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A Happy Story of Death

by Nick Hayden
December 9, 2016

Advent wreath – waiting for Christmas
ASSY / Pixabay

The Saturday after Thanksgiving we made the six-hour trip from Peoria, IL, back home. By the last hour, all the kids (and the adults) were tired and bored and ready to be done. I put on the Muppets Most Wanted soundtrack and we bounced to the ridiculous songs. (The “Interrogation Song” is simply wonderful.) I was caught up, as I often am at unsuspecting moments when lively music is playing, in an almost aching sense of joy and expectation.

And it hurt, because while I felt a sort of inexpressible life, I knew it would pass, that it would drift away, and that I could not hold onto it. Next time I listened to those songs, it would not feel quite the same. The joy was destined to be short-lived. It was, by its very nature, transitory–and that is partly why it ached.

And, yet, I think this ache might be one of the truest marks of real joy. In a broken world, among fallen men, what else could real joy be but the merest glimpse of what we were destined for–and still are, if we will accept Jesus at his word.

When one of my friends read my new short story collection, Behind the Curtain, he joked that I should call it “Happy Stories of Death.” In many ways, that’s a valid summary. The stories circle around the search for something beyond–like that glimmer of joy with which, if you could just capture it and hold onto it, you would be happy to live forever. But these stories are filled with death and madness and deceivers, because the glimpse comes amid pain and confusion and the source of it cannot be found, really, in this life.

I’ve told my wife that sometimes I think I only really have one story to tell, and that I just keep attempting variations of it. That story is faith, man’s struggle to believe, the journey to fill the hole within, the quest to find God. Take Obed, from The Unremarkable Squire, who finds he serves one he doesn’t quite know yet; or Strin, from The Remnant of Dreams, trying to save all his people by his own efforts because he cannot believe in God; or Fitzwilliam Fitzwallace, from The Isle of Gold, who desires not only a drink of water, but to taste the experience of everything within the Sea; or Calea, from The Well’s Orphan, who is afraid to die, but doesn’t know why she lives. Everyone is looking for something, in fiction…and in life.

I started writing this blog only wishing to somehow collect my thoughts from my Thanksgiving trip home. But now that I’ve come this far I find myself thinking on Christmas. The answer to all my stories, to all the searching, is found ultimately in the stable, in the child who is somehow God, in the immortal man willing to suffer and die, in God seeking us out first.

That is where my stories are wrong. It’s good drama to have your hero search and overcome. But we aren’t the heroes. We’re the rebels. We aren’t looking for him; but he has found us. And He has offered us Himself.

Someday we will have Him completely. We will know as we are known. But for now, in this still-waiting world, we have glimpses. A moment of glorious happiness, tinged by sorrow, upon a road trip is one of them. Because everything will disappoint until we are with Him; and then we will dwell in the fullness of joy forever.

This blog was originally posted at Works of Nick.

Melancholy Holidays

by Nathan Marchand 
December 2, 2016

grumpychristmasHolidays are often melancholy times for me. Not just Thanksgiving and Christmas, but most holidays throughout the year. The only one that had managed to avoid this stigma was Halloween, but as of this year, it has now been tarnished—my grandmother, Ruth Sitton, died at age 94 October 31, 2016. She was my last grandparent, so, you could say, I’m a “grand-orphan” now. You can read my tribute to her here on my own blog.

Sadly, holidays have either been the days marking tragedies in my life or they serve as reminders of what I don’t have. When I was 12 years old, my Grandfather, Max Sitton (Ruth’s husband, obviously) died suddenly two days before Christmas. He and Grandma Ruth had just finished eating breakfast at a restaurant before coming to visit me and my family, as they always did, before having the big family gathering on Christmas Day. For many years, my Mom had difficulty celebrating Christmas because she associated it with her father’s death. She kept expecting other tragedies to befall the family around Christmastime. Unfortunately, that did happen. Five years ago, I was dumped by my then-girlfriend over the phone two days before Christmas. She was the first girlfriend I’d had close to the holiday season. (more…)

Extravagance

by Nick Hayden
November 20, 2015

Nightdragon0NA0 / Pixabay

“If I were God, I never would have made procreation such a messy, intimate, emotional, painful affair. It’s crude and unclean and sometimes horribly unpleasant. I would never have made trees. I would have made lampposts. Goldfish, but not the sawfish, in my world; cats, but not the cougar; grass, but not the ivy. It is fortunate that I am not God. He enjoys the beastly disorder of forests and rivers and caves. […] And so we build hospitals and office building and laboratories to shield against the pain — and hide us from real joy.”

The above-quote is from a little known project that preceeded Children of the Wells by nearly a decade. It was called The Story Project and it was a collection of the fictional blogs from a varied and interesting group of fictional writers who lived together in a New England mansion. The above writer’s name was Vincent, and he lived in a meticulously spotless lab in isolation from others. He preferred to control his environment.

I’m no Vincent, but I feel the draw of ordering my life “just so.” I tend to want to use my time efficiently, to edit things repeatedly, to balance my checkbook accurately, to cross items off my checklist daily. And these things, indeed, are well and good.

But there is something that kills in these things, an instinct that grinds the edges off life and mechanizes it. God created the world in an orderly manner, but he did not create it as Henry Ford might. The universe might be compared to a cunning made watch, but it so often defies that easy description. There is a diversity, a wildness, a sense of surprise and head-scratching weirdness to the created world. You need not look far into space or deep into the ocean  or long through the aisles of Wal-mart to see what a strange cacophony of men and animal and galactic bodies we’re surrounded by day-in, day-out.

We miss something, I think, by isolating ourselves in safe little havens of calendars and Netflix and Internet-relationships. We are safer, but we are not better. For a writer and reader, it is like this: if the stories I create and consume draw me into myself, I have perhaps failed to understand. If they draw me out, I have grown wiser and better.

It is nearly the holiday season. It is nearly time to celebrate with some sense of indulgence because to celebrate is to overdo–to cook more food than is necessary, to decorate a little too much, to thank God that he gives us not just nutrients, but taste, not just the potato, but the genius to mash them and drape them with gravy.

And soon we shall gaze upon the Nativity and see a baby who is actually God, the Creator disguised in flesh, a wild, inexplicable extravagance–astounding, inconceivable, but not so out of step with the God who thought we must have both the jellyfish and the giraffe.

There is a beastly disorder to loving others, to living in the world as it is, in seeing the God of the universe in all he has made. It is not safe, and I dare say I am not good at it myself, but this holiday, perhaps you and I can embrace a bit of that messiness and enjoy well this weird, wonderful world all the more.

Halloween: A Scary Good Time

By Nathan Marchand
October 30, 2015

Me as Captain America blocking an attack from Catwoman at a Halloween dance party last week.

Me as Captain America blocking an attack from Catwoman at a Halloween dance party last week.

I love Halloween.

There are some Christians who might stone me—proverbially speaking, of course—for saying that. Many believers won’t have anything to do with the holiday because they can’t get past its occult origins. I can understand that…and yet I can’t. See, if you dig into the history of any major holiday, you’ll discover that it had unsavory beginnings until the Church “Christianized” it. Even Christmas and Easter, which Christians love.

But I digress. (more…)

A Writer Mom’s Reflections: Heartache and Hope

By Natasha Hayden
May 15, 2015

Natasha as Mama.

Natasha as Mama.

Mother’s Day is a special day, of course, a day to receive little tokens of appreciation from our children or to tell our own mothers how much they mean to us. But I’ve discovered, as a mother of five-plus years now, that there can be a bit of sadness about the holiday, too. Sometimes that sadness is because our mothers are not near or not even on this earth anymore. Sometimes it’s because certain hard memories are associated with the day or simply because we’ve been disappointed in the past. Often it’s because of our wants: our petty desires or our deep longings, both.

Mother’s Day comes with all these complicated emotions because it celebrates something that is life-changing and all-encompassing. Evidence of such change in my own life was that when I became a mother, I found I had a hard time writing stories about anything else, processing my reality through fiction. For example, I once wrote a story about a spy mother leading a double life (like Amira in Jaysynn’s story, though I cannot claim authorship of that); it contained bits of reality from my own life (not the spy part, sadly!). The short story I did write for CotW is also about a mother, one with regrets.

The story I am hesitantly sharing with you in this blog is one far more personal than those. I wrote it more than five years ago, during a time of my life when Mother’s Days were dismal, when the deep longing of my heart was to be a mother and when more than two years of trying ended in two miscarriages. It depicts pretty much what happened to me the first time I was pregnant, with only names and minor details changed (or cut for modesty’s sake). I wrote it to remember, and I give it to all the mothers who grieve and all the mothers who were meant to be but aren’t. It’s not happy. It’s not meant to be. It’s meant to make a connection, to let you know, if you have experienced loss or emptiness, that you are not alone. And while another happy, commercialized holiday passes us by, let’s be real a minute. Life–motherhood being just one aspect of that–is tough, and sometimes you just need someone else to shoulder the load a bit and hold your hand while you cry.

[Disclaimer: The story linked here may not be for everyone. It contains details straight out of my journal and is occasionally mildly graphic, from doctor’s exams to bathroom scenes. I believe I have censored the most offending sections and apologize if it is not enough. Read at your own discretion.]

Perhaps this seems like a strange story to share with you, our readers at Children of the Wells. It’s not that we relish telling depressing tales (right, Nick?). We’re more about reflecting all of life, ups and downs, about shining hope into the darkest night. As you read, you will find sadness, even despair, but we want our stories to reveal a way to live through and beyond it, something I’ve noticed the modern story often lacks. We aim to strike closer to the truth, which isn’t about attaining an ideal or fatalistically accepting what life hands you. Whether you read my personal story, linked above, or the fictional stories we create for CotW, you will find honesty, raw and aching but also beautiful, hopeful. A mirror of motherhood, I think, but also a reflection of the daily struggle of life on Earth.

Looking Back, Looking Forward

A new year is nigh, so we at Children of the Wells wanted to collect some of the thoughts on our mind as 2015 approaches. Enjoy a little look into our end-of-year psyches.

Natasha:

nat_profileThe best book I read this year was, surprisingly, not a YA novel but the biography Unbroken, which I also saw in the theater when it came out on Christmas Day. Just FYI, the movie is not at all exaggerated and, in fact, tones down what Louis Zamperini went through, surviving weeks on a raft at sea only to end up tortured in a Japanese POW camp. It’s just such an incredible story. If you haven’t read it yet, I highly encourage you to do so.

I also recently rewatched the classic movie It’s a Wonderful Life. It had been a few years since my last viewing, and I’m not sure I’d ever been quite so touched as I was this time around. Maybe it’s that I now have kids, I don’t know. I definitely see the world differently than I used to. George Bailey’s feelings of failure really resonated with me (I’m ruining my children!) while, at the same time, I could see the bigger picture and the personal sacrifices he made to help others. It’s so interesting to think of how the world we live in might be different with the total absence of even just one of us. One life affects so many, and whether that’s positive or negative is up to us.

Put these two stories together, one theoretical and one actual but both resounding with truth, and you have a powerfully inspiring and hopeful message. It’s a good way to end one year, putting the mistakes of the past behind you, and find inspiration for another. (more…)

Some Assembly Required

By Nathan Marchand
December 18, 2014

Tim tackled Christmas trees, and Natasha conquered Santa Claus (like a Martian), so I’ll talk about another Christmas tradition: toys.

I’ve been known to sometimes wander through a Wal-Mart toy aisle just to see what kids are into these days. I smile when I see that some of my old favorites like Transformers are still around. I remember a few years ago when I looked at one and thought, Kids today have it easy. Most of the toys were pre-assembled and had pre-applied labels/stickers.

IMG_2212I remember one Christmas when I was 11 or 12, all my younger brother Josiah and I asked for were toys for the Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad (an over-marketed Power Rangers knock-off). But it wasn’t the normal-sized action figures we wanted: we asked for the huge 13-inch figures that split into three vehicles. Josiah wanted Drago, a robot dinosaur, and I wanted Zenon, a robot who looked so much like Optimus Prime, Hasbro could’ve sued. (Yes, I’m a nerd with a remarkable memory). (more…)

When Santa Moves In

By Natasha Hayden
December 11, 2014

Santa Claus did not come to my house when I was a kid. I don’t remember having any feelings about Santa Claus one way or the other, actually, because we celebrated Christmas differently. I come from a rich Christian heritage. My grandfather on one side was a pastor. My Opa on the other side was a missionary and Bible translator. My parents are missionaries, and I grew up on the mission field from ages 7-16.

We had interesting Christmas traditions like opening presents on January 6th, the day on which the Church observes the wise men’s presentation of gifts to Jesus. (I do remember that being quite a trial. It might as well have been two months instead of two weeks!) My dad preferred anything but a normal Christmas tree. At least one year, we had a gigantic live wreath suspended from our ceiling by ropes, a sort of hanging advent wreath. And Christmas stockings? I had one of those one year. I didn’t know what to do with it except fill it with homemade presents I intended to give to other people. I’d empty it sometimes to see what I’d collected, and that’s how I discovered a little surprise from my mom that I wasn’t supposed to see until Christmas.

When we moved to Brazil, there wasn’t even any snow to get us in the festive spirit. Nope, just 90 degrees and 100% humidity. In fact, if we celebrated any Christmases in Brazil, I don’t remember them. I remember more the times we visited family back in the United States or even Peru, South America (where the one set of grandparents were missionaries), for the holidays. Christmas was a time when family gathered. What we did didn’t so much matter as being together. And you know what? In all that, I didn’t really miss Santa.

But now it’s different. (more…)

Now that’s a Christmas Tree!

By Timothy Deal
December 5, 2014

This year, it felt like an important part of my family’s Christmas died before the season even began. For the first time, our parents bought a fake Christmas tree instead of a live one.

peanuts

“Gee, do they still make little Christmas trees?”

Those who have grown up with an artificial tree can hardly understand the dismay my sisters and I felt by this betrayal. Our family is known for getting big, lush, beautiful, real Christmas trees that can occupy up to a quarter of the family room. For us, it wasn’t just about getting a tall tree; it also needed to be wide and bushy to accommodate all the ornaments five kids, two parents, and a grandmother can accumulate over the years. Visitors would stop in our family room, drink in the intoxicating pine aroma that candles and air fresheners can only wish to imitate, and gaze in wonder at its magnificent size and sparkling vision of lights, garland, glass balls, and tinsel. The experience would prompt many guests to say, “Now that is a Christmas tree.”

Yet nevertheless, in recent years our parents had warned us they intended to trade this wondrous experience for an artificial tree the first year our youngest sister went off to college. With their children either moved out of the house or increasingly preoccupied with significant others (or both), apparently Dad and Mom decided to sacrifice a longstanding tradition in the name of convenience and simplicity. (more…)

How I Expanded My Mind and Accepted Turkey Day

By Nick Hayden
November 20, 2014

Look, I’m no fan of turkey. I mean, sure, it’s tasty enough, but give me mashed potatoes, and I’m set. Always mashed potatoes, in a great big heap, with some gravy. And maybe some of that green bean casserole, officially the best use of green beans on the planet and most likely the reason they were invented in the first place.

Sorry–I got sidetracked. As you probably know, next week is Turkey Day, better known these days as Black Thursday. On the calendar it’s usually listed as “Thanksgiving,” but this is an antiquated nomenclature at odds with the more progressive capitalist (is that a contradiction?) view that understands that the fourth Thursday of November  is the first day of Christmas. (In a decade, at most, the gateway to Christmas will be Halloween, but a few shreds of tradition still hold us back. That, and most people don’t like to associate skeletons with Christmas, Jack Skellington excepted.) (more…)