Story: Any account that presents connected events, an account or recital of an event or a series of events, either true or fictitious. A beginning, a middle, and an end.

Ever since I was little I’ve loved stories. I love getting lost in a good book, seeing how the characters develop, and waiting with bated breath to turn the last page. For me, this always meant getting lost in something fictional, so I could turn down the noise of the real world around me. Life seemed simpler when I was faced with Harry Potter’s attempts to face his enemy or Aslan’s triumphs over his foe. It’s easy enough to check out when the plot is good enough.

Yesterday I got to listen to whole different type of story. They were told out loud by eighteen to twenty somethings. The stories they told had similar components to my books: failure and glory, vulnerability and victory, brokenness, devastation, redemption. There was one difference. These stories were all true.

I spent about three hours yesterday outside in the chilly Radford weather with my tripod and my camera on video mode. Focusing in and out on twelve of the students that make up our ministry. I recorded as they shared their heart and shared their story with my lens, envisioning a room full of college students on the other side of it. They recited their greatest losses and grandest failures, all of their sin, knowing that one day soon their peers would listen. They shared their stories because they needed other people to know what had happened to them. How the Lord of the Universe had invaded their life and saved them from the pit. That they had been restored and redeemed. They put their hearts on the line for the sake of the Gospel.

I recorded story after story, reset over and over again around campus. I held back tears listening to students’ scars and heartbreak, cheered internally as God saved them from the wreckage, rejoiced in the beauty of our shared Savior and how He actively worked in all of our lives. I listened as they explained how they were still in the middle of their stories, waiting to see where God would take them next, admitting they didn’t have it all figured out.

Three hours and twelve stories…twelve lives later. I was exhausted. Emotionally, spiritually, physically. But I could not check out like I do when I open a book. This was real, it was raw and beautiful. There’s something so surreal when someone bares their soul to you. I could not be more thankful to have been the one listening.