Humans have a natural inclination to make narratives out of our lives, and we are very good at it. And, in the years and years that we live, and through the many events we experience, the idea of story “arcs” becomes both a little more complicated and a lot more important.
Every effective story that has ever been told has narrative arcs. There are plot arcs, character arcs, thematic arcs, and more, and all of them coexist in a single story. More often than not these are what make or break a story, ie if a character has no arc, if they never change or grow, you may have a hard time relating to them. This gets even more complicated in different mediums of storytelling: a television show will have a series arc, as well as season arcs, as well as individual episode arcs. The same goes for novels and movies, specifically those in a saga.
This is applicable to our very real lives as well. If our lives are stories, they certainly aren’t simple ones. In the same vein as TV shows, our lives have arcs for individual seasons of our lives, sometimes just a month, or even a week. But my theory is this: if we broaden the arc of our story, it can help us to gain a more powerful perspective on the difficult parts, and see things more clearly moving forward.
The end of a story informs, and determines the meaning of, its prior events. So, say you are looking back on a horrible season of your life; if it had a genre it would be a tragedy. Things were only lost, it had no meaning, and it was not at all worth it. If that is the end of that story, its meaning is entirely negative and it was just a confusing sour point in your life. But if you look at it on a grander scale, as part of the arc that God sees your life in, and even the story of humanity, the meaning of it is changed. Maybe you now see that certain things were redeemed down the road, and lives were changed for the better.
If you aren’t far enough removed from the season to see this, then remember that at the end of the story of God’s unstoppable love for us, He makes all things well again. The story has a happy ending, and if you remember that that is the ultimate end of your arc, you will see your life as it truly is. Seeing the meaningful parts exactly as they are, and that it was all worth it.