When I was a child my dad read The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis to my brother and I each night before bed. I remember begging him to keep reading every night, my four or five-year-old imagination transfixed by the snow-covered world of Narnia.

Suddenly, the opening of doors had become something magical. 

In the sixth grade I discovered Harry Potter. I literally mean discovered; my mom had been reading the books to be sure they were “safe” and one day I found Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in her work bag. I sat down, curious, and started flipping through pages and found myself drawn into this amazing place called Hogwarts. My mom saw me with her book and shrieked that I couldn’t start with number FOUR! She came home the next day with the first book and I finished it that same day. Another door had been opened to me, this time into the wizarding world, courtesy of J.K. Rowling.

I am a collector of stories. I think most of us are, even those that don’t love reading. There’s something about a good story that draws us in and never lets us go. We learn through stories. We escape into them. We are challenged by them. Often, we find comfort in stories!

It’s not only fiction or fairytales that we enjoy, either.

The true stories of real people are often the best ones. 

Why is that? Well, the only thing guaranteed to make a story boring every time is perfection. Let’s face it, no one REALLY cares to hear someone talk about a promotion at work unless they know the backstory of hard work and struggle to get there! Lucy Pevensie would be just another little girl if war hadn’t sent her to a home in the country where she happened upon a wardrobe. Even Narnia itself would only hold interest for so long if it weren’t for a witch, a war, a lion, and a mission. Harry Potter would simply be a sad orphan that we feel sorry for if it weren’t for the story of his lightning-shaped scar and how it got there. Hogwarts would fascinate us for a while, but it would be easy to move on if it weren’t for the turmoil and the risk and the calling. 

Something in us strives to identify with the hero. We want hope. When the hero is perfect, we can’t relate. We don’t find hope in that! What does this perfect person know of pain and hardship? What use do we have with a hero who’s never been challenged and a world that’s never known hurt when we are in so much pain ourselves? How do you know the strength of love if it’s never been tested? How do you have confidence in who you are if you’ve never had to fight to discover yourself in the first place? Where does hope come from in a world that doesn’t need it?

People aren’t interested in stories about perfect worlds— they’re looking for stories that give them hope for their place in this one. 

That’s where we come in. We are imperfect people in an imperfect world. Our stories are the kind that open doors, not into magical lands, but to hope, courage, strength, and more. And our mission, our calling, is to tell these stories.

I’ve seen stories change lives.

I just left a job at an amazing place that GETS this whole story thing. Long before the hashtag, they were saying, “me too.” When you identify with someone else’s story you’re both suddenly less alone.

“Friendship is born at the moment when one man says to another, ‘What! You too? I thought that no one but myself…” – C.S. Lewis

When the #metoo movement did emerge, we posted a video of a few of us telling parts of our stories of sexual assault and abuse. The flood of people thanking us was overwhelming. THANKING us. Just for letting them know they weren’t alone. The #metoo movement was an outpouring of outrage and heartbreak by people who had had enough and would be silent no more.

Stories start movements.

I watched several women surround my mom after she told her story at a retreat, just to tell her that their stories were similar. They hugged her and they left with tears in their eyes and smiles on their faces. 

Stories are freeing. 

Each week, my pastor stands in the lobby after the services to meet people who want to thank him for his transparency about his own story, and to tell him their stories. They tell him how safe they feel in a place where “even the pastor” has messed up.

Stories are equalizers. 

There is something about hearing that another person has had your experiences that makes you feel less alone and scared, and more encouraged and hopeful.

That’s not to say that every story ends well. Sometimes the family member dies or the foreclosure goes through. The rape still happened. Sometimes, instead of opening a door to magic, a story slams the door in your face. They don’t all have happy endings. Still, the feeling of at least not being alone with it is some sort of comfort.

Sometimes, there is still no resolution. It could end terribly or wonderfully, but it hasn’t ended yet, and there is even some hope in that.

The fact is, even more than fairytales with handsome princes and beautiful princesses, stories of common hurt, mistakes, and struggles REACH people. 

We don’t need to be perfect, or have the perfect happy ending to chapters of our stories, for our stories to matter.

YOUR STORY MATTERS. 

You need to tell it.

I know it can be hard. It takes a lot of courage to open up and tell people your story. Often, our more difficult chapters are inked into the darker pages of our stories, hidden away. Even WE haven’t risked reading those pages. To go back and flip through the story would mean looking at some truly painful experiences. It would mean shedding light onto those dark pages. It will most likely hurt… but it will also transform you. 

Healing is often found in the re-breaking and the rebuilding.

Until one day I had enough
Of this exercise of trust.
I leaned in and let it hurt,
And let my body feel the dirt.
When I break pattern, I break ground.
I rebuild when I break down.
I wake up more awake than I’ve ever been before.

–Sleeping At Last, Pluto 

There has been a sort of movement among the women I know that we’ve all been referring to as Pieces. The process involves a mug, representing you, and a hammer. You smash the mug— shatter it. Then you grab a glue gun and you work to put the mug back together. I highly encourage you to do this, but let me warn you: it is FRUSTRATING, to say the least. Spoiler alert: the mug isn’t going to go back together perfectly. It doesn’t matter how badly you want it, or how hard you try. It will not look the same as it did before. When I first heard about this process I thought it sounded beautiful. What poetic symbolism! Sure, I’d love to do it! I agreed to do mine on film, to help my friend Christine with her senior worship project. I have my years of hiding emotions from people to thank for the fact that I did not completely break down in front of my friend J who was running camera (it would have been better if I did). It was overwhelming. Each piece was another part of my story— another part of me. To see that some pieces were gone forever — dust— and that others were not going to fit in properly at all was infuriating.

Some of these pieces were things I had talked openly about for years. When I was raped. When I was assaulted. When I thought I had lost my dreams. When I had miscarried. But other pieces were parts of the story that no one knew about. Some of the pieces were even more subtle things that I hadn’t been fully aware of, myself. I was afraid to let the mug stay broken. But it was so hard to put it back together. I couldn’t make it look the same! The realization came later: the mug SHOULDN’T look the same. No one should go through life-shattering moments and be exactly the same. And maybe all those ugly cracks were actually how all of the light was going to finally get inside. 

I’m not saying I suddenly love every fault line. Many of them infuriate me, some scare me. But others, I find simply beautiful. Yes, there is pain in breaking and pain in rebuilding.

But one thing I’ve found is that pain is a little more manageable when you give it purpose. And it’s an amazing thing when you shed light on the darkness to let other people see, and it ends up changing their lives— and yours.

It’s not easy. But it’s worth it.

And there are people who NEED to hear your story.

They need not only the reminder that pain is shared and they aren’t alone, but also the reminder that there is beauty in the world, and good to be seen! Even while we struggle with new chapters, we can give hope. We can point people to the light, even from darkness. We can call people to the mountaintop through the haze of clouds below. The beautiful thing about our stories is that they are but small chapters in the much larger story of all of us combined! You’re a character in this tale and that means you aren’t living this story alone. Perhaps your small part can forever change the storyline of another character.

It’s your turn to tell your story— however it reads.

Write the song, the book, the poem. Paint the picture. Dance. However you choose to do it, it’s time.

Time for the opening of the door.

The breaking and mending of the mug.

The telling of the epic story.

And I can’t wait to read it.

With all my love,

Dannika