Forgotten Stories

I had forgotten how much I love to write. When I was younger, I would make up stories to cope with stress or simply just to disappear into my own world. Daydreaming has always been my best defense against boredom.

I imagined and wrote so many stories over the years. One story continued. I wrote of a brother and sister escaping a house fire. It was set in the old west. I was pretty into Legends of the Fall and Brad Pitt and what not. Also, I may or may not have listened to the soundtrack while writing. Anyways. The siblings lost their parents and depended on one another as they did not know who else they could trust. I didn’t know it at the time, but this story encompassed so much of what I was feeling in my own family. My parents loved us and also had difficulty hiding their problems. Villains were clear in the story...people in life that I did not trust showed up here.

I shared this story for the first time in a creative writing class. The professor had just shared her own short story, which involved a fire. My classmates didn’t believe me when I said I had been writing this story over and over for years. They assumed it was unoriginal and yawned at the theme of fire. I remember feeling embarrassed and invalidated.

I stopped writing the story when my brother disappeared from my life. It was too painful to consider the story with just my heroine escaping the flames, with no one to trust and no one to turn to. The thought of finishing the story without him in it was unbearable. How on earth would she ever make it alone? The whole thing went up in flames.

Now that I am writing again, my heart is swelling with stories and the beauty of their meaning. I am filled with a love for truth that is woven into the fiber of our experiences.

Jesus was a storyteller. He introduced us to characters we could relate to, stories that seemed familiar, and themes that felt as though they were taken from the pages of our own book.

That story was important to me. It was a way to say, "Hey! I don't think we're doing okay here!" and "I'm not sure we should trust them." As a child, my voice was small. But in that story, I fought fire and stood tall against my enemies.

Tell the story. Write the truth. Be right where you are. Live passionately with the gifts you have been given. Recall a time where you were filled with life and consider what fueled you. It may have been as far back as childhood, when your cares were less. What cares are holding you back now? Tend to them. Where do you find healing? For me, it's always God. A different route, but always the same destination.

It is in our nature to tell stories, whether written or spoken. It is in our nature to be known. It is not in our nature to go up in flames.