Dungeons and Dragons Became my Ministry

Growing up during the Satanic Panic, I knew three things about Dungeons and Dragons: people played it in the dark, there were demons involved, and kids died.

It turns out people play around brightly lit tables, the only demons involved are the ones we defeat, and friends do die...inside the game. Like in checkers. Christians, of all people, should know that facing death, even in stories, can make you better at life.

Dungeons and Dragons has become my ministry.

A typical first session starts with strangers, usually other women from local Army support group Facebook groups, arriving at my apartment door. I greet them with my baby on my hip, welcome them inside, offer them cookies. They're usually nervous, find their seats around my coffee table while I hand out colorful dice in little tupperware with weapons written on the top. "These are the dice for your short sword, these are the dice for your long bow..." Sheets of paper are examined. One new player's character is good at talking to animals; another can heal wounds by laying on hands.

When everyone is comfortable and I've downed a cup of coffee, I pass around a cloth bag and let each woman choose a bracelet from inside. "Congratulations." The girl with the bangle is the much-contested crown princess they've sworn to protect. The two with matching bracelets are twins. Strangers stare at each other.

And I plunge them into the story.

"You've been tracking a monster through the night as it passed through the border of your tribe's lands moving toward the human settlements. As the sun rises, the tracks disappear into a stream."

Within five minutes, strangers are plunging into danger to help each other, laughing at ridiculous choices and silly moments, gasping as they incur imaginary wounds. Within three hours, they're shouting "FOR MY SISTER!", talking to imaginary people without shame and deciding what kind of heroes they'll be in this little world we've made.

When I finish, I ask, "Do you want to do this again?" No one has ever said no.

I believe in the power of stories to give us practice in being brave, to give us chances to make hard decisions while they're a little bit easier. I believe in the power of stories to let us feel who we want to be.

And I believe in the power of adrenaline, of doing something ostensibly silly but doing it together, to teach people they can trust each other. I've gone to coffee, I've gone to lunch, but a DnD circle will randomly switch from fighting a monster to sharing notes about abuse or difficult events in a way coffee dates never did. Hurting people find a sisterhood of women who care and listen and help them fight monsters. 

Not every game I run is going to be a therapy session. Sometimes it's just a story, just a chance for people to get together and laugh and do something hard. But creating that safe space? Creating that chance for people to get out of themselves and into who they want to be? That's worth every hour.

Dungeons and Dragons is the way I have to love people, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

So I was Sexist.

When I was young, I believed men were storms.

They didn’t make decisions; they didn’t commit sins; they happened to you. They swept in and out and left wreckage or not. They were not accountable for what happened to you when you encountered their wrath. You could make things worse, but never better.

I couldn’t bear that the beast changed for Belle, but my child self was not worth changing for. So, instead of deciding the forces that shaped and splintered my world could be wrong when they so obviously had the favor of heaven, I called them unchanging. I called them storms.

Then I married a knight in shining armor. And my world fell apart.

Collin was beautiful and perfect and he’d never hurt me on purpose, but he was terrible at telling me what was happening in our Army-controlled life, and as my panic attacks worsened and life was terrible I could only blame me. I wasn’t prepared enough for the storm. I wasn’t smart or strong or good enough to handle finding everything out at the last minute. I felt worthless because I was, dagnabbit, and poor, poor Collin having to deal with a woman who fell apart when life happened to her! Then my dear husband told me the thing that sent all my careful defenses for him tumbling to the ground, looking not like love but just like barbed wire. “It hurts me that you never think I can change.”

And I blurted out, “Men don’t change!”

*three…slow…claps*

In the middle of my panic and confusion and guilt, Collin took my shoulders and walked me through how to blame him for a mistake. He taught me that my suffering could be his fault, and it didn’t bring on his wrath or make me an unkind creature of horror. It was easy to forgive him. I’d never gotten to before, and it was easy to start.

And then he changed. For me.

Men aren’t storms. They are heroes or monsters. Absolving them of responsibility for their actions isn’t kindness.  It’s just barbed wire.