What's True Is Enough

I have to watch myself when I tell stories.

There's something in me that, given the opportunity, will add just a little extra flavor. A touch of drama to make sure you really feel how significant this moment was. And I don't think I'm alone in this.

Real example. If I pass an accident on the way home, a couple of cars, it looks bad, by the time I walk through my front door that story has somehow become a ten-car pileup on the interstate. I just want you to feel what I felt. But here's the thing: isn't three cars dramatic enough? If it actually happened, doesn't the truth carry its own weight?

We do this in everyday conversation without even noticing. "I have literally been waiting all day" when it's been twenty minutes. "Everyone is talking about this" when you mean two people. "This always happens to me" when it happened twice. We reach for the bigger word, the more extreme version, because somewhere along the way we decided the plain truth wasn't quite enough to hold your attention.

But I think what we're really saying underneath all of that is: I need this to matter to you.

And that's actually a very human thing to want. We want to be heard. We want our experiences to land. The problem is that exaggeration is a shortcut, and like most shortcuts, it costs us something we don't realize we're spending. It costs us credibility. And slowly, quietly, it costs us trust.

Jesus never exaggerated to make God sound more compelling. The stories He told were vivid and they stuck, but they were true. The father in the prodigal son story didn't sprint a marathon to meet his son. He just ran. And that image, told plainly, has moved people for two thousand years.

The truth, told well, is enough.

So what if we just tried that? Not inflating, not dramatizing, not reaching for the version that sounds more impressive. What if we trusted that what actually happened, what's actually true, already has everything it needs to matter?

We don't have to earn the impact. We just have to tell the truth.

That's enough. It always has been.