“It’s been quite a journey,” she wrote, and I read short bits of her story and somehow became part of it. She had a hard story too, and for just a moment, I was tempted to compare, to feel smaller, to write off my own paltry suffering. But then I realized that her story is her story and my story is mine, and there really is no comparison, because hard is hard, and its definition varies by the individual.
I think there is something we who write ourselves out online know that real life people forget – everybody has a story. We write our stories here, our histories and our sillies – and we’re not trying to offend anyone with what we write. We’re just being who we are where we are.
Sometimes, online is the very best place to meet people, because we write things here that we feel we can’t say to our real life friends. It’s been a good place for me to learn how to be a person, outside of the approval of everyone around me. The best thing I’ve learned is that I have my life and others have theirs – and if I take them where they are and live where I am, there is ever so much to be gained.
The more I think about it, the simpler life seems, that each day does have its own trouble and there is grace enough for each moment – no matter who we are or what we’re going through. I no longer think my troubles are the only troubles – when others share their troubles, I find, in some small way, grace for me too, knowing that grace is there for them. And for me, it is grace to be able to share, to talk through the hard things that don’t seem so hard on the other side of the talking.
Here online, we don’t have the ability to play God in the lives of others the way we do with our real life relationships. But we get to see Him work – in big ways, and in more subtle ways. Even though we write ourselves out, we are part of a bigger story here, traveling together into grace.
There is really something to that — we don’t get to play (or try to play) God in our relationships online. Which should, in turn, maybe make us less inclined to do it in those that are up close.
Thank you, my friend. Online relationships are what freed me from my fear enough to have face to face relationships … and since both are real life, I’ve been blessed either way.
I can appreciate what you say here so very much. I think online relationships can be just as complex and confusing as real life ones, but out blogs? Oh those are little pieces of us, aren’t they? Sometimes I wish I was as outgoing in my relationships as I can be on my blog!