Let Us Listen: The Power of Stories

Our two-year-old is prone to the usual toddler bumps and bruises, especially with two older brothers she’s determined to emulate. Our determined little girl never takes into account that her brothers are five and eight years old, and she is not. If they are climbing to the top of the jungle gym, then by golly, so is she. She tumbles off the couch, runs into open kitchen drawers, and is perpetually slamming doors—sometimes with her fingers in the way. Last week, she wiped out in our driveway while trying to carry a box of sidewalk chalk nearly as big as she was, and she ran to me, pointing to her skinned knee, tears streaming down her face.

“What happened, baby girl?” I asked, though I had witnessed it myself. She told me, in her sweet, limited, starter-pack vocabulary, the whole sordid tale. Trip. Too heavy. Chalk. Fall down! I grabbed a Band-aid and an ice pack (the “Boo Boo Turtle” is great emotional balm, even when the injury doesn’t require icing), and she told the story to her father and brothers. With each retelling, her burden lifted a little more as they listened, believed, and empathized.

She turned to me with sparkling eyes, her tears beginning to dry. “Fine!” she chirped, hopping off my lap. “FINE!”

Sharing stories can be so healing, can’t it? Telling the truth about what happened to us, what we experienced, what it felt like to be us in a specific moment in time. When we are listened to and believed, when another person offers us empathy, understanding, and kindness, it is utterly transformative. And receiving the stories of others with love and grace is one of our most sacred tasks as human beings.

Jesus was a master listener. When a woman who’d been bleeding for twelve years reached out in anguish and hope to touch the hem of his robe, she was healed. But Jesus didn’t leave her simply with physical healing. He turned to her with compassion.

Mark’s Gospel continues the story: “Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. [Jesus] said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.’” (Mark 5:33-34 NIV).

What freedom in telling the Savior the whole truth! This is the heart of our confessions of sin, that we cease justifying and explaining away our failure to do what is good, our stumbling into—or actively choosing— what is bad, and simply telling God the whole truth. Sharing our story with God is at the heart of allowing him to bind up our wounds, shine his light on the shadows of our hearts, and find in him a faithful, loving witness to our lives.

Stories are everything.

At my first pastorate, nestled in the farmlands of southern Wisconsin, I couldn’t crack the funeral code. I officiated service after service, but folks in rural America tend to hold their sadness close. Like everyone else who’d moved there less than a generation earlier, I was a newcomer, not yet trusted to hold people’s grief. My gentle questions about how families would like to shape a loved one’s service often resulted in crickets, shrugs, or tears. Their pain was palpable, and I wasn’t sure how to help.

That year, I spent a continuing education week at Duke Divinity School, where I had the opportunity to pick Rev. Dr. Jeremy Troxler’s brain. Dr. Troxler was in charge of Duke’s Thriving Rural Church Initiative at the time—he’s since gone back to the pastorate—and his deep wisdom was matched by an even deeper kindness.

I broached my funeral question with him. “Folks are clearly dealing with waves of grief,” I said, “but don’t seem to want to talk about any of it. I can’t shake the feeling that it would be helpful, but I don’t want to press them if they’d prefer not to share.” We talked through the clinical way I’d been approaching things. Then he made a gentle suggestion.

“Ask for stories,” he said. “Ask where their mother was when she was happiest. Ask about their father’s favorite hat. Talk about pets, children, grandchildren. Ask about favorite foods, sports teams, holiday traditions. The stories will come, and so will the grief.”

He was right.

We might be built of sinew and bone, but our lives make sense through narrative. The first birthday party, the kindergarten field trip, the high school sweetheart, the Christmas tradition. Where our great-grandmother stood when she was happiest. Our uncle’s favorite hat. Foods, sports teams, holiday traditions.

Jesus knew how quickly a story could capture an audience. He pointed to the birds overhead, the crops in the field. He wove metaphor and imagery and parable for his listeners until they stood transfixed and transformed. Stories change us.

Let us speak. And let us listen.

Courtney Ellis is a pastor, speaker, and author of Uncluttered, Almost Holy Mama, and the forthcoming Happy Now: Let Play Lift Your Mood & Renew Your Spirit. She lives in southern California with her husband, three children, and the class parakeet that they took home in March “for the weekend.” You can find her on Twitter, Facebook, or at www.courtneybellis.com.

Photograph © Yoel Peterson, used with permission