Are You Stuck in the Wrong Story? A Guest Post

Today it's my pleasure to introduce my new friend and long-lost sister, a gal I've come to refer to as "The Other Lori." I discovered her on Edie Melson's blog, The Write Conversation when she guest posted there. Her sharper-than-arrows writing resonated with me, and when I read her bio, I discovered she not only shares my name (spelled correctly, L-O-R-I), she also shares my home state of Rhode Island. WOW!

A lively email exchanged followed as we compared stories -- married forever to the same man, two young adult children whom we homeschooled from birth, a love for writing, and a love for Jesus. The only difference we could tell beside the fact that she got a boy/girl set of children and I got a girl/girl pair was that she got saved in Rhode Island, and I had to migrate 1,000 miles away to hear the Gospel.

On a professional level,  we share the same publishing house, Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas, the same agent, Les Stobbe, and our books launched in the same week earlier this month. Our paths are so similar that our publishers and editors decided no longer to refer to us by our names, but by the titles of our books because they kept getting us mixed up. "Too many Lori's!" they said in frustration. So I'm Hungry Lori and she's Crazy Lori. Secretly, I'm hoping they mix up our paychecks, because I'm convinced her book will be a bestseller.

Today we're blog swapping. She's guest posting here on my South Carolina-based blog. Hey y'all. And I'm headed north to hang out with her readers. I think I still remember how to speak Yankee. How ya doin'? Glad ta meetcha. 

And so, without further ado, here's Lori. The other Lori. The one who wrote Running from a Crazy Man (and other adventures with Jesus) . I know you'll love her.

Are You Stuck in the Wrong Story? Following Jesus When Life Is No Fairy Tale 

Cinderella knew the truth. She was intended for greater things than sweeping ashes from the hearth.


Are you sometimes haunted by the notion that you were meant for more? You should examine that idea. It may be from God. 

My daughter got me interested in a Sunday night television show called Once Upon a Time. It’s the story of a town inhabited by storybook characters trying to find their way back into the world in which they really belong.

But really, it’s the gospel.

That’s probably not what the writers intended, but Jesus, in an effort to reach His people, will even inject Himself into the prime time lineup of network television.

In the first season, Once Upon a Time was all about the characters awakening and remembering that they were once part of a glorious land. It features one child who still believes in their story and is willing to take drastic measures to remind everyone else of their former glory. Because of him, they are awake. Now, they remember they’re not just librarians or shopkeepers or waitresses, but they have “once upon a time” bloodlines with ancient stories full of magic and adventure.

Even though they’re awake, they are not yet back home in The Enchanted Forest. They remain trapped in a foreign place hostile to their former way of life. Dark forces oppose them. An enemy works against their return, trying to keep them in bondage to their everyday, ordinary, lesser selves—to rob them of their redemption.

It’s the gospel, don’t you see? Can you acknowledge the playfulness of our amazing Creator as He inserts His homecoming beacon into our modern culture and cries out for us to remember who we were designed to be?

Doesn’t your heart cry out after a long Monday, or in the face of another Tuesday, to be part of a greater story? Isn’t there within you a longing for a home you don’t remember ever knowing? Don’t you sometimes feel trapped in a minor role when all your dreams and passions create a force that threatens to destroy you if you don’t find the role you were born to play?

Jesus created everything. His story is in His Word, yes, but He roams, unconfined, across genres. He appears in the music we write, the movies we make, the art we create, and the stories we tell.

He is calling to us—calling to us from every medium—to remember who we are. 

"For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness. So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, are drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation" (1 Thessalonians 5:5-8).

Feel stuck inside a lesser role than you were intended to play? Wake up. Like Sleeping Beauty, you need the kiss of true love. There is a High King and He will free you if you come to Him. There is a rider on a White Horse coming. Can you hear His hoof beats?

Wake up, loved ones! You have a part in the greater story. Everything your heart whispers to you in the night is true. There is more, and you were meant to be part of it.

Once upon a time, there was a King who shed His blood to ransom His people back from the grave. It is the greatest and truest story ever told.

And it is the place where you belong. 



Lori Stanley Roeleveld is a disturber of hobbits who enjoys making comfortable Christians late for dinner. Her new book, Running from a Crazy Man (and other adventures traveling with Jesus) is available now online and at your local bookstore. Jesus lover. Blogger. Wife. Mother. Part-time dragon slayer. You’ll find Lori at her website www.loriroeleveld.com or on her front porch writing.

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