Maybe you
recall a Christmas that was simply awful—a time you were heartbroken, or
homeless, or broke, or far from home, or jilted, or frightened, or sick—and
your future looked bleak.
You
remember it as the worst Christmas ever.
But I
invite you to think again.
Writing a
memoir can be such a blessed project. Memoir requires taking long, deep looks
at the past. Memoir involves pondering, rethinking, unearthing, and finding
gems we might not have known were there.
Sometimes
what seems to be our biggest disaster
can turn
out to be a blessing—
one we
couldn’t have received without the difficulty.
Sometimes
we think a calamity will destroy us, but God works in the midst of our
situations and, in the way only He can do it, He turns everything inside out
and upside down and—instead of destroying us—it makes us stronger and better.
Failures.
Tangled messes. Catastrophes. Tragedies. Conflicts. Blows. Adversity.
Upheavals. Disasters. Setbacks. Unwelcome surprises.
God can use our deep disappointments to
- get our attention,
- shake us up a little,
- clear our heads,
- help us see we were putting our hope in something we shouldn’t,
- open new doors for us,
- give us new perspectives,
- tenderize our souls,
- give us fresh starts.
God can
do all that.
That’s
what Romans 8:28 is about: “God causes
everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called
according to his purposes for them” (NLT).
A long, long time ago, H.C. Trumbull told this story:
“The
floods washed away home and mill, all the poor man had in the world. But as he
stood on the scene of his loss, after the water had subsided, brokenhearted and
discouraged, he saw something shining in the bank which the waters had washed
bare. ‘It looks like gold,’ he said. It was gold. The flood which had beggared
him made him rich. So it is ofttimes in life.” (Quoted by Mrs. Charles E.
Cowman, Streams in the Desert, January 20 selection.)
When
turn-arounds and relief and solutions
eventually
come our way, it’s so easy to snatch them,
run with
them, and never look back.
We too
easily fail to recognize God’s intervention
on our
behalf, and we pay too little attention
to the
good He has brought to us
out of
our hardships.
Take
time—make time—to dig through the dirt and ashes
of what
you thought was your most disastrous Christmas,
and mine
those bits of gold.
Search for
evidence of God’s healing, new directions He offered you, new friends, and new
hope.
Pinpoint
the ways He strengthened your faith for the future.
Recognize
these were all part of God’s unique plan for you and your life.
Gather those discoveries
and write stories in your memoir
that detail the ways God was with you
n the midst of your worst Christmas ever.
Write
stories about the way He took a disaster and turned it into something good—blessings
you couldn’t have received without that difficulty. Instead of destroying you,
it made you stronger and better.
If you’ll
make time to do that, you can receive heaps of blessings.
But it
doesn’t end there. Your readers can benefit, too.
Take in what Jeff Goins said,
“At times, you will hold the keys to another’s prison. . . .
when you write from the heart,
your pain will become someone else’s healing balm.”
