“One of the arguments we often use for not writing is this: ‘I have nothing original to say. Whatever I might say, someone else has already said it, and better than I will ever be able to.’ This, however, is not a good argument for not writing. Each human person is unique and original, and nobody has lived what we have lived. Furthermore, what we have lived, we have lived not just for ourselves but for others as well. Writing can be a very creative and invigorating way to make our lives available to ourselves and to others.

We have to trust that our stories deserve to be told. We may discover that the better we tell our stories the better we will want to live them” (Henri Nouwen).

One of the reasons I write these blogs is because it’s part of me telling my story. It’s often very therapeutic and healing to get my thoughts out of my head and onto paper (or more accurately, onto computer screen then onto cyberspace via the interwebs).

No one can tell your story better than you. No one has lived your life quite like you have.

It occurred to me earlier as I was watching a Baz Luhrmann movie that the best stories are the ones in which you find your story and I find mine. Those are the stories in which the specifics may be quite different than mine, but the emotions are the same. I find in a good story that I can relate to the characters and the situations in which they find themselves.

Even if you just write what you did that day, it’s something. If you write about your fears and doubts, however odd and neurotic they may seem, someone else out there will inevitably be able to relate. Someone else will be able to say finally, “I’m so very glad I’m not the only one who thinks or feels this way. Maybe there’s hope for me.”

So write your story. My preferred method is blogging, but yours may be writing a novel or short story, taking a photograph, giving your testimony before a church group, or just being intentional about how you live your life.

Three words: tell your story.