I arrived at this particular life crossroads after an exhausting three-year run that included a challenging “hair-on-fire” job while parenting a preschooler. I love the purpose behind the work and the people, but the way I went about engaging in it left me depleted. In leading, I had isolated myself. Professionalism, discretion, and pride led me to that lonely place where busyness was worn as a badge of honor and spirituality was reduced to looking to God for marching orders. My soul had not been well tended, and it was evident to the people around me. This particular situation was not familiar to me, but I thought I knew what to do at a life crossroads. I had the benefit of experience that comes with some age, and I hoped that it would qualify as wisdom.

First, I knew I needed a break. Once I had secured a three-month sabbatical, I promptly escaped to my sister-in-law’s retreat house on a secluded lake. I slept. I fasted. I played worship music. I journaled, and then I napped. I took walks around the lake and napped some more.

Feeling more settled, but still in a less-than-human state, I returned home. I journaled, prayed, and slept some more in the months that followed. Many attempted conversations with God, seeking wisdom to discover the route past this intersection, frustratingly directed me only to another nap. I resonated with God’s interactions with Elijah when he was in a depleted state.

I had received profound clarity at previous crossroad experiences by engaging in various life-mapping processes. After emerging from exhaustion and sensing my soul was still, I decided to dive into the work of reviewing my story once again. This time, I used a visual life-mapping tool developed by a life coach, in conjunction with experts in graphic recording, that contained provocative questions. Although it was a “you-are-the-center-of-the-universe” oriented process, I used it as an on-ramp to conversations with God about my past, my present, and my future. It gave me a framework to track my story in ways that were coherent, insightful, and highly revealing.

I traced my story back to things that gave me life and recalled enjoying photography, intimate friendships, singing, and studying culture and leadership. I reviewed choices, experiences, and people that drained life from me and recognized patterns of people-pleasing, and a need to be noticed by others that led me into situations of disappointment, frustration, and pain. As I asked God to bring my attention toward what he wanted me to notice, he was taking me to places in my story where there was healing, redemption, restoration, new perspectives, clues, and encouragement to be received. The whispers of God to my soul came in short phrases.

“Rest in my love.” 

“You don’t need their attention or approval.” 

“You don’t need to do it alone.” 

“Slow down to notice what I’m up to.” 

“My approval of you is not related to your busyness or accomplishments.” 

“Let me shine through you.”

My present circumstances were pulling threads of my past storyline forward in ways that stirred my soul in fresh, inviting ways. Although I would not have described God as a taskmaster, I had been relating to him as if he was just that.

My journal filled with confessions—honest reflections on previously artfully “spun” tales‚ stories edited for the purpose of self-protection and image management. I had told slightly twisted versions of stories enough times that I had begun to believe my own press. I realized that I told myself and others cleaned-up versions of my life stories as if I were in a job interview trying to make the best impression, leaving out any clues to my shadow side. Freedom and grace flowed as I told the truth to myself and to God.

My schedule, having been cleared of full-time job responsibilities, had margin. Other people extended invitations and suggestions, but I guarded my time carefully, only making additions with clear intention toward building a life of purpose, clearly guided by who God was shaping me to be and what he wanted to express through me to the world. Confirming what God had made clear to me ten years before, my vision is to “be a catalyst for generative change” (change that puts positive ripple-effects in motion that go on long beyond my presence), and my mission is to “help people and organizations articulate their intentions and live them out.”

I sensed adventure was afoot. I dreamed of engaging in life-giving work and reclaiming my artistic side that had been crowded out in a schedule of obligations to a challenging job and normal life demands. To my delight, God seemed to be cheering me on! I was beginning to act more like a beloved daughter than a loyal soldier, and my soul was beginning to come alive again.

In the process of reviewing my dreams and aspirations, I sensed I was to join God in a pottery class. I learned to form lumps of clay into useful vessels on a potter’s wheel. I found that I couldn’t throw a pot on the wheel successfully if I wasn’t fully present to the activity. “Be present or go home” became a guiding principle. I spent hours pondering the many reasons why God sent Jeremiah to the potter’s house to observe the activity and be ready for the Father’s revelations.

After telling a classmate about the many friends who needed my time, my space, and my help, she later observed that I was choosing to make a narrow-necked vessel on the potter’s wheel. “Sharon, you normally throw very large, open serving bowl shapes that seem to reflect the normal position of your openness toward others. Only the finest oils, poured slowly and sparingly, are stored in narrow-necked vessels, you know. Isn’t it interesting how what we choose to form out of clay reflects what is going on in our lives?” Her words spoke to my soul. If my life was to be joyfully open to acts of service for others, my soul needed tending in closed, quiet, and private spaces. Time and space to be in solitude with God was to become a priority. Activities and happenings in everyday life like this became adventures in noticing God’s still small voice.

I was learning new ways to be self-reflective, self-aware, and to understand my storyline. I picked up photography once again and sensed fresh wonder as I looked at God’s creation and his people through my lens. When I would capture something beautiful, I could sense God’s whisper, “I’m glad you noticed!”

At the bottom of it all, I was learning new ways to listen to God—to experience him in the midst of my story, past and present. As I gained confidence in where he was inviting me to trust him into the future, I was learning that my story was a part of his much grander story.

In reviewing my story, I was recounting how particular Scriptures had become bedrock truth to my soul through my life experiences, tracking specific instances when beliefs became faith. I came to understand how remembrances of God’s activity in my life have become the deciding factor in quieting reactions formed in fear and choosing responses rooted in faith. I wrote these words:

I have faith in the reality that the Holy Spirit intercedes with groaning deeper than words, because I personally had this experience when my tears ran dry from sorrow from a broken relationship. (Romans 8:26Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™)

I have faith-filled confidence that God turns “mourning into dancing” because God blessed my husband and me with a child against all odds. (Psalm 30:11)

My life would be impoverished if I did not notice the reality of God walking through the valley of the shadow of death with me as I heard him say, “healing will come” as I awaited news on the status of my husband’s cancer. (Psalm 24)

Faith prompts me to anticipate the sensation of the Holy Spirit’s presence creating holy ground when gathered in soul-bearing community. Jesus’ promise of “where two or three are gathered, I will be there,” is a fact to me, because I have taken account of these experiences in my life. (Matthew 18:20)

I have suffered the embarrassing consequences of not heeding the wisdom contained in Proverbs like this one, for example: “Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent, and discerning if he holds his tongue.” (Proverbs 17:28)

As I read the account of the Israelites wandering in the dessert for forty years, I can see myself following their cycles of turning away from God, and God’s faithfulness in helping them choose to turn back toward him (Exodus).

When I look back on my story and see what has given me life and what has drained life from me, I gain clues to understand that I was uniquely and wonderfully made (Psalm 139). I was made for a purpose (Jeremiah 29:11), and God intends to live through me, as he has made me to be. I can worship authentically when I sing songs like, “Great Is Thy Faithfulness,” as I take account of just a few of the many blessings that have come from his hand.

My capacity to trust and believe God for those parts of Scripture I have not personally experienced is stretched when I know how my own story connects with Scripture. My journey toward God is wrapped up in my story, and it is inseparable from it.

Sibyl Towner listened to my story in its most unedited form. I spewed it on her as a part of my release of frustration, as I exited the job where I had become disassociated from my soul. Sibyl and I had become friends, and she had invited me to be a part of her spiritual mentoring team at our church. I learned there were often more people who wanted to be mentored than those who were willing to become mentors. Many felt unqualified, since they had never had a mentor themselves. Many seemed to shy away, fearing the ambiguity in a lack of firm process to guide them in what to say or do with the mentees.

As a result of my recent adventures in visual life-mapping as a spiritual practice, seeds had been sown that were now growing into dreams of using such a process with God at the center rather than self at the center. I felt a desire growing to help people document their life stories using visual maps for the purpose of recognizing and responding to God. Consulting, life coaching, instructional design, strategic planning, creativity, listening, and leadership threads from my storyline were converging, and my enthusiasm for a project of this kind was gaining energy.

I brought my visual life maps to Sibyl, knowing that she could bring her vast expertise of spiritual mentoring, spiritual direction, and essential spiritual practices into the mix. As we reviewed them together, our hunch was that if we could produce a tool that would help mentees walk through the process of using life story as a doorway to self-reflection, self-discovery, and ultimately God-discovery, we could recruit more mentors to listen to them. An outflow of this journey is a spiritual formation tool called “ Listen to My Life: Maps for Recognizing and Responding to God in My Story.”

A community of soulish people has gathered around the practices contained in these materials. We find great joy in introducing others to a way of seeing our lives as a part of God’s story. Using specific guidelines for listening to help us create emotional safety, we have come to know how to be vulnerable and listen deeply to one other and to God. We have discovered anew that God designed us to be in community; we accept that we often cannot see ourselves clearly except through the eyes of another. The more we understand our own stories, the more capacity we have to listen to the stories of others, offering them tangible grace in authentic community. At our yearly gathering of “Listen to My Life” facilitators, we gain energy in hearing how God uses these spiritual practices of life story to move people toward overcoming fear and increasing momentum in joining God in his work in the world.

We have come to believe that the way we listen to one another and with one another makes a powerful difference in inviting souls to come out of hiding. Using specific Listening Guidelines for “Listen to My Life,” we trade being good conversationalists for being good listeners as we suspend the normal course of conversation for something more profound to happen. We create space to allow expression of the deeper stirrings of our souls. The truth of David Augsburger’s observation has become self-evident when he says, “Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person, they are almost indistinguishable.”David Augsberger, Caring Enough to Hear and Be Heard (Ventura, CA: Gospel Light Publications, 1982).

As God has directed me down this pathway, I can no longer think about spiritual formation apart from my story. If I am connecting God’s word to my story, then I am being formed. If I am tracking the movements of God in me and around me, I am being formed. What else is there? I must root out my knee-jerk reactions from my past that invade my present and replace them with trust-filled responses to God. If I take my day out of the context of God’s story, I self-orient, self-protect, and waste a day of precious life because of my clueless distraction from the reality that the day and every breath I take in it was given to me as a gift to steward and to enjoy as an adventure with my Savior and Friend.

After years of immersing myself in the exploration of life story as a reflection of God’s larger story, I have come to understand that there is immense wisdom to be found in aging if our stories are mined for what God is up to in them, and how our stories reflect God’s epic story. This, however, is often only seen in retrospect. The first two decades of our lives we simply live out our lives, and in the best of scenarios, we continue through life learning the practices of reflection that allow God’s wisdom to move us toward living life to the full.

The eight visual maps of “Listen to My Life” document a part of what we have learned about life story as a spiritual practice and provide spaces to take notes on one’s self, as Parker Palmer writes about in his book, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation.Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Inc., Publishers, 2000). Questions are meaningfully placed in visual layouts to write, doodle, or paste images that represent reflective responses, and more importantly, on-ramps to conversations with God about the past, present, and future. The colorful and nonlinear layout of the visual maps invite one’s memories and emotions to be documented in whatever order they come to mind. Connections and themes are more easily discerned in this more graphic form, and some who may not be wired for longhand journaling find ways of expressing what it necessary in short phrases or simple drawings. An experience of dark shame not ready to be revealed may be represented by a simple black dot or other symbol that is known only to the individual, offering emotional safety in privacy that a long hand journal may not offer if it were to be found.

The Holy Spirit’s interactions with people inviting his activity in the process repeatedly lead toward truth and life. The community that is built as people deeply listen to one another’s stories is a beautiful ongoing gift for many.

Reflection questions provided after each map invite the possibility of more extensive journaling and engagement with scripture through lectio divina.

The first visual map in the series invites reflection on “My Life Now,” with a series of questions about circumstances, people, restlessness, and what’s drawing attention. A capstone of this exercise is to compose a “lingering question” that is at work either overtly or subtly below the surface of life’s busyness. It is most likely a question worthy of many conversations with God over time. The “My Life Story” map provides an organized, visual means to review one’s life story; this includes highs, lows, positive and negative influences, dreams, aspirations, and times when we recognize God’s Activity. “Aha moments” are frequent when story is documented visually. Documenting your life story uncovers how beloved you are by the God who created you, so that you can live gracefully, purposefully, and without fear. Reflecting on your story can help you become more open to deeply listen to the beauty and pain in the stories of others.

“Peak Experiences” is a map that documents occasions when you have felt most alive or most aligned with who you are made to be. The themes that run through these peak experiences offer clues to our unique, God-given design and what God might want to do in us and through us. Our attention is drawn to earlier times in our lives when we may have seen seeds of gifts or talents that are now more clearly emerging. What may seem like a simple lifelong interest may now be seen to be the seedbed of life that God is nurturing in us.

The “Valley Experiences” map offers a way to process the losses, hurts, and low points in life. It opens conversation with God around what was lost and how we attempted to compensate for the loss without seeking God’s involvement. It directs attention toward healthy grieving, forgiveness, and God’s promises that remind us that we are never alone in our valley experiences.

“Reviewing My Days” is a map with direct reference to the daily examen, a spiritual practice with the purpose of drawing attention toward self-reflection, self-awareness, and ultimately God-awareness in the everyday moments of life. The practice of reviewing my days becomes a way of remaining present to each moment and God’s presence in it.

The “Desires and Longings” map invites thoughts of who we are becoming and what we want from life, opening conversations with God about what drives or motivates us. Through the years, many of us have stifled our desires and longings, believing that we must sacrifice them for the sake of being selfless followers of Jesus. The process of uncovering our deepest longings will lead us right back to God, the only one who can satisfy the soul he has created.

“Life-Giving Rhythms” is an exploration of spiritual practices that have connected a person to God in the past and present. It invites us to take a fresh look at the work God is doing in our lives and how he may be opening possibilities of new practices for new stages of life, to reveal sin patterns or draw us into our deepest desires.

Finally, the “Following Forward” map provides a review of the previous eight maps and asks us to find themes, identify what should be taken forward or left behind, and design bold prayers, statements of what we believe God wants to express through each of us to the world. Next steps may be identified to move reflections and learning into actions to benefit others and to glorify God. As we facilitate the “Listen to My Life” experience with others and repeatedly work through the map’s questions ourselves, we are continuing to learn, grow, and be formed by spiritual practices of life story work. There is ongoing wisdom that is lavishly given by God as we reflect on, recognize, and respond to God in our stories. We are given a front-row seat to God’s activity of redeeming, healing, restoring, and empowering in the stories of his precious sons and daughters for the benefit of others.

Thinking back on that crossroads, I thank God that he prompted me to look toward ways he had directed my soul in the past and moved me to map my story once again. Had I not learned to reflect on my life story I would have missed the wisdom, insight, and countless ways that God has directed me and provided for me. As Sibyl says, “I could not recognize this until reflection opened an unseen remembering of the very presence of God.”