It Depends on the Author

I’ve been watching the baseball playoffs a lot lately, as you may imagine since my Cardinals are amazingly still standing (hoping I can say that after tonight, too!).  It has been an intense ride.  After each game I realize how progressively mangled my fingernails have become over the weeks.  Sometimes it’s hard to watch as the team implodes and lets a win slip away.  Other times I’ve been able to rejoice over a well fought victory.  But whatever the outcome I’m usually on the edge of my seat.  It’s exhausting.

Maybe the most frustrating thing about being a sports fan is not being in control of how your team does or the outcome of the game…conspiracy theories aside.  It may also be what makes following sports so exhilarating.  You never know what will happen.  Or what the next amazing thing will be that you couldn’t have guessed.  There is a lot of heartache, to be sure (especially depending on your team!), but there is also the thrill of the miraculous.  It is the unknown possibilities that bring both fear and hope. 

But that isn’t just sports.  It is life.  And I have realized many times over lately how little I can control my life.  Most of the time the illusion of control flows without much challenge.  But we all come face to face with uncontrollable reality at various points. 

Yesterday my browser kept crashing, I couldn’t get the insurance company to call me back, and I still couldn’t get the mower to start.  I could feel the stress mounting in my body…we hate not being able to control our world, our life.

And those were the little things. 

It has been expontentially more difficult to lack control over having children.  That might be the hardest thing about infertility issues…feeling so helpless to bring about what you desire so deeply.  I’ve never felt such a lack of control over my life as I have the last several months.  The illusion has been shattered in a new way.  I cannot create life.  I cannot make it happen.

“All we can really do is create the best environment for a baby to be born.  The rest is up to divine intervention.”

That statement from a doctor we consulted while looking into fertility options says it all.  We are not in control.  God is.  He is the one writing this story. 

Sometimes I forget that.  I forget who is in control.  I forget I am in a larger story.  

I’m reminded of the Will Farrell film Stranger Than Fiction, where his character finds out his life is being dictated by an author (Emma Thompson) writing a novel.  When he discovers she has a beautifully tragic end planned for him, he naturally gets upset and tries to pursuade her to change the plot.  In case you haven’t seen it I won’t reveal what happens, but what strikes me is the plot, the story, the ending…it all depends on the author.

Last year Jenny and I watched the movie, Up, which we really enjoyed.  But the opening few scenes were terribly sad and heart-wrenching.  If you’ve seen it, you’ll know why it was so hard for Jenny and why she cried her way through the first 15 minutes.

She said later that she almost asked if we could leave because it was so hard for her to watch.  The only thing that kept her there was the thought, “No, this is a movie.  And if I know anything about movies it is that they end well.  There must be a redemptive ending.”

We all know that intuitively.  A good story by a good author has a good ending.  There will be redemption.

But for that to happen there must also be pain, tension, and frustration.  A good author knows that redemption means something being redeemed.  And a really good author brings it about in unexpected ways.

I know life is not a movie.  But it is a story.  With an Author.  And I need to remember that this Author is good.

I don’t know what God has in store for us.  And I am tempted by the same thought as Janner in The Wingfeather Saga (which I have really loved), who in the midst of a dark situation thinks about the stories he’s read.  He knows they always turn out alright, but he also knows real life doesn’t always turn out like those books. 

But, we know he’s in a story (brilliantly done!).  So we know it ends well.

The ending of a story all depends on the  author.  And this Author is good.  So we trust and we wait.