How do you write about your family’s baggage?

 

Your ancestors and mine included a lot of fine people, but let’s be honest: Our family trees also include at least a few dysfunctional people—parents, grandparents, great-grandparents. Some carried out unhealthy practices and held offensive attitudes.

 

And now our generation has skeletons in the closet. Every family has baggage.

 

You know—the enabler.

 

Or the one who should have protected you but didn’t.

 

The bully, the controller, the know-it-all.

 

The petty one always looking for ways to take offense and blame you.

 

Your grandfather might have been a wife-beater.

 

Perhaps your father was quick to criticize and slow to praise.

 

Maybe your mother was egotistical and self-absorbed.

 

Your family tree might include a drunkard, a liar, murderer, adulterer, sex addict, drug addict, or a thief.

 

Even Jesus’ genealogical chart shows ill-famed characters: Rahab was a prostitute and King Manasseh deliberately defied God, carried out evil, and led God’s people astray.

 

Your family’s imperfect people have influenced you.

 

Some of the dysfunctional ones have played major roles in your life.

 

So, how should you, a memoirist, write about your people and their baggage?

 

First, examine your motive. That is all-important!

 

Hear this: Memoir is not about revenge.

 

Forbid yourself to use your memoir to shame people.

 

Refrain from humiliating anyone.

 

Refuse to get even.

 

Writing a memoir can bring much-needed healing

to you, the writer.

 

And writing can help break the cycle

of hand-me-down hang-ups

that crippled your family’s generations—

 

but focus on the right reason to write about your people.

 

“God’s Word clearly expresses

what a good and effective teacher the past can be.

The past will be a good teacher

if we will simply approach it as a good student,

from the perspective of what we can gain

and how God can use it for His glory.”

(Beth Moore, Breaking Free)

 

Do everything you must to be at peace with God:

• Recognize that like your parents and grandparents, you have made and will make mistakes in your marriage, in raising children, and in relating to grandchildren.
• Your malfunctions might be different from those of your parents or grandparents but, be assured, you have your own shortcomings and failures.
• Ask for God’s forgiveness.
• Accept His forgiveness.
• Allow God to wrap you in His grace and mercy.

 

Wrapped in God’s grace and mercy—that’s where you find peace with God.

 

Then pass it on: In writing your memoir,

you don’t need to act as if sins against you and others

were somehow okay.

They weren’t.

But I encourage you to extend to your ancestors

the same forgiveness, grace, and mercy God extended to you.

 

Read the following slowly, and then read it again. Take in its message:

 

“Thank God that

although you cannot change the past,

He can help you change what you’re doing with it!

And the changes He makes in you

in the present

can certainly change the future!”

(Beth Moore, Breaking Free)