A Different Script

After reading my post on Monday, a dear friend told me that it wasn’t that I hadn’t grown in the past ten years but that it was me listening to the script that I’ve been listening to since childhood. She’s right, you know—about that script—the one that tells me that I’m not good enough or smart enough or worthy to be loved. For whatever reason, that is the script—the voice—that starts screaming when I’m tired or feeling stressed. That is the only script that played in my head for so many years…until I did the hard work to write another script: a script of connection and grace and God’s unconditional love.

My counselor and I got into an argument once. [Well. Okay. It wasn’t really an argument because I was the only one taking offense :-).] She calmly stated that maybe we could go back and change the past. I adamantly said that we could NOT—that what had passed was past and that it could not be relived. While I stayed verbally fixated on my point, she simply turned her head to the side, shrugged, and smiled. In time, I realized that she, too, was right. While we can’t change the events of our past, we can learn to see them through different eyes and allow those eyes to help us write a different story—a different script…and sometimes that different script can change our worlds.

Maybe this happens with scripture, too. Maybe when we allow ourselves to approach scripture with eyes opened by God’s Spirit and Holy Imagination, then we allow ourselves to read a different script—a different script that can change our worlds.

Take, for example, the woman at the well. What if she wasn’t a horrible woman who just slept with any man who would have her? What if she were a barren woman who wanted nothing more than to have children yet never conceived? What if her husbands threw her out not because of her poor character but because she could not give them a son? How does that change your view of her? Can you imagine the depth of heartache and shame she might have carried?

Or think about Mary and Martha. What if Jesus looked at Martha with extreme compassion and invited her to sit down not because her work was bad and sitting was good but because he knew her tendency to push herself too hard—he knew that she always sacrificed herself and her well-being for the good of others and that because of this sacrifice she was being pulled too thin. What if he wanted her, for once, just to sit and to listen…and to be? Does that story ring true with any of you?

Or what about the man whom Jesus healed by spitting in the dirt? After he could see, the man told his story over and over again to people who didn’t believe a word he was saying. The authorities even called in his parents because they refused to trust his account! Yet, in the end, he was honored by Jesus for staying true to his word and telling the story of how he had been changed. What if this story speaks to how we should tell our stories? What if sharing our stories doesn’t change anyone’s mind? Should we stop sharing them? Or should we keep telling them, knowing that they might not be changing anyone but us…yet that by telling them, we are being true to Christ’s work in our lives?

I don’t know. I’m just thinking. And I’m rewriting some scripts. And I’m hoping that you aren’t being like me with my counselor and having a one-sided argument with someone who is just wondering…just sitting and being curious…and being changed.