I have always been a lover of stories. I can still remember my mom reading The Little Mouse, The Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear. Her voice changing tone, and pitch, and cadence, as she read aloud. I tried to write my own stories in 3rd grade (and onward). When I was pregnant with our first, I told my husband, “I want to make sure when we pull into the parking lot at the library, that he says, ‘Yes!!'” He did. And so has the middle child. And I’m sure the baby will at some point too.
I spend hours reading books, and reading books about books, and talking about books, and thinking about books. For someone who isn’t story-obsessed like me, you might ask… why?!
We’re all part of a story – or several, really. There’s the great over-arching story that God began in Creation and is still weaving to when we join Him. There’s the story of our countries, our communities, our families, and our own selves. And within all those stories, we get to decide what kind of character we are going to be.
Are we going to be the One Who Overcomes, despite challenge after challenge, when others attack with words or underhandedness, or when natural disasters strike, or when we feel in our hearts we can’t go on… but we do?
Or are we going to be the Victim, the one who sees herself at the center of a great drama, where all of life is against her, and we drown in the sorrow and injustice of it all?
Are we going to be the One Who Chooses to Laugh, even when life seems unlaughable, when the scene, or the chapter, or even that section of the series just seems too much for joy?
Or are we going to be the One Who Wallows, looking about us in despair and barely raising our head from the mire we are now so entrenched in?
I’m reading Book Girl by Sarah Clarkson, and in one of her chapters she discusses the power of story to form who we want to be. That we can choose characters and stories that will help shape our internal dialogue, and then our choices, which then alter the flow of the story of our own lives. The subject of her chapter is Anne of Green Gables, a heroine I’ve loved too.
But the first “character” I thought of who I loved this way was Laura Ingalls. I knew as a girl that I really wasn’t very much like Laura – I didn’t have her spunk or determinedness. I felt more timid and afraid to break out of expectations, like Mary (and don’t get me wrong – there are things I love about Mary! But in my childhood, this was how I saw these two characters.). I pushed myself to try new things, even when it was incredibly hard, and to see the sunshine on cloudy days, because that’s what Laura did.
Years later, as a new mom, I re-read the Little House series and was shocked to find a new character reveal herself to me in blinding light, who had before remained in the shadows: Caroline Ingalls.
Ma had always seemed a pleasant background to the antics and home life of Laura. But reading it as a mother, I now saw that she was the heart and home of their family life. In the background at times, but a vital undercurrent to the symphony of the Ingalls existence. I saw a grit in her that I had never noticed before, as she endured the hardships of starvation, a moving home, and ill or even dying children. It inspired a grit in my own self to press on, despite circumstances, and leave something golden and beautiful for my own children to cling to in their years to come.
“This the ongoing and wondrous gift of all good literature. I have long argued that children cannot think in abstract terms, but I’m increasingly convinced that adults cannot either. What does it mean to be good, brave, and resourceful? We struggle to define those vague, existential ideas, but we know exactly what they look like when we seem them embodied…” – Sarah Clarkson, Book Girl
Stories matter because they help us see clearly who we want to become, and give us the will to get there. They create an idea, a vision, of how we want our lives to play out, and how we want our hearts to be shaped. And in the forming of the idea, the forming of our selves has already begun.
A Little Golden Thread 