So What's Your Story?

     Everyone’s got a story.  If you are with someone for any length of time you begin to touch on their story.  Sometimes it just comes out, and then there are times you have to “read between the lines”.  Other times you can easily see a person’s story peek out, like my daughter’s tale.

      Little children will often ask Bella what happened to her eye.  A four year old girl at the park approached my daughter and requested her immediate friendship last week.  Bella willingly became the little girl’s playmate as they began climbing on the play equipment together.  Every now and then the little girl would ask her what happened to her eye.  My daughter is always ready for this question and sometimes she has fun with her answer.  “It was a freak spitball accident.”  “Oh, wow”, the little girl said, and then ran off to play somewhere else.  The little girl would play and laugh for a bit until she was overcome with curiosity and would ask Bella what happened to her eye again.  Bella declared her one of the cutest girls she had ever met.  I was reminded again that Bella wears her story for others to see.  But I know that most of our stories are not so obvious.

     The playground at A.I. DuPont Children’s Hospital is fast becoming one of my favorite places to sit and think.   One can see children and families from all over the world; European, Asian, Middle Eastern, African, and American walk through the hospital playground.  This multicultural parade is so beautiful to me.  This is truly a unique place.  It is a place where everyone has a story to tell.

      A child doesn’t come to a place where there are world renowned specialists unless they have some sort of difficulty.  Some children walk with canes or braces, some cannot walk at all, others have casts, and still others are frail and thin.  But many of the children look just fine on the outside.  Their story is hidden, like little Gracie’s sister.

     A beautiful young family sat down with me at one of the picnic tables on the playground.  The mother sat with her 10 month old daughter while her husband ran after their three year old Gracie.  After a few questions like how many children do you have? and what do you think of the hospital?, their story began to unfold. Their youngest daughter was born with a hip displacement condition and so they sought out the best help they could find.  Their search led them to Dr. Bowen, who wrote a book on the little girl’s deformity.  Dr. Bowen is also Jackson’s doctor.  The little girl is looking great and her future is looking good. It was after meeting this little girl who shared Jackson’s doctor that the words to one of Jackson’s favorite songs came to my mind.

     Jackson heard a song when he was 7 years old that really impacted him.  “Give me your eyes for just one second, give me your eyes so I can see.”  I remember asking him why he liked the song, and he told me that he wanted to see people that way, the way God sees them.  God was giving him a tender heart toward others.  We had no idea that just a week following his baptism, at 7 years old, just how greatly our family would be impacted by pain.  It was the week that Bella lost her sight in her left eye.  Jackson’s song took on a whole new meaning.  We were all drawn right into my son's own prayer to see people in a whole new way. 

     I have been learning to slow down when I meet people, to look and listen to people more intently.  I am learning to walk a little of their own path with them.  It is in our weaknesses that many of us find strength.  None of us are fit enough.  We are all flawed.  Our flaws are a part of our stories.  Each life has value because of the precious story that it tells.  Even a newborn baby has a story – like my nephew, who came into this world just fine, beating all the odds of surviving an umbilical chord that was knotted 4 times.  Levi’s life tells a story even now, as an infant.  We all stop and take notice because his story causes us to marvel at the gift of life.

     Affirming another’s worth can be as simple as listening to their story.  Or like one child wrote at the A. I. DuPont Hospital, “Just smiling at someone can make a person’s day.”  By looking for other people’s stories we can learn how to care more deeply for people.  Many stories translate to prayer for me.  How can I pray for this person?  Where is God working here?  And as I look for more stories, I find myself praying for more people.  It is becoming a natural overflow.  I am taking their stories to Jesus. 

     As I am praying for people, it humbles me. I am reminded to never assume that I have a person all figured out.  Little Gracie’s sister looked just fine, but as her Momma carefully placed her x-ray on top of the stroller, the little girl’s story became more real to me.  This Christmas she will celebrate her first birthday, and maybe, just maybe, she will walk on Christmas Day. 

     Our stories make us who we are; the good, the hard, the painful, and even those things we don’t want to remember, they are a part of the stories we are living.  And living is what we were meant to do.

~Your Fellow Sojourner

“Give Me Your Eyes”
Looked down from a broken sky
Traced out by the city lights
My world from a mile high
Best seat in the house tonight
Touched down on the cold black top
Hold on for the sudden stop
Breath in the familiar shock
Of confusion and chaos
All those people going somewhere, 
Why have I never cared?

Chorus:
Give me your eyes for just one second
Give me your eyes so I can see
Everything that I keep missing
Give me your love for humanity
Give me your arms for the broken hearted
Ones that are far beyond my reach.
Give me your heart for the ones forgotten
Give me your eyes so I can see

Step out on a busy street
See a girl and our eyes meet
Does her best to smile at me
To hide what's underneath
There's a man just to her right
Black suit and a bright red tie
Too ashamed to tell his wife
He's out of work
He's buying time
All those people going somewhere
Why have I never cared?

I've Been there a million times
A couple of million eyes
Just moving past me by
I swear I never thought that I was wrong
Well I want a second glance
So give me a second chance
To see the way you see the people all along

by Brandon Heath

Studio Performance of Brandon Heath singing "Give Me Your Eyes"

 

                                         What is going on here?!  

For Everyone Who Climbs

     These rocks of affliction seem to never leave the skyline.  They tower over us with their shadows cold and grey.  We awake each day with the impassioned thought to climb; climb, ever higher until we reach the top.  We begin but soon our bodies are pushed to the limit.  We look up.  The distance is just too far.  And we must look down again to begin the decent. 

     At the end of the day, after our attempted climb, we sit.  We sit and close our eyes and dream.  We set our hearts and minds on the hope of the shadow moving and the warmth of the sun pouring over us, thawing out our cold and weary souls.  But mountains do not move.

     And then, one day another climber comes along.  He doesn’t look too pretty.  The cuts and bruises tell of a similar tale; we know the marks well.  But he has a confidence about him, a steady look in the eye, and a patient hand.  He says, “Let’s ascend this rock face together.  I have stood at the base of a wall of rock such as this, and I have come down on the other side.  I am ready to climb.”  And in blind faith or desperate hope, we agree to go along.  The struggle is still there and the obstacles the same, but when we are too weak and our hope has waned, our fellow climber bids us to go on.  We push through the most difficult and dangerous parts of the climb and the summit comes closer. Our hands and feet find holds we did not see before.  We are helped and our weakened souls become stronger.  We begin to breathe the air of hope.

     As we pull our bodies up to the top, we stop to look for our friend.  The climb was long and the work was hard, but we were not alone.  We had someone there to help us up when we had fallen; we had someone there to show us that we did have strength, when we thought we had none.   With aching legs and muscles taught, we stand upon the precipice.  We close our eyes and feel the breeze.  In our hearts we hear a new refrain, “It was worth the pain.  It was worth all of the pain.”  

     And we stand there, in awe of what we have just ascended.  As we think back to where we have come from we feel a twinge of doubt, but we push the thoughts aside.  We are standing on the majestic point of a mountain and we feel a surge of pride roll over us like a wave.  But to take any credit for coming this far would be foolish.  We know we only kept going because someone had gone before us who knew the way.  We had a trailblazer to follow.  And now we see that we too know the way that others must take. 

     We make our plans to go down the rock.  We know we cannot stay here.  We know we need to go back to the lower, more level ground.  And as much as we want to rest in the valley for a little while, we know the next climb will come soon and we must be ready for it.  There are other climbers down below.  Our knowledge and our pain are precious now.  These experiences and things we have learned could become stagnant if they are hidden away and never shared with another.  We are a people of the Way, the Truth, and the Life. We even know the One who made the mountains.  We know that He has led us to these rocks that have been so full of trouble.  But it has been a trouble shared, not wasted.  It will be like precious oil that has been spilled out to heal another troubled soul.  This affliction turned to healing, He has called good. The rocks that had once afflicted us will be like smooth stones we can hold in our hands, to remember. We have stood on top of the massive rock that would have crushed us.  But we were not crushed. We have become more than conquerors.  ~Your Fellow Sojourner

Mt. Hood in Oregon