Stories.

It was Friday night, and just as I was entering the highway on-ramp, I felt myself become overcome with a sense of 'Awe'.

Awe: an emotion variously combining dread, veneration, and wonder that is inspired by authority or by the sacred or sublime (via Merriam-Webster)

A heightened awareness of being human, fragility and the power of our stories.

I've always liked stories. I think everyone does. We can't get away from them.

As I drove through the blowing snow in my little black Kia, I reflected on the fact that I get to listen to the stories of about 20+ different people per week through assessment appointments.

a gift.

Yes, people get to choose what they wish to disclose to me (sometimes its the basic stuff other times its sprinkled with traumas, triumphs and experiences that even Hollywood couldn't make-up).

I feel overwhelmingly humbled- I get to hear abbreviated tellings of so many different lives.
I mean living, breathing, imago dei people.

I think that I am just beginning to understand the power of sharing one's stories.
I think that I am just waking up to the profound allowance it is for me to hear so many of them.

This seems to be some sort of spiritual work.
In unexpected (at least for me) ways, my job is moving my beliefs into solidified knowledge.

I know that there is something more, something greater.
There just has to be.

The people that share bits of their lives with me probably don't all share the same faith that I do, and that is okay.

All these stories are greater testimonies to me that:
this God that I am choosing to be more intertwined with
has greater stretching love and mysteriousness than I will ever comprehend.