The original version of this essay first appeared on my other blog, roadstainedfeet.wordpress.com.
If you're a Christian, at some point you might be asked to share your testimony: the story of how you have seen God at work in your life. Some denominations and cultures like to share testimonies more than others, and there are blessings and pitfalls to telling others what can be a very vulnerable story about yourself.
One of the biggest pitfalls comes when your story is interwoven closely with someone else's and you realize that, somewhere, you stopped telling your story and started to tell theirs. Even if you're sharing from the best of intentions, it's good to be very careful about telling someone else's story without their permission. The flip side of this is hearing a vague prayer request and wanting to get all of the details: okay, but why should we pray for your sister and her husband? What's going on?
Again, the intentions might be good, but personal information is precious. Human curiosity is not a good enough reason to divulge it.
C.S. Lewis understood this.
In The Horse and His Boy, Aravis, Hwin, Bree, and Shasta are fleeing Calormen for Archenland when, to add to their troubles, a lion begins chasing them. The lion overtakes Aravis and Hwin the horse. Shasta bravely turns back to help, only to see the lion scratch Aravis’s back and then let her go.
The lion, of course, is Aslan, though they did not know it at the time. Shasta then asks Aslan why the good, lordly king would harm Aravis.
Aslan replies, “Child, I am telling you your story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own.”
Aslan is a loving father. He will not discuss Aravis’s sin, punishment, and repentance with someone else. Should she wish to share the details with Shasta later on, it will be her privilege. Aslan does not gossip about his children, and it’s a good example for parents, bosses, teachers, and anyone else in authority.
Fortunately for us curious readers, we get to listen in on Aslan’s explanation to Aravis. He is a loving father here, too. He does not let his daughter wonder why she suffered.
When Aravis ran away from home, she drugged her maid so she could escape, and the maid was beaten. Aslan tells Aravis now, “The scratches on your back, tear for tear, throb for throb, blood for blood, were equal to the stripes laid on the back of your stepmother’s slave because of the drugged sleep you cast upon her. You needed to know what it felt like.”
The brave but pampered Aravis had never been beaten in her life, and earlier in the story, she was too proud to care about what happened to the girl. After all, the girl was “a tool and a spy of my stepmother’s” who deserved to be punished. Aravis never even bothers to give the girl’s name.
Now her heart has softened. She has known pain and humiliation on her journey. She had looked with contempt on the low-born, uncouth Shasta, but then he proved himself braver and nobler than anyone in their party. Bree the Warhorse did not turn back to save her from the lion, but Shasta did.
Because of Shasta, now she sees the slave girl as a person. The distinctions between them that had mattered so much in Calormen matter less in Archenland and not at all to Aslan.
Sadly, she can't really make it up to that girl, even after suffering the same punishment. She can’t even know what happens to the slave.
When she asks with her newfound compassion what will become of the slave girl, Aslan repeats, “Child, I am telling you your story, not hers. No one is told any story but their own.”
In the past, I would glance over that moment and reassure myself that the girl was fine, but I don’t really know that. The opposite is probably true. The cruel indifference Aravis initially shows to the girl is typical of Calormene society, where there is no room for error. And whatever the slave girl’s testimony, we know that Aravis will not feature well in it.
What a painful lesson for a child: when we would most like to help another person, make amends, ask forgiveness…it may be too late. As long as someone is in our lives regularly, we can be indifferent, assume that his or her story doesn’t matter as much as ours. When our stories separate finally, we realize our lost opportunities.
I grew up in a small town. I was with the same thirty-five kids, give or take a couple, from kindergarten to twelfth grade - and that was a public school; our town was that small. People didn’t flit in and out of my life. They were just there. I liked my friends and was fine with the rest, and I assumed complacently that I’d always know how they were doing.
I’ve only see twelve of those classmates in twelve years, and only four of them more than once.
I can’t be the only one who worries, quite suddenly, about people I haven’t thought about in months. It’s probably worse for people who have seen more and done more than I have. Whether I like it or not, I have neither the privilege nor the burden of knowing all of other people’s stories. Even the friends I see most often – even the husband and children I share a life with – have parts of their stories that I can’t see.
Our realization that we are being told our story, first and foremost, shakes our complacency.
Don’t assume that people are okay. Don’t assume that they do not need your help. Share encouragement and show interest in their lives, but do this without prying into the most intimate parts of their stories without being invited. Trust that the One who actually knows their story is taking far better care of them than you could.
He has given a way to still be near them, though the bonds that join us are invisible. When I pray for them, turning my curiosity into compassion, our stories stay connected. In the end, the very end, they’re not going to be “my story” and “their stories,” but “His Story.”