“No such thing as happenstance”

What do you and your memoir have to do with Joseph? You remember Joseph—the guy with the coat of many colors.

He was sold by his brothers,

relocated in Egypt,

elevated to a position of exceptional power and influence,

falsely accused of rape by Potipher’s wife,

imprisoned, an innocent man, in a dungeon,

reconciled with his family,

and resettled in Goshen.

Rabbi Lawrence Kushner observes:

“The characters in the tale are so consumed with trying to manipulate their own fortunes that they all (like most of us) fail to notice what is really happening not only around them but—and here is the key idea—through them and despite them. Nobody gets it. Nobody but Joseph.

“… He realizes that something else has been going on all along.… ‘It was not you,’ he tells them, ‘who sent me here but God!’”

Memoirists need to be like Joseph. We need to step back and take a long look—a deep, wide, high look.

Memoirists must shun shallow living and superficial thinking.

Memoirists look over their lives and say, “Something else has been going on all along!”

“God is … quietly, invisibly, secretly planning our steps; feeding us our lines; moving us into position; unifying everything we do,” writes Kushner.

“…What we thought was an accident was, in truth, the hand of God. Most of the time we are simply unaware. Awareness takes too much effort.… But every now and then we understand, just for a moment, that God has all along been involved in everything. As Rabbi Zaddok HaKohen taught, ‘The first premise of faith is to believe with perfect faith that there is no such thing as happenstance.… Every detail, small or great, they are all from the Holy One.’” (Eyes Remade for Wonder; emphasis mine)

What are you discovering as you write your memoir?

Be a Joseph! What was God doing,

“quietly, invisibly, secretly” to bring you to today?

What was happening around you, 

through you, and even despite you?

Connect the dots.

What new person have you become?

What new direction has your life taken?

In what ways has your faith changed?

What messages of wisdom and hope can you write

into your memoir for your readers?

“Disburb us, Lord, when.…”

You want to entertain your memoir’s readers, but you also want to change your readers.

You want to write stories that show God’s everyday involvement in your life and your readers’ lives, stories that illustrate “everything is revealed to be in the hands of God.…” (Lawrence Kushner, Invisible Lines of Connection: Sacred stories of the ordinary)

Within that context, make sure your memoir’s stories—at least some of them—challenge your readers to think, to ponder, to mull over issues below the surface. Challenge readers to turn from worldly trinkets and distractions so they can consider their lives’ substance and purpose.

The following prayer teems with ideas for your memoir’s vignettes:

Disturb us, Lord, when

We are too well pleased with ourselves,

When our dreams have come true

Because we have dreamed too little,

When we arrive safely

Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when

With the abundance of things we possess

We have lost our thirst

For the waters of life;

Having fallen in love with life,

We have ceased to dream of eternity

And in our effort to build a new earth,

We have allowed our vision

Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,

To venture on wider seas

Where storms will show Your mastery;

Where losing sight of land,

We shall find the stars.

We ask You to push back

The horizons of our hopes;

And to push into the future

In strength, courage, hope, and love.

Attributed to Sir Francis Drake, 1577

Did Drake’s prayer give you ideas for vignettes? I hope so!

For example, take the first couple of lines: “Disturb us, Lord, when we are too well pleased with ourselves.…” What does “too well pleased with ourselves” mean? What stories can you write about being too pleased with yourself or about someone else who was too pleased with himself? What were the results of that mindset? Why would/should we pray for God to disturb us over it?

Look at the next couple of lines: “Disturb us, Lord, when … our dreams have come true because we have dreamed too little.…” What does dreaming “too little” mean to you? What results from dreaming too little? Why would/should we pray for God to disturb us over it? What stories can you write to illustrate that?

Sift through your memories for stories that illuminate “Disturb us, Lord, when … we arrive safely because we sailed too close to the shore.” What does “sailing too close to shore” mean to you? When did you sail too close to shore? What were the results? Why would/should we pray for God to disturb us over sailing too close to shore?

On the other hand, look over the third stanza: When did you dare more boldly and venture on wider seas where, as a result, storms showed you God’s mastery? Write a vignette about a time you lost sight of land, and as a result, you discovered stars. You’ll want to examine and explain what the following mean: “wider seas,” “storms,” “God’s mastery,” “losing sight of land,” and finding “stars.”

Stories matter. Stories make a difference.

Stories guide, inspire, encourage, influence, motivate, and empower.

Stories shape lives.

“Sometimes a particular story, or version of a story, is so potent,” says Ayd Instone, “that it becomes so interwoven in our lives that it defines the direction our life story takes and modifies behavior.… I’ve seen teenagers who changed the direction of their lives to become teachers after seeing the film, The Dead Poets Society.…”  

Your stories are important. Write them!

How an HGTV program demonstrated Jeremiah 29:11

A couple of evenings ago, HGTV’s House Hunters featured James, his wife Mindy, and their four children in their search for a house in southern California—but James was no ordinary man.

Born in Da Nang, Vietnam, during the war, James contracted polio in his infancy and inadequate medical help left him crippled in both legs.

James’ mother made the heart-wrenching decision to put him in an orphanage, no doubt hoping and praying he would find the help he needed.

Then, during the fall of Saigon, U.S. President Gerald R. Ford arranged emergency evacuation flights for some 110,000 Vietnamese, including two-year-old James.

James praised the American family that adopted and raised him and—then came the best moment, for me, of the program: James explained how thankful he was for his polio and for being given to the orphanage because, he explained, if he had remained in Vietnam, his life would have held bleak prospects and many hardships.

And isn’t that what Jeremiah 29:11 is all about?

“For I know the plans I have for you,”

declares the Lord,

“plans to prosper you and not to harm you,

plans to give you hope and a future.”

James recognized, and told HGTV viewers about, the blessings that resulted from what appeared, at first, to be disasters. Based on his words and his wife’s necklace, I’m sure James saw God’s fingerprints all over his life.

If you’ve been part of the SM 101 tribe for a while, you know where I’m going with this:

Think back on events that seemed all wrong, that threatened to destroy your dreams and hopes, that left you in despair.

Take a few days to take a long look at those events and search for God’s fingerprints all over them.

We often miss the most important Holy Fingerprints because we don’t take time to dig deeply and examine and think and pray.

Invest time in this until you can declare, like Elisabeth Elliot:

“The will of God is never exactly what you expect it to be.

It may seem to be worse,

but in the end

it’s going to be a lot better and a lot bigger.”

Write a vignette for your memoir showing ways that, despite seeming setbacks, God had plans to prosper* you and not harm you, plans to give you hope and a future (Jeremiah 29:11).

You’ll find additional inspiration from these earlier blog posts:

Connect Your Dots, and my friend Barb’s cry, “Lord, You’ve said you’d make my path straight, so why is my path so crooked?”

You’re the bridge between generations past and generations yet to come.

Write your stories!

Your children, grandchildren and other readers

need to know they can trust God with their lives,

that He has plans to prosper* them

and not to harm them,

plans to give them hope and a future.

*The word prosper is, in Hebrew, shalom, meaning peace, completeness, tranquility, soundness, safety, and well-being. Here’s how Cornelius Plantinga describes shalom:

“The webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in justice, fulfillment, and delight is what the Hebrew prophets call shalom. We call it peace but it means far more than mere peace of mind or a cease-fire between enemies. In the Bible, shalom means universal flourishing, wholeness and delight—a rich state of affairs in which natural needs are satisfied and natural gifts fruitfully employed, a state of affairs that inspires joyful wonder as its Creator and Savior opens doors and welcomes the creatures in whom he delights. Shalom, in other words, is the way things ought to be” (from Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be).

Is there an easy way to turn non-memoir into memoir?

I’ve been telling you of new discoveries I made while reflecting on an old photo from my family’s years in South America.

In a thousand ways, that time was a most wonderful adventure—even though I confessed last week that I refused to unpack and plotted ways to run away. By Christmas, I was begging my husband to agree to stay another year. And we did. And another year after that.

The mission center was a paradise for kids: collecting butterflies and insects, chasing bulls, hunting alligators, mud sliding, fishing for piranhas that could rip out an apple-size piece of flesh in a split second, eating grubs, swimming with stingrays—what’s not for a kid to love?

And the tropical vegetation! This Seattle gal lived surrounded by plants I knew from only florist shops back home: hibiscus, orchids, gardenias. Before moving to South America, a gardenia, to me, was a very special corsage for a very special date, but down there, I had a gardenia hedge! An entire hedge of gardenias—gardenias by the hundreds, gardenias by the thousands! Heavenly.

And the people we worked alongside—courageous, funny, tenacious, brilliant, friendly, creative, fun-loving, and the most dedicated you could ever find. We made life-long friends there.

For my kids, I’ve already assembled, in three-ring binders, a couple hundred pages of letters I wrote home—but that photo I ran across recently.…

That old photo of Matt, Karen, Glenny, and Ray made me lurch. It shook the earth under my feet.

That snapshot is begging me not to be content with just the historical facts. It’s urging me to tell a bigger, broader story, one I had previously overlooked like an elephant in the room. 

That photo pointed out a theme (an important part of memoir) that was there all along—it was a given in the back of my mind all these years—but I had not put it in writing.

Remember the definition of memoir—it includes reflection and inspection and digging for deeper meaning: What was the big picture? What was happening on a larger scale, and on a smaller scale? What was God doing? How did it make us who we are today?

Now I need—and want—to turn those pages of non-memoir into memoir.

But how much time and effort do I want to put into the project? That question has been nagging me for the past couple of weeks.

Do I want to start again from scratch?

No. No I don’t.

So I’ve been asking myself: Is there an easy way to turn non-memoir into memoir?

Yes, perhaps.

What if I included that new info in an Introduction and an Epilogue?

In the Intro, I could foreshadow our family’s and colleagues’ theme (guerrilla threats and attacks). I could write about receiving a telex, just as we were ready to fly out of the States, telling us to delay our arrival by ten days because our facility had been bombed. And I could tell about the next bomb threat a few days later, and additional threats—bombings and more—received after that. 

The Epilogue could include Chet’s, Ray’s, and Norm’s stories and the closure of the mission center (since they all occurred after we returned to the States). (If you missed earlier blog posts, click on Sometimes you think a story is completed and all wrapped up. But then.… and Sometimes you think a story is completed, Part 2.)  

The Epilogue, however, could do more. I want it to do more.

The Epilogue could emphasize the bigger victory: that the guerrillas did not win even though they took Chet’s life.

“The guerrillas had intended to oust the [Bible] translators; instead they entrenched them. Almost a decade of negative press gave way to supportive editorials,” wrote author Steve Estes in Called to Die. After Chet’s death, Estes said, the Bible translators “basked in the effusive support that followed from President Turbay on down.”

The work of Bible translation flourished in jaw-dropping ways no one could have anticipated. Across the U.S., people signed up to fill the gap created by Chet’s death: Wycliffe Bible Translators saw applications double for overseas work.

I want my kids to know about the uncommon faith of their neighbors and their classmates’ parents and about the God they served. I want my grandkids to know, too.

I want both the Intro and the Epilogue, and everything between, to be celebrations of God. 

So, what do you think? Could I accomplish all that by adding an Introduction and Epilogue?

And what about you? Look over your photos. Re-read your vignettes and your chapters. Don’t settle for mere historical facts.

Maybe you, too, “think a story is completed and all wrapped up. But then, decades later, something happens and you realize that it’s not done yet, it’s still in process” (Rabbi Lawrence Kushner).  

If so, I have a message for you from Sharon Lippincott: “You don’t have to write an entire memoir. Vignettes and essays are enough to answer questions in years to come.” 

Give it a try. See if it works.

“Sometimes you think a story is completed and all wrapped up. But then.…” Part 2

Wednesday I told you:

(1) I made a surprising observation while looking at a decades-old photo from our family’s three years on the mission field in South America,

(2) a couple days later I stumbled upon these words by Rabbi Lawrence Kushner:

“Sometimes you think a story is completed

and all wrapped up.

But then, decades later, something happens

and you realize that it’s not done yet,

it’s still in process.”

(Invisible Lines of Connection: Sacred Stories of the Ordinary)

and (3) I realized that the photo and Rabbi Kushner are begging me to tell additional stories, bigger stories than the ones I’ve already compiled in three-ring binders for my kids—old letters to folks back home and a few added stories.

While it’s good that I compiled them, they are just the facts, not memoir. (What is a memoir? Click on that link, and on this one.) 

Currently my stories dawdle on the surface. They lack memoir’s introspection, pondering, and unraveling.

They lack an examination of what God was doing in and for and through it all.

But now that snapshot has changed everything. That snapshot represents a theme (which is an important aspect of memoir), an ever-present undercurrent that impacted everything during our years there.

The picture foreshadows stories that made ongoing international news—events that touched our family and friends. Events that changed many lives. Forever.

What am I talking about?

Let’s look another look at the picture:

That’s my Karen (her haircut is a story for another day),

Glenny, my Matt, and Ray Rising, Jr.,

who had also come over to play that first day.

Only days ago I looked at that picture and realized that when we moved to the mission field, the first two kids my kids met, Glenny and Ray, became victims of leftist guerrillas.

Less than five years after that snapshot, guerrillas kidnapped Glenny’s brother-in-law, Chet Bitterman, and murdered him 42 days later. His story was all over the news. Steve Estes captured the story in Called to Die. (I know almost everyone in the book.)  

The day I took that picture, no one could have guessed guerrillas would kidnap and murder our neighbor and coworker, Chet.

In 1994, guerrillas kidnapped Ray’s dad, Ray Rising, Sr., and international news agencies covered this event, too. Unlike Chet’s case, guerrillas released Ray after 810 days. Denise Marie Siino penned that grueling episode in Guerrilla Hostage. 

The day I snapped that picture, no one could have guessed guerrillas would kidnap Ray’s dad.

Shortly after the Glenny-and-the-snake incident, the next two friends my kids met were Mark and Tracey Tattersall. Several years later, guerrillas gunned down their father and our friend, Norm.

No one could have guessed those precious children would experience the guerrillas’ radical violence so personally. No one could have foreseen the high price they’d pay.

But there’s more. It occurred to me that our stories' overall theme would be carried out, literally, in the lives of the first four kids my kids befriended.

And I could tell you more stories of more kidnappings and more murders at the hands of leftist guerrillas.

Those photo discoveries make me marvel yet again at the richness of memoir—the tunneling beneath the surface to find deeper meaning, to discover what God was doing.

Memoir involves piecing together small pictures that, like a collage, compose and reflect the bigger picture.

That bigger picture for three years for our young family, that bigger picture for colleagues who worked there thirty years, and for missionaries with other organizations, and for Peace Corps volunteers—that bigger picture included guerrillas, always lurking, sometimes face to face, sometimes in the shadows, but always stalking—always—from before our family’s arrival and for years to come.

All these years I’ve treated the bigger story like an elephant in the room.

Why? A couple of reasons.

The bulk of my materials consist of letters I sent home and, when I wrote them, I didn’t want to alarm our parents. Yes, they knew of guerrilla activities while we were there, but I deliberately downplayed them.

Second, I’m sure we were at least partially in denial about our day-to-day dangers. (And maybe that wasn’t so bad. Living in denial was much more fun than living in wild-eyed, paralyzing terror.)

Now, however, years later, I have no reason to hide the realities.

The time has come to deal with the elephant in the room because, as a family, we can embrace deeper lessons.

I want my kids, and someday their kids, to celebrate God’s faithfulness, power, and protection for our family and friends.

I want my kids, and someday their kids, to marvel at how God can use everyday people to accomplish SuperHuman heroic feats.

I want my kids, and someday their kids, to see God’s sovereignty: To us, at the time, it looked like God had to scramble to patch together a Plan B, when it was his Plan A all along.

So, now I must decide: What’s the best way to incorporate that bigger, broader message—that theme—into my already-existing stories?

Do I want to revise the letters and stories and turn them into a memoir?

I groan when I think of the time and effort that would take.

Come back Wednesday and I’ll tell you what I might do.…