“What are these fundamental principles, if they are not atoms?”“Stories. And they give me hope.” ― Neil Gaiman
Recently my family has been gathering earlier and earlier for bedtime. The lights still go out at the same time, but we start the getting ready process earlier-
“Can we read Magician’s Nephew tonight? Do we have time?”
Funny enough, you may have read those words as your mind speaks a child’s voice. Most nights, those words belong to my wife and me. Our kids join in the hope, too. How many chapters can we fit in before we fall asleep?
I lay on my side angled toward the lamp with the book in hand. One girl sits against my legs and another leans against my back. A few paragraphs in, she climbs over and onto my shoulders to get a better view of the pages. My wife sits nearby, blissfully unbothered by the weights of curiosity. I know I will be sore by chapters end, but nonetheless, I begin.
“This is a story about something that happened long ago when your grandfather was a child.”
“Exactly as he spoke, Polly’s hand went out to touch one of the rings. And immediately, without a flash or a noise or a warning of any sort, there was no Polly. Digory and his uncle were alone in the room.”
I close the book at the end of the chapter and look up to see hungry eyes on me. “Please one more chapter, Daddy. Just one.”
One girl wrestles the book from me and flips to the last pages. She wants to know how it ends.
This has been our routine. And when the events of the day derail our plans to read, we sadly look at the book on the shelf and anticipate the next time we can open up ourselves up to story.
Most of the time we parents use story as a means to get a break from our kids. “Can we watch a show?” the kids cry. Yes, please. 30 minutes. An hour. How about a longer movie? Anything to give me a break from the whining, fussing, and fighting.
Our recent family evenings have nothing to do with distraction, though. We discovered a hunger for story. If the human body survives on food, water, and shelter, the human heart lives on story.
I’m ashamed to say I needed the reminder. I gave much of myself to athletics in my youth. As a dad, it’s been one of the greatest surprises to learn my kids, too, love to dribble, throw, and win. In the madness of practices, games, and making sure everyone has water bottles and the right gear, I fell into old habits: Living and breathing sports to the neglect of something my heart (and kids) needed very badly: Story.
“Creatures, I give you yourselves,” said the strong, happy voice of Aslan.
Now ten chapters in, I have to hide the book each night so the girls don’t peak ahead. What a beautiful and necessary reminder of our soul’s appetite for Story.
Indeed a deeper wisdom seeks out Story. We want more than entertainment. More so we look for something eternal when we pile onto the bed as a family. We gather each night, before and with story, in great anticipation.
Together…
- We are looking for home.
- We bring our slumbering hearts that only a good story can awaken.
- We bring our disconnection and burdens in search of hope.
- We read to remember that our life, too, is a story. It is going somewhere. It has a plot and a point. It matters. And so we matter.
- Story reminds us to live in anticipation rather than expectation.
- We are looking for our selves. So we read to remember who we are, because you and I forget. Often.
- And we bring our existential questions: Will this story end well? Will our story end well?
- Together we enter story with earnest hopes of entering Story.
As Lewis so wisely reminds adults, “Someday you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”
Like the air we inhale and the food we eat, we breathe in and feed our heart with story. Because in the madness and craziness of life where truth seems lost or hidden at best, story reminds us and puts us in touch with truth again.
How might you pursue story and Story as a means to watching over your heart?
