Steward Your Story

I had a dream about my former foster daughter, whom I raised almost 4 years from birth before she left us. She started early childhood services at 7 months old because she never babbled like other babies, and oddly, she used to roll only in one direction. We laid her down on the floor in my grandma’s living room at Thanksgiving one year, and she rolled straight across the house (through the living room, dining room, kitchen, and hallway). When she reached the end of the house, her sojourn was complete. She never made it back the other way.

Those early intervention sessions turned into 2-3 times a week of speech therapy as she grew older and still wasn’t talking like the other kids. She’s a spit-fire with expressive body language, so I always knew what she meant even when I had to fill in the gaps on the actual words. The stubborn pout, the mischievous glint in her eye as she tried to pick your pocket and rob you blind (seriously, one of her favorite pastimes and she was darn good at it). I couldn’t presume to know the exact workings of her abstract thoughts, but I understood the flavor of her emotions, her wants, and her needs.

I dreamt I had a chance encounter with her several years in the future. I was a summer camp counselor, and she happened to be assigned to my cabin. She was finally old enough to really communicate, where I wasn’t filling in the gaps or guessing at her thoughts. We sat together one evening and just talked. It was incredible to hear her thoughts so articulately spoken for the first time. She spoke of her experiences in and out of foster care. She both referred to me as mom and categorized me as “part of her disappointment” for being in their lives and then leaving.

The dream felt so real, like the kind of dream you have with a loved one after they’ve passed on from this world and some essence of them is reaching from the beyond to offer just a little comfort and solace. It was strangely cathartic after years of guessing, and sometimes assuming the worst of how they must view my role in their lives.

I attended a tea party the same weekend I had the dream. The speaker shared about her infant son’s accidental death. A lump snagged my throat as I listened. She walked through the unimaginable. Instead of closing herself off, the grief opened her eyes to a wide world of hurting souls. She now counsels grieving parents who’ve lost children and mentioned almost all of the bereaved parents describe how they’re more attune to other people’s hurt after walking through their own tragedy. The speaker closed with a simple message: “steward your story.”

I took a brief inventory of my life these past several years as I drove home that day. I’ve been waiting with my story. I always thought there would be some big, redeeming ending to tie all the loose ends together. I waited for the kids to come back and I could finally share the hundreds of photos that have stayed hidden, showcasing years of life together. I could finally say their names. How I’ve longed to stand next to people I’ve loved for so long and simply reach out an arm in their direction so other can see that yes, this is them. These are the faces that complete our story.

But it never came.

The redeeming, full circle moment I thought I needed to finish my story never happened. As I drove home to the dull rumble of my van over the asphalt, I accepted for the first time that I could steward this story, the one I had in front of me.

In the movie “Stranger than Fiction,” Will Ferrell’s character wakes up to his rather dull life being narrated. There’s a scene where he tries to figure out if his life is a comedy or a tragedy, and he spends the day with a notebook in hand, tallying comedic or tragic events as they unfold. At the end of the day, his “tragedy” column is filled with tally marks, and he’s left with the fate assigned to him by the narrator.

I compare my life to that scene sometimes. Are we fated to either a comedy or a tragedy? Does God allow my tragedy column to fill while the comedic tallies run over in someone else’s notebook?

I don’t begin to wax philosophical in the mysteries of good and evil, suffering and blessing. I think I can be satisfied in approaching it more simply- this is what happened. I don’t know why it happened this way. I don’t know why it never resolved in the way one would hope. But since it didn’t, these are the things that still cast shadows in my heart. They’re the empty chambers that echo mournful thoughts in my mind. My best hope is for all that’s unresolved in my life to find connection in those who experience it too. So you know you’re not alone.