If you need a happy story :)

Hello myth-makers!

What's something encouraging someone said to you this week?

I've felt a strange kind of poetry at uni lately, where goals I set in first year have been fulfilled in compliments on my work from classmates and teachers. It feels like God is saying through them, "I've been growing your skills, and people are noticing! ;)" One of my classmates (whose music is just fabulous) said to me, "I don't listen to your music enough! You're a beast!"

And I thought, "But... you seem to just exhale music! How can you say that about my work, which feels so painfully slow to create?"

And then I realised.

He thinks I just exhale music.

He probably finds his music painfully slow to create.

Ah.

Friendly reminder... someone out there probably thinks that you make [fill the blank with something you can do] look easy ;) . Does that feel weird? You're the legend today!

:D

(Don't worry, I do still have a story to tell this week XD.) Come with me to Kenya, where we will meet a young maiden named Wanjiru.

Wanjiru's land was in its third year of a terrible drought. There was no rain, no crops, no food. The people were starving, hopeless, and becoming desperate for a solution. Finally the elders gathered the village together, to discuss what they could do.

'Why is there no rain?' the villagers asked each other. No one had an answer, so they went to the witchdoctor and asked him.

He performed a ritual, then finally said, 'There is a young woman named Wanjiru living among you. If you want it to rain, you must bring her before the people of the village. In two days' time, every family must bring a goat with which to purchase her.'

Two days later, the village gathered around Wanjiru. Each family had brought a goat, and they formed a circle and presented their goats, one by one, to Wanjiru's family. As they each approached her family, she started to sink into the ground. Soon the ground came to her knees, and she began to cry out and scream for help. Her parents saw what was happening and began to call for help too, but the villagers just gathered around them, giving them their goats, so that she sank to her waist.

'I am lost,' she called out to the village. 'But because of this, the rain will come.'

As she sank deeper into the earth, black clouds began to form above her. She was up to her neck when fat raindrops began to fall. Her parents tried to press through the crowd to save her, but the people stood between her and her parents, offering their countless goats.

Finally, Wanjiru vanished. Rain poured down, so thick that the villagers had to run home to escape the downpour.

Only one man mourned for Wanjiru. He was a young, brave warrior, who had loved her ever since they were children. As the weeks passed after her sacrifice, he ignored the rain, distraught at the price it had cost.

He decided that he had to find her.

For almost a year he wandered the countryside with his shield and spear, but he found no trace of her. Dejected, he finally returned to his homeland and stood on the very spot where he'd seen Wanjiru sink into the ground. The disappointment and grief welled in his chest afresh, bringing hot tears dropping from his face, into the ground.

As his tears fell like rain, his feet began to sink into the ground. He sank lower and lower, until the ground closed above him and he found himself standing in the middle of a long road. He followed the road, and soon saw a figure walking ahead of him. Could it be... It was! He ran toward Wanjiru, taking in her tattered clothes and unsteady steps until he finally caught up with her.

'The rain has come,' he told her breathlessly. 'I'll take you back now.'

He lifted her onto his back, and gently carried her back along the road, until the path rose above the ground and they stood in the sunlight again.

He let her down safely, then turned to speak to her face-to-face. 'You can't go back to your family, after the way they treated you,' he told her. 'I will look after you instead.' They waited for night to fall, then he took her into his home, telling his mother to keep her presence a secret. They kept this secret for months, during which she regained her weight, was clothed in goat skins, and her hair was once more adorned with beads.

During the autumn festival, she snuck out of the house to join in the dancing. For a few minutes, no one seemed to recognise her, but then one of her brothers glimpsed her face and cried out. 'You're my sister--who we lost when the rains came!'

Wanjiru hung her head and wouldn't respond, but her young warrior was angry at them. 'You didn't care for her before,' he snapped, leading her back to his house. 'So you don't deserve her now.'

For three days, her family knocked at his door, shouting to let them in, or send Wanjiru out, but each day, he refused. On the fourth day, he finally relented, realising that her family really was sorry for how they had acted.

He invited them in and they ate a meal together. As they ate, they determined the bride-price, and Wanjiru and her warrior were soon married.

I wrote a song about this story a couple of years ago, and this is the chorus:

Climb onto my back, I'll carry you home.
You don't have to hold on; I won't drop you.
These past few weeks, we've both been roaming,
Now you're found, you don't have to.
You won't be alone
As the crow, we'll fly home.

It reminds me of another story of a lost person (or, in this case, an animal), who was carried home on the shoulders of the only one who cared... ;) Isn't lovely to have a God who is as tender and gentle with us as a Shepherd is with his sheep?

I hope you have a wonderful weekend, you legend!

PS this week's blog post is the fourth and final in the Writing Romance series! We're looking at where you can take a romance in your sequel... I offer four possible solutions.