Faith Over Foreshadow: Moving Forward When We Don't Know What Happens Next
I taught a mini-lesson on foreshadowing this week.
We are currently reading The Crossover in class and my students can hardly put it down. In the text, the two main characters, Josh and Jordan Bell, are twin brothers who love to play basketball.
The text develops through a descriptive relationship of two brothers and their dad, Chuck. The Josh, Jordan, and their dad share a special relationship that is strengthened through their love of basketball.
Only middle-schoolers, Josh and Jordan are immaculate athletes with dreams of playing in college.
However, things seem to be going too well for Jordan and Josh, and Josh even notices this himself in the text.
This realization is a demonstration of foreshadowing in the text.
My students were analyzing this statement in class earlier this week and trying to determine if Josh saying “Things are going well” actually does foreshadow that things are going to start to not go well and why.
“I cannot tell you how many times in my life I have had the same thought as Josh. The realist in me knows that things cannot be good all of the time.”
Wouldn’t it be nice, though, if we had a hint or warning before the storm? Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a foreshadow? Kwame Alexander, the author of The Crossover intentionally foreshadowed the storm that was to come for Josh in the novel.
However, we are our own authors.
Wouldn’t it be nice if God would swoop down and have a talk with us before we ventured into the unknown?
“There have been many hail storms in my life when all I could do was think, ‘Lord, why couldn’t you send me a sign? Why couldn’t you give me some kind of warning? Where was the foreshadow, Lord?’”
But, if we are our own authors, our stories are not yet completely written. Not even our first or second draft, and definitely not our final manuscript.
We indulge in beautifully woven written word in novels while drooling over the most diligent foreshadow crafted into a piece of literature, but to relish this luxury in our own lives would not only be boring, but it would be quite cowardly.
How can we learn? How can we grow? How can we develop into changed characters in our own stories if we know about the foreshadow
“Our best character traits will not be developed through knowing what happens next, but in being the kind of character that pushes forward, into the unknown, ready to muster up the courage to set fire to our fear and put on the armor of faith. ”
Josh is not a cowardly character. He recognized that things were going well and braced himself for the fall, but his biggest moment was in putting on the coat of courage.
He did not know what would happen next. Perhaps only the writer did.
Much like Josh, we are blind characters, living out our truths, trying to make sense of “things going too tell” and bracing ourselves for the fall.
We cannot skip ahead a few chapters and predict our ending.
We cannot go back and erase pieces of our draft. We cannot avoid the next conflict in our lives.
We cannot bookmark a page in our lives and completely analyze what we think might be the foreshadow, or what is coming next.
We can, however, choose faith over the foreshadow. We can choose to believe that no matter where our story takes us, faith will carry us through. Although we might not know what is coming next, if we choose faith, we choose strength. We choose love. We choose grace.
And it is these things that will carry us through.
Even when we don’t know what will happen next.
Even when there is no foreshadow.
With love,
Brittany Jeanine