Hello, Lovelies.
I emerge from the great void of sleeplessness with yet another deep and slightly personal pondering of a serious and philosophical nature. I don’t know why this only happens when I’m tired. Side effects of lunacy. I’ll figure it out one day.
Anyway. It’s time for another 2 AM talk with Sarah.
I’ve been thinking about the subject of pain.
(There’s your abrupt and slightly morbid topic-switch for the day.)
Because whether you’re male or female, ten years old or twenty, elf, goblin, orc or hobbit, there will come a time in your life when you meet pain. And I don’t mean pain as in dropping the stapler on your toe kind of pain. (Though we really shouldn’t discredit that sort of thing—I am determined that not even a ton of concrete hurts so much.) I’m talking about heartbreak. Grief. Depression. Despair. The kind of pain that worms down into your soul, leaving you awake at night and challenging every belief you’ve ever had about life and God.
Some draw closer to Him through it. Some push Him away. But at least once, you’re going to find yourself wondering:
Is there even a point to this?
And will it ever end?
I know what that’s like.
And I used to lay in bed at night, looking toward the future and only seeing darkness. I didn’t think it would ever end—and I certainly didn’t think that it had a purpose. But then one night, when I was fifteen—still a relatively new writer and fledgling Christian—God brought me to realize something through writing, something that blew my mind and exploded my entire perspective of life and grief.
I call it the 60 Page Theory.
As a writer, I understand more than most about the components of a good story. I know that characters start out with a miserable beginning, and end with a happily ever after. There are generally a good deal of swords, fair maidens, and nasty dragons in between, but nothing is more important than that horrible beginning and that wonderful end. One is incomplete without the other. You need the bad to get to the good. You need to break the character before he can become whole.
It sounds funny, saying it that way, and terribly paradoxical. But it’s true. And we, as the reader, know right from the get-go that everything will turn out alright.
Sometimes we forget that the character isn’t so well-informed.
The Chronicles of Narnia, for example. Those four Pevensie children had a pretty bad time of it. Yanked from their home by a world war that had already claimed their father’s service, they were sent away from their mother (and their entire way of living) to go stay with a man they’d never met before, not even knowing if they would ever see their parents alive again.
That’s rough.
But look at what happened because of it. If it hadn’t been for those terrible circumstances, if they hadn’t been taken away from their mother and dumped with a stranger, Lucy never would have opened that wardrobe door. There would have been no Narnia. No Aslan. None of the wisdom that came from ruling a country, none of the joy derived from having so many faithful subjects and loving friends.
No redemption for Edmund.
Yes, they had pain in the beginning. But that pain was a doorway. And though it was impossible for them to know—or even imagine—at the time, they only had to wait forty pages, or fifty pages, or sixty.
Sixty pages. And then everything suddenly makes sense.
While we’re caught up in our sorrow, it’s way too easy to look ahead and only see this never-ending road of grief. But despite what it sometimes feels like, we don’t know the future. We only see the right now—the immediate pain, the immediate present—and we can’t know that what’s happening right now is merely the bad beginning that will bring us to the happily ever after.
Because all the while, God is standing beside us. And He’s saying, “Sixty more pages. Read sixty more pages, Sarah, and I promise, you’ll understand.”
You need the evil-stepmother to meet the prince.
And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. ~Romans 8:28
Anyway. There’s my deep say-so of the week. All hail the coming of March, and don’t drown in glitter.
~Sarah
The Sarcastic Elf 
First of all, YAY FOR BEING HERE RIGHT WHEN YOU FIRST POSTED!! Second, thank you for such a beautiful post. I really enjoy your sarcastic writing, and I enjoyed reading your deep and thoughtful posts as well. (As rare as they may be.)
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Girl, you literally commented five minutes after I posted. Just… HOW. 😂
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*grins* ‘Cause I’m a special girl who’s worldhopped (and absorbed abilities) so many times I can’t even remember what planet I originally came from.
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This is so true, Sarah. It’s so easy to forget that we just need to get through the hard times so thanks for this wonderful reminder. 🙂
*drowns in glitter*
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*hauls you out of the glitter*
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This was a really deep post. I really like this. 😃 Thanks for it!
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That. Was. Beautiful.
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AMEN TO THAT.
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Book wisdom is always oh-so relatable… ❤
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Love this analogy. And the title! “Baran’s Six-Page Theory.” (Yes, I added the “Baran’s” XP )
A wonderful thing to know: That God is always there, leading us in the darkness, and constantly loving us. It reminds me of the song Not for a Moment by Meredith Andrews. (Of you haven’t heard that song find it and listen to it RIGHT NOW)
Thank you, Sarah!! This touched my heart, and I know it will touch others, too ❤
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Thanks, Dekreel. That’s super sweet. 💕
(And I’ve actually never heard of that song…. *runs off to look it up*)
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I love the (writing-related) concept! xD
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This analogy is just about perfect, and what makes it even more so, at least in my experience, that it’s usually at about sixty pages in that I get my first really crushing doubt that this story is worth slogging through to the end. So even when you’re outside the story, I guess, the same holds true. (Not that when I get to 60 pages in my manuscript I’m at that part of the plot, necessarily, as I write out of order; but that’s about how long it takes for the doubt to paralyze me.)
It’s amazing, isn’t it, how stories can encourage us? No preaching necessary, just the knowledge that you aren’t the only one who’s faced a dark night of the soul before, and others have come through okay in the end.
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Stories definitely make the best analogies, and it’s strange how similar our own lives are to fictitious ones—even if we’re not slaying dragons or doing crazy stuff like that. I find some of the best encouragement in them (after the Bible, obviously). Thanks for reading. ❤
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I am an avid journal writer, and after reading this post, I went back to a time in my diary where I have written about a difficult experience I was going through. I then flipped ahead 60 pages. Sure enough, the issue had been resolved within those sixty pages. It’s remarkable, isn’t it?
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That… is… the NEATEST. Man, I’ve actually never even thought about doing that. Goodbye, world, I’m going to go hunt down my journal.
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I thought it was pretty cool, too.
Haha, literally me when I can’t find something. *time stands still* *Earth stops turning* “Goodbye earth, I need to find stuff”
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Unless you’re Lev Grossman, and then you take a horrible beginning and make it even more horrible. . .
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Oh gosh. I don’t even want to know…
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What a wonderful post, Sarah! I feel like I need to re-read this when I feel depressed. The Romans verse you quotes is very well chosen. I’d like to add another favorite I have:
“… Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have summoned you by name; you are mine.
When you pass through the waters,
I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers,
they will not sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire,
you will not be burned;
the flames will not set you ablaze.”
~Isaiah 43:1-2 (NIV)
[This is my first comment on your blog. It’s funny that I found this right when you are going on a one-month hiatus. I found your blog through KP & SE, and found this one through your Survey post as being *the* one that everyone loved on your blog. I’m a huge Lewis fan/Narnian, and I’m an INTJ female, and I love that you use that curvy signature dash in the end… just like I’m used to do;)]
~C.M.
P.S. #GoSkirts-wearersTeam
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Very true! How comforting to know that God always works things out for our good.
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Thank you Sarah so much for this! It is wonderful.
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