The King Holds On to Old Stories

I remember when -

There are stories we tell ourselves that feel like facts. Not because they are true, but because we’ve told them so many times, we’ve stopped questioning them.

The King is especially fond of these. He collects them over the years—moments where he was overlooked, times he was wronged, decisions that didn’t go his way. And instead of letting them pass, he builds a case out of them. He files them away carefully.

“This is who I am.”
“This is how people treat me.”
“This is how the world works.”

The strange thing is, most of these stories were written in moments when we saw the least clearly, when emotions were high, when understanding was low, when we didn’t yet have the full picture.

But the King doesn’t revisit them. He protects them. Because if those stories were questioned, his identity might be called into question.

I’ve seen this in myself more times than I’d like to admit. An old interaction will come back to mind, and without even thinking, I’ll replay it the same way I always have. Same conclusion, same judgment, same quiet reinforcement of the role I assigned myself years ago.

And it feels certain. But certainty isn’t always truth. Sometimes it’s just familiarity.

I notice this especially when talking to my grandkids. I guess you could call it reminiscing a little while trying to instill a lesson I learned.

I’ve also noticed this in others over the years. A person will tell a story about something that happened long ago, and you can almost hear how settled it has become. Not explored, not reexamined, just accepted.

When we used to visit my in-laws—very often in our earlier years of marriage—my father-in-law would really get into this mode. He would talk about what life was like in the 1930s and especially the 40s. I found it very interesting, and I suppose I was a captive audience, as no one else appeared as interested. I didn’t question what was said, as I knew it was true in his case.

And from those stories, whole patterns of behavior can grow. For some, walls may go up. Distance might be kept. Or a closeness might develop that wasn’t there before.

Opportunities are sometimes quietly avoided. Other times, the story itself becomes something meaningful—something that shaped a life and gave it strength. Memories have a way of shifting over time, sometimes reinforcing what we already believe.

All to stay consistent with a version of the past that may or may not still be accurate.

The King prefers a fixed identity. It’s easier to rule from a place where everything is already decided.

But life doesn’t work that way. People change. Circumstances change. Understanding deepens, if we allow it to. The only thing that keeps the old stories alive is our willingness to keep repeating them.

There’s something freeing about going back and looking at one of those stories again—honestly. Not to rewrite history, but to loosen our grip on it. Many people have lived through difficult things, and those memories can take on a life of their own, sometimes making forgiveness harder to reach.

If we truly understood the backstory of someone’s life, we might begin to see what shaped their reality. And sometimes those same stories can reveal something else—that the difficulties didn’t destroy them, but strengthened them.

So we ask:
What if I didn’t see that clearly at the time?
What if there was more going on than I understood?
What if I’ve been carrying something I don’t need to carry anymore?

The King, or what we often call the ego, doesn’t like those questions. They make the ground feel less solid. But they also make it more real. Life is messy and rarely follows a clean storyline.

What we can do is use those questions to better understand the stories we’ve been telling ourselves. Maybe it’s not the stories that define us, but what we come to understand from them over time.

At some point, we have to decide whether we want to be right about our past or free from it.

Because we usually don’t get both.

And it turns out, when the old stories loosen their hold, something else quietly takes their place. Space.

Room to see people differently. Room to see ourselves differently. Room to step out of a role we may have outgrown long ago.

The garden doesn’t need a King protecting old stories. It grows better when we’re willing to let some of them go.