Blog | Ann C. Averill Author | Flash memoir portraying God's Grace in an ordinary life.

Blog Dump

Posted on March 24, 2023 by Ann C. Averill

Writing is a process. Big surprise, living is a process. And trusting God is the mother of all processes.

That said, let me tell you what I figured out this week about all of the above.

A few weeks ago, a fellow Hope*writer, Shirley Weyrauch , author of Follow the Breadcrumbs, sent me a You Tube interview with author Molly Baskette entitled The Ethical Memoir. Although the video was centered on how to ethically use parts of other people’s story in your own, something she said as an aside jumped out and bit me. After submitting her memoir manuscript to her agent, her agent replied, “This is not a memoir. It’s a blog dump.”

A blog dump! Maybe that’s what my critique group had been politely trying to tell me about my own memoir in process when they said things like You tell a really good story in such vivid detail, but what is your memoir about?

It’s true, I’d taken parts of essays posted on my blog and pieced them together with additional material to craft what I thought was my final draft. But when I submitted some of my beginning chapters to fellow Hope*writer and editor, Mara Eller. She said something similar about how I bring my stories to life with vivid detail then ended with the overall feeling that my backstory chapters felt like, “random historical vignettes.” I use her exact words because they sound like the dictionary version of blog dump.

So, here’s the thing, like any human being, I’ve lived my life in daily chapters that looked like “random historical vignettes,” seemingly disconnected, perhaps meaningless. And it’s hard when you’re in the thick of your own life to see the thread that runs through it all. I was paralyzed with discouragement until Psalm 139:16 came to mind.

“You saw me growing, changing in my mother’s womb;
Every detail of my life was already written in Your book;
You established the length of my life
before I ever tasted the sweetness of it.”
Psalm 139:16 (VOICE)

Trusting this about God’s power and sovereignty, ensures my life is not random or without purpose and helped me focus on the crux of my narrative.

When I started this story, I didn’t understand how critical my adoption was to my self-concept even when I wasn’t aware of it. I’d always felt like an impostor, a fake, not one of the real_______ fill in the blank. I held back on the fringes, yet was always on the hunt for where I really belonged, personally, socially, professionally. And eventually, I was hungry enough for significance, to compromise what was most precious to me, my marriage, in order to be who I desperately wanted to become—chosen, clean, and wildly loved.

In the midst of my contemplation, a new subtitle came to mind: Looking for God in all the Wrong Places because wasn’t what I wished for already provided by God? Colossians 3:12 says we are chosen, holy, and beloved children of God. What was fake and counterfeit was not me, but the sources from which I tried to suck my worth and identity.

A new title also appeared: Love Child, because the heart of my narrative is how I discovered I was not the euphemism for an illegitimate bastard born from the momentary passion of man, but a precious child conceived by the amazing grace of God.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. Twice Adopted. Once by loving parents who saw me as a priceless gift. And again by God, my ultimate father. Now I can delete or dump all the other chapters of my life that don’t point to that overarching transformation.

“Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ.”
Philippians 3:8

Thank God for the honesty and skill of friends and colleagues. Thank God for the truth of his Word. Knowing what’s wrong with something is half the battle of making it right. It’s a process isn’t it? But if God is in it, I trust he’ll carry it onto completion.

BTW what do you think of my new titles? How have you titled your story, and how could the love of God change it?

Cover photo by Uday Mittal on Unsplash

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged #blogging, #identityinchrist, #maraeller, #memoirwriting, #Mollybaskette, #shirleyweyrauch | 3 Comments

My Aunt Ruth

Posted on March 17, 2023 by Ann C. Averill

Last week I wrote about SHAME, a painful consciousness of being bad, wrong, and less than because of doing bad, wrong things or having them done to you.

Shame’s remedy is GRACE, being shown favor you don’t deserve. The question is, can you feel grace like you can shame? How does it manifest? Let me tell you about my Aunt Ruth.

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I always knew that if my parents died, I would go to live with Aunt Ruth and Uncle Mac. I don’t remember when I was told this legal fact, but I thought it was a great idea because Aunt Ruth and Uncle Mac had two kids, Macky and Donna. Donna was just my age and lived within an hour of my Memau’s farm in Virginia, the best place in the world. Besides, the real possibility of my parents’ death never occurred to me while ensconced in my cozy childhood.

Not even in March 1964 when I was in fourth grade and my mom had a near fatal car accident that made the frontpage of The Schenectady Gazette, “Woman Hit by bus.” An impatient bus driver had rushed a red light, hit my mom’s two-ton, black Ford station wagon broadside and launched her barely one-hundred-pound body out of the car, across four lanes of traffic, and onto a snowbank the size of the Rock of Gibraltar.

That summer my mom was still recovering, so I spent a month in Virginia. Two weeks at the farm with my mom and Memau, and two weeks at Aunt Ruth and Uncle Mac’s.

As Aunt Ruth drove Donna and I up the steep driveway that plateaued at their modest three-bedroom ranch, I recalled an earlier visit while she and Uncle Mack were building their first house. The contractor had cut down several giant oaks atop the ridge, and Donna and I had walked their long, straight trunks like balance beams.

During my 1964 visit, the heat was stifling, and Donna and I often retreated to the cool basement that still smelled like fresh concrete. To one side of the stairs was an old upright piano. Aunt Ruth could play by ear, yet there was a well-worn hymnal on the music shelf opened to “The Old Rugged Cross.” I had started piano lessons, and Donna and I plinked out the song.

“On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross, the emblem of suffering and shame. And I love that old cross where the dearest and best for a world of lost sinners was slain.”

As a kid, I didn’t get the lyrics, but there was something plaintive in the melody that struck a chord. I wouldn’t have called Aunt Ruth or Uncle Mac religious. They went to church just like me and my family, but when Uncle Mac said the blessing before a meal, he spoke like a man thanking an old friend. The feeling of his prayer was nothing like my rote recitation, “God is great, and God is good…” Actually, for years, I thought it was God is gray not great. As a child I simply mouthed a long string of words. I might as well have been quoting Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky.”

One day that summer Donna and I crossed her street, and I met a neighbor family of sweaty, tow-headed kids playing tag.

The oldest girl yelled, “Hey, Donna.”

It wasn’t until I came closer that I realized she wasn’t wearing a blouse. I couldn’t take my eyes off the flesh mounded on her chest like small scoops of peach ice cream topped with a butterscotch kiss.

The youngest boy, in nothing but dinghy underpants, touched his sister’s bare bosom and rolled away in laughter. “Ha, ha. You’re it!”

She swatted at his behind, “Get out of here, you brat,” then looked up at us. “Y’all wanna play tag?”

I didn’t know what I wanted. Maybe for somebody to put some clothes on. It was hot but come on!

If I knew that when I was only eleven, why didn’t I know it the summer after my freshman year in college when women nationwide were burning their bras and Aunt Ruth and Uncle Mac came to visit us in Schenectady? Standing in our kitchen, just me, my mom, and Aunt Ruth, my bare boobs jiggled beneath my T-shirt, and she said, “Don’t you think you better go upstairs and put on a brassiere?”

Even though the word straight had gained the connotation of uncool, Aunt Ruth remained as plumb as the tall oaks that remained atop the ridge where she and Uncle Mac had built their home.

Throughout the decades, Aunt Ruth never failed to send me a birthday card that landed exactly on the day I was born–even when my own life was shifting father and farther out of plumb.

Not only were her cards on time, they somehow contained the words that salved my sore spot of the moment, saying things like, You are beautiful when I was a brand-new mom trying to regain my shape and equilibrium.

You are unique and creative when I was home with toddlers feeling like I’d lost my professional identity and verve.

Words that told me, the world was a better place because of me. What a special niece I was. How lucky she was to have known and loved me. Me? The bucktoothed tomboy who lost her temper, the high school girl who lost her virginity, the foolish young bride who almost left her husband? The baby my birthparents couldn’t keep and put up for adoption?

When I first trusted Jesus and was flush with the joy and cleansing of rebirth, Aunt Ruth was one of the first people I told because, somehow, I was sure she’d understand. We’d never spoken about her faith. She’d never shared the four spiritual laws or tried to evangelize me. My parents didn’t die young, and I’d never officially lived with her, but she’d adopted me as surely as my parents had and tucked me deep into her heart as one of her many darlings.

My mom once shared that when Uncle Mac met Aunt Ruth as a young woman he’d said, “I’ve met an angel and her name is Ruth.”

Ruth was the brown-haired beauty who’d sat by his bed and taught him to read again after he’d sustained a head injury during WWII. She was the one who’d cared for him again in old age until the former pilot took flight into glory.

I’m not saying there was anything extraordinary or supernatural about Aunt Ruth. No tulle wings or glowing halo. She grew up on a truck farm in Ohio, and most of her adult life worked as a secretary. She kept a tidy house, spoke the plain truth, and loved to laugh at a funny story. But remember the trend where people wore bracelets marked with the letters WWJD for what would Jesus do? All my life I could have worn one marked WWRD for What would Ruth do?

Now pushing a hundred, I just want my Aunt Ruth, and you dear readers, to know what I’m sure Uncle Mac meant.

Angels are radiant messengers of God’s grace.

Do you have an Aunt Ruth? I’m so glad I still do.

“So, I’ll cherish the old rugged cross,
till my trophies at last I lay down.
I will cling to the old rugged cross,
and exchange it someday for a crown.”
Music and lyrics by George Bennard

Cover photo by Todd Cravens on Unsplash

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged #angels, #christiantestimony, #god'sgrace, #manifestationof grace, #reallifeangels, #whatdoesgracelooklike | 5 Comments

Hello, My Name is Shame

Posted on March 10, 2023 by Ann C. Averill

Shame is subtle. It never names itself, rather it names you by your every faux pas, misdemeanor, and disappointment. Idiot, Jerk, Loser and worse in a precipitous cascade of taunts and ridicule.

Shame is a sticky substance that multiplies and hardens into a heavy, yet brittle armor worn over your real self.

Shame is a parasite, that feeds on your low self-esteem and never lets go.

Shame is a bully, an abuser, a monster. Once clenched in its powerful maw, it chews, and chews, and chews up your soul until you no longer know who you are or what you’re worth, so you’re willing to do anything to prove yourself and feel loved.

Whatever metaphor I use, shame grew to be my inferred identity until I was rescued from the monster and given a fresh way of seeing myself through the love of Christ. That’s the gospel, the birth of good news.

I wrote the above in response to homework given to me by editor, and Hope*Writer, Mara Eller when she asked me to describe the before and after me in the memoir I’m polishing. It was supposed to be only one or two sentences which this isn’t, but sometimes you have to write more to get less.

In a nutshell, the before me was living in the past out of an identity of shame, based on what I did and didn’t do.

The after me was living in the present out of a fresh identity based on what Christ did for me out of love.

She also asked me to list the lies I believed about myself before the moment of transformation.

I believed I wasn’t pretty enough
smart enough
or clean enough to be loved

She asked me to contrast a list of truths I learned through my trials.

Pretty doesn’t equal lovable
Smart doesn’t equal worthy
Clean in this corrupt world is only through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross for all of us

She asked me to list key revelations about myself I learned on my journey

I was an insecure follower willing to compromise to belong
I used the beauty and accomplishments of those I associated with to reflect well on me
I assumed I’d be rejected if I didn’t hide who I really was

She also asked what I learned about the nature of love through my struggles

I thought love was conditioned on merit
I thought love equaled sex and sex equaled love
Yet pre-marital sex disqualified a woman from true love because she was used, damaged goods
I was so confused!
Now I know, human love, however true, is always flawed and incomplete
Only God’s love is purely unconditional, and forgiveness is the true source of freedom

I share my homework here because surely some of you readers have been confused and misled just as I was about your identity and worth. We all have our reasons, and they are as varied as we are. And yet, the cure is the same because we are all created in the image of the same God, and we are all under the same curse, created for paradise, but living in the presence of sin’s pollution from without and within.

For my fellow writers, the rest of my editorial homework is to sift and list the scenes from my memoir that portray how I learned the lies about myself and how I learned the truth.

For the future readers of my memoir, I know an outline is insufficient to grasp what coming of age and coming to God has meant in my life, so I must finish my manuscript for you. I share this here to hold myself accountable.

Until then, I’ll just say, if you’d met the old me, I would have said, “Hello, my name is Shame.”

The new me says, “Hello my name is Ann, which means grace.”

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

Cover photo by Julia Taubitz on Unsplash

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments

In Christ Alone My Hope is Found

Posted on February 25, 2023 by Ann C. Averill

Today I’ve completed 70 years of life. Where has the time gone? Days flash by in a blur. Is it a Wednesday or a Thursday? I’m only aware of the exact date if I’m scheduled to babysit a grandchild, take a walk with a friend, or when I punctuate the week with Sunday at church.

As a little girl, time was so much longer. Maybe because there was still so much ahead. In third grade, I remember sitting in my classroom at the end of June watching the janitor mow the lawn out the open window. I could smell the grass, and longed for the school day to be over, but the five minutes left before the bell felt like hours. In fourth grade, I visited my grandmother’s farm for a month that felt like a year. And every year of my childhood, waiting for Christmas felt like forever!

Over my lifetime so much has changed. I was born before pomegranates and avocados were in grocery stores across the nation. I remember when TV dinners seemed like a treat, not a gross substitute for a real meal. I remember when every family I knew sat down to supper together and there was no such thing as fast food.

In first grade, I stood in line to receive a pink sugar cube containing the polio vaccine booster from the school nurse. One of my dad’s friends had had polio as a child and walked with a cane. Other children didn’t survive the disease, or lived the rest of their lives in an iron lung.

When I came of age, as a peer said recently, “Hippies roamed the earth.” Guys had long hair and women didn’t shave their legs or armpit. In college, streaking was a new phenomenon, meaning students ran naked through the cafeteria, across campus, or down dormitory halls. And pot was sold in dime bags, not chic dispensaries.

My first airline flight as a young adult felt glamorous. I dressed up in a linen suit and walked across the runway to board the plane via a portable stairway. I was served a hot, full-course meal by a stewardess, that’s what we called them back in the day, who was always a woman expected to look like a model. There was no security check, travelers were polite, and the plane took off and landed on time—with your luggage.

I know I’m sounding like an old fogey, as if times were better back in the good old days when we walked two miles to school in a snowstorm and didn’t complain. No, I rode the bus, and kids were both as silly and mean as they are today.

Photo by RepentAnd SeekChristJesus on Unsplash

Somethings, though, were definitely worse. Women went to the hairdresser once a week, and sat under a stationary hairdryer with their hair in bristly curlers until the hairdresser sprayed the finished coif with hairspray until it had the hardness of a military helmet. Women wore shirtwaist dresses and wore high heels while preparing meatloaf recipes from Betty Crocker or ambrosia salads made from canned mandarin oranges and marshmallows. Most ladies, that’s what women were called, were secretaries, teachers, or nurses, and all were underpaid, called things like sweetie, or honeybun, and expected to fetch the boss’s coffee.

My adoptive mom was one of the first few women to attend her state college, and graduated with a degree in home economics, before other studies were offered to female students. My birth mom started out at college but ended up getting pregnant with me out of wedlock, what we now call an unplanned pregnancy. As a result, she left school and went into hiding until my birth. As the unwanted infant, I was placed in a foster home for nine months and adopted by my mom and dad who longed for a child and didn’t have the benefit of fertility treatments available today.

All to say, there’s been a torrent of water under the bridge these 70 years. I made my own mistakes, and through them found the one true God and the meaning of life. That sentence might sound grandiose or pompous, but actually, finding Jesus was as humiliating as it was exhilarating, and experiencing his amazing grace in my ordinary life is still awesome.

Dear readers, I’ve tried to describe all this and more in granular detail, in the form of a memoir, so you can relate on some parallel thread of your own life.

Fellow writers, I just sent the first few chapters and a full chapter summary to editor and fellow Hopewriter, Mara Eller, for her suggestions and critique.

Last Sunday we sang the song, ”In Christ Alone My Hope is Found,” so I will leave you with these lyrics that struck my heart, knowing that no matter how your years have added up, these words are true for all who call on the name of the Lord of heaven and earth.

“No guilt in life, no fear in death
This is the power of Christ in me
From life’s first cry to final breath
Jesus commands my destiny.”
Lyrics by Stuart Townend

Cover photo by Jeremy Perkins on Unsplash

Posted in Flash memoir, Writing Process | Tagged #christiantestimony, #hopewriters, #inchristalonemyhopeisfound, #maraeller, #memoriesofababyboomer, #writingmemoir | 6 Comments

MORE THAN ROMANCE

Posted on February 16, 2023 by Ann C. Averill

Valentine’s Day has come and gone. It’s the day when we celebrate romance by sending boxes of chocolate, and sweet cards to those we love. Yes, love is a gift, but it’s also a verb.

Here’s a story from my childhood to explain what I mean.

BTW, for those writer friends following the progress of my memoir, this is a chapter I may edit out, so I thought I’d share it here.

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

It was the week of mid-winter school vacation, February, 1960. I was in second grade. The snow was deep. The air freezing, and after church we drove forty-five minutes to have Sunday dinner with the Swensons at their farm in Sharon Springs, New York. Arne was one of my dad’s oldest friends. He was a tall, ropey dairyman. Marta, Mrs. Swenson, was his round, smiling wife.

Arne sat at the head of the oval table in the middle of the dining room. His table was covered with a pink tablecloth, set with rosebud china, and adorned with three beautiful daughters: Cindy, the oldest, Karen, my age, and Trina, a blonde baby. Mrs. Swenson set a roast chicken before her husband and returned with steaming bowls of mashed potatoes and a gravy boat balanced on a saucer to catch any slurpy spills. We all dug in.

After dinner, the adults went through open French doors into the living room with two maroon armchairs and a squishy maroon sofa facing a roaring fire. Karen grabbed a pink and black afghan off the back of the sofa, and we wrapped up together on the piano bench in the drafty dining room. She opened the red cover of John Thompson’s Teaching Little Fingers to Play and showed me how the black ants on the page matched the white keys on the piano. With Karen’s help, I tapped out “Row, row, row your boat. . . life is but a dream.”

After a quiet afternoon it was usually time to go home, but this Sunday, my mom had packed my round, red suitcase with the loop handle and a white felt poodle on the lid because I was having a sleepover with Karen. I kissed Mommy and Daddy good-bye in the front hall next to a radiator draped with drying mittens. Through the open door, I watched the taillights of our black Ford station wagon fade into the frigid night.

Karen shared a room with her older sister. Mrs. Swenson positioned an old mattress in between the twin beds and made it with pink and blue bunny sheets. A tall bureau stood on one side of a frosty window. On the other side was a dressing table, its bubbled veneer topped with child-sized bottles of pink lotion and violet eau de toilette.

In the morning, Karen and I walked down the road to the barn. A concrete runway separated two aisles of cattle. Arne and his hired man were moving amongst the cows hooking up stainless steel milking machines that squished and squirted while the radio played country western tunes. Karen and I petted the big-eyed Holsteins looking out the barn windows full of cobwebs.

“This one is Maybelle. She’s going to have a calf in the spring.” Karen scratched the cow’s nose.

After a lunch of alphabet soup, Mrs. Swenson said, “You girls want to go sledding?”

Karen and I look at each other and squealed.

Mrs. Swenson helped us squirm into our snow pants and zip up our parkas. We pulled on our knit caps and flipped up our hoods. She bent down and tied red scarves around our necks and clipped our wool mittens to our jacket sleeves. All bundled, we were ready for the arctic.

Two Flexible Flyers waited on the front porch. We grabbed their ropes, waddled down the front walk, and trudged single file along the country road towards the pasture. Karen climbed over the fence, and I passed her our sleds. Our breath formed alternating clouds as we huffed and puffed up the steep rise.

The snow was covered with a glistening crust, so our boots broke through with every step, leaving jagged holes in the slippery slope. Finally, at the crest, we planted our bottoms on the sleds and placed our red rubber boots on the wooden cross pieces used to steer. Holding the ropes, we pushed off.

“Yee-haw!” We were riding bucking broncos across the snowy plain.

Down, down we slid, streaking shadows in the low winter sun. The thrill was but an instant. Without a word, we climbed the hill over and over. With each slide, we grew wilder, going down headfirst, then headfirst holding hands.

From cowboy to circus star, I stood on my sled, the rope taut in my snow-pilled mittens. The thin metal runners hit a footprint in the crust and lodged in the soft powder beneath. The rope yanked out of my grip. My chin cracked the ice. My slick nylon snowsuit accelerated my descent. Lips, nose, cheekbones rubbed and ripped against every icy opening in my path.

When Karen slid to my side, the snow beneath my face was the bright red of a bloody snow cone. We were both too terrified to cry. Silently we tossed our sleds over the fence and hurried for home. Up the country road, past the barn, down the walk.

Karen pushed the front door open. “Mommy!”

Mrs. Swenson carried me into the kitchen and set me on a stool beside the white enamel-topped table. She flew to the bathroom and returned with a box of band-aids and two clean blue washcloths. With eyes as big as Maybelle’s, Karen watched her mother fill a bowl with warm water. Mrs. Swenson wet the terrycloth and gently wiped my abrasions. Blood clouded the water as she rinsed again and again. Karen winced as a deep gash above my upper lip was revealed. Mrs. Swenson pinched the skin back together and secured it with two tiny blue band-aids covered in silver airplanes. She opened the freezer, pulled out an ice tray, and filled the dry washcloth with a handful of cubes. Gently placing the cold pack in my palm, she told me to hold it over my mouth. After gently peeling off my boots and snowsuit, Mrs. Swenson led me to the squishy maroon couch, and Karen tucked me in with the black and pink afghan.

I don’t know how long I laid beside the fire before Mrs. Swenson and Karen were back at my side. Cindy was holding the baby. Mrs. Swenson exchanged my bloody washcloth for what looked like an empty hamburger bun spread with butter. I sat up and took a timid bite. It was the best thing I’d ever tasted. An empty hamburger bun? At home we always ate Blue Bonnet margarine, so how could I imagine the glory of fresh, sweet butter, sun-kissed blades of summer grass transformed by the herd, churned, and spread with the kindness of a farmer’s wife?

The small scar above my mouth is still there, a constant reminder of the taste of my own blood, exchanged for something infinitely better.

The love of God is so much more than a box of chocolates, yet sometimes it’s just an empty hamburger bun.

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 Kostiantyn Li on Unsplash

Posted in Flash memoir, Writing Process | Tagged #babyboomerchildhoodmemories, #godslove, #loveinaction, #mid-centurychildhoodmemories, #valentinesday | 2 Comments

Ordinary Genius

Posted on February 1, 2023 by Ann C. Averill

Last week I watched a movie entitled Genius about author, Thomas Wolfe. What caught my attention was the voluminous manuscripts Wolfe brought his editor, Max Perkins, and one scene in particular where Perkins says, “Thomas, put down your pencil.”

Last week I also received feedback from a group of trusted Beta readers who critiqued my memoir about coming of age and coming to God during the Woodstock generation. One reader said, “It took a long time for the plane to get off the runway.” Although worded differently, I believe she was expressing what Perkins said to Wolfe. I too needed to cut many words, in my case, beginning chapters which failed to focus the theme and slowed the story’s take off.

Whether you’re a genius or an ordinary writer, we all have to write lots of chapters that never make the final book. Some deleted chapters may appear in some form in another work. Even those cut and never seen in any volume, I’d argue were worth writing, because there’s value in getting thoughts out of your head and organized on a page.

Some coaches and editors recommend mapping your content before you start writing your book. It’s a great idea to nail down the best route to your destination, so you don’t wander down dead ends or get lost and give up before you get there. This is especially helpful when planning prescriptive non-fiction.

My messy writing process was more like creating a map by first putting dots all over a blank page. Although I was sure of my destination, without even a compass rose, it took me a long time to make out the metaphoric towns, topography, and roads that connected them. Maybe because I was writing a memoir.

Here’s the thing about a memoir, it’s not about your whole life, and yet sometimes, it takes your whole life to understand the aspects of your life that have plagued you for a lifetime. It’s called a memoir because it contains specific memories that shaped you. In my case, it was finding the mile markers that illustrate how desperate I was to belong. Why I was willing to follow friends and lovers who I knew were leading me astray. And why I was willing to betray anybody, even those who loved me best because, although I couldn’t have put it into words at the time, I didn’t think I was worth loving.

All this happened of course in the larger context of being a human on earth. Even as a child, I always felt there was more to existence than met the eye, something, or someone invisible, yet obvious. Something or someone magic expressed in the beauty of the natural world yet somehow above it. In every fiber, yet not of it. Something or someone wonderful I knew was there yet could not name. And as I grew older, there was obviously something wrong with life on earth, and something desperately wrong with me. Why did I do things I knew were bad and not do things I knew were good?

My challenge now, is to weed out the rabbit trails from the interstate that led me to Jesus. I could be discouraged by my circuitous writing process. I don’t have the genius of Thomas Wolfe, or an editor par excellence like Max Perkins. I am an ordinary person writing about my circuitous ordinary life, but I do follow the God who called himself the way, the truth, and the life.

So if you’re another writer like me, or another ordinary person trying to find meaning in your own life, here’s the full quote from Jesus to his disciples who were, at the time, just as confused as we can be.

“Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me.There is more than enough room in my Father’s home. If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you?When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am. And you know the way to where I am going.”
“No, we don’t know, Lord,” Thomas said. “We have no idea where you are going, so how can we know the way?”
Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. If you had really known me, you would know who my Father is. From now on, you do know him and have seen him!”
John 14:1-7 (NLT)

Thanks for the cover photo by Michael Dziedzic on Unsplash

Posted in Writing Process | 1 Comment

Paper or Plastic

Posted on January 19, 2023 by Ann C. Averill

I spoke recently with a younger friend who said, “Do you remember what perimenopause was like?”

My answer, “Oh, yeah! Let me tell you a story.”

Back in the 90’s I was next in line at the grocery store checkout. It was after work. I was tired and impatient.

The cashier asked the customer in front of me if she’d prefer paper or plastic.

The woman answered, “Plastic,” and it was as if she’d pulled the pin on a grenade.

My mind exploded. How dare she choose plastic! Hasn’t she seen all the plastic bags tangled in treetops? Hasn’t she seen them floating down rivers? Going out to sea! Fouling beaches! Killing baby turtles! Suffocating whales!!!! Doesn’t she know the whole earth will be covered in ugly, non-biodegradable plastic if she doesn’t stop? PLEASE STOP!!!!!!!

Not a word of this came out my mouth. I paid for my items, walked to my car, and sat in the driver’s seat stunned by the ferocity of my response. Oh my gosh, I was ready to kill that woman for simply putting her bananas in a plastic bag.

“That,” I explained to my friend, “is not your brain on drugs, that is your brain on hormones.”

That incident happened before anyone knew massive swirls of plastic garbage were accumulating in ocean gyres. That was long before environmental activist, Greta Thunberg, was old enough to protest.

My point is, I was proved right about paper or plastic, but being right wasn’t the issue. The issue was my reaction was so far out of proportion to the poor woman’s choice.

Perimenopause doesn’t make your reaction to any offense wrong. It just flings it into outer space. And even knowing that, in the moment, doesn’t help you control it. It just makes you aware of your hormonal craziness.

During that period of my life, excuse the pun, my husband affectionately named the week before I menstruated Kill Week.

After I got my period, the sky was miraculously blue. The clouds a glorious white. It was a “bright blessed day and a dark sacred night,” and I realized my heart was singing along to Louis Armstrong’s “It’s a Wonderful World.”

What a difference a few chemicals can make in a woman’s body and mind. Therefore, to protect both the innocent and the guilty, I adopted some personal rules for Kill Week.

As a teacher,

Don’t call any parents about their child!
Don’t tell any administrators what they’re doing wrong!
Don’t share your opinion at faculty meetings!

As a parent,

Remember, my children are immature, so have mercy.
Remember, I can love my children and not their irritating behavior.
Remember, relationship is always more powerful than punishment.

As a person,

Don’t condemn myself as the worst mother in the world.
Or the worst wife ever.
Or the ugliest, most worthless person that ever lived.
And resist the urge to tell anyone else what I think is wrong with them.
Above all, don’t make any important decisions

Considering my conversation about perimenopause with my friend, I realize the rules I made for myself were a precursor to seeing myself and others through the lens of God’s grace. Perimenopause makes you extra sensitive and inflames your emotions. So does living in a world that deserves judgment.

But judgement always ends in murder, literal or heartfelt. Think of Paul as a Pharisee dragging Christians before the court for what he judged blasphemy. I would have dragged the woman ahead of me in the checkout line to customer service if I thought there was a jury behind the counter.

Yes, people can be jerks. But it’s not our job to rip their heads off.
Yes, people make poor decisions, but we’ve made poor decisions too.
Yes, people can be ignorant, but we are not always the smartest person in the room.
Yes, people can be harmful, damaging, and evil abounds
But the apostle Paul’s revelation was that we all deserve judgment, yet through Jesus, God’s grace abounds.

Another friend recently sent me this meme summarizing Paul’s message of grace.

So, keep the faith friends, whether perimenopause or some other monumental crisis or craziness triggers judgment. And when the cashier wants you to pick paper or plastic, remember there’s always another choice – grace.

“Be gentle and ready to forgive;
never hold grudges.
Remember, the Lord forgave you,
so you must forgive others.
Colossians 3:13 (TLB)

Thanks for the cover photo by Naja Bertolt Jensen on Unsplash

Posted in Flash memoir | 3 Comments

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.

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.

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

Posted in Flash memoir, Spiritual Growth, Uncategorized | Tagged #findingourdestiny, #iamcompleteinchrist, #iamenough, #trustinggod, #writingamemoir | 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.

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.

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

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.

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?

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

Posted in Flash memoir | Tagged griefatchristmas | 8 Comments

Ann C. Averill Author

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My Aunt Ruth

Hello, My Name is Shame

In Christ Alone My Hope is Found

MORE THAN ROMANCE

Ordinary Genius

Paper or Plastic

Connecting the Dots

Do You Live in a Shack?

Christmas Tears

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