I’m fairly certain our four children are amidst and producing a good bit of noise right now. But, I couldn’t tell you what that noise is entirely because it’s far from where we are. They’re at an amusement park with Grammy who actually called us and asked to take them for two nights. We obliged because we want to be kind to her and want good things for our children.

What were we to do while they were gone?

We kinda skipped town. With a gift certificate in hand, we took off and are presently sitting here in a cozy little spot by a fireplace with a beautiful view of a green ski slope and a glassy outside pool with our laps full of Bibles, notebooks, and our MacBooks. That’s how we roll.

My thoughts are full of the last time we sat in this same place surrounded by friends, men and women energized by rest and fellowship together. We laughed about silly things because we could. And, we asked how they were doing and meant it. We told our stories. We listened to even more stories. Maybe that’s why I find myself liking this place so much; it’s where stories were shared.

Oh, how I love our stories. God is the author who brings to life the characters, the setting, and plots that knit everything together. But, how generous He is to allow us to claim our stories as our own and tell them in spoken and written word alike. Every story is as different as the ones sharing them. Some seem rather simple at first telling; some are riddled with twists and turns. Regardless, I think the best stories are not the ones with reported happy endings that are neat and are easy to follow. The best ones are the cliffhangers that leave us on the edge of our seats, straining to understand them, that require us to ask questions and think hard to get it. They are the ones that aren’t easy to tell or easy to hear. They aren’t comfortable by definition. They are the ones that we know aren’t actually finished yet when the storyteller takes a deep breath and is done with words for now. They are the ones without necessarily the promise of happy endings on this side of eternity and yet have glimpses of hope even if it’s the listener who has to point them out.

Stories are how we make sense of things, aren’t they? We understand the world and literally all of history through stories self-articulated and told to us. I find myself sitting here quietly longing for more stories like a child does before bed, asking God to supply more people around me who can muster the courage to unwrap their hearts and tell their stories and who are willing to sit beside me to actively listen to my overthinking of my own.

That happened right here, and surely will happen again come April at Together Called 2016. And, it will happen before then with the girls who sit over cups of coffee with me at 6:30am on Wednesday mornings. And, it will happen in the counseling sessions as I sit on a coach and seek to encourage parents and children to walk through those places in their stories where they feel stuck. It will happen around our dinner table when we train our children to become good storytellers themselves. It will happen late at night when our sheer exhaustion brings down barriers and the hearts of a husband and wife are compelled to burst with stories and allow them to unify us.

It’s definitely not exclusive to this place or that Together Called weekend with kindred spirits. But, for now, I’ll stay right here and relish in the memories of storytelling that happened here and dream of the stories yet to be written and told, knowing there are some good ones coming.