Past Lives

Posted on November 18, 2023 by Ann C. Averill

A week ago, I was on a plane watching a Korean movie called Past Lives. The movie begins with three people, two men and a woman, sitting at a bar. You hear the voiceover of other customers wondering what their relationships are to one another. Brothers, sister? Colleagues? Is there a romantic couple in the group? If so, which ones are together? Who is the odd one out and why? To answer these questions, the movie flashes back to the woman’s childhood until it catches up to the opening scene. I recommend Past Lives because, like all good art, it resonates with real life. We all have past lives, and the rest of our story is always influenced by our childhood.

As a writer, the movie also intersects a question I’ve been asking myself as I finish up my latest memoir. Am I portraying the people from my past accurately? Fairly? Is my take on our interactions and how they affected me legit? The woman in the movie hunts the internet for her childhood sweetheart. What she finds affects her deeply and propels the film’s plot. What she discovers about herself makes it more than a simple romance. Here’s its trailer. Check it out if you enjoy stories focused on character.

Like the woman in the movie, I too searched the web for images of people from my past. Seeing them again, although much older, my emotions rose as if I was still the person I was when I knew them in school.

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

In a key scene near the end of the movie, the woman sums up what she has figured out by re-establishing a relationship with the man from her childhood. She tells him, she is no longer who she was as a little girl, but that doesn’t mean how he remembers her wasn’t real.

That’s the line that informed my dilemma about how I’ve portrayed the people from my past in my memoir. My emotional response to vivid vignettes in my life was recorded through my perception of myself and others at the time. These profound feelings drifted like sediment onto the seabed of my memory and hardened into solid rock. Therefore it’s no surprise that looking at internet images of those who caused intense sentiment could illicit profound reactions even now. However, seeing their aged faces made me realize they aren’t who they used to be way back when and neither am I. Past lives don’t need to define us because none of us remain the same. I can write my story as I perceived it without invalidating their version.

This might seem like a forced connection to Thanksgiving, but honestly, my first response to watching a movie about past lives was, thank God I am not locked into who I used to be! And, thank God, I can see myself through the transforming lens of Christ’s love that frees me to see myself and former antagonists with the endless expanse of God’s grace.

Make no mistake

  • Grace is not a cheap pass that gets you or anyone else off the hook.

  •           Grace transfers what is owed you and what you owe others into God’s hands.

  •          God’s perfect justice for us all was accomplished on the cross through Christ’s sacrifice.

  •          Therefore, there’s no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. (Romans 8:1)

  •          Shame and blame become moot points that allow us to forgive and live free.

All to say dear readers, taste and see that the Lord’s mercy is good. (Psalm 34:8)

Serve that in your holiday pie, and after dessert, if you want to relax with
a good movie, check out Past Lives. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Taste and see that the Lord is good.
    Oh, the joys of those who take refuge in him!

Psalms 34:8 (NLT)

Cover photo by Anita Jankovic on Unsplash

Copyright Ann C. Averill 2023

Posted in Book Review, Flash memoir, Spiritual Growth, Writing Process | Leave a comment

LOVE CHILD

Posted on October 28, 2023 by Ann C. Averill

It’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and I’m adopted, so until I connected with the woman who bore me, I was unaware that my maternal grandmother had a double mastectomy in her thirties. That trial came on top of being tragically widowed. Yet, my young, breast-less grandmother secured a challenging job, married another man who adored her, and lived a full life into her 90’s.

That’s not to suggest trauma and trials are easy to overcome or without consequence. And being human, we all have our own version. As a young woman, my mom conceived me out of wedlock. In the conservative 50’s, she was sent away to hide the shameful bump that was me. Once born, I was removed from the hospital, like a social cancer, and sent to a foster home until placed with adoptive parents who proved wonderful.

And yet, I confess, as a love child, a euphemism for the old-fashioned bastard, part of me always wondered who I really was and where I belonged. And as I came of age, what I was worth if born by mistake. I couldn’t have told you that at age five, or fifteen, or even twenty-five, but looking back, as a memoirist, those were the questions that propelled my desperation for acceptance which in turn led to my own sexual mistakes and shame. But desperation can also be a catalyst for change, and I found myself on a parallel odyssey to not only find myself, but God. For who can know their true value and significance without knowing their maker?

Photo by Valery Fedotov on Unsplash

I don’t know how my grandmother, or my mom overcame their trials and tragedies, but I know how I’ve overcome mine.

By finding my heavenly father, I’ve come to rest in the fact that as women we are so much more than the sum of our female parts no matter how they’ve been used, abused, or removed. And I’ve developed my own definition of the term love child. Not the dictionary version, of a misbegotten bastard, but rather a beloved daughter, chosen, and adopted through God’s amazing grace.

This is my hope for you too, dear reader, that no matter what’s in your family medical history, no matter your origin story, and no matter your varied trials and tragedies, that you may be aware, not just this month, but always that you too can be God’s love child. And as such, these are his promises:

  • God is for you not against you, no matter your sufferings. (Romans 8:28-34)
  • No trouble can ever separate you from Him. (Romans 8:35
  • You have an almighty protector. (Romans 8:35)
  • Trials are not evidence that the world is falling apart, but that a fallen world needs a savior. (John 3:16)

“For this is how God loved the world: He gave[a] his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.  God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.

John 3:16-17 (NLT)

Copyright 2023 Ann C. Averill

Posted in Flash memoir, Spiritual Growth | 2 Comments

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Posted on October 11, 2023 by Ann C. Averill

Forty-six years ago, my husband and I were married on Columbus Day, now called Indigenous Peoples’ Day. A few nights prior to our anniversary, I finished Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, and was struck by the phrase,

“Ah jus’ know dat God snatched me out de fire through you. And ah loves yuh and feel glad.”

I could say the same thing to my dear husband who I met when I was a barmaid in a college bar. There was instant chemistry between us, and I knew from the first he was the one. That said, there was so much we didn’t know about each other, the world, or even ourselves.

My husband didn’t know he was an engineer. While I was finishing my senior year, he quit college as a liberal arts major, worked as a short order cook, and played pool into the wee hours of the morning. I always wanted to be a writer but didn’t know how to make that happen. Without a clue, we held hands and jumped into the world together after I graduated.

During those early years, my direction as a writer diffused, while my husband’s career as an engineer crystallized. We bought our first fixer-upper. We had babies, and my dream of being a writer drowned in being a doting stay-at-home mom. That’s when a marriage crisis almost sunk our union, but you know the outcome, so I won’t bother with the details here. Enough to say, as a result of that storm, for the first time, my eyes were watching God.

Photo by Marina Vitale on Unsplash

Although that was the beginning of seeing the world from a brand-new perspective, life was not without challenges. My husband’s engineering career struggled as industry fled to the Sun Belt, bringing us out West where a master’s degree and a career teaching ELL students finally crystallized for me. But this is not about our combined resumes because there comes a time when you realize life is about more than professional success.

In Hurston’s novel, Janie’s second husband dies, a husband who’d built a good business and reputation as mayor of an all black town in 1920’s Florida. Yet Janie walks away from his empire, marrying a younger man nicknamed Tea Cake because he brings unknown sweetness to her life. They take off to The Muck, an area south of Lake Okeechobee where Tea Cake works as a migrant picking beans. Off times, he takes Janie fishing, gator hunting, and she becomes his equal able to shoot the head off a chicken hawk soaring towards the sun.

But life on earth rarely ends up tied with a bow. Janie and Tea Cake watch as Seminoles march across The Muck towards higher ground when the weather portends a hurricane. Although even rabbits and snakes follow suit, Janie and Tea Cake stay until they’re caught in the ensuing flood. I’ll leave the ending for you to find out. It’s a fantastic read!

Photo by Lukas Hron on Unsplash

I met my own flood while teaching in an abusive school, abusive to its under-performing students and to its over-worked teachers. One day coming home emotionally broken, I found my Tea Cake husband had drawn me a hot bath with daffodil heads floating atop the water. Standing by the tub, he said, “You don’t have to work there anymore if you don’t want to,” giving me permission, I couldn’t give myself, to resign.

That was a long time ago, but that was the hurricane that buried my career as a teacher and began my life as a writer. You can find the details of that episode in my first book, Teacher Dropout: Finding Grace in an Unjust School.  

I started by saying when we were young, there were so many things my husband and I didn’t know about ourselves, the world, or God. I didn’t know:

  • Before my eyes were watching God, his eyes were watching over us.
  • It was God who drew our immature souls together.
  • God would choose to reveal Himself when we were at our worst.
  • God would carry us when we were too weak to carry our own load.
  • God was the one whose faithfulness and sweetness were embodied in my husband.

But 46 years later I can say, art mirrors life. Although my circumstances were vastly different from those in Hurston’s novel, one woman’s story told from the heart always resonates with another’s.  

So together with Janie I can say, ”Ah jus’ know dat God snatched me out de fire through you. And ah loves yuh and feel glad.”

Happy anniversary babe!

Photo by Nikki Son on Unsplash

 “For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.”

Jeremiah 29:11-13 (NASB)

BTW, my own memoir from the heart about my marriage, my adoption, and finding my true identity in Christ is coming soon. Pray, I tell it well to the glory of God.

Copyright Ann C. Averill 2023

Cover photo by Quinten de Graaf on Unsplash

Posted in Book Review, Flash memoir, Uncategorized | Tagged | 2 Comments

Do You Believe in Fairies?

Posted on September 25, 2023 by Ann C. Averill

When I was still small enough to take a bath in the kitchen sink, my parents rented a cottage on Long Island Sound, and we sailed to a small island for a picnic. Once we made landfall, my mom prepared the lunch, and I led my dad down the beach telling him, “This is where the leprechauns live,” confident of finding a wee magic man wearing knickers and a waistcoat perhaps behind a piece of driftwood.

When I was a bit older, we often visited my Memaw’s farm where my cousins and I were put to bed with a picture book featuring stories like Sleeping Beauty where a princess and her kingdom were put to sleep and hidden in thorns only to be awakened and put to rights by the kiss of a prince. And Peter Pan where children never lost their wonder and fairies flitted about on gossamer wings in gauzy garb that looked like flower petals.

Photo by  Alice Alinari on Unsplash

By fifth grade, I knew full well there was no Santa, but I wanted there to be, so I still put out cookies and a glass of milk for Mr. Claus and carrots for his reindeer. By sixth grade, I was watching the Twilight Zone and reading stories by Alfred Hitchcock that delved into sci-fi, ghosts, and the supernatural.

Looking back, I see my child’s heart stubbornly unbounded, no line of demarcation yet drawn between the mundane and the sublime. Although I couldn’t have articulated it at the time, I was sure there was more to existence than met the eye. Sure, there was something, or someone invisible, yet obvious. Something, or someone, expressed in the blink of a firefly on a summer night, the hoot of an owl in the darkness, the cold breath of a snow cloud blown across the face of the moon. Something or someone I knew was there yet could not see or express except as magic.

Yet as I came of age, the magic seemed to fade. Something was obviously wrong with the world. My government was bombing children half-way around the globe with napalm. The President was a proven crook, and citizens were divided over politics and civil rights. Something was also desperately wrong with me. I did things I didn’t want to do and didn’t do the things I knew were right.

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

That was a long time ago, but not much has changed in the world, citizens are still divided, no president is above the law, and half a world away children are still harmed by vicious wars. And yet I still see Christmas decorations that read, BELIEVE!  Believe in what? Santa? Fairies?

I am no longer a child, but my belief in the supernatural has never been stronger. In fact, it has matured in light of the Word of God.

Are there invisible kingdoms we cannot see? Absolutely, thrones, dominions, rulers, and authorities. (Colossians 1:16) And our fight is not solely against each other, but the powers of darkness. (Ephesians 6:12)

What is wrong with the world, and what is wrong with me? I was alienated from God by my hostile mind and evil deeds as is all mankind. (Colossians 1:21)

So why doesn’t everything just fall apart?

Because Jesus not only created all things but holds them together. (Colossians 1:17)

And who is the prince who will lift the curse and set all things to rights? Jesus who was betrayed by a kiss yet reconciled all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace with God by the blood of the cross. (Colossians 1:20)

Photo by Miguel Bruna on Unsplash

So dear reader, let me ask if you believe in fairies? And let me assure you, if your answer is or ever was in the affirmative you are not necessarily a fool. Perhaps you are still doggedly on the hunt for the divine just as I’ve been ever since I was a child. And may you find the true magic—the grace of God through Christ—the image of the invisible God. (Colossians 1:15)

Copyright Ann C. Averill 2023

Cover photo by Cederic Vandenberghe on Unsplash

Posted in Flash memoir, Spiritual Growth, Uncategorized | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Vanishing Point

Posted on September 13, 2023 by Ann C. Averill

Definition: 1. : a point at which receding parallel lines seem to meet when represented in linear perspective. 2. : a point at which something disappears or ceases to exist.

*****************************************************************************

My husband bought a newish truck to replace our old one that failed to pass inspection in July, its oxidized undercarriage on the brink of collapse. So, the other day, we brought the newish truck to be treated with a rust-preventing undercoating. While we waited, we drove around town, and came upon an estate sale. The home smelled like stale air and old rugs. In the kitchen were mixing bowls, casserole dishes, and mismatched cups and plates. Costume jewelry covered the kitchen table. The dining room displayed sets of China, silver, and candlesticks. In the living room was a couch from the 70’s in a plastic slipcover. The master bedroom held an overstuffed armchair upholstered in pink velvet and closets full of outdated women’s clothing. Another bedroom was empty save Navy uniforms from WWII. The list goes on and on as what was left behind by an old lady in a house with a stairlift and a handicapped commode. Such a vivid reminder not to put my treasure in things so readily destroyed by moth and rust.

Rust reminds me of our ancient tractor which fell to its knees in June with a broken front axle. We put it back together, at least for now, so we can repair the gullies along the driveway caused by summer’s deluges.

Photo by Benjamin Lehman on Unsplash

Speaking of deluges, a day after the estate sale, we drove through a downpour on a tree-tunneled, country road to attend a memorial for a relative I’d never met, at least not in person. You see, I’m adopted, and a few years ago, in searching for my birth parents, I stumbled upon this cousin on 23andMe. When she realized I was an illegitimate part of her family, she invited me to the next family reunion, never imagining the next get-together would be caused by her own demise.

Driving to her final remembrance, the wipers swishing wildly, I peered down the narrow road toward its vanishing point on the horizon and had the odd sensation that I was driving into my own past, an alternative past that never came to fruition. Until the moment I went through the hostess’ back door, I’d had no contact with any of the people in the room who shared my bloodline. 

It was wonderful to be welcomed so warmly and wonderful to see the home where my birth mother told me she’d spent all her Christmases surrounded by the very cousins surrounding me. The home had been in the family for over fifty years and had a colonial fireplace big enough to fit Santa and his entire sleigh. Before the hearth was a table with a heaping buffet, and after I’d settled with my plate, the cousins asked for the tale of how I’d found my birth mom. They shared fascinating stories from their own lives, and following several fond eulogies for the cousin who’d passed away, the family proceeded to a New England cemetery atop a mossy hill. Subsequent to my cousin’s commitment to the ground, I wandered the faded headstones of ancient relatives. One of the older cousins pointed out the nearby tombstone of Dave Brubeck, a famous jazz musician, and together we hunted for the gravestone of Mary Travis of Peter Paul and Mary, also buried nearby. How fleeting life felt standing atop the remains of both long-gone ancestors and icons from my youth.

Photo by kyle Larivee on Unsplash

All to say, when my rusty old body fails to pass inspection, when I fall to my knees on the brink of collapse, when I’m ready for my final stairlift, I hope I leave behind more than costume jewelry and a couch preserved in plastic. I hope to leave a map of the narrow road that led me beyond my own vanishing point to an alternative future where eternal life comes to fruition for anyone who trusts God’s grace offered through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. That’s why I share these stories.

“These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.”

1 John 5:13 NASB

Cover photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash

Copyright Ann C. Averill 2023

Posted in Flash memoir, Spiritual Growth | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Fathers

Posted on June 15, 2023 by Ann C. Averill

This coming Sunday is Father’s Day, a joyous day for some, a complicated, difficult day for others, so let me tell you about the fathers I have known. I’ve already written about my adoptive dad. In a nutshell, he was an avid sailor, an engineer, and a good daddy. You can read another blog about him entitled “My Captain” by clicking here. But only recently have I learned what I missed by not living with my biological father. 

First, some background. My bio dad never married my mother, so I was born a lovechild, the euphemism for illegitimate offspring. I was placed in a foster home the day I left the hospital, and there I stayed until adopted nine months later. I can’t recall being told I was adopted; it was simply something I knew about myself from the first. When I was ten, my adoptive mom added these few facts. My bio mother was petite like me and from old New England stock. As a child, she sounded more like a Campbell’s Soup flavor than a mom. Stock was the stuff my adoptive mom made from boiling down chicken carcasses and beef bones. My dad, I was told, was Irish Catholic and strawberry blonde like me. What did he look like? Robert Redford as a priest?

As I got older, I was told my parents were college students at a New England university. She was a sophomore music major, he a senior engineering student. As a college student myself, I did my birthday math, figuring I was the product of a spring fling just prior to his graduation. Therefore, my birth mother must have found out she was pregnant after his graduation. If it hadn’t been for birth control, I could have been in the same predicament. Did my father even know I existed? Was that the reason they were never married? I suppose I was trying to let them both off the hook.  

Much later, I learned this detail, they met at a college dance. She was beautiful. He was handsome and a member of the glee club. I imagined a gregarious guy who swooned her on the dance floor. Then together, under an enchanted, starlit sky, they strolled across a wide, green lawn, until ensconced under a tree, fragrant with spring, he leaned in for a steamy kiss that resulted in me. A portion of my dream conception proved true, but there was also a darker reality.

After my adoptive parents had died, my husband urged me to find my biological parents before they too were gone. I wrote each a letter requesting a response. My mother replied. My father, silence. However, in searching for my father’s address, my husband stumbled upon an online real estate listing of his home, so I had a virtual tour of the home of a father I never met. Interestingly, there was a sailboat in the driveway.

A decade later, I discovered one of my paternal half-brothers who informed me gently that our father was abusive, ending with, “You drew the long straw.”

I also met one of my paternal half-sisters who added our dad was a voracious reader, a man of constant projects, and, literally a rocket scientist, who built both a chicken coop in her childhood backyard and that sailboat I saw in the driveway of his retirement home.   

You’d think it would bother me that my bio dad was abusive, but it doesn’t. I suppose because I never really knew him, so he couldn’t hurt me body or soul except through his rejection. I grieve greatly, however, for my half-siblings because I have a growing relationship with them, and I see the wounds our father left in their lives. And I grieve for you too, dear readers, if your father hurt you in any way.

All to say, there’s a vast expanse between knowing about someone and knowing them personally.

Photo by SpaceX on Unsplash

So, let me tell you about my ultimate father, God. I grew up knowing all sorts of stories about him, but we’d never actually met. Not until a crisis in my own marriage revealed that in some part, I was like my biological dad who cruelly abused the affections of those he should have loved best. 

Ironically, it wasn’t until I came face to face with the fact that I was ready to meet my legitimate need for love and worth in an illegitimate way that I came face to face with God, as both my judge and defender, the almighty ruler of heaven and earth and his vulnerable manifestation executed naked on a cross for my indefensible faults.

Photo by Kjartan Einarsson on Unsplash

That’s when my meaning of lovechild was rewritten. I was not the euphemism for a misbegotten bastard, but a precious child conceived, and reclaimed by a heavenly father who loved me too much to let me go—at any price. That’s amazing grace, God’s rocket science, or as my brother and sister might say, drawing the longest straw.

And that’s my hope for you, dear reader, on this complicated Father’s day, that you would meet God face to face, and experience what it is to be His lovechild.

 “In the same way, we can see and understand only a little about God now, as if we were peering at his reflection in a poor mirror; but someday we are going to see him in his completeness, face-to-face. Now all that I know is hazy and blurred, but then I will see everything clearly, just as clearly as God sees into my heart right now.”

1 Corinthians 13:12 (TLB)

Copyright Ann C. Averill 2023

Cover photo by Greg Rosenke on Unsplash

Posted in Flash memoir, Spiritual Growth | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Veritas Matters

Posted on June 3, 2023 by Ann C. Averill

The other evening, I watched a bio pic about Aretha Franklin who was a musical force in my adolescence with hits like “Respect,” “Chain of Fools,” and “You Make me Feel Like a Natural Woman.” The film portrayed wounds and demons, as a young fan, I was unaware Aretha carried. That helped me understand more deeply why her music was called Soul. Her songs vulnerably exposed her deepest hopes, hurts, and fears in a style forged in her childhood church.

Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash

Interestingly, at a low tide in her life, Aretha recorded a gospel album that outsold all others. Buyers were hungry for the good news of God belted out by someone who believed it, someone whose voice could manifest the power of Christ’s redemption in her own life.

This week, I watched Tom Hanks give the commencement speech at Harvard University. In his remarks, he called his listeners to cling to the concept and practice of absolute truth, reminding them that Veritas, Harvard’s motto, is Latin for truth. Hanks added that truth is worth fighting for. Even though he was speaking to the cream of the intellectual crop, he emphasized there are no real superheroes. Only human beings who advocate for truth, justice, and the American way, ordinary citizens called to stand against a flood of lies. 

As a new grad myself in 1975, the culture had recently discarded absolutes in favor of relativism. Many young adults, like me, had cast off establishment religion, and the country encountered a new breed, Jesus Freaks with long hair.

With a freshly minted English degree, I imagined my destiny as a best-selling novelist. Who knew I’d do a million other things including working in an industrial laundry and, I confess, selling Mary Kay.

Times continued to change with the materialism of the 80’s, the birth of the tech industry and social media. Who knew I’d be writing this thing called a blog in a culture that embraced oxymorons like alternative facts and Christian Nationalism.

Then again who knew that, like Aretha, during a low tide in my life, I’d embraced the gospel.

I am not a gifted actor with an honorary degree from Harvard or a singer whose lungs can fill a room with God’s glory. I am not a superhero. But I am a writer because that is what God has gifted and called me to do. To advocate for truth, justice, and the way of the gospel by telling the stories of His amazing grace in my ordinary life.

Photo by Manu Ros on Unsplash

On this, I think citizen Hanks, soul sister Aretha, and I could agree,

Veritas matters

because the phrase that’s gospel also means the undeniable truth!    

“Jesus said to him, “‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me.”

John 14:6 (NASB)

Cover photo by Michael Carruth on Unsplash

Copyright Ann C. Averill 2023

Posted in Flash memoir, Spiritual Growth, Writing Process | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Wonderful!

Posted on May 9, 2023 by Ann C. Averill

Here in New England, spring can be a frustrating season. Last March ended with a paralyzing snowstorm that cracked tree limbs and flattened my favorite lilac bush. April opened with a ninety-degree day then chilled to misty showers that lasted most of the month, including the week my oldest grandsons came for a visit during school vacation. I’d hoped for sunny days romping on the lawn, but most of our time was spent inside, playing card games like War or Crazy Eight, and their new favorite board game, Sorry, that keeps sending you back to the start just when you’ve almost got all your men safely home.

At the end of the visit, pre-school cousins added to the pile of boys for a sleepover. Dawn comes early now, and at 5:30 AM, they all ran downstairs. After a quick cup of coco, we finally opened the door and together walked into sparkling sunshine. Still in our pajamas, we played Wiffle ball, kickball, dodge ball, and swung on the swings as bluebirds and gold finches chirped, building their nests in the treetops. In all the glorious fun, my four-year-old grandson, threw his little arms around my fuzzy bathrobe at the waist, looked up into my face and said, “Gramma you’re wonderful!”

Oh, how my heart swelled with love for this wonderful child, and I realized this is what our loving God longs for from us, to look him full in the face and call out his wonder.

That afternoon, after all the boys went home, I checked my email and found the husband of a close friend had died while I’d been enjoying my sweet little men. After being flattened by a layoff, his heart formed an invisible crack, and he fell into a paralyzing depression until his weary body gave up the fight.

My heart deflated, as I sat on the couch reminded that at times it’s easy to wonder if God is even good.

The morning of the funeral, I was in my garden adding compost around blooming bulbs and bleeding hearts, sweaty with dew, until it was time to go to the memorial.

Behind the church dais there were photos on a big screen of happier times in the husband’s life, fishing, waterskiing, wedding shots of a glowing bride and groom. Pictures of a proud father holding his firstborn.

At the end of the memorial, we sang some old hymns: “How Great though Art,” “Amazing Grace,” “Softly and Tenderly,” “Precious Lord, Take my Hand,” and lastly “God Be with You Till We Meet Again.”

Friends, there are seasons when we feel like we’re losing the game of life, at war with ourselves, dealing with crazy unexpected circumstances, sorry for so many things and wishing we could start over. You are not alone if you’ve ever wondered if God really loves you because life on earth can be frustrating and cold.

But remember, even in New England, summer cannot be forestalled forever. The daffodils have passed and tulip heads cup the rain.

Both joy and grief can happen in the same day, so let’s hold hands as we walk each other to our eternal doorstep, trusting that as God’s precious children, He thinks all of us are wonderful too!

Maranatha, come quickly Lord Jesus!

“God be with you till we meet again.
When life’s perils thick confound you,
Put unfailing arms around you,
God be with you till we meet again.”   

Jeremiah Eames Rankin

All photos by the author, Ann C. Averill

Copyright Ann C. Averill 2023

Posted in Flash memoir, Spiritual Growth | 4 Comments

Easter in an Eggshell, a Very Short Testimony

Posted on April 6, 2023 by Ann C. Averill

On a cold day in December my adoption became official. My birth certificate stated I was the daughter of my adoptive parents, as if my illegitimate birth and nine months in foster care had never taken place. I had a new name on the document given to me by my new parents as if it was their blood that now flowed through my tiny veins.

Years later, I met my husband while working as a sassy bus girl in a college bar. He was the hunk, I was the babe, and eventually we got married. It was great until it wasn’t.

I said, “I’m leaving.”

He said, “Please don’t go.”

That marriage crisis opened my eyes to the horrible hurt I was capable of causing even to those I loved best. In a nutshell, I realized I was a sinner.

On a cold December night, long ago, a Jewish baby was born in a stable. An angel told his parents to give him the name, Jesus, officially revealing the holy blood that flowed through his tiny veins was capable of saving people like me from their sins.

The Easter after my marriage fiasco, I was baptized, officially taking the name Christian.

In a satisfying story, the end always kisses the beginning.

Christmas kisses Easter. Birth kisses rebirth. A child in trouble. A heavenly adoption. A new name, as if the blood of the holy parents flows through the child’s veins. As if the old had never happened.

That’s my testimony in an eggshell.

P.S. Thanks to my dear parents, long-gone, who modeled the adoption of a good God. Thanks to my faithful husband who modeled the grace of the savior who loves us from the first and never lets go, even when we are at our worst.

Happy Easter!

“This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!”

2 Corinthians 5:17 (NLT)

Copyright Ann C. Averill 2023

Cover photo by Frank Alarcon on Unsplash

Broken egg photo by Dennis Anderson on Unsplash

Easter egg photo by Σελήνη on Unsplash

Posted in Flash memoir, Spiritual Growth | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

The Jabberwocky and Spiritual Warfare

Posted on March 29, 2023 by Ann C. Averill

Once words leave our mouths or our pens, they are no longer ours. They belong to the listener or the reader and are subject to their interpretation no matter the speaker or the writer’s intent.

And in this mysterious process of making meaning out of life, both the writer and the reader are often surprised.

For example, while editing another chapter in my memoir about my adoptive mother’s near fatal car accident, I realized, as a fourth grader at the time, I had no concept of her brush with death or its possible consequences on my childhood.

This was evidenced by the fact that even though my mom was in the hospital fighting for her life with a ruptured spleen, broken ribs and a broken pelvis, a punctured lung, innumerable contusions and a severe concussion, the night of the crash, I put on my flannel pajamas and said the prayer I’d been taught as usual,

“Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord, my soul to take. God bless…everybody I knew starting with mommy and daddy.”

As a ten-year-old, it never occurred to me to beg God to keep my mother from dying. Death was beyond the boundaries of my cozy bed. God was only a concept, and my rote prayer was simply a long string of words I didn’t completely understand. I might as well have been reciting a verse from Lewis Carrol’s Jabberwocky.  

Photo by Arno Senoner on Unsplash

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch!”

This mention of the Jabberwocky wasn’t in my previous draft of my memoir. So why did it appear in my latest version? Perhaps because my church has been going though Ephesians chapter six which discusses spiritual warfare. My mind connected the spiritual battle that was going on for my mother’s life, and the future of my childhood with a poem that uses nonsense words to make its case for combating the ever-present evils of this world.

The child hero in the poem takes up a vorpal sword and strikes the fearsome Jabberwock with a snicker snack. The long time manxome foe is vanquished, and although Lewis Carroll uses words he made up, his meaning is clear, the beamish boy has slain our worst enemy, Satan himself. At least, that’s the way the author’s words resonate with this reader.

My point is to set our words free into the universe is a brave enterprise, never knowing how they will be received or what work they will do in another’s inner man.

Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash

Writers wish their works to resonate. In other words, by portraying a universal problem we’ve wrestled with, we hope the truth we’ve discovered echoes in our reader.

As a child, I didn’t know God as he knew me, yet the Almighty was already fighting on my behalf in ways I could not see.

But now, knowing His amazing grace in my ordinary life, “O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”

I take my vorpal sword in hand to write of God’s glory and kindness.

That fearsome accident happened on a dark day in March not unlike this one, yet my mother survived to love me well.

SNICKER-SNACK!

“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” 

Ephesians 6:10-12 (NIV)

Cover photo by Philip Myrtorp on Unsplash

Copyright Ann C. Averill 2023

Posted in Flash memoir, Spiritual Growth, Writing Process | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments