tell a better story

The thing about people is we are all defending something.  Family and future and finance. Checkbook, child, country. Time, value, resource. Body. Home. Good cause.  Medicine and education. Peace. War. Global warming. Oil spill clean-up. Santa, BMW and soup kitchen.

These things that we defend sometimes make up our selves, which can be a good or a bad thing, and our self is what we defend with the greatest of fierceness. Sometimes we use guns, and sometimes we use cuss words, and sometimes we become reclusive.

But I know a story about a man who, amidst a world of BMW and Santa and big-dollar corporation defenders, was threatened and did not defend his self, his finances, or his home. Last January, Paul Gibson lost his job of 35 years. Too passionate about a certain network of AIDS orphanages in Uganda to continue a life of slavish defense of a suburban California lifestyle, he took the director's position with Children of Grace, requiring him to move his family to Jinja, Uganda. Instead of defending, he rejoiced.

That story inspired us. Not because Paul Gibson moved to Africa, but because God told Paul Gibson to give up everything to defend something bigger than himself--and he actually did it, similar to another Paul you may have heard of.

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Let us explain who we are. We're Holly and Meagan, and we share this blog. We also shared a room for four years in college, countless jars of peanut butter and bottles of cheap wine, but mostly we shared a spirit of fervency. Sifting through passions like laundry, we fought to find what made our hearts ache and what made us feel alive. We wanted the kind of story where God told us to give up everything we had to defend something bigger than ourselves---the kind where we would actually do it.

Holly now lives in Greenville, South Carolina and Meagan's in Atlanta. After a season of post-grad life, we are learning, solo jar of peanut butter by solo jar of peanut butter, that God wants us to live the kind of story where we defend something bigger than ourselves all the time--in Africa, Atlanta or Greenville--no matter how mundane or unsexy our jobs are. And they can be really unsexy, even when you are wearing a pencil skirt.

We are also learning that sometimes God wants us to go to Far Corners of the earth to defend something bigger than ourselves--and sometimes he blesses us and lets us go in pairs, like on the Ark except with your best friend so that when it's scary and you freak out (because you've never been to Far Corners before) you have each other. And maybe a jar of peanut butter to share. And hopefully a bottle of cheap wine.

You see, Holly's a writer and Meagan's a graphic designer and photographer. Collectively, we're a brainstorming, story-telling machine. Creative minds, dreamers, big-picture thinkers. If that sounds ambitious, it probably is. But we have more enthusiasm than we know what to do with. And like we said, we're dreamers. It's just what we do. So when presented with the opportunity to join Paul Gibson (who also happens to be Meagan's dad) and the Children of Grace team in Uganda to do some promotional media for them, our wheels started spinning on how we could tell the story.

700+ HIV/AIDS orphans cared for and educated. These are the kind of words that you hear often if you run in non-profit circles (700 orphans blah blah blah), but think about that. Seven hundred kids with AIDS are given a home, medicine and schooling that would otherwise die alone, because that's what orphans with AIDS do unless someone extends a hand to them. The story of Children of Grace is hope in the dark. It's a stream in the dessert. It's a good story, in the truest sense of good.

Children of Grace needs media material to tell these stories--video, photographs, written stories, brochures, booklets. That's how they grow, and growing means more orphans cared for. Orphans cared for means God's story moving forward, a parade: triumphant and gentle. That's what we care about. Like I said--big picture thinkers here. But we are training our eyes to see the big picture in the ordinary. The magic in the mundane. The poetry in the prose. The Truth in the facts.  One orphan cared for, Jesus coming to earth. This is story.

So between Holly's writing skills, Meagan's photography and design skills, our pooled videography skills (still working on learning those…), we think we can help Children of Grace with what they need. We can join them in telling their story--and we want tell it well.

We believe God gives us specific gifts and talents, and he also makes our hearts ache & makes us feel alive in specific ways. Maybe he would like for us to apply our specific gifts and talents to our specific heart-aches and joys. That, specifically, is what we want our story to be about. And this is just the beginning.

In January we will board a plane, fly across the ocean into another hemisphere where we will stay for half of 2011. Until then, we will be working our jobs, raising money to buy that plane ticket & equipment and praising the Lord for our bosses', friends' and families' unceasing support, vision and defense of our stories.

So, why not just keep working our "normal" jobs, making sufficient money, fueling our cars, moderate shopping and thai food habits? After all, then we would get to stand next to one of our dearest friends when she marries a boy she loves in Tennessee.

We're going because we think that maybe when Jesus told his followers to care for orphans, he meant for us to really care for orphans, and sometimes that means we have to go to Far Corners. So we are going to help Children of Grace do just that--and not because it's sexier than our jobs in Greenville and Atlanta.

Because God told us to give up everything to defend something bigger than ourselves--and we want to live the kind of story where we actually do it. Like the Pauls.

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We want to be a part of the Living a Better Story Seminar to figure out more distinctly what makes story important and good and what makes an important and good story. We're dying to wrestle with this because we know it won't be the things we expect; moving to Africa, saving lives, creating the most awesome non-profit media material ever. We think that maybe the things that will make our stories important and good will be smaller than we thought and, at the same, much grander.

Story-telling will be crucial when it comes to communicating the stories of a Ugandan orphanage, in photo and video and word (such layman's tools). The things we think are important probably won't be. And the things that are important, we will probably miss. It takes the careful spirit of an intuitive story-teller to dig through the muck to find the gem.

We know we love story. We know we love the First Storyteller. But we need help finding the gems.


Living a Better Story Seminar from All Things Converge Podcast on Vimeo.