There is a great lady in my life that I really enjoy spending time with. She is 88 years old. I love to hear her share about her experiences in her past life. I can sit down with her and never run out of questions to ask her and she always has an answer. She has lived a long time, so she has been through a lot, seen a lot, and experienced a lot. She was young once and things were a little different then.

Today I asked her, “Is it crazy to see how everything has changed over the years since you’ve been alive?” “Why yes, yes it is crazy!” She replied, “What’s the craziest thing you have seen that’s changed?” I said. ‘Well…just everything! Everything has changed so much but it’s all for the better I guess.” She said, with a smile on her face.

I love talking with her and hearing about her life so much I told her I wanted to write a book about her, which would be a lot of more work than an average article. I’ve asked her multiple times if I can write this book and each time, she refuses. Finally, I asked her,

“Why do you refuse for me to write a book about you?” I just want to share with the world what she has shared with me.

“I’ve had a bad life, I don’t want anyone to know what I’ve been through.” she replied.

However, I don’t want to just show the world what she has been through; I want to show the world what she has overcome. I won’t share her name in this article, like I promised her. I tried to explain that to her. “You’ve gone through so much, you’ve overcome so much though.” “Yeah and I got out of it, as slick as a ribbon.” She responded.

She was born into a very poor family. She has numerous brothers and sisters. Their family was so poor, she doesn’t even have a birth certificate. All of her brothers and sisters wrote down their birthdays in a bible to keep up with their ages. She is one of the last 2 of the 12 siblings still living today.

When I say special, she truly is special. She is 88 years old and still as sharp as a whistle. She refuses to go out in public unless she’s dressed to the nine’s, with lipstick on. She can still get around smoothly. She enjoys the smell of flowers and cooking. She’s a diva and exactly the kind of woman I want to be when I am her age. Oh, and she currently has a boyfriend too. She’s been married. She’s a mother. She speaks her mind and loves her family. She’s a Godly woman who attends church every Sunday. I love her and admire her more than she knows and I can’t share like I want to but all I want to do is share with the world how wonderful this great lady is.

After she told me how ashamed of her past she was, it got me thinking. I don’t think her past is something she should be ashamed of. I want to be swept up in her life story and I want to share it. See, we don’t all have clean stories. We can’t all gloss over our messy bits of our past. We all have hard parts, great parts, painful parts, and disappointing parts. But they make up who we are today. Our moments, our revelations, our experiences they are what we learn from, whether those be good or bad, they make us who we are today. It’s about what we have overcome and how we handle it, not what we have been through.

This great lady in my life should know she has come a long way in her 88 years of life. I don’t think it’s something that she realizes and I think that’s why she won’t let me share her full story like I wish she would. Even if you know you have been through challenges, you have learned something. It’s what makes us well worn, in the best way.

We all have a story. We shouldn’t be ashamed of them. They are something we can proudly stand next to, there is always a before and always an after. We all have a past. If we chose to look at in a negative way, every single one of us has something to be ashamed of, but we shouldn’t be ashamed.

Sometimes you need to know the whole story, not just the clean parts. God will always push you through. Sometimes when you hear the whole story you can be reminded what he is capable of. There is always a way out when we feel stuck and we won’t be broken forever. We have to hear the brokenness so we can hear the redemption. That’s a story worth being proud of.