Stories that Live

We are a storytelling species. It’s how we make sense of the world around us and communicate what matters most. Storytellers hold great power to stretch dreams,  invite belonging, and frame our collective purpose. 

I have been shaping stories since I was a little girl, aware of this power as far back as my memory takes me. I kept dozens of journals, confident my perspective would be worth re-reading. I wove tall tales that confused and delighted my little brothers. On Sunday mornings, my mind would wander away from the pastor’s sermon and into my own fan fiction about the feminine characters who remained underdeveloped in the story. Their mystery had a power that pulled me away from the preacher’s historical commentaries and background. It was always the same: she was unworthy, but God was merciful. 

My studies in college helped me identify the deep dissatisfaction I felt for these tellings of women in scripture. The storyteller was giving valuable airtime to her identity through the lens of patriarchal systems, trying to make her oppression reasonable and feigning surprise that God in Jesus would challenge the social norms.

But here’s the thing: explaining the context of patriarchy is only one way to engage these characters. And it’s tired. It limits our imagination for her whole personhood and reinforces the same boundaries that Jesus shows up to break. 

This awareness is tangled up with my writing and preaching, but also with the way I tell stories to my children. They are learning to read between the lines: to listen for what is unsaid, to wonder about supporting characters, to challenge the assumptions we make about who matters and what’s worth seeing.

I share my body like a map to tell my twin daughters about Jacob and Esau. I use my voice to recount the bold declarations of Queens, like Vashti and Esther. I embody a sneaky and subversive power while drawing them into a fuller story about Tamar and Jael.

My son can tell you it’s more complicated than Good Guys and Bad Guys thanks to the spectrum of David’s behavior and Peter’s belief. He wonders about the women at the tomb, how much more they knew and would have written down in an account all their own. He sees the way Jesus used his body to help other bodies matter. 

It’s true they often groan once they realize I’m telling a Bible story. “Mom! I thought this was fiction, but this is Bible! Ugh.” I smile because, by the time they catch on, it’s too late. They are invested. Their imaginations are stretching beyond the patriarchy’s thin version. The story is filling their bodies with something real and holy - more alive than any fiction I could conjure.

So many of my cultural identities ask me and my kids to engage stories as information - to stay in our heads sifting through facts in pursuit of knowing what is certainly true. But the time and energy we use resisting this heady destination is well spent. I want them to experience faith in their bodies, too - listening with breath, wondering with guts, and daring to believe the Word is actually alive in their flesh.

Birthing, loving, and mothering them is one way I practice incarnation - love up close, power made vulnerable, promises reshaped by a brave proximity to the suffering and joy of others. Somehow, the incarnation makes these stories simultaneously less and more my own. The sharing is intimate and the telling keeps expanding to include more of the world God loves. Because there are always more characters worthy of names and wonder in this body we all share thanks to Christ. 

This post is part of the book launch blog tour for Embodied: Clergy Women and the Solidarity of a Mothering God. Embodied includes reflection questions at the end of each chapter, to instigate conversations that lead to support and new perspectives. The book is available this September from Bookshop.org, Amazon, or Cokesbury.