You have a story, too!

This was a gorgeous post on my favorite blog. The kind that could possibly change lives. That's why I'm posting it.

www.heartkeepercommonroom.blogspot.com

Enjoy! And happy second Sunday of Advent.

Thursday, December 04, 2008
Embracing the Story

This is a post brought about by several recurring thoughts, some staunchly held opinions, and simply a sense of sheer wonder.

It began many moons ago, when the DHM asked The Equuschick if she remembered where and how she learned to write.

The trouble with this question is that The Equuschick actually doesn't remember learning to write. She remembers reading. The Equuschick has long been troubled by the kind of mind-shaper that will bewail a child's lack of writing ability and imagination, all the while denying the child the heady meat of a good story. A mind will never learn to create what it was not first taught to appreciate. There will always be varying levels of abilities and interests, but for pity's sake give a child a chance to learn to love the Story.

And what is the Story?

Listen, oh fellow Christians. We are right when we refuse to excuse base immorality on the grounds that it makes for "good art", but how dare we run in cowardice to the other extreme and close the minds of our children to the glory of the Story because some Stories have scary bits, some Stories have immoral people, some Stories are fantasy and we should never let our children read about the supernatural? (Never mind for now that the life we live is supernatural.)

And there is The Equuschick most distressed. When children are denied fairy tales then we have all lost all sense of reason and all appreciation for the art of creation, a creation that resembles life in different colour tones.

Oh sure, a well-written Story will increase a child's vocabulary and help with spelling, but there is so much more to learn about life and death and pain and joy.

We return to our original question. What makes a good Story? A good Story is well-written and full of large words and all that, but a good Story is one that makes your heart beat and the tears flow and makes you laugh out loud, and most importantly a Story that says to you softly "You have heard this one before." A Story will speak to the darkest parts of ourselves, it speaks to the voices we thought we had silenced in our modernism and secularism and sense of safety in the familiar. "This is not all there is", a good Story whispers. "This is your Story. It is being written today, all around you. And it will go on." They speak to the most ancient parts of our very souls.

Who wrote the First Story, anyway? Was the God the Christians worship not the first Author? And what a creative, brilliant, devastatingly beautiful story He told.

John 1

1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

2The same was in the beginning with God.

3All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

4In him was life; and the life was the light of men. \

Gen. 1

1In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

2And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

3And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

Among the Common Room's best-loved Stories are those of the Inkworld, by Cornelia Funke. There is a book of words that the voice of one man brings to life, and into the Inkworld we are led where words are still being written and the Story still being told, and yet the characters in the end seem to choose whether or not the written words control their final destiny.

Is this not our Story? Did a Creator not speak our world into being? Did not He mold us, and yet leave us with the final choice? That Christians should deny this type of Story is tragic.

Let us forget, for a moment, even the Great Story of a Creator God and a rebellious people and a blood sacrifice that redeemed the world from evil.


Let us consider our own rather little Stories, and note that still our little Stories are grand.

Let The Equuschick but tell you her Story and you will know (if you don't all ready) that you have a Story too, a tale as full of light and darkness as the most frightening fairy tale. And were it not for the fairy tales, all the treasures needed most to appreciate the journey that is this life would be buried in our cynicism and we would surrender, as G.K Chesterton has said, to the dragons we never knew we could defeat.

The Equuschick was born nearly 24 years ago to a mother whose childhood was full of many kinds of pain, but she found brief beacons of light in a strange and unexpected rural little place where dwelt an eccentric uncle, and to a father whose childhood was spent between a loving grandmother, a cold and absent mother, a series of step-mothers, and a cold and absent father.

From these roots sprang The Equuschick, the second of what would be seven children.

The childhood of her parents had fed in both of them a determination to do better, and choices were made that might never have been made were not it for the struggles of their childhood. These struggles shaped the parents, and therefore also The Equuschick.

Many years passed in a sort of tranquility, The Equuschick's childhood was a happy one. Travel and moves were frequent, as they are all for military families. Friends were made and lost and others made and kept as The Equuschick's family travelled the world like gypsies. After a glorious five years in the Pacific, they prepared to travel to a cold and distant land far north. A visit was made first to the strange and rural country where dwelt the famed eccentric uncle, and from there the trek was made to the northern wilds. This trek was a peaceful one, a most glorious trail that the Equuschick never will forget.

The family arrived at last, but the stay was brief for unexpected reasons that never should have been. They simply happened without much explanation at the time and the family was sent traveling again to a desolate midwest country and nobody thought then "It is good that we be sent here."

And yet once we were there two beautiful things happened, and most Story-like of all, we only recognized the one and missed the other completely.

Sure, the 8 year old Equuschick met, with her family, two young boys being raised by a single mother, and The Equuschick's parents being who they were (it having been noted in the beginning of the Story that they had resolved always to aid the suffering of children) they were taken under the HM's wing. And all well and good, for these two boys, but no one blinked then. This was only a coincidental part of the Story.

Five years passed and then a trek was made to sea country. It is worth noting that when The Equuschick left, she left kicking and screaming. She cried for days to leave her friends and all that was familiar to her.

She will never forget sea country again. It seeped into her blood and dug its way into the center of her soul and she will always miss the sea and close her eyes to see it crash and hear it thunder and to smell it. It became a great part of her Story and shaped a great part of her character. Friends were made there too, friends that became main characters and lessons were learned and memories made.

And there one day (the day of the Columbine High School Shooting an event that sent The Equuschick to her father's arms in tears),the family received a phone call from a young man in the midwest. He had become a Christian.

A year or two passed in peace, and the young man called to say he was joining the army. To do what, asked the HM? To weld. Oh, said the HM, to weld tanks on the front line? And the young man said he hadn't thought of that.

But it was peacetime then, and the Story went on in peace.

In due time the gypsies packed up again and went a tad bit more southwest, and there a great reunion was made with the family's greatest friends. Times were good.

But peacetime never lasts forever and a war was soon began on foreign soil, and there was a sort of awakening as The Equuschick watched as so many friends, from all parts of the country, were called away. There was a friend from the sea country who went and was brought back when his young wife suffered a terrible miscarriage, there was a dear friend of the Equuschick's whose husband went while she had knee surgery. And the young man from the midwest went too.

And for over a year, prayers were sent up every day.

The young man from sea country was safe, the young man from the midwest was safe. And safe too was the husband of The Equuschick's friend.

At the end of that trek, came the end of the trekking.

And you could also say then came the End of the Innocence, because all fairy tales must take a darker turn here and there.

In The Equuschick's 18'th year she and her family prepared to leave behind their friends and all that was familiar once again. The choice was made to come to a strange little rural place in the midwest to care for the aging and eccentric uncle.

But he died, and too soon. He left a house and land, and the family moved with heavy hearts.

It was not a peaceful journey. There was a moment where The Equuschick sat in front of the van reading Wives and Daughters and all was well, and then a moment came when it wasn't well anymore and she will never know what happened in between.

Half the family had an accident that left the HM with a broken arm requiring three surgeries and several screws and required months of physical therapy.

And so the family of 9 descended on a 1200 square ft. house, the husband and father in a cast. Family was kind and came to help. Neighbors were kind and they helped, but the neighbors lived a different way of life and it was hard to find close friends. Roofers who were hired to repair a leaking roof were not kind, and there was a night where the rain descended in a torrent and inches rose in the house and the FYB, still traumatized from the accident, crouched in the bedroom and cried because he thought it was the deluge.

There was a moment where everyone gathered in the house and suddenly someone made mention of giving it all up and going back to the sea country. It was first presented as a joke but in their desperation and frustration, the family looked the option in the face quite seriously that night. It was let go of, and for a moment it was gut-wrenching.

The roof was repaired. The cast was removed and the physical therapy was completed, jobs (but not good friends) were found. A routine began, momentarily shattered when the FYG cut the tendons of her toes on a razor and required surgery and physical therapy of her own.

But life went on. Life was new and strange for the gypsies, who had never lived in a place like this before. Friends were few and far between. There were brighter moments, visits from out of town friends. Once the young man from the midwest came, a great relief because of late his life had been uncertain and his faith unsure, he had suffered in the army. But he came once to that 1200 sq. ft house, and helped to repair the bridge across the creek. But he left and life went on.

Always, there was a sense of "Why? What is this? Is it always to be like this?"

In a day, less than a day one day, we learned that it wasn't always to be like this. It could get worse.

So many things shattered. So many months (years?) in darkness, fear, misery. Insecurity. Pain. Grief. All sense of stability ripped out from under our feet.

Nights spent in tears and cries of "Why God? Please make it end, God. Help us God, we're drowning." And of, "Why here? There is no hope in this place."

Life went on, but no longer dull. We wished for the dull again, but it never came. Only nightmares came. Memories of the fairy tales helped, because we all knew the Stories of those who had faced epic pain and conquered, and those Stories fueled the true faith that is faith in a God you can't see for the dark in your eyes. Beside the questions was the sense, not quite expressible, that like it or not this was in the script of our Story. Embrace the Story, however it ended. A good God has written it.

It was shortly after this time that the young man from the midwest began to visit more often. Slowly he too was putting the shattered pieces of his life back together. But he was so funny, he was so full of joy himself that he lit the darkness briefly when he came.

Darkness never disapears, but darkness slowly lifts and slackens its hold. There was no moment of transformation.

The Equuschick remembers the time where she was in the hospital and the darkness threatened to return, but it was there in the dark of the hospital room that the young man you now know as Shasta called and first said to The Equuschick "Hey sweetie, how are you?"

He later confessed that it was then he was reminded that he really didn't have forever.

And then he came again for Christmas, and The Equuschick remembers a moment where she cried in the bathroom in confusion and in the end there was only this sense again. "This is your Story. You control your part in it, but no one else's. Embrace your Story."

And the Story was embraced and The Equuschick waited to see how this chapter would end. It has ended well, this chapter. Not perfectly, nothing is perfect this side of the Last Chapter of the Great Story. The Equuschick and Shasta now live in the 1200 sq. ft. house left by the eccentric uncle and the joy illuminates the darkness for all.

If The Equuschick were to read her own story between two covers, she'd have bawled her eyes out and said "What a beautiful story."

The Equuschick does not ask you to tell your own Story, only to acknowledge in appreciation and in awe of Life Itself that you have one. The Author has crafted it well and it will end well, if only you do not rip the pen out of His hands every time you encounter a frightening chapter. You know your Story's secret descents into fear and its flights into joy.

But perhaps, if you are not familiar with the pattern of all good Stories everywhere, you will never know quite how to fight the fear. You will never appreciate the moments of joy as they ought to be appreciated.

The good Stories that all children should read, they are mirrors. In them we see our own Stories and we learn we are not alone. This is the song of the spheres and we are granted a minor but lovely key.