Share Yourself
You’ve got the words to change a nation
But you’re biting your tongue
You’ve spent a life time stuck in silence
Afraid that you’ll say something wrong
If no one ever hears it how we gonna learn your song?
So come on, come on
Come on, come on
You’ve got a heart as loud as lighting
So why let your voice be tamed?
Maybe we’re a little different
There’s no need to be ashamed
You’ve got the light to fight the shadows
So stop hiding it away
Come on, come on
From Emile Sande ‘Read All About It’. Source.
…
We’ve all got stories. In fact, maybe we are stories – even if we’re not sure how to read them. I was reminded of this today, listening to a (new) friend’s testimony. In some ways we come from very different places: and yet – as she spoke, I was nodding and laughing and thinking ‘You too? Thank goodness: it’s not just me. I am not on my own.’
It’s hard to value our own experiences – but they’re much more precious than we think: and we’re not the ones to assess why. I can read a hundred self-help books and they may well give useful advice. Some of it even lodges (temporarily) in my brain. But it’s when I connect with others that I’m changed; and they’re changed too.
That’s one of the things I love most about church – it’s a living library, with genres of people you’d never normally share. You might think it’s just religion, but the opposite is true. There’s a janitor sat beside a brain surgeon sat beside a newborn sat beside an octogenarian. Poetry and drama and comedy and tragedy and history and crime and romance and heartbreak that crosses class and gender and race and even English reticence.
But it’s not an easy thing – all this reading. It takes time and energy and curiosity and commitment. A book’s not like a magazine. You can’t just skim it or sum it up with a headline or picture. People can’t be scanned either. We rarely read like our covers – and as with the best stories, we reveal ourselves gradually and in unexpected ways. But as we read others and tell ourselves, we get a sense of a bigger story, the only one that matters. We’re part of it and changed by it too.
So – tell your story. It’s precious. And it’s written to be shared.
Awww just read this, really needed to see this today, this week, month, year! Sometimes it is easy to see everyone else as having a story to tell but our own story is not worth sharing. Like you said, it’s hard to value our own experiences, they are more precious than we think and we are not the ones to assess why. Thanks Emma x
Absolutely. Everyone’s got a story. And they’re all powerful.
One of the many, many great gifts God has given people like me is … you, with your story and your gift in sharing it. And one of the many, many great gifts you give your friends and your readership is your willingness to share your story (very often, as it unfolds). It takes humility to tell your story, warts and all, with all the ups and downs, and before the details of the glorious finale are fully known – thank you, Emma.
Thanks Nick.