By Reverend Laurie DeMott

In writing an autobiography, then, we have to decide where we will begin. At what point in your life do you see an inkling of the person you will become? We also have to decide what facts to include in the narrative and which facts can be left out as ultimately unimportant. The fact, for example, that you had seven brothers and three sisters will undoubtedly play a role in the formation of your character but the fact that on August 5, 1962 you ate a pretzel will not (unless you choked on it and nearly ended your autobiography then and there). In other words, a writer preparing his or her autobiography has to take the mish-mash of the thousands upon thousands of days of their lives and try to give them a shape that makes some sense out of who they are today.

Now, whether you are writing an autobiography or not, the reality is that this shaping of the narrative of our lives is something we are doing constantly and often unconsiously. How many times have you started out the morning on a bad foot and then spent the rest of the day collecting grievances to prove that your day was destined to be ill-fated?

"I'm just having a lousy day," you say, as you stumble on the stairs going out the door, slop ketchup on your shirt at lunch, get stuck behind a slow driver, and finally sit down for the evening only to discover that your favorite show was pre-empted for a curling tourniment.

"This day was a waste," you conclude, but the reality is that to reach that conclusion that the day was a disaster you had to discard the facts that didn't fit your narrative: you had to ignore the beautiful sunshine that morning, the kiss your wife bestowed on your scowling face, the joyful music on the car radio, the good dinner you barely tasted while grumbling about the curling tourniment. Our lives, for the most part, are really a stream of unrelated events -- good, bad, neutral, ordinary -- but who we are, the self-identity we form as we grow, is based on the narrative that we are constantly imposing on that stream of events. We choose which events to lift out of the background noise to claim as meaningful and which ones we are going to set adrift downstream and let disappear.

When I worked as a student chaplain in a Dayton, Ohio hospital, I spent many hours listening to patients talk about their ailments, and since I worked the same two floors all summer, most of the patients shared similar medical histories: I talked mostly with cancer patients and burn victims. Nevertheless, the interpretation the patients gave to the meaning of that disease for their lives varied immensely. For some it was yet another injustice in a long list of proofs they had gathered that life was horribly unfair, and my time sitting with them was spent listening to their litany of complaints and the bitterness of a cynical soul. Others however, insisted on seeing their disease simply as a physical limitation in the midst of a good life filled with other sources of joy and friendship. These patients, even some of whom knew they might die of their disease, talked to me not of injustice and the hardship of life, but of fond memories, of laughter with loved ones, of the blessing of their days, even of the wonderful doctors and nurses their disease had given them the chance to know. The medical facts were often the same for both sets of patients, but the narrative each person chose to apply to those facts -- the meaning they ascribed to what was happening to them -- was vastly different.

We choose how to understand our lives. We choose what meaning to give the events that happen to us. We choose what we will remember and what we will let go. I am not suggesting that everyone's trials are the same -- the person who has been abused, or who loses a loved one through tragic circumstances is going to have a harder time coping with what has happened to them than the person who has had smooth sailing -- yet even in the most difficult life events, we still retain the power to decide what meaning we are going to take from that event and how we are going to let it shape who we become. Every day we sift through the events, the interactions, the hurts and the joys of that day, and we choose what will define us.

And so I ask again, if you were to write your autobiography, where would you start, and what events would you include that would tell people how you have become the person you are today?

In the letter to the Galatians, Paul writes a twelve sentence autobiography to explain himself to the church at Galatia. He choses to begin his story with the revelation he received from Jesus: "For I did not receive the gospel from any person," Paul says, "... but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ." After this opening, Paul confesses his former persecution of the church and finally ends this short autobiography with Christ's charge to him to preach the good news to the Gentiles. For Paul, these are the cogent details of his life that he believes say everything that needs to be said about himself -- "I was called by Christ, I was forgiven by Christ, I am sent by Christ." Now, we know from Paul's other letters and from the testimony of the book of Acts that Paul had quite an exciting time filled with all kinds of adventures but Paul doesn't mention any of that. In this succinct version of his autobiography, there are no prison stories, no floggings, poison snakes, or shipwrecks; Paul waves all of that aside and says, "Do you want to know who I am? This is who I am: I was called by Christ, I was forgiven by Christ, I am sent by Christ." Paul has chosen to give meaning to the mish-mash of his life -- the good days of clear sailing and the bad days of cold cells and angry crowds -- by seeing it all as part of the narrative of his relationship to Christ. Jesus is the framework that puts everything that happens to him in perspective. If Paul were to chose a theme song for his life, it might be the contemporary praise song "Jesus, Lamb of God" that sings, "You are my strength when I am weak, You are the treasure that I seek, You are my all in all. "

I was called by Christ, I was forgiven by Christ, I am sent by Christ.

Paul chooses to use this narrative to make sense of his life and who he is. What would happen if we too adopted that narrative for ourselves? What if you began your autobiography with these words? "I was called by Christ." Sifting through the events of your life, which ones do you remember as giving you a strong sense that God was at your side, loving you and inviting you into fellowship? What are the moments when you saw Christ's face clearly, heard Christ's voice speaking to you? Maybe it was in the quiet of prayer or in the words of a friend, or even the unexpected kindness of a stranger. When have you experienced a joy that was so great it was holy and you knew God was there or a conviction so strong that you knew it was the Spirit pushing you?

"I was called by Christ." Paul tells the Galatians, "This is where I begin. Everything you need to know about me begins the moment I realized that I belonged to Christ and that without Chirst, I am nothing."

But knowing that we are called also means recognizing the mistakes of our past and confronting our capacity to cause hurt to others. Without Paul's grounding in Christ, the guilt over his past behavior would have struck him down permanently, but with that forgiveness he was able to let go and move on. Where has Christ forgiven you? In your autobiography, what are the mistakes you need to confess, the wrongs you need absolved? Where have you seen Christ's forgiveness at work in your life?

"I was called by Christ. I was forgiven by Christ," Paul says. "I discovered that I belonged to Christ and that Christ would not hold my past against me but would help me to become a new person. And then, knowing I was loved, knowing I was forgiven, I discovered that I could serve, that my life has purpose. Christ sent me into the world to be that love and forgiveness to others so that everyone can discover the joy that I have found."

What in your life right now shows that you too have been sent by Christ? What are you doing to serve him? Where are you carrying love and forgiveness to others? When we show thoughtfulness and caring to people, we shouldn't think of it as just being nice -- we should think of it as part of the narrative of being sent by Christ. When we give money to hurricane ravaged countries, we shouldn't say that we are doing it because we are generous hearted; we are doing it because we are sent by Christ. We are patient with our children because we are sent by Christ. We are accepting of people different from ourselves because we are sent by Christ. We humble ourselves, admit our mistakes, and bend our pride for the sake of others because we are sent by Christ.

Who are you? the world asks, and this is what we reply; this is my autobiography:
I was called by Christ.
I was forgiven by Christ.
And now, I am sent by Christ.

This is the narrative I choose. This is who I am and will be for I belong to Christ.