Telling my story

So thank you for all the encouragements before telling my story this Wednesday morning, in this school I'm staffing (Awaken DTS). This week every staff had 20-30 minutes to share their story to the class, 80 students we barely had begun to know.

It's something really powerful about sharing your own life story, whether you are 18 years old and you feel like life just started, or you're 80 and hopefully have a well of wisdom to draw from. And everyones story is so different and it is just yours, no one can take it away from you, no one else but you can own it. While thinking about and telling it, it might hit you how good it is and how fortunate you are. Or you may notice how you have not even begun in reaching your goals, maybe you even forgot about them because the dreams faded so long ago. Maybe your story is full of pain and hurt and how you have overcome them, or still are in the process of it, or just never got started and pushed it all back down. Telling your story will always remind you of something important, I think, or push you forward in the right direction, or rekindle dreams and hopes from long back.

And it is your own.
And it is never too late to change course.
You can change your life story so that when you tell it again next year or in five years or when you are 80 - it will be different.



So yeah, sharing my story felt amazing. I loved it. I was just being myself, excited and happy and deep and a bit of a klutz. Of course as I was speaking I managed to push a nice glass clock down from a table, and it fell into the ground in 2-3 pieces!! I felt bad, but everyone just laughed... I shared about my growing up, in an amazing family who taught me about God - parents that were focused on us kids; we would sing and pray together, discuss fervently on any political, religious or moral issue, learning the value of giving to those that had less than us, my parents being most generous with their money. Then I shared about my choice when I was 10-11 to continue following Jesus, even when the other kids "grew out of" childhood faith (barnetro) and this being a huge part of me while I at the same time just avoided things I was scared of and had so much identity in what I could do; singing, dancing, writing, performing, doing well at school, listening to people... and not in who I just was, without all these things I did.

So yeah, that was the start of my story - and maybe some other time I will share what happened after those early years.

Right now I'm just hanging with the Dowdy's for the week-end, listening to the World Cup soccer bronze finale in Norwegian, playing with the kids and getting ready to go in the pool in a minute.

Life is good. Finally. After exactly one month in Hawaii life is at this moment pretty okey.

This is Opal on the last picture. She's been running around with my camera taking these beautiful pictures. Good start for a coming photographer!