The Gift of Telling Your Story
“We have the sacred privilege of closing the gap in culture and location by telling stories from our lives abroad and deepening people’s understanding of this beautifully diverse world we live in. They want to know they can relate to you, even though you live in a distant land — but they need your stories to do that.”
My mother’s family spent several years in the early 70’s living in Seoul, South Korea, when she was a teenager. Because of her vivid memories and my relationship with my grandparents, the influence of Korea on my family was marked. My grandparents’ home in the States was filled with beautiful artwork and furniture from Asia. My grandfather often answered the phone with the Korean greeting, yobaseo, rather than the typical hello. I always chose Korea for class presentations because I could wear my mother’s traditional Korean hanbok dress. Even as a child, I loved that a culture other than my own was woven into our family heritage.
Both of my grandparents have passed away now, but I still recall some of the stories that they shared about life in Korea. My favorite was when my grandmother recalled how most homes did not have indoor plumbing, so men would come with buckets strapped to a pole they carried on their shoulders to empty out outhouses and sewers. They called them “honey buckets” and my grandmother had a rather indiscreet reaction anytime she encountered them while she was out. One day she was walking down the street and came across a man carrying honey buckets full of human waste. She covered her nose and mouth, gagging, and tried to walk away quickly. The man was so humored by her response that he started chasing her down the street with the buckets, laughing the whole way. I laughed, too, as I pictured my always-proper grandmother running down the street gagging, the honey-bucket man chasing after her.
I was captivated by the stories of their cultural experiences—how men walked down the street, hand in hand, because that’s just what friends did; how they touched my aunt and uncle’s blonde hair; how people always wanted to have conversations in English with them; how my mom and her older sister would ride the bus around Seoul exploring on their own. To me it was a strange and fascinating world that I got brief glimpses of through the telling of these stories.
Although I knew my grandparents did challenging and important work helping train Korean pastors, I didn’t need to hear those stories to admire them. They were already heroes in my eyes. It was the stories of their everyday life — the honey buckets and bus rides and funny conversations—that truly connected me to their experience. I wanted them to recount the memories that helped me see them as real people navigating real-life challenges. I didn’t care about how much they accomplished, I just cared about knowing them and that part of their life better.
We often feel pressure to impress people with stories of what we’ve accomplished. We think people are most interested in achievements and strategies and things we can check off as “been there, done that.” But, perhaps they really just want to know we are real people living real lives with real struggles. It’s hard to feel connected to a project, event, or set of numbers. But a story? Well-crafted stories burrow into our hearts and take us to people and places we’ve never encountered firsthand.
I struggled deeply leading up to our first trip back to the States. Our initial two years abroad had primarily been spent learning how to buy food and cook in another country, speak the language, and keep our kids alive. My list of “Great Things I’ve Done That You Should Know About” was virtually non-existent, but that’s what I thought people would expect to hear. I wrestled with this feeling of failure and inadequacy for some time. Then, one day, when I had been back in the States for a week and a half, I found myself sitting among a group of women at a friend’s house. She had asked me to come and share about our time in Asia. In my jet-lagged fog, I made a few fuzzy mental notes of what I felt like they’d want to hear. Shortly after I started speaking about the work we do, one of the ladies interjected and asked, “so do you have a refrigerator?” Then someone else asked, “what about groceries? What food do you eat?” I quickly realized (to my relief) they were not looking to be wowed by my great acts of service. They just wanted to have a framework for my life abroad to hang my words on. They wanted my stories.
Funny language blunders.
Tales from the open market.
Giant lizards and armies of ants.
Sun-tanned skin and emerald-green rice fields.
Stinky durian and sticky rice.
Failed cooking attempts.
My barefoot children in the rain.
Contagious joy and gut-wrenching heartache and humble gratitude.
Those are the stories that will draw a picture in people’s minds and create a space in their hearts for the place we call “home” and they call “foreign.” Those are the kind of stories I listened to as a child that tied my heart to Korea. We have the sacred privilege of closing the gap in culture and location by telling stories from our lives abroad and deepening people’s understanding of this beautifully diverse world we live in. They need to hear about you mopping up water in your house during rainy season, laughing over language mix-ups, and battling through times of grief and loss. They want to know they can relate to you, even though you live in a distant land — but they need your stories to do that.
The pictures I’ve sketched in my mind may not be an exact match to the stories of my family’s time in Korea, but I do know that I’m a better person and expat for hearing them. I have a greater understanding and a deeper love for Korea because they invited me into that part of their lives.
When I traveled to Korea myself for the first time and sat in a church and heard “How Great Thou Art” in a language I didn’t understand but had grown up hearing, I wept with gratitude because I knew I belonged in this land I learned of at my grandparent’s feet. The stories had become a part of me, and now I have my own to tell.
My stories are a gift I want to give to others. How are you telling your story in meaningful ways?
start sharing your story:
Sharing your story doesn’t have to be difficult. It can be done by writing one line a day.
If you feel like starting from the very beginning of your life, this book is full of great writing prompts to answer. Start filling out a book, and maybe gift it to other family members and ask them to do the same!
