The Reality of Fiction

Thirteen weeks, three months to the day.

I am having a BBQ for DCH employees. Chad is in San Diego (where we were supposed to be some time this summer). I cried a few times yesterday because I miss him so much. He was having a wonderful day because he was so excited about all the fun his life has turned into. I swept the patio getting ready for the BBQ, the job I used to watch him do as I cooked from the kitchen. I am dreading cleaning up in the morning, alone.

Last night, I went over to P, C, and S R-L’s home to watch a movie with the bible study I’ve been going to. We watched “Stranger Than Fiction.” A movie that I never wanted to see and thought looked stupid. Turns out, it is a movie that I have to buy. Shockingly (yeah right) I was in tears. I related to the movie in so many ways. (There may be spoilers ahead, I don’t know—I haven’t written it yet.) In one sense, as a writer (I hate calling myself a writer—I don’t feel I have earned it yet—However, I call myself an eater, and I don’t get paid for that yet, either, so I guess I am an unrecognized writer), the movie was a trip. To imagine my characters trying to go through their lives with me dictating their actions and narrating their every move. Maybe it’s my God complex, but I love that idea—mainly because it seems to give importance to the people who live in my little worlds, gives their existence validation. Also, watching the film was fun in simply trying to imagine writing such a work. I think my brain would have had a stroke attempting to create such a spiraling, seamlessly connected tale.

I wish I could have blogged about the film last night in the height of my emotions around it, as it will seem cold and removed now, but I was too much of a mess last night and couldn’t face being on my own, so I blog now—however frigid and solid it might be. The movie seems to be a mirror of my life. There are those people who talk about how they have given up control to God, LET Him have their lives and LET Him lead it. Not me. Like Will Farrell’s character in the film, God is my author, and no matter how I seem to try to create my own outcome, I recognize (however ungraciously) that I have option in the matter. It is not by choice that I give my life to God and say, ‘Here it is, do Your will, Please show mercy.’ I know He is writing/has written my story (Which is saying a lot for someone whom adamantly rejects pre-destination), the only choice I have is to let Him and trust that somehow the story will be more beautiful this way. I know if Chad and I were characters in one of my novels, he would have left me, just like he did. It would need to happen to make the story more interesting, more meaningful, more true, more sweet, more beautiful—I am, sadly, a believer in pain often equaling beauty, at least in my writing—I hope and pray that in the novel God is writing He will find beauty in the fulfillment of the circle when Chad returns. Tragically, I know all to well how beautifully written a permanently shattered heart can be.