My family made a big change recently: we moved from Michigan to Nicaragua.
From English to Spanish. From snowstorms to tropical heat. From pine trees to palm trees.
It wasn’t an easy decision to uproot my family and move to a different country. But we knew it was what God was calling us to do (for me to teach high school English at a school in Managua). A lot of thought and prayer went into our decision. And strangely enough, the power of fantasy stories played a part as well.
If you’ve been around my blog for a while, you know I’m big on the idea that stories do more than merely entertain. Stories (the good ones anyway) teach us how to live. They inspire us to live courageously, to do the right thing even when that means walking the more difficult road.
For me, it was epic fantasy (two novels in particular) that inspired me to walk the difficult road to Nicaragua.
During the weeks my wife and I were deliberating on whether or not we should make the move, my oldest son and I would listen to The Hobbit on audiobook during our morning commute. As I listened, I noticed there were many times when Bilbo was in no mood for adventure. He was so done with the danger of his journey and just wanted to go home to where it was safe and comfortable.
The goblins were very rough, and pinched unmercifully, and chuckled and laughed in their horrible stony voices; and Bilbo was more unhappy even than when the troll had picked him up by his toes. He wished again and again for his nice bright hobbit-hole. Not for the last time.
I think the reason these moments stuck out to me so much is that I could relate. I wanted my own “hobbit-hole” with comfort and safety. Nicaragua, on the other hand, is not safe. My wife and I had lived in Nicaragua before (we moved from there to the US over six years ago), so we knew of the dangers down there.
- Armed robbery — Half the people I know in Nicaragua have been mugged. My sister-in-law has been robbed at gunpoint and knifepoint so many times it’s become a joke.
- Dangerous traffic — There are too many fatal accidents. I remember for several months driving to work, I’d pass the same chalk outline of a body (complete with dried blood) drawn in the middle of the road.
- Tropical diseases — There are all sorts of mosquitos and worms in Nicaragua bent on making humans sick. At one time, there were a few weeks when half my fellow teachers were out of school because of dengue fever.
- And other dangers and inconveniences.
Don’t get me wrong; there are plenty of parts of Nicaragua I love. It’s a beautiful country of lakes and volcanoes. It’s where many members of our loving family and community live. But when I was in Michigan wrestling with the idea of moving far away, my fears–rather than fond memories–rose to the surface.
Like Bilbo, I was in no mood for an adventure.
At least not at first.
During this time of uncertainty, I was reading Andrew Peterson’s The Warden and the Wolf King to my oldest son as a part of his bedtime routine. One night while reading to him, a few lines out of the story hit me hard. The hero, Janner, was in a moment of darkness and despair after a long and arduous journey.
Rest. That was what he wanted. He was so tired of running, so tired of constant fear that each day held some new danger or treachery or lie. He wanted a good meal, a good book, a little fire in the winter, and a little shade in the summer. Could there be some world where such a place existed?
Then…
He remembered the old tales, stories about self sacrifice and the way a single, beautiful act for the sake of another could shine out across the dark of the ages like the breaking dawn…Maybe the Maker was answering the prayer of his little boy heart by leading him here and giving him the chance to live one of those stories.
When I read that, I immediately thought, “That’s me!”
Part of me wanted rest and comfort in the US. But another part wanted to heed God’s call–the chance to live out one of “those stories.”
Returning to The Hobbit…
Then something Tookish woke up inside [Bilbo], and he wished to go and see the great mountains, and hear the pine-trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves, and wear a sword instead of a walking-stick.
The stories were helping me see what lay before my family and me. A call to adventure. Would I really forsake the call just so I could live the safest life possible? Did I really want to be a hobbit who remained in the Shire?
Deep down I knew the answer to these questions. Like Bilbo, my family and I would leave our “hobbit-hole” and strike out on our journey. Of course, there’s the risk of “goblins” and “trolls,” but stagnation and complacency can be just as deadly. And perhaps more deadly still, there’s missing one’s call to adventure.
A little over a month ago, my family and I made the move to Nicaragua to face the dangers and beauty alike. So yes, fantasy does have power to impact us in real world. For me, two stories gave me a nudge out the door.
What about you? Have you ever had a moment when a fiction story inspired you to get out of your comfort zone?
Please respond in the comments below.
Yep, but those stories are for adults only.
I have found that fantasy stories are encouraging because I can see they are also going through a hard time. God helps too.
Hi Jason. Wonderful post! I’ve been living in Japan for the past four and a half years, and it’s occurred to me that my decision to move here was based on exactly the same convictions you described, as is every decision to do something uncomfortable that I could just as well justify ‘not doing’. (Course, I’m not perfect; I don’t always make the hard decisions, and even then not right away.)
I think, ultimately, while we often shudder at notion of all the potential dangers and risks, we shudder at the notion of slinking back even more! Do we want to conquer fear or be a slave to it? It’s a question we all must answer.
Stories (the good ones) most certainly unearth the courage in us to do the scary things. I realised very recently, like a week before reading this very post, that every story I’ve thoroughly enjoyed, I’ve enjoyed for this very reason: it tugs at this heart-level ‘call to adventure’. It’s a call to action, in story form. And, for me, it’s the only truly effective form of a call to action. (Sermons and lectures don’t effect me nearly as much.) Your post put this in words perfectly, and, for me, couldn’t have been timed better! Fantastic stuff.
Also related: I’ve been trying to find a core-level answer to the personal question, “Why write?” And blog posts like this are doing a great deal in helping me find the answer. Thanks!
I had to think for a few minutes about what my comfort zone actually was—an interesting exercise as it challenged me to question whether I do enough to expand, to push against the boundaries of that zone. I know that I would never have become a teacher of literature (alongside English skills, generally) had it not been for the fact that literature is more than simply something I do. It is what my life is built out of. Beyond this, I think that my emotional excesses are held in a kind of balance by literature even when keeping that balance is a challenge to my state of comfort.
The choice to work in a school teaching literature to teenagers wasn’t an easy one to make, especially because I was offered the job before I had attained the necessary qualifications to do that job well. Feeling in the dark about so many things, feeling imposter syndrome on a daily (if not hourly) basis, and working hard to take the post-graduate qualifications alongside the job all lay outside my comfort zone. But two things made it worth it: having the passion for literature and communicating that passion to young learners.
As a teacher, part of my job is to reflect on the lessons I have taught and consider what I might have done differently, how I might have communicated ideas or structured lessons more effectively. Attaining some of those skills remain outside my comfort zone even now. On the other hand quite a few of the students have been kind enough to say that their learning with me has inspired them. Sharing a love of literature with students who are learning to love it themselves is an amazing experience. But I can’t say that these rewards were easy to achieve. Nor were they achieved in a comfortable state of being.
Bouncing ideas off colleagues and working alongside them has helped me to learn that literature and real life can be one and the same thing, and the reward is beyond measure; but for this to happen, currently this means that the living of this must be in classrooms. There are more works of fiction than I can count that inspired me to push at the limits of my confidence to achieve this, but I could mention Crime and Punishment, Les Miserables, His Dark Materials, short stories by Jorge Luis Borges, Tolkein, Kafka, Shakespeare and so many more.
One of the things about teaching is that it can take the time away from you if your mind is bent on other kinds of achievements. I have always wanted to write, to create, and if the desire to do so is felt with the kind of keenness that you know that something is missing from your life if you are not doing so, there is a danger with teaching that you can at some point resent the work you do to make a living, if it comes at the expense of experiencing the kind of life that you feel you need to have. Becoming a teacher taught me to sacrifice my time to do these things and wait for opportunities to write in the holidays. After eight years of teaching, I was last year able to get a sabbatical from my regular school and a part-time job in another, to undertake an MA in Creative Writing. Developing my own writing abilities has been immensely rewarding and helped me to balance my life so that as many of my needs as possible can be met. It was difficult, though, to make the choice to sacrifice a part of my income to make this happen. As above, the same kind of works of fiction inspired me to leave the boundaries of my comfort zone to do this.
Finally, I have a deep enjoyment of the epic poems The Iliad and Paradise Lost. I believe that Homer and Milton’s work as they are presented, take the form of fiction, whatever their grounding in reality or myth.
With the Iliad, it is beautiful to see Achilleus at the end of the tale, able to let go of his deep anger as he recognises the grief of the father of the hero he has killed, and predicts the grief of his own father when eventually his own death on the battlefield will come to pass. I have learned enough to know that there is much in this world to give one more anger than they know how to cope with, and also that anger is a source of comfort, a source with an infinite supply. Achilleus can’t have found it easy to move beyond his anger, but I can take inspiration from it when news, politics and social media tempt me towards a more bitter path.
In Paradise Lost, I believe anger is a part of Lucifer’s motivation to destroy Adam and Eve’s relationship with their creator. Miserable himself, he desires to spread the misery to others. Whatever the truth of the story of the War in Heaven, and the Fall and whether or not faith requires one to have a literal interpretation of these things, I have lessons about the dangers of pride and vengeful thinking, as I have about the hard work Adam and Eve, and all humanity after them, have to do to get back to that state of grace. I was impressed and inspired by how charismatic Lucifer is presented to be at the beginning, as the reader themselves are tempted to support his cause. The greatness of the poem is that we learn where this ambition takes Lucifer, the squalid state of existence it leaves him in, and the need for redemption for Adam and Eve, as they taste the bitterness of the knowledge they have learned.
I always did think of my background as a secular one, but the messages of Lucifer’s corrupting pride, of Adam and Eve’s transgression and need for redemption are as real as anything else for me.
To conclude, literature itself has defined my whole existence and caused me to enrich that existence with meaningful work even when it was far from easy to do this work. Literature has guided me push my own writing to a better level even when this has meant my sacrificing a significant part of my income to do this. As I consider my own emotional and perhaps spiritual health, and the health of others in the world, I see lessons from the epic poetry of Homer and Milton that teach a way forward, even though Achilleus’s recognition of a father’s grief and Adam and Eve’s lifetime of sweat and toil would have been far from easy; and each symbolises our own journey beyond the threshold of our comfort zones.
Lovely blog post! 😀
Thank you!
When I was six years old, my mother was told that I would be blind by age twelve. From that day, she researched and taught me things I would need to know in my day to day routine. One of the things she did was buy me a copy of Helen Keller’s story “The Miracle Worker”. As with everything I read, I devoured the book. I also made extensive use of the appendices to learn the signing alphabet and braille. The book made me feel better about my diagnosis and more confident in my abilities to deal with it. I realized that I wouldn’t have to limit myself just because my eyes weren’t working properly.
Fortunately, I never went completely blind, but I still use the things my mother talk me as well as the principles I took with me from the book.