Creating Your Life Map - Part Three: Pointing Out Pain

How are your life maps coming along? Today we’re going to focus on the part of the process that will cause you to dig a little deeper. Today involves pain and grieving. Do you believe that God can use pain in your life for His good for your spiritual health? Do we see anyone endure pain and grieving in the Bible? Do they grow through it? Yes. But let’s admit—the painful parts of life are HARD. And often it’s hard to see how something beautiful can come from something that hurts so bad. Today I’m going to ask you to revisit some of those moments in your life story.

I’ve been using the format for life maps I learned while in graduate school as we go along. I hope it’s been helpful to you as you start to sort out the details of your life that perhaps you’ve never looked at in such detail before this process. I remember it was really eye opening for me the first time I did it.

For this step you will need another color of post-it notes. Go through your chronologically organized life map (from Part Two) and pick out the post-its that signify PAIN, GRIEVING or TRIAL/STRUGGLE to you in your life. It could be a person, place, event, etc. Replace the old post-it note with a colored one and transfer the detail that was listed on the original post-it. The idea is replace the pain, grieving, or trial/struggle notes so they are now in a different color so they stick out. Make sense?

I understand that this could be a difficult step for some. I’m praying for you all. Take your time and talk to God as you go along. God is at work. He always has been. Hopefully this process will start movement within your soul to promote a healing journey. Sometimes that doesn’t start until we can see the truth in front of us. I’ll be back tomorrow with the final step on how you can use this life map to seek healing and tell your personal story with new eyes and fresh perspective.