I was raised on stories. I don’t remember a time when stories were not present in my world. Stories were a foundation for my heart long before I knew what that meant and that has followed me all my life.
The stories began with me because of my mother. She read me stories from as far back as I can remember. It always was three books a night. Never two and never four, always three and I never found out why, but I always wanted her to read me one more.
Tom Cantwell
Most of these stories inspired me and ushered me into a world of what might be. They included stories of an undersized train engine hopefully chanting, “I think I can! I think I can!” or of Max who sailed “in and out of weeks, and almost over a year” to a place where the Wild Things lived and then realized he most wanted to be “where someone loved him best of all” or of the Grinch who almost stole Christmas and then thought, “Maybe Christmas doesn’t come from a store. Maybe Christmas perhaps means a little bit more.”
The stories continued with the help of the dedicated men and women Sunday school teachers at Beverly Hills Baptist Church in Independence, Mo., who told me stories every Sunday morning about a man who built a boat to save his family from a giant flood or of a woman who was not well respected who told the Hebrew spies where they could be safe or, of course, the teenager who only needed one smooth stone to defeat a giant, and Jesus feeding a group whose stomachs and hearts were hungry for what he served. These stories and so many more opened my heart to what God was like and what I could be and become.
“These stories and so many more opened my heart to what God was like and what I could be and become.”
On the campus of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Mo., people like Larry Baker, Hulitt Gloer, Vernon Davis, Ken Wolfe and Sam Balentine took those seemingly basic biblical stories, stories I first learned at Beverly Hills Baptist Church, and brought them to life in ways I could not have imagined. They showed me how and where God’s story intersected with my story and because of that how I was a part of a much greater story.
The intersection of God’s stories with our stories is one of the main reasons I became a chaplain. Over the decades, I have had the honor and privilege of hearing and holding thousands of people’s stories. God’s stories and our stories need to be told and heard. I see it and hear it every day with our hospital staff and patients.
Three days a week, I have the opportunity to facilitate groups on spirituality on the Behavior Health Unit at the hospital where I serve. One of the common denominators with our BHU patients and like most of us, is that most of them have never been given the opportunity or they have been unable to tell their stories in a space where their stories are heard and respected and they are seen.
We talk about power on Wednesdays in these groups and ask and answer questions such as, “Are you powerful?” or “Who or what has power over you?” One of the stories I tell on Wednesdays is the story of Samson and Delilah as found in Judges — not so much the way they told it in the Sunday school classes I grew up in. The ultimate question of our group is, “Who do you allow to cut your hair and take away your power?”
This Wednesday, Ashley was here because over the past weekend, her boyfriend raped her and beat her until she was unconscious and then shaved her head.
This was not the first time. It probably won’t be the last time, either.
“Ashley said nothing, but much deeper emotions were being communicated.”
The events of her weekend, although familiar, were just more stories added to her trauma foundation.
Ashley’s trauma began long before this weekend, with her routinely being sexually assaulted by her father and other family members beginning at the age of 7. And then at 11, her father yelled at her to come to his bedroom, but this time it was for a different reason. This time, as she walked in, this time, her father blew his face off with a shotgun.
These were some of the origin stories that became the theme music for her ongoing 10-year dance with meth.
This day, Ashley had been quiet, which was unlike her, while we were all sharing about who, and sometimes ourselves, we have allowed to “cut our hair.” Ashley, during the discussion, suddenly jumped up and ran out of our group room.
I was concerned she had been triggered.
I was wrong.
A couple of minutes later, she ran again, back into the room wearing a wig that one of the BHU nurse practitioners had given her and she sat down in her chair. Everyone was staring at her as she began stroking the hair on her wig. She was smiling but she said nothing.
Ashley said nothing, but much deeper emotions were being communicated and, more importantly, felt.
Tears were forming in everyone’s eyes, especially mine.
Ashley, while stroking the hair on her wig, while the room was still silent, and looking straight ahead and to no one in particular, but for all of us to hear, validating the power of a story, her story, with these words that brought all of us to our emotional knees, “I’m never gonna let another bastard cut my hair!”
She wasn’t triggered. She connected her pain to the power of a 3,500-year-old story.
With a nod to and a remembrance of the late John Claypool, one of our generation’s greatest story tellers, the question I ask for all of us is, “I wonder what story is saving your life right now?”
Tom Cantwell is a chaplain in Paducah, Ky., and serves on the board of director of the ABP Foundation, which supports Baptist News Global.