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Statement of Faith
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Whenever I walk through a cemetery, I look at all the tombstones sporting names and birth and death dates, and not much more. And I always think, "I wonder what this person's story was." Cemeteries are sad places for many reasons, but one is that they are filled with untold stories.
I believe that every person alive today has an interesting story to tell, but that the vast majority of those stories will die with the person. This is a great loss to all of us, but especially to the families of those individuals. This is why I have attempted to tell my own life story in as many ways as I can. Someday after I am gone, I want my grandchildren and great grandchildren to be able to read about what God did in my life. I hope this will be an encouragement to them as they face life's challenges even as I have.I would like to encourage you to tell your story. Many people can tell their own story at no cost to themselves and without any outside help. Others may need some help, which I am prepared to offer at reasonable cost. Please read on to find out how this can work for you. PLEASE WRITE YOUR STORY. First I would like to encourage you to write your story. This does not need to be a complicated task, but I believe it is vitally necessary to your descendants that you do this. I can think of many benefits this will bring; here are a few. 1. As I mentioned, one of my motivations for writing my own story is the desire to encourage my descendants to trust God as I have as they face life's challenges. I am now 67 years old, and my oldest grandchild is just five. By the time she is having children, in about twenty plus or so years, I will be 87 or in Heaven. In either case, I will probably not be able to be of much help to them. I want them to have access to written materials that show them what God did in my life and how He can help them as well. If those materials are to exist then, they must be produced now. What you write now can still be an influence on others long after your death. Any message that is to transcend your life span must be recorded in some manner, and the written word is still the most convenient and efficient method of doing that. Write your story to encourage your descendants. 2. What you write can be a tremendous help to future family history researchers. In building a family tree, researchers are always especially delighted to find a document produced by an ancestor telling his or her own story. This is priceless in genealogical research. Your story makes you a real person, not just a name and a date. It can also help fill in gaps in family histories by identifying others who played important roles in your life. 3. Writing your life story can help you understand yourself and what God has done for you, and help you to put your life into a logical perspective. It can help you make decisions about your future as you review what God has done in the past. This gives you greater confidence for the future. 4. Writing your life story preserves some of the everyday features of contemporary life. These can be invaluable to future researchers seeking to understand an era. The details of daily life are preserved when we record them as incidental to our lives. Future generations can piece together how we lived by referencing the materials we leave behind. 5. If you are a Christian, then you are interested in glorifying the God Who saved you and guided you through your life. By telling your story and recording the things God did in your life, you will be glorifying God for generations to come. Others will be able to see intimately your relationship with God. If you write your story accurately and correctly, the hero of the story will be and should be God. REASONS WHY PEOPLE DON'T WRITE THEIR STORIES. Many people simply think they do not have the time to write their story. They are too busy living their lives to record their lives. This can be a problem, but it is not an insurmountable problem. Time can be carved out of any schedule for writing a few paragraphs a day. That is all it takes. And your story does not have to be told in a long manuscript of hundreds of pages. It can be told in less than a hundred pages, which can be written in a relatively short period of time. People often think they are not capable of writing their story. They simply do not have the skills they think are necessary to write something someone else will want to read. It is not necessary to be an accomplished writer, however. There are many helps available to people today to improve their writing. I offer some helps here, at the end of this article, but there are many sources of help available to assist a person to produce a well-written highly readable document. Another hindrance to writing one's story is the notion that "No one will be interested in my story. My life is too common; nothing exciting or interesting ever happened to me." This is never true. Every person has an interesting story to tell. The problem is that we think it is the events of our lives that form our story. They are certainly important, but they are not the basic elements of our story. It is how we reacted, how we felt, and, most important, how God guided us that makes our stories interesting to others. For example, I could have written this: I was born on June 5, 1941 in Windsor, Ontario, Canada to Whelan LaVerne Parsons and his wife Edna Marie. I grew up in Windsor, moved to Lincoln Park, Michigan and then to Grand Rapids, Flint, etc." Boring. But even more importantly, it doesn't really tell the reader anything about myself. My life is not comprised of the cities in which I have lived or the dates on which things happened. What people find interesting is how I reacted to the events of my life. How did I feel when at the age of ten my parents made a move from one country to another? What experiences did I have as a Canadian in an American school setting? What challenges did I face, and how did I deal with them and overcome them? It is the emotions of life that are of primary interest to readers. We like to read about the inner person, not just the facts. Facts are important; feelings are essential to telling a good story. I WOULD LIKE TO HELP YOU WRITE YOUR OWN STORY. Not everyone needs help, of course, and if you can write your story without help, please do so. But make sure you do it. It will be tremendously important to your descendants, as I have already mentioned. But if you need help, I would like to offer my services to you at what I believe are very reasonable prices. I have devised a scale of services from which you can choose. If you just need a little help, then that is all you pay for. If you need a higher level of help, then I have to charge more, of course. But even at the highest level the cost is still reasonable. 
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Your age is a factor in this as well. Writing their story is something anyone can and should do, but the older you are the more story you have to tell. In fact, many people do not begin to write their stories until they are in their fifties or sixties. But you can begin to write your story at any age, adding to it as you live more and more of life. Here on my website, I have attempted to preserve as many life stories as I can, especially of my ancestors. You can read these stories by clicking here. I have also written, or I should say, I am in the process of writing my own story. Because of my interest in writing, my story may be much more ambitious than you wish yours to be, but that is okay. It is more important to tell your story any way you can. If you would like to read my story, click here. Why not start today? Write a little each day. Then go back and review it. Think of ways to improve it and make it more interesting to a reader, even if the reader will only by your family members. Write your story. You and others will be glad you did.
I am interested in helping people write their stories. Not everyone needs help, of course. If you are able to write your story without help, please do so. Your family needs to have an account of your life to preserve for future generations. |
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| Copyright © 2009, Thomas M. Parsons, All Rights Reserved. - 616 |
But if you need help, I would like to offer my assistance. I have no prospects of getting rich helping people write their stories, but compensation is a necessary part of the process if I do help.
