Why not just have it wander along happily? Is that so hard to do?
Well, actually, yes it does seem to be.
One reason that bad things happen in the McKenna books is that bad things actually do happen in life. I have heard of things that have happened to people that are so terrible, it is almost impossible to believe. Not only what people do to each other, but natural disasters and twists of fate that put people in the wrong place at the wrong time, leaving others behind in a quagmire of despair.
Why write about it? Don't we have enough of that? Well, yes we do. But, it is a reality that bad stuff happens to everyone, at some time or another, and to deny that it happens, even in books, is to do a disservice to ourselves. After all, disaster is relative, isn't it?
To some, a disaster of mammoth proportions would be a toilet to back up right before a dinner party. Or a scandal to be divulged for the neighborhood to talk about. Or for a child to be cut from the team. And that is not to diminish those things as being uncomfortable, maybe even far-reaching in one's life.
A person can lead a quiet, uneventful life and still that kind of disaster will find them. And then, there is the other kind.
It is fascinating to me to explore the human spirit. People who seem hell-bent on destroying themselves sometimes turn and become heaven sent. Those who face the most horrific losses find a way to come through them. Not only do they come through them, they find a way to be happy again. Grief is profound and real and tangible, and yet people overcome.
So, I wanted to explore exactly how deep can despair and pain go, and how would a person come back from it. Morbid, I suppose, but I think Jesus smiles when those who walk through great darkness find the light. The light is Jesus, after all.
To convey something of the journey through, the reader has to really know the characters. You, the reader, has to spend time in the character's shoes, see him in good times, to know what makes him tick. Then, when time has passed, you can feel what the character feels when he is thrust into the dark.
That is why the books go on and go on. To plop a person down into a disaster is one thing; to grow into a disaster is another. You have lived through the character's past, his history, and now his world is turned upside down with a sense that things will never be the same again. Let alone "good" again. How will he ever get through this?
And then, things go along and gradually, he does get through. Or maybe he doesn't. We don't really know how he will react until he does. What course will he take to "get through" the darkness. Will he reach for God as the Source of the light? Or will he wallow around in the dark awhile.
How do people survive?
How silly we feel when our definition of disaster is shown to be so shallow in the face of the real thing. In times past, death and loss were much closer, much more expected. We have floated through a time when if we washed our hands enough and watched our kids closely enough and turned off the coffee pot and wore our seat belts, we could get through life unscathed except when the toilet backed up. And, even that would probably have been able to be avoided if we had just done something more correctly.
But, disaster is relative. I knew a handsome, talented boy from a loving family who took his rifle and blew his head off at the age of 14. Why? Were there things that had happened that no one knew about? Or was life, even sheltered and happy as his was, still so not-perfect that it seemed disastrous to him? We don't know.
So, the McKennas go through stuff. Bad stuff. Unexpectedly bad stuff for no good reason...because that's life. And then we watch how they handle it. Some do better than others. But, I try to make the heartbeat theme in them be that God is still there with them. Some turn to Him; some don't. At least for awhile. But He is still there.
And the Family goes on..