Gretchen Ronnevik@garonnevik
People have various comfort levels in sharing things, and there's nothing wrong with that. Some of it is cultural. Some of it is the family you grew up in.
We learned early on in our marriage the power of sharing our story. That first year was rough. We were in a small group of young married couples, and one time on the way to our gathering, I asked if I could share with the group how much we had been struggling. He said he thought that'd be good, and as we were vulnerable with the group, it opened up a door where all the couples started sharing real things. The pretense dropped. Real friendship met us there.
That experience is why we are pretty open about our lives, especially as we both work within churches. We are often the first to share or be vulnerable, to lay the groundwork. I share a lot about my family, but I don't ever want to throw them under the bus. My husband has joked more than once that he hopes he can live up to the man I portray him to be on social media. I told him I don't say anything untrue! Yeah, he'll say, but it's not the whole truth.
I recently turned in my 3rd book to my publisher, and as this book talks about a difficult season of our marriage as a brief illustration, my publisher wanted my husband to sign off that he was ok with it. He doesn't always read what I write, because he says he hears me talk about it non-stop that reading it feels redundant. But he sat and read the chapter where he came up. When he was done,
he said, "You could have said so much more. This was restrained."
Me: "I didn't want to throw anyone under the bus."
Him: "Sometimes I wish you would just let it rip. So many other people come into play in all of this. Sometimes I want you to throw all of them under the bus--the whole lot of them."
Me: "But that would distract from the point I was making. They arent' the story. You weren't the story. I was talking about my own experience. But it could be perceived, perhaps, not knowing the whole story, that it paints you in a bad light. People might fill in the blanks incorrectly, and you need to know that."
Him: "Oh, I don't care about any of that. Where do I sign?"
Knowing what to share, and who to share it with are often really difficult judgment calls. But here's one thing I know: you can't share your testimony of God's grace and look good doing it at the same time. You can't. You can't say, "I was an awesome person, and God made me even better!" "Being a good person is kind of my thing, so I just drifted into Christianity." That's not it.
We fell into sin, we are oppressed by sin, we are trapped in sin. God saved us. As Christians, we still mess up, and God grace is so steadfast that it's work cleaning us up is an active thing. You can't share a testimony and make yourself look good at the same time. That's why they're so hard.
