“Orphan stories are the best,” agreed our daughters the other day after we finished a chapter from Betty MacDonald’s Nancy and Plum, a favorite Christmas season read-aloud. (I count myself ridiculously lucky to be the mother to a high school junior and a college freshman who still allow me to read to them at breakfast.) Nancy and Plum are orphans with a familiar story — ignored by a clueless uncle, sent to an abusive boarding school, and to boot, now spending Christmas day alone and cold, foraging for a meager meal with the animals in the barn. And yet these sisters find ways to resist the soul-crushing elements of their environment — what a satisfying storyline! And there are so many others like it, an astounding catalogue of orphan-based children’s stories from The Secret Garden and The Boxcar Children to A Series of Unfortunate Events and Harry Potter. The pervasive nature of this phenomenon makes me wonder what kind of need this fills for children — and adults.
My wondering intensified at a recent church service. “God loves an underdog!” cheered Pastor Jeff, leaning into his sermon on Hannah’s song in 1 Samuel 2. As he talked about the reversals in the text — the repeated images of the lowly and poor being lifted up while the powerful and rich become broken and humbled — he foreshadowed the messages we would hear in Advent, through Mary’s song in Luke 1:
He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;
he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.
He has brought down rulers from their thrones
but has lifted up the humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things
but has sent the rich away empty.
Pastor Jeff’s observation about God as a champion of underdogs resonated deeply with me. Although not an orphan as a child, my own journey featured the tight clasp of a highly dysfunctional family from which, by God’s grace, I was able to emerge into an adulthood with a growing sense of personal agency. I spent a full year in my 20s learning that saying “no” wouldn’t make me a “bad daughter,” and that boundaries can co-exist with truly loving family relationships. I remember the shocking power of skipping a mandatory family lunch one weekend and observing that the ensuing wrath never arrived in the way I had expected.
Just like other survivors, I’ve had to learn to nurture myself, to forgive others, and to watch out for the vulnerable. There was, of course, a choice — I could have chosen a different road where I would use my newfound power to protect myself and leave others behind. But in my college years I found myself surrounded by examples of kind and humble adults who gave their lives to service and demonstrated the joy that comes from living lives of generosity and integrity. They taught me that although we live in a world where power and wealth and education offer the opportunity and temptation to snatch up resources and use people for our own benefit, our God is not of this world, and calls us instead to humility, mercy, and justice.
Once we’ve opened our eyes to these different ways of being in the world, we can find instructive and inspiring examples all around us — especially in high-quality children’s literature. The Secret Garden invites us to witness the transformation of a formerly selfish Mary Lennox as she imitates the kindness and generosity of Dickon just as she imitates his Yorkshire dialect. Harry Potter, abused in his aunt and uncle’s home, discovers his own power through his professors’ training and uses it to fight injustice — from Draco Malfoy’s sneering put-downs to the evil plots of Voldermort. And if you haven’t yet read Nancy and Plum, I won’t spoil the delights of the way these sisters advocate for their fellow boarders in ways that raise up champions for their whole community.
To be honest, it does my own soul good to read about orphans finding their way as they discover opportunities to escape their oppressors or turn the tables on greedy pursuers or offer kindness to someone even less fortunate. We all need these stories to shape our imaginations, whether from children’s literature, good fiction, biographies of courageous men and women, or from Scripture. We need stories that illustrate how to best use whatever power we may have, whether as undergrad students or presidents of universities. No matter our circumstances, we must reckon with the question: Will our power be used to serve others or to serve ourselves? And thus we return to Christmas, the season when we remember which path was embraced by One who, though not an orphan, chose to leave his Father’s home, and “being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage” but became, of his own choice, the small, helpless, and beloved baby, to whom we can pray:
O holy Child of Bethlehem!
Descend to us we pray;
Cast out our sin and enter in,
Be born in us today.
Photo by Altered Reality on StockSnap
