The trouble with mishaps,
injustices, tragedies, or foolish choices is that we have no way of knowing how
events might’ve otherwise been worse. Did this minor fender bender save me from
a head-on collision? Did this knee injury stop me from breaking a leg? Did the
tipped over jelly jar in the refrigerator, prevent me from writing that vicious
e-mail?
I’ve
often wondered how my life would’ve been different if I chose to go to the same
High School all four years. I wonder what was the point of getting my pilot’s
license? Why did my knee have to give out in the first few miles of the San
Diego Rock and Roll Marathon? Why did those friends move away? Why did God put
those obnoxious people in my life? Why was feeding my baby so hard? And if
these events didn’t occur, would things have been worse for me?
For
the last year I’ve been rewriting a novel I wrote in High School inspired by
The Lord of the Rings and a little bottle of fairy dust that my grandma gave me
one Christmas. The story is called Providence: Heady and Headless. And through
it, I’ve learned how an author must treat his or her characters. While I’m able
to reform them, force a change of mind upon them, or insert an all-knowing wise
wizard to explain the truth, that would be intruding too much. Characters turn
into puppets, and the magic is lost.
No, I can’t
force them, but I can bring along rainstorms, robbers, cults, insulting
teachers, dull swords, forks in the road, and conflicting personalities. Thrown
into a labyrinth of conflict they change: some for the better, some for the
worse. It’s like medicine. Some that take it grow wings; others grow fangs. Or
as CS Lewis says in Mere Christianity: we are all growing into either more
heavenly creatures or more devilish creatures.
That must mean
that what I have called unjust or tragic may actually be a mercy. Their hurt to
me could be the preventative maintenance of an otherwise larger catastrophe.
Wouldn’t I have moved into that house of sand if the waves hadn’t washed it
away? Wouldn’t I have gone on slandering others, had I not been slandered
myself? Wouldn’t I have continued thinking the world of myself, if others hadn’t
thought ill of me?
I can’t explain
every situation. How can I? I’m not the author. But I know when the
transformation of my thinking occurs. It happens when I stop thinking of an
event as evil and start thinking of it as sad or sometimes—when God’s grace has
been injected into me in double dosages—as humorous.
Posts
Comments