Imagine this: a famous movie producer wants to film a movie of your life, or a best-selling author proposes to write your story as a biography. What would be the heart of that tale? What event or era from your life would form the basis of the plot line? Would it be some shameful secret from your past you thought long gone and forgotten? Maybe it would be the story of some on-going struggle you’ve been fighting. Perhaps those long-running relationship battles with your family are book-worthy. Would such a movie or book find an audience? Probably you’re thinking nobody would be interested at all in the minutia of your life, the drama, the angst, the little victories, the almost overwhelming defeats.
That’s probably what Emmalyn would have thought if she had known someone was planning to write about her life. She and her sometime sweetheart, Mr. Turnipseed (yes, Turnipseed—stop snickering) would undoubtedly have been convinced that nothing about their lives was worthy of a book. Nor a movie, for that matter. She was the spoiled daughter of a Southern plantation owner growing up in the tumultuous years before the Civil War. He, also spoiled, belonged to another fine family nearby, and the two of them developed a relationship that was as rocky and conflicted as the brewing national discord. Shortly after the war began, the couple had another one of their famous fights, but this time it was fiery enough that he decided to go join the Confederate army. Seems to me you’d have to really be angry at someone to decide you’d rather be on the front lines of a vicious war than spend another minute in their presence!
You have heard Emmalyn’s story—pretty much everyone has. It became one of the best-selling books and highest-grossing movies of all time. Of course, Emmalyn is not a proper name for a heroine; neither is Turnipseed for a leading man. So Margaret Mitchell decided to use the name, Scarlett, for her female protagonist, and then use Mr. Turnipseed’s first name, Rhett, for her romantic foil. Gone With the Wind is, if not a retelling of this couple’s ill-fated romance, then certainly a “based on real life events” kind of telling. Evidently, we are suckers for this kind of human drama, because we ate it up! So much so that a sequel was published in 1991 telling the rest of their story. That second novel, though, was completely made up.
We know this because we know what really became of the real Rhett and Scarlett after their tumultuous affair ended. What happened was a plot twist of the first order. After the war, Rhett came back home and became an itinerant gambler. Not hugely successful, he found himself wandering the streets of Nashville one winter near Christmastime. Cold and homeless, he was walking past a meeting hall when he heard singing. Slipping inside for warmth, he found himself in an old-fashioned Methodist revival. He slid into the back pew, intending to leave after he warmed up, but the singing entranced him and he stayed through the song service and then through the preaching. Something happened that night, and when the preacher ended his sermon with an altar call, Rhett, to his surprise as much as anyone else’s, found himself walking to the front to accept Christ as his savior.
He eventually ended up attending Vanderbilt Divinity School and became a circuit-riding preacher, making the rounds of several churches around the southeast. At some point, word reached him that a young girl, maybe 17, had run away from home and gone to the city to seek fame and fortune. Not long after, he learned that she had turned up in St. Louis working in a brothel. Being a good shepherd, he immediately went after her. Finding the address, he asked to speak with Madame of the House and was shown into her chamber. In a perfect example of the truth being stranger than fiction (Even Margaret Mitchell’s fiction), when he strode into the room, he was shocked to find himself in the presence of none other than his former love, Emmalyn Louise Hannon. In a strategic move not necessarily approved of by governing church committees, Rhett challenged Emmalyn to a single game of poker for the right to take his young parishioner back to her parents. He won and good was triumphant. But (apologies to Paul Harvey) you only think you know The Rest of the Story. Here comes the second plot twist: As a result of her encounter with the reformed Rhett, Emmalyn herself was converted. She closed down the brothel and later opened a home for Indian children orphaned by the war.
Now let me ask: When Emmalyn and Rhett are telling their stories ages and ages hence, on worlds and in galaxies far, far, away, do you suppose they’ll talk about those Gone With the Wind years already covered by Margaret Mitchell? Or do you think maybe their story will be all about the redemptive love of Christ and the power of the gospel in their lives? About what came after the plot twist introduced by the working of the Holy Spirit? And let me ask this: What story will you tell? The story of your defeat and hopelessness? The story of attempting to find purpose and happiness by gaining the whole world? The story of self-medication and self-hate masquerading as self-love? Or will you, too, pick up after the plot twist in your own life? Will you be telling for eternity the story of what happened after Christ touched you, changed you, became your hope of glory?
The world only knows stories like that of Scarlett and Rhett in their brokenness and pseudo-love affair. But we know, and they need to know, the story of what Christ has done and will do in the lives of those who come to him. That’s the gospel, really, the plot twist, the rest of the story—the only story that matters for good and always.
Peace.
