I say I want to know your story, but I haven't even asked

When I look into your eyes, I can see your story.

But that's as far as I get.

What is love?

What is kindness?

Where does my story stop and your story begin?

I've spent my whole life writing my own story.

I haven't had time to listen to yours.

Why am I paralyzed in fear?

Why is it so hard to look past my story for one minute?

What is it that I'm scared of?

Am I scared that your story will be different, or do I fear that it will be the same?

I say I want to know your story,

but I haven't even asked.

I can live with you for a semester and not even know you.

I can live with you for a lifetime and never even know your dreams.

I want to know you, I really do.

What story do I believe in?

That this is it, this is all?

Is there a heaven or a God?

Why haven't I learned that your story is my story?

That when I ignore you, I discount myself.

When I'm scared of you, it's really me that I'm afraid of.

If I really knew His love, would I be scared?

His love is supposed to drive out fear.

I want Your love to be my story.

This was one of my journal entries from March 31, 2006, in the middle of my religious and ontological crisis. I'm discovering more and more the importance of stories. Discovering more and more how to let His love be my story.

But these questions still linger, still hound me.

If I can barely make sense of things in my own head, how do I find the space to let others' stories in?

Looking back, I can see these questions, in fact all of my journal entries from that year, were steeped in loneliness. A loneliness and an insecurity that led to hostility toward myself and others. A loneliness that I (and I think everyone) still struggle with.

I just finished reading Henri Nowen's Reaching Out, where he speaks about the dichotomy between loneliness (a needy, grasping place) and solitude (a posture of secure identity and contentment).

He writes, "As long as we are lonely, we cannot be hospitable because as lonely people we cannot create free space. Our own need to still our inner cravings of loneliness makes us cling to others instead of creating space for them."

This journey to love myself is also a journey to love others. To create space for others. To allow their stories to become my own.

I am striving for a spiritual life that "makes [me] so alert and aware of the world around [me], that all that is and happens becomes part of [my] contemplation and meditation and invites [me] to a free and fearless response." Nouwen

God, please allow your love to be my story, so that my heart may be opened to others' stories.

Living a Better Story

I came at Christianity backwards. Well, more like God came to me. Unexpected and unannounced.

The stories I used to believe about myself were awful. Depressing, really. I can’t even look back through my old journals without feeling a complete sense of despair.

I told myself stories of how dumb I was. How ugly. How boring. How awful. I was never good enough. Even in my relationship with God I wasn’t good enough.

I used to wonder why I wasn't in love with Jesus the way other people seemed to be. I felt really guilty about it. In fact, I felt pretty guilty about everything. How I wasn't nice enough. Outgoing enough. Christian enough. Happy enough. (anyone sensing an introvert complex yet?) Instead I was too shy. Too scared. Too selfish. Too....human.

When I came back from a study abroad experience in Costa Rica, I was wrecked. After a semester of poverty tours, angry rants, and guilt trips, the conflicting stories became too much bear.

I stopped telling myself any stories. The stories reduced themselves to apathy, disengagement, disconnection.

Silence.

But out of the frightening silence of the months I spent in numbness and isolation, unable to find my worth and validation in my schoolwork, my religion, or friend’s and family’s approval, came an acceptance of self that I had never known. The emptiness of not caring, though scary and unproductive, gradually opened into space for peace and self-acceptance and even joy.

Only when the stories of self-hatred, doubt, and condemnation were silenced, could God actually speak. Although I couldn’t (or wouldn’t) identify God as the source, something began to tell me stories of love and grace. That maybe the salvation of the world didn’t hinge completely on me. That maybe there was something good and worthy inside of me after all.

Only after I began to hear this new story did I actually start to live like I was loved, like I was forgiven. And only after months of living in the kind of freedom I'd never dreamed of, did I finally begin to believe that maybe there is a loving God. That maybe it was the God of love who made me free, who was there loving me all along.

Don't worry, it sounds weird and new-agey even to me. But the beauty of God is that he knows me. He knew I didn't need another formula or piece of intellectual information to believe in. He knew I needed to experience his truth and freedom before I could ever believe it.

My relationship with God is inseparable from my journey to love myself, to believe a better story about myself and this world. The verse, "We love because he first loved us," (1 John 4:19) could not explain it any better.

And that is the new story I’m learning to live.

Telling A Better Story

"What we do comes out of who we believe we are." –Rob Bell

I’ve heard another one of my other favorite authors, Donald Miller (Christian hipster alert), talk about the importance of story in our lives and, particularly, the role of God as the author of our own stories. I’m not going to get into the recent blogosphere squabble Don started by talking about men authoring love stories for women or anything like that. I’m not going to unleash my thoughts on feminism or, heaven forbid, dating. I actually wrote the following part of this post over a year ago—before Rachel Held Evans’ response to Donald Miller’s post with “My story is more interesting than that”—for reals.

What I am going to talk about and what I agree with both of them on, is that stories matter. The stories we tell ourselves and the stories we believe we are living matter a great deal.

If we believe the story that life is meaningless, we’re going to act like nothing matters. If we believe that the problems of the world are too big and too complicated to make a difference, we’re not going to do anything to make a difference.

Maybe you believe that you are nothing more than a body to be lusted after or rejected.

There’s a better story.

Maybe you believe that you are what you produce.

There’s a better story.

Maybe you believe you’re too busy to make a difference.

Maybe you believe you don’t have any skills or talents that are useful.

Maybe you believe, deep down, that if people knew the real you they would be disgusted.

There’s a better story.

Maybe you believe your past mistakes will dictate your future.

Maybe you believe you are powerless to help.

There’s a better story.

It doesn’t exactly sound like the normal Christian activities: pray, read the Bible, go to church….practice letting God author your life story? (I guess Jesus take the wheel comes pretty close to the idea). My love story with God is really just the story of letting God write my story--how meta is that? Or at least letting God’s story about me be the main story I believe.

What story do you believe?

Check back next week to read more about the ways I’ve learned to believe and live a better story.