Our daughter’s former cheer coach recently reconnected with her old team. She wanted to tell the girls what was going on in her life during those great days of fun and going to Nationals.
What was going on was not fun. It was a time of severe challenges in her marriage. She shared some details of those challenges. But, she said God used her time coaching to encourage her, and that the time with her girls was the highlight of her day. Of course, she couldn’t share that back then. But now, over fifteen years later, she wanted the girls to know.
Our daughter said, “We never suspected. She was a real person, not just a coach.” She paused, and added, “No matter who it is, everybody’s got a story.”
I met a gap-toothed truck driver at the WinterJam concert the other night. I knew a million like him in my blue-collar days. He laughed and talked joyfully about experiencing God’s grace while driving through a snowstorm. A friend told me, “That guy used to be bad on drugs. And he drove for Elvis. And, oh yeah, his mom wrote “Love Me Tender.” Everybody’s got a story.
I met another guy at the concert—tall and skinny. One of dozens of nameless non-star band members. But everybody’s got a story. He used to weigh over 300 pounds. Lost 150. But he refused to buy new clothes while he was losing weight. His waist had been 50 inches and as he lost pounds he continued to wear the same size pants, pinching them tighter and tighter, until he got down to the goal of his old high school weight. When he finally got there his waist size was 31 inches. Then he bought new clothes. Why’d he keep wearing the too-big pants? Motivation—it kept him going.
Multiply those stories times every person you see. And don’t see.
It’s easy see people as one-dimensional, almost unreal, and to forget that everybody’s got a story. Then you hear it and they instantly become as real as you.
There are two sure-fire ways to hear everybody’s story, and never miss one:
1) Listen. And if you listen, but don’t hear anything, then
2) Ask. And after you ask do 1) again.
There’s no such thing as a nobody or ‘just a person.’ There is no nameless, faceless crowd.
