The reward you get from a story is always less than you thought it would be, and the work is harder than you imagined. The point of a story is never about the ending, remember. It's about your character getting molded in the hard work of the middle.

***

It's like this with every crossing, and with nearly every story too. You paddle until you no longer believe you can go any farther. And then suddenly, well after you thought it would happen, the other shore starts to grow, and it grows fast. The trees get taller and you can make out the crags in the cliffs, and then the shore reaches out to you, to welcome you home, almost pulling your boat onto the sand.

***

I remembered about story, about how every conflict, no matter how hard, comes back to bless the protagonist if he will face his fate with courage. There is no conflict man can endure that will not produce a blessing. And I smiled. I'm not saying I was happy, but for some reason I smiled. It hurts now, but I'll love this memory, I thought to myself. And I do.

***

Job calls out to God, asking why God would let this happen.


God does not answer Job's question. It's as though God starts off his message to the world by explaining there are painful realities in life we cannot and will never understand. Instead, he appears to Job in a whirlwind and asks if Job knows who stops the waves on the shore of stores the snow in Wichita every winter. He asks Job who manages the constellations that reel through the night sky.


And that is essentially all God says to Job. God doesn't explain philosophically or even list its benefits. God says to Job, Job, I know what I am doing, and this whole thing isn't about you.

***

I didn't want to get well, because if I got well, nobody would come and save me anymore. And I didn't want to get well, because while I could not control my happiness, I could control my misery, and I would rather have had control than live in the tension of what if. A chance of hope is no pacifier against a sure tragedy.


But Victor Frankl whispered in my ear all the same. He said to me I was a tree in a story about a foster, and that it was arrogant of me to believe any differently. And he told me the story of the forest is better than the story of the tree.






Some books are meant to be read. Other books are meant to read us. How a book functions depends on the person holding it and turning the pages. For now, this book is meant to read me.