By now you’ve probably heard and, if you haven’t yet, let me be the one to tell you first.. Let me give you MY side of the story.
How many times have I given MY side of the story? Countless.
Everything back to innocent fights with my siblings growing up..
“But Daaaaaad, he started it! …”
to my marriage ending. Ouch.
Yeah…. this just got real.
The times I’ve shared my side really is too many to count.
I believe there are several reasons why we want to give OUR side of the story.
- It’s healthy to talk about things that we experience & it feels good to be heard
- We are fearful of someone giving the wrong account of the situation and we don’t want to be misunderstood
- We want to justify our actions
- We want to sugarcoat things and make the OTHER person look like the bad guy to take the blame off of ourselves
Yeah #1 sounds great… but how often is our side of the story really powered by genuine motives?
While my marriage fell apart, I wanted the world to hear it from my perspective. Why? 2, 3, and 4… That’s why. It took a lot of growth before I got to the place where I realized my motives were ugly and it took even more healing before I would admit it.
Since then and in journeying through life with a very cherished friend of mine, I’ve learned a few things about giving my side of the story with different motives:
2. The hurt from being misunderstood is real. People tend to be quick to assume and quick to judge. That judgment, however, doesn’t really matter. Who cares what they think of you or what happened? You know the truth and, more importantly, God knows the truth. It’s not good to give others the wrong impression or let them falsely accuse you, but if you spend all of your time worrying what they think, you’ll end up sharing your side of the story with people who probably didn’t need to hear the story at all.
3. The need to justify your actions usually comes from a place of realizing that you did something wrong.. Justifying your actions is really just a fancy phrase for giving others- but more importantly yourself- an excuse as to why you did or didn’t do or say something. The more time you spend here, the harder it is to leave. We are all broken people. Come to terms with it. Realize that your mistakes don’t add or subtract to who you are. They don’t take away any of your value.
4. A sugar coating may taste sweet for a moment but it is surely going to taste like poo the moment that sugar dissolves. In the same sense that your mistakes don’t take away from your value, others’ mistakes don’t add to your value. For some reason, we have gotten so used to tearing others down in order for us to feel better about ourselves. Stop comparing wrongs. Stop comparing rights.
1. It IS healthy to talk about things you experience and it DOES feel good to be heard. If your side of the story contains intimate details about someone else, it’s not your story to tell without honest intensions and it’s not meant to be shared with just any listening ears. Make sure that the ears your story falls on are in the right place a well.
To take it one step further, before you ask someone a question, think about where their heart is at. And before you offer up your ears, make sure that your heart is in the right place as well.
Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.
Ephesians 4:29
