{"id":2923,"date":"2014-11-07T08:01:09","date_gmt":"2014-11-07T08:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oshetablogs.wordpress.com\/?p=2923"},"modified":"2014-11-07T08:01:09","modified_gmt":"2014-11-07T08:01:09","slug":"turning-towards-the-back-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/shalominthecity\/2014\/11\/turning-towards-the-back-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Turning Towards the Back Story"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

It\u2019s Friday! This week I\u2019ve made a concentrated effort to blog on M\/W\/F and today I\u2019m celebrating my success by joining my favorite online community, the Five Minute Friday bloggers.\u00a0 Every Friday this group of brave writers, sit down and write for five minutes on one word prompt.\u00a0 These posts free-write which means for one day a week we write just for the love of the written word\u2013 no over-thinking or worrying about grammar or punctuation.\u00a0 There are no rules, simply to write authentically and then encourage the writer who posted before you on the link up.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s prompt is on the word: Turn.<\/p>\n

I hope you like my take on it.<\/p>\n

\"FMF-Turn-600x600\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Turning Towards the Back story.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"From<\/a>
From the author\u2019s website.<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I\u2019m reading a book with my twelve year old son called, \u201cThe Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell\u201d <\/a>written by Chris Colfer.\u00a0 It\u2019s right up my alley because I love all things fairy tales and magical. \u201cThe Land of Stories\u201d is about twins who find out that in the Land of Stories the fairy tales characters are real, with real lives, back stories, and problems, because we\u2019re cut from the same cloth my son and I are having amazing conversations about the characters in the book.\u00a0 One conversation we had this morning was reflecting on when Snow White visits the Evil Queen (Snow White\u2019s evil stepmother) in the prison after she\u2019s been apprehended and sentenced for trying to kill Snow White.\u00a0 The Evil Queen, aged and humiliated, reveals a truth about villains that completely turns my desire to hate them on its head:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cYour sorry will forever be romanticized. No on will ever thing twice about mine. I will continue to be degraded into nothing but a grotesque villain until the end of time.\u00a0 But whet the world fails to realize is that a villain is just a victim whose story hasn\u2019t been told.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A villain is just a victim.<\/p>\n

Wow.\u00a0 How often do I look at someone who has disagreed with me, offended me, or simply annoyed me so much that I can\u2019t stand to be around them and part of me vilifies them.\u00a0 I feel justified in my anger and righteousness in mu judgement. In those moments I create stories about them.\u00a0 Stories that say, \u201cthey are bad and they have always been bad and they will always be bad\u201d or stories that say, \u201cTheir no hope for them,\u201d or stories that place me as the primary victim and never once think about how they may also be a victim too.<\/p>\n

In my family we have this practice called, \u201cCreating a Back Story.\u201d When someone hurts us, we try to create an elaborate story as to why they may have hurt us.\u00a0 Even if we\u2019re completely off base from the actual reason someone bumped up against us, the practice of thinking of someone in a position of vulnerability turns our disgust into grace, turns our anger into compassion, turns our judgments into hope, turns my selfishness into sacrificial love.<\/p>\n

These stories can be as simple as,
\n\u201cOh my goodness!\u00a0 They must have honked at me and sped off because they got a phone call that their dog got out of the gate and got hit by a car so they\u2019re rushing home to help little Fido. I\u2019d rush home too and maybe pay less attention to other drivers if it meant saving my pet\u2019s life.\u201d<\/p>\n

To as complex as,:
\n\u201cOh,maybe there\u2019s a reason that Christian believes differently about gay marriage or death with dignity than I.\u00a0 Maybe they\u2019ve had a loved one come out or die painfully from a terminal disease.\u00a0 Wow it must be so hard to watch someone you love suffer and struggle and feel so powerless.\u00a0 How would I feel in that situation?\u201d<\/p>\n

I practice creating a back story because it keeps me humble and as the Bible says, \u201cGod opposes the proud, but give grace to the humble.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s Shalom (healing, wholeness, grace)\u00a0 in the Back Story,<\/p>\n

\"signature\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Wanna join us?\u00a0 Click the button and give us your best five minutes on \u201cTurn\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"Five-Minute-Friday-4\"<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s Friday! This week I\u2019ve made a concentrated effort to blog on M\/W\/F and today I\u2019m celebrating my success by joining my favorite online community, the Five Minute Friday bloggers.\u00a0 Every Friday this group of brave writers, sit down and write for five minutes on one word prompt.\u00a0 These posts free-write which means for one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3037,"featured_media":2924,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[462,3,398,477],"tags":[634,635,93,229,106,148,360,636,32,637,638],"class_list":["post-2923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anabaptist","category-blog","category-faith","category-peacemaking","tag-chris-colfer","tag-fairy-tales","tag-faith","tag-five-minute-friday","tag-fmf","tag-grace","tag-hope","tag-humility","tag-love","tag-victims","tag-villians"],"yoast_head":"\nTurning Towards the Back Story<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"It's Friday! 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