Understanding My Life’s Journey: Creating and Using a Life Map for Spiritual Growth and Personal Mission

By Noel Sherry

This book is a guide for helping adults to complete and share a Life Map project in a supportive group. I got connected with this ancient practice as director of a seminary program helping over a hundred adults complete and share a Life Map with their introductory spiritual formation class. This project was often viewed as their best learning experience. When Bethel University closed our East coast center, I helped fifty more adult leaders complete this transformative project for the New England Christian Study Center. I was most fortunate to be able to receive a Doctor in Ministry degree with Bethel University, investing five years of research on this signal practice inaugurated by Saint Augustine with the publication of his seminal Confessions in 397 AD. Now I am leading groups of adults for my church and community interested in exploring their legacy via a Life Map project. My guide begins with the church crisis that introduced me to Life Mapping, which helped me navigate a very difficult transition at midlife. The guide then leads an adult through reflection and journaling to complete and share their project with a supportive group, five steps completing this important life skill.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9781669875932

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Copyright © 2023 by Noel Sherry. 853143

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Xlibris

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Rev. date: 04/29/2023

CONTENTS

Introduction to Understanding My Life’s Journey (or the Life Map Project)

ONE Weathering a Perfect Storm at Midlife: My Discovery of Life Mapping

TWO Inspired by Life’s Teachable Moments: Second Step in a Life Mapping Project

THREE The Hinge Events that Moved Me in New Directions: Third Step in a Life Mapping Project

FOUR Discovering the Storyline in My Life: A Fourth Step in Life Mapping

FIVE Connecting My Story in with a Master Story: Fifth Step in Life Mapping

SIX Redeeming the Darkside of my Life: A Sixth Step in Life Mapping

SEVEN Is There an Image that Crowns My Life Story? My Seventh Step in Life Mapping

EIGHT Sharing My Life Story in a Supportive Group: Eighth Step in Life Mapping

NINE Reflecting My Story into the Future: A Nineth Step in a Life Map Project

TEN Passing On a Legacy: A Tenth Step in the Life Mapping Project

An Update with Helps for the Leader of a Life Map Group

Sources Mentioned

Introduction to Understanding My Life’s Journey (or the Life Map Project)

This series of chapters is written to guide an adult through basic steps in creating, sharing, and using a Life Map as a tool for spiritual growth and personal mission. Ten vignettes from teachable moments in my journey will be used to illustrate each step, as I honestly share snippets of my Testimony—the title I have given to my Life Map project. Your Life Map project is best completed in a group but can be done individually—both using journaling exercises done 3 to 4 times/week over a 3-to-4-month period. The emerging field of narrative psychology refers to this practice as Life Review, calling it a universal developmental need like learning to walk or talk. It was originally known as spiritual autobiography after Confessions—the first work of its kind written by Saint Augustine in 397 AD.

In the first chapter, I share my discovery of this ancient spiritual formation practice that has been a transformative tool for countless men and women since the time of Augustine. My discovery came during a church leadership crisis, helping me navigate a very rough transition in my life successfully. Since that time, I have had the privilege of mentoring over one hundred and fifty adults through their Life Map project, as director of Bethel Seminary of the East, New England, and the New England Christian Study Center. The impact of Life Mapping for these adults then became the focus for a Doctor in Ministry project I completed with Bethel Seminary in St. Paul, MN. That confirmed my view that this practice needs to be renewed for leaders and laypeople alike. My students were young adults at the go-for-it stage of life, adults in midlife transition, and seniors reminiscing on a long and productive life. Adults in all stages of life found Life Mapping to be highly beneficial, with a small percentage encountering a significant roadblock or two in their attempts to practice it.

This book has three people in view—the leader of a small group of adults working on a Life Map project, the adult who plans to create and share his or her Life Map, and the adults who will witness and support that project as it is presented. The leader needs to complete a personal Life Map before facilitating a group like this. Helps for a leader have been added at the conclusion of the series. The second chapter on life’s teachable moments offers a fun starting point with some counsel on setting up the journal that will supply the raw material for a completed Life Map. The rigors of a project like this are best completed as a member of a supportive group, but chapters 3 through 7 could also guide an individual to complete a personal Life Map. In that case the selection of a mentor familiar with Life Mapping would be helpful. The biggest roadblock is addressed in the sixth chapter on overcoming the darkside in a person’s life. The last three chapters address Life Map sharing for the presenter and audience (8), using a Life Map for future planning (9), and writing out a spiritual memoir from a Life Map as part one’s legacy (10).

I approach Life Mapping from a distinctly Judeo-Christian point of view, though a total collection of spiritual autobiographies will reflect many different religious beliefs and worldview perspectives. This series could aid an adult in completing a Life Map project from any spiritual perspective. Richard Peace’s helpful workbook Spiritual Autobiography: Discovering & Sharing Your Spiritual Story offers the following points about noticing God, a great starting point for anyone taking up this Life Map challenge (p. 58):

Yet there are hints of the divine in all lives: long-forgotten childhood experiences of God’s presence; answers to prayer that were quickly shrugged off as coincidence; grace in the midst of pain; moments of joy that rush in unexpectedly; responses to nature that draw us outward; deep suspicion that maybe our mechanistic explanations of the way the universe operates are not as sound as we would like them to be; encounters with powers beyond us; worship that we did not initiate and could not contain; a sense of blessing that gives us hope and direction; a knowledge that somehow we are significant in this world. God is alive and active in the universe, and when we start to notice, it is hard to stop noticing.

ONE

Weathering a Perfect Storm at Midlife: My Discovery of Life Mapping

Midlife lived up to its reputation for me. This term was coined in 1965 to describe the transition many adults experience between ages 40 and 60. Questions about what our life-purpose is and how we have used our time thus far are often triggered in this time of self-reflection. My wife Ingelise and I were fully engaged in raising teens and caring for aging parents at age 40 when I took a position as associate pastor of a large New England congregation. After seven years of fruitful ministry, my