Storytelling: Not Just for Children
By Sarah Underwood
September 23, 2014
Muttering “Excuse me,” and “Oops, sorry about stepping on your foot,” I found my way to a very crowded seat in Sub7 on Sept. 4 for the Apostolos’s event “My Two Words.” Overwhelmed with a feeling deep in the pit of my stomach that something unique was about to take place, I joined over 100 fellow students, family members and faculty who had subjected themselves to an overheated room and invasion of private space for one purpose: to hear stories.
Students Breanne Baudinot, Shayla Wood and Dan Ball bravely and a bit shakily stood up in front of their friends and told their stories. Breanne told of her battle with ovarian cancer, Shayla spoke about God redefining her distorted version of forgiveness and grace. Dan shared about making his faith his own in a family with very different views of religion. As each opened up their lives, a sense of togetherness spread through the room and carried with it the realization that we were all hungry to hear more.
This wasn’t the first time I had experienced this hunger for sharing stories. Last semester I worked as an intern at Mountain Christian Church in Joppa, Md. My official position was the “storytelling intern.” When explaining this, I was often met with laughter and sometimes confusion about whether or not I would be doing a puppet ministry or reading bedtime stories to children. While the word “story” takes many of us back to our Dr. Seuss days, storytelling is not just for children.
Throughout the semester, I interviewed people about the way God worked in their lives. My next task was to tell their stories, mostly through written word, to the whole community of believers at Mountain. Some stories were difficult to capture and made me question why such great people were put through hardship. Other stories made me want to march out into the mission field and make an actual difference in the world. One story in particular made me want to do both.
Lisa’s story was full of abuse, drug addiction and suicide attempts. One late night in the rehab center her grandfather talked her into admitting herself in, Lisa had a powerful experience with God which eventually sent her to a life-changing trip to Kenya. In Kenya, Lisa discovered a job involving fish and farming that only her and her marine biology experience were capable of doing. It was in that moment when realized she was given a life for a reason. Since then, she lives a life searching after God’s will (To read her full story, click here).
But why would an entire semester internship be dedicated to creating a space for people to share their stories?
I’m no expert, but I know something happened whenever I sat down and listened to people tell their stories. Not only did they realize their worth, but I, as their story collector, was humbled and transformed as I realized that I found a little bit of myself in each story.
Alex Tizon, writer at The Seattle Times, described his similar experience with stories: “Stories give shape to experience and allow us to go through life ‘unblind.’ Without them, the stuff that happens would float around in some glob and none of it would mean anything. Once you have a version of what happened, all the other good stuff about being human can come into play. You can laugh, feel awe, commit a compassionate act, get pissed, and want to change things.”
Stories connect us. Stories move us. For better or worse, when we hear a story, we are inevitably changed in some way, big or small. That’s why it’s important to listen to others tell their stories. When we sit down and listen to even a small chapter of someone’s story, we are declaring to them and others that we are willing to change and inviting them into our own story.
It would be easy if I were just trying to convince you to sit down and open your ears. But we’re called to do more than that. We’re called to share our stories with others. Award-winning author Madeleine L’Engle says this, “Jesus was not a theologian. Jesus was God who told stories.” And we, as Christians, are called to be like Jesus.
There is an epidemic infecting American Christianity; it’s a disease convincing many Christians that they don’t have a story—or if they do, it’s certainly not worth telling. Worse yet, as my best friend Hannah Lature put it, we give others a false, censored version of our stories: “We walk along and look around at everyone's seemingly great life, but we really don't know what they have shoved into their cabinets and are trying to hide from the rest of the world.”
God created us all with stories worth telling—stories full of excitement, heartbreak and adventure.
You have a story. And more importantly, you have readers. If Apostolos’ first “My Two Words” event was proof of anything, it was proof that Milligan’s campus is full of people hungry for stories. So grab a friend and some coffee—it doesn’t have to be a big production—and risk sharing your story.
