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This past week, I was sitting in a hospital waiting room while my mom had cataract surgery, a minor outpatient procedure. I watched people come and go and, after a few hours, it began to dawn on me that people who arrived after I did had already left the hospital. The nurse had informed me that it would take about an hour, but as the minutes ticked by, I knew something was amiss. That moment when you realize that something is not quite right, that things are not going as expected, you have a choice: you can start to panic, imagining every possible horrific scenario, or you can choose peace. I knew that my mom was surrounded by capable health care professionals, so I said a prayer of trust and surrender and continued to read my novel. Shortly after that, a nurse came into the waiting room and sat down beside me. She said, "You mom had an episode during surgery..." Once again, I was faced with a choice: did I let anxiety or peace rule the day? I chose peace and smiled at the …
I like to read stories. I also like to write stories. I have done a fair bit of both and, over the years, I have learned a few things about what stories do and do not do. In essence, a story is a trajectory. It sets the reader or listener on a path toward something or someone. It has a beginning (a specific starting point in time), it has a middle (in which characters face various challenges, setbacks, and victories), and an end (which is not really the end, but an invitation for the reader to imagine past the last sentence). Stories are always partial and incomplete. They never tell it all, but they do set us on a particular journey. What stories do NOT do is seek to make a case for absolute truth statements. Stories do not prescribe a particular plan of action in order to achieve certain results. Stories do not give us universal rules and regulations. When we try to force stories to perform apologetic, didactic, or juridical tasks, we end up mishandling them. A story invites people…