fiction Archives — Christine Dente

The Power of the Tales We Tell

July 12, 2023July 12, 2023 by Christine Dente

Our thoughts have a lot of power. They come out of nowhere. They say things that may not be true. And if we don’t rein them in, they make up stories that take us to crazy places.

On top of that, our bodies believe the tales our minds have to tell. Apparently, our nervous systems either freeze, take flight, or get ready to fight with the right kind of threat.

To be honest, I tell myself lots of stories. My imagination generates situations that haven’t happened and most likely will never happen.

These thoughts often involve my family. When I am not with them, I am often picturing them and praying for their safety. If I let my mind wander too much, it makes up scary scenarios.

It gets worse when I add to that an app I have on my phone.

It’s called, “Find My Friends.” It shows me where family members are with the touch of an icon. Sometimes I use it to see where my son is when he is on tour with a band. Or I may confirm one of my daughters is safely back at her house after a visit. The benefits of locating those I love speak for themselves.

Yet this tracking device has drawbacks. Lots of times, seeing someone’s location makes me wonder and worry: “Why are they at that place? How come they’re not home yet? Has something bad happened?”

Three Stories

One evening last month, I opened that app to see if my husband Scott was almost home. And I noticed that my daughter, Carina, was at Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital. My heart started to pound. My brain began to scramble. My mind was trying to fill in that huge gap of ignorance: I knew not why she was there but I had my guesses.

In the next two hours I told myself three different stories and morphed through multiple states of mind and body.

♦ Story number one: “It’s 7:30 PM so this cannot be good. It must be that my daughter and her husband had to take their daughter to the emergency room! What has happened? What’s wrong with my granddaughter, Callaway! Why didn’t Carina tell me she was headed to the hospital?”

“Breathe, Breathe,” I told myself. “Pause and practice a non-reactive response. Let the panic pass. There’s no need to call or text her yet.”

The gap between my fictional catastrophe and what was actually happening was as wide as the miles between us.

Honestly, I was shocked at myself for how quickly I’d escalated the danger in my mind. And embarrassed that I could find my daughter’s whereabouts so easily. She didn’t need to be reminded in my panic that I was tracking her with my app.

I reminded myself, “You don’t know if this story is true.” True, I’d used the app in the past to confirm what I already knew. My daughter’s icon was in that very spot at downtown Nashville’s Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital countless times in the last three years. Since their daughter was born, she and her husband had shown up on the map at that location a lot.

Their emergency room visits began on Callaway’s third day of life. After nearly dying, Calla received her genetic disease diagnosis.

Later, after months of metabolic crises and then her liver transplant at 1 year old, she began a new tale of suffering, healing, and recovery. Add to that the ensuing hospital stays and tests and check-ups and I became quite familiar with that hospital. No doubt, I had good reason to be telling myself the frightful story.

Except that, at 3 years old now, my granddaughter had been steady, stable and thriving.

“Was she really rushed to the hospital tonight?” The tension in my neck said I’d better get the story straight.

♦ Story number two: “Ok ok, she’s just picking up Callaway’s prescription medication, the one that suppresses her immune system so she won’t reject her transplanted liver. Sometimes it’s convenient to go to the in-hospital pharmacy at night, right? Yes, that’s it. Carina has just dropped by to get some meds while Calla’s daddy gets her ready for bed at home. Phew.”

I closed the app and pushed my phone across the table. After a few deep breaths, I pledged to check again in an hour. “I’m sure she’ll be home by then.”

♦ Story number three: It’s 8:30 PM and I have re-checked my phone to find my daughter’s icon now smiling at me from the middle of the Children’s Hospital.

“Ugh, that’s not where the pharmacy is and anyway, why would she still be there?”

The app is quite precise — I can see she’s not in the emergency room or pharmacy area but actually in the hospital section itself. “Why would she be in a regular hospital room? Why hasn’t she texted me?”

My chest was getting heavy, my nerves were jangled and vibrating. “I’ve got to call her right now to find out what is wrong!”

“Breathe,” I tell myself, “and hold on. You really don’t know if the worst is happening.”

I relaxed my shoulders, opened my fists. Let my brain shift to a lower gear.

“Wait a minute…oh yes, oh now I remember! My friend has a baby in the hospital and Carina has visited twice since he was born. That’s it! She’s visiting that newborn baby with special needs like her own child three years ago. My girl has a heart of compassion and fierce kindness that would send her back to that place which stirs her with so many memories. Yes, that’s it, Carina would definitely go in at night to support a suffering mother and child.”

The Power of Thought

I did check again at 9:30 PM to see that Carina was safely home. Two hours and three stories later, my pulse had finally slowed.

The next day, she told me of her hospital visit and holding my friend’s sweet little baby boy. I admitted to her my two hours of silent storytelling. She smiled as one well-acquainted with the practice.

But the situation was what it was. Nothing changed in the time I spent fretting and flailing. Reality remained the same though mostly unknown to me. What changed was the state of my mind and my heart, depending on the story I was telling myself.

This illustration of the power of projection, the impact of reacting with few facts, reminded me of why I am learning meditation and mindfulness.

I only see in part. A small part. New information can tell me a totally different story. Taking care to watch where my thoughts go, to notice the stories I’m telling myself, makes all the difference in my body and mind. In taking the time to breathe through the horror story, release my grip on a possible fiction, I found the space to stay present and wait, respond rather than react.

One of these days, I’ll delete that app. But until then, I promise to use it more judiciously.

For more on this, read: “Have You Noticed What You Notice?”

For more about Callaway, read: “A Mother Shares Her Daughter’s suffering”

What would you be, if free to be anything you wanted?

June 19, 2020June 17, 2020 by Christine Dente

Free to be anything? You might be surprised by your answer. I sure was.

3 Parts to the Story

My friend, Melissa, asked this intriguing question one evening at a gathering of friends. Whenever she and her husband, Ken, throw their doors open, my husband and I join the party. The conversation spins up a notch when Melissa invites her guests to invest some energy beyond the small talk. She posed this question to a group of four couples who had gathered to eat and laugh in her kitchen:

“What would you be, if you were free to be anything you wanted?”

Each of us eight answered with unpredictable and somewhat surprising dreams. My answer popped into my head and bounced out of my mouth before I could edit and filter it:

“When I am old, I will live alone in the woods. I will know the names of every tree and the songs of each bird I meet. My hair will flow long and silver-grey upon my shoulders. My name will be Willow.”

Everyone’s eyes widened, then slid sideways toward my husband, Scott. He said, with half a smile, “Where am I in this story?”

Okay, so it wasn’t very nice to erase him from my old age. But his absence in the picture made me wonder what was at the heart of my imaginary scenario. Was there a bigger story lurking in the shadows of my answer? Upon examination, I discovered 3 parts to my rough sketch of who I’d be if truly free.

Part 1: A Fairy Tale

First, living alone in the woods is my fantasy of freedom from the challenges of human relationships. I am an introvert. Social interactions sap my energy. Sustained focus on the faces and feelings of those I most love requires an output of energy that asks for rest and space—sooner rather than later.

Also, I grow calm and strong whenever my feet sink into the earth’s mossy soil and I can listen and look for God in His creation. Plus, learning the names of the trees and the calls of the birds has been my passion lately.

However, pure peace in isolation is just a fairy tale. Even though a hidden forest path enchants me, I realize any magical setting in a sunny wood could become a nightmare when the sun went down. The big bad wolf of loneliness would surely come knocking at the door of my little haven in the woods. Indeed, I love my husband and my people and I know I need them close.

Part 2: Observing the Woman in the Willow

But, the image of an old woman with silver-grey hair comes from an actual place:

Mrs. Zook lived close to the home I grew up in. As a child, I only glimpsed her across the parking lot that connected our houses. Her austere dresses and tightly contained hair—always up in a traditional Mennonite bun—created the impression of a stiff old woman. However, the graceful weeping willow tree that shrouded her lawn drew me with its mystery. I remember the day I dropped my bike to creep in for a closer look. Skirting the outer edge of the unfenced yard, I parted a few of the willow’s draping green branches.

Old Mrs. Zook stood beneath the tree in a cottony nightgown, brushing her freshly washed, silver-grey hair. It flowed long and lovely as the willow branches under which she hovered.

Unaware of my stare, Mrs. Zook seemed free from care in the cool shade on a hot day. That picture of the woman in the willow, one of grace and ageless beauty, enchanted my ten-year-old soul and touches me still.

Part 3: Going with the Flow

The third part of my free-to-be story is that Old Age is creeping up on me. She will, God-willing, knock on my door in a few years. Beyond my desire to live a simple and contemplative life, is the wonder of what I will become. Already, I sense my tendency to stiffen and settle, to give way to a negative outlook. Instead, I’d rather keep stretching, stay flexible, and learn to go with the flow of life.

Will my body and spirit succumb to the stifling effects of gravity and pain? Or will I find the strength to keep growing and bending with the wind? I don’t want my heart to close, becoming pinned like a tight hair bun. On the contrary, I hope to stay open like a willow, sharing grace and beauty in the place God plants me. I pray my trajectory of 56 years has not taken me too far afield of the accepting, compassionate old woman I wish to become.

So, those questions and hopes combined with the memory of Mrs. Zook elicited that unedited answer to my friend’s question. And they became the springboard for my next creative project:

I wrote a novel called The Woman in the Willow.

Finding Freedom in Fiction

With The Woman in the Willow, I was free to try on my character, to create a drama exploring her choices. I wrote my novel, in part, to search for the sage in me, the woman who ages with wisdom. My fiction asks,

Can an old woman flower and flow, despite her heart’s instinct to tighten and close?

It’s the story of Catherine Hathaway, a woman struggling to forget her traumatic past by hiding away in her homemade haven. When a precocious and lonely child challenges her isolation, she refuses to open her gate or her heart to the neglected girl. The resulting tumult stirs unsettling memories and threatens to sweep the woman away in a flood of grief and loss. What part will the willow tree play in transforming Catherine into the woman she wants to become?

Stay tuned to find out. My book will launch into the world on September 1st, 2020!

Perhaps your answer to the question, ‘What would you be, if you were free to be anything you wanted?’ contains an important part of your story.

In it are fragments of your dreams, shadows of your past, and seeds of what you want to become. In between is who you are now. Make that imaginary sketch to test the final portrait you will paint. Let the vision and the dream write the story of your becoming, like the woman in the willow has for me.

Subscribe here to find out more about The Woman in the Willow and receive the book’s cover reveal in your inbox!

Leave a comment about your answer to the question: “What would you be, if you were free to be anything you wanted?”

My Moment at the Well

April 11, 2018August 29, 2017 by Christine Dente

He startles me as I walk up to the well. I hadn’t seen him sitting there under the trees. I turn around to face him as he begins talking to me. He says he wants some water to drink. I think it strange that he is alone. We are in the middle of nowhere. In the heat of the day. He has no way of getting to the water. No jar and such a deep well. He’s obviously parched. What is he doing here all by himself?

People come from all over to sit and drink where Jacob himself once watered his flocks. He and his sons had walked these surrounding fields. This place is holy to us even if it isn’t to the Jews.

I mess with him a little. “You’re asking me for a drink? A woman of Samaria?” I know Jews don’t want to have anything to do with us. With me. Yet here he is, needing my help because he’s worn out. Thirsty. He is depending on me. How funny.

He answers me, saying something about if I knew who he was, I’d be asking him for a drink of ‘living’ water. He seems a little crazy. Well, I’ll take the bait.

I say to him in my sweetest voice, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?” I’m smiling at him like I do when talking to a little kid who tells me that the stones he’s holding are real gold.

Who does he think he is, anyway? This well has been here for thousands of years and probably took months to dig. Out of nowhere he’s going to produce this so-called living water and I’m going to beg him for it? I don’t think so.

“You’ll never be thirsty again,” he is saying. If I drink the water he could give me, he says it will become in me a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

Wow, that sounds fantastic. Water that just wells up in my body. Exactly what I need so I don’t have to come back again and again to this damned well just to stay alive and keep my dishes clean.

I’m so sick of trudging up and down this path alone with an old container that empties as fast as I fill it, with no kids to help, no man who cares to lift a finger for me, and flocks of women moving aside when they see me coming. Sure, fella, I’ll take some of that living water.

Of course now he tells me to go get my husband. Always turns out this way: women need a man to speak for them. A man to head the household. A man to stay around and do what he said he would do. I haven’t had any men like that in my life since my first husband died. After that, the others left or divorced me as soon as they realized they weren’t getting any sons and daughters out of me. Those liars are long gone.

“I have no husband,” I tell him.

“You’re right,” he says, “and the man you have now isn’t even your husband.”

His accusation is right. But how could he know that? He hasn’t been in town or hung around long enough to hear the gossip. And gossip they do, those heartless witches. No compassion- only judgment for a girl who tried to live by the rules but got stepped on and left behind by those rules instead.

He must be a prophet or something. This is getting interesting… and a little too personal. I wonder what he’ll say about those rules for living God’s way. If it is God’s way. So many rules that I can’t seem to keep to satisfy anyone around here.

“You Jews say we’re supposed to worship in Jerusalem even though our fathers worshiped God here on this mountain.” That’ll get him talking about what all men want to talk about: religion and politics.

He’s looking at me with a sweet smile on his face. “Woman, believe me…”

The way he called me ‘woman’ just now almost made me cry. Like I was someone he cared about. Someone he knew.

He’s saying that the time is coming and is even now happening- that it won’t matter where we worship God. He says true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. He’s even saying that the Father is looking for those kind of people.

I’ve never heard anyone talk religion like this! It feels like he’s just toppled over a rock wall inside of me. I’m tasting the dust of fear and freedom at the same time.

I mumble something I’ve heard all of my life, something about the messiah someday coming to tell us everything we need to know.

“That’s me,” he says. And I know he isn’t lying.

All of a sudden, some guys are coming up to him, looking shocked that he is talking to me.

I don’t care. My insides feel like churning water. My legs are weak as if I’m ripe wheat, just cut down and gathered up into the arms of God. Something in me wells up and I begin to run for joy. I float and fly into town. Suddenly I love everyone and want to hug them and tell them about the man who knows my story better than I do. The man who saw right through me. The man who saw ME and still smiled as if he loved me, cared about ME!

That day they all followed me back out of town and down to the well. I must’ve sounded like a crazy person. But I must’ve looked like a prophet because they followed me and for some reason, they believed me. Like I was somebody that had tasted something they were thirsty for.

I don’t know what life is gonna be like around here now that Jesus has come through. He only stayed a couple of days. That was long enough to make believers out of a lot of people in this place. They said they know that he is indeed the Savior of the world.

Everybody’s talking about him. They feel the way I felt.

But I met him first. I got to talk to him alone when no one else even knew how awesome he was.

Now, every time I go to that well, Jacob’s well, I remember the man who gave me a taste of living water. Sometimes that visit seems more like a dream than a memory. But I know it’s real. I remember how he told me about my crazy history. How he said that he was the Christ. How he looked at me and loved me.

I don’t worry now that I can’t get to Jerusalem to worship. I don’t just hope that the Father knows I want to worship him the right way, because He already knows. Because even though I’m way out here in no man’s land, He came through once, looking for me.