When I first created my personal timeline, I experienced affirmation, healing, and a greater sense of God’s movement in my life. At times, I felt sad over missed opportunities or painful situations. Yet, I also rejoiced, as I saw God mixing the defining moments and seasons into something good.
In the Old Testament, the Israelites would often erect stones of remembrance as a reminder of God’s provision and faithfulness. In a similar way, your personal timeline is a way of identifying markers in your life that point to significant events that God used (or can use) to shape you. I am so thankful that God can bring good out of even the most painful event in our lives. This does not mean that we minimize what happened, but we recognize that God is able to redeem even our most painful experiences.
Here are four steps for creating your personal timeline:
Step One – Identify the pleasant and painful moments/seasons in your life
Using one color of post-it note for pleasant experiences and another color for painful events (or color-coding entries in a spreadsheet/table or using Chazown’s personal timeline tool), brainstorm some of your defining moments or seasons of life. Some of my defining moments are times when people spoke into my life by simply asking a question or making a statement (e.g. “Randy. Would you like to teach this lesson to the rest of the class?” and “I would like you to be a leader in this group”). Others occurred over a longer period (e.g. growing up in a Christian family). Put one defining moment/season on each post-it note. At this point, don’t worry about putting them in chronological order. Come up with approximately 20-30 events to start.
Step Two – Arrange your experiences in chronological order and give your timeline chapter titles
Arrange your post-it notes chronologically in columns in a legal-sized folder or on a 14×17” piece of poster board. On different colored post-it notes, come up with three to five chapter titles for the different seasons of your life. For example, as a young adult I went through several liberating experiences. I have called that chapter in my life, “My Renaissance.”
Step Three – Identify lessons and themes
As you look at your pleasant and painful defining moments/seasons, what are some of the lessons you learned or perhaps need to learn in a deeper way today? Write these lessons on a different colored post-it note and put these along the bottom of your timeline. Some of the lessons I identified when I did my timeline the first time were “I can be a leader” and “God’s ways are always the best.”
As you look over your timeline, what are some of the themes that stretch across the chapters? For me, several themes are apparent: a love for learning, a passion to build capacity in others through teaching and mentoring, giving vitamins to groups by leading them, and the importance of family. Of course, not all of the themes are healthy. I also struggle to trust others and often base my identity on my accomplishments. The themes in our timelines often point toward core values in our lives. These values influence the way we think and act.
Step Four – Share your timeline with another person
One of the most important steps in creating a personal timeline is sharing it (or parts of it you feel comfortable sharing) with someone you trust. The other person will likely learn something new about you, which can deepen your relationship. However, it also gives you a chance to verbalize your timeline, which may help you experience more of the affirmation, healing and understanding about God’s leading that can come out of this kind of reflective exercise. It can also be a very powerful team-building activity. As people share about their lives, team members begin to understand one another better, the respect level goes up, and conversations go deeper. Giving people an inside look into our lives helps them to see what we value and why. It builds bridges of understanding that allow teams to communicate more effectively and make better decisions. I’d encourage any team or small group to take a chance, be vulnerable with one another, and share their life stories.