Good Morning, Fellow Travellers,
You know that saying about being kinder than necessary because everybody is fighting some kind of battle? It sets me to remembering too that everybody has a STORY, the story of his or her Life that contains experiences I don’t have a clue about. Everybody has a HeartStory.
To have the privilege of hearing a bit of another person’s story is holy to me. It’s a trust. Yes, it’s part of my profession, but it’s more: it’s something we can offer each other anytime. “Tell me about when___? What was it like when____? Who was there when____?”
I’ve been married thirty-eight years to the same man. You can probably imagine how well I think I know this fellow. Thirty-eight years and just the other day he shared an event from his childhood that, for whatever reasons, I didn’t know about.
It was such a stunning, intense event that I had to question myself: How could I have not known that? Had it been mentioned, maybe as a matter-of-fact, and I was so caught up in my own drama that I completely missed it? If he hadn’t mentioned it, was there something about our relationship that he didn’t entrust the story to me til now? Was it something he assumed I knew because he did?
Or maybe it just came up exactly when it needed to come up…..nothing more complex that perfect timing!
However it came to be part of not just his story but now part of our family story, I am grateful that I now hold it with him.
And I realized one more time how little I know and how ignorant I am to think I know….
Today I will listen to someone I think I know well.
And I’ll hear an unheard bit of the story.
And we’ll be changed by it.
Travel lightly,
Jaylene
jaylenewhitehurst.wordpress.com 