Sam and the Light (My First Blog Post)

My name is Anne Wiser. I am a passionate author and reader of all kinds of books. I want to share my love of stories with you.

In this blog I am going to share things I have discovered throughout my life about how stories, fictional and non-fiction, can be very healing, validating, and beneficial in other ways. I hope what I have learned will help you, or even simply give you something entertaining to think about. It’s a bonus if it does both!

I have always been passionate about stories for as long as I can remember. I was the kid who always had a book under her arm, borrowed twenty whole chapter books from the library and finished them all before they were due, and was always reading after I was supposed to be in bed. Throughout my life, I have also experienced abuse, disappointment, fear, grief, and other feelings that are sometimes difficult to understand, manage, and heal. One way I found healing was through stories of all kinds. I hope to help you find the same.

How This Will (Usually) Work

In this blog, I will usually share a story (fictional or non-fictional) or a specific part of a story, then share what I love about it and what I learned from it. I will also share what in that helped me to heal or solve a problem so that you can start to find healing through the stories you discover. (By the way, I would love it if you would share those with me in the comments! I’m always down for a new story.)

Are you ready to start? I’m excited and ready to start sharing!

Now We Get to the Story

For this first blog post it was difficult to decide what story to use. There are so many I love! If you’re a book lover, you know exactly what that feels like. The question, “What’s your favorite book?” is one of the hardest in the world to answer.

I decided to choose one of my favorites, and one that is vastly popular, The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien. If you know anything about that, you may be asking, “But Anne, that’s a whole three book series. How are you going to do it justice in half of a short blog post?” The answer is, my fellow fans, I am not going to try. I am going to focus on one particular part, or scene, for this post.

As I only have half a post left, I will use an incredibly short scene from the last book, The Return of the King. (Spoiler Alert!) It is one of my favorite scenes, and one that gets a simple, but beautiful few seconds of screen time in the movie. In the book, Sam and Frodo are in the terrible land of Mordor, ruled by the dark lord, Sauron. They’ve made it that far through many trials, challenges, heartbreaking moments, and tests of their utmost strength. They stop to sleep, Sam, the true friend he always is, tells Frodo to sleep first as he keeps watch. Frodo falls asleep before the words are all out of Sam’s mouth.

Sam tries to keep awake, though his body and mind are exhausted. He grabs Frodo’s hand tenderly and sits as the night grows darker (and the day there was already dark). Finally, he cannot keep awake any longer if he stays still, and he crawls out of their hiding place. Looking and listening all around him, he hears “creaking and cracking and sly noises…” His eyes are drawn up to the top of the Ephel Duath, the mountains around Mordor.

Just above the dark, craggy peaks, he notices one small, white star twinkle for a moment. It is only a small moment, but the beauty of it all in that dark land awes Sam and touches his little heart. That small light brings this weary little Hobbit hope. “For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach… for a moment, his own fate, and even his master’s, ceased to trouble him.” Sam crawls back into hiding, lays down beside Frodo, and falls into “a deep untroubled sleep.”

The Help and Healing I Found

I love that scene not only because Sam is my favorite character (Feel free to comment and tell me who yours is if you’ve read the books or seen the movies!), but because that scene has a beautiful, but simple message. There are times in our lives where we can feel like Sam and Frodo. No, I don’t think we’ll ever have to walk thousands of miles into the land of a dark lord in the shape of a giant fiery eye, fight spiders bigger than we are (please no!), be followed by a 500-year-old pitiful former Hobbit, and nearly die in that attempt, but we may face similar challenges.

Things can get dark. Our minds may ache and be overwhelmed by our problems. We may feel exhausted after a traumatic struggle, or after a long day. We may try to keep watch over others around us and feel as if we are not up to the task. We may be in the middle of the hardest time in our lives we have yet experienced, and have no idea how we’re going to get out of that rock bottom spot. None of us know how the next chapters of our story will turn out. Those dark places can be terrifying. They are real. I know. I’ve been there. My heart goes out to you who are there right now, or are still working your way up and trying to heal.

The beautiful thing about this scene is that Sam looked up. He made the effort to do all that he knew how, and his eye was drawn to the next simple little thing that helped him. After he looked up, he saw a small, twinkling star (I love to think it’s the star of Eärendil, a very special star in Tolkien's writings). That tiny light was enough to touch Sam's heart and give him hope. For one moment, he saw beyond the darkness and understood that it was not the end. There is a whole universe out there. There is a power greater than any darkness, and it can never be overcome. Sam glimpsed that, and it gave him hope and peace.

In our difficult moments we can look up. We can move forward. We can listen to that small voice inside that will guide us to or help us see the little things out there that can help us. When we see those little things (and they could be as little as a smile or compliment from a stranger, the next step for your life falling into place just in time, the grace of living to take one more breath, or even the sight of a twinkling star like Sam saw), we can choose to think about the depth and power behind them. Good will always overcome evil.

As another book I love, Sir Percy Hits Back from the Scarlet Pimpernel series by Baroness Orczy, states, “…all evil, friend… is by the grace of God finite.”

There is always hope. There is always light. Light overcomes darkness and dispels it. Like Sam and Frodo, keep shining your own light, no matter how thick the darkness is around you, and keep noticing the light shining from other sources into your own life.

I hope that helped you in some way. And yes, the quote from the other book may, or may not, be a hint about a future post. 😊

"Namárië!" (Farewell! In Tolkien's Elvish) Until next time!

Your Friend,

Anne Wiser