Becoming the Hero of Your Own Story

SPEAKERS
LESLIE VERNICK, JULIE ROYS

Note: This is a rough transcript and may contain some misspellings.

Leslie Vernick: You see there’s two parts of your story. Chapter one is what happened to you? The rest of the story is what you do with what happened to you. How does it shape you? How does it grow you? Does it deform you or help you be a courageous warrior? So how do you write your part of this story as the main character?

You get to decide

what I wanna share with you. Is how to become the hero of your own story. Now, have you ever gone to the movies or read a book and hated the ending? Like the person who was supposed to become the good guy or the hero, wigged out and got outsmarted by the bad guy, or the person in the main character position never grew and developed and became the hero.

They just stayed at Medium. That almost happened in Mill Murray and Groundhog Day. Remember that movie where he woke up every day to the same old day, and at first he thought, this is great. I can eat all I want. I can drink all I want. I can have all the women I want with no consequences, and I can do it again and again.

But he soon realized his life was boring and also deforming. And had Bill Murray not changed, it would’ve been an awful movie. One of my favorite movies is 42. The story of Jackie Robinson, the first African American baseball player in the major leagues Jackie faced unbelievable cruelty. Criticism, racism, even among his own team members, every single time he got to bat or did anything, he was criticized.

He felt incredible anger, and yet displayed incredible character because the myth there was an African American man cannot be a noble man. He’s an animalistic man. And Jackie Robinson proved them wrong. And then I just had the privilege of watching the Rosa Parks story over Martin Luther King Day.

Despite the culture, despite incredible injustice and the odds of an African American woman having any kind of voice in 1955, she used her voice. On a bus ride to say no, she wasn’t gonna give up her seat to a white man who demanded it. And Rosa not only changed her story, she changed the civil rights story.

Hollywood is not the best storyteller. God is Joseph. Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers. Faced injustice in Potiphar’s house when his wife lied about him and he ended up in jail unjustly. And then when he graciously gave the prophecy or the interpretation of the dreams, the baker and the wine taster, forgot him to Pharaoh For two years, Joseph waited, but how he waited made a difference in his story.

Joseph not only changed his story, he changed history and Esther. Esther was sold into slavery as a young woman to be the king’s sex slave. Back then they called him cocky mines. Esther could have been bitter and angry, resentful, but she was not, and apparently she was quite good at her job because she was promoted to the queen.

And then she faced an incredible decision. Was she gonna risk her position to be honest and go to the king and talk to him? Esther had to be strategic, but Esther’s story also changed history. Many of you are here because you have a story of incredible oppression, abuse, injustice. We hear you. I hope you have felt seen and heard, but please do not get stuck in chapter one of your story.

One of my very first counseling clients, Sarah got stuck in her story chapter one. For 20 years, Sarah was abused as her as a child by her father who was the pastor of her church. I. They were a very conservative, fundamental church, so her mother was passive and accommodating and turned a blind eye to what her husband was doing to her daughter.

Sarah grew up hating her father, hating her mother, but hating God, who allowed that to happen as a 20-year-old woman, she failed out of college. She could not hold a job. She was angry and bitter and spiraling in the question, why me? Why me? Why did God allow this to happen to me? Why did God give me these horrible parents?

And Sarah could not see that she could have a part in authoring her story. She thought what happened to her was her story. That was not her story. That’s just chapter one. What you do with what happened to you begins to become chapter two. Sarah was right. Her parents did ruin her childhood, but Sarah herself was now ruining her adulthood.

She could not see that she had choices to make. We talked about this all weekend. How important it is for victims to learn. They still have choices. Sarah couldn’t see that she had any choices to make about how her life story was going to go. She didn’t see that she had choices about whether she was going to heal, whether she was going to forgive, whether she was going to grow and learn, and even thrive over what happened to her.

She stayed stuck. In chapter one of her story, Jesus asked a man who had been paralyzed for 38 years, a really perplexing question. He asked him, now, we don’t know why he was paralyzed for 38 years. We don’t know if he was born that way or whether he was injured as a child or whether he was an older man.

We don’t know that part of his story, but he asked him, do you want to get well? What an interesting question, but if you remember the story, this man was asked by Jesus, why didn’t you put yourself into the water? When the water stirred? This man was functioning in a helpless way, and apparently he had some capacity to put himself in the water, but he did not.

He said, there’s no one here to put me in the water. And so Jesus said, do you want to get well? Because I think Jesus knew that this man had a decision to make. Jesus could fix this man’s legs, but this man would have to fix his life. He lived his whole life as a beggar, depending on other people, to take care of him, even to put him in the well.

He didn’t take agency for that, and so Jesus was respectful of this man’s agency. Do you want to get because if I heal your legs, sir, you might have to get a job. You won’t be able to beg anymore. You might have to interact with people face to face. You might even get married. Is that what you want?

Do you want to get many of you are here because you have been injured by people and you do feel crippled. You do feel harmed and it’s easy to stay stuck in those feelings. I get it. I experienced some of that myself in my childhood and early adulthood, but God wants you to move from the main character in your story to the hero in your story.

And so perhaps for some of you, you are ready. And if you’re ready, I want to teach you how You ready? Yes. Okay. Now I’m gonna play a game with you that I play with my granddaughters to teach them this concept. It’s called Finish the Story. ’cause every story starts with a main character who faces an obstacle, a challenge, or a bad guy.

Right? Chapter one. You ready? We’re gonna finish a story and it’s gonna be a little T story. And it’s not gonna be a bad guy. It’s just gonna be a challenge. And it’s a little gross and I’m almost afraid to use it, but I thought we needed a little humor. So once upon a time, you are home alone and you wake up in the morning with a terrible stomach bug and you forgot to charge your cell phone last night.

So you’re outta battery and you’re in the bathroom and you realize, oh my gosh. This is the end of the toilet paper.

What do you as the main character do? Finish the story. Help. Help. Okay. No one’s home.

That’s your second obstacle. You’re alone. Your cell phone’s not working. You have a problem and it’s not going away. You have no toilet paper. What do you do? What brush? What was that? Wash The Middle Eastern Way. Yes. Wash it away. Get in the shower. The Middle Eastern away, middle Eastern way. Yeah. Yes.

You don’t have toilet paper, so you do something else. I couldn’t quite hear you, but I got it. What else do you do? Use a washcloth. Use a washcloth. What else? I have paper towels. Paper towels, okay. Let’s say you’re out of paper towels by now. What else do you do? Station call Uber Eats. Although your cell phone doesn’t work.

All right. There are lots of solutions that you can come up with right now. Here’s where I want you to pay close attention. How does chapter two go? Depending on how you as the main character handle your problem. So if you sit on the toilet, angry that this happened to you, and all you are saying is, God, why am I here?

This is so unfair. I don’t have any toilet paper and my phone isn’t working and I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. How does chapters two start?

What’s different about chapter two? If you are cleaned up, however you chose to do it, and you are tucked into your bed, do you see how you as the main character of your story shifts the narrative once you take ownership of your problem? It’s not your fault. Sometimes we get confused because it’s not our fault, and so we think, why should I have to take ownership?

Because it’s your life. It’s your life. It’s not your fault, but it’s your life and it’s your story to write. And if you live it in the default mode, you will ruin your story. You will not become the hero of your own story. One of the biggest problems that happens in storyland is that we get caught in the question of, why?

Why is this happening to me? Why did God allow this to happen to me?

Why? Why? How many of you have got caught there? Nobody. Some of you. Yeah, we get caught there. Jesus specifically told us not to get caught there. Remember, he was telling his disciples about the man born blind. He said, you’re gonna wonder who sinned this man or his parents. Why or when the Tower of Sloan fell on all these people, were they worse sinners than the Gentiles?

Why? Job asked God, why for 42 chapters? And God never told Job why? But he told us why in chapter one. Are you okay with that? I’m not okay with why. God told us Satan came to me and allowed, asked to test job, and I said, okay. Are you okay with that? I’m not okay with that. I don’t wanna know that. Right?

I don’t, that doesn’t make me feel better to know why. And so one of the things that you need to do to move off of your story is to begin to ask different questions. Lemme give you a few. What do I need to do to help myself right now? I like the toilet paper story. I’ve got a problem. I’m getting dysregulated.

I’ve got a problem. I’m afraid to go out. I’ve got a problem. I’m losing my temper all the time. I’ve got a problem. I can’t hold a job. I’ve got a problem. I feel like I’m full of hate. Own your problem.

And then what do I need to do to fix my problem? Big little, whichever it is, and you might have more than one. Start small. What do I need to do to deal with this problem I’m having in this moment? Another question. How can I learn from this? I went to a conference once. It was a secular conference, and we talked to different people and talked about what we did, and a woman heard what I did.

I worked with Christian women in destructive and abusive marriages, and she said, oh, I was married to a sociopathic narcissist. She said It was the best thing that ever happened to me. And I’m like, tell me more. Tell me your story. I really wanna hear how you got that. And she said, when I got married, I was the most passive, accommodating, people, pleasing, forbearing, forgiving person you would ever meet.

And had I not married such an evil vile man, I would’ve never learned to stand up for myself. I would’ve never learned to set boundaries. I would’ve never learned to steward my own one. Precious life. I learned a whole lot from him. My marriage failed, but I grew strong. What an amazing hero of her own story.

How can I learn from this? Another question is, what is the gift in this challenge? What is the gift in this challenge that I’m facing? Another question is what matters most? Dr. Danny Freeland was a medical doctor who did great work in crisis management work. At 55, he got diagnosed with a terrible brain tumor.

And he knew that he would have one year max to live out the rest of his life. So for the first half day after that diagnosis, he got caught in Why? Why me? Why this? Why now? Why God? And how would his story have ended if he stayed there? He only had a year and all of it wasn’t gonna be good. And so he switched questions.

And he asked himself the question, what matters most? Now I have one year left. I’m gonna love my kids the best I can so that they really know their dad love them when I’m gone. He still died, but he changed his story because he could. Because he asked himself the question that moved him off being angry and disappointed, legitimately so over his diagnosis, and took agency over how the next few months were gonna go.

When you cannot change what’s out here, you cannot change your pastor. You cannot change your husband. You cannot change the system. Julie can work on that, and we hope you do and we’ll help you, but right now all you can change is you. Let’s play Finish the story again. You’re leaving the Restore Conference and whether you live in the Phoenix area and you’re anxious to get home to get ready for the Super Bowl, or you’re catching an airplane.

You get on the 10 or the 1 0 1 or however you’re going, and you’re not going because there’s a terrible traffic jam and you’ve gotta go to the bathroom.

Finish the story.

Yeah, she’s got some, she’s got a van, so she’s got a little pea cup in there. How many of you carry a pea cup in your car? Lesson learned, right? All right, so you’re stuck in traffic. So how many of us love getting stuck in traffic? Especially when we have an airplane to catch or we wanna get home? Nobody likes it.

Nobody likes it. So how do you write your part of this story as the main character? You get to decide. You get to decide. The problem is we don’t decide. We just default. We just react. We pounding on the steering wheel. We’re making phone calls. I can’t believe this is happening. This is so angry. Why is this happening to God?

I know that shit. You know how it goes. Most of us don’t handle those kind of obstacles, those challenges very well. These are small teas, not trauma, but small opportunities for you to practice the things I’m talking about here. But if you don’t learn to do these things, do you think you’ll be able to do them in the big moments of life?

So if you were driving home tonight and you were practicing, how am I gonna write this part of my story? And you’re stuck in traffic and you’re stuck with asking yourself why or asking God why, and you switched to what question could you ask yourself that might help you? What’s in the car where I can, where, what can I find a pee in?

That would be one question. To solve my problem if I have to. If you have to. That solves one of your problems. What’s the gift in this moment? What’s the gift that’s hidden? Alright. Maybe I can listen to a podcast of Julie’s that I missed, or Scott McKnight’s or mine, or somebody that you heard here, right?

I can learn. I can listen to something that will continue to facilitate my learning. I don’t have to sit here like a victim of the traffic. I can take agency to help myself. I can breathe. I can practice some of those exercises I learned at that Restore conference to calm my emotions down. I can sing. I can listen to worship music.

I have choices about how I will be in this moment, and that writes a different chapter two to I got stuck in traffic story in chapter one. Is this making sense? Yes. So I’m trying to break this down into very small steps for you so that you can go home with something really doable. So step one, find a guide or allow guides to help you in this moment.

I’m your guide. I’m not the hero of your story. Some of you are old enough like me, that we saw the original Star Wars and to remember the moment when Luke Skywalker is fighting Darth Vader. Luke Skywalker was writing his story. He wasn’t the hero yet. He was just ordinary Jedi Knight and Darth Vader was trying to destroy him.

And Obiwan Kenobi was saying to Luke, what, Luke? Don’t go to the dark side. Be careful. Be careful in your anger. Do not go to the dark side. Luke had to decide what he was going to do. Luke is the one who was writing his story, but the guide reminded him what was important. It wasn’t winning over Darth Vader.

It was winning over Darth Vader with integrity. Remember Diane Langberger warned us yesterday. Yes, that we can be overcome by evil and self-deception. Just like our abusers, we can judge and condemn. We need to remind one another lest any one of us become hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. That’s why the body of Christ is so important to write our stories.

We don’t write them alone. We need one another. We need to be honest with one another so that when I’m tempted to go to the dark side, someone is there to guide me, to remind me. Do you really wanna do that? Do you really wanna go there? Have a guide. Jackie Robinson had a guide. His name was Branch Ricky.

He was the general manager and when Jackie Robinson would come back and he would be so angry at the way he was treated, the injustice, and he was ready to punch someone out, branch Ricky would say Jackie, be the man. You know you are. Don’t let anger win. Don’t let hatred win. Hatred is winning from them, but don’t repay evil for evil.

He helped Jackie to be the man. He was the hero of his own story, branch. Ricky wasn’t the hero of Jackie’s story, but he was a voice at tough times to remind him, who am I? Who do I wanna be? How do I wanna show up? Do I really want anger to get the best of me and write my story that way? No. Get support, get a guide.

Two, be courageously committed to truth to reality. Healthy people live in truth. The truth sets you free. And as we heard from Melissa, I think her name is, the truth is hard. Life is hard. Life isn’t safe. It’s hard, but we waste a lot of energy arguing with reality. It’s not fair. I don’t like, of course we don’t like hard, but life is hard.

Jesus tells us that in this world you will have hard. So the more we accept that and equip ourselves to deal with hard in a heroic way. The more likely we are to be the hero of our story. If we keep arguing that life shouldn’t be hard and life should be fair, and why me, we’re gonna be spiraling ourselves downward again and again, and then wonder why we feel so weak and defeated.

If we can accept the truth that life is hard, then we commit to building muscles to deal with heart. Instead of being angry that life is hard and so be courageously committed to truth. The serenity prayer is beautiful this way. It says, Lord, help me to accept the things I cannot change. I’m not saying like it, but accept it.

The courage to change the things I can change me sitting in traffic. I can’t change the traffic. I can change the way I’m reacting to the traffic, and that changes the story and the wisdom to know the difference. Two courageously. Commit yourself to truth. Three. Did you know that you are not your feelings?

You have feelings? They’re not who you are and sometimes you don’t even like your feelings, right? Like, why am I feeling so hatred? Full of hatred? I remember a good friend of mine said, I feel like killing him. And I don’t, that’s not who I’m, so what’s the part of her that is aware? That she’s having feelings that are out of alignment with the person she wants to be.

This is amazing self-awareness that we have feelings, but they are not to have us. We become aware of our feelings, but what’s the we that’s looking at our feelings? What’s the we that’s becoming aware of our feelings? That’s something I call the Bible calls your noble self. That is the image of God in you.

You are an image bearer. You are not just anger and we talk about our feelings in such a confusing way. I am angry. No you are not anger. You feel angry. I am depressed. No, you are not depressed. You feel depressed. And if you say it differently, all of a sudden you can become aware of who the you is that can decide what you wanna do about these feelings versus being encaptured or engulfed by your emotions.

So change your language, but also become aware that God has called you. To develop who you are. He says, you are my workmanship, created to do amazing things in my kingdom. I have a plan for your story, but I won’t do it without your permission and your cooperation. So that we now need to strengthen ourselves, our character, our identity.

Diane said, character matters. You don’t become a hero because you feel like it. You become a hero because you have character that does heroic things, whether you feel like it or not. When I wrote my book on marriage, the Emotionally Destructive Marriage, I was the first author who said, it’s okay to get divorced.

In fact, it’s not only the only choice, it might be the best choice. And I did get a lot of flack for that. It’s not like I wanted the flack. I didn’t want the flack. I don’t like the flack anymore than anybody else does. It took bravery to write that. But bravery is not a feeling. Courage is not a feeling.

Courage is a virtue. And so I’d like you to think for a minute, what are the most important virtues and values that God has put inside of you to write your story? Because feelings will always try to interfere with that, and if you allow them to, they will sabotage your story. What are the most important virtues and values you have?

God says, love ought to be our most important value and virtue. As believers Paul says, do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. That’s how you begin to write a different story, but when you’ve been touched by evil. I want you to picture this. It’s like someone has shot a poison dart right into your body and now you feel the poison coursing through you.

And if you don’t apply an antidote, you will be overcome by evil. And if you wanna become the hero of your story, you have to know how to apply the antidote. And what is the antidote? It’s love. That’s why Jesus says, love your enemies. He’s not expecting you to kiss them if they’re your husband or sleep with them or even live with them.

You can’t precisely because they’re your enemy. They’re dangerous, but he wants your heart to not be poisoned by what they did to you. You see there’s two parts of your story. Chapter one is what happened to you? The rest of the story is what you do with what happened to you. How does it shape you? How does it grow you?

Does it deform you or help you be a courageous warrior? In judges chapter six, God called Gideon and he said, Gideon. Man of valor, mighty warrior, and you get the Gideons going, who are you talking to? That’s not who I am. I’m not a mighty warrior. I don’t feel like a mighty warrior. I just feel like a little weenie farmer here from the least of tribe of Benjamin.

We don’t feel our virtues. We live into them. And so Gideon said, I don’t feel like that. And God said, go act in the strength that you have. Start now acting like a mighty warrior. So in the dead of night, Kiton went in his father’s backyard and he started cutting down all of his idle pulses. He didn’t tell him what he was gonna do, but he started acting like a mighty warrior.

And guess what happened as Gideon started acting like a mighty warrior? He became the mighty warrior. God always speaks of you and me in the present tense. You are beloved. You are fully forgiven. You are perfect. You are a mighty warrior. You are. My beloved, you are my workmanship. Peter. You are the rock.

When Peter was full of stuff that he was gonna mess up with yet, right? But Peter learned to live into it. So my friend, to become the hero in your story, begin to develop your virtues, the things that you hold most. Dearest character qualities. How many of you are parents? How many of you aspire to be a good parent that your values are?

I wanna have a good story with my kids. At the end of the day, I want my parenting story to be my mom and dad love me. Everybody want that? Okay. How many of you feel like a good parent All the time.

So when you’re writing your parenting story, remember this. When you feel like ringing your kid’s neck, you have a choice to make, which part of me finishes the story, my feelings or my values, my feelings or my values. When you let your negative feelings finish the story consistently. Yeah, and they’re not in alignment with your values.

You will feel bad about you. I can’t believe I did that. I can’t believe I said that. I feel horrible as a parent. Pay attention to that. That’s good information for you. You don’t ruin your story in one day. You have a chance to redo it, but if you’re not paying attention, you won’t be able to learn. Third, work on your virtues Last.

But not least, I’m gonna leave you with a little tip. Viktor Frankl, who was a Jewish Holocaust survivor, a psychiatrist in Nazi Germany, wrote a beautiful book called Man’s Search for Meaning, and one of the phrases he says in that book is between a stimulus and response. There’s a pause between a stimulus and a response.

There’s a pause. So I want you to remember that, that when life is happening to you. And you wanna write a good story, it’s really important to pause and notice I’m getting worked up. I’m feeling certain feelings. Those are really important for you to notice. Oti, I’m feeling hatred right now. I’m feeling angry right now.

I’m feeling tempted right now. I am feeling tempted. How many people have felt tempted and then they didn’t stop themselves because they just let that be their story. I fell into temptation and then they went against their virtues and their values, and I’m not the man I wanna be. I’m not the man I thought I was.

I’m not the woman I wanna be because I did this and I don’t even know why I did it. So pause. Pause, notice, and then choose. Pause, notice and choose. We’ve said this weekend that we might be on the cusp of a Reformation 2.0. Maybe just maybe your story will be a part of God’s story. That changes history.

You can be the hero of your story. God bless.

Julie: Thanks so much for listening to this session of Restore 2025. As a lot of conferences charge for resources like these, but we’ve decided to make them available for free because we don’t want money to stand in the way of ministry. That said, these do cost money to produce, and we also feel God calling us to expand our ministry and our production of resources.

So if you believe in what we’re doing here at the Roy’s report, would you please consider donating to support us? To do that, just go to Julie Roys spelled ROY s.com/donate. That’s julie roy’s dot com slash donate. Again, thanks so much for listening. Hope you were blessed and encouraged.