The Stories We Tell Ourselves About Ourselves...
*We assume there is a period where really, quite often, there is actually a comma.
Inviting You Into The Confessional For A Little Taste Of Redemption….
(note to readers: I worked for 9 months on this project and believe so much in the power and beauty of these conversations…but also I know that endless self-promotion is nauseating for all of us…I’m not sure what the happy middle is between making sure folks know about the work I’m doing and being an evil PR machine that won’t shut up…)
But, Here’s my opening essay to this episode:
When I was 24 years old and my guitar player boyfriend, who I was irrationally in love with, came home from tour to inform me I had been replaced with a girl he met that weekend in Seattle, it was like someone had taken a meat tenderizer to me.
The story I had told myself is that if such a cool, handsome guy wanted to be with me, it must mean that I am lovable, it must mean that I have purpose and a future that I am desirable and worth something. These attributes were conferred to me through the relationship and so when I was replaced, it felt like they were transferred to someone else—or that’s what I told myself.
So, when I cried my 24 year old self to sleep, thinking my worth and lovability and purpose had left with the guitar player, I had no idea that the story was still being written.
I did not know that in the Fall of 2016, when I was 47 years old, that I would be on an airplane bound for Boston with a man I had been dating for 6 weeks, and that he would lean over kiss my cheek and softly ask “Nadia, when did you forgive me?”
And I would answer, “when I realized that so much of my suffering from our break up was a result, not of your actions, but of the story I was telling myself about your actions.”
The guitar player is still handsome but he doesn't play much anymore—he’s a single dad and a software engineer and a magnificent human. He is as much of a different person now as I am. And we are happily in love again. And even so—who knows how this chapter might end.
All of that is to say, we tell ourselves stories about who we are, and what we deserve, and what the events of our lives mean and then we commit this all to memory and repeat it to ourselves and to others over and over as if it’s fact. *We assume there is a period where really, quite often, there is actually a comma.
I’m Nadia Bolz-Weber and you’ve stepped into The Confessional. It’s like a car wash for our shame and secrets. Today, I talk to someone who ran away at 13, got arrested, hurt everyone they loved, and yet, whose story unfolded in beautiful and surprising ways.
Joining me in The Confessional today is Lenny Duncan. Lenny is the author of the amazing book, Dear Church: A Love Letter from a Black Preacher to the Whitest Denomination in America. And he talks about running away at 13, getting a girl pregnant when he was 19, and failing to be the father he wanted to be.
If You Want a Gritty Story of Grace and Redemption, You Can Listen Here (it’s free!):
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Tune In This Friday For A Live Chat and Q & A With Me And Lenny!
Friday May 1st, 5p PST/ 6p MST/ 7p CST/ 8p EST Lenny and I will have a chat live on my Instagram. Just click on the circle with my image on the upper left. Last week’s chat with Megan was a joy for me.
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post-script
This episode of the powerful Wrongful Conviction podcast was devastating. I commend it and all the previous episodes to you.
*This comes from a powerful line I’ve heard often from Black preachers, “Never put period where God has placed a comma” but I could not find the original attribution.
Gracie Allen is credited with this quote, and the UCC have used it for many years.
I stopped believing in forgiveness and redemption and quite possibly God after my marriage to my addict spouse fell apart and I had to literally glue my children and myself back together. It’s been 8 years. I stumbled across your podcast yesterday after trying to get my 21 year old to see her father for the first time In 4 years. I have seen him truly living in recovery for the first time in the last few months, doing hard work. She’s not buying it, and quite frankly, I can not blame her. She has been the child who screamed in his face and he left her over and over. Lenny’s story has touched a part of me that I thought was long dead and buried. There is no hope at returning everything back to shiny and new. But I can see maybe a glimmer at returning things to better? We can not give her back her childhood or her happy. I try for normalization at least. This story has helped. I sent it to her father, in hopes that it helps him understand a little better as well. Thank you.