A few words can change a life.

Growing up in a broken family, sent to an institution, and lacking positive feedback during the transition from boy to man can affect someone. I ended up introverted and spoke with a severe stutter. Overcoming, or sometimes not overcoming, deeper issues still affects my behavior.

Yet it was the last day of basic training that changed the course of my life.

On the last day you have your orders to school or your first assignment. You made the hard part and now the learning really begins. The next several months are planned and you are "in". On this day the group of trainees was sitting around the break room. The instructors had dropped their masks and gave us good advice to maximize our military careers. One of them pointed out that no one knew much of anyone else except their last names on their shirts. We had a fresh start if we wanted; a clean slate.

Boy oh boy...

I didn't have any sort of police record to hide from but I did have myself. A couple years prior i had made up a character for an espionage role-playing game. The idea was a very different character concept; he was the opposite from me as possible in traits and attitudes. His name was a sub-set of mine that many people don't recognize. What made him interesting was that many of his traits were positive and more desirable than mine. He was gregarious and friendly as I was shy and sensitive.

As that statement crystallized I chose to "become" the character. I used his name and behaved with his traits that were positive. Which, really, was a lot compared to my own. It took effort and I often slipped back to where I had been. But the clean slate meant few people noticed before I got back in gear again.

I was getting comfortable in this new role and went to my first real duty assignment. The NCO invited a few of us over for darts and his wife kept score. Since my name was unfamiliar she spelled it wrong. It was a cooler spelling, even though it diverged from the origins of my actual name.

Nice!

So there I am, having a decent life. I've integrated many of "his" better characteristics into my own and they mostly come naturally. The world, outside of my small surviving family, knew me as "him". Then the divorce happened. Yes, I married while starry-eyed and love struck. I was young and foolish; I'm no longer young. Like many places the state of our dissolution allows the woman to change her name back to her maiden name if she wishes. This one, unlike some places, allowed either person involved to change their name to whatever they want.

Boy oh boy...

Now and then someone wants to change themselves in a positive way. If they are open to my help I pat the (virtual) seat beside me.

"Let me tell you a story..."

Aye, this is good. Thanks for sharing this with us.

Wow, had me in. Haven't read anything here for a long while, so I'm glad I found this one. Very powerful, thankyou for sharing.

It's really interesting that you mention this, because God has been putting the idea of the importance of people's stories into my heart for a while now. I love stories and "get them" so to speak. I think it's why I'm a writer and a psychology major aiming to do counseling with traumatized and exploited women. The stories we tell about ourselves shape how we view ourselves. But, as we know, there are certainly quite a few ways to tell any single story, but not all of them are in accordance with how God sees the story. He has certainly used my story to minister to people.

Do you have any thoughts about what makes a story so powerful to change a life?

Well, I'm a hermit by nature but the connection between people can be strong. God brings us into his story and we can bring others into ours. A deep story, deeper than "I'm fine", can start that connection. Living in view of others you've been open to can continue to build the connection when they doubt they can be successful.

When it gets down to it, I'm willing to go with what works. Seems God made us that way.

Many years ago I read a book (I can't remember the book but part of me wants to say it was an old Star Wars book, of all things). Anyway, there was a line that struck me - "act the way you want to seem." And it really resonated with me at the time, that if I wanted to come across as kind or patient or a good-listener or whatever, that becoming a better person takes effort. That if I "acted the way I wanted to seem" that I would gradually become that person I wanted to be.

I also read What Katy Did by Sarah Chauncey Woolsey, aka Susan Coolidge, around the same time which had a similar message.

On a similar side-note, I was reading an article about hand-writing analysis recently and it mentioned that there is some evidence that people actively choosing to change the way they write certain letters can affect their personalities. (No idea if that's true or a load of bunk but very interesting idea regardless.)

In a scary agreement I write the lower case "e" three different ways, often in the same long sentence or short paragraph. Not sure what that says about us.