Chapter Books

There is something about watching a child learn how to read. How you take fragments of an alphabet, with sounds and character, and put them together to make words, and eventually meaning that tells us the truth about who we are as people or life or even God. I am watching this phenomenon with Bennett. And he is doing well. I am reminded, that sometimes the English language makes no sense. Sometimes you can’t just “sound it out” because the letters say all the wrong things to make the right sounds. And you just have to guess, memorize, and eventually know what some of these strange words really say. Bennett was reading a Frog and Toad book. He tripped through the reading, like a dance tripping on laces, but he did it. The book had chapters. He felt accomplishment in finishing a chapter. He made it through a story with plot and conflict, choices, friendships, and foolishness. And in the end he learned something. And although the chapters told different stories, they had the same connective tissue of loyalty and love.

So, this got me thinking about writing and living. Writers try with great diligence to create something that will loosen the strings that bind our understandings in the core of who we are as people with words. It is a grand ambition to create with intangible words, what is tangibly immortal. A true masterpiece. Few actually do it. And we are forever changed because some have. They are the words that are etched on our souls and breath inspiration to tired lungs, and crawl into the empty spaces of our brains and reside in undusted bookshelves of memory. The characters are ageless. They are perfectly flawed. They utter the words that make us scream, or breath, or weep; they make the same damned decisions every time we encounter them. With all their motion and change, they are static in who they are. Pages are immoveable. Someone created this. And we attempt to replicate for others a character that we can love, or a life that is so tragic that we connect so deeply with their loss. We always hope for their redemption. And sometimes, art-imitating life, redemption never comes. Their stories are woven together through chapters, like continents across the ocean that creates the entirety of our world.

And writing is like living. We are the characters. We have to learn this process by learning how to connect our reality with sounds to create words that somehow make sense. We will eventually tell our story. We hope to live in such a way that, when someone reads life, our life, they are able to understand the sounds that create words and images and dialogue. Eventually, we hope to leave the reader with meaning. We hope to live a story meaningfully. And if we are insightful enough, we will learn that we all have a story.

I heard a sermon not long ago, talking about Abraham’s story. It was a story of change. A story of leaving and wandering. A story of promise, betrayal, and eventually blessing. I was reminded that we are part of something bigger than what I experience on a day today. I was reminded that I am a part of a long history of who we are as a part of being God’s blessing. I was having this conversation with a friend who said, “Thank you for saying that. All this time, I had it all wrong. All this time, I thought it was my story. Really it was always God’s story and I have a small part in it.”

And I got to thinking about the structure of history and stories. They seem to exist on two dimensions. And I am amazed by this complication and weaving together of humanity. God is an amazing author that can create sub plots and paradox. I think of my story. I hear the echo of Isaac Anderson telling me that my story is to be a blessing on God’s time not my own, and sometimes I am encouraged by this. Usually I forget, and am overwhelmed by needs all around me, like floodwaters engulfing fields. Needs rise, and I am treading water in needs. And they are heavy. And I am tired of swimming. However, there are these moments that you climb out of the flood, and lay in the sun. There is hope there and lightness and rest. Enough to tread water with a sore heart.

See, we are all a part of a chapter book. And reading chapter books is a huge step in learning to read, learning to live. We are learning that sometimes life doesn’t make sense. You have to memorize, and guess, and hope that you are getting the meaning. You hope that you are contributing to the writing and the story, that your story will be read, and that your story is not in isolation. We live in such a way that life communicates the most beautiful heartbreak, hope, love letters, and tears, and grief ever lived. And ultimately, my story is God’s story. And I have a part in it. I have a part in it by simply existing. Our lives tell different stories, but they flow or trip together in such a way that makes sense only from a distance of years. So, I need to keep writing, contributing, and reading other’s story and looking for the connective tissues that allows us to flow chapter to chapter, person to person, life to life.