Our names Identify us; our stories define us

​I am often caught off guard by the profound things people say when they aren't for a second trying to be profound.

Yesterday, Amy, my friend and training partner for the next few days, told the group, I'm not always great at remembering people's names, but I always remember their stories.

What a gift, I thought.

In a world where we often memorize names, are often enamored with someone's house or car or title, in a world where we so often identify people by the things we can see on the outside, how beautiful that there are people who just can't forget the parts of us that often live on the inside.

This didn't surprise me about Amy. She's a counselor by profession; she's naturally curious about people as a person.

It got me to wondering, though, would I rather be remembered by my name or by my story?

For the longest time, I'm sure my answer to that would have been my name. Probably because for much of my life I used my name and the surface level parts of me to hide my story. To protect me from anyone ever discovering the story beneath the name.

Over the last several years, though, I've come to own my story. I've begun to break free from the judgment of good story or bad story, good guy or bad guy, and just embrace - this is my story.

I have a name attached to my existence, but my story defines it.

Owning my story has largely come to be because I've discovered over time that I can live with people never knowing my name, but the pressure of living with the belief that no one will ever know who I am, that the world will never know my story, well that has become too suffocating to live with.

It's a prison to live in relationships all your life with people who know your name but have no idea who you are. It's a hell of sorts to have your name serving as a prison guard against the world and not a door to it.

Our stories are our ultimate escape. Claiming our stories as simply that, our stories. No need to assign shame or guilt or defense or explanation. No explanation other than, this is who I am.

You have forever known my name, now meet me.

I love these trainings like we're leading this week. I love hearing people's stories. Often stories that sound tattered and broken and damaged. But they are not.

They are simply who the participants are beneath their names.

Stories that feel broken to the story teller that eventually feel like healing don't often shift because someone fixes the story, they often shift because someone hears it.

Someone hears it and then remembers it.

Maybe even more than they remember that person's name.