So Brave, Young & Handsome

Say what you like about melodrama, it beats confusion. The truth is we ought have a chance to say a little something when it's getting dark. We ought to have a closing scene.

So Brave, Young and Handsome, Leif Enger

A few years back several of us at church read the first novel by Leif Enger called Peace Like A River, the story of Rueben Land and his family as they embark on a cross country search for an outlaw older brother who is questionably charged with murder.

Occasionally I have looked to see if he had written a second novel. Recently I discovered that he had in fact done so. So Brave, Young and Handsome was written in 2008. It is the story of an aging train robber seeking redemption for his past choices.

The quote I wrote above is toward the end of the book. One of the characters in the book, who has lived his whole melodramatic life trying to appear a much "bigger" man than he really is, has had a stroke. It appears that he is at the end of his life. The author then states, "Say what you like about melodrama, it beats confusion. The truth is we ought have a chance to say a little something when it's getting dark. We ought to have a closing scene."

Something struck me when I read those words and at the time I wasn't really sure what it was. I remember looking at the page number and thinking that I needed to revisit those words.

I think there is a part of me that longs to be seen as successful and capable. When I don't feel either of these thing, I begin to create this melodrama around me so I can feel like it is true of me. I feel like much of my ability to look good is dying and much of that dying is being done quietly without fanfare or recognition. Much of the dying process is happening completely within my confusion.

I am crying out because I really think I should be able to get a word in edgewise, to somehow control my own fate, to actually even choose what should die. But God doesn't see it my way. He chooses what needs to die and what needs to live within me, based on a larger picture I can't see. Often I am not even sure what has been dying until after the death occurs.

I hate the confusion caused by the unknown, but it is the unknown that saves me again and again from my own melodramas. It is God bringing reality into the confusion. He is constantly at work redeeming the dead parts of my soul; dousing my confusion with mercy.