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Monday, November 27, 2017

Do Stories Matter?



Hello, my lovelies!

There are just a few days left in November and if you’re doing NaNoWriMo you’re no doubt scrambling to write that last several thousand words.

But it’s times like this when the doubt really starts to set in and you’re wondering if your story matters. What is the point of all this? Why are you still writing this?

What good are stories really? I often ask myself in my darkest moments. They’re nothing more than fiction- lies masquerading as something important and true. Why waste so much time and energy investing in something that is only make believe?

And then I remember.

Life Sucks:
Sorry for being so blunt, but you can’t deny it, can you? Life isn’t pretty. It’s one big mess after another.

I don’t need to rehash it all here but my teen years were pretty dark ones. And that’s coming from someone who would say she had a happy childhood. My parents are amazing and my home life has always been incredible. I still live at home and I have no intention of changing that any time soon.

But still, life is life, and even the happiest of us get blindsided.

I got lost. I didn’t know who I was anymore or who I was supposed to be. I stopped really living and just started surviving. Some days were better than others but all the nights were the same. After my sister went to college I was alone at night consistently for the first time in my life. And as someone who thinks way too much that was dangerous.

I threw myself into my stories and other people’s stories because that was the only thing that made sense. I finished my first book in that time- a book of light and hope and optimism, which were all things I was searching for.

We’re All Looking for Light
My relationship with God crumbled then. I fought to hold onto it but something was missing- there was a disconnect. I got saved when I was five and when people talk about returning to your first love or having childlike faith I know that they’re talking about. I remember what that was like. I remember how God transformed my family, how miraculous it was. And somewhere in those years I lost it. I wanted it back but I didn’t know how to go about doing that.

I was convinced that if I went to the right church service or prayed the right prayer it would fix everything. I was looking for a “God moment,” like in the movies, where the character prays and God fixes everything. In that instant everything changes.

I knew it could happen because I had seen it happen before. And since it wasn’t happening there must be something wrong with me. It was God’s will for me to have a relationship with him, I knew that. So if something was keeping me from that it had to be me.

I was obviously broken. And I didn’t know how to fix myself.

Story Time:
I don’t remember how old I was exactly but I was in my late teens. I bought a book at a discount story for $2.99- more than I would ever pay for a paperback I hadn’t read before (I laugh now as I write this, thinking of all the full price paperbacks I’ve bought since).

But I started reading it in the store and the main character spoke to me. She told me I wanted to read her book- I needed to. So I bought it.

I read in the car on the drive home and kept reading for the rest of the afternoon. I took breaks to spend time with my family and get stuff done but I kept going back to the book. I read most of it that day. The only reason I stopped was because it was the Saturday before Daylight Saving and we had to be up early for church the next morning.

I finished the book in church that Sunday, before the service while my Mom and Dad practiced to lead worship later that morning.

It was a YA contemporary romance. The main character falls in love with an actor who plays sparkly vampires in Twilight-esque movies. They bicker constantly but each needs the other for something else so they come to an agreement to tolerate each other. The tolerating turns to love and it’s adorable.

And in his mercy, God decided to use this book to change my life.

I’m Getting to the Point, I Promise:
See in the midst of the bickering and falling in love the main character was breaking.

She lost her brother- in a different way than I had lost mine, but I understood what she was going through. She was falling apart inside but pretending to be fine. And she was looking for God, looking to get rid of the disconnect that was between herself and him.

I saw myself in her. And as her trip to Ireland and falling in love with a sparkly vampire brought her healing, so it did me.

She finds God in the end. She finds him in such a way that she realizes he’s been there all along. She has her big “God moment” and she knows things are going to be okay.

But here’s why I needed this story- the book has an epilogue, set two years after the end of the book- after the character’s big moment. And she’s still broken. She’s healing and she’d growing closer to God but she’s not there yet.

And sitting in church that Sunday, reading the end of the book, I knew God had inspired the author to write it for me. I knew he had always been there for me, that I may be broken but there was nothing keeping me from him. And I knew that healing was going to take time. And that was okay.

We Need Stories:
I had heard everything I learned from that book before. Pastors had preached it in sermons. Wiser, older people had said it to me in an attempt to encourage me. I’d heard others talking about the principles in conversation.

But I needed a book about vampires, and crazy old ladies, and mischievous nuns to really make the message sink in. I needed a fictional character to go to Ireland to find God so that I could too.

We need stories because they speak to us in ways other things never can. They say fiction is telling truth with lies and I wholeheartedly believe that.

Stories teach us things, show us things, remind us of things. They build us up and take us places we’d never get to go otherwise.

I don’t know what my life would look like without this book. I’m sure God would have found some other way to speak to me- he’s God, after all, and I know now he never would have given up on me- but still, the process would have taken so much longer, been even more painful than it was without this book.

God uses stories. I don’t know why. I guess because he’s merciful like that- he’s willing to use the things that make us happy, that we allow ourselves to get lost in, to speak to us. He’s willing to use those things to reach us when nothing else can.

Even if you don’t think your book has a strong message, like the book I talked about does, that doesn’t matter. My best friend likes to tell me about the spiritual truths she finds in Doctor Who and Star Trek and Stargate.

You don’t have to set out to tell your readers something. Just know that if you write with the intention of telling the truth your readers will find the truth they need. If you’re writing your story, trusting that even in its messy state, God can and will use it, then that’s all that matters.

Conclusion:
We are just days away from finishing NaNoWriMo. November is almost over and hopefully your novel is too. You’re almost there. You’ve got this.

And yes, that novel is a mess. It’s an utter nightmare right now. No one will ever make any sense of it, right?

Wrong. You will have time to edit and polish and rewrite. Right now you’re getting words on paper and that’s enough.

But be encouraged. Someday this messy, messy first draft is going to be something beautiful. It’s going to be something that changes lives. Someday a very lost teenager is going to read your book and God is going to use it to fuse back together all the broken pieces.

And until then all you have to do is keep writing. The only story that can’t change someone else’s life is the story you keep to yourself.

I hope to see you on Friday for some bookish fun. Until the next time we meet, don’t forget to live happily ever after <3
~Jennifer Sauer, the Ivory Palace Princess


P.S. Let’s Chat! What stories has God used to change your life? Which ones still continue to bring you healing?

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