Part 2: How to Overcome 5 Common Fears of Sharing Your Story
Are you afraid to share your story? Today we look at three more common reasons for not sharing stories and some stories that encourage us to overcome those fears:
- It’s not godly enough.
Thirty-five-year-old Lucy actually spoke these words as she began her story of a secret summer boyfriend: “This isn’t a very godly story.” Indeed, it might have seemed so at first as she described sneaking out of her house at fifteen to meet her first love at midnight in the neighborhood park in the days when parks at midnight weren’t so scary. It might still have seemed ungodly as she described how when the summer ended, and she and her secret boyfriend returned to school, he pretended not to know her because she was a band-nerd and he was a basketball jock. And yet, as her tears of brutal betrayal leaked out, how many of us recognized similar betrayals? How many of us noticed that God had actually saved us from cruel men who would use us and betray us?
Many times, all we have to do is look a little deeper, listen a little harder, to find God’s mercy at work in any story we might tell.
- I don’t have any interesting stories.
When she passed on her turn to tell her story, sixty-two-year-old Eunice spoke these very words. The leader nodded wisely and asked, “Eunice, did you say you grew up on a dairy farm?”
“Yes,” Eunice replied, smiling, “I remember the summer I was seven I had to start getting up early with my older sister to learn how to milk the cows. We used to spray each other with the milk sometimes.” And then she giggled a little as she remembered. Her face softened, and the mischievous grin of seven-year-old Eunice was revealed to us for a quick moment.
No interesting stories indeed. Eunice, created in the image of God, growing up on a dairy farm, spraying her older sister with the cow’s milk…Forgive my irony, but need I say more?
- I’m afraid of what people will think of me.
She was a sinner, and everyone in the group knew it. They knew she had been married multiple times and that the last man she lived with was not her husband. They even wondered a little that she dared to show up. But then, Shalona began her story. She told of being abused by her father and marrying the first man who said that he loved her. She told how that man had quickly turned on her, calling her lazy and worthless. She told of how she met another man who seemed much kinder and married him. On and on her story of “looking for love in all the wrong places” went until she reached the turning point, the day she met a truly different kind of man. This man knew everything about her. And he loved her. He didn’t try to use her or marry her or have sex with her. He just wanted to give her a gift of love that would never end. “Living water,” Shalona said. “He called it ‘living water’.” And ever since that day, she had told anyone who would listen this amazing story of the man who loved her well.
You may recognize this storyteller as the woman at the well from John 4 (And yes, I invented the name “Shalona” as a play on “shalom,” the deep peace that God brings). She is the woman who once shirked in the shadows because she feared being shamed by others. She is the woman whose life was so radically changed by Jesus that she ran to tell others, “Come and see a man who told me everything I ever did.”
Yes, it is scary to think what people may think of us if they know our whole story, the story of our sin. But we must ask this one crucial question: “What if, in telling that story, we can lead someone to see the Jesus who came to redeem and change sinners just like us? Is it worth the risk?” I hope you find that it is.
Photo by Sarah Noltner on Unsplash