I Don’t Want You to Just Know My Story

“Tell me your story.”

You’ve heard it been said. Maybe you have been the one to say it or maybe you have been on the other end of things and it has been asked of you. We sit around campfires and share testimonies. Am I the only one who has ever noticed that as the night goes on the stories just seem to get more and more intense? We alter our stories when others are sharing because we feel the need for our brokenness to one-up someone else’s. It is a bizarre thought.

I have been asked to share my story more times than I can even count and if I am honest this phrase has wounded me a little bit. I want to make sure we are clear in what we are wanting from people when we use this phrase because the meaning of it can get lost in translation. We don’t want to leave people feeling like they have a nametag on themselves and its labeled with that one specific part of their story that they probably think we are referring to when we ask for it.

That’s how I felt. Scratch that, it is still how I feel sometimes. The moment the words come out of someone’s mouth is the same moment my mind goes to a place of “they want to know about my dad.” At times, this might not be the intentions. However, somewhere along the way, this is what my reaction came to be. I wanted to retrace my steps to see when I got the chords twisted because storytelling is not an ineffective thing, nor is it a bad thing.

We have to do it right though.

Jesus was a storyteller. He spoke in parables because He knew the simplicity of stories were something that our finite minds could understand. His stories weren’t long. He was a man of few words but meaningful words. Imagine the tone of voice He probably chose when speaking. We read scripture like it is a Shakespearean play, it isn’t. Jesus’ voice was kind. He didn’t yell. He drew you in. He calmed you. He told us that He was rest. It was impossible to leave listening to Jesus and feel more exhausted.

Ever left listening to someone talk and feel more emotionally exhausted than when you got there?

When I think of stories, I think of being a little girl getting ready for bed. I see myself running to a bookshelf in the corner of my room and getting to pick out just one book for my mom to read to me before I fell asleep. I think about the many nights where I have tucked children in and they have climbed up into the bed next to me with as many books as their arms could carry. I think of all the movies I have seen where a kid would ask either a parent or a grandparent to tell them a story. There was something about not picking the book, about what was coming being a surprise and it always being different than the one you heard the night before.

But we all had the favorite book, the one we had read a million times but still persistently asked to read it again. Don’t hear me say telling your story more than once, to different people, or even telling it over and over again is a bad thing. Hear me say that there is a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it.

We have lost the art of storytelling because we are tempted to start camping out on one page and never letting people in on the before and after. We are tempted because we are believing the lie that all we have to offer is the tragic climax. You’ll come to see that what people really want when they hear a story is the evidence of hope. You can create that without feeling the need to give an in-depth, drawn-out, long-winded account. Hope is Jesus. If you talk clearly about what He has done, then there will be more hope coming from your lips than there is anything else.

Stories weren’t meant to be repetitive. Stories weren’t meant to stay on the same page. Stories were meant to be simple, not over-emotionalized. Stories were meant to have a main character, and it’s not us. Sadly, our stories have become so self-focused.

If I am sharing my story with someone and they walk away knowing all about me then I have failed. They need to walk away knowing all about my Jesus.

The best stories are the ones with the unexpected endings. That is why we can’t just share the “thing” we think everyone wants to know about – your eating disorder, your addictions, struggles with self-harm, your parents’ divorce, etc. Don’t ever deny the existence of the reality of these things in your life but know that there is more to you than just what you have been through. We can’t just share where we were, we have to share where we are now.

Stories have chapters. We give people whiplash if we skip right to the “bad” and not let there be any context for what led up to these moments we are sharing about. We are leaving the things out that God has clearly written into the story if we let the before go unsaid. It is not giving credit where credit is due. Unpeel the layers slowly. No one told us that we had to lay it all out there for every single person we came in contact with. Coffee dates do not have to be memoirs shared verbally.

This past summer I was having a conversation with a friend about this very idea. I was working at WinShape camps as the speaker for middle school and high school-aged girls. At camp, every Monday was the day I shared a little bit about losing my dad. As the summer progressed, I genuinely wasn’t in a good place with it and to share it was causing emotional turmoil that was not a healthy place to teach from. I kept explaining to her that I didn’t have a backup plan though.

What else was I going to talk about?

She kindly, yet firmly reminded me, “that was not the only time in your life that you faced a hard time. You are still letting yourself think that it is all you have to offer.”

I didn’t talk about my dad from stage anymore that summer. Not because what God has done through that is not evident and worth talking about but because it was what my heart needed. You can be protective of your story. Notice I said protective, not selfish. Always guard your heart in those moments. Pull back when you need to. Don’t let yourself believe that to not share something is going to take away from the potential of what God is going to do. He promises that His word will not return void. Use more of His words, less of your own. The potential for what could happen automatically increases.

We have overcomplicated story telling. Paul puts it this way when writing to the church at Corinth, “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.” 2 Corinthians 4:8-9

                                                            We are _ but not _.

When I read those words they moved me. Paul was saying, yeah, we are hard pressed, but we aren’t crushed. We are struck down, but not destroyed. It was the confession of the struggle paired beautifully together with the reminder of the hope. I didn’t leave thinking about only what he was going through, I left thinking about what God was doing in the middle of it. We need both. People need both. It is doable. We can individualize the layout Paul was using.

                                                            I am _ but _.

To do away with the phrase, “tell me your story,” won’t happen but I think as people of the church we can make sure that we don’t throw the phrase around like confetti. We can make sure that people know our hearts behind our curiosity. We can make sure that they know when we say the word story we don’t just mean that one page.

I want people to know that I want to know them, not just their story because the odds are that there are a lot of people out there like me who instantly take out so much when that question gets asked. I want to know people, not just stories. There is too much of a risk to only know characters if we just know stories. Sometimes people get lost in the story. People matter the most.

Most importantly, share your story but share His story more.

I don’t want you to know my story, I want you to know me. I want you to know that behind all these words there is a real-life person who is really no different than you. I want you to know the real me, not just the selective couple pages of me that I seem to have memorized a script for and gotten really good at sharing. This book, it’s the whole story. It’s the before, the messy middle, the here and now, and a look into what’s to come.

Really, we all have the same story when we are followers of Jesus, there are just personal versions of it. Here’s mine. I hope by the end of this you don’t just know my story though, I hope you know me. I hope you know Jesus.

It all goes a little something like this: I am still figuring this whole life thing out but He is teaching me.

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Hey you, you just read the introduction of the book I have been working on for the last four years. Yep, you read that correctly, I’ve been writing a book. I  have kept it on the major down low because I needed this to be written from the truest secret place. BUT, here we are – a complete manuscript finished that needs a good home (and an editor and everything else that comes with publishing a book). I don’t know what the days ahead look like but I do know this, the Lord lets our paths cross with the people they need to. Excited for what’s ahead, whatever it might be.