I thought my story was over the day I lost my leg, but I realized it was only just beginning when my dad brought home a new horse with a prosthetic leg just like mine.
My 10 year old niece wrote that last week for a “First Sentence” writing contest. The winner of the contest will be invited to write the rest of their story, to be printed in a national children’s magazine. I’m trying to get her to finish the story anyway. Tell me how it ends. How the little girl and her horse start their new journey together. Tell the world how there were so many obstacles, fears, unknowns that they both had to face to get to a place of trust in each other. She, trusting the horse to hold her, protect her, not stumble beneath her weight. The horse, trusting her to be gentle, know her limits, moving forward only when both are ready.
And I can’t help but wonder how many of us have these “first sentences” hanging out there with the rest of the story just begging to be written. Isn’t it true that we look at a sentence like, “I lost my job today and I have nothing to fall back on” and we let it just sit there, sad, depressed, alone.
“My mother has cancer.”
“My husband cheated.”
“My son is failing all of his classes.”
“I lost my best friend.”
Whatever it is that tells you “I thought my story was over the day I…” needs more from you. Our lives are begging for us to keep writing. There is ALWAYS an “until I” waiting to finish that first sentence. But too often I feel like I’m waiting for someone else to invite me to write the rest of my story. Someone to inspire me. Tell me I won the contest. When all I really need to do is pick up the pen and start writing it on my own. No invitation. No wins or losses. My story.
There have been several times in my life when I felt like the story was over. The story of love. The story of health. The story of spirit. But every time, no matter how long it took for me to find that pen and paper, I just kept writing. Just kept showing up. Some days the words flowed and I could feel the love creeping back in. Some days I sat in silence feeling like I was staring at a blank piece of paper that would never see words again. But I kept showing up with faith that something would happen. And something eventually did. Love found its way back. Peace came. Faith flowed.
It’s true that our stories don’t always feel like they have happy endings but I don’t think that’s the point of writing out our lives. We aren’t meant to live in this world always seeing rainbows and butterflies. We are meant to just keep going. Living out our stories so that others can have the courage to live out theirs. It’s an ebb and flow. Lows and highs. The tides of our lives coming in and out. But, like ocean waves that follow every receding tide with an incoming wave, so must we look at a situation of loss, hurt, fear, and allow it to be followed by peace, forgiveness, grace.
If you need a friend’s hands to help you get started, grab them. Trust them. Allow them to help you find your footing and start moving forward when you are ready. Grab the pen and just start writing. Maybe you have to cross a few lines out and start again. So what? Just keep going. Every one of us deserves to see our full story written out. Those first sentences are desperate for a second and third and before you know it you’ll have a paragraph, a chapter, a full circle story to call your own.
And they rode off into the blazing sunset, her horse finally trusting the leg that was not his own, allowing it to carry the weight of the girl that now carried his heart.
he hung the moon 