Almost ten years ago, a friend helped me set up a blog after I’d published my first book, Teacher Dropout about discovering God’s grace while I worked in a poverty school. He explained, a blog is like the lady at Costco who gives you a sample of her product, so that you’ll buy the whole box. A simple marketing concept, but at the time, I didn’t realize my blog would also become the path to my next memoir.
Every week I found myself blogging stories from my childhood I hadn’t thought about in years: my first-grade trouble learning how to read, my first playground fight, my first best friend. Vignettes buried in shame, pain, and confusion also rose to the surface along with incidents displaying the kindness and forbearance of others. The stories kept coming until I realized I had the pieces of another book. But how did they fit together? What was this book about? Sometimes the author is the last to know, especially when what you’re writing is in story form and not a twelve-chapter how-to book.
As much as I’ve benefited from Christian Living books, my favorite genre is still memoir because the author shares her whole story, not just the neat takeaways she’s distilled from her struggle. I relish a complete vicarious experience that in some mysterious way resonates with my own. As Alison Wearing said, “We know when we’re in the presence of truth.”
Years ago, I read The Cure in which author John Lynch said, “God never tells me to get over something and just get past it. Never. Instead, he asks me to trust him with every circumstance. That involves communicating with Him honestly, in detail, until I’m sure I’ve left nothing out…I must sigh, cry, shriek, or howl, until He’s certain I’m done, that I’ve gotten it all out.”
So, here’s the thing, drafting this new memoir has been the process of getting it all out, first on the messy page, and then placing it at the foot of the cross. By trusting God as my merciful judge, I’m released from my past and set free to move on.
Practically, how does this relate to writing memoir? It shows you when your story is done. It’s done when you’re tired of telling it. When you’ve gotten it all out. When you’ve spent the ammunition you fired at yourself and others on the page, and you see yourself not as victim, but as victor through the love of Christ. When you can forgive yourself and others, and share healing truth with your readers.
Years ago, I helped my mom move out of the house she’d lived in for forty some years. One of my daughters took my dad’s old gun cabinet where he locked away his hunting rifles and a few family relics like an antique sword, and a lady’s pistol. Before my daughter took the cabinet into her own home, all the weaponry was sold, the gun rack was removed and refurbished with shelving that held flower vases, her best serving dishes, and champagne glasses.
By unlocking my past with my pen, and handing it over to the Lord, I’ve emptied the enemy’s weaponry that shouted over and over again, you should be ashamed of yourself, you were never enough, who do you think you are?
And I’m ready to serve my reader not only samples of my writing, but a full meal of thanksgiving about how I came of age and found freedom for my soul.
“Banish bitterness, rage and anger, shouting and slander, and any and all malicious thoughts—these are poison. Instead, be kind and compassionate. Graciously forgive one another just as God has forgiven you through the Anointed, our Liberating King.”
Ephesians 4:31-32 (VOICE)
Cover photo by Yannick Pulver on Unsplash
Copyright Ann C. Averill 2022
Heart.