Blog 3821 – 06.09.2026
The Story We Tell Ourselves
In middle school, high school, and college my favorite subject was history. Miss Anderson, my middle school history teacher, nominated me to receive the sterling silver history medal that year. I wore it around my neck till I lost it.
Over the years I have learned a couple of important things about history:
- The winners write the histories
- The stories we tell our selves are often fiction
As an example, I share a story that was told as historical that was based on a lie that was told so often and emotionally that the person who told it came to believe it was the gospel truth. (Aside: The four Gospels tell four very different very stories that Christians apologists have a devil of a time trying to reconcile.)
What actually happened, documented by witnesses who knew the true story was quite different from the story my friend told. When her oldest daughter was in high school she invited her boyfriend to have dinner with her family to meet her mom, dad and siblings. Mom took quite a fancy to that young beau and began a secret affair with him. She got pregnant by him and they ran away together. In order to get medical care for her and the baby the young man joined the Army. They never married and split up shortly after the baby was born. The story that mom told her beautiful younger daughter and all who would listen to her was that the young man tragically died in Vietnam. She told that story so many times that she came to believe it herself. When her baby girl was in her early twenties and mom was recounting that tragic tale of young love yet again when her daughter interrupted her: “Mom, you know that’s not true. I found my birth dad several years ago and got a letter from him recently.”
History is a story we tell our selves. Sometimes we make ourselves the hero of the story, the victim, or the villain. People sometimes say, “You can’t change history.” And yet we do it all the time. I have often said that love changes everything thing. The nasty now and now becomes the best time of our lives, the future’s so bright we gotta wear shades, and even the past understood through the lens of love takes on a rosier tint.
Instead of mythologizing what happened in the past we can honor what really took place – mistakes, miscalculations, failures and even a few triumphs and lessons learned. History, unvarnished, is how we got to where we are today. We can if we allow ourselves, see it for what it always was and will always be, the adventure of a lifetime.
I still love our his and her story, history.
Your friend and fellow traveler,
David James White
Collin Raye – That’s My Story (Official Video)
theencouragingword 