Storykeeper

I have always loved a good story.
First, when I was young, it was all about a good book. I could get lost for hours in a good book, and was scolded often for bringing my book to the table during dinner, or staying up late to sneak read.

When I got older I realized that the best stories are the stories in each of us. The ones that are constantly unfolding right before our eyes, the chance encounters that have so much potential because your story can become apart of someone else's story and...possibilities are endless.

I'm not a great storyteller. I talk so fast and get overly excited. Volume control has been a persistent problem throughout my life (eh, Krista?) But I love to write. I have to write. I have to express, some way, externally, and so often it is in writing that I start to make sense of it all, to unpack it, to label and sort it and put it away.

In my work now I do some writing. Sometimes I sit on a story for a few days (or weeks, every so often, like this time around). And because these stories are sacred they aren't things I can talk about. Sometimes after a hard story I come home so sad, and I want to convey to Mark the story. But I really can't, not properly (or legally, actually) because it's so much more than words...it's tears and trembling and heavy silences. A word or two that are so ripe with meaning. I couldn't possibly do the story justice. So sometimes I sit on, sit with, a story for a while, until I've had time to write about it (either for work or in my own journal). Until I write it, until I've framed it exactly perfectly as I can, it will follow me, bounce around in my head, catch me off guard at funny times. I'ts a therapeutic thing for me to write these stories out of my head, to look the words straight on.  I'm thankful that it is a mandatory part of my current position, because I need to do it anyways. (But just so everyone knows...I write the real story-the story as it was told and how it felt to be the hearer, and then I take out about 90% of the emotion, and submit that. =)  )

Words are so powerful. I feel honored to be a story keeper.