Rewriting the Story

I believe we have the power to rewrite our stories. I believe real transformation happens when we are willing to press into the painful and negative stories, we’ve told ourselves and begin to rewrite them as we discover and uncover the truth. That is where life begins to shift, this is where life begins to shift for me.

For most of my life, I believed I was stupid, incompetent stupid. Unable to do or accomplish anything. And honestly, there were reasons I believed it.

I remember being in elementary school and spending much of my class time sitting out in the hallway. The teacher would put a handful of us out there and tell us we could come back in when we decided to participate correctly, whatever that meant. I didn’t know how to participate “correctly.” I just knew I couldn’t learn the way everyone else seemed to. Which caused me to wonder what is “wrong with me”.

The times I did come back into the classroom, I failed the tests and never understood what was being taught. I was always behind and struggled to keep up so I gave up. Being behind only reinforced the story of how stupid I was.

As the years went on, the hallway became something else the island of misfits for me. I was never going to amount to anything. In 8th grade, there was a table at the back of the classroom called the dumb table. That’s where I sat. It was where the kids who were dumb and “didn’t try” were placed. What no one understood was that these weren’t kids who didn’t care. These were kids who had already given up on themselves.

To make it worse, teachers would hang our failing grades closest to the door so everyone could see them as they walked in and out. They weren’t just hanging a test we failed. They were hanging our identity. We weren’t students who struggled—we were failures. Incapable. Less than those in other kids in the classroom.

The teacher’s belief was perhaps shame would motivate us or the embarrassment would somehow make us try harder and get smarter. Instead, it did the opposite. Shame and condemnation crystallized over vulnerable children who were left to figure it out on their own.

When lies crystallize over our truer selves, they start to feel permanent. They become what looks like truth. And those lies I told to myself robbed me of believing in my own existence and potential. These stories robbed me of living, trying, expanding, growing evolving in to the best version of me.

I remember coming home from school one day and asking my mom if something was wrong with me, I asked if I wasn’t mentally capable of learning. I wonder if I had something wrong with me, no one told me about it. I shared with my mom about the dumb table. She had no idea. And when she found out, she came in with fire. We were pulled out of our Catholic school and placed into public school.

In the public school, I was tested and told I had a third-grade reading level. My comprehension was third grade. Imagine being thirteen years old and publicly labeled incapable and stupid again. That moment didn’t heal anything—it only solidified the shame growing belief of the lie deeper within me.

So I gave up on me, and stopped trying.

I barely passed high school. I never believed I was capable of more. And the lie followed me into adulthood and every single facet of my life. What you anyone love this stupid, pathetic incapable human. This was my story and the song I sang every single day of my life.

Years later, as God began working in my life, I felt a nudge, not just for myself, but for my children, the generations coming behind me and humanity. I wanted to change the story me story, my kids story, your story…. My life reflected my story and song. And in the depth of my soul something was calling me to be brave and rise. As single mom making minimum wage, I wanted deep within to be able to financially support my kids and give them something different than poverty and limitation- spiritually, emotionally and physically.

In 2015, I found the courage to face the negative lies and went back to school to get my college degree.

I remember getting my first A and calling the university to ask if it was a real, accredited college or if it was somehow a place for stupid people to go to get a “degree.” I genuinely didn’t understand how I was capable of succeeding. For over a year, I called the admission office asking questions about the accreditation of the university,  kept waiting for someone to tell me it wasn’t real.

This was real, I am not what I thought I was.

I graduated summa cum laude.

Standing on the stage before crossing over, I knew something was ending and it was time to lay to rest of verse in this song I was singing go. I could no longer live in the story of how stupid, dumb and pathetic I was.  I showed myself I am capable and determined.

In that moment, God gave me a picture.

I saw myself sitting at the back of the classroom for all those years, watching people, studying them, noticing every part of them, I saw their spirits, I began to read their energy shifts day after day. I heard Spirit of the Living God say,

“What man meant to harm you, I will use for your greater good.”

I realized then, while teachers may have intended to shame me, God used the “dumb” table to shape me.

From the back of the room, I learned how to notice people, who was having a bad day, who was lonely, who was heartbroken, who was tired…. I learned how to read people like a book, I learned to hear their spirits speak with no audible words, I learned how to sit with their pain, and how to empathize with others in their humanity.

God showed me I wasn’t placed at the back of the classroom by mistake. What felt like human rejection became Divine preparation.

What stories about yourself have crystallized into “truth” that might be a lie waiting to be rewritten?

Rebecca Dawn