I’m not sure I chose to attend in 2009 as much as it was something that just had to happen. Yes, I asked to be placed on a waiting list. Yes, I booked my own flight, drove myself to the airport, checked into my hotel, along with all the other things I had to physically do to get to The Story Workshop. But it was more.

My good friend, mentor, and pastor invited me to this conference in Seattle. He knew I admired Dan Allender鈥檚 work and hoped I would come with him to visit this graduate school taking a different approach to theology in its integration of psychology.

I was a pre-med student at the time, pondering a calling for pastoral work, and I was intrigued by the provocative brochure asking me about my story. I wanted some answers for what was next in my life, but I didn’t know so many of those answers would come from looking into my past through my work at the Story Workshop. I didn’t necessarily want the answers I found, but they were still the answers I needed to begin the wild goose chase The Story Workshop has sent me on toward knowing myself more deeply.

The impact of The Story Workshop was like an infinite echo. Because of what God whispered to me in those places of my story, I will never be the same. For those whispers and the tears of my Story Workshop peers and facilitators, I will be eternally grateful.

Compelled to pursue my own story, I found my heart for narrative and clues as to who I was created to be vocationally. The Story Workshop focused my eyes to see who I am and who I really want to be.

Before I knew it, I was recanting my medical school applications. After a year鈥檚 discernment, I decided to continue my story work and training as a Counseling Psychology student at 天美视频 of Theology & Psychology. 聽Not all participants in The Story Workshop choose to up and move, change vocations, or relocate to pursue a degree at 天美视频鈥攖hough I was certainly not the first nor will be the last.

Still, we are all deeply impacted by The Story Workshop in the same way. Just like many of those who come to participate, I was living my story not knowing that I was the main character in my own play. taught me that the script needed my help鈥擥od was inviting me to collaborate.

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It is a reminder of the history that inhabits these walls. And before the luggage factory, back when the Puget waters met the western wall, a fisherman鈥檚 wharf greeted the day鈥檚 catch with open arms. This is the building that now bears our name – 天美视频.

I smile because the allegory of a former fisherman鈥檚 wharf/luggage factory now housing grad students is not lost on me.聽 Just like a fisherman casting his nets into the Pacific, we dive into the depths of the soul to see what can be brought to the surface.聽 And just like a luggage maker filling his space with suitcases, we fill the building with the baggage of our hearts.

We are a group of artists, nomads, farmers, fishers of men, orphans, wanderers, prophets, & gypsies that are desperately seeking to reek of healing of grace.聽 Our pasts chased us into this building, and I鈥檓 hoping for a future that will one-day chase us out.

This building is not an easy building to be in. It鈥檚 not normal for people to openly tote around so much baggage 鈥� let alone talk about it in a room full of aspiring therapists and pastors. We talk about meeting. We find it difficult to be in this building and hold the tension of also being out in the world, let alone finding community elsewhere. For now, we learn to be here, how can we be elsewhere too?

Mainly for it not to be called church, we named it Exhale. We sought just that. We needed a space to breathe 鈥� find rest in the midst of our work. Exhale has become my community to hold my past baggage of church & community. I never envisioned Exhale to become for me what it has 鈥� a hope, a symbol for how to live out a new way of being in community with others. To be a fisher of men and provide space to hold another鈥檚 luggage, this building reflects incarnation.

We meet bi-monthly and take turns sharing. We prepare songs to sing together. We set up microphones, chords, and a projector. We relive the times we鈥檝e done this 鈥� set up chords, fix the sound, and set up seating. We laugh, share how much transference we have to these things, and make up a phantasmal Transference Team, just like our past churches had ushers, greeters, and praise teams. We call on this team often!

The past and the future, both welcomed to inhabit the space, as much as we can bear to share in our present. We exhale, breathe from our lungs, 鈥渨e are here, I need you, be with me, can I be with you鈥�, as chests expand and collapse. We share our stories, talk about communities we鈥檝e failed and been failed by. We break bread, pour Welch鈥檚 juice, but communion began long before with the 6 o鈥檆lock chimes that mark our beginning. My community is a space that I can breathe with others who know of the shortness of breath we鈥檝e come to remedy. The same aspirations we will one day go out into the world to aid.

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