Once Upon A Time

When I was eight years old my third grade teacher told my mom she needed to take me to the library so I could check out books to read at home. I was what she called a "slow reader", and she knew this was the best way to build my speed and comprehension. And so, because of that wonderful teacher, my mom began to see my reading as something I needed to do rather than a way to lay around and do nothing.

I have learned I love to read. I love the stories. I love the narrator voice, especially if it is done well. I love the rhythm some authors bring to their writing. The books of my life have brought me to places, introduced me to characters I would never have known. They have taught me great truths and shown me that something does not have to be factual to be true. Books, and the stories I have found in them have opened the world to me, and for that I am thankful.

It is not surprising then, that I have come to see story, my story-your story, as a way to tell our own personal truths. Our stories, as we tell them, might not be strictly factual, but if we speak from our hearts, our stories always tell what is true. I think it is in telling our story, to our journal, to another person, that we allow our stories validation. We allow them to breathe. We gift them with a spaciousness that allows the spirit of God to enter.

I have kept a journal off and on since college, and have them all. The ones from my college years are full of the passion and drama and make me shudder just a bit with embarrassment when I read them. I have journal entries from early on in my single-mother years, journals packed with self doubt and longings. And I have the many journals of the last twelve years or so. The years when my daughters were growing up and out of the house. The journals where my relationship to God was growing into something that breathed life into my days. These journals are testaments to my development. When I read back in them, even the ones from college, I am aware of the many places the Spirt has intervened in my life.

When I listen to my story, or yours; when I read a Don DeLillo book or a children's classic like Peter Pan; when I read the books of the Bible, I am always looking for the same thing. I am looking for the truth in it. I am looking for that movement of the Spirit that nudges me into seeing what part of these stories is true for me. I am no longer too concerned with what is factual, what can be strictly verified.

This lack of consideration for fact makes some people I know uncomfortable. But I I believe it is in the broken parts of the stories... it is in the stumbles and mistakes... it is in our weakest moment when we are most vulnerable... that we release our spirit to the universe and allow the Spirit of God an entrance into our lives.

It is my hope that this blog will be a place of story. A place where truth slips through the cracks of my life.