Alternate Endings

When I was fifteen, a boy broke my heart. If this were not my first ever blog post, I would now insert a little, blue link to an entry called Death to Dating. But I'll spare you my philosophy on that for now. I mourned my loss for an appropriate length of time. Then I discovered an amazing balm. I rewrote the story. I sat down one teary afternoon with a yellow legal pad and a black Bic pen, and I turned the whole saga into my first piece of fiction, wherein the girl gets the guy and he ultimately gives her the world.

And, thus, I became a writer. Writing is dangerous business. If I spout off some craziness in my own living room, or even shout it on a city block, few people will be bothered. They will soon forget what I said, if they even heard it in the first place. If I write something I later regret, I can never take it back. Years later people can say, "Oh yeah. You are that lady who thought..." (Just fill in the blank. I'm not taking any risks today.)

So, I enter Blog World with some trepidation. I've enjoyed my identity as Occasional Commentator on several other blogs. Authorship brings a whole other realm of responsibility. I'll do my best to add something useful and positive to the cyber-conversations. If you stop by again, you will learn I'm a generally positive person. I'm a direct descendent of The Nicest Lady in the World, also known as my mother, and I generally believe in happy endings whether I write them or not.

According to Thoreau, it is vain "to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live." That makes sense to me. Unfortunately, some people have lived truly terrible lives and have then sat down to write dark, despairing stories as a result. For some reason, those stories are often counted as great literature while stories about honor, purity, and right living are considered less important or even frivolous. As I enjoy my sixth decade on this lovely, little planet, I find I prefer the latter. Maybe I'm simply naive or too simplistic in my worldview. But I prefer to drink from the glass half-full.

I probably tend toward this view because my own life has gone this way. Despite the foolishness of my own heart, God has captured me. I've still had my share of heartaches along the way, but together with my husband, our children, our grandchildren, and a host of family members and friends I am caught up in what author Ernest Gentile calls The Magnificent Obsession of knowing God through His Son, Jesus Christ. And this is the true source of my tendency toward happy endings. As my husband likes to point out, "I've read the end of the Book. We win."

Here is the guy who ultimately gave me the world surrounded by several of the shining stars in our universe.