Connecting the Dots

Posted on January 12, 2023 by Ann C. Averill

Some people pick a word for the year, a word they believe God has in some way given them as a guidepost, a word that somehow defines what God’s hope and joy is for them in the next chunk of their life. Last year was the first year I ever engaged in this spiritual practice. I felt God was pointing out the word complete. Over the last 365 days it was embodied in several ways:  

  • A deeper understanding that I am complete in Christ through his righteousness above anything my striving could earn.
  • That I am enough as I am.
  • Although I don’t deserve God’s love based on my behavior, He loves me completely because of his character.
  • And finally, and most compelling, that I was called to finally complete a long form testimony, a memoir, about how I came of age and came to God during the cultural earthquake that was the Woodstock era when women’s roles did a head spinning 180 from the likes of June Cleaver of Leave it to Beaver to Grace Slick, the sexy, psychedelic lead singer of The Jefferson Airplane, who invited an entire generation down the rabbit hole.

This year, I feel the Lord is pointing me to the word courage.

So, what does courage look like, and where does it come from? Is it something we can muster up on our own? Is there some profound well within our soul from which we can draw brave waters? I think not. There is nothing deep inside me except fear, worry, disappointment, and self-condemnation.

Although all these emotions point to a lack of trust in the power and goodness of God, I know as a believer, he promises to live in me. Perhaps then, courage is placing my confidence in him more completely despite my impostor syndrome.

From my smattering of French and Spanish, I know that coeur in French and corazón in Spanish mean heart.

Brené Brown says, “The root of the word courage is cor – the Latin word for heart. In one of its earliest forms, the word courage had a very different definition than it does today. Courage originally meant “To speak one’s mind by telling all one’s heart.”

Brown goes on to connect courage to vulnerability. “Heroics is often about putting our life on the line. Ordinary courage is about putting our vulnerability on the line.”

Author, and columnist, David Brooks, said something to the effect that writers write about what they are trying to figure out. My memoir is about figuring out who God really is and who I really am to him even at the bottom of my empty well. My goal is to take my reader on a vicarious journey through not only my external low points, but through the interior travels of my heart, that led to an ascending knowledge of God’s profound grace.

Photo by Andres Siimon on Unsplash

Therefore, at this point in my journey, courage means placing my completed manuscript, and its transparent coming of age and coming to God story completely in his hands, trusting that as I put God at the heart of any matter, I can risk beyond my human capacity.

None of us can comprehend our complete destiny as if it were a movie we could stream. Following our destiny is more like connecting the dots in a child’s activity book to see the complete picture.

The word complete was my last dot. This year I will pick up my pencil and search with all my heart for the next series of dots marked courage and see where it takes me.

Photo by No Revisions on Unsplash

BTW, one concrete example of how I picked the word courage is the fact that when I googled how to find your word of the year, I fell upon the following blog about being fearless.   Check it out. Maybe it will give insight into choosing your own WTY. God has something new for each of us to learn about him every year, every moment, as we connect the daily dots that lead to His divine purposes for our lives.

“For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.” 

Ephesians 2:10(NLT)

Thanks for the cover photo by Isis França on Unsplash

Copyright 2023 Ann C. Averill

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

Do You Live in a Shack?

Posted on January 4, 2023 by Ann C. Averill

A few nights after New Year’s, I watched the movie version of the novel, The Shack by William Paul Young. I read it years ago while it was a bestseller and frankly wasn’t impressed, but then maybe I wasn’t ready for the concepts within, because clearly the movie version is an allegory about God’s grace.

The plot, many of you know, has to do with a man named Mack whose youngest daughter was abducted by a serial killer, and taken to a shack in the mountains where she was murdered. In the midst of Mack’s ensuing depression, he is drawn mysteriously back to the shack to confront the memories that haunt him. Engulfed in doubt, anger, and revenge, he meets God the father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit in human form.

In one scene God the Father confronts Mack, “You don’t believe I’m good, do you?”

In light of what happened to his little girl, Mack’s answer, “No.”

In another scene, Lady Wisdom asks Mack if he can discern good and evil.

His answer, “Yes.”

Lady Wisdom then invites him to be the judge of all the evil in the world, especially of this daughter’s murderer.

Photo by Veit Hammer on Unsplash

However, when she shows him how the web of evil touches us all, he needs to judge even his remaining children and send them to hell. With no other just solution, he asks Lady Wisdom to send him instead. This is the beginning of Mack’s understanding of the gospel. Jesus took death’s bullet meant for those he loved, you and me.

In the story, the shack represents the poisonous prison of our past with all its unforgiveness and shame.

The New Year’s holiday represents a chance to break free into a fresh future.

So, to all who resolved to become better in some way this coming year, remember, better is all well and good, but impossible on our own. Why else would we be trying AGAIN this year to improve ourselves?

But God offers us a new opportunity every day of the year, not just on January first, to believe Jesus died on our behalf because he loves us, just like Mack, in the middle of our mess. He simply asks us to trust that He is good, the only wise judge with the glorious power to transform any evil into unimaginable good.

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Paul says to his friends in Philippi,
“Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, 
for it is God who works in you
 to will and to act
in order to fulfill his good purpose.”

Philippians 2:13 (NIV)

No summary can do justice to an entire story, so check out The Shack on Prime. Forewarning, the beginning is a little churchy, so hang in there until Mack goes back to the shack in the mountains alone. That’s when it gets good. And a Happy New Year brimming with the grace of God.

Thanks for the cover photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash

Copyright 2023 Ann C. Averill

Posted in Book Review, Spiritual Growth | 1 Comment

Christmas Tears

Posted on December 20, 2022 by Ann C. Averill

I’ve been thinking about tears lately. They wash away emotions too heavy to endure, too tangled to name. They keep us from imploding.

With a sigh of discouragement and exasperation, an acquaintance once asked me, “What’s wrong with the world?

My reply, “We were created for a perfect world, but we’re not in one.” I was referring of course to Eden before Adam and Eve’s fateful decision that separated us from God.

As I write, I’m wondering if there were tears in Eden. My posit, certainly, since tears are an overflow of the heart, and our emotions convey not only negative reactions, but positive. Surely there were tears of awe, at being in the physical presence of God. Tears of delight at the beauty of a pristine world. Tears of joy in the bonds of completely innocent relationships.

But here we are on earth.

I’ve shared before that I was adopted as a baby, the result of an illegitimate birth. My brother was also adopted, the result of another couple’s extramarital relationship. However, he was in two foster homes, one abusive, before he joined our family at age four. By abusive, I mean he told me a story as an adult about being locked in a closet without a pillow. Those were all the details he chose to share, or all his child’s mind could thankfully recall.

I was six when he first came into our family, and I remember hearing my brand-new brother sobbing in the bedroom at the end of the hall.

When I was in my sixties, and he was near homeless from alcoholism, my mom told me he used to wake her after nightmares and ask, “How far away is California?’ At the time, she didn’t know why.

As an adult, he found his birth mom. She was already deceased, but there were pictures. She was a beauty. And records. She worked as a model. After all the pieces were put together, I learned she’d dropped him off at the adoption agency, saying, “I’m going to California, but I’ll come back for you.” Perhaps a well-intended, yet faulty means of comfort.

He also found two half-sisters. They were not in California, but a city on the banks of the Mohawk River in upstate New York. They told him this story. Every Christmas their mom hung an ornament on the tree for the half-brother they’d never met but knew by name.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Although I wasn’t privy to their reunion, were there tears? You’d think buckets, but I wonder. My brother spent his life drowning his tears in alcohol before they could escape, trapping the emotions he most needed to purge.

This will be the first Christmas without him, and I realize Christmas, ironically, is all about tears. God’s tears. God also knows my brother by name. He knows all our names, and all the details of what happened in the closets of our lives.

Did Mary cry tears of hope mingled with disbelief when the angel, Gabriel, told her to name her baby Jesus because he would grow up to be the savior of a world full of tears? Did Joseph cry tears of betrayal mixed with confusion at the news that his betrothed was already with child? Did the shepherds cry tears of wonder when they saw the heavenly host?

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

Last October in a rest home, my brother died with a smile on his face, so said the nurse who cared for him at the last. After a lifetime of complicated emotions concerning all the mess that alcohol brought into our relationship, my eyes mist at the thought, that he’s in a better place, free at last from his demons.

It sounds cliché unless it’s true. Unless the babe in a manger is God’s answer to the question, what’s wrong with this world.

Whatever the source of your tears this season, my friend, may our Father in heaven comfort you with the reality that Christmas is His way of coming back for us all.

“Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us).

Matt. 1:23 (NLT)

Cover photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Copyright Ann C. Averill 2022

Posted in Flash memoir | Tagged | 8 Comments

You Are My Everything

Posted on December 16, 2022 by Ann C. Averill

Sunday, it was snowing, and my husband was recovering from Covid, so I took a shower and dressed in fresh pajamas. My plan for the day, skip church, go nowhere, and couch potato all day long.

Laying around, in my red, velour bathrobe, I looked up at my pajama-twin husband, and was suddenly so grateful that Covid had not captured his body, and that, in light of Ukraine’s frigid horror, we were safe from the storm, in our toasty home doing Wordles together.

That’s when a friend who’d recently lost her beloved husband came to mind. She’d moved since his death, so I sent her a quick text asking for her new address. She responded, and in a brief exchange, told me, in a sea of sorrow, God and her friends were her lifeline. When we were done, I clicked over to my Facebook feed. There on my tiny screen was a YouTube video of a turtle flipped over and drowning in a shallow concrete pond until the rest of the turtles swam underneath her and provided the solid ground she needed to right herself.

Immediately, I texted my friend back. “I think God meant this video for you.”

Afterwards, I shared the video on Facebook. Within moments, another friend who’d tragically lost her husband earlier in the year, saw my post and asked if I had a minute for a phone call. We talked about everything, the way you do with someone you’ve known for fifty years, and among our topics was her dad, a master organist at her childhood church.

Photo by Gabriele Strasky on Unsplash

When we parted, she said she’d text a video of the Westminster Abbey choir performing for the royal family accompanied by the Abbey’s pipe organ. We hung up, and I went back to watching the snow fall and relaxing with a mystery series on Prime. 

Next morning, I opened my friend’s video. Alone, again in my pajamas, I listened as the choir began, “Guide Me, Oh Thou Great Redeemer.” The camera panned from above. The long nave, lined with Romanesque arches ended in a gilded altar. Transepts to either side gave the towering cathedral the shape of a cross. This was the space in which William the Conqueror was crowned king in 1066.

Photo by Cameron Mourot on Unsplash

I am not a thee and thou kind of girl, and we don’t worship at my church with old hymns, but oh my, I see why my friend sent it. The thunder of that organ in that ancient space, the chorus of voices, the fanfare of glistening trumpets, figuratively put me on my face before the majesty of an Almighty God who stooped to carry our human frailties and grief.

At one point, the video, focused on the face of Kate Middleton amidst the royal family. Somehow, she seemed unsure, even standing beside her husband, the future king of England. And suddenly, I saw Prince William as the adorable blonde boy who’d lost his mother to palace intrigue and the pitiless paparazzi. And I realized, every Christmas since, he’s spent without his mum.   

It may sound cliché to say it’s hard for those who’ve lost loved ones during the holiday season, but with close friends making that a reality not even royalty can escape, the lyrics of that classic hymn hit home. We are pilgrims in a barren land, weak, and desperate for our redeemer’s hand. And as our sorrows strip away the things of earth, we long for nothing but a strong deliverer, healing, and the death of death and hell’s destruction.

Let’s bring all this back to earth. The very next day, I tested positive for Covid, and it was my turn to be the turtle flipped over and flipped out.

Many turtles checked in, and on the third day of my illness, at break of day, my Westminster Abbey turtle sent me a Barry White video that made me laugh out loud.

So, whether it’s through his creation, his music, or a seemingly unrelated trinity of YouTube videos, may the Lord speak his comfort and peace to you this Christmas.

Lord, be our everything! 

Whom have I in heaven but you?
    I desire you more than anything on earth.
26 My health may fail, and my spirit may grow weak,
    but God remains the strength of my heart;
    he is mine forever.

Psalm 73:25-26 (NLT)

Thanks to erin mckenna on Unsplash for the cover photo

Copyright 2022Ann C. Averill

Posted in Flash memoir | 5 Comments

The Creche

Posted on December 2, 2022 by Ann C. Averill

This week I put up the creche I made with my mom when I was little.

This post is a kind of rerun, an edited version of a post about that creche that I shared a few years back before I had any idea it would be a chapter in a memoir I’ve almost finished about how I came to Christ.

Read it for the first time or again with a greater understanding of God’s patient sovereignty in our lives.

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After the first snowfall of second grade, there was a small, corrugated box, a pile of Popsicle sticks, a jar full of sawdust, some huge pinecones, and some bark on the kitchen table when I came home from school. My mom said we were going to make a crèche. My brother, Bruce, and I sat beside her as she set the box on its side and folded the upper flap to make a roof. She pulled apart the pinecone petals and showed me how to glue them on like shingles. She opened the sides, and the box turned into a building with wide open doors. She showed me how to glue Popsicle sticks on the doors and the inside of the box. Now it looked like Granddaddy’s barn. She spread some glue on the floor of the box, and Bruce got to sprinkle it with sawdust. We glued the tree bark on the outside walls.  

After we washed our hands, my mom helped Bruce zip up his parka before she pulled on her maroon coat with the fur collar and cuffs. I climbed into the back seat of the black Ford station wagon next to Bruce while my mom reached into her purse and pulled out a shiny tube. Glancing in the mirror, she arched each lip with the color of a candy apple. Her purse snapped shut, and we were off to the ten-cent store.   

In the center of the five and dime there was a high counter where a short little old lady sat behind a cash register while her little old man wandered the store. Bruce and I glided along the outside counters fingering the small bins of pink teddy bear erasers, Mickey Mouse pencil cases, blunt-tipped scissors, silver jacks, rubber balls, green dice, leather wallets branded with lariats and rearing horses, balloons, bubbles, balsa wood gliders, and Popeye Pez dispensers, things we could only hope Santa would leave in our stockings. My mom was standing by the plastic folded rain hats, miniature sewing kits, darning needles, and crochet hooks when the little old man said, “May I help you?”

“Yes.” She scanned the shelves above the bins lined with china figurines: German shepherds, angora kittens, and nursery rhyme characters. “Do you carry nativity figures?”

“Right this way.” The little old man led us towards more bins chocked with ten-cent men in beards and red bathrobes, ladies in blue bathrobes and matching head scarves, and babies stuck in cattle troughs like where Granddaddy feeds his white-faced, red bodied Herefords. There were all sorts of animals too. My mom said I could pick out a cow, a donkey, and even a camel with a fancy red saddle. She picked out two of the bearded men. One would be Joseph, the other a shepherd. A blue lady would be Mary. Bruce got to pick out three kings. The purple one carried a golden treasure chest, the green one a basket. The red king a wooden box.  

When we got home the sawdust was dry, so I could put my animals in the little barn. My mom put Mary and Joseph in the barn, and I put baby Jesus in the trough between them. She told Bruce to put the shepherd and his sheep on one side of the barn and the kings on the other side along with their camel because they had come across a desert to worship him. She glued a crocheted angel to the roof of the crèche to sing to the shepherd while he watched his little flock and told us this is what Christmas was about. Yet we placed the crèche on the stereo where my dad played Bing Crosby’s White Christmas and hung up our stockings on the mantel.

The night before Christmas, we put out a plate of cookies for Santa and two carrots for his reindeer. Then lying on the carpet, the tinseled Christmas tree the only light in the dark living room, I dreamed up a plan. After mommy and daddy went to sleep, I would sneak out of my bed and hide beside the couch. From there, I was sure to witness Santa coming down the chimney to stuff our stockings.  

In the morning, I realized I’d slept through my scheme, yet when I raced down the stairs, there was my stocking, the top bulging with a ballerina’s pink tutu. “Mommy, Daddy, Look! Santa knew just what I wanted.”

They tittered and sipped their Maxwell House coffee as I left the room and returned in the pink leotard and tulle skirt.  

My dad set the arm of the record player on the Nutcracker, and I twirled with joy beside the crèche – waiting patiently on the stereo.   

Waiting for me to figure out that my mom and dad ate Santa’s cookies, that Santa was a fraud, that shepherds were poor, dirty men nobody usually sang to, and having a baby in a barn was gross, desperate, and extraordinary.   

Posted in Flash memoir | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Does Size Matter?

Posted on November 24, 2022 by Ann C. Averill

The following is an essay I read last Friday at BraVa, an event sponsored by Marion Roach Smith and the YWCA in Troy, NY. Marion is the author of The Memoir Project: A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text for Writing and Life, which I highly recommend. The YWCA houses many women in crisis or transition, so the purpose of the event was to raise money for the facility and to provide bras of all sizes for women in the community who need them. Therefore, every member of the audience and every writer who performed their piece donated a bra.

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When I was in sixth grade, a bra was still called a brassiere, named I assumed after its inventor, some Frenchman with a first name like René or François. Its cups were made of cotton and shaped like rocket cones aimed for the stars. Entering junior high for the first time, however, I wore a JC Penney undershirt and Hush Puppies with ankle socks. All to say, in an era when Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield were literally pushing the lingerie envelope, I was a Skipper Doll in a Barbie world.

Within the first week of school, my gym teacher, Mrs. Fraser, herded all the sixth-grade girls into the auditorium for a movie sponsored by Kotex called: The story of Menstruation. As I sat in the dark, the screen filled with animated flowers blooming and girls becoming women. Internal organs were overlaid with diagrams and calendars that left me with a vague sense of embarrassment and no practical idea of what having a period entailed. When we girls got back to class, the boys sniggered. When Debbie Caldwell, who sat beside me, whispered what you actually did with a sanitary belt and pad, I wanted to scream, that’s disgusting! But she assured me you got used to it. The film said every girl developed at her own speed. That explained why Darla DiCaprio, who had bouffant hair, Cleopatra eyeliner, and frosted pink lipstick, had raced into a D cup ahead of me.

Darla didn’t matter because she wasn’t a close friend, but when my best friend, Marie, invited me and my other two besties, Linda and Laura, to sleep over, boy did it matter. It was a sultry summer evening, and we laid our sleeping bags on the dewy grass behind her dilapidated garage where no one could see us. Once it was pitch black, Marie, Linda, and Laura took off their blouses to reveal, ta-da, brand new white training bras that seemed to glow in the moonless dark. When I took off my blouse, there I was in my JC Penney special. Was my mom the only one who didn’t get the memo? Or were my bosoms, that’s what we called boobs back in the day, still so puny they weren’t worth training? The angst of becoming a woman in a man’s world hurtled towards me at the speed of adolescence.

Of course, my mom eventually bought me a bra, but honestly, I don’t remember exactly when. My memory is simply that I didn’t have one when compared to my peers. That was just the beginning of feeling ashamed and confused about my body. 

It was a confusing time. 1964, was also when the U.S. first bombed North Vietnam.  1969 was the summer of Woodstock, the legendary concert where psychedelic Grace Slick, singer of the Jefferson Airplane, invited an entire generation down the rabbit hole. Hippies and war protesters spawned mantras like make love not war, do your own thing, and question authority. So, what was a girl to do? I slept with my boyfriend, threw away my electric curlers, and cast aside all my bras as symbols of oppression.

That was a long time ago, and so much water has gushed under the bridge. By God’s grace, I’m finally at peace with the shape of my body and all the excruciating coming-of-age events that shaped my soul. But then coming of age is always excruciating. Every generation has their own form of cultural cataclysm. And getting a bra represents a female rite of passage.

So, I’ve chosen to donate a small soft cup bra, not unlike the one my mom bought me in our local department store, somewhere, if I recall correctly, near the Girl Scout uniforms. I do this in hopes that whoever receives this comfy little brassiere (which by the way, was invented by a French woman) will appreciate one thing I’ve learned over a lifetime: size doesn’t matter except as it concerns the heart.

Photo by Hannah Busing on Unsplash

So whatever size fits you, sister, feel free to wear it with or without Hush Puppies and ankle socks—because God loves variety, and God loves you!

Copyright 2022 Ann C. Averill

Cover photo by Siora Photography on Unsplash

Ann is working on a full length memoir about coming of age and coming to God in the Woodstock generation.

She is also the author of Teacher Dropout: Finding Grace in an Unjust School about working in a poverty school, coming to the end of herself, and discovering her core identity and worth in Christ.

Posted in Flash memoir, Writing Process | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Memoir as a Process of Forgiveness

Posted on November 17, 2022 by Ann C. Averill

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.

Photo by by Arnav Singhal on Unsplash

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.

Photo by krakenimages on Unsplash

“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

Posted in Flash memoir, Spiritual Growth, Writing Process | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Dry Bones

Posted on November 8, 2022 by Ann C. Averill

As a writer, I recently listened to an interview with Shayla Raquel on Marion Roach Smith’s podcast, Qwerty. It was so good, I bought her book, The 10 Commandments of Author Branding. In it, Shayla, a self-publishing mentor and branding coach, advises authors to document their journey towards publication in order to discover their readers and build their tribe, that’s you guys who read my blog. So, this week, I’m sharing the preface of a memoir I’ve been working on for a long time. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you may have seen early versions of some other chapters. It’s had a million titles: Back to the Garden, Looking for God in all the Wrong Places, A String of Lights, and lastly Stardust and Golden, but always the same subtitle: Coming of Age and Coming to God with the Woodstock Generation because that’s what it’s about.

So, please let me know in the comments which title you like best or suggest another, and please let me know if this preface whets your appetite as a reader. If you’re a writer, I hope the info above also gives you ideas for branding and marketing your own work. All our God stories matter!

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As an adopted daughter, I always wondered who I really was and where I belonged. And as I came of age, what I was worth. I couldn’t have told you that at age five, or fifteen, or even twenty-five, but looking back, those were the questions flying constant reconnaissance just below my radar. And high above, a soaring fear of exposure and rejection.

Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on Unsplash

As an adult these issues seem obvious and inevitable for a child born out of wedlock in the conservative 50’s, removed like a social cancer at the hospital, taken to a foster home, and adopted at nine months. Of course, I remember none of that, except as a bright blank I wish I could fill in. But here’s the thing, children file emotions and events before they’re old enough to name them. Impressions and conclusions come fast and hard and carve deep grooves in an immature brain that guide patterns of thought and action for a lifetime. Invisible patterns we can’t make out with our own eyes.

My early childhood was set in a Leave-it-to Beaver suburb. My adoptive mom, like every mom in the neighborhood, a version of June Cleaver who wore a shirtwaist dress and heels, yes heels, while cooking meals inspired by Betty Crocker. As a Pippi-Longstocking tomboy, this female role model was not appealing. I’d rather ride my bike, play in the woods, or hunt tadpoles in the golf course pond while pretending adventures with my friends. And yet the TV icon of the virgin-bride, stay-at-home mom powerfully defined what made a woman proper and therefore lovable before I was old enough to consider or challenge alternatives.

Photo by Fern M. Lomibao on Unsplash

Then came Woodstock. I was sixteen the summer of the legendary concert where sexy, psychedelic Grace Slick, singer of the Jefferson Airplane, invited an entire generation down the rabbit hole. The hippie movement interwoven with Vietnam war protest, spawned mantras like make love not war, do your own thing, and question authority. At the time, I couldn’t see the irony of a society that condemned my birth mother’s pre-marital sex, then changed its mind and promoted the very act that created her problem—me. That said, I was as curious as anyone else and quickly found my own shame.

Photo by David Clode on Unsplash

As a course correction, perhaps, I eagerly married my prince, and became a version of Mrs. Cleaver myself—inconveniently—just as Gloria Steinem founded Ms. Magazine. As a stay-at-home mom, the rise of feminism only lowered my self-esteem which plowed the ground for infidelity as a young wife.

Later in life, I discovered I was the illegitimate third great granddaughter of Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of The Scarlet Letter, a classic about adultery, shame, and the grace of God or lack thereof. You’d think this is a spoiler. End of story. At long last I know who I am and understand the curse and cure of my life-long self-devaluation. But there is more, always more when it involves the soul of a sentient human being.

I sometimes wonder, what would have happened had I known this secret about my human lineage earlier in life. Would it have inoculated me from wobbly self-worth? Separated my self-image from achievement or failure? Would it have provided a clearer sense of direction? Quelled my desperation for a faithful friend, husband, lover? I think not, for these issues have plagued the family of man since Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden. And it is our flaws and confusion that compel us to find our way back.

These are the dry bones of my tale, but what I really want to share is the heart, the emotional oxygen of one woman’s coming of age and coming to God during a cultural earthquake.

Then again, every generation has its own form of cultural cataclysm, and coming to God is always a breakthrough. C. S Lewis said, “We read to know we are not alone,” so, I invite you, dear reader, to buckle up and ride shot gun as we travel back in time to mid-century America. Put your head out the window if you like to feel the breeze and inhale a portion of my life without a pane of glass between us as we hurtle towards the tear in the veil that separated an imperfect woman from her true identity and infinite worth.  

Photo by michele spinnato on Unsplash

I share all this to portray how God’s grace carried me as a child, allowed me as an adolescent to discover my own flaws, and convicted me as an adult that I needed a savior whose love had always been there for the taking.

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Ephesians 2:8-10

If you’d like to check out my first book about coming to the end of myself as a teacher in an underperforming school and learning to lean on my identity in Christ, click here for Teacher Dropout: Finding Grace in an Unjust School.

Copywrite Ann C. Averill 2022

Cover photo by Wilmy van Ulft on Unsplash

Posted in Flash memoir, Writing Process | Tagged , , , , , | 8 Comments

Nothing Gold Can Stay–Except Jesus

Posted on October 20, 2022 by Ann C. Averill

As a child, how I loved October, the chill on my cheeks and the early dark that foretold the coming of Halloween, that hallowed eve when I could become anyone I wanted. And, by merely pressing a doorbell, I received a mother lode of Almond Joys, Pay Days, Milky Ways, Tootsie Rolls, Fireballs, and Sugar Daddies—until the bewitching hour when the last lady of the house said, “It’s getting a late,” and turned off her porch light.

Photo by Conner Baker on Unsplash

As a child, back in school the next morning, how I grieved the return of the ordinary—plaid dresses, saddle shoes and cafeteria ravioli.

As an older adult, October became the month my mother died. My wonderful mother who made all my Halloween identities come true with her magic sewing machine.

Last October my younger brother died. The same brother with whom I traded Halloween treats, dead at an early age, an alcoholic.

October is the month I married my husband. As a surprise, he took me to honeymoon at the Hanover Inn without a reservation. His hopes were dashed, however, by New England’s renowned fall foliage. The boutique hotel is a mecca for leaf peepers, and there was no room at the inn for our wedding night.

October is the month one of my darling grandsons was born. He’s the one we almost lost when his infant lungs were infected by a virus.

Some of my close friends have recently become widows, and I realize it’s getting late. The porch light could turn off at any moment.

October has become as bittersweet as summer’s leaves that blaze like flame before they drift to earth and return to the soil they came from.

Robert Frost said it best in “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” his poem I probably should have read in high school but came across instead in my autumn years when I could comprehend its pathos.

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

Robert Frost
Photo by Courtney Smith on Unsplash

Frost’s famous poem is true of this life. How often joy is escorted by grief. Life is fleeting, and nothing gold can stay. And yet, what a relief to trust Jesus’ words are true of eternity.

“For God so loved the world (that’s you and me) that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

John 3:16 (NIV)

Many Christians forsake Halloween as a pagan holiday, but I still love it even as a grown up because, ironically, I see it rich with Christian symbolism and hope.

  • Children walking in darkness
  • Surrounded by ghosts and goblins
  • For one night are gifted sweets beyond measure
  • All through putting on someone else’s identity

For me, Halloween showcases our childlike longing for something more, and how, as believers, we take off our old identities forever to put on Christ’s marvelous light!

October is a reminder that this world is fallen and nothing gold can stay–except Jesus.

Cover photo by Ricardo Gomez Angel on Unsplash

Copyright Ann C. Averill 2022

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

Prove-it Prayers

Posted on October 13, 2022 by Ann C. Averill

When I was almost a believer, I started praying prove-it prayers to see if God was real. Could he see me? Could he hear me? Did he care about my circumstances? And did he have the power to intervene?

I recently shared the whole story as a guest blog on Marnie Hammer’s series Hear Him Louder. Click the link below to read it. I hope it encourages you that the answer to all the questions above is an unbounded YES!

https://www.marniehammar.com/post/how-submitting-to-his-promptings-unlocks-his-best

The Lord is near to all who call on him,

    to all who call on him in truth.

Psalm 145:18 (NIV)

Cover photo by Amaury Gutierrez on Unsplash.

Copyright 2022 Ann C. Averill

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