Don’t start writing your memoir until. . .

 “Do you love?” asks Beth Kephart. “Are you still learning to love?”

 

“It’s a question . . . we must repeatedly ask ourselves, especially when we’re writing memoir.” (Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir)

 

Beth, award-winning author of 23 books, including several memoirs, says:

• if we don’t know what we love,
• if we’re not capable of loving,
• if we’re focused too much on self (“if we’re stuck in a stingy, fisted-up place”),
• if we’re too angry,
• if we haven’t allowed grace to take the edge off disappointments,
• if “we haven’t stopped hurting long enough to look up and see the others who hurt with us,”
• if we “only have words . . . for our mighty wounds and our percolating scars,”
• . . . then it’s likely too soon to begin writing a memoir.

 

Beth says, “No memoir is worth reading if it is not leavened with beauty and love. And no memoirist should start her work until she can, with authority, write about the things she loves.”

 

She offers this starting point:

 

Make a list of little things that bring you happiness, those things that embrace beauty and goodness and love.

 

Beth’s not suggesting

you cover up your sorrows and wounds.

 

She says,

 

“Rest assured

you’ll be given a chance to tell the whole story soon.

But start, for now, with love.”

 

Read that again:

 

Beth’s not suggesting you cover up

your sorrows and wounds.

 

“Rest assured you’ll be given a chance

to tell the whole story. . . .

But start, for now, with love.”

 

Beth’s suggestion reminds me of Philippians 4:8, “Fix your thoughts on what is true and good and right. Think about things that are pure and lovely, and dwell on the fine, good things in others. Think about all you can praise God for and be glad about.” (The Living Bible)

 

The Message says it this way: “You’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse.”

 

Eventually, you’ll likely include many types of vignettes/anecdotes in your memoir—adventure stories, sad stories, funny stories, heartbreaking stories, heartwarming stories.

 

By incorporating Beth’s suggestions,

by including love and gratitude,

writing your God-and-you stories

is a way to extend grace and mercy to others,

as well as to thank Him for all He has done for you.

 

Beth’s Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir is a rich resource for you. Consider adding it to your library.

 

Come back next week: We’ll look at how to write about baggage-carrying people. 

Back to Basics: Is your story arc eluding you?

 

If you’re struggling to pin down your memoir’s story arc, please don’t be discouraged. (If you missed our recent posts, click on Your memoir’s all-important story arc and Your memoir’s middle and end.)   

 

Most of us struggle to find our story arc, but believe this: You can figure it out!

 

Rebecca Ramsey’s experience will give you hope. She spent years searching for her story arc. (And writing and editing her memoir, The Holy Éclair, took ten years! And it’s on my list of books to read.)

 

She says to ask yourself this about your memoir’s rough draft:

 

“What is your journey, the big change you experienced

that you want to share with the world?

 

“What were the little struggles and big struggles

that got you from the beginning to the end?”

 

Rebecca says, “That wasn’t clear at first to me . . . [but] the writing itself revealed to me my own transformation.”

 

Read that again:  

“The writing itself 

revealed to me my own transformation.”

 

That can happen to you, too. Hooray!

 

It might take a long time but doing so is probably the most important part of discovering your real story.

 

Take a closer look than you ever did before. Recognize—maybe for the first time—the ways you changed. Then tell readers what you learned, how you transformed, and how you became a stronger, better person.

 

• Dig deep and deeper.
• Reflect.
• Inspect.
• Analyze your experience and yourself.
• Stand back and ask yourself what God was doing.
• Discover details you might have overlooked before.
• Pray for God’s help.
• Join a good critique group (in person or online) and ask for help.

 

Keep writing and revising.

 

Rebecca also said, “Once I figured out my story arc (which I should say took years, all in the back of my head) and started editing, I made myself do the hard job of throwing out the stories that didn't advance the arc. This sounds reasonable but it's tough when you love them. Do it! The voices will thank you later.”

 

You can do this!

 

Back to the Basics: Why should you write your memoir?

 

A couple of years ago, I wrote a blog post after I attended the first meeting of our church’s fall book club, for which they’d chosen my new memoir, Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir.  I was happy but also humbled that they chose it.

                                                                                                                                     

Among other questions, they asked me: Why did you write your memoir?

 

Good question.

 

I took time to answer because a memoir—every memoir—can and should be a gift for its readers. In fact:

 

I believe God Himself

dreamed up the idea of memoirs.

If you think that’s a stretch, read on!

 

That evening, I took the ladies back to the beginning of my passion for memoirs—though originally I didn’t even know the definition of “memoir.”

 

It started some thirty years ago. I’d been reading Streams in the Desert, a devotional from 1925 (!) by Mrs. Charles E. Cowman (though nowadays they call her L. B. Cowman).

 

Not only have publishers updated her powerful devotional by letting the dear lady use her own name instead of her husband’s, they’ve also updated the wording and Bible version.

 

But I’m still using the old-fashioned version, so keep that in mind when you read what L.B. wrote. It’s based on Luke 21:13 which says, “This will give you an opportunity to tell about Me” (ERV).

 

“Life is a steep climb,

and it does the heart good to have somebody ‘call back’

and cheerily beckon us on up the high hill.

We are all climbers together, and we must help one another.”

L.B.Cowman

 

“This mountain climbing is serious business, but glorious,” she wrote. “It takes strength and steady step to find the summits. The outlook widens with the altitude. If anyone among us has found anything worthwhile, we ought to ‘call back.’”

 

And then L.B. Cowman shares her poem:

 

If you have gone a little way ahead of me, call back—

‘Twill cheer my heart and help my feet along the stony track;

And if, perchance, Faith’s light is dim, because the [lamp] oil is low,

Your call will guide my lagging course as wearily I go.

 

Call back, and tell me that He went with you into the storm;

Call back, and say He kept you when the forest’s roots were torn;

That, when the heavens thundered and the earthquake shook the hill,

He bore you up and held you where the very air was still.

 

. . . But if you’ll say He heard you when your prayer was but a cry,

And if you’ll say He saw you through the night’s sin-darkened sky—

If you have gone a little way ahead, oh, friend, call back—

‘Twill cheer my heart and help my feet along the stony track.

 

That poem—

that thought of cupping our hands around our mouths

and cheering on others

who are coming behind us, struggling up life’s steep trails—

that thought zinged me.

It zapped me.

“Yesssss!” I said.

 

I fought tears when I thought of the people

who had already battled up life’s steep mountain trails,

who then turned to me to show by their example

how to choose courage and faith,

those who shared with me their words,

who cheered me on and kept praying.

 

My heart lurches when I think how my life’s battles

might have turned out

if those dear souls had not told me their story—

they and their stories

kept me pounding one foot in front of the other,

hoping, believing, refusing to give up

because if God had helped them, He’d help me, too.

 

When I first read L.B. Cowman’s devotional that day, I told myself: “A Call Back book! That’s what we need—to share our stories and keep each other fighting the good fight.”

 

Reading that poem was a defining moment for me. For years I thought about a Call Back Book. But the idea was raw and rough. It needed to marinate for a few years.

 

Fast forward twenty years or so. I came upon the following words (words which you know well if you’ve been with our SM 101 tribe for a while): “Always remember—and never forget—what you’ve seen God do and be sure to tell your children and grandchildren” (Deuteronomy 4:9).

 

When I read those words, they gave me another zing and zap. That was another pivotal moment for me. “That’s it!” I told myself. “That’s what a Call Back Book would accomplish.” My undeveloped concept began to take a more solid form in my mind and heart and vision.

 

And the fact that God told us to tell our stories

to our kids and grandkids—

Wow again! He commanded us to tell our stories.

 

It’s a calling He’s given all of us.

A ministry, not a hobby.

 

I remember asking myself, “I wonder what a memoir is.” I looked up the definition and—Wow again. Memoir was a perfect format for telling our stories. (Click here for the definition of memoir.)

 

And, as they say, the rest is history:

• I started teaching memoir classes for churches and other interested groups,
• in 2010, I published my first memoir, Grandma’s Letters from Africa,
• I started blogging at Spiritual Memoirs 101 to reach others interested in writing their stories,
• in 2019, I published my second memoir, Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: AFoot-Dragger’s Memoir,
• and I’ve continued to teach online and in-person memoir classes. 

Fast forward to that evening at our church’s Book Club meeting when they were reading my memoir. I was in for a delightful surprise. The ladies started discussing the definition of memoir, and then they realized that each of them had a story.

 

They caught the vision of the importance of telling their stories.

 

In the words of Lloyd John Ogilvie, “ “. . . we can be God’s tap on a person’s shoulder. . . . It’s awesome to realize that God can use us as His messengers, healers, and helpers. He’s up to exciting things, and all He needs is a willing, receptive, and obedient spirit” (Silent Strength for My Life).

 

If you’re writing your memoir,

YOU are those Ogilvie writes about—

YOU are the ones with a willing,

receptive, and obedient spirit.

 

How awesome to realize that

God is using YOU as His messengers,

healers, and helpers.

 

Find healing through the process of writing your memoir

 

If you’re just starting to write your memoir, I have important advice for you.

 

Don’t do what a friend of mine did. When he began his memoir, he started by writing about the most traumatic year of his life. Whoa!

 

I’ve seen other people begin by writing super-painful stuff, too, only to become overwhelmed all over again with the devastation—and soon they gave up writing altogether. Don’t let that happen to you!

 

Please hear this: Begin your memoir by writing your easy stories—the happy stories, the funny incidents, the fascinating experiences. That way you can ease your way into both writing and the reflecting that memoir is.

 

My heart wants you to fall in love with

remembering

and pondering

and discovering all the good stuff you didn’t recognize in the past,

and with making sense of what used to mystify you,

and with writing

            and choosing just the right words

                        to fashion your story as a gift for others to read.

 

Keep in mind that you don’t need to write your chapters/vignettes in the same order they will appear in your finished memoir. Write them in any order that’s easiest for you. Later you can organize them in the best way.

 

For now, give yourself permission to start with easy stories. Tackle your hard stories later.

 

Also, keep this in mind: Even if you’re not physically putting your painful story into words (with pen and ink or on a computer screen), you are working on the story. I can’t explain how that works but, behind the scenes, your heart and brain are working on how to write your troubling story. 

 

So, let your heartache marinate for a few more weeks or months. One day you’ll be vacuuming the car, or playing catch with your grandson, or folding laundry when out of the blue, your heart and brain will speak to you (or maybe it’ll be God who speaks to you—I’d like to think it’s Him), and that voice will offer insights into your hurtful experience. Listen, and jot down notes to yourself: You’ll be mining treasures. Later you can use those notes to compose your difficult story’s rough draft. 

Remember this, too: Your rough draft is for your eyes only.  Write it all—the seared, charred, blistered parts, the questions you never had the courage to ask aloud, the doubts you never admitted before, the anger you kept bottled up.

Work out the pain—

work through the pain—

by writing with God beside you.

Wrestle with God

and with yourself

as you write.

Go ahead and cry.

Why?

Because God can bring healing

through the process of writing.

 

And be gentle with yourself, extend grace to yourself: Reliving those emotions and writing those scenes and conversations can be overwhelming.

 

I know of no anguish-free way to get through that writing process, but I can encourage you with this:

 

Write your story as a prayer to God

and He can use the process of writing

to help you make sense of events that

knocked the air out of you,

left you broken,

confused,

weary,

hopeless—

maybe even paralyzed—

and He can help you work through your grief.

 

If you’ll give it the needed time and if you’ll peel back enough layers and dig deep enough, writing your stories can lead to new insights, to answers that too long evaded you, and to resolution—to getting un-stuck so you can move on to healing and forgiveness and peace and hope for the future. Writing your story changes you.  

If you stick with it, at some point you'll find the most profound, redeeming part of writing your story:

• You'll discover that God was beside you all the while, bringing you people and opportunities and Bible verses and Bible studies and sermons, and working out His good plans—many details you probably didn't recognize in the midst of the incident, or saw only dimly, and
• you'll also discern how far you've come, how much you've healed.
• That, in turn, makes you overflow with gratitude toward God,
• and that solidifies your relationship with Him.

Mick Silva says it this way: “I’ve discovered that . . . protecting and preserving our stories is about discovering God’s story.” I call that your “God-and-you story.”

 

In that way, writing a memoir can be a journey of personal healing—even if you originally set out to write it for others.

 

And this is important: At some point, you’ll revise your manuscript. Your first draft, that for-your-eyes-only draft, will remain what it is. But use that rough material to craft a rewrite of your memoir for others to read.

 

Let God transform you through writing that painful first draft, and afterward, your God-and-you story can help others heal.

 

P. S. Did you read Tuesday’s post about Kathy Pooler’s experience writing her memoir? If you missed it, click on “Unveiling painful truths and moving to the other side of pain.” Since most memoirists must write about something painful, you don’t want to miss Kathy’s wisdom and encouragement.

 

 

They asked me: Why did you write your memoir?

Last night I attended the first meeting of our church’s fall book club, for which they’ve chosen my new memoir, Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir.  I’m happy but also humbled that they chose it.

Among other questions, they asked me: Why did you write your memoir?

Good question.

I took time to answer because a memoir—every memoir—can and should be a gift for its readers. In fact:

I believe God Himself

dreamed up the idea of memoirs.

If you think that’s a stretch, read on!

Last evening, I took the ladies back to the beginning of my passion for memoirs—though originally I didn’t even know the definition of “memoir.”

It started some thirty years ago. I’d been reading Streams in the Desert, a devotional from 1925 (!) by Mrs. Charles E. Cowman (though nowadays they call her L.B. Cowman).

Not only have publishers updated her powerful devotional by letting the dear lady use her own name instead of her husband’s, they’ve also updated the wording and Bible version.

But I’m still using the old-fashioned version, so keep that in mind when you read what L.B. wrote. It’s based on Luke 21:13 which says, “This will give you an opportunity to tell about Me” (ERV).

“Life is a steep climb, and it does the heart good to have somebody ‘call back’ and cheerily beckon us on up the high hill,” she writes. “We are all climbers together, and we must help one another.

“This mountain climbing is serious business, but glorious. It takes strength and steady step to find the summits. The outlook widens with the altitude. If anyone among us has found anything worth while, we ought to ‘call back.’”

And then L.B. Cowman shares with us her poem:

If you have gone a little way ahead of me, call back—

‘Twill cheer my heart and help my feet along the stony track;

And if, perchance, Faith’s light is dim, because the [lamp] oil is low,

Your call will guide my lagging course as wearily I go.

Call back, and tell me that He went with you into the storm;

Call back, and say He kept you when the forest’s roots were torn;

That, when the heavens thunder and the earthquake shook the hill,

He bore you up and held you where the very air was still.

. . . But if you’ll say He heard you when your prayer was but a cry,

And if you’ll say He saw you through the night’s sin-darkened sky—

If you have gone a little way ahead, oh, friend, call back—

‘Twill cheer my heart and help my feet along the stony track.

That poem—that thought of cupping our hands around our mouths and cheering on others who are struggling up the steep trails behind us—that thought zinged me. It zapped me. “Yesssss!” I said.

I fought tears when I thought of the people 

who had already battled up life’s steep mountain trails, 

who then turned to me to show by their example 

how to choose courage and faith, 

who shared with me their words, 

who cheered me on and kept praying.

My heart lurches when I think 

how my life’s battles might have turned out 

if those dear souls had not told me their story—

they and their stories kept me pounding one foot in front of the other, 

hoping, believing, refusing to give up 

because if God had helped them, He’d help me, too.

“A Call Back book,” I told myself. “That’s what we need—to share our stories and keep each other fighting the good fight.” 

Reading that poem was a defining moment for me. For years I thought about a Call Back Book. But the idea was raw and tough. It needed to marinate for a few years.

Fast forward twenty years or so. I came upon the following words (words which you know well by now if you’ve been with our SM 101 tribe for a while): “Always remember—and never forget—what you’ve seen God do, and be sure to tell your children and grandchildren” (Deuteronomy 4:9).

When I read those words, they gave me another zing and zap. That was another pivotal moment for me. “That’s it!” I told myself. “That’s what a Call Back Book would accomplish.” My undeveloped concept began to take a more solid form in my mind and heart and vision.

And the fact that God told us to tell our life’s stories to our kids and grandkids—Wow again! He commanded us to tell our stories. 

It's a calling He's given all of us.

It's a ministry, not a hobby.

I remember asking myself, “I wonder what a memoir is.” I looked up the definition and—Wow again. Memoir was a perfect format for telling our stories. (Click here for the definition of memoir.)

And, as they say, the rest is history:

• I started teaching memoir classes for churches and other interested groups,
• in 2010, I published my first memoir, Grandma’s Letters from Africa,
• I started blogging at Spiritual Memoirs 101 to reach others interested in writing their stories,
• three months ago, I published my second memoir, Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: A Foot-Dragger’sMemoir,
• and now I’m preparing to teach my next in-person memoir classes.

Last evening at the Book Club meeting, I was in for a delightful surprise. The ladies started discussing the definition of memoir, and then they realized that each of them has a story. One thing led to another and I think some of them are eager to attend the upcoming memoir classes.

They’ve caught the vision of the importance of telling our stories. I’m excited.

In the words of Lloyd John Ogilvie, “ “. . . we can be God’s tap on a person’s shoulder. . . . It’s awesome to realize that God can use us as His messengers, healers, and helpers. He’s up to exciting things, and all He needs is a willing, receptive, and obedient spirit” (Silent Strength for My Life).

If you’re reading this post,

YOU are those Ogilvie writes about—

YOU are the ones with a willing,

receptive, and obedient spirit.

How awesome to realize that

God is using YOU as His messengers,

healers, and helpers.

Vera Bachman’s table

Henri Nouwen’s words from last Tuesday stirred up memories of a dinner table that’s been in our family for four generations and counting, and a variety of meals and family activities that have taken place around it. Take a couple of minutes to read this vignette I wrote in 2006. Be prepared to have your own old memories stirred up.

When I was in seventh grade, on the night of May 6, 1960, my mother told my two little brothers and me that the next day our father was moving out and that they would get a divorce. I was twelve years old, Doug was ten, and little Davey was just six years old. We were traumatized to the very cores of our beings. On May 7 our father moved out, and the next day was my mother’s 38^th birthday.

My mother had earned her teaching credential in Canada, and she was a teacher in every cell of her body. Naturally she turned to teaching to support her three little children. However, Washington State would not recognize Mom’s Canadian credential, so she had to go back to college.

She turned first to the University of Washington, but it would not recognize any of her Canadian college credits.

Seattle Pacific College honored half of her Canadian credits so even though SPC was a lot more expensive than the UW, she enrolled at SPC. I suspect she had to take out a loan to pay for tuition and books.

Mom found enormous support from everyone at SPC because they demonstrated their Christianity in tangible ways: They understood her desperation, her heartache over the divorce, her need to care for her children, her need for financial aid, and her need to get her degree as soon as possible so she could begin earning a living. They bent over backward to help her. At times they gave Mom permission to take 24 credits per term in order to push ahead.

I don’t recall that in those days the Visa Card and Master Card had been invented, however, gas stations had begun issuing credit cards. I remember that our pastor and his wife, themselves living on a tight budget, gave Mom their Chevron credit card to help pay for our family’s gas.

At the same time, the Seattle School District granted Mom an emergency teaching certificate and hired her to work half-time as a Kindergarten teacher at Northgate Elementary School, conveniently located between SPC and our home in north Seattle (now Shoreline).

I don’t know how Mom endured her exhausting schedule as a teacher, more than full-time student, and a mother, and I don’t know how we kept putting food on the table. We ate sparsely, and we wore hand-me-down clothes and worn shoes. I remember that my saddle shoes had completely worn out—the soles had broken away from the upper leather, and the sole flapped underneath my foot with every step. One day my teacher put a rubber band around the sole and over the toe of my shoe so it wouldn’t flap.

I said I don’t know how Mom did it, but I often spotted her on her knees beside her bed in urgent prayer. God extended His loving provision in many ways, through Mom’s church friends and SPC friends, and even the Seattle School District.

And through people like Vera Bachman.

Mom tells me that she was terribly afraid during those years of her life – afraid of constantly living on the edge of financial disaster and physical exhaustion. Surely her faith was stretched. Yet God provided people like Vera Bachman, a fellow teacher at Northgate Elementary School.

Recently widowed, Vera had some understanding of my mother’s heartache and desperate needs, which were ever-present. Vera was the best kind of a friend—she understood, and quietly reached out. Mom says that sometimes she’d arrive at her classroom to find a note from Vera asking if Mom needed cash. Another time Vera gave us a sofa and an old dining room table.

Today (August 8, 2006) when my mother recalled Vera's friendship, she got tears in her eyes thinking about Vera’s sensitivity, her generosity, and the way God worked through her to answer Mom’s prayers and help meet our family’s needs.

God tells us in the Bible that He will care for us, but He does not knock on our door and hand us a check to cover the house payment. He does not place a roasted chicken on the dinner table. No, almost always God uses other people in the process of helping us. He knows how comforting and encouraging it is to look into someone’s eyes and see kindness and concern. He knows how good a hug feels, and how cheering a friendly face can be. So, He gives us each other. He works in and through other human beings who serve as His representatives. God provided Vera for my mother’s encouragement and help in real ways. The old sofa is long gone but that old dining room table is still in the family, a tangible reminder of how God meets our needs.

That old dining room table—if only it could talk! I don’t know what stories that table would tell about living in Vera’s home, but it was already old when she gave it to us, and over these 46 years that table has made the rounds in our family. For years, Mom and my brothers and I used it in our home on Greenwood Place North. It was delicately designed, with curves and turned legs, in dark-stained wood. It had a number of leaves and opened to a grand size for entertaining lots of people.

A few years after Dave and I got married Mom purchased, with enormous delight, a maple dining room table in the American Colonial style—a long-term dream come true for her—and Dave and I became the owners of Vera’s table.

It was the first table Matt and Karen sat up to when they were babies, originally in our rental home on Dayton Avenue North in Seattle, when Matt was born, and later in Spokane when Karen was born. We entertained many friends and relatives around that table over the years.

When Karen was almost a year old, we bought an old house southwest of Spokane, and there the kids and I sat around Vera’s table and drew pictures, assembled model airplanes, crafted artificial flowers, and made Christmas decorations.

I used it as a place to set up my sewing machine and I sewed clothes for the kids and for myself, and curtains for our windows, and tablecloths and napkins for our dinners around Vera’s table.

I sat at that table to write letters to my Grandma Mac and to my mother and to Dave’s parents, and to address our Christmas cards every year. When the kids got older, they sat around that table to do their homework.

Years later, when Dave and I could afford to buy our own dining room table, Vera’s table became my desk. The creator of that table brilliantly designed it so that, with several leaves, it became a large dining table, or, with all the leaves removed, it became a small table perfect for a desk.

I used that old table as a desk for all the years I served as a Teaching Leader in BSF (Bible Study Fellowship International). I spread out Bibles and study books and papers on that table, I prayed urgently sitting at that table, and pounded out my 24-page lectures every week for five years.

When Dave and I moved to Africa in 1993 and Karen became a first-year teacher in Port Angeles and bought her little house on Caroline Street, she became the proud owner of Vera’s table.

Many a morning it served as Karen’s meeting place with God. Friends and Young Life kids ate around that table. One of Karen’s fellow Young Life leaders once got ambitious and sanded the old finish off the top of the table, but never got around to re-finishing it. A good tablecloth took care of that problem.

Then Karen moved to California to teach at Calvary Christian School in Pacific Palisades, and we loaded the old table into a U-Haul and unloaded it in her newly rented apartment in Brentwood. There it served as her dining room table, and no doubt a place to plan her students’ lessons and grade their papers.

When Karen and Brian got married, it served as their dining room table. Chase ate his first meals on Vera’s table in their little 600-square-foot house in Malibu, California.

Maybe Finn did, too; I’m not sure because at some point, Karen and Brian received a gift from a family friend, a sturdier dining room table that matched their chunky rustic bench and armoire, and they moved Vera’s table to Brian’s classroom at Calvary Christian School. For many years, Brian’s students used that table. Since both Vera and my mother were teachers, I’m sure they’d smile to know where that table was used.

Now Brian and Karen and the three boys are moving to a larger home, and I do hope they have a special little place for Vera’s table. It’s an enduring reminder of God’s provision for our family—several generations of our family. When Chase, , and Kade are old enough to understand, I hope Karen will tell them the story of Vera’s table.

           

Perhaps it will remind them to do what their great-grandmother did—to pray and trust God to provide for them when they find themselves in desperate need. I hope it will also inspire them to be like Vera Bachman—to notice when others are in need and to allow God to use them to meet others’ needs in tangible ways.

Do you have an old dining room table rich with family history—

about everyday events, beloved people, special occasions?

What about other family heirlooms—

maybe your great-grandmother’s set of china,

or your grandfather’s old handsaw,

or your daughter’s favorite doll?

What stories can you write that will pass down

family stories rich with values and lessons

for your kids, grandkids, and great-grands?

Your dinner table memories

It happened some thirty years ago, but I still remember Tony’s question.

He had come from out of town to visit our daughter during their college Christmas break.

After two or three days, he took my husband, Dave, aside. “Does your family always eat meals together?”

Dave assured him we did, but he was struck by Tony’s strange question.

Tony must have picked up on Dave’s bafflement so he explained, “I’ve never eaten dinner with my family. At my house, when we’re hungry we look in the fridge and eat whatever we can find.”

Both Dave and I were shocked—we’d never heard of such a thing—and we were sad to think of all Tony and his family missed by opting out of meals together.

I thought of Tony when I read these words penned by Henri Nouwen in 1997:

“Today fast-food services and TV dinners

have made common meals less and less central.

But what will there be to remember

when we no longer come together around the table

to share a meal? . . . 

Can we make the table a hospitable place,

inviting us to kindness, gentleness, joy,

and peace and creating beautiful memories?”

(from “Creating Beautiful Memories,” Bread for the Journey, 

February 18 selection)

Did your family eat meals together around the table when you were growing up? When you were raising your kids?

Around the dinner table in Kenya, we became friends-like-family
with John, then later enjoyed a meal with him on the Thames.

If so, you’ll enjoy—and maybe even applaud—the following Henri Nouwen thoughts:

“. . . Having a meal is more than eating and drinking. It is celebrating the gifts of life we share. A meal together is one of the most intimate and sacred human events. Around the table we become vulnerable, filling one another’s plates and cups and encouraging one another to eat and drink. Much more happens at a meal than satisfying hunger and quenching thirst. Around the table we become family, friends, community, yes, a body” (from “The Meal that Makes us Family and Friends,” Bread for the Journey, February 15 selection).

My daughter's fourth birthday

Jo Harjo also wrote about a dinner table: “. . . The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So has it been since creation, and will go on. . . . At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers. . . . Wars have begun and ended at this table. . .” (excerpts from “Perhaps the World Ends Here,” The Woman Who Fell from the Sky: Poems).

She’s right. Sometimes dinner tables resemble war zones.

Henri Nouwen writes about that, too—about husbands and wives refusing to speak to each other, siblings bickering, and awkward silences. He says, “Let’s do everything possible to make the table a place to celebrate intimacy” (“The Barometer of Our Lives,” Bread for the Journey, February 17 selection).

 

My in-laws' 70th wedding anniversary

Consider including in your memoir a story about a dinner table—and the life-shaping experiences you had around it.

Give yourself a day or so to think back.

Maybe you’ll come up with a story set at your childhood dinner table,

or at your grandparents’ dinner table.

Or perhaps you’ll write a story that took place at a cold industrial table in a hospital cafeteria,

or with strangers along a plastic counter at a fast-food place in the Rome airport,

or deep in an African jungle,

or on foreign soil in an Army mess tent.

Look again at Jo Harjos’swords:

“Wars have begun and ended at this table. . . .”

If your dinnertime resembled a battlefield,

write stories to inspire an about-face

in the way your readers do their meals.

Your story could provide motivation

to break the cycle, end the war,

and create a happy, healthy, affirming experience

around the dinner table.

Your story could be the turning point

so that in the future,

people will have pleasant memories

to pass on to their kids and grandkids.

Be sure to come back next Tuesday.

I’ll tell you a story

about a very special table

that’s been in our family for four generations, and counting. . . .