Holy, Sacred Moments

It happened again a week ago.

I shouldn’t be surprised when it happens, since it has happened repeatedly, but I always am. Surprised, that is. And moved.

Last Sunday, I preached my “Stories in the Dark” sermon. It’s a sermon I’ve taken on the road since the publication of Telling Stories in the Dark. It’s a real sermon, not a commercial for my book, but it does cover some of the same ground about sharing our stories of sadness, grief, trauma, and pain.

After the service, a woman approached me and told me her story. It was devastating. I’m not going to repeat the details here; I don’t have her permission to tell it. But it was the kind of story that makes you wonder how someone finds the strength and courage to go on.

We’re approaching the one-year anniversary of the release of Telling Stories, which means I’ve been hearing people’s stories of loss and trauma for a year. I should have seen that coming. About 25 years ago, when I first gave a message that tied my secondary-sufferer experience following my 24-year-old fiance’s stroke with Frederick Buechner’s concept of the stewardship of pain, a man followed me into a men’s room to tell me about the death of his daughter. It was the first of many similar experiences.

Writing in the New York Times Magazine the day after Christmas, Taffy Brodesser-Akner related how writing about the kidnapping of a family friend combined with her own trauma story led hundreds of strangers to email their own trauma stories to her. Nothing had prepared her for that—in fact, she’d been in conversation with someone who wondered if perhaps “trauma” was an overused term. After the reaction to her story, she wonders if it is underused.

Seeking to understand this, Brodesser-Akney spoke with a trauma therapist, who said, “Being human is being storied. Our identities are built on the stories told about us and that we tell about ourselves and experiences. And healing comes from re-storying our self-narratives and importantly, also, from sharing them: We need our stories to be witnessed in order to heal.”

I wish I’d had that last line, “We need our stories to be witnessed in order to heal,” available when I wrote my book. I would have included it. I wish I had articulated more clearly that our stories don’t just need to be told, they need to be witnessed—listened to—in order for us to heal. I wish I had written more about the importance of listening well. Empathic and compassionate listening is one of the greatest gifts we can give each other.

Recently, I read the novel This is Happiness by the Irish novelist Niall Williams. The book was published in 2019 but I just discovered it. I wish I’d known it when I wrote my book, I would have used these quotes:

Story was a kind of human binding. I can’t say it better than that. There was telling everywhere. Because there were fewer sources of where to find out anything, there was more listening. (4)

Story was the stuff of life, and to realise you were inside one allowed you to sometimes surrender to the plot, to bear a little easier the griefs and sufferings and to enjoy more fully the twists that come along the way. (50)

The truth turns into a story when it grows old. We all become stories in the end. (82)

When the trauma therapist speaks of “re-storying our self-narratives,” she is saying a similar thing to “We all become stories in the end.” I prefer literary language over the abstract language of psychology, but they’re making the same point. (This is Happiness, by the way, is an absolutely delightful novel that I cannot recommend highly enough.)

One other book I wish I’d had when I wrote my book is Nicholas Wolterstorff’s slim volume Living with Grief. Nick is one of the great wise men of our tradition, and this book was published in 2024. He had told me about it when I interviewed him for Telling Stories, and many of the points he made in my book are echoed in his new book. However, he writes about grief subsiding in a way in Living with Grief that I wish I had said more clearly:

Though it (grief) cannot be relieved or alleviated, it does subside. . . . It subsides mostly, I think, because one learns to live around the gap. One has no choice.

Shortly after Telling Stories was released, I was in a discussion with a group at my church. A man in his 90s told a vivid story of loss from his childhood. Everyone in the room felt the power of his story and weight of his grief. We sat in silence for a while and then I asked, “How long ago did this happen?”

He paused, did some mental math, and said, “Eighty-eight years.”

Think about that.

The intensity of grief changes, it subsides. But it does not go away. I wish I’d said that more clearly.

A year after the publication of my book, I am aware of things I wish I’d said better. I don’t feel bad about that; I appreciate that I’m learning. And I appreciate my book, not because it’s some great work of literature, but because it has opened up meaningful conversations which I’ve been privileged to be part of. Although it does surprise me when strangers feel safe enough to share their powerful stories, I have come to appreciate them dearly and see them as nothing less than holy, sacred moments.