Your Story Matters

by Crystal Walton

  YOUR STORY

  MATTERS

  Identity. Purpose. Hope.

  Crystal Walton

  Impact Editions, LLC

  Chesapeake, VA

  Copyright © 2014 by Crystal Walton.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, contact the publisher through the following website:

  www.crystal-walton.com

  Book Layout ©2013 BookDesignTemplates.com

  Cover Design ©2015 by James, GoOnWrite.com

  CONTENTS

  Search for Significance

  Stay Rooted In Identity

  Thrive In Your Calling

  What comes naturally to you?

  What gets you out of bed in the morning?

  How does your life bless others?

  What makes your heart sing and weep at the same time?

  Flourish On The Journey

  Your Story Matters

  PREFACE

  Search for Significance

  I nearly jumped off the couch. Heart pounding, tears brimming, I stared at the TV. The dialog continued. The story went on. But as I sat on the edge of my seat cushion, my thoughts froze around a single statement.

  Could that be it? Could a line from a movie capture what I’d been straining most of my life to articulate?

  Pearl Harbor. Have you seen the 2001 film? Partway into the story, Lt. Rafe McCauley volunteers to join the British military in their fight against the Nazis.

  He lands in the debris of a war well underway. No drills. No pretenses. No romanticized notions of playing hero. His life-long aspiration collides with the blood-coated residue of the same sacrifices he’s being asked to risk.

  As he passes beside planes bearing scars from the day’s battle, he approaches his assignment with sobriety and valor.

  In the shadows of loss, his new squadron commander watches Rafe cross the airstrip. “Are all Yanks as anxious as you to get themselves killed, Pilot Officer?”

  Chin lifted, Rafe pulls his shoulders back with a sense of calling he knows he was made for. “Not anxious to die, sir. Just anxious to matter.”

  Anxious to matter. Those three simple words echoed in my heart like sound waves rebounding back to a question that had finally found its answer.

  With every other motive peeled away, that statement burns into the core of who we are. We want to matter. To live a life of value, meaning, and impact.

  It’s not a quest for success or even achievement. It’s a search for significance. One that drives and calls us.

  Think about it. We can coast through life, taking the ebbs and flows as they come, but we’re not satisfied with the status quo. Not really. Not if we’re honest.

  Even amidst all the distractions, there’s an undercurrent of restlessness we can’t quite shake. It ripples and prods with a question that grips us with greater intensity than any other.

  What’s my purpose?

  We can phrase it a dozen different ways. Yet regardless of what syntax we use, what background we come from, or at what point in life we find ourselves, we each have a desire embedded into our DNA to live the answer.

  The real question is, how do we start?

  CHAPTER ONE

  Stay Rooted In Identity

  Other than a faint cast of moonlight from the window, darkness hung over my room. I sat on my bed, knees pulled up to my chest, hating the tears spilling onto my pajamas.

  It was supposed to be different. They promised. They promised me love. Acceptance. Identity.

  Yet there I was. Alone. Trapped between hope for something more and the fear of never finding it. Left in the hollow aftermath of an empty pursuit that kept me craving for that one word, one look, one touch to validate my worth.

  But it never came.

  Shadows pressed in instead, eager to answer my search for identity with pre-made labels.

  “Abandoned.”

  “Empty.”

  “Not enough.”

  “A disappointment.”

  “Broken.”

  Labels that covered my reflection despite how desperately I tried to swindle the mirror into showing me someone who amounted to more than what I saw.

  Have you spent any time in this same room? Surrounded by the consequences of choices made, lies believed, and self-worth forfeited?

  Have you stood in front of the same full-length mirror, straining to see someone of value behind the labels?

  Oh, those titles are easy to believe, aren’t they? They’re what we feel. What’s spoken over us. What we often rehearse in our minds.

  They’re not only consistent, they’re outright convincing. And they should be. They’re trained to be. Like a black ops team, they’re deployed with a single mission: prevent us from fulfilling our purpose. Their tactic? Overshadowing our identity with one that doesn’t belong to us until we stop fighting to see anything different.

  Yet, here’s the thing. They might be skilled at masking our worth, but they’ll never be able to erase it.

  And once we ground ourselves in that assurance, we uncover the courage to tear off the labels of dejection, wipe away the residue of deceit, and unveil the true reflection hidden underneath the layers.

  Your Are Chosen

  The service had already begun. In a crowded auditorium, while music rang from the stage, a family slipped in through the back doors and filed into a row a few ahead of where my husband and I stood.

  I watched them trickle in, one after the other. After the other. After the other. Fourteen kids. All with down syndrome. All adopted. Wow.

  My gaze kept drifting toward the children of varying ages dancing in the aisle, singing with reckless abandonment. Yet as captivating as they were, their dad was the one who stole my heart.

  Tender and patient, he smoothed out ruffled dresses as he swayed with his little girls in his lap. Forehead to forehead with his grown son, he showered affection over a boy at heart who clung to the security he provided. And I simply stared at this humbling picture of selflessness.

  The music whittled to soft piano accompaniment in the background. The father led his children onto the stage to dedicate the two newest additions to their household.

  At one point during his prayer, which I’m fairly certain I sobbed through, he turned and addressed his two little girls directly.

  “You’ve been rescued from the unfit conditions in your orphanages and adopted into a home of acceptance. And though you’ve been denied the unearned love of natural parents, I offer you this simple gift in exchange. You are loved. You are mine.”

  Through my tears, I took in this precious family lined across the stage. Fourteen children. All chosen. All handpicked. All given a new identity rooted in unearned love and acceptance.

  As I stared, I wondered, am I really so different from them? Overlooked by the world. Abandoned in an orphanage of brokenness until a Father rescued me. Until He held me in His arms, forehead to forehead, and whispered words that forever changed the mirror before me.

  You are loved. You are mine. And that is enough.

  We’re not used to being enough, are we? In fact, we’re used to being the ones on the other side of the pursuit. The ones chasing after the desire to be loved.

  We run until our feet grow weary. Craving affirmation. Searching for validation. Unaware that we’re the ones continually sought after.

  I saw this image so vividly in an ordinary moment on an ordinary day.

>   Giggles bounced across the campus yard and up the sidewalk to where I was walking. A child zoomed through the grass with his dad on his heels in a game of you can't catch me.

  Squeals followed the boy's glance over his shoulder at his dad's outstretched arms just inches away. The father, five times the boy's size and infinitely faster, kept his pace in step with his son’s joy.

  And then, the moment came. With one quick swoop, the dad scooped his boy up into the air. A tickling fest ensued. More giggles erupted. Cradled in his dad’s secure hold, the little guy relished the security of a love he’d known and experienced all his life.

  He squirmed and wiggled, ready for another round. Because although he’d been caught, he knew the pursuit of his father's love hadn't ended.

  And right there on that college campus sidewalk, I lowered my head, thankful for the pursuit of a Father who chose us before we ever chose Him.

  I might not know your story. I don’t know what pieces have been left behind from the other sources fighting for a say in who you are. But this much I do know.

  You are not an afterthought. You have not been forgotten or abandoned. You are pursued with an unrelenting love from One who’ll never let you settle for misplaced affections. From a Father who will chase you, scoop you up in His arms, and whisper the truth of your identity over your heart again and again until the only reflection in the mirror is this: “You are loved. You are mine.”

  Always and without condition.

  You Are Accepted

  I almost didn’t see him.

  Arms folded over his knees, a young man sat with his back hunched against a brick wall. He kept the hood of a faded black coat pulled over his head to shield the blustering wind and perhaps something more.

  A faint voice called to me.

  I turned with my hand already on my car door handle. “I’m sorry?”

  His eyes spoke first this time. “Excuse me, ma’am, can you help me out with some change?”

  Unspoken questions stood in the space between us. What will he do with the money if I give it to him? Squander it? Exacerbate the problems that must’ve gotten him into this quandary to begin with? Wouldn’t my charity only enable his dependency?

  But those eyes.

  A sigh. “Yes, just one moment.”

  I climbed into my car and dug through my purse in search of the five-dollar bill someone had given me a few days earlier—a gift I’d planned to use on Starbucks. And now, here I was on the sidewalk of a 7-eleven, handing it over to some guy who’d likely waste the unearned gift before the night was over.

  Back home, I stood in front of my door, sun on my back, my thoughts still churning.

  Am I really unlike him? So often hunkered down in the consequences of failed choices. Hood of shame hiding my eyes. When a bearer of hope passes by, I risk the pain of rejection and search for the courage to ask for something I know I don’t deserve. “Please, God, can you help me out with some grace? Again?”

  Sometimes I wonder what His response will be. A pause of reluctance? Doubts of my integrity? Questions of how I’ll steward an undeserved gift of love and mercy? His hesitation wouldn’t be unwarranted. Not when my track record shows I don’t deserve anything different.

  But God doesn’t hesitate to meet me where I am—right in the midst of my broken request, regardless of what I will or will not do with the gift.

  Because maybe love is less a matter of how it’s received and more a matter of how it’s given. No measuring sticks. No tally boards. Unearned. Unjustified.

  Ooh, that’s a hard one for us to accept. It challenges our assumptions and threatens our logic. Why give me something I haven’t earned? You couldn’t possibly still accept me if you really knew what was in my heart.

  That new identity I’ve been given? That whole being chosen thing? Surely, that’s not still valid now. Not after the ways I’ve blown it.

  Yet, that’s the very thing we crave, isn’t it? Unconditional acceptance.

  Imagine for a second that every detail about your life was projected onto a screen for people to watch like a movie. All those mistakes. Every bitter thought. Wrong choices. Secret habits. Failures. A frame-by-frame stream of everything you’ve ever done, thought, or felt.

  How would you react? Would you plow through the crowd in search of anything large enough to cover as much of the screen as possible? Would you sprint out of the room and bury yourself in the nearest cave for the next, oh, bazillion years?

  Kind of sobering, right? Intimidating. Even paralyzing.

  Our insecurities tell us we can’t possibly receive acceptance if we reveal our flaws. It’s safer to stay hidden, guarded. Only problem is, our hearts won’t let us. Because covered up underneath that fear of rejection is something far stronger.

  The yearning for unconditional love.

  Can I make a confession? I really like Taylor Swift’s song, “Begin Again.” I may or may not have scoured YouTube to find the video and listened to it back to back. More than once. (Yes, my chin is sagging to my chest right now.) If we’re being honest, I actually like most of the Red album. Hey, I said it was confession time.

  All teeny-bopper jokes aside, what is it about these songs that strikes a connection with me?

  Is it the way they transport me back to when I was twenty-two, where I can relive those fun yet painfully awkward moments of falling in love? Or the way they remind me of that season when I didn’t know how I’d survive a day without my best friend? Is it the catchy choruses that make me bob my head at my desk while giving serious consideration to breaking out an air microphone?

  Okay, fine, those might be part of the reason. (There’s that head-hanging thing again.) But at the heart of it, there’s something more. Her songs tap into an emotional connection that goes right along with what a survey found to be females’ greatest need. Ready for it?

  To be loved.

  Yep, that simple, and yet, that powerful.

  Taylor Swift nails one of our greatest desires. We yearn to unveil all our imperfections and still hear the words, “I love you. You. Not the mask. Not the show. One hundred percent authentic you. Even the wounds. The past heartaches, past failures. Every part.”

  Oh, how we long to hear that, even if it seems inconceivable.

  Can I let you in on something? Those very words are being spoken over you every day. In those moments when the curtains are drawn back, your faults are exposed, and everything you’ve hoped for is at stake. Right there, in that very place of vulnerability, God peels the labels off the mirror until you’re face to face with another pillar of your identity.

  Unearned, unwavering acceptance.

  The kind that drains the power of every fear and insecurity holding you back from walking in the fullness of who you were made to be.

  You Are Made By Design

  The smell from the science lab down the hall billowed into our corner room, but it didn’t bother me. Not today. Not after my teacher’s announcement started to sink in.

  My knees bobbed underneath my desk with the same excitement pushing back the borders of that middle school home economics classroom.

  Wow, I actually get to make it? How cool is that? I already loved stuffed animals. But to have one I made myself? Priceless. Think of all the possibilities, all the choices. Where would I begin?

  A raccoon! With cute bandit eyes. Perfect.

  I sprawled my hand-chosen materials across my desk and dove in. Measurements marked. Careful lines drawn. Shaky scissor snips cut. I held a threaded needle in one hand, the pieces of my unformed project in the other, and began to sew my creation into existence, section by section.

  Hours later, I sat back and examined my work of art.

  So, maybe it didn’t look exactly like a real raccoon. The stuffing was a little lumpier in parts. Okay, a lot lumpier in parts. The stitching was visible. And I’m fairly sure I put the eyes in the wrong spots. Even from my shelf, they looked at me. But crazy rabid eyes or not, it was my raccoon. I made him. H
ad the prick marks on my fingers to prove it.

  So what if he looked a little different from the rest of the stuffed animals in my room? He was birthed in my imagination and bore the imprints of my investment. Every inch of him chosen, prepared, and fashioned in love. Of course he’d stand out.

  And so do you.

  Believe me, I know that’s easy to doubt.

  “You don’t know what I look like,” you say. “You don’t know my personality flaws. You don’t know what other people have said about me.”

  Maybe not, but I know it doesn’t matter. Because God fashioned you by design. Like a painting that bears the distinct trademarks of its artist, your life reflects God’s signature touches of creativity.

  All those things that make you you were handpicked. The way you feel lost in a crowd but thrive in one-on-one conversations. The way you lose your keys ten times a day but always find time to let someone know you’re thinking of them. The way you take risks and never hold back, crack up a room full of strangers, or bawl during a thirty-second commercial.

  All unique features. All hand-marked with tags that say, “Made by design.” As in, on purpose for a purpose.

  There are no discount tags. No returns. No reject piles. Your traits aren’t flaws or mistakes. They’re personalized touches embroidered by an Artist who lifts you off the shelf and says, “This one’s mine. She looks different from the others because I created her with characteristics tailor-fitted for the life I’ve called her to. I didn’t design her to blend into a crowded shelf. I designed her to shine.”

  Let that settle over you, and imagine if you saw yourself through your Maker’s eyes?

  Would those extra ten pounds you’re trying to lose or gain still matter? Would that irritating feature you can’t change still plague you? Would all those comparisons you make with others still haunt you?