30% vs. 70%

This past winter I had the amazing blessing of being a youth camp counselor.  I couldn’t have been more excited.  Some of the most incredible times I have had growing up, times when God has spoken to me in the deepest places, have been during camps and retreats.  I have had counselors who are still mentors in my life today.  I could hardly wait to “pay it forward” if you will.  What I didn’t expect was that one of the girls in my small group, we’ll call her “Leah,” would end up teaching me more than I taught her.  On the last night of retreat, I was actually late to our small group (for legitimate reasons…promise ;). Leah asked me if I wanted to stay after we dismissed to hear what she had shared.  I jumped at the opportunity to hear her heart.

She went on to explain how a group recently came and hosted a Challenge Day at Centennial.  They spent the day playing games that began to tear down the walls between individuals and groups.  One was similar to this Line Game used in the movie Freedom Writers.

Some of the statements at Challenge Day included: step on the line if your parents are divorced, step on the line if you’ve ever been the victim of bullying, step on the line if you’ve bullied someone else, step on the line if you’ve ever attempted suicide, step on the line if you have had someone close to you die recently… Needless to say, after playing this game, tears were streaming down faces, people who had set themselves against each other were embracing, truth replaced misunderstanding and judgments.

The team hosting the event went on to explain how people are like icebergs: on the surface we only see 30% (some statistics say 10%).  Majority of our stories (the other 70%) lie below the surface.

After explaining this Leah asked me, “Kendra, do you want to know my 70%?” What followed was perhaps one of the most life-changing conversations I have ever had in my life.  She poured out her life story to me: the wounds, the victories, the hard-lessons learned, the disappointments, and the hopes.  As I listened, I couldn’t hold back the tears.  I grieved with her.  But they were also tears of joy.  As she was sharing, I was able to trace God’s hand in her life.  I could see His faithfulness and hand every step of the way.  After spending an hour talking, she then asked me, “What’s your 70%?  It’s ok if you don’t want to share, but I would love to hear it.”  The truth is when faced with this question, fear often sets in.  As Shauna Niequest writes in her book, Cold Tangerines:

True friendship is a sacred, important thing, and it happens when we drop down into that deeper level of who we are, when we cross over into the broken, fragile parts of ourselves. We have to give something up in order to get friendship like that. We have to give up our need to be perceived as perfect. We have to give up our ability to control what people think of us. We have to overcome the fear that when they see the depths of who we are, they’ll leave. But what we give up is nothing in comparison to what this kind of friendship gives to us. Friendship is about risk. Love is about risk. If we can control it and manage it and manufacture it, then it’s something else, but if it’s really love, really friendship, it’s a little scary around the edges.”

Scary around the edges, risk, giving up control?  I could definitely relate, but it was this beautiful woman’s courage in sharing her story that gave me the strength to come undone before her.  What happened in this small handful of hours was a birthing of sacred friendship.  We both shared our “70%,” and I discovered the beauty of sharing and hearing life stories in a way I never had fully experienced before.

I have been reflecting on this story this week because recently, I had an incredibly encouraging conversation with someone we’ll call “Andy.”  I believe I ended the conversation with “I’m glad I was wrong about you.”  You see, I assumed I knew all about who he was, when in reality, I had forgotten what it meant to look beyond the 30% that I could “see.”

So, what’s your 70%?  Do you know your story?  Do you know that the sharing of your story matters?  Are you only seeing the 30% in those around you like I have a tendency to do at times? Are you willing to risk taking off the mask of perfection and drop into those deeper levels and to accept the imperfections of others?  I believe when we begin to do this, we begin to truly love one another in community.  We make room in friendships for genuine accountability, correction, and encouragement.

John writes:

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.  By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.” – 1 John 4:7-21

It’s because of God’s perfect love for us that we can (and should) love others.  Reflecting on this idea, Shauna Niequest writes:

That’s what friendship looks like to me.  Friendship is acting out God’s love for people in tangible ways.  We were made to represent the love of God in each other’s lives, so that each person we walk through life with has a more profound sense of God’s love for them.  Friendship is an opportunity to act on God’s behalf in the lives of the people that we’re close to, reminding each other who God is.  When we do the hard, intimate work of friendship, we bring a little more of the divine into daily life.  We get to remind one another about the bigger, more beautiful picture that we can’t always see from where we are.

I don’t know about you, but this is the type of community and friendship I long to experience, and I am so thankful for those (and there are many others not mentioned here) who God has used to begin to show me what that means.