CHAPTER EIGHT: YOUR STRUCTURED STORY: Ordering

The artist goes back to the chaos and the ways in which it is experienced, moment to moment through our senses, and pulls out bits and pieces of that sensual experience. The artist gives it back to the reader reshaped. In selecting and shaping and restructuring the sensual experience, the artist creates a vision of order for the reader, not as an idea, not as a set of principles, but as a kind of harmonic that’s set up in the reader, a resonance.

ROBERT OLEN BUTLER, IN OF FICTION AND FAITH

I SIT AT MY COMPUTER in my office, skimming the pages. This is it. I look one last time at the introduction and the first chapter and then scroll to the ending. I don’t know if I can read these words one more time. I try to imagine Kate reading these words, with her critical eyes and pen. The pages scroll before my eyes: My niece’s near drowning, then the barnacles and the close . . . Yes, I sigh. That’s it. The ending answers the beginning. And all the in-between, the questions I’ve been asking for the last few months: Have I ordered it well? Does the structure hold? Does it flow? My stomach quivers, my index finger hovers over the enter button, then answers for me. I hit “attach file” and then “send.”

I exhale, stand, grab a scarf and my trench coat, and tear out of my office door. I know where I have to go. In five minutes, I’m at Mill Bay Coffee, cradling a hazelnut latte and carving out spoonfuls of tiramisu made fresh that morning by Joel and Martine, the French chefs whose pastries fed me through multiple drafts of a memoir I never thought I’d write, let alone finish. Even if no one wants it, I’m proud of the work I’ve done. I’m grateful for all I’ve learned, page by page, and the tiramisu is awfully good today, but what will Kate think?

I soon found out. Kate sent it out into the world immediately after receiving it. And then it began. A steady stream of rejections from the major New York publishers over the next two months. They came in the form of very polite letters (yes, actual paper letters!) mentioning the writing, the drama of the setting, but “the memoir craze will soon be over,” they wrote, twenty years ago. (They were wrong.)

I took it in stride, sort of. I knew that rejections are the cornerstone of the writing life and that those who succeed are mostly those who persevere. My one comfort was my prescience over the rejections: “I knew no one would want a girl-in-fish-and-boots story.” Maybe Kate wasn’t such a hot agent after all.

But then there was a yes. From one of the “New York Big Ten” publishers. It was a hearty yes (and it was a double yes, including another book proposal I had shoehorned in: this a collection of dramatic stories from commercial-fishing men and women). Suddenly Kate was great, and she said I was too. My first memoir —and surely my last —would soon be in bookstores around the country. I quivered at the thought, then raced to the coffee shop again to celebrate.

Finally, the memoir story ends! And it’s a happy ending! (Sort of. I’ll tell the rest later.) Why am I starting this chapter with an ending? Because that’s where we are in the writing right now. It’s time to think about the three toughest chunks of our stories or our manuscripts: endings, beginnings, and the structure of the in-betweens.

You have stories on the page. You have scenes, the outer story, and you’ve written into the inner story, knowing the truth is beyond, beneath, and within the events themselves. You’ve wrestled with memories and whoever has shown up to fight you for them. Then, after discovering that inner story, you’ve shaped and rewritten your piece or several pieces. You’re seeing what to keep and what to let go. You’ve even written toward prickly people. Along the way, I hope you’re sharing your stories with readers in one way or another. In all of this, you’re experiencing the power of words to join and joint the bones of the past, to breathe air into those new-old bodies, and to march and saunter them into the present, with new beauty and wisdom to share.

At this point, it may be time to retrieve that four-letter word we shelved in the first chapter. Remember that scary word book? Some of you weren’t cowed at all. You knew from the start you wanted to write a book, and you’ve borne with me through these pages with enormous patience. (Thank you!) And some of you, like me, quailed before even the thought of it (What? Me? Book?). But now you’ve got all these stories in hand, and maybe there’s some kind of book here after all. Let’s consider that possibility, perhaps even work toward it.

Whatever you’re writing, whether it’s a book or a sheaf of stories or even a single, long story, we’re after order now, structure, putting this whole thing together. Even within a single story, there are often several moving parts. If you’ve created a sheaf of stories, how do you order them? Do you just start at the beginning, in the baby-blue nursery, and leap from one stake on the time line to the next, ending up at the funeral where your uncle Harvey and aunt Bertha stand next to the open casket, hats in hand, mumbling kind words about the dear departed while everyone eats fried chicken in the kitchen?

I started my first drafts of the memoir this way. Not cradle-to-grave, but that same measured march from the start to the finish. But straight chronology has some pitfalls. I knew it as I read my story. And you’ll know this the moment you pick up a story or a book that begins, “I was born in County Fair Hospital in Macon, Georgia, in 1932 and given the name Harvey Henry McHenry by my well-meaning parents. My first few years of life were blissfully happy, spent in our front yard with my sister and brother among the poppies by the picket fence.”

There’s a good chance you won’t make it past the first chapter, unless Harvey is your grandfather and you know ahead of time that right out of high school, he landed in the infantry as a sniper in Korea, where he met with a tragedy that marked him for life. Then perhaps, with enough shots of caffeine, you would skim through the long, slow parts to get to the good parts. Straight chronology can trap us in a narrative that trudges a listless reader from “first this happened” to “then that happened, then this happened.”

Most of us are not telling our stories for the history books or for the local museum, accounting for every bump, swerve, and trip along the long road of our lives —unless we have 500,000 Instagram followers, or we’re in a reality-TV show, or we’re historically interesting, which totally knocks me and probably most of you out of the running for a detailed biography or exhaustive autobiography. Your grandfather, though, may have led such a fascinating life that a straightforward account will do the trick. Go for it! Perhaps your life, too, can captivate us from beginning to end.

But remember, the real story we’re after is the inner story. The inner story is not the record of everything that has happened to you; rather, it focuses on a key theme and transformative event in your life: the death of your mother and then how you dealt with your guilt and grief. Your spiritual journey from the Pentecostal church to Catholicism, exploring the theme of belief. Helping your son through rehab and what you learned about true hospitality. I originally thought my memoir would be a detailed account of my entire life up until then but soon realized the impossibility of that. Not to mention the cruelty that kind of blow-by-blow would inflict on my readers. The inner story —my search for home in a strange land —was more intense and focused, and like all inner stories, it couldn’t be tied to a rigid time line.

Given the fluidity of the inner story, we’re going to have to make decisions about the order of the events, about the structure of our piece. Right now, I imagine a few of you are miffed that I’ve waited until now to talk about structure. Isn’t that one of the first decisions we should make? you’re asking.

No, I respond politely. First you must know what kind of story you are writing. We don’t choose a structure and externally impose it on our stories, especially when we’re not even sure what our story is yet. We write into and under and around the whole thing until we know the outer story and the inner story. Until we know, really know, what we’ve come to say. Then we look for a way to gather the threads of the one story or the several stories and fit them together so they make sense, so they move the reader forward with insight and energy.

How do we do this? For that first memoir, I asked myself this question aloud in my little shed over the dock again and again, with a touch of hysteria and chest-beating. Where do I start? How do I finish? And how do I keep my reader with me through all the in-between? In my innocence, I had no idea I would have to ask this again for every book written thereafter. (You mean, there’s no secret formula?)

Eventually, I decided to start at a turning point, as many memoirs do. I was wearily leaning out over the skiff in the middle of a long day of fishing. Days and nights blurred together as we worked the nets, week after week. Beside me, suddenly, a fin whale surfaced, black, serpent-like, sending a geyser of spray overhead, just a hundred feet away. I watched in awe. In my fatigue, I almost missed him. I wondered then, how much else I had missed that week, that month. What happened to that eager, fresh-faced, just-married girl who stepped off on the graveled beach of that Alaskan island just a few years before?

The moment immediately established the setting of the story and the tension that would drive the story forward. From there, my chronicle moved back and forth through time: forward into my life on this remote island, then a chapter that flashes back to my childhood, and all the surprising ways I was prepared for my Alaskan life. Then forward again a few more chapters through the early years here, and another flashback to events in my childhood. Like this, I zigzagged between past and present all the way to the finish line. The tension —would I survive this rugged new life and make it my home? —provided the energy to both hold the story together and propel the story forward, no matter the temporal switchbacks.

This is how we live, is it not? Time doesn’t behave for any of us. Don’t we know this already, how we fall from chronos time into kairos time at the mere whiff of Italian roast coffee, the memory of our grandmother hand grinding the beans she bought at Mr. Steiner’s grocery?

And haven’t we known since childhood that even if a story begins with “in the beginning” or “once upon a time” and ends with “happily ever after,” anything can happen in between? Madeleine L’Engle imagined that time could “wrinkle.” Einstein believed, “The distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”[38] The week that I write this, the first image of a black hole appears on screens around the world, confirming what physicists have long speculated, that time moves in more than one direction.

In the biblical view, too, time is complicated, layered, mysterious. We are time-bound beings —but we believe we shall live forever. We are time-bound beings who can map the steps of our faith in time, on a neatly ordered time line, yet God knew us and chose us before the world was even made.[39] We are time-bound beings, but we can move back and forth from present to past to future through our memories and imaginations. We’re instructed, in fact, to live in daily anticipation of the future, “when the times reach their fulfillment.”[40]

Time is a playground, a web, a wave, a mystery. We may begin writing through the stories in our lives chronologically. Reconstructing the order of events often helps us understand how things happened, even why. But in our later drafts, we can free our narratives from a strict account of time. Not only because of time’s own mischievous nature but, practically speaking, chronology alone is not enough of a force to propel our stories forward. We’re looking for something else, something more. What is it?

At this point, the question is for our readers. Because this is not just for us, is it —all this writing, all this remembering? We write our stories for all that we gain ourselves in the writing, but are we not also desiring to “love [our] neighbor”[41] —that is, our reader —through our words?

For me, dear reader (whom I love), this means that I’ll do my best to spare you the ugliness of my writing process. Over every early draft, I drool and cry. I snort-laugh, I smirk, I wail, I pray, and sometimes, I sulk. Those pages are smudged with mucus, saliva, coffee, and tears, as they should be. I don’t want to pass all of this on. I want to pass on my most crafted stories about this strange and complicated world. I want to give you stories that will matter to you as well as to me. I want to give you stories with energy and force, that compel you to turn page after page. That might even change your life. Don’t we all want this?

So, what will propel your reader through your story with interest? It’s not difficult to find out. You’re a reader: What do you want in a true-life story, in a memoir? (You’ll have a chance to answer this when it’s Your Turn!)

When I ask this in my writing classes, the responses are nearly always some version of these four qualities:

  1. 1. A likable narrator. (“If I’m going to follow a narrator around, he or she can’t be a jerk.” “I need to like her and care about her.” “I need an honest, engaging voice.”)
  2. 2. Escape/entertainment. (“I want sharp and vivid writing to sweep me off into the writer’s experience.” “I want a bit of escape. Like ‘Beam me up, Scotty.’”)
  3. 3. To learn something about human nature; about the life of faith; about a particular time or place. (“I want to finish the story knowing more than when I began.” “I’m looking for inspiration.”)
  4. 4. A sense of unfolding discovery. (“Don’t give me predictability.” “I want a sense of freshness and surprise that keeps me turning the pages.”)

I’m going to assume, dear reader and writer, that you’re likable. I’m going to assume your vivid scenes provide entertainment and immersion. I’m believing that your inner story, developed through WordSeeking and reflection, prompts learning and some kind of wisdom (without being too heavy-handed).

Which brings us to that fourth quality. How do we create a sense of unfolding discovery and surprise? As Robert Frost has said, “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.”[42] One way to open possibilities and invite surprise is to play with time. Here’s one way to juggle time.

We’re back in my living room at Harvester Island. It’s a gorgeous sunny day outside our room. The sun is spilling through the golden curtains. I can hear the rumble of a fishing boat as it passes. Twenty faces look at me, poised to write.

“So, here’s what we’re doing. I’m going to read a series of six prompts around a single theme. Here’s our topic.” I reach for a blue marker and write in cursive on the whiteboard:

For once, I want to tell the truth about when I lied.

I hear mild snickering behind me as I write the final word.

“Are we writing a confession?” Scott asks.

“It’s good for the soul,” someone quips.

Then Sue asks timidly, “What if we don’t remember ever lying?”

We all turn to stare at her. She’s blushing scarlet. “I mean, I just can’t remember anything right now.”

“All right, how about, For once, I want to tell the truth about when I stole?”

“Oh.” Sue looks at the ceiling for a second, then nods her head, relieved.

“Choose whatever bad behavior you want for that last word: lied, stole, ran away, cheated. I’m going to give you one prompt at a time. After each one, just write for two to three minutes. This is WordSeeking, basically. We’re after memory and ideas right now, not good writing. Ready?”

Half the class is poised over their laptops, the other half ready with notebooks and pens.

“Okay, here we go. What was the lie that you told?”

Twenty heads dip intently over their hands and computers. I wait until the movement slows and heads begin to rise. On we go, one question at a time:

“Okay, is everyone done? How did it go?” I look around. “Sue?”

“I like the way this exercise covered memories of the past and then imagined the future. I wouldn’t have thought to do that.” Sue has been a fiction writer. This is her first foray into nonfiction.

“I thought of all the little white lies I tell every day,” Tania offers. “Like, when someone asks me to do something, and I just kind of fudge on the reason I don’t want to do it. I definitely surprised myself here. But what do I do with it?”

“I told about scratching my name into a desk at school and then lying about it,” Amy says, with a lift of her eyebrows.

“I did two-for-one,” Scott adds, his voice light. “I lied about stealing a Clark bar at the store when I was, like, ten. Man, I really caught heck for that.”

We laugh. “What did you write about, Leslie?” Terri asks.

I’m glad she asked. I’m teaching this class, but I’m still a writer just like everyone else. “Okay, it’s still kind of embarrassing.” I sit down on the stool next to the whiteboard. “I wrote about lying to get into a movie theater. I had just turned twelve, but I only had one dollar. That was all my money in the world. And the sign said, ‘Twelve and up: two dollars.’ So I lied and said I was eleven. Guess what the movie was.”

Everyone looks at me blankly.

“The movie that I lied to get into was” —I pause for drama —“The Ten Commandments.”

We laugh. When we settle again, Scott raises a tentative hand.

“So, I’m confused. I’ve got a real mess here, Leslie. All these fragments,” Scott says from the corner, looking worried.

“Don’t worry. We’re not done! So you’ve got six pieces, all of which are connected thematically, right? They’re set in the past, in the present, and in the future, but they’re all connected by the inner story, which has to do with lying. So experiment now with moving these pieces around to fashion a compelling story. You don’t have to use all six pieces, but try to use at least three. Find a structure that works for your content. Remember, we’re looking for a sense of learning and discovery. So, let’s take about thirty minutes.”

It’s almost lunchtime, but everyone is absorbed in their story. At the end, each describes what they wrote and the structure they chose.

Amy wrote about a lie she told the principal in school. She used a straight time line, starting with her first lie, but she dipped into backstory and reflection along the way.

Tania wrote about all her little white lies. She started with the present, then flashed back to a memory, dipping into reflection, then ended with speculating about the future.

Gina alternated the past with the present throughout.

Sue created a bookend, beginning and ending in the present, but in the middle, focusing on a lie she told in the past.

Many structures are possible in every story we write. We have to decide what makes sense organically, given the content, and also creates energy to propel the story forward. Here’s one simple means of discovery: Print out all your stories, or if you’re working on a single story, print out the different sections singly. Then spread them out on a table and move them around. Try different sequences. What makes sense? How do your stories best fit and flow together? (I’ve done that even with the sections and pieces of this chapter, whose order and structure eluded me until the very last!) You might like the space between stories, wanting each one to shine separately. Or you can tweak the ending of one story and the beginning of another to create a smoother narrative arc.

After I’ve thrashed around for a while in various drafts and possibilities, when I’m ready for a ride out of the woods, I ask two questions of myself and this work:

  1. 1. What do I want my stories to make happen in the world?

    This question comes courtesy of Frederick Buechner, who reminds me of both the focus and purpose of each project and, more importantly, why I write in the first place:

    Write about what you really care about. . . . Write about what truly matters to you —not just things to catch the eye of the world but things to touch the quick of the world the way they have touched you to the quick, which is why you are writing about them. Write not just with wit and eloquence and style and relevance but with passion. Then the things that your books make happen will be things worth happening —things that make people who read them a little more passionate themselves for their pains, by which I mean a little more alive, a little wiser, a little more beautiful, a little more open and understanding, in short a little more human.[43]

    Maybe this will be your question too. Granted, a writer never fully controls how her words and stories will stir the hearts of her reader, but without some sense of your own hope and desire, your stories are less likely to achieve them.

  2. 2. What am I promising to my readers?

    When we’re stuck, when we lose our vision and energy, when we throw our pages under our bed and vow to fulfill our dream of becoming a lepidopterist or a surfing instructor instead of a writer, consider these calming words from novelist Morris West:

    You can’t tell or show everything within the compass of a book. If you try to tell or show everything, your reader will die of boredom before the end of the first page. You must, therefore, ask yourself what is the core of the matter you wish to communicate to your reader? Having decided on the core of the matter, all that you tell him must relate to it and illustrate it more and more vividly.[44]

There it is. We’ve promised something to our readers (usually near the beginning of the story). The promise is directly connected to the inner story we’re about to tell and our own purpose in telling it. All of that is what West is calling “the core of the matter.” It’s a touchstone for us as we write as well as a touchstone to our readers. It can be explicit or implicit. It can be a question or a statement, but it encapsulates the focus and purpose of your story:

As you write, paragraph by page by chapter, let each word illustrate “the core of the matter” more and more vividly.

Are you ready, then? I feel the need for a sassy cheer to send you forth. This part of the process, the editing and revising, isn’t for sissies. It can take a while. It’s easy to get lost. And you know, it’s okay to get lost. In every book and story I write, if I’m doing it well, I’m wandering in that dark wood for a while, not knowing the way out. It doesn’t matter how many books I’ve written. Writing is always a walk of faith that requires long days and sore muscles and weary hands. Because what we’re doing is immense and beautiful and significant. It’s worth our time. Your story deserves the best words you can find.

At this point in the book, you know more than ever how much your story matters. I hope your breath still catches in your chest when you know again that the God who twirls galaxies and counts the cattle on a thousand hills still pursues a single sheep named you. Maybe you’re beginning to believe it, that your story matters to you, that it matters to others —and that it matters to God. But maybe you are wondering if your writing matters to God. Or if you’re not a God follower, if your writing matters to the world and spheres you inhabit. Your word choice, your sentences, the structure of your stories —does any of this matter on the grand scale? Isn’t it enough to discover and then send out the truth of our lives?

I’ve been pointing to the path of truth since the start of these pages, but there’s a hitch and a caution. Sometimes we so believe in the truth of our story, we take shortcuts in our writing. We hope the truth of our message will outshine the sloppiness of our work. We hope the truth of our message will redeem the artlessness of our art. I’m as guilty of this as anyone. I’m making a plea for beauty here.

But what about Mrs. Lynchpin and the steady campaign against perfectionism? you protest. Aren’t you changing your story here? Who can remember and write under that prickly, impossible mantle?

Let me add one more layer to all that I’ve said before, because it is sweet and we need to remember: The universe is a multiverse of beauty, is it not? From the single-celled diatom to the trillions of galaxies beyond us, every shard is shot through with astonishing design. For the God seeker, we see not only God’s great love for both beauty and truth, but the immense value he places on words. His own grand narrative, his redemption story could have been told through lists and dry histories. Instead, it comes to us through human authors who wrote God’s truths in poem, proverb, parable, oratory, story, allegory, and debate, with words of force and elegance. The figurative language alone —metaphor, imagery, simile, allusion, symbolism —stuns us still. How does his story go?

In the beginning, let there be and there was; it was good, very good. Know that the Lord your God is one God, our Rock, our Shelter, slow to anger, of everlasting love, who spreads his table before me in the presence of mine enemies. My cup runneth over. And behold, she shall be with child and you are to call him Jesus, Prince of Peace. Whoever comes after me must take up his cross and follow, loving your neighbor as yourself, pouring out your life as a drink offering. Do not be troubled, my brothers. Not my will but thine on earth be done. Well done, thou good and faithful servant; happily ever after, even so, holy, holy, holy Lord Jesus, come.

In the midst of all this beauty and truth, doesn’t our story deserve the truest, clearest, brightest words we can find? So take your time. Write fast sometimes, but also write slow. Don’t short-cut across the field. Not all who wander slowly are lost. And understand, writing well does not mean you must clear your throat and write in a pretty-pitched voice. Don’t change your voice on the page. Write in your own distinct voice, in your own words as the incomparable you you already are.

And now, this chapter nears the end, but I haven’t finished what I promised: to say a word about endings. How do we end a story, a book (this chapter)? You must return to the core of your inner story and bring some measure of closure. In some stories, you’re answering the question that lies at the heart of your quest. Most of life is too complex to answer with a straight yes or no. Don’t be afraid of ambiguity. And trust your reader. Don’t summarize or repeat something you’ve already said. End with a light hand.

But the most important thing I have to say about endings is not how to write the ending, but when to write the ending. Write the ending at the end. Write it last, after all the writing and revising of your story has done its holy work on you. In every project, I finish standing in a new field, a new valley, some place I could not even imagine when I began. In the forgiveness book, fists became open hands gesturing into an open-gated country. When I began the Surviving memoir, I did not even know what I was looking for. After years of writing, in the midst of roaring seas, doubts, the claustrophobia of an island with no escape, I found a place to land. I discovered life-saving truths to stand on —and to end with. And I hoped maybe others, stranded, could find a place as well:

I sat on a distant beach on our island one morning. I was alone. I could hear the hum of a boat; two ravens sat on a cliff above me, spatting. I waved them away and could hear now the water licking its lips, and nothing more. Then —what was that? A click, no, a popping. It was all around me, a cricking and snapping as if the beach were waking from sleep, pores opening, tongues unsticking. I could see no movement, could not account for it at all. I waited, my ears tracing the pattern to the largest boulder on this part of the beach, about forty feet away. It was blistered in colonies of barnacles and mussels, blue mussels and thatched barnacles with tall volcano-shaped cones that are yellowed and look like fossilized teeth. I moved closer. I waited. There it was again. A barnacle, the beak of the barnacle, like a telescope in rotation was rounding the perimeter of its own shell, ticking the edges as it went. Then, scattered within my close range, I caught another tip, the orbit of another maw, and another. Now adjusted to these dimensions, the whole rock came alive with the diminutive circuit of these beaks. . . . I was struck by such vulnerability —no escape from attack. No escape at all. Such obscene limitations! I almost smiled as I understood. Here, halfway between land and water, was the barnacle, a creature that literally grows its own cliffed walls. His own form —given by God Himself —entraps him; it is his prison, his island. But I saw: It is also his mountain fortress, the very grace that sustains his life.[45]

Those final words purchased a hold. Yes, it was a slippery hold —but it was enough.

Your Turn!

  1. 1. What are some of the qualities that you look for in a life story? Make a list and discuss. Compare your list to the one in this chapter.
  2. 2. Read the two essays at the end of this chapter, “The Hands of Strangers” and “Of Bodies and Birds.” Consider the beginnings. How do the writers capture your attention? Consider the endings. How did they bring closure? As a reader, were you satisfied —or not? What could you apply to your own beginnings and endings?
  3. 3. How did both writers structure their stories? Did they successfully sustain your interest and keep you moving through the essay?
  4. 4. It’s your turn to do this fun writing exercise: Tell the truth about a lie! It can be done quickly, in as little as twenty minutes, or you can take your time. (Feel free to use the WordSeeking method here.)
    1. a. What was the lie that you told? (Or choose another iniquity: when you stole, cheated, hurt someone.)
    2. b. Where and when did you tell it?
    3. c. Why did you tell it?
    4. d. What’s the first lie you remember telling?
    5. e. Name at least one lie that someone told you that impacted you —for good or bad.
    6. f. Can you imagine a time in the future when you might need or want to tell a lie to your adult children?

    Now choose at least three or four of these pieces and experiment with different structures. Time can be the organizing principle, but the inner story here, something about telling truth and lies, may need another kind of structure. Experiment by moving pieces around. This is your playground. Have fun!

THE HANDS OF STRANGERS

Joy Ng

Ronald McDonald sat upright on the wrought-iron bench just outside the front door. The primary colors splashed across his composite body shone in the sunshine. His painted smile belied the reality of this place we were to call home. My trembling finger pressed the doorbell. A kind, professional woman answered; she was expecting me. I didn’t hear her introduction. Her words of welcome didn’t register in my brain. I watched myself being escorted through the large automatic front doors of the Ronald McDonald House near Seattle Children’s Hospital. The director herself was giving me the grand tour.

We began in the lobby. Nemo swam contentedly in a giant aquarium with his sea-creature friends, oblivious to the pain in the little faces that peered through the glass walls. The aqua-colored chairs were set in groupings, as if assuming residents and guests would pass the time in pleasant conversation. The counter at the reception desk held baskets heaped with treasures from well-meaning supporters, dropped off for the less fortunate children and their families who made their temporary home in this place. There were hand-knit hats to cover bald heads and beautifully decorated greeting cards, as if frazzled parents might have time to correspond with their now far-distant, normal lives. There were tickets to baseball games in the very best seats at Safeco Field and passes to the Woodland Park Zoo. When would Colin be able to go to a game or frolic at the zoo?

Miss Director continued the tour. The laundry room had twenty stacked, large-capacity washers and dryers, extra-strength laundry detergent, and bleach. Bleach and hand sanitizer were everywhere.

I watched myself follow her into the common kitchen. Everything was so clean. Teams of volunteers came often to clean. We would have our daily chores, too, Miss Director explained. Ours would be to clean the laundry room, empty the lint filters, wipe down the appliances, and sweep the floor.

“Here is the toy room, the movie room, the supply room, the playground. It is our goal to provide families with everything they need so they can give their full attention to their child,” offered Miss Director. “Your room is right here, number 152.” She opened the door and handed me the key. She clearly felt pleased and satisfied with the facility and support they were providing for needy, unfortunate people. Who were these poor people who needed help? Surely it wasn’t me.

We were a happy, middle-class family. My husband, Jimmy, and I lived in Kodiak, Alaska, and all our children and grandchildren lived near us. Our two oldest girls were married, and we had five precious grandchildren. Our baby, Sarah, was eleven years old. She was the caboose, born when Suzanne was eighteen and Jenny was sixteen. We had just purchased a bigger boat, one that could hold all twelve of us at the same time! The grandkids were always at our house. The sign hanging in my ever-overflowing mudroom reflected the joy in our home, “Grandma’s house; where cousins go to become friends.” It was easy to say, “God is good.” I liked my rose-colored glasses and the belief that we would all live happily ever after, together, on this beautiful island in the North Pacific.

Just a few days before, I had taken the children for a short walk to Spruce Cape for pictures. The abundant wildflowers were in full bloom —lupine, chocolate lilies, wild geraniums, Indian paintbrush, forget-me-nots, and fireweed. I carried two-and-a-half-year-old Colin. He didn’t want to walk. He tried to smile for the pictures, but his smile was crooked and forlorn. He had an appetite. He didn’t have a fever. He did have a lot of bruises, but what two-year-old doesn’t have bruises? At dinner that evening, with a houseful of family and out-of-town guests around our table, Jenny wondered aloud, “Should I take him to the clinic?”

The next morning, Sarah and I went with Jimmy for a ride to the rocket-launch complex. We enjoyed the day walking from the command center to the recreation area. We cut through the brush to avoid the buffalos on the dirt road. On the beach, we looked for jewels, glass weathered smooth by Kodiak’s rough surf. We were totally unconcerned, completely happy.

When Jimmy had finished his work, we began the hour-long drive back to town on the bumpy road along the rocky coast. We chatted about the wildflowers and the buffalos and our beach finds as the sun sparkled on the sea, lighting up the white mountains. There was hardly a cloud in the sky; it was a rare day in Kodiak.

Jimmy’s cell phone interrupted our conversation. The message was short and sober, with no explanation. “Meet Jenny and Colin at the ER immediately.” The rest of the ride to town was somber. No longer did the sun seem so bright. In the quiet of my heart, fear loomed. I cried out to God, but I had no words.

Jenny had taken Colin to the clinic that morning. A perceptive nurse practitioner had ordered a blood test because she didn’t like his color. The unpleasant procedure completed, Jenny went on with her busy day, running errands and mothering three small children, until the hospital called.

We entered the tiny cubicle at the emergency room of Providence Kodiak Island Medical Center. Colin, lying on the examination table, looked so little, so pale, so fragile. The glaring lights and stark-white walls were a sharp contrast to the warm earth tones of our happy home. Dr. Smith stepped into the room. I remember that he looked so very sad. He explained the results of the blood test to Jenny. She responded, “What could it be besides cancer?” He shook his head sadly, and a tear ran down his cheek. I remember that tear.

Suddenly, we were a cancer family. Colin’s bones were full of leukemia. Jenny took my arm and pleaded, “Mom, don’t leave me.” I nodded.

Suzanne hurriedly packed our bags and met us at the airport. We left everything in her capable hands —our house guests, our responsibilities, our precious eleven-year-old daughter, Jenny’s four-year-old son. I knew our friends and family were praying. I was thankful because I still didn’t have the words.

The next few days are a blur of medevac flights, tests, procedures, pokes, and strangers. I stayed at Seattle Children’s Hospital with Colin. The staff explained the protocol, the plan to attack the leukemia. Colin had a good chance of survival. A good chance? The treatment would last more than three years. Three years!

Now, I watched myself get the introductory tour. I was the poor lady who needed help. It seemed so foreign to me. Jimmy was in the business of solving problems and helping people. I was the wind beneath his wings. I was the one who knew the answers, met the needs, quoted the Scriptures. We didn’t need anything. Everything had changed. My pride was shattered. I was broken, needy, fearful.

Actually, not everything had changed. God had not changed. Over the next three years, my perception of his goodness would change, though. I would learn that God’s goodness doesn’t depend on my circumstances. He would be there in the night when Colin cried in pain or raged from the steroids. He would be there when I was lonely and homesick for Sarah and Jimmy and the way things used to be. He would be there when new friends died, friends who had become so important and so close so quickly because of the cancer journey we shared. God would grow my faith and teach me how to humbly accept his help, even from the hands of strangers.

OF BODIES AND BIRDS

By Michelle Novak

I knelt in the swamp, mesmerized by the creature on the shrub. His strange contortions enthralled me: He was emerging from his exuvia —breaking out of his outer shell, undergoing the change from water-based nymph to fully adult dragonfly.

I watched for more than hour. It looked excruciating, bone cracking, the outer layer splitting along what we might call the spine. I understood entirely how this felt: It mirrored my own bone-cracking transformation to wholeness.

I had always been athletic and energetic. Even as I approached fifty, I still led a vigorous life and was untroubled at the thought of aging.

Until one day. Without warning, my neck swelled up, became hot to the touch, and my head fell over. My neck could not support my head. Afraid to move, I slept that way in a chair only to wake up the next morning with my head rammed hard onto the opposite shoulder, along with a spine-cracking sensation and pain I couldn’t begin to describe.

My head never went back.

I was diagnosed with systemic dystonia, a complex neuromuscular disorder for which there is no cure and very little in the way of successful treatment. The dystonia affects almost every muscle in my body, with constant tormenting spasms in my neck muscles and surprise spasms everywhere else, twisting my spine, wringing it from top to bottom. It rapidly progressed, bringing with it a deep fatigue and a violent tremor in my hands and neck. I had no idea how much I’d be able to do, but I knew my active life was over.

What was possible for me in this new life, this new-old body? If this was how I was going to age, I at least wanted peace of mind in the midst of it. That meant I needed something to study. I’ve always been active both in body and in mind. I love studying languages and have gained proficiency in several living and dead languages, which I use to translate ancient texts, particularly the Old and New Testaments. I knew if I was going to survive this dystonia, I needed a new mental challenge, but I could only study for short periods. I also desperately needed something to keep me moving. Even the little movement I could tolerate was crucial to keeping as healthy as I could.

One winter morning as I rummaged through my books, I happened upon my mom’s old bird guide. The cover was gone, and it had seen much use. I smiled as I fingered through it, remembering the first time I picked it up as I visited my mother one sunny spring day.

We had been sitting together on the deck when two male hummingbirds appeared at the feeder. It looked as though they were fencing with one another. My mother described the drama she had been watching.

“Those two have been going at it all day,” she said with a smile. Then, “Do you hear that song?”

My eyes followed her pointing finger. A shrub, under her description, slowly revealed the lovely song and impossibly red plumage of the male scarlet tanager.

“Later,” she told me knowingly, “the heron will visit the pond for dinner.”

Sure enough, a couple of hours later, we both marveled as a great blue heron made a gorgeous silent landing into her pond —just as she had said.

We looked at each other wide-eyed and giggled. I had never seen my mother like this: her mind vibrant, her sparkling eyes so fully invested in her place.

Her radiant joy remained in my memory as I closed the book.

Then I remembered something else: By then she, too, had developed a spastic rigidity in all her limbs and lost most of her ability to move about safely. But she was so rejuvenated when watching or talking about the birds.

I made a decision. I got a couple of feeders and put out some seeds. Soon the birds came —first the usuals, chickadees and titmice. And then woodpeckers, which fascinated me. By spring, I had an aviary that only an obsessive-compulsive, twisted central nervous system could dream up! The yard was full of new birdsong and vigorous life.

Most of my outdoor time now was spent slowly working through each feeder, moving, filling, and cleaning it. I experimented. I started talking to the birds, and they began to come closer, forgiving the twisted body and maybe even the twisted mind of one who talks to birds.

I learned to listen to the incredible arias of bird language, as they discuss, announce, and proclaim their intentions for their every movement and activity.

Many nights I study about them. And since my disease requires me to sit for hours at a time every day, I’ve learned to observe them in their own space through a disciplined, almost athletic stillness, a great accomplishment for someone whose muscles are still yanking, twitching, and spasming.

Now, every day a world of creatures alight in my flawed garden to be tended by a wracked body. I know what I look like. I move like someone twenty years older. But the creatures come. They stay. I’m charmed, and I feel deep affection for what I never noticed when I could see straight ahead.

When my head was permanently wrenched to the right by the unyielding spasming of many neck muscles, my eyes were recast. What was peripheral vision has become my central vision. Only a twisted body can know it and navigate the world by it.

The direction of my life has been realigned as well. I move sideways. I move slowly, with what might be seen as excruciating deliberation to those who only see straight ahead. But the best part is, I see small. I see slow. What I used to blow by in fast hikes, I now stop to examine, write about, photograph, and consider. That’s how I met my dragonfly.

And my chickadee. At the end of May, as I was filling a chickadee feeder, talking as I worked, as was my custom, a chickadee landed on a branch just a few inches from me. He looked at me, his head as cocked to the side as the dystonia had tilted mine. I slowly raised my hand, asking in a soft voice, “Would you like a seed?”

In a moment, he flitted into my palm. I liked the soft pinch of his feet, and he seemed to like sinking into the flesh of my hand. We looked at one another with the same long, quizzical gaze. A few seconds later, he lit from my hand to the tree. He came because I held my hand out to the birds from January to almost June. In my old life, I would never have had the patience to wait and be still.

As it is with everyone whose soul is hidden in Christ, my brokenness has been redeemed, and I am whole. I’m twisted but whole. I know who I am: I am a helpless creature who must wait on the Lord for every good thing.

And he has cared for me in my new state and allowed me to care for others. I have a pair of robins nesting in my yard that come when I call them. I named them as Adam must have when things were new and slow. They wait for the food I give them. They drink and bathe in the water I pour out for them. They frolic and nest in the trees and grass I tend for them. I’ve finally learned why the birds made my mother so joyous, even in her pain and immobility.

And in these creatures, I see a new world coming when my body is made as whole as my soul. In that day, I will crawl out of my broken exuvia and stand erect to feed my chickadees with strong, steady hands.