Once Upon An Ending
Every classic story begins with the same four words. The words that signal for you to sit back, settle in, and prepare to be taken on a journey through the lives, spaces, and adventures of some character or characters with which the author hopes you fall in love, grow to hate, or cheer on despite their flaws and sins. If the author is worth their weight in ink, you’ll hang on every word until the soul satisfying final words that leave you with closure, contentment, and the cozy fulfillment that comes only from a vicariously lived adventure… “and they lived happily ever after”.
Disney princesses, fairy tales, and 90’s teen drama raised us to believe that no matter the obstacles or how differently the individual stories started, no family or friend interference could stop true love from happening. Even the poorest of the poor or the hardest of hard cases could get their happy ending filled with true love, career satisfaction, perfect homes with 2.5 children, and Christmases filled with snow and sparkling white smiles.
“We believed we could have it all as long as we had “faith, trust, and little bit of pixie dust”.
Oh, we might have some trials, tribulations, or hard times, but all would resolve itself in 90 minutes with just enough time for a shower before bedtime.
And then… adulthood happened. Now, I’m not sure how adulthood introduced you to its lovely story telling tactics, but mine read a little more “pit of despair” from The Princess Bride than it did enchanted castle from Beauty & the Beast. I felt betrayed by most classic authors and Walt Disney himself. I wondered if every little girl believed that Prince Charming was waiting around the next castle corner to sweep her away to a life of beauty and happiness where problems resolve with a quick Bippity Boppity Boo
If only life came with a magic wand wielding fairy godmother who could throw a few of the triple Bs around and make everything better. Real life is sorely lacking in fairy godmothers and overloaded with wounds, disappointments, scars, and pure…adventure. Fairy tales would have us believe adventure looks like swashbuckling pirates, sword fights with wizards, and good always winning. Well, friends…plot twist. Good doesn’t always win. Sometimes, it loses…hard. Swashbuckling doesn’t always lead to sailing off into the sunset with birds chirping and dolphins jumping.
Princesses sometimes cry themselves to sleep and Prince Charming occasionally watches the girl ride away with the court jester.
Life doesn’t resolve itself in 90 minutes or even 90 days. Our journeys look less like a yellow brick road and more like the roads carved from following the town drunk home. However, real life journeys do require wisdom, a resilient heart, and a whole lot of courage.
No matter how many times I’ve watched my favorite movies or how assured I am of the happy endings, I always cringe during the hard parts in the middle. Watching my favorite characters walk through the plot twists & turns, the fabricated losses & disappointments, I am tempted to fast forward to the resolution and contentment of the “happily ever after” crafted ending.
I. Just. Want. The. Happy. Ending.
No struggle. No hurt. No broken hearts. No disappointing losses. Just happiness.
Unlike the fairy tales moviemakers wanted us to embrace, life is full of hard seasons, hard paths, and hard decisions. Places where we are unsure. Moments when we are broken.
Journeying from “Once upon a time…” to “…and they lived happily ever after” is what creates us.
Our wisdom, courage, and resilient hearts are all born from the adventure of the middle parts. We become grateful for our blessings by living through the losses that we face. We develop depth of love by experiencing the ache of heartbreak. Sunrises bring more hope and sunsets more peace when we understand the strength that living the day requires.
The middle parts offer us experiences to create us and people to shape us in ways that cannot happen with the wave of a wand or the pressing of the fast forward button.
While we often cannot avoid the hard seasons, we can choose who we become in the midst of them and who joins us along the way.
Our secret hope may be for a fast forward button firmly pressed until moments before the credits roll, however, we will have missed the beautiful adventure of the story. The story is where we fall in love with the characters… where we discover who they are and what they’re made of… where we discover hope in the most hopeless situations… and where we cling to the belief that there are still parts of the story yet to be written. Our potential, our hopes, our dreams lie in the blank pages yet to be filled.
As much as we do not want to walk through the hard seasons of life, they are where we find who we are, who we want to become, and who we know will walk through every adventure alongside us. The hard seasons craft our story and its characters in the most beautifully painful of ways.
They chip away at the pieces of clay that do not belong revealing the work of art in the story that only the author saw prior to the first page.
The chipping hurts, shocks, leaves us in confusion and pain… but the big reveal at the end of each season shows us parts of ourselves that we otherwise would have never discovered. They reveal doors yet to be opened that we would have never noticed had other doors not been slammed in our faces. They bring people into our lives we would have never met had our paths not taken a turn or had we not been desperate for help.
Temptation would have us consider fast forwarding through our stories… or doing whatever we can to be just a viewer rather than a character in our own story. Some choose to avoid the pain by avoiding truly living. They believe the slumber of playing it safe will keep pain from awakening in their lives.
Yet, pain comes to collect its dues at the end of the life that is left unlived.
Regret is the pain we believed we could avoid by skirting the hard seasons and decisions.
But wait… there’s more. Plot twists abound. We have the ability to co-author our stories. We are able to take the hands of our people and face the hard paths & seasons knowing we aren’t certain where they will lead. Like Dorothy, we can strap on our slippers, gather our wisdom, our resilient hearts, and our courage and set off toward our goals. There will probably be flying monkeys along the way in the form of critical people trying to tell us who we are and what we should or should not do. We may even encounter the Green Jealousy Queen who wants to sabotage our very existence. However, the story is never dotted with the final period until we either give up or get it done. The choice is truly ours.
Don’t let someone else live your story and don’t leave your story unwritten because you’re afraid of the hard seasons. Allow who you can be to be discovered. Allow your story to be written. Find your people. Take the journey. And even if you have to walk through the season afraid, DO IT AFRAID.
You’ll find your story will outlast your fear.