When stories are truer than reality

On the flat screen on the wall (just right of the fireplace, just under the horse painting) flickers Shadowfax in the meadow, Rohan of the hills, and Eowyn in the great hall. 

Aragorn: What do you fear, my lady?
Eowyn: A cage. To stay behind bars until use and old age accept them and all chance of valor has gone beyond recall or desire.
~Lord of the Rings


And I sit on a couch of faded blue as the credits trickle down and Enya sings about the West, and I wonder—is this it? Is this life I have chosen all there is—to get up early, to work through the day as the sun brightens and fades, to go to bed early and sleep in the same bed as all the days before, to make enough money to buy the same food to live the same life to cry the same tears until all chance of valor has gone beyond recall or desire?

I cannot believe it.

For if life is less than my greatest dreams, if the truth about this world that goes straight to my soul is a liar, if Middle Earth has more inherit glory than Planet Earth—then fiction is better than reality, my God is not who I believe Him to be, and I dedicate myself to living in my made-up world:

Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things – trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a playworld which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play-world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia.

And with that decision, life opens to me—all of life—the life that makes this world as wild and breathtaking and terrible and beautiful as any Rivendell or Mordor or Shire. The battles just as great, the risk just as high, and the love just as real. The same cutting feeling of maia that causes me to dig my fingernails into my palms when Sam talks about the great stories, the same desire that makes me curl up and sigh when Eowyn goes to war—those stories only affect me because they were meant for me to live.

I don’t know how to live them, sometimes. But I don’t think that always matters so much, in the end. Because once you believe in the greater stories, the stories seem to then find you.

Aragorn: What do you fear, my lady?
Eowyn: A cage. To stay behind bars until use and old age accept them and all chance of valor has gone beyond recall or desire.
Aragorn: You are a daughter of kings, a shield maiden of Rohan. I do not think that will be your fate.
~Lord of the Rings

Gas station miracle

I suppose, to some, it would be a stretch to call it an adventure.

But it was to me.

It was just a gas station. A soundless Shell station on the south side of County Highway 22, with exactly six pumps, and it always had the lowest gas price of any station in the Chisago County area. Actually, I could never understand that, because it was out in the middle of nowhere, and if I were a greedy gas station owner, I would hike the price and force everyone to pay a fortune and then cackle happily over my piles of money.

But I wasn’t a gas station owner, and whoever owned this one apparently wasn’t greedy, because the place always had the lower gas prices on the highway.

And today I stopped there.

I’d always wanted to go simply on principle, because it looked like a pleasant place (as far as gas stations go), and it was inexpensive, and I’d driven past it many times—rather like the street vendor who offers you a newspaper so many mornings that one day you just buy it, because you feel obligated.

3 p.m. sun squinted through my filthy windshield (my grandmother would be scandalized, awful dirt), and the gas gauge was below ¼ tank. I couldn’t concentrate on account of this unforgivable sin, gaze flickering between snow-covered road and dipping gauge needle: it seems for as long as I can remember, Dad had told me to not let the gauge get below ¼ tank. Not in the summer. But never in the winter. In Minnesota, you could always needed gas, in case you got stranded or a snowstorm descended or you went <whoosh> out into the ditch because you were trying to adjust the radio and drive on ice at the same time and were stupid.

(Or because you needed gas for a car chase. That was my personal philosophy. Always have at least ¼ tank of gas so when the bad guys are after you, you can fly off on an epic 20-minute chase and still get away with time to kiss your true love.)

There weren’t any KGB agents behind me now, but I wasn’t taking chances, and my Shell station was up to my right. A few seconds later, the car is off, fuel cap wrestled away from its petulant hold on the car, and the pump is interrogating me: Shell rewards card? Zip code? Credit or debit? Car wash? Receipt? No. 55079. Yes. Good grief, no, do you know how expensive those are? Yes, duh.

But then, life switched.

Maybe you feel it sometimes; I’m getting more aware of when it happens. It’s when you suddenly look at the trees around you, and feel January through your jacket, and your necklace is cold on your throat, and you realize with a start, you’re in an adventure.

No one else is at the gas station, driven away at my approach—no people in a solitary place. The sun slants low, flickering branches with the magic of golden hour. The wind wakes up, and I am cold, but I don’t flinch, and the not flinching is important. A field (plowed, covered, waiting) is behind me, a forest (watching) in front of me, and it is strange. And new. And alive. And exciting and calling to something you thought you’d forgotten.

And the world is beautiful, with new life happening every moment, when you least expect it, if you allow yourself to feel when at a lonely gas station buying 9.4 gallons of $2.99 gas. 

Only humans have birthdays

7:43 a.m. 0 degrees. Christmas Eve. The dogs are eating breakfast. I wait for Riley to finish his kibble; I could stand and watch him chew, or pull The Horse Owner's Veterinary Manual off the shelf and read a half page, or fold three sweaters from the laundry.

Or step outside (where it is beauty incarnate).

Later my father would ask why I went outside—me? Who is always cold? Out in my pajamas and stocking feet?—and I didn’t have a good answer, other than I needed to feel alive. A 60-degree temperature drop in three feet and two seconds is enough to drive your thoughts to God, as happens to me, now, when I feel most alive. Cold. Pain. Tears. Joy. Sitting next to a Christmas fire so long your face burns hot or breaking a paper-thin Christmas tree bulb you didn't mean to destroy, or pinching out the flame of a candle with your bare fingers or trying to tear open a present that refuses to give up its prize—this is life, pure life that rushes your heart like zero-degree air.

So I stand outside and frozen concrete pounds through my socks.

4:54 p.m. 12 degrees. Christmas Eve. I swing my black-suede boots out of my dad’s blue Corolla and cold air freezes my skirt, black beads on white satin—outlines of flowers and leaves in swirl and sparkle. My father and I are silent, thinking of what I’d just read out loud by moonlight:

The Voice was and is God…
His breath filled all things with a living, breathing light—
A light that thrives in the depths of darkness…
It cannot and will not be quenched…

The true Light, who shines upon the heart of everyone, was coming into the cosmos… The Voice took on flesh and became human and chose to live alongside us… Through this man we all receive gifts of grace beyond our imagination… God, unseen until now, is revealed in the Voice, God’s only Son.

We had been silent a moment, and drove past snowed-in pine trees.

“What should I read next?”

This is the revelation of Jesus the Anointed, the Liberating King: an account of visions and a heavenly journey. God granted this to Him so He would show His followers the realities that are already breaking into the world and soon will be fulfilled…

“This is not the time for fear; I am the First and the Last, and I am the living One. I entered the realm of the dead; but see, I am alive for now and for all the ages—even ages to come.”

It is a candlelight service tonight—heat of flame and cold of snow and voice of God.

7:32 a.m. –14 degrees. Christmas Day. The dogs are eating again. I wrest open the sliding door smudged by dog nose prints, step over Anya’s soggy blue ball, and walk into the backyard onto the one patch of concrete patio not covered with snow. Wrapping my arms around my waist does nothing against the glass wall of ice I just entered—wake up! good morning! merry Christmas!

Earlier, sitting by the fire and the lighted Christmas tree before my parents were awake, I had seen on Facebook a friend post a picture of a cake with “Happy Birthday, Jesus!” written in green icing across its face—a family tradition, as proclaimed in the comments.

Beyond the mesh yard fence lies unbroken snow to the treeline. Happy birthday. I rarely think of Christmas as Jesus’ birthday—perhaps this is sacrilegious?—but today the air-torn cold won’t let me forget one thing: I am alive. I am human. And only humans have birthdays.