I have always had a strong conviction when we go through painful things, sometimes we need to share our journey. Over the years I have been through some really difficult things and sharing my story not only helped me heal, it helps others.

I once heard a friend say, as she was starting to share the story of a particularly difficult time in her life, that through the journey of telling her story, she was learning to love it. The first time I heard that, I wondered how I could ever love the part of my story that includes a divorce, or what about the part that includes ongoing health issues. One of the biggest challenges with sharing my story was that I didn’t love the messy bits. The bits that weren’t perfect were hard for me to look at. I definitely didn’t want to love them and embrace them as part of my story. I wanted to press delete on the broken parts and make them go away. They felt like failures.

As I have become more comfortable with sharing my story and learning to love it, I have learned something else. People don’t relate to the edited version of my story. They don’t want to hear the perfect, polished, clean version. People don’t want perfect, they want to know that there is someone else in the world who has walked a similar path as they are walking and is still standing.

I want to encourage you that your story has meaning. There is purpose in the hard stuff, there is a reason for all the ups and downs, and even the things that you aren’t proud of. Your story is yours to tell, yours to love. Be proud of it and share it with people, you’ll be surprised how many people it helps. As we trust God with all of it, the ugly stuff, the beautiful stuff and all the in between, he can use our journeys in a powerful way.