mama3girls-phnig

I’ve been thinking a lot about thin stories.

Not just the thin stories we tell about other people—the flattened versions that make life easier to sort into heroes and villains—but the thin stories we tell about ourselves.

Because if I’m honest, we all do it.

We build stories that protect identity. Stories that help us stay coherent. Stories that keep us from having to sit too long in discomfort.

Thin stories conserve energy.

They help us move on.

They also keep us from seeing.

A thin story about her might sound like this:

She’s dramatic.
She’s messy.
She got hurt.
She left.
She’s causing accounting problems.

There. Clean. Efficient. Easy to hold.

You don’t have to ask questions inside a thin story.

You don’t have to ask what happened before she left.

You don’t have to ask about power, attachment, loyalty, grief, mixed signals, hierarchy, silence, or fear.

You certainly don’t have to call the woman who left and ask, What happened?

You can just decide.

But the thing about thin stories is that they are rarely only about the person being flattened.

They also protect the storyteller.

That’s the part I keep coming back to.

A thin story about another person almost always rests on a thin story about ourselves.

Maybe the thin story sounds like this:

I am a good elder.
I am discerning.
I protect truth.
I am loyal.
I would know if something inappropriate were happening.
I can trust my instincts about people.

That kind of story feels safe.

Until a thicker story threatens it.

And thick stories are expensive.

They require curiosity.

They require humility.

They require the willingness to ask not just:

Why did she leave?

But something much harder:

What reasons exist that I am unwilling to ask her why she left?

That question changes everything.

Because now the inquiry turns inward.

Maybe asking feels messy.

Maybe conflict feels intolerable.

Maybe loyalty feels safer than curiosity.

Maybe asking threatens relationships you depend on.

Maybe thickening her story would force you to reconsider someone you admire.

Maybe it would expose attachments, desires, dependencies, or compromises you would rather not examine too closely.

And that is where thin stories become seductive.

Not because they are true.

Because they are protective.

But here’s the part that keeps humbling me.

The temptation when someone refuses a thick story is to create a thin story about them.

That’s the trap.

He tells a thin story about her.

She can easily tell a thin story about him.

I can tell a thin story about him.

You can tell a thin story about me.

Round and round we go.

Which means the discipline of thick story isn’t merely being curious about people who hurt us.

It also means resisting the narcotic of certainty—even when certainty feels justified.

Recently I saw this dynamic play out through something that, on the surface, looked absurdly small.

Four hundred dollars.

A young woman I love spoke publicly and did an extraordinary job—thoughtful, articulate, grounded, wise beyond her years.

At one point she interrupted the normal flow and said something simple and devastating:

“We need to be there for each other.”

The room applauded.

And I sat there holding two realities at once.

First: she is gifted.

Second: I have seen this dynamic before—in churches, schools, offices, and families.

People will celebrate gifting.

They will applaud excellence.

They will publicly praise contribution.

But applause and opportunity are not always the same thing.

Sometimes people love what you offer as long as it does not require structural change.

That bothered me.

So I donated $400.

Not because I wanted to hand cash to a young woman.

Because I wanted something more symbolic—and more concrete.

A beginning.

A first job.

A line item.

Some structural acknowledgment that labor is still labor.

Then I got an email.

In it, my donation was described as a targeted donation.

Later, again:

targeted donation.

That phrase lodged in my body.

Because sometimes the thin story lives inside a single word.

He called it targeted.

I called it line itemed.

That difference sounds semantic until you realize semantics are often where power hides.

Targeted tells a thin story.

It suggests someone emotionally trying to funnel money toward a person.

Personal. Emotional. Improper. Misguided.

But line itemed tells a thicker story.

Line itemed asks a completely different question.

Not:

Why is she trying to give money to that person?

But:

Why is there no structural mechanism to recognize valuable labor already happening?

That is a very different story.

So I responded:

“Maddie has been wanting to do things for the youth group. I wanted to line item for her usage in ministry.”

That word—line itemed—was not accidental.

It was a correction.

A refusal.

Not of the rules.

Of the story.

Because he did not need to break rules to thicken the story.

He only needed to ask one more question.

What are you trying to name here?

That’s all.

One question.

Because this was never really about $400.

It was about recognition.

About labor.

About value.

And before anyone gets too comfortable making him the villain, let me say this:

I do this too.

We all do.

I tell thin stories when I am scared.

When I am tired.

When complexity threatens my preferred narrative.

Thin stories are seductive because they spare us from rewriting ourselves.

A thick story asks more.

It asks whether loyalty has become more important than curiosity.

It asks whether rules have become refuge.

It asks whether certainty has become armor.

Most of us do not flatten other people out of cruelty.

We flatten them because a thicker story would cost us something.

Status.

Certainty.

Belonging.

Innocence.

That may be the most uncomfortable truth of all.

The danger of thin stories isn’t merely that they misrepresent other people.

It’s that they slowly imprison the storyteller.

Because every story we refuse to thicken becomes a wall around our own humanity.

And maybe that is why the words of that young woman still echo in me.

We need to be there for each other.

Not for thin versions of each other.

For the real ones.

The complicated ones.

The inconvenient ones.

The ones whose stories cost us something to hear.

Those are the stories worth thickening.

And here I am, trying to thicken the skin of a young lady who wants to run for office someday, inside a church where she is learning a very thin story about loyalty.

How thin that story is right now for her.

What will the thick story be later if that mindset creeps into her psyche?

What will she learn to believe about her own voice if adults keep applauding it while quietly limiting where it is allowed to go?

And what thick story is the church not considering when it cannot imagine putting a gifted fourteen-year-old on payroll?

Not to exploit her.

Not to rush her.

Not to make her more grown than she is.

But to say, clearly and concretely:

We see your work.

We see your labor.

We see your gifts.

They matter enough to structure something around them.

And what reasons exist that a physician in charge of the tax side of things could not think to ask that simple question within the frame of a couple of emails?

Not to break a rule.

To thicken the story.

I mean, damn.

A future president on your payroll.

I guess the next time she calls to tell me she’s done with this church, I’ll say:

“You gave them grace. You don’t have to keep staying somewhere to worship Jesus if it hurts you. We can pray for them from afar.

Through thick or thin, I’m here for you.”