How can you retrieve your faded memories?

 

Writing your memoir can surprise you by bringing past events into a new light. As you make time to remember and ponder, new insights into old experiences will surface. Puzzle pieces will fall into place.

 

Frederick Buechner explains what he discovered when he penned his personal stories in The Sacred Journey and Now and Then.

"They gave me more of a sense than I had ever had before of how as far back as I could remember things had been stirring in my life that I was all but totally unaware of at the time.

"If anybody had predicted when I was an undergraduate at Princeton that I was going to be ordained as a minister ten years after graduation, I think I would have been flabbergasted.

"Yet as I wrote . . . I found myself remembering small events as far back as early childhood which were even then leading me in something like a direction but so subtly and almost imperceptibly that it wasn't until decades had passed that I saw them for what they were. . . .

"The events were often so small that I was surprised to remember them, yet they turned out to have been road markers on a journey I didn't even know I was taking.

"The people involved in them were often people I had never thought of as having played particularly significant roles in my life yet looking back at them I saw that, for me, they had been life-givers, saints." (Frederick Buechner, Originally published in Telling Secrets)

God longs for us to remember what He has done (Psalm 105:5), but we so easily forget!

 

Memories are vital components of memoirs, so how can we retrieve the faded ones?

 

If you kept a journal in the past, you have a treasure. It will be packed with events and details and personal insights that you might have forgotten over the years.

 

Old letters—that you wrote or received—can also help remember significant events and people.

 

Look through your Bible, devotionals, or Bible study materials. If you’re like me, you’ve jotted memories and dates in the margins.

 

Some people print and save special emails they’ve sent or received.

 

Here’s another idea to help you retrieve your memories of a key place: Sketch a floor plan and/or the neighborhood. Maybe you’re writing about your childhood home or about Boy Scout camp. Or maybe you’re writing about an office building in a bustling city. Sketching that place will help remember details.

 

While you draw, memories will bubble up and percolate.

 

Don’t believe me? Give it a try! As you sketch, jot down notes about who was with you and what significant events took place there.

 

But that’s just the beginning!

 

Memoirists go beyond remembering the past. Memoirists search for significance. Relevance.

 

Pondering, unraveling, piecing together, reflecting—all are necessary ingredients in memoirs. Tell readers what you now see, in retrospect. Look for deeper meanings and connections, as Frederick Buechner did, above.

 

Looking back, what did you learn about yourself?

 

What patterns did you discover that you hadn’t noticed before?

 

How did the place and people shape your life? And prepare you for your future?

 

Maybe, like Buechner, you'll notice that you'd been on a journey you didn't even realize you were taking.

What was God doing? What did you learn about Him? Like Frederick Buechner, did you discover God’s purpose for your life?

 

When you pull your memories out of hibernation, give yourself plenty of time to examine them and answer the above questions.

 

Look for relevance you might have missed in the past.

Search for profound lessons you learned.

Notice defining moments and turning points.

Make time to discover insights.

Identify healing and blessings that were there all along.

Uncover your richer, higher, deeper, wider story.

And then share it with others.