Good morning…
“Dear Friend,” she wrote after yesterday’s post My Five Year Headache. “About the time you wrote to me, I was stirring and ready to slip downstairs for coffee and a chapter or two from my current book Lighthousekeeping. I made coffee and read these words:
Tell me a story . . .
What story, child?
One that begins again.
That’s the story of life.
But is it the story of my life?
Only if you tell it.”
“The weight of those words caused me to pause,” she admitted. “Life . . . a story of new beginnings . . . and shaped by our memories and our telling of it. Knowing that my life is in a different place than I imagined . . . I paused . . . then I read your blog and email.”
“Tears . . . those ones that so rarely fall not from my eyes as much as bubbling from my heart,” she so beautifully explained. “Today, five years ago on this first Thursday in March, I learned that my cancer was not “nothingness . . . eradicated and gone” as we had hoped, but was as you described, it was a cancer like ‘Charles Manson in second grade.’ I had forgotten that . . . left that out of my story . . . so glad to be reminded. I was overwhelmed by a deep sense of gratitude–gratitude by God’s amazing strength and the love and hope He poured into my life . . . and continues to do so each and every day.”
“Profoundly thankful for your presence in that cancer journey and now, I thought of the others you quietly refer to in your post,” she continued. “I thought of you at our sides . . . walking beside . . . a God-sent, wise, kind angel in our midst. A friend willing to hold our hands and help us to fly again. What a week that was for you . . . for so many of us.”
“When I returned to my book,” she concluded, “I stopped reading when a chapter ended with these words:
Tell me a story . . .
What story?
The story of what happened next.
That depends.
On what?
On how I tell it.”
“My story . . . my stories . . . are often shaped and told through the beautiful words you share, Sue–whether in reflection or in looking forward or in the moment. Thank you for the reminder of where my story was five years ago . . . and that a new chapter is coming. Thank you for reminding me of dear women and their families who were also in the midst of profound and heartbreaking stories at the same time.” She added: “Know you are loved.”
I think back to the Scripture verse uncovered in our blog a few posts back. Your surplus could meet their need, and their abundance may one day meet your need (2 Corinthians 8:14a, TPT). This divine dynamic is a huge part of my own story over the past five years. Again and again and again, I have enjoyed sharing my spiritual surplus with friends in need only to experience their abundance richly meeting my needs in return. “This equal sharing of abundance will mean a fair balance,” adds 2 Corinthians 8:14b.
What happens next . . . as we tell . . . our shared story? “As it is written: The one who gathered much didn’t have too much, and the one who gathered little didn’t have too little” (2 Corinthians 8:15, TPT). Morning by morning, year after year, we gather and we share the mysterious, mutually beneficial manna rained down by God.
…Sue…
