Origin.

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”

-G.K Chesterton

I think everyone has a place in their mind where they go to think. Or maybe not. But maybe yours is a peaceful memory, a wooded scene, or an oceanside landscape.

Mine is a tree, a log, and a field.

The field changes with the season. Sometimes its flowers, sometimes its just grass, sometimes fall, or winter.

And sometimes its a graveyard.

We all have a graveyard in our minds. Some people announce theirs, others wear it like a badge,

Some wish it wasn’t there…

I wish it wasn’t there. I wish yours wasn’t there.

But it is. And what we do with it matters.

To those who hurt, who silently cry, I wish I could keep you company in yours.

I wish I could walk with you through your headstones, and let you tell me about the memories and cry with you about the losses.

But I can’t. You can’t come in mine and I can’t go in yours. It’s a place only Jesus can go.

In my graveyard there are lots of floating stones- losses half grieved, because they have only half died.

But as I trace the names upon them, I come to a few that are solid and real.

I never said goodbye to a few and those are the ones that hurt the most.

——————-

I remember when I first started writing. There was a creative project for school. I threw something together. A random idea in my head. It stuck.

But overtime I put it away. Tension in life silenced the tall tales of courage and hope.

One night I remember my sister’s brave pale face look down at me as she leaned over the bunkbed railing.

She asked for me to tell a story before bed.

As I looked up at her and saw her brown sickly hair clinging to her bony chin and sunken cheeks, the oppressing cloud within me grew and I didn’t feel like telling any story that night.

In my silence, my other sister sat up from her bed and suggested a few imaginative ideas. The ideas made them laugh and I smiled despite my looming cloud.

After a few moments I looked up from where I sat on the ground at their beaming faces. They looked like two greek pictures of dryads, courage and joy.

As I sat and thought, a few foggy pictures of the old story, almost forgotten, appeared

And so with a reluctant voice, I began the tale.

The simple imaginary ideas formed concepts. Narrative lines had triple meaning.

My ideas raced through hurts not understood, worries that expounded, and disease that infiltrated.

Somewhere along the way Jesus stepped in.

And there He met me at my graves. He sat with me in the losses.

He helped me see that my greatest enemy I strive against was a lot closer to home than I thought…

She was myself.

———————

And so if I do publish the story, I hope maybe it can be a way for you to say goodbye where you didn’t get the chance before.

Or maybe though its poorly told downward slide to upward pilgrimage it will remind you of your own walk with Jesus through the graves.

Or maybe it can impart hints of the two rays of courage and joy that weave their way in and out of the story.

If only for a moment, I hope it will make your sun a little brighter or the tears a little lighter.

Or maybe if you have yet to walk with Jesus through the gravestones, or if you are going through a clouded season, maybe it will suggest to you as it did me, that the enemy to start with is probably the one staring back at you in the mirror.