Saturday, November 13, 2010

Lesson: The Plotline Problem

I've been writing ever since I can remember. Hidden somewhere in my boxes of books, next to textbooks and journals, are composition books filled with stories going as far back as three years old. Mommy took dictation as I told my stories and I went back later and illustrated with my markers and crayons. I may not have a very talented imagination, but it is very active nonetheless.

Naturally, an imagination like mine has affected in no small way how I view the world. I see life like a story. Did you ever read the Choose Your Own Adventure books? I've read almost every one of them, at least the ones that were available in my early teens. Life looks like that in my head, a string of plot elements tied together by the choices I, as the main character, make. I think that mindset is part of my problem solving process. I can make a clearer decision when I view it as a story that I'm writing, when I can separate myself from the situation.

Here's the problem: I cheated on the Choose Your Own Adventure books. I would keep my last five choices marked with a finger. It would have been more, but I needed the fingers on the other hand to turn the page! If one of my choices ended badly--in death, defeat, or the compromise of something I had to protect--I would flip to the last choice and try again. If that didn't work, it was back to the one before that. Eventually I would get the outcome I was looking for. Hooray for me!

Needless to say... real life does not work like that. The adventures I choose stick. The plot changes I make to the ongoing story in my head are not something I can go back and revise at the end of the chapter. And the thing that is absolutely the most frustrating to me: I am not the only author of this story. Other things can make changes, too. It's maddening! Sometimes I just want to sit back and say, "No! This is my story! That's not how it's supposed to go!" I've actually tried that before. It didn't work.

Here are a few examples of things that didn't quite go according to the synopsis I had worked up for my autobiography: last year, one of my best friends decided she no longer wanted to be part of my life. Five months ago, I blew up my car engine on the side of the road, wrecking my carefully planned savings budget. And last week, my husband came home jobless. I'm sure this sounds like a very whiny paragraph, but I don't mean it that way. I'm just trying to illustrate some of the ways that I found out I'm not the one in charge of my own story.

So what am I supposed to do about it? I'm trying to craft a beautiful life story but I keep losing control of the pen. There comes a point (that point is now) when I have to realize I'm not supposed to be writing my own story. God is the one writing my story--all of our stories. He's been writing stories since the beginning of time--the Bible--and He's a lot better at it than I am. He is the master of subtle twists, continuous threads, dramatic climaxes and perfect endings. He knows how to use a negative plot element to thrust the glory of the resolution further into the light. How blessed I am to be a character in his literary masterpiece! Because
"God is not the author of confusion, but of peace" (1 Corinthians 14:33, KJV) I can rest assured that He has it under control.

That probably won't stop me from imagining my life as some epic saga, and it definitely won't eliminate my frustration and distress when things don't go my way. I'm only human after all, a human with the curse of pride and the gift of a vivid imagination. But it will certainly remind me when I need it most that I am but a character, a being formed of ink on paper, not the one holding the pen.

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