Stories Save Lives

It had been a while since I had put words down on paper.

A long while since I believed in the power words had to offer.

The magic had been gone and I was uncertain I wanted to harness what little energy I had left to go out and see if it could be found again.

I was sitting in a High School auditorium, chaperoning my class to a required assembly.  I was disengaged-unable to focus.  In truth, I had much grading to do, schedules to maintain, phone calls to make and the last thing I wanted to be doing was sit in a sweaty room full of teenagers who could care less about the uninteresting story this man would surely tell.  I didn't even know what it was about.  Twenty minutes had already gone by and I hadn't paid attention to a single one.

Until I heard his voice get low and emotional, as one does when one is recalling something particularly painful and important.  He uttered one single sentence,

"But I chose to stay."

The force of power in those five words blew me back.  My eyes flicked back and forth putting the pieces of the photos displayed in the presentation together.

He was talking about the Rwandan genocide.  He was talking about living there during the crisis.  And those five words, "But I chose to stay," were more real to me than whatever I had waiting for me in my classroom.

He went on to tell story after story of people he defended- of people who defended him and his family.  With great emphasis and emotion, he recalled tale after tale of how hardened people's hearts were softened by words.  How whole, strategic rebel military plans were absolved by one, elderly woman's plight to speak aloud the name of each and every child who died in the village that week.   How they hung their heads in shame only when only moments before, his son was their next target.

"See?," he exclaimed, "See how powerful stories are? They save lives."

And the last two years came back in a flood- a replaying of everything I've lived through and experienced.  Of who I was and who I am now, and how that has come to be.  The holding on to all of the stories- a lot of them, yours, a lot of them, mine- the ones that saved me.

And I remembered what it was like to save and be saved with and by words.

And the idea of writing a new one- a new one to save me, or you- well, all of us-

It was too good to pass up.

It's good to be back.

I have so many stories to tell you.