I was never much for fairy tales until more recently. Animals talking? Elves and dwarves? Tree people and all those blurred lines between real and fantastic that made me uncomfortable? But as Lewis says, maybe I am just finally getting old enough to enjoy them. And now, I must confess, one of my very favorite books is indeed a fairy tale: At the Back of the North Wind, by George Macdonald. I don’t feel worthy to even give a synopsis. All I can say is that it is one of the most beautiful, wrenching, delightful, stirring books on this planet. It does something to you. It gets inside you and flips you inside out. It takes up abode within you, whispering ever after Divine Truth to your soul. I don’t want to spoil the ending, but all I’ll say is that humanly speaking, it is not a happy ending. It’s confusing and painful. And as I read it aloud to my children several months ago and as we read the final chapter and as we all sat together on my bed hugging and crying like our hearts were broken (because they were) I remembered Tolkien’s words in On Fairy Stories:

“But the “consolation” of fairy-tales has another aspect than the imaginative satisfaction of
ancient desires. Far more important is the Consolation of the Happy Ending. Almost I would
venture to assert that all complete fairy-stories must have it”

And so with tears streaming, I reminded them that Macdonald writes fairy stories and that all fairy tales must have a happy ending.

“But how, mommy?” they cried. “how is this a happy ending?”

Maybe it wasn’t for us. But I knew because of Damian and because of the promises of God that it was a happy ending. It was the happiest ending the story could ever have.

It was 10 years ago tonight, just past midnight on February 10th, Damian danced with the North Wind one last time. It was not a happy ending for us. It was devastating. My heart was ripped from my chest and a large portion of it buried in a little white coffin in the Xoclán cemetery in Mérida, Yucatán. And so our little family, now one member smaller, wept together, the story of wonder of a new life somehow now against all natural inclinations, a tragedy.

Except that all fairy, or wonder, stories do indeed have a happy ending. May we not be so egocentric to expect them to be happy to our own personal satisfaction. Long before reading Macdonald, the Holy Spirit whispered His consolations into our broken hearts. For Damian, it was a happy ending. The happiest there could ever be.

No more cold, sharp needles. No more pain. Never sick again.

No life of sin and regret. No struggle for holiness against the flesh.

No disappointments, no trials, no hope deferred.

Instead, forever with the Lord, worshipping at His feet, dwelling in Light inaccessible. Drinking living water, eating of the tree of life, dancing down the street of gold.

What? and we dare to presume there was no happy ending? That broken hearts and cemeteries were the end of it all? My little Damian, how could I ever wish you back?? Oh soul, so weary, so in love with this world! How truly delightful that the lines are blurred between “reality” and the fantastic; that the trees do sing with joy, that the beasts do raise their voice in worship, that the hills do run and skip like lambs—that death really can be a happy ending.

But only for some. For babies and children, for those redeemed by the Lamb, the fairy story holds true. The fairy tale is really just the Gospel shared in another way. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the true and complete wonder story whose happy ending is of eternal, holy delight. Friend, is Jesus your Savior? Have you repented of your sins and been made right through His death on the cross? For if not, the ending can only be one of tragedy and devastation.

On Damian’s 10th Glory Day, may his early death point you on to the greatest Death and the greatest Victory, the happiest ending of a resurrected Savior. Trust in Christ and find all your joy in Him.

“It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.” -JRR Tolkien