Stories in the Seeds

Stories in the Seeds
Friday, March 22, 2024 by AUBREY TAYLOR

Categories: Friday's Fiction / GUEST AUTHORS

PLEASE WELCOME

AUBREY TAYLOR

FICTION FRIDAY

THE AUTHOR’S STORY

For the last few years, this month has been an anniversary of sorts for me. March 2021 was the month I began my writing journey. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that March 2021 was the month I began my writing journey in earnest because as I look back, I can see that my journey actually began in childhood.

Then, after a 25-year interlude, as I was cleaning up from dinner, I heard the Lord whisper, “I want you to write.”

At first, it didn’t even occur to me that He was calling me to do something I had loved to do so many years ago!

Three years have yielded four books, and I am working hard on another two. I can’t do anything but say, “Wow, God,” because He knew this would become my passion long before He called me into it. As I look closely at my life between the ages of 7 and 14, I see the seeds of my future passion being planted.

First, there were the seeds of family saga and character-driven fiction: from the time I was old enough to draw stick figures on a chalkboard, all of my stories centered on three sets of sisters. First, there were Jacky and Jan (the aforementioned stick figures). Then came Tammi, Leera and Kelly, and finally Teri and Asta. Asta became my favorite: an overly confident, snarky younger sister who was probably inspired (at least to some degree) by Beverly Cleary’s Ramona.

As I think back on those old stories, I also see the seeds of banter, humor, and friendship. Particularly, Asta and her best friend, a wild-haired ginger named Chelly (great names, don’t you think?) In one book, I sent them to summer camp with a bunch of stuffy, boring cabin mates. As you can probably imagine, the two ran amok and nearly got themselves kicked out of camp for their shenanigans.

I remember something about one of their cabin mates going down the drain.

Perhaps I was bordering on speculative fiction at the time?

I wish I hadn’t lost all those early books, made of nothing more than printer paper that I folded and stapled together, filled with pages of chicken scratch and simple illustrations. Eventually, I graduated to spiral-bound notebooks, then binders and loose-leaf paper.

My fascination with the Second World War started early in life too, at age seven when I watched my first war film. With a little watering from my family’s pride in my grandfather’s service at Iwo Jima, those seeds would also bear fruit. I wanted to join the military. During high school, I visited recruiters, and in college, tried to join the ROTC program. Sadly, with my physical condition, it was not meant to be.

God knew.

During those 25 years, beneath the ground, all those seeds began to germinate. He even brought to fruition something else I didn’t expect, perhaps something I didn’t even recognize. Something that forms the core of my passion now:

The stories I have always loved the most are the ones in which the “bad guy” is not just reformed, but redeemed. For that reason, it’s no surprise that my Second World War fiction takes on the unique flavor it does.

Maybe it was Corrie ten Boom’s story about speaking to a church congregation in Germany, two years after the war ended. Her message was about grace: grace that broken people, still living amongst the ruins of their bombed-out cities needed as they worked through their nation’s guilt and shame. She spoke to their hearts, and, in the end, her listeners were left silent and speechless.

Corrie recalls being approached by a gentleman whose face she recognized immediately. Two years earlier, he had sneered at her and the other women prisoners at Ravensbrück, watching sadistically as they filed naked into the bathhouse.

Thanking her for her message, he affirmed how good indeed the Lord’s grace is. He had come to know it and was now a Christian. Yet he was not content with God’s forgiveness: he wanted to ask her for forgiveness as well.

The story is repeated from time to time because people love it. Corrie recounts how she struggled to grasp the hand the former SS guard extended to her. When she finally does, we are shocked, and thrilled, and ask ourselves whether we would do the same thing.

My heart asks a further question: “How many others, Lord?”

I am simply not content to write about the Allied heroes, the brave people who resisted the Nazis, or the victims of tyranny, though all of these themes are incredibly important. The seeds that were planted in my heart sprung to life as a desire to write stories of God’s amazing grace and reckless love from the standpoint of “the worst of sinners.”

When I get to heaven, I want to sit with men like Corrie ten Boom’s former SS guard, hear their stories, and praise God together with them for what HE has done.

For now, my stories may be fictional and my characters imagined, but they are born out of years of allowing seeds to germinate in the warmth and sunlight of what I do know: the nature of a loving God, who invites everyone to grab hold of His grace and forgiveness, regardless of what they’ve done.

As a child, Aubrey spent countless hours creating characters and writing stories. In 2021, God led her back to her love for writing, coupled with her fascination with history. Since then, she has published four books and is hard at work on her fifth. Aubrey lives in Upstate New York with her husband and three children. When she’s not writing or taking care of her home and family, she enjoys singing with friends from a German choir and dancing with a Bavarian folk dancing group. She is a lover of Jesus Christ, the Holy Bible, tea, and cats!

ABOUT AUBREY TAYLOR

See all of Aubrey’s books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Aubrey-Taylor/author/B0973KWXV8

*Note: from the author for reader caution

”The Rubicon is "gritty." It has a strong presentation of the gospel and is written from a Christian worldview, but it also deals with issues that more sensitive readers may not want to read about.”

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Comments

Aubrey From At 3/24/2024 7:49:33 AM

Thank you Priscilla! Forgive my delayed response. I appreciate your support so much, and look forward to reading your work as well!

Priscilla Bettis From Texas At 3/22/2024 2:59:46 PM

Wonderful post! I laughed at the "cabin mate down the drain." What an imagination! I rejoice in our redemption through Jesus, and I'm so thankful, Aubrey, for your stories.