I love stories – how they take me out of my brokenness into hope stories. Literature from the 1800s to the early 1900s was always my favorite – goodness pevails more often than not – stories end on hope and faith walked out more often than not. 20th-21st century literature isn’t that way – more often than not ignobleness wins, hope fails – and it just bottoms my heart out. We weren’t created for for hopelessness and faithfulness.
That’s why the hope and faith story is so important.
“If you want to change someone’s life, tell a story”
-Billy Graham
Fairy tales- I love them. My favorite is the Goose Girl. Fairy tales gave me hope growing up – that goodness prevailed, that I was not alone in my suffering – whether that suffering was caused by others or myself.
The Grim’s Brothers are not faint-hearted stories. They were required reading by me this summer for my youngest who doesn’t like reading. He was drawn in to the short and long stories, the guts and gore, the mind-puzzlers, the noble and ignoble. There is much in them for boys – but – there is much in them for us.
These fairty tale stories. I’ve decided many of them, like the Goose Girl – are about how God never abandons us or forgets us.
A few years ago, in The Goose Girl Unveiled, I wrote (I hope you don’t consider this cheating – but I really wanted to include it):
All fairy tale princess in the Kingdom face grievous challenges. Many have fathers, the king, or if they are no longer alive, they provide protectors who leave no stone un-turned, no effort exhausted. The princess is never forgotten nor is the pursuit lessoned to reclaim His child.
The Prince, much like the princess’s honorable father, often saves her, whisking her from the grip of torment, isolation, a false-sense of abandonment. The tormenters are destroyed – and she is returned to her rightful place in The Kingdom.
A true princess loses not her nobleness during these fierce challenges. She cries sometimes, feels saddened, feels lost. But she still acts nobly.
God is like that. He provides. He leaves no stone unturned. He never gives up. The fairy tale princesses are always provided for and their futures are secured. We really are not any different from those Grimm’s Brother Girls! We just think about ourselves differently – and that is what needs to be changed. Do you see yourself as God sees you?
We have our own fairy tale stories that need telling, stories of soul blood and guts, heart-break, injustice – but it is in the saving, the Knight in Shining Armor who is our Savior – for that we finish the story – read all the way to the end – worth enduring the suffering – because in the end, we are saved by the most perfect, faithful man who ever lived.
Some people might wish you’d just shut up. There are people like that.
But we’re called to tell our stories. Where philosophy, logic and history fail – real life stories of a real life KISA can encourage hope and faith.
Are you telling your Fairy Tale Story? It just might change someone’s life.
Blue Cotton Memory 