The Power of Your Story

One day, last week, the doorbell rang.  It was about one o’clock in the afternoon, and my visitors were both a surprise and yet not entirely unexpected.  It was the same girl who has been to my door several times over the last few weeks, offering me a handmade bracelet for a buck, offering me a smells-good-stick for three bucks—she and other children in the neighborhood have been frequent visitors. 

I was a little surprised to see them in the afternoon.  Normally, they come much later, like when I am fast asleep on the couch or in the recliner.

But the other day, they came in the afternoon and the little girl, there with her two little brothers and an older girl who I think was just a friend, asked me if I had a stroller she could borrow so she could take her little sister out.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that every time this girl comes to my door I have about a dozen questions for her and this time was no different, though I kept the questions to myself.

Like, why don’t you have a stroller?  Where is your little sister now?  Who is watching her?  Who is watching you?  Are you going from house to house asking for a stroller?  What made you think I might have one?  Where are you taking your sister in this stroller?

But instead of asking these questions, I simply told the girl that I was sorry but I didn’t have a stroller.

“We’d bring it back,” the girl said, as if realizing her ask might be too much.  “We just need to borrow it.”

Again, the questions—I wanted so desperately to know what was going on and, while I repeated I didn’t have a stroller, I was stalling some, hoping she might tell me more of what was happening.

But she didn’t.  And she and the other children walked off.

And I was left to wonder.

I have always been fascinated by people’s stories.  Consequently, I get frustrated when people send me texts with no context, or when someone tells me something and when I have follow up questions, they have no answers.  I want the full picture.

This past Monday, I was at the tire store, getting four new tires—yay—except that I hadn’t planned on being there.  I had planned on just popping in for a quote and then setting up an appointment later in the week, but the quote they gave was good and they said they could put the new tires on right then—it would only take about two hours.

Well, why not? I said to myself.

So I sat down in the waiting area resigning myself to sit there for the next two hours inhaling tire fumes, but not only that—I hadn’t brought a book to read.  The tire place didn’t even have a TV on.  What in the world was I going to do for two hours?

I texted my dad, told him where I was and that I was bookless.  I mentioned maybe walking across the street to Target to buy a book and then said, surely I could handle sitting alone with my thoughts for the next two hours.

Haha.  Hahaha.

We, as humans, especially in this day and age, are not wired for alone time.  For silence.  For nothing but the company of our own thoughts.

Now, you might wonder why I couldn’t simply get on my phone for the next two hours, get on Facebook or go shopping on Amazon for more books—or why I simply couldn’t read a book on my phone.

And to that I say, I have a very tiny phone, with a tiny screen and I have bad eyes, so that in order to read a book on my phone, I would need to enlarge the font so that it was basically one word at a time.

Twas swipe the swipe night swipe before swipe Christmas swipe.

I tried to read on my phone.  I truly did.  But after a few minutes, I gave up.

And then it was just me and my thoughts in a waiting room with other people and their thoughts and their phones.

The boredom, the ennui, was crushing.

And then I started writing a story—in my head.  The man sitting across from me had a bandage on his arm, inside his elbow.  I started Sherlock Holmesian him.  He had had bloodwork.  What was the bloodwork for?  Was it routine?  Had he missed work?  How had he wound up here?  Were those Nikes he was wearing real or knock-offs?

Don’t tell me you’ve never made up stories about strangers you see in the doctor’s office or at the airport.

There is a reason that reading stories with children is so important—there are many reasons—but the most important reason is that reading stories with children builds empathy, that it is important for all of humanity to be exposed to other people’s stories from the very start of our lives so that we know that the world does not revolve around us, so that we know that while we are the main character in our own stories, there are millions of other stories out there most of which we won’t even grace the page as a background character.

Stories connect us to each other.

Stories help us be less self-centered and more world-centered.

This past Sunday, President Joe Biden announced that he would not be running for re-election.  Joe Biden has been in politics for a very long time, longer than I have been alive.  My mom loved him—I never knew why but I think she was drawn, like so many, to his bumbling, goofy self.  Joe always had a story to tell.  Sometimes it wasn’t his story.  Sometimes he borrowed that story from someone else, but he was like that uncle we all had, that family member at the holidays that always had some whopper of a tale to tell that you knew was not remotely true, but couldn’t help yourself from being drawn in.

Part of the reason, President Biden lasted so long in politics was because of his ability to empathize with everyone.  He knew the power of a person’s story.  He knew the power of his story.

President Biden was elected to the senate at the age of 29—the youngest ever, and shortly after his wife and his children were in a horrible car accident that took the lives of his wife and daughter.

Jon Meacham, noted historian, speech-writer and fellow Episcopalian recently wrote of Biden, that after the death of his wife and daughter, Biden “endured, found purpose in his pain, became deeper, wiser, more empathetic.”

Stories, when we read them, help us find meaning in others’ pain.

Stories, when we write them, can help us find purpose in our own pain.

Suffering is universal.

Empathy, unfortunately, is not.

It’s a skill that needs to be learned and strengthened and renewed over time.

We should always, always strive to know people better, to understand them better, to recognize their pain in our own lives, to make that connection to them.

A few days after that little girl came by, asking if I had a stroller, I watched her and several other kids walking past my house.  The little girl was pushing a shopping cart.  One of her brothers was in the basket of the cart and, what I can only assume was her sister, was sitting in the child’s seat of the cart.

They had found their stroller.

And I had a dozen more unanswered questions.

I share the stories of these children with you because every time I do, I make them real to everyone who reads about them, to everyone who hears about them.  They are not statistics.  They are not numbers.  They are real, living and breathing human beings, who exist and love and hurt and laugh and together, with us, are all children of God.

Amen.