Can you remember what you got in trouble for the most as a child? In other words, what did your parents emphasize as the worst possible thing you could do? With me, it was lying. Telling the truth was expected and punishment came easier if I confessed and repented first.
I was digging in my garden as usual one morning, when my tomcat brought me a present, a young cardinal clenched firmly in his mouth. He dropped it at my feet and to my astonishment, it hopped up with an unearthly ear splitting screech! I quickly yet gently scooped the bird up and placed it high up in a tree where I watched it stutter and start, stutter again, and fly away.
I’m working on absorbing a powerful testimony I heard given by a friend of mine with whom I’ve traveled through life for the past twenty years. As we sat in our pews listening, she volleyed one family trial after another onto our side of the congregational court:
According to my young idealistic twenty-something-year-old self-assessment, I was positive that the most challenging aspect of raising my two, twelve-months apart boys was getting them through the first years of their lives, protectively shielding their little eggshell heads, driven by the anguished sense that death could swoop them away at any moment.
Twenty years ago, I wrote this story for me, for my healing. But I also had others in mind who I knew were out there, who might have walked in my shoes and needed validation, to be seen and feel safe in their vulnerability, to know that their feelings and experiences were authentic and not something to hide.
Witnessing is telling the truth about your first-hand experience. It’s sharing intertwined small vignettes of authenticity, like a pearl necklace. Each bead of truth on its own might not be of great import but laced together, becomes a credible story to tell. Usually, the storytelling starts with a question asked, then the one who has witnessed the answers is inspired to share his/her experience. The pearls of answered questions ping one right after the other in the strength of their veritable purity.