I love a good story – one that is written well where the words dance on your tongue as you read them – tasting sweet, silky and smooth like honey – soothing your soul.

Ursula le Guinn, the well-renowned sci fi author once said,

There have been great societies that did not have the wheel – but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.

Stories weave together the fabric of our society – carrying learning, tradition and knowledge from one generation to the next.

Stories are powerful – they can open up the world – transporting us to different places and introducing us to new cultures.

Stories build empathy  – giving us the chance to walk around in someone else’s shoes and bringing fresh perspectives.

Stories help us make sense of the world around us.

We continually tell ourselves stories – they help us understand who we are .. who others are … it’s a brilliant way of helping us work out how the world works.

The late, great John Westerhoff who was legendary in pioneering a model for understanding child faith development, once said

We are a story formed people.

Stories shape us – the stories we tell ourselves shape our perceptions and understanding which in turn shape our responses. But the thing is, the stories we tell ourselves aren’t always helpful and they aren’t always true. We jump to conclusions. We see things from a very narrow perspective. We don’t have the full picture.

When we catch someone looking at us, or have someone respond to us in a way that we are not expecting we often write the story to fill in the gaps. We assume that something we have said has caused offence or we decide that a person doesn’t like us. And those stories go on to shape our responses – we decide to hold our tongue because that person clearly doesn’t ‘get’ what we are talking about – we become wary and guarded of the person we’ve decided has a problem with us.

The thing is – in those situations, I’ve told myself a story based on a very limited perspective – and that story can be very powerful and shape how I feel.

In 2 Corinthians 10:5, Paul encourages us to take captive every thought and bring it to Jesus.

How can we capture our thoughts as we reflect on our day – notice the stories that we are telling ourselves – and bring them to Jesus. How can we seek His bigger picture perspective and His truth before we allow our limited perspective to create an untrue story that will shape us in an unhelpful way?

A great way of doing this is to use the sentence ‘The story I am telling myself is …’.

(If you want to explore this more, Brené Brown describes this really well in ‘The Call to Courage’ which you can watch on Netflix.)

…taking a moment to pause and to capture our thoughts – to allow ourselves to notice and become aware of the story that we are writing – and to prayerfully bring curiosity to it – to seek God’s big picture perspective.

A brilliant tool to use here is something called the Examen. The Examen is an ancient daily pattern of prayer, originally created by St Ignatius of Loyola as a way of prayerfully remembering. It’s an opportunity to pause, to pay attention to your emotions, to notice where God has been at work in your life and to give thanks.

I like to pray the Examen at the end of the day as I lay in bed – and so I have created my own simple way of praying the Examen, using my body to guide me through to help me remember the stages so that I don’t need anything in front of me as a reminder. 

I use a simple Head, Shoulders, Hands, Heart, Feet pattern – asking God to draw my attention to what has been on my mind, to anything weighing heavily on my shoulders and to the things I may be holding tightly to that I need to bring to Him. I ask Him, though His Holy Spirit, to remind me of moments in my day that have made my heart sing as I bring my prayers of Thankfulness before asking Him to guide my steps and go ahead of me into the following day.

As I have prayed the Examen at the end of my day, I have found it has been  beautiful way of shifting my perspective – a way of building a rhythm of wonder and thankfulness – of bringing curiosity and seeking Jesus.

I have found it a really helpful way of making space for the Shalom Peace of Jesus as I finish my day and an opportunity to be shaped by the story of God in my life.

If you would like to try praying the Examen, I’ve created a simple graphic that you can download for free here.