Curiosity is the doorway to beautiful stories

​On my drive home from Christiansburg yesterday I spent some time thinking about heaven. And one main thought I had, a wish of sorts, was that heaven would have a lot of story telling time.

Stories that go on forever. No end.

During a break in my training yesterday, I struck up a conversation with the school librarian. The break was only eight minutes so it wasn't a lengthy conversation. But when you're curious, you can get a lot out of eight minutes.

I found out this wonderful lady had been this school's librarian for 22 years. Same school, same library, 22 years. She told me about her love for reading, and the joy she gets watching her student's find that same love. She also told me she'd likely be retiring in two years.

Then in what felt like an instant, I was back to the training.

So much there left to be curious about. I found myself wondering, how hard will life be NOT being a school librarian two years from now after so much of her life was indeed that library. Are there fears? Are there adventurous plans that were born in that library? What exactly made her want to become a librarian in the first place?

That is often the nature of my life these days. Desperately curious about people's stories only to be left feeling like l somehow only got the once upon a time.

Heaven, I wondered, is heaven where we will spend eternity hearing the rest of the stories that got cut off way too soon?

Oh how I hope so.

It's a beautiful thing - people's stories. I've spent most of my life missing out on that truth, and I suppose in many ways I'm trying to make up for lost time. Or maybe I've just been set on fire by the discovery of that truth. Because I've spent most of my adult life hiding from my own story, which has landed me in relationships where comfort was found being afraid of exploring one another's stories.

When you don't spend time exploring one another's stories, one another's fears and struggles and hopes and dreams, when time isn't spent exploring those stories, the default setting is to simply respond to the stories life creates for you. The stories life throws at you to fill the gaps of the stories you aren't writing from the mutual curiosity that can be found in togetherness.

Even if it's only eight minutes of togetherness.

Because I walked into a library I'd never been in yesterday. In a school Siri had to help me find. Then I stood at a counter dividing me and a librarian I'd never met. And curiosity broke the divide.

Yes, I walked away with an incomplete story that I hope one day heaven will complete.

Yet, I also walked away with a story that helped shape the way I see and do life. A story well worth writing about.

There are so many beautiful stories in this world. We miss many of them. We miss them because we are waiting for the stories to come to us when quite often, the stories are found standing at a counter.

They are found in curiosity not information.

Curiosity, even if for only eight minutes.