There are two ways to think of the experience of intimacy in the sharing of story. It is the big and small ways we catch up with our loved ones every day and meaningfully listen to each other whether it is a recent event or something long past. But there is also the act of listening to each other and being present to each other within the life events themselves in the moment, as they are happening - that bring a deeper sense of connection.
I was seven years old when I found myself for the first time listening to the life story of someone - I was at a family reunion and found myself one-on-one listening to my great great uncle Ted share his story. He was my great grandfather’s half-brother whose parents had traveled west in a covered wagon. Hearing this story as a 7-year-old was absolutely riveting, and from that one incident, I have a sense of Ted and a broader sense of my family. I suspect this in part led me to study history and now spend my days listening to the stories of clients. In this listening, I still have my sense of connection fired up. I feel especially honored and grateful to be with people in parts of their story where they were profoundly and painfully alone. No one wants to be alone in their story.
Just a week after I first met my wife Sue in the spring of 1990, we started talking late in the evening after a college fellowship and the conversation only ended when I walked her to class at 8 am. To this day, I marvel at how we spent the night walking and sharing our stories with each other, and how by the next day, we felt as though we truly knew each other.
While sharing story can inherently bring a sense of knowing, there is a deeper and more personal sharing of story that leads to relational knowing. We know God, in part, because we can read and understand His story through scripture. However, the deeper knowing is to have God as an active part of our story. In Psalms, we often hear the exhortation to remember. What is being remembered? It is the specific ways God has been present to His people. While I began to know my wife in the sharing of her past story, it is the memories of her actively present to me in my story that I experience a deep sense of feeling known. I can feel her loving presence with me when I remember many of the best and worst events of my adult life. In the same way, I also know her as I am with her in her moments of struggle, listening to what is feeling hard, but also in the expressions of joy in response to the great things that happen in her day. This kind of active presence and empathetic listening brings a special kind of intimacy and relational knowing.
We are created to live in this deeper place of relational knowing through an experience of the presence of God and others. We never really want to be alone. To truly believe God is with us and that we are with God eternally is the most precious of all relational knowing. We are deeply grateful because Jesus came as God with us, lived within the human story, and is now always with us as we live out our story. Jesus demonstrated an ability to be present to anyone and often made people feel truly seen and heard in the most important moments. Jesus was also known in meaningful ways as he shared his thoughts, feelings, and experiences with His disciples. In the Garden of Gethsemane, we also see Him inviting his disciples to be with Him in his turmoil (though they fell asleep), but also see how feeling heard by His father was so important – even though God strengthened him for Golgotha instead of saving Him from it. Prayer in this life is lived in an active and meaningful interaction of sharing and listening that helps us feel deeply known by God and truly believe He is with us in the important moments of our lives.
The Christian life is about ongoing and loving relational presence. We seek to be with each other in meaningful ways, living within and listening to each other’s story while bringing the presence of Christ to each other by the Holy Spirit. God’s beautiful invitation is to be in each other’s lives by listening to each other’s past, present, and future stories and being a loving presence listening and responding to each other in the ongoing events of our lives.
