We happened to set our music bags down a row apart. Rehearsal wouldn’t start for another ten minutes, so we chatted about the weather, the holidays, the typical what-fills-our-days chatter. Imagine our surprise and delight when our surface conversation revealed we’d each written a book! Suddenly there was that warm, tingly feeling of camaraderie. “You know what it’s like too!” And we promised to go to coffee and bring our books.

My coffee cup and her tea mug steamed on the table between us as she shared about her husband passing away – the suddenness and shock of unspeakable loss. As her story unfolded—a tale of clinging to God and journaling her way through grief, my heart nodded in agreement. I was grateful she honored me with her story, a gift from her heart.

God is in the story

It's not always easy, but telling our stories might be one of the most important things we offer one another.

Do you worry your story’s not worth telling?

Do you wonder if sharing your story makes you too me-focused?

Have you hesitated to share because you’re unsure if you have the words to tell it well?

Sharing our stories is simply telling the truth of our experience. It’s the what, why, when, and where of who you are today. Sharing your story is heart work.

As Frederick Buechner wrote:

My story is important, not because it is mine, God knows, but because if I tell it anything like right, the chances are you will recognize that in many ways it is also yours. Maybe nothing is more important than that we keep track, you and I, of these stories of who we are and where we have come from and the people we have met along the way because it is precisely through these stories in all their particularity…that God makes himself known to each of us most powerfully and personally.

God is always in the story, dear friend.

Telling my hard story to a safe person could help make sense of it. Hearing her story might reveal a hidden thread of grace within my own. Offering a simple, ordinary story to a friend might be a a way to gift grace, hope, and “you are not alone” to her heart.

So, let us share our stories. Let us not hesitate to weave our true tales of tragedies, of joys, of what it means to be human. And as we tell them, may we notice again just how personally and powerfully God shows up within the pages of our lives.

Reflection

  1. What piece of my story is God still editing?
  2. Where might He be calling me to share my heart through my story?

 

photo credit: Maegan Martin, unsplash