Growing up in the Lutheran faith, I attended years upon years of catechism classes, so I'm very familiar with the use of symbolism in the Bible. The Easter story is my favorite. As a child, I thought "If Jesus would only turn his back on the course he's taken, his life could be spared." But then, of course, all the symbolism--the water turning into wine, the never-ending fishes, the stone not being able to keep Him in the tomb--would have been for naught.I had my own bit of symbolism happen the other day. I had just written "The End" to my next historical. This time it's Rosemary's turn. She's a writer, long before the days of the typewriter, and her ink-stained fingers proved her undoing. With my head still in my story, I had to go put in my hours on my grocery job, which is restocking greeting cards. I went to the designated store, wrote down my start time in the log book, loaded my cart full of boxes from the warehouse, and rolled them to the card section of the store. I cut open the box and started to pull the plastic off the cards when I noticed ink on my fingers. I thought the pen I used to sign in had leaked, but a quick check proved it to be still intact. There was no explanation for the ink being there. Fortunately, the greeting card company had to foresight to provide each of us with a hand sanitizer, so I cleaned the ink off my fingers before I began putting away the cards. But it puzzled me for hours.
When I got home, I realized the symbolism my day had. I can't turn my back on the course my life has taken either. I'm a writer and, even though some parts of it are tedious, the sheer magic of having a story come together is still so cool to me. Rather than having the ink stains be my undoing, they freed me. I'm cutting back even more on my grocery job and will be able to spend more time putting my stories together.
Happy Easter, everyone.
