As you reflect on the past and write your memoir, you’ll need to examine painful experiences.
Even
“happy” memoirs
will
include an element of sadness
or
displeasure or ache.
That’s
because even the happiest lives include
challenges,
disappointments, and obstacles.
Life
includes an unwelcome surprise or two.
Heartaches,
too.
And
some lives include terrible suffering.
Writing
about painful happenings can be agonizing because it requires you to relive the
experience.
From
a spiritual angle, we’re often tempted to question God, asking Him “Why?”
Why
would He make me wait so long for relief from a desperate situation?
Why
does He allow my children or parents or spouse to suffer?
Why
does God seem so distant and uninvolved in my life?
Why
doesn’t God love me enough to do something?
Why
did He allow a loved one to die?
But
writing can also bring healing if,
in
the process of writing,
you
look at the hurtful incident carefully, dissect it,
and
try to make sense of it
in
ways you might not have in the past.
Jenn
Soehnlin offers good advice in her article, “When you find yourself asking God ‘Why?’”
For
a long time, Jenn had been asking God “Why?” But, she writes, “One day . . . God was
telling me I was asking the wrong question.
“What
other question is there? I wondered.”
Jenn continues, “I didn’t get an answer right away, but when it came, it shifted my
perspective.
“The
question to ask was not “why?” but “what?” with a heart to learn God’s heart.
“For
example, ‘What do You want me to learn from this . . . ? What good do You want
to come from this?”
She
continues, “By asking ‘what?’ instead of ‘why?’ it puts God back on His throne.
“Asking
‘what?’ suggests humility, trusting God.
“Asking
‘why?’ suggests a hostility toward God’s character, that He isn’t really good
or cannot really be trusted, or a belief that we know better than the Creator
Himself.
“It
requires . . . an intentional decision to trust that God is teaching us
something,” Jenn says, “and that it is for our ultimate good and the good of
others around us, that we can impact others with what we’ve been learning.”
Did
you catch that last bit? It could be that God has allowed painful things to happen
for your ultimate good (such as spiritual growth and personal maturity—such as
knowing God better and loving Him more), and for the good of other people—through
your memoir.
Jenn
writes, “It makes hard times a little easier to bear, knowing that there is
something to learn—and one day, to teach and encourage others from what we
learned during our hard circumstances.”
Jenn’s
words are so wise, so good.
That’s
why I always link writing memoirs
to
2 Corinthians 1:3-4: “The God of all comfort . . .
comforts
us in all our troubles, so that
we
can comfort those in any trouble
with
the comfort we ourselves have received from God.”
Reflection
is such an important aspect of writing a memoir—and such an important aspect of
loving and serving God. Many times in Scriptures, God tells us to remember what
He did in the past for us and our loved ones.
Reflection:
A time for re-evaluating assumptions we made in the past, for taking a fresh
look at conclusions we came to in the past. A time for asking God “what?”
instead of “why?”
“Don’t
get rid of the pain
until
you’ve learned its lessons.
When
you hold the pain consciously and trust fully,
you
are in a very liminal space.
This
is a great teaching moment
where
you have the possibility of breaking through
to
a deeper level of faith and consciousness.
Hold
the pain of being human
until
God transforms you through it.
And
then you will be
an
instrument of transformation for others.”
(Richard
Rohr, adapted from
The Authority of Those Who Have Suffered)
