Your Story in Six Words

 “I have called you by name; you are mine.” Isaiah 43:1b (NLT)

There’s a legend I love about Ernest Hemingway. Folklore says he was in a restaurant when someone challenged him to write a story in only six words.

If I were a betting girl, I would have sided with the men at the restaurant, believing it was impossible to have plot, character and conflict in only six words. But Hemingway won the bet with this short story: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

It’s an interesting exercise to think about your life as a six-word memoir. What would it be? Which six words would summarize any seasons or truths about your life? I can chart the timeline of my adult life through a series of six-word memoirs. When I was a teacher, my six-word memoirs might have been:

Life is like a lesson plan.
Always crafting my next bulletin board.
Teaching the next generation to read.

As a brand-new bride, perhaps my six-word memoirs would have been:

I look 12 in wedding photos.
Crockpots are a bride’s best friend.

When my children were born, as I stepped out of the classroom and claimed my role as mom, perhaps my six-word memoirs may have been:

Goldfish crackers. Board books. All day.
Again with the laundry and cooking?
Please, can it be naptime now?

Yet, everything changed one December morning in 2010, when my husband passed away. He was sick for only 12 hours before he died. He was here, and then he was gone. I was 31 years old, my children were 5 and 3, and suddenly my world was torn apart. Overnight, I became a widow.

I became the single mom of two small boys who were now fatherless. My brain was consumed with the tasks of getting out of bed and fighting depression and post-traumatic stress with every ounce of my being. Perhaps my six-word memoir for this dark season may have been one of the following:

How on earth did this happen?
Widowed mom, trying to wake up.
Winter, winter, winter, winter. No spring.
I wasn’t ready to say goodbye.
I still have things to say.

In 12 terrible hours, my roles changed. My definitions became unclear. I felt as if the entire world had tilted on its axis by about 30 degrees. So much of my identity felt suddenly and terribly missing. Few events create such a fertile petri dish for insecurity more than a deep, sudden loss.

My loss was my husband, but perhaps you know a loss of a different kind. Perhaps divorce — a death all its own, coupled with crippling rejection. Or the loss of a job, a friendship, respect or innocence. We each have our stories. Sometimes life is impossibly hard, and this world is the scariest place to be when you no longer know who you are. Sometimes, a person can get deeply caught up in what she is instead of who she is.

What defines you as a woman? Is there a six-word memoir you are holding on to as your identity?

Wishing someone could call me Mom.
I’m the family’s big screw-up.
I really thought he loved me.
Credit cards maxed. Nothing else left.
Living the dream I didn’t want.
This diagnosis will swallow me whole.
This loneliness is now my life.