Every story follows the same plot part I

A couple years back I heard Dan Allender speak on "story". This was after the release of his book To Be Told (recommended reading). Allender spoke of the importance of knowing your own story and sharing story.

In this seminar, Allender spoke over several sessions on how every story follows the same pattern, and seeing this in our lives can benefit us and help us see the direction God has for us. And make sense of our lives. Interesting, this isn't in his book or fully shown in the workbook, though some elements are there. In the interest of popularizing this for others benefit, I want to share it in my own words. I break this up in four parts:
1) Shalom
2) Shattered
3) Striving
4) Restoration

Part 1, Shalom

In every story, there is an opening period of shalom -- of peace, tranquility, of harmony. It may be implied -- generations ago, there was a great king who ruled in peace; when a person was young, he lived with a model family; once upon at time there was a happy princess. In God's story, there was "In the beginning". Not Genesis 1, but John 1. John 1 starts in a time predating Genesis 1, with "in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and the word was God". There was the Trinity, before anything was created living in harmony. Or, if you want to go to Genesis 1 to the story of man, there was the Garden of Eden. In the movies, we can turn to movies like Gladiator, where they speak of a Rome that once was, and is to be again. In the movie Walk the Line, we see young Johnny Cash and his brother planning and dreaming in their bedroom.

Every story has a Shalom, or the echo of one that was there sometime before the beginning of the story that is implied in the story.

Part II