Lingering Questions

I'm studying the art of telling a good story.  It's helping me live with flair. 

Today, I read that every great novel needs mystery and conflict.  Otherwise, the reader won't turn the page.   As readers, we love and expect a good mystery and a grand conflict.  We want each chapter--maybe even each page--to have a lingering question.

But what about in real life? 

I think that every great life needs mystery and conflict. There's something beautiful and full of flair about the unresolved.  There's joy in the lingering questions.  Is it possible that mystery and conflict are written into our own stories on purpose to drive us onward?  All morning, I think about what it means to trust the Author within the mystery and conflict (internal and external) of my own life's journey.  Do these lingering life questions have a purpose? 

Mystery and conflict provide great motivation to continue on with hope and expectancy.  I'm actually thanking God for writing these elements into my own story.

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Journal:  What are my great life mysteries?  What internal and external conflicts do I need to resolve in my story?

When You Feel Sapped of Strength

Tree Leaking Sap

I think about sap today.  I'm standing outside the apartment, waiting for my fitness friend to accompany me to the gym.  I see the sap weeping out of the tips of the pine tree beside me.  I know sap.  It's the vital circulating fluid in the tree.  A tree's sap carries all the nutrients to every part of the tree, much like our own vascular system.

The sap must circulate and deliver the nutrients in a closed system.  I learn that this pine tree isn't supposed to leak sap.  A tree leaks sap when it experiences a wound or when excess pressure builds up in the tree. 

When we use the word sap as a verb, it means to drain vitality (as in, I was sapped of my strength).  I think about the reasons why we become sapped.  I think about ways we become wounded and what sources of pressure cause our "vital circulating fluid" to drain out.

A woman asks me today how I stay in balance.  She wonders how I find energy and how I refresh.  I think about sap.  You have to attend to where your wounds are.  You have to manage sources of pressure before you're sapped of strength.  I'm learning to circulate and deliver God's truth to every wound and every stress.

Living with flair means we know how to circulate and deliver what our mind and body need before we're sapped.

Wanting Your Story Told

I'm ordering a smoothie (raspberry and peach), and the young woman making it asks me what I'm doing for the rest of my day.

"I'm writing," I tell her.  "I have this idea for a novel, and I want to start it today."

She leans over the counter top and looks to her left and then her right.  "Do you have ten minutes?"

"Yes."

"I have a good story for you.  You'll never believe it, but it's true.  It's my life.  Maybe afterwards you will write my story."

I sit there drinking my smoothie while she recounts her childhood in Venezuela, her failed marriage at just eighteen years old, her dreams to become an artist, and what she's learning in therapy.

"I tend to become everybody's mother," she says.  "I'm not doing that anymore."

I thank her for her story, and she adds, "You can use all of this in your novel.  That's how it works, right?  You meet someone and they inspire a great story.  But I want to look good in it, you know.  Not like a crazy woman or anything."

I tell her I'll return for another smoothie on another day.  Maybe I will write down her story.  I'd like to know more about this Venezuelan young woman, wouldn't you?  

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Journal:   Who needs to tell you their story?  Do you have a life story that people might not believe?