Life is All Stories
August 3, 2014
If you asked me about the best part of my summer, or if you asked me to name something I’m passionate about, or even if you asked me what has made an impact on my life and heart lately, my answer would all be the same. It would be stories.
Plain and simple, it all comes back to stories. I embarked on a personal project at the beginning of this summer centered on the idea of stories, and it has changed me in ways I’ll never be able to capture well in words. If you’ve talked to me or read anything on my blog in the last few months, you know that this whole idea of stories has me pumped up and ridiculously excited.
I’ve heard individual stories that have blown me away, but I’ve also been thinking a lot about stories in general—what they look like, where they’re found, what defines them. What I’ve found is that stories are everywhere. Stories always look different, no two will ever have the same characteristics or qualities. Stories are nuanced and layered and complex and beautiful. Stories are moments, seasons, years, lifetimes, relationships, conflicts, successes, diseases, challenges, joys.
No person is void of a story. No story is less than another. No story is unworthy of being told, shared, heard, celebrated.
When the Rethink team was praying and dreaming about this new blog, I knew without a doubt that I wanted there to be a place for stories. I’ve seen firsthand how meaningful seeking stories has been for me, and I had a strong feeling that having part of our site dedicated to sharing stories would be meaningful for those who come by here. The blog category we once called “Life” is now “Stories” and I really think it’s going to be good.
Stories stick with us in ways that facts and statistics and lists never will. I can still remember stories I read as a kid—the Narnia series, Junie B. Jones books, American Girl books, Harry Potter…those stories are ones I’ll never forget. My family always reminds me that when I was a toddler, I had the Night Before Christmas story memorized and loved to recite it to any relative who would listen. I still know a good chunk of it, and I think it’s mostly because it was a well-written and engaging story. The rhyming probably helped…but that’s not really important.
What I love about stories is they aren’t perfect. They aren’t always pretty. They are more than the snapshots with artsy filters we blast out on Instagram to show the world we have our act together. They are more than the “I’m good” replies we give to people who ask how we’re doing. They are full of things that break us down and bring us to our knees, and they’re also full of things that pick us back up and people that remind us of truth, full of victories and parties and milestones.
Stories plunge through the surface level into places that are raw and honest and totally unguarded. Those places, where filters are gone and guards are down and we whisper words we’ve never said out loud, are places we grow. We find out that we are braver than we dared realize. We find that the people listening to our stories get us in ways we never thought anyone would.
I hope the stories shared in this little corner of the Internet shatter stereotypes and misconceptions, bring encouragement, shine light into shadows, knit together relationships and communities, open eyes and hearts and minds, and make us all feel a little less alone and a little more connected.
There’s an Author writing an epic novel through each of our lives and through all of our stories, and I invite you to dive in, page by page, post by post, and soak these stories up with us.