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    Equipped to Bless: Finding Relevance in the Stories of Your Life
    Equipped to Bless: Finding Relevance in the Stories of Your Life
    Equipped to Bless: Finding Relevance in the Stories of Your Life
    Ebook129 pages2 hours

    Equipped to Bless: Finding Relevance in the Stories of Your Life

    By Pete Vanderpool and Wendy C. Brown

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    About this ebook

    Stories have the power to paint a picture of our individual relevance, to connect us with others, and allow us to experience blessing as we bless others. Pull up a chair… Something to put your feet on …and let’s look at the stories that make us who we are, and the beautiful ways in which they interact with others to give life meaning.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateOct 23, 2012
    ISBN9781483505626
    Equipped to Bless: Finding Relevance in the Stories of Your Life

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      Book preview

      Equipped to Bless - Pete Vanderpool

      meaning.

      PART ONE: THE TREASURE OF STORY

      I felt the need to tell stories to understand myself.

      — Manuel Puig

      Everyone has a story. From buttercups and butterflies to knee-deep snowdrifts and desert sands, each person’s life is a treasure chest, a rich repository, designed to carry the gold, silver, and jewels of story, meaning, and purpose. The stories begin before we are born. There is romance, obligation, joy, pain, and a myriad of other circumstances and emotions that birth us into the story we call life.

      A STORY is the big picture that encompasses every minute detail, every little story contained within. STORY is the narrative account or course of one’s life. Even if we choose not to believe it is rich and amazing, our STORY is a treasure and reads like an interesting novel—one that carries us away into a life so amazing we forget it is our own.

      Every story has conflict, action, suspense, and a thematic thread that ties the pieces together with an intended purpose. This purpose reaches far into a greater STORY that is unfolding on the stage of the universe.

      As stories gather within each life, they create a greater STORY that marks an individual with, well . . . individuality. My STORY is unique. So is yours. And all of them are as precious as the next because every life STORY is also part of a Divine STORY.

      Connected:

      To connect is to communicate with, to make one’s unique self available to another, to offer to bless or even just be in the right place at the right time.

      A toddler once picked up two ends of a broken power line. She connected one end to the chain-linked fence and then connected the other end to the same fence a few feet along. These connections were significant and secure. If, however, she had connected the two live ends, the result would have been more than significant and anything but secure.

      Throughout this book, the word connect will have two meanings. The first is to join, unite, link, put into communication with. The second meaning is the same but occurs with electricity, a spark, energy. There is power in the word connect.

      CHAPTER ONE

      GOD’S PLAN FOR MY CINDERELLA STORY

      ‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’ Jeremiah 29:11

      Yeh-Shen is the friend of a ten-foot fish in the lake. They often talk and laugh as she stares into his eyes and strokes the glittery scales on his back. Yeh-Shen’s mother died when she was a baby. Her father, the chief of the region, had a second wife to care for Yeh-Shen, but when he died a few months ago after contracting the plague in his quiet, rural village in China, everything changed. So, Yeh-Shen and her unusual friend have a lot to talk about most days.

      I know you don’t yet see the reason for all this, Yeh-Shen. Neither do I, but you must remember that the One who has always been, knows.

      And who is this One who has always been? I see him as a monster that reaches out with giant claws, stealing those we love and need. He must not truly know anything about me.

      He knows you needed a friend and He sent me, didn’t He?

      Well, it’s not exactly Cinderella, but can you guess what happens next? Yeh-Shen has to live with her abusive stepmother and stepsisters who exploit her kindness, talent, and beauty so much that she no longer believes there is hope. She forgets her father was a great man and that her story is a vital part of a greater, even Divine, story.

      Once reminded, Yeh-Shen sees great things happen. Her mother’s spirit comes to her and suddenly she finds herself ready for the spring festival where all eligible young men and women go to find love. Dressed in a cloak of kingfisher feathers, an azure silk dress, a tiara of ivory and pearls, and of course, golden slippers, Yeh-Shen wows the crowd and one young man in particular. The rest is fairy tale history. She loses a slipper and the prince finds her after a regional search for the only one in existence who wears a size 5. Pardon the cliché, but they then live happily ever after.

      Cinderella shows up everywhere. Choose your version. There is the classic cartoon Disney tale where the porcelain-skinned, Barbie-style blonde, assisted by singing birds and rambunctious mice, wipes her sweaty brow under the command of her stuffy, arrogant, and abusive stepmother. There is also the multiethnic version where pop star Brandy plays the role of a sweet, soft-spoken, brown-skinned dream model who dances through her shabby room at night singing ballads that bemoan her circumstances while building a melodic spirituality of hope.

      Maybe the version you see most is your own. Life has proven that injustice can turn off the lights of the soul with a simple flip of the switch; so can grief, sadness, bitterness, violence, and even boredom and the passing of time. The story of Cinderella, though fictitious, has a universal message that communicates the concept that each of us lives our life within the framework of a true but broken story, but also that we each have a magnificent purpose directed by the Divine.

      My wife Joyce and I started a local chapter several years ago of an organization called SAFE: Stuffed Animals For Emergencies. We collect cuddly, cute stuffed animals and deliver them to law enforcement offices and other agencies that work with children. Each patrol car carries a small box of these critters. When crises occur that involve children, from natural disasters to methamphetamine busts, officers have a warm connection in their cars that de-escalates the fear and trauma a child is likely to experience in these situations.

      On one trip to the sheriff’s office, Joyce noticed that the receptionist seemed a bit distracted. That is when I lost my wife. She went straight toward Cindy while I unloaded boxes in front of the

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