In working within our own stories, we come to name that there has been violence, grief, contempt, and even great loss in our lives—experiences we have been trying to avoid.  Yet in the Biblical story of Hagar it is in the place of death that God meets her. God chooses the least likely to show his glory — an Egyptian slave woman—and more instructively, does not immediately remove her from her suffering but engages her with questions:

Where are you from? Where are you going?

Narrative work in a therapeutic context is subversive. Where problems and patterns have saturated the story, we need others to come with kindness to attend to our past that we might have more authority in the present, and more hope for the future.