Becky’s birthday in the third week of June always falls on or near Father’s Day. This past June our children gave us joint birthday/Father’s Day gift subscriptions to something called Storyworth. Storyworth’s promotional material says, “The recipient of Storyworth will get weekly questions meant to prompt forgotten stories. At the end of one year, Storyworth collects all the stories and puts them in a gorgeous book.” So far we are nine weeks into our year and are enjoying the adventure. Our questions to date include:
- How did you get your first job?
- What qualities do you most value in your friends?
- At what times in your life were you the happiest, and why?
- Have you pulled any great pranks?
- What is one of your fondest childhood memories?
- What is one of your favorite trips that you’ve taken? What made it great?
- What is one of the bravest things you’ve ever done, and what was the outcome?
- What’s the first major news story you can remember living through as a child?
- Are you more like your father or your mother? In what ways?
Our children and children-in-law see each week’s entries, and, yes, we will have a couple of bound books to share with posterity at the end of the year.
I won’t post any of my responses to the questions here, but I can say Storyworth is living up to the hype on its webpage. We are revisiting stories not told in a long time with new appreciation for how they may have affected us years ago – and still affect us today.
Whether or not our grandkids ever read our stories, it’s been a lot of fun. I look forward to 43 more questions.
More than biographical data or diplomas and plaques on the wall, stories tell us who we are and, in time, our loved ones who we were. That brave thing I once did (was it really brave?) reminds me who I was and tells our children a little about who I am.
The Bible knows the power of a story told. In Deuteronomy Moses gives the children of Israel instructions for bringing an offering of first fruits to the Lord in thanks for their safe arrival in the land he promised to them: And you shall make response before the LORD your God, ‘A wandering Aramean was my father. And he went down into Egypt and sojourned there, few in number, and there he became a nation, great, mighty, and populous. And the Egyptians treated us harshly and humiliated us and laid on us hard labor. Then we cried to the LORD, the God of our fathers, and the LORD heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. And the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great deeds of terror, with signs and wonders. And he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. (Deuteronomy 26:5–9 [ESV])
The Lord did not need to be reminded of the story of the Exodus, but the children of Israel did.
Storyworth promotes its product in part as the gift it will be to children and grandchildren, and I think the stories Becky and I are telling week by week are a gift to our children. But in many ways we are the primary recipients of the gifts as we are reminded of who we are. Our best stories help us, as the psalmist says, to recount the wondrous deeds of the Lord as he shaped us and molded us through the stories he gave us.
Now I need to think about whether I am more like my father or my mother.