“I never read fiction,” the friend standing before me declared. “I only read stories that are true.”

The literary gauntlet was thrown down – and a challenge accepted. We agreed to swap books. He offered historical non-fiction in exchange for a novel. I accepted his worn copy of Endurance – Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage, and offered him an equally treasured paperback version of Ernest Gaines’ A Lesson Before Dying.

The leap of faith was mostly his. I’m almost certain Gaines’ novel was the first one my friend had ever determined to tackle start-to-finish. (Plans change.) But the pleasure, I’m afraid, was mostly mine. A Lesson Before Dying is fiction that reads like fact, and in the deepest sense of the word, it is completely true – even though its characters are imaginary.

Endurance is fact so unimaginable that it reads like fiction.

It is the story of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s attempt, in 1914, to cross the Antarctic continent. That was not his first dream, his original passion. He had wanted to be the first man to reach the South Pole, but two other men beat him there. So Shackleton found a new dream. And he failed at that, too. Sort of. He never completed his intended 1500 mile Antarctic trek. But he kept 27 men alive for two years after disaster struck, and ultimately brought them to safety. Plans change.

Shackleton was forty when he started his voyage. He set sail from England and after nearly five months at sea, his great ship became wedged in ice “like an almond in a toffee bar,” only a day’s sail from his destination. Then he and his men sat in the ship for 11 months, waiting for the ice to melt and free them. It didn’t. Instead his ship and most of what it held was crushed to a heap of wood and steel and wire between two gigantic ice floes that ground against it until it gave way with an awful groan. Plans change.

They were sailors whose survival depended more on their ability to surrender than to steer. Plans change. They let themselves hope – but not too specifically. They’d seen the elements crush too many particular dreams. They were at the mercy of the wind and the water – and they knew it. Shackleton learned to let go of one rope before another rope swung his way. He never began the journey he intended – but he finished one he never might have started had the choice been left to him. Plans change.

I’m not where I thought I would be today. Maybe you’re not either. But God is writing a story with your life, and with mine – one grounded in reality, yet as luminous as fiction. And I am learning to let his hand have free reign with the manuscript, because thankfully, plans change.

“If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it.” (Luke 9:23-24, NASB)

©2003 Leigh McLeroy