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Once Upon A Time I Was Someone Else

Home » General » Once Upon A Time I Was Someone Else


Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!

2Cor 5:17


Today I was asked to tell an old story. This friend of mine is compiling stories from the lives of women she knows. She is going to do something cool and fun and new with all of the words that her friends string together to tell about their lives. I told her mine. It had been a long, long time since I had told the whole story and I had forgotten many twists and turns in my own tale. It was like I was watching an old favorite movie in my mind and every once in a while I would think, “Oh, yeah! I forgot that happened! That was my favorite part!!”. There were other parts that I still wish I could take out of the final cut, but that is not a power I possess, so I told her about those anyways. My friend is really nice and hopefully won’t think I am crazy- even though I gave her full reason to think just that.

It reminded me of when I was a little girl, and how I loved hearing the same stories over and over again. The only thing is, I would always hope for the same story to actually be a different story. I wanted Cinderella to go to the ball without her nasty step-sisters ripping her dress apart so she could fall in love and not have to run off at midnight. I hoped that this time Snow White wouldn’t eat the apple and fall asleep and scare the poor little dwarves. Oh, and could Pinocchio please, please not turn into a donkey?? I also admit to being pretty sure at the age of six that had I been given the duty of first woman on earth instead of Eve, I would not have listened to that nasty serpent. I could have changed that whole story if I had only been given the chance. My six-year-old self could have saved the world, clearly. Who knew?


If could have, I would have erased every bit of excitement, conflict and danger from all the best stories ever written. They would all have become sweet tales about people who get along and have everything lovely happen to them without anything particularly interesting ever getting in the way. Birds would chirp, girls would sing, boys would fall in love and then the story would end. Gripping, no?

Unfortunately, miracles happen when you are in need of them, not when everything in life is coming up roses. We would never know the value of comedy if we didn’t first know tragedy. Wonderful is only made more, well, wonderful, when compared with horrible. How could we appreciate beauty if there wasn’t also something ugly? It seems the hard places in life make space for heaven in our hearts. A place where every tear is wiped away can only be appreciated fully if you have shed a few buckets of your own already.


Don’t be mad at me for saying all this. That’s not how I want life to be. I don’t think that’s how God ultimately wants it to be. That’s just how our humanity and the knowledge of good and evil plays out.

My day was full today with dragging three rambunctious boys and a fussy toddler all over town and being completely frazzled with the task of simply keeping everyone together and out of harms way. By five o’clock I was feeling the weight and stress of all my little people. After Morgan got home all six of us took dinner to another family with small children. Tragically, the father in the family passed away a few weeks ago very suddenly. The wife was so kind to us while we were there. She asked about us and our children and we chatted for a while. Then we left and I felt all the unfairness of our situations. I was going home with my husband and hers was gone. My children will see their daddy tomorrow and hers won’t. I learned something about gratitude tonight, and a lot about humility and the distance between it and my daily selfish thoughts.

So now, with my day behind me, I find myself thinking of the girl I was in that old favorite movie. I would not want her to have had a life free from difficulty or challenge. I would not have wanted her to have found the easy button or even to have missed some of those embarrassing moments that came her way from time to time. Just like the six-year-old version of me needed to hear that everything could be okay after Pinocchio went to Pleasure Island, the big girl me needed to know that everything could turn out all right after she ended up a lot like Eve in the garden.

I am not who I was once upon a time, and it is all thanks to some scary plot turns that came my way. It gives me hope for the scary things in my life now, and the scary things in the lives of people around me. There’s just a little more space now for some miracles in 2011. Kind of makes you want to pray, huh?

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  1. Michelle

    January 9, 2011 at 3:08 am

    I think this is a great post! Such great points Carrie, thanks for sharing :)I've been thinking a lot lately about how God is the great Author of our lives and how creative He is. And how He uses the negative turns in the story to make it a better story. You said it perfectly!

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