Hard Stories: Writing for Yourself

As ministry practitioners and nonprofit communicators, we are often called to sit with difficult stories of human suffering and injustice. Even though we are storytellers, not every story is for sharing. Our words are also meant for remembering, exploring, questioning, and hoping.

Resources
Mark Vroegop, Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy: Discovering the Grace of Lament
Michael Card, A Sacred Sorrow: Reaching Out to God in the Lost Language of Lament (Quiet Times for the Heart)


Links may be affiliate links. This means I receive a portion of your purchase price (at no extra cost to you).

If you struggle to tell stories, you’ll struggle to raise funds. 
In the Mission Writers course:

• Learn the exact stories that every ministry, missionary, and nonprofit needs to tell.
• Master the fundraising story calendar.
• Develop and practice essential storytelling skills to increase funding for your mission.
• Build your story library and your confidence.

Details at MissionWriters.org
Support the show

Mission Writers is an online course and group coaching experience where you’ll develop and practice essential storytelling skills to help increase funding for your mission. Get started now, for a year of coaching at over 60% off the regular price.

Transcript

Kay: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Life and Mission Podcast. I am Kay Helm and today's episode is a little shorter than the regular episodes. I want to talk about. lament. Don't change. Don't skip out on me now. It's not going to be too sad. I just wanted to share something that helped me recently, and I hope it will help you. 

You are a nonprofit leader, a ministry leader. You are around and in, and part of stories that are hard stories. And I talk a lot about fundraising writing and some about copywriting. And marketing and things like that, and using our words to communicate messages so that we can call people to action and get them involved, move them to change ways of thinking–all of those types of things. Persuasive writing, right. And fundraising writing. But. 

I want to talk about a different type of writing today. 

Last week, I received an email from a longtime friend, and she was asking for help with a medical issue for someone halfway around the world. And a small group of us banded together to, to pay for travel to another country where this person could get treatment. And, um, he, he didn't survive the journey. 

And the intensity of my own reaction to the death of this young man surprised me. This was not someone I knew. It was someone I had never met. But his situation, I think just triggered a lot of other stories. I've been, I'm not, not so faithful to journaling lately. And I just–I could not leave this story alone. 

I sat down and I just began to write, and I kept coming back to it all morning. I kept grieving. I kept writing and revising, and trying to find just the right word, just the right phrasing to, to tell a story that no one would read, but I had to write it. And I don't know if you've ever been in that situation where you're like, I don't know why I'm like honing this and, and really working on it as though it were going to be published, knowing that I can't share this story. 

Somehow I just couldn't not leave this story alone. And even though I have three big projects going on right now, I have deadlines. And I was just–I was struggling to get on with my day. And so I know, okay, I need to deal with this for, for myself. And, you know, when, when it's like that, I don't know about you, but I felt guilty for not being productive. And then I felt guilty for feeling guilty about not being productive when I, when it's perfectly normal and right to grieve the death of a person. 

[00:03:00] As a ministry leader. You know, work has to go on and things have to keep moving. And yet we're still called to sit with people in their grief. We're still called to, to not be detached and removed from the emotional side of, of all the things that are going on. And a lot of times though leaders end up crying in silence. 

Because you're the leader and you have to be strong or whatever we think you know about how leaders should be and as ministry practitioner. And as nonprofit communicators, we are often called to sit with these really difficult stories of human suffering and injustice. And even though we are storytellers, not every story is for sharing. Our words are also meant for remembering, for exploring, for questioning, and for hoping. 

There's a book called Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy: Discovering the Grace of Lament. And at the author says, “Prayerful lament is better than silence. However, I've found that many people are afraid of lament. They find it too honest, too open, or too risky. But there's something far worse: silent despair.” 

[00:04:16] So I want to encourage you to use your writing and your storytelling skills for your own wellbeing. Allow yourself to make incomplete sentences and drip tears onto a perfectly good notebook. Journal, scribble, type, doodle. Do whatever you need to do to get the story out. No one's going to grade it. No one has to see it, unless you need somebody to bear witness with you, which is also quite a release. 

There's an old philosophical question. "If a tree falls in the forest and no one's around to hear it, does it make a sound?" And that's actually how I felt a little bit last Friday when I was spending time on this article that nobody's going to see. I felt like I just needed one person to see it, one person really, to bear witness to it. 

And it needed–you know­–it needed to land somewhere. Someone needed to hear the proverbial tree fall. So I finally called a fellow communicator. And, I just told him, "This is not for sharing, but I need somebody to read this. It's not long." And sometime later I got a really simple, compassionate text that just basically said, "I'm in tears." 

Boom. That was it. The tree fell. Somebody heard it. And at that point, I could go on with my day. 

[00:05:47] We all need people with whom we can share our laments, not as a writing exercise for critique but just someone who can bear witness with us for those stories that we can't share publicly. Do you have somebody like that? Do you have somebody you can share  those moments with, and you know, they're safe. They're not going to blab it all around. 

I hope you have somebody like that. And I hope you'll take the time to use your writing skills to help yourself heal, to help yourself go through the things that we all go through, the things that, are big in your life, and the–those moments. And I know journaling is a big thing for a lot of writers; it's been an off and on kind of thing for myself. 

But I just want to encourage you, and remind you, because we all need reminding from time to time that writing doesn't have to be work all the time. And writing doesn't have to have some outside focus or outside purpose all the time. And it doesn't have to be something you're doing to get better at your craft. 

Okay. Just get better. Just do it for yourself. Put another tool in your self-care toolbox. And anyway, I just wish you well, and I pray that you do have people in your corner that you can share your deep hurts with, and that you can share your cries with, and they can walk with you in tough seasons. 

All right. God bless you. This is the Life and Mission Podcast. I’m Kay Helm. Find your voice. Tell your story. And change the world.