Dry Bones

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.

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.

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.

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.  

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