“Is there something about me that makes you think I’d want to hear THAT?”
That’s what a friend told me she was tempted to say to an elderly mother who had just told her, in great and gory detail, how she’d come to the aid of her grown son, who was suffering some digestive distress.
I do give this mother credit for her heroic efforts. She probably deserves a medal. But even if I could somehow suppress my fragile gag reflex long enough to do what she did, I’d absolutely never, ever tell anyone about it.
My friend’s recounting of this over-the-top conversation was hilarious, partly because we can all relate to being helpless victims of awkward “oversharing.”
Alas, TMI (too much information) seems to be the order of the day in our social-media-saturated, tell-all culture.
I know this could seem a bit ironic coming from me since I regularly subject you, my readers, to the minutiae of my life. I may well be the proverbial pot calling the kettle black here.
So I think it’s only fair for me to ask myself some variations of the question my friend wanted to ask: Why do I tell you what I tell you? Why do I write what I write?
Ok, I admit I do just enjoy writing and have for as long as I can remember. But there’s more to this than that.
I believe I can honestly say that my deeper motives are the same as those expressed by the Apostle Paul to the Christians in Thessalonica: “Having so fond an affection for you, we were well-pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God, but also our own lives, because you had become very dear to us.” (1 Thessalonians 2:8).
I “impart my life”—maybe too much of it and probably more of it than my husband wishes I’d impart—so that I can also try to impart something of infinitely greater value and importance: encouragement for you to seek, know and follow God.
None of us can know how long our tickers will tick, and I’m convinced the most pressing issue in each of our lives is what we do with Jesus Christ.
Will we believe Him or reject Him?
Call me nuts, but I believe heaven and hell are literal places, and each one of us will end up in one place or the other based on what we do with Jesus and His claims.
I know that’s not politically correct and my beliefs may rankle some of you. But even if you’re among the aggravated, I want you to know this: I write because, as Paul said to the Thessalonians, you are very dear to me. I may not know you personally, but it matters to me where you spend eternity.
Many years of my professional life were spent writing public relations materials for colleges. What I wrote was true, but it didn’t really matter much. So, I quit that to do this.
And while my columns can’t change anyone’s life or destiny, the God I point to certainly can.
“O, taste and see that the Lord is good,” the Psalmist wrote.
That’s what I want, for everyone to just “taste and see.”
Is there something about you that makes me think you’d want to do that?
Yes. Seventeenth-century French mathematician Blaise Pascal expressed it perfectly: “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus.”
I’ve lived that truth and now live to share it with others. My stories are just a way to tell His story.
I may often overshare mine, but I can never overshare His.