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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.

December 9, 2016 - Tags: christianity, holidays, Nick Hayden, other projects, personal, philosophy Posted in: Blogs

Melancholy Holidays

by Nathan Marchand
December 2, 2016

grumpychristmas Holidays 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…)

December 2, 2016 - Tags: family, holidays, Nathan Marchand, personal Posted in: Blogs

Tell Me A Story, Daddy!

By Nick Hayden
November 11, 2016

Alexas_Fotos / Pixabay

We here at Children of the Wells began this project because we’re storytellers and we thought it would be fun to tell a longer, interconnected story together. We’ve sometimes stalled along the way, partly because, since we are storytellers, we each have other individual stories we’re also working on. (Excuses, excuses, I know.)

There’s a thing about being a storyteller that, for me, starts to make each project a drawn-out affair. I’ve gotten more and more concerned on writing well, on making things interesting, in editing completely, in somehow making the tenuous web that is fiction hang together. And this is very good. But it is sometimes paralyzing. So, now and then, it’s freeing to just throw the rules of well-structured fiction out the window and do things crazy and off-the-cuff.

Exhibit A is a live brainstorm my podcast partner-in-crime Timothy Deal and I did in the second half of Episode 70 of our podcast on storytelling.

But, more personally, it happens with my daughter Serenity. Her new favorite thing (though the Shopkins voices are still active) is for me to tell her a story. Usually, it needs to involve at least one Minion, since Despicable Me 2 is her current watch-it-every-day movie. And whenever I try to move toward an ending, she helpfully adds, “But there were still 200 problems in the world,” which is her way of adding conflict — because a hero’s job is never done. (more…)

November 11, 2016 - Tags: family, Nick Hayden, personal, philosophy Posted in: Blogs

The Faults Inside Us All

By Gregory J Meyer
August 12, 2016

“You will need help,” she told them, “but all I am allowed to give you is a little talisman… Meg, I give you your faults.”
“My faults!” Meg cried.
“Your faults.”
“But I’m always trying to get rid of my faults!”
“Yes,” Mr.s Whatsit said. “However, I think you’ll find they’ll come in very handy on Camazotz.”
-Madeleine L’Engle (A Wrinkle in Time, 1962)

wall I think it’s a safe assumption to say that every single one of us have our fair share of flaws. Even if the most beautiful person stood in front of a mirror, I bet they could easily name a few things that they didn’t like about themselves. When I look in the mirror, I see where my beard doesn’t grow in on my chin, or the scar by my left eye I received from a fall when I was four.

Then there are the internal flaws and faults we have that can’t be seen in a mirror but are apparent to us every day. These are the things that we try to hide so others can’t see them because they make us look bad. Perhaps these are the anger issues we have, the bad words we say when things don’t go our way. There’s the crippling self-doubt when speaking in front of people, or the nervous vocal tick that rears its head when we least want it to. (more…)

August 12, 2016 - Tags: Greg Meyer, personal, struggles Posted in: Blogs

Adventures Around Grandma’s House

By Timothy Deal
August 5, 2016

Last year, shortly after both grandparents on my father’s side had passed away, I started a short series of blogs I call “Lessons Learned at Grandma’s House.” Today I pick that series up again with a lesson well-suited to this time of year. (In yet another case of “great minds think alike,” expect some overlap with Nick’s latest blog.)

Adventures abound outdoors, especially when you take your imagination with you.

I talked about indoor activities in previous entries of this series, but one of the charms of going to Grandma’s house was exploring her expansive property. Purchased as a hobby farm way back before anyone was moving to that obscure corner of Noble County, the area around Grandma’s house included a barn, a couple garages, sheds, chicken houses, Grandma’s aviary (more on that in a future blog), a field perfect for kickball, woods, a creek, and one of the best sledding hills in northern Indiana. (more…)

August 5, 2016 - Tags: childhood, family, personal, Timothy Deal Posted in: Blogs

Adventure Awaits!

By Nick Hayden
July 8, 2016

Adventure is out there!

We all know (I hope) how the first tinges of warm weather bring alive the senses. We want to go out of doors, to find something outside our winter-enclosed world, to explore and somehow, in some way, suck a bit of the marrow out of life. We long for adventure, even those of us who aren’t rock climbers and wilderness explorers. That’s one reason we spend hours staring at a page or a screen, to be taken somewhere bigger than where we are. We want magic in our lives.

But there is another sort of adventure, I think, that we often miss, the adventure of ordinary things. I remember watching The Secret World of Arrietty and being amazed at how much wonder came through the interaction of these little people with commonplace objects. As adults, we sometimes forget these little flashes of wonder. For kids, it’s the air they breathe. (more…)

July 8, 2016 - Tags: adventure, Nick Hayden, personal Posted in: Blogs

The Burden of Loneliness

by Nathan Marchand
June 24, 2016

I could write a progress report on Bron & Calea #5, but the pertinent lessons I’ve been learning are summarized pretty well in the latest blog I posted on my own website. I also hinted at a few things in my previous blog here. Ironically, in that same blog I joked about how my fellow CotW creators were getting personal in their latest posts, but I wasn’t. Well, now it’s my turn to be a bit vulnerable since most anything else I could blog about I’ve done elsewhere.

My birthday is June 29. I’ll be 33 (going on 19, according to some—I look young). As Tim said of himself in his most recent blog:

“I’m still unmarried, unsettled in my career, and not nearly as financially stable as I would prefer. At times, it’s hard not to look at where I’m at this far after graduation and not consider myself a failure.”

While I, too, feel the weight of all of these things, the first is where I’ve been hurt the most and worst. (more…)

June 24, 2016 - Tags: christianity, Nathan Marchand, personal, relationships Posted in: Blogs

A Mid-Year Resolution

by Timothy Deal
May 13, 2016

We’ve had some wonderfully introspective blogs from our courageous CotW writers/editors lately. I’m going to attempt to continue that series – if only because certain anniversaries came up recently – but in case my insights come out like a rehash of previous blogs, I’ll try to keep it concise.

geralt / Pixabay

Generally, I’m not one to fixate on anniversaries of life events (which I can get away with as a bachelor), but this year the arrival of May prompted mixed feelings. You see, this May marks five years since I finished graduate school and ten years since I finished college. And truth be told, my life today doesn’t really match what I envisioned for myself back when I graduated either time. I’m still unmarried, unsettled in my career, and not nearly as financially stable as I would prefer. At times, it’s hard not to look at where I’m at this far after graduation and not consider myself a failure. (more…)

May 13, 2016 - Tags: personal, Timothy Deal Posted in: Blogs

Shake the Dust Off

By Gregory Meyer
May 6, 2016

I have a confession to make, when Tim asked me to join the Children of the Wells project, I almost told him no. When I read his texts, I mentally fought with myself from declining the offer. I was in a bad place mentally at the time, and I didn’t know if I had it in me to try writing for someone again.

Shaking the old ash off.
From Dark Souls 3 and wallpapersbye.com

Back in 2010, before all of this, I had just come home from a trip to my University for my wife’s graduation. I was an inexperienced writer at the time, and I was in high spirits, having finished a cartoon script for a class that my tough to impress professor genuinely found funny. While in Virginia Beach, a filmmaking couple my wife and I were friends with asked if I’d be interested in writing a screenplay for them about zombies. I worked with the couple previously on a short story script that had been received well, and I jumped at the chance to write a script that had the potential to be made into a feature length film. My eyes had stars in them, and I thought I was on my way to success. After all, when you’re presented with a grand opportunity on a silver platter like this, how can you say no?

There was just one catch, though. While I enjoy creepy stories, I don’t like zombies. Never have, never will. Just ask my wife how I am when she watches The Walking Dead on TV, I’m out of the room faster than you can say “Brains” or “S.T.A.R.S.” for you Resident Evil fans. But this was going to be an MST3K-style movie, so I thought. I could write a silly movie with zombies getting hacked to death by a guitar wielding drifter with a heart of gold.

I struggled in front of my Word document, writing, erasing, and trying again. I even watched Shaun of the Dead as inspiration, trying to jumpstart my creativity. Eventually, after weeks of creative agony, I had a treatment for a story I felt I could get behind. I sent the story to the couple and waited for a response. The one I got back wasn’t good. The movie was too silly, and the project needed to be something that would end up on MST3K, rather than the comedy I wrote. I felt absolutely deflated, and the thought of starting over crushed me. I crawled away from the project like a coward, not even bothering to contact them again for the project, something that I’m still ashamed of to this day. (more…)

May 6, 2016 - Tags: creative process, Greg Meyer, personal, writing life Posted in: Blogs

A Perfect Failure

By Natasha Hayden
April 29, 2016

I’m back! After months of silence and a lot of change (Baby #3 is three months old already!), I’m venturing to contribute more than just baby pics to the web world. In thinking about what I might say on this very unnoteworthy occasion, I’ve been reflecting on what is meaningful to me of late. Clearly, family would be near the top of that list, and Children of the Wells…perhaps not so near.

In preparation for Easter this year, during the time of Lent, rather than sacrifice something, I spent some time in a devotional book written by my favorite fiction author, Ted Dekker. His message in The Forgotten Way is simple but profound and profoundly different from society’s way of thinking. Essentially, it’s this: my identity is not based on what I do or the costumes, as he puts it, that I wear in life. My identity is not writer, mother, wife, daughter, or any other role that I play. Those are just that: roles. My identity goes much deeper. Who I really am is not how I or anyone else sees me; it is how God sees me. And because I am His, bought with the blood of his son, Jesus, I am His perfect creation, made in His likeness, complete and completely loved, not condemned. Even my body, though special and made by God, is not who I am but just the vessel for the real me, which is spirit. (more…)