any sense of Presence? Even a flicker? Even afterward, a recognition?
Most of us, when we're honest, notice something a little surprising. God doesn't show up only in the highs. Sometimes, often, it's the lows where the Presence feels closest. The grief. The failure. The long waiting. The thing we didn't see coming.
And then there's a second layer of seeing: Where can you see God now, looking back?
Not where you felt it then, but where you can trace the hand of grace in hindsight. Celebrating with you. Walking beside you. Holding what you couldn't hold alone. There, in the moment you thought you were entirely on your own.
This is what Ignatius called consolation and desolation, the movements of the Spirit through the terrain of a human life. Your life is not just your story. It is a sacred story. And it is still being written.
The Practice: Your Sacred History
Set aside some quiet time. You might want paper, or a journal, or simply a blank page.
Draw a horizontal line across the middle of the page. This is your lifeline.
Mark your pivotal moments. Don't overthink it, let what surfaces, surface. Births, deaths, milestones, losses, beginnings, endings. Place each one above the line if it felt like a high, and below the line if it felt like a low. Write the names or dates. Draw connecting lines between them.
Sit with what you see. What is the shape of your story so far?
Note where you felt God, in the moment. It might be a small mark, a question mark, or nothing at all. Be honest.
Note where you can see God now, in hindsight. Present. Helping. Celebrating. Grieving alongside you. Use a different color if you like.
Take your reflections to prayer.
Questions to sit with:
Where do you tend to feel God's presence more, in the highs or in the lows? What does that tell you about how you've come to know God?
Looking back, where do you see grace at work that you couldn't see at the time?
What questions do you find yourself wanting to bring to God now?
What do you want to say to God about your story?
What have you learned about yourself, about who you are, what you need, what you've survived, what you've been given?
Where is the invitation in this moment of your life?
A Word About What Comes Up
As you sit with your sacred history, something else may surface alongside the memories.
A quiet, or not so quiet, voice that says: I don't like this. I wish it had been different. I wish I had made different choices. I wish I had found my way here so much earlier. My life would look completely different if only I had...
That voice is worth noticing. And then, gently, worth releasing.
Because here is what is also true: your sacred history is what has made you you. Every moment on that line, the ones above it and the ones below it, the ones you're proud of and the ones you'd rather forget, they are all part of the person God has been forming all along.
You are God's beloved. Not in spite of your story, but through it.
God has held you in every moment on that line. Has journeyed with you through every connecting line between them. Has never, not once, let go. And you are who you are today, with the wisdom you carry, the compassion you've grown into, the faith that brought you to this moment, because of all of it. The whole of it. Even the parts you'd rewrite if you could.
This isn't about making peace with pain for its own sake. It's about trusting that grace was already at work in the places you couldn't see it. That nothing has been wasted. That the Beloved doesn't look at your timeline and wish it were different.
God looks at your timeline and calls it sacred.
A Closing Prayer
God, my constant companion, whether I can sense it, see it, or know it, You have journeyed with me.
Help me see the sacredness in my history. Help me reverence each moment, the highs and the lows. Help me accept that my life, in its entirety, is a path to You. And allow me to seek the invitations You are always giving me.
Amen.
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If this practice stirs something in you and you'd like a companion for the journey, I'd be honored to explore it with you. Spiritual direction is a space to do exactly this kind of deep looking, together.
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