Messy As I Am |

By Natasha Hayden
May 24, 2013

An early concept drawing for Katrina.

For The Story Project, whose stories are now done but were part of another shared universe with multiple writers, I once wrote a character who was so seemingly hateful of the world that nobody liked her or understood her or knew how to write her. But I loved her.

Katrina was self-sufficient, deeply distrustful of men, hard-hearted, tough, driven, and downright intimidating. What’s not to love, right? She didn’t care if people hated her, thrived on it really. But all that, perhaps much like what we see from Calea in The Select’s Bodyguard, was her persona, the exterior she wanted everyone to see.

When other writers wrote her into their stories, Katrina came across as very one-dimensional: just a mean person no one really wanted to be around. But I saw so much more complexity and potential in her. Where others saw hard-hearted, I saw world-wise. Life had knocked her around a bit until she learned to knock back. Where others saw intimidating, I saw forthright. When there was a job to be done, she did it or made sure others did, no nonsense. Where others saw hateful, I saw hurting, even before I myself had written or even knew her backstory.

When The Story Project ended, its various characters were given closure of sorts. I felt, however, that to give Katrina closure would cheapen everything she’d gone through and wouldn’t be true to the character I’d written. Instead, I sent her on a lifelong quest even she didn’t fully realize she was embarking on–a quest to see if there existed anyone in the world who could accept her for herself, deeply flawed though she was.

You see, some of the other characters in The Story Project were Christians, reflecting our own beliefs as the writers. And as I saw Katrina misunderstood over and over again, by the characters and by the writers themselves, I realized how clueless we humans–Christian or not–can sometimes be. Too often, we judge people by what we see when, in reality, their true colors–good or bad–lie underneath. Most of us put on some sort of exterior to cover what we perceive to be our naked flaws. Katrina’s exterior wasn’t the nice kind some people put on to cover their ugliness, but it was still her armor, meant to cover her weakness and sins. Nobody likes the cracks in their armor to show, though ironically those are what make us human and accessible to those around us. Christians, in particular, have difficulty with admitting weakness, and because of it, we often close ourselves off to the people we are supposed to reach out to.

As I finally said good-bye to Katrina, I envisioned that she would go a long time before finding someone who could prove to her that Christianity–faith–was for people like her, too. Katrina gives a lengthy, heartfelt parting speech to a very kind and sincere Christian one of the last times we see her. In it, she basically sets forth her manifesto and challenges Christians everywhere to show her a God she can believe in. Her words (shortened, because they are longer than this blog is already) say it best:

I have a journey to make. I must find a place where the person I am is not in complete conflict with the life you have shown me. […] I am not ready to surrender so easily, and how can your God ask it of me? […] The thing is, people such as I don’t belong in your world, at least not as it’s portrayed to us. I want a God who can take me, messy as I am. If that God exists, I dare him to show himself to me…and if he does, I’ll come back and show you Christianity.

I love to read about and write strong women. Katrina, unique as she is, was in that regard just one of many. But she holds a special place in my heart just as surely as if she were real and not just a figment of my imagination. With Katrina, I wrestled about what it means to love the loveless, especially from their viewpoint. I don’t have all the answers, and I write it better than I practice it, but that is the ultimate goal: to meet those around me where they are at and show them love–show them God.

You might not hear us talk about God in Children of the Wells (or you might, if you listen to the subtext), but this is where we are coming from. And through characters like Katrina (ahem…Calea), you can be sure we won’t waste the opportunity to explore, as it’s so aptly put, “life, the universe, and everything.”