Cathy, Lia, and Kathleen proved it

Stories matter. Stories make a difference. Even little stories.

Cathy, Lia, and Kathleen proved it.

Tears stung my eyes when I read their comments after last Wednesday’s post, Connect Your Dots. Do you remember it?

“O, Lord, You’ve said You will make my path straight!” Barb cried. “So why is my path so crooked?”

She listened for God’s answer. He seemed to say, “Barb, this is my straight path for you!”

God’s reply zinged Barb.

Barb’s story zinged three of you.

Cathy Scibelli left this comment:

“…  Many times when I read your posts I feel as if I've tapped into a hotline to the Almighty because they are so often an answer to something I've been musing and praying about. Just today I was thinking similar to Barb, saying to a friend I wish God would put up road signs that say ‘Wrong Way’ so I don't stray off a nice straight smooth path. Now I understand not to fear the bumpy detours.”

Lia London said this:

“I absolutely love this idea! For years, I’ve understood that the Lord has customized trials for us, but I had never visualized the ‘path’ idea. Your dot-to-dot idea further helps me see how each individual’s journey is its own beautiful work of art, and we are in the care of the Master Artist.”

Kathleen Pooler wrote:

“You always seem to strike a chord in me with your posts! This one took me back to the time I decided to move out of state. I was a single parent with two school-aged children and on the surface it certainly didn't seem like a rational plan. Even my brother said ‘there's a straight line from A to B but Kathy chooses the zig zag course.’ In retrospect, as irrational as it all looked, I know now that God knew what He was doing. Thank you for another thought-provoking post that gets me in touch with my own journey and with the awesome presence of God in my life.”

So there you have it: Stories are important!

Stories can solve mysteries, encourage change, inspire action, and give hope.

Even your everyday stories can impart wisdom and shape character.

Your stories can change lives.

No wonder God urges us to tell others what we’ve seen Him do!

Over the years, God used Barb’s story in powerful ways, and He can do the same with your stories.

Your stories can build bridges between past generations and future generations.

Like Lisa-Jo Baker said, word by word, build your bridge, that others might walk across. (From her blog post, Because Words Can Build A Bridge…)

Last summer Pastor Sid Tiller preached a sermon based on Psalm 100:5, “For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.”

Sid challenged us, saying,

“Generations before you lived for you

and told you of God’s love and mercy.

There are folks counting on us—folks not born net—

who need us to put Psalm 100:5 into action.

May your children and grandchildren

and great-grandchildren

know the name of God and praise Him.”

Stories matter. Stories make a difference. Even little stories.

Your stories can be sacred, full of life and light.

Write your stories!

Graduation: an ending and a beginning

This evening my first grandchild, Maggie, graduates from high school.

If you read Grandma’s Letters from Africa, you’ll remember Maggie, that little babe I wrote letters to from Africa. 

She’s all grown up now. How can that be?

The words of Sunrise, Sunset tread softly in my mind and heart, and I change a few words for Maggie:

Is this the little girl I carried?

I don’t remember getting older, when did she?

When did she get to be a beauty?

When did she grow to be so tall?

Wasn’t it yesterday when she was small?

What words of wisdom can I give her? How can I help to ease her way?

Sunrise, sunset,

Swiftly flow the days.

Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers,

Blossoming even as we gaze.

(adapted from Bock and Harnick’s song in Fiddler on the Roof) 

Graduation: a successful completion.

But we also call the ceremony a “commencement,” a beginning, a start, a launch.

However we define it, it’s a major turning point in life.

What do you remember about your high school graduation? Or your children’s graduation?

What vignettes can you write to entertain your memoir’s readers?

Does or did your family have traditions surrounding graduations?

What wisdom can you pass on to your readers about completion and new beginnings?

What stories can you tell to help ease their way?

Be sure to include photos! They can be priceless.

Connect your dots

“O, Lord, You’ve said You will make my path straight!” Barb cried. “So why is my path so crooked?”

My friend and fellow BSF leader, Barb, was referring to Proverbs 4:11, “I guide you in the way of wisdom and lead you along straight paths,” and Proverbs 3:6, “In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.”

After she cried out to God, she listened for His answer. He seemed to say, “Barb, this is my straight path for you!”

Suddenly it all made sense to her: What appeared crooked was actually the straight path God designed for her. Her meandering, rough journey was the God-designed route leading to His good plans for her.

This reminded both Barb and me of Isaiah 55:8-9, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

Barb hadn’t seen the big picture, but God had it under control.

When Barb recognized these things, she relaxed in God’s love. She felt peace about the way He was leading her through life.

Barb could even look back and connect the dots along her circuitous pathway. One dot at a time, the God-designed picture of her life was taking shape. The process was making more sense. 

What about you?

I have a hunch you, too, can look back and connect the dots and recognize, maybe as never before, that God has been leading you all along. Perhaps like Barb, you’ve discovered that your crooked, bumpy paths are really God’s straight paths.

Look at this connect-the-dots picture. My granddaughter, Claire, almost missed 11 and 12. Have you almost missed a significant dot?

Claire got off track between 14 and 15 but then got back on course. When did you veer off track? What brought you back?

What vignettes you can write about your life’s zigzags?

Was there a time you wanted to stroll down a grassy path through the meadow but, instead, God took your hand and led you to a jagged cliff in the desert?

Look for valuable lessons God taught you at that dot in your life.

Connect that dot to the ones before and the ones that followed.

Look for ways God is bringing your dots full circle.

Write your stories!

Your children and grandchildren need to know that God, whose ways and thoughts are higher than ours, makes our paths straight—according to His definition of the word. Your readers need to know how you have connected your dots so they, too, can connect their dots. 

Jessica’s vignette for Mother’s Day: An Unusual Keepsake

Continuing with our Mother’s Day vignettes

here is “An Unusual Keepsake” by Jessica Cherie Errico.

You’ll also enjoy Jess’s two blogs, Jewels for the Journey 

and Mother Daughter Tango.

If you missed the first in our Mother’s Day series,

click here to read Ellie O’Malley’s

“Mom’s First, (and Last), Sled Ride,”

and our second in the series,

Julie Miller’s “Good Direction.”

An Unusual Keepsake

by Jessica Cherie Errico

Keepsakes come in all shapes and sizes. Some sparkle with market value, others appear ordinary and hardly worth a moment's notice. But don't dismiss an "everyday" heirloom too quickly, for its legacy may be priceless!

As I lift the hope chest lid and survey the cherished items carefully packed within, one object in particular stands out. Once shiny, it is dulled by use. The rounded dome is still sturdy and its perforations form a fanciful pattern. This is the aluminum colander my mother passed on to me when I ventured out into the world over a quarter-century ago.

Since then, how many cans of tuna fish have been drained by its capable bowl? Surely thousands of servings of pasta have been prepared with its straining effect. Fruit salads and kidney bean salads have been lovingly prepared with its aid. Children have been nourished and my sweet husband blessed with the use of this colander.

Turning it over in my hands, I observe its sturdy form and my fingers trace some random dimples in the metal. These evidences of hard use murmur to me of surviving in a complex world. Just as the colander drained away impurities and unwanted oil, so too, my mother survived loneliness and disappointment, cancer and osteoporosis, only to forge ahead with a smile.

Bound up in this keepsake are her examples of endurance and a positive attitude, characteristics I've put to the test and have proven to sustain me. How grateful I am for the gift of Mother's colander, and the courage and perseverance it represents. As I pass it to my daughter for use in her kitchen, may the inevitable trials of life be strained away to reveal the same joy and strength of those who used it before her. Bon apetit!

copyright © 2012 Jessica Cherie Errico

“The Story Woman,” Lynn Henriksen, encourages sons and daughters to write compelling stories about their mothers and, if interested, to submit them to her.

Recently she published TellTale Souls Writing the Mother Memoir, a writing guide that also includes 40 bio-vignettes submitted to her by people just like you.

Interested? Click here to read Lynn’s blog post, How The Mother Memoir Came To Life. 

Also click here to read Sharon Lippincott’s related blog post, Mother Memoir.  

Good Direction: Julie Miller’s Mother’s Day vignette

Continuing with our Mother’s Day vignettes

in honor of all mothers everywhere,

here is Julie Miller’s Good Direction.

Be sure to look over Julie’s blog, “Burst of Salt.”

[burstofsalt.blogspot.com]

(If you missed the first in our Mother’s Day series,

click here to read Ellie O’Malley’s

Mom’s First, (and Last), Sled Ride.)

GOOD DIRECTION

I learned something long ago from my mother, something it took me quite some time to appreciate. I've known for years that if you're looking for a compliment from my mother, you're probably wasting your time.

She is a lady of more understanding and insight than anyone I've ever known, and she loves God, she walks with Christ, she cares about others, but she's just not someone to spout off words of glowing praise for others, not even her children.

I think it's good. Honestly, I do. It took some time for me to realize she's done me a great favor by not allowing me to see myself as more than what I am. I know she loves me and is proud to be my mother. I have no doubt of that. And she's taught me so much by example: The praise and glory goes to God, rather than to us.

Scripture does teach us to resist pride and teaches us it's better to receive instruction and wisdom than praise. I think the culture we live in doesn't always subscribe to that viewpoint as the world day by day becomes more secular, but it seems a shame in the way that we're missing out on one of the great truths God would like us to see.

To raise a child, feeding and building endlessly on their sense of self-pride really can handicap them, in my opinion, unless they are naturally of a disposition that will keep that idea at bay. It can be a harmful thing in a couple of ways, one being that it can make it very hard for them in life to follow God's path.

Are you loved? Are you valued greatly? Yes, always, because your life and your very spirit and soul are treasured by God.

God is concerned about the condition our spirit is in because that affects our whole life. I don't doubt He's happy if we've excelled in life at various things—academics, running, dancing—but He wants us to develop spiritually and that's the purpose of our lives that He has for us. That carries over, from this life to the next. Possibly everything else is left behind in the dust of memories.

And so, it's with gratitude and great love and respect in my heart that I offer thanks to God for the things I've learned from Him. And I thank Him for my mother—that He gave me her, and no other in the world—because she has offered me a viewpoint of life that has helped bring clarity of mind I might have otherwise spent a lifetime searching for.

copyright © 2012 Julie Miller

"Mom’s First (and Last) Sled Ride," by Ellie O’Malley

A few weeks ago I invited you to send Mother’s Day vignettes and I promised to publish one here this week.  

I’ve chosen three stories instead of one, and today Ellie O’Malley’s tribute to her mother will get us started. Ellie is a member of our local memoir class and I know you’ll enjoy her story because many of us remember the childhood emotions and longings Ellie shares—and our own sledding mishaps.

Mom’s First, (and Last), Sled Ride

By Eleanor O’Malley

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?... Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.”

Romans 8:35, 37

My mother might have become the first ever Olympic snow sledder from the Caribbean if it hadn’t been for an almost invisible bump in the snow on her first sled ride. If she had known then how to be a victor in Christ, the event would not have deterred such a quest. As it was, it spoiled the day and was the end of her sled riding.

Born and raised on the Dutch half of warm, sun-basked St. Martin, she had no opportunity to make friends with snow. After moving to New York in her teens she discovered the silent beauty of a gentle snowfall but never really learned how to play in snow.

Dad and I, on the other hand, were raised in four-season New York and enjoyed playing in all seasons. In winter we constructed awesome igloos big enough for us both to crawl into, built gigantic snow forts for neighborhood snowball fights, ice skated on local ponds, and took the adventurous sled ride of the century after a blizzard. Dad was a kid at heart for he’d never really had a childhood until he had one with me.

Mom was so loving, sacrificing, hard working, and practical, but we wanted her to play with us too. One day we came up with a plot to get her to enjoy winter with us, so we wore her down with invitations and pleas to sled with us down Dinner Bell Hill. It was an open, wide, long but gentle slope on Rice’s farm across the street where neighbors of all ages went sledding, so we kept at her until she consented.

It was the perfect place to give her a safe start.

So we thought.

There were two other sled riding spots on the farm, but we never considered either for Mom, especially Daredevil Hill. That was off limits for me as it was a treacherous, narrow run on a steep, twisty path lined with big trees and large rocks. A boy had been severely injured there the year before when he hit a tree head first trying to navigate a toboggan down its slope. Of course, as I got older I justified my secret expeditions down Daredevil Hill by telling friends that a sled could maneuver easily where a toboggan couldn’t.

The third hill was a little steeper than Dinner Bell Hill but had a deep, wide ditch halfway down enabling sledders to become air born when they exited it. That made the end run so thrilling you could feel it in your stomach. Quickly approaching the bottom, you had to jam the steering bar to the left while dragging your feet in the snow so you wouldn’t fly into the gooey swamp straight ahead. Its huge tree limbs seemed to reach out menacingly just to capture you in swamp muck.

Truly, we’d made a very wise decision about which hill to choose for Mom’s first sled ride.

We had two Flexible Flyer sleds which were quite old, but extremely well built with perfectly smooth tops that ensured comfortable belly flopping. They were made of dark, durable hardwood and had sturdy, swift, red runners. The smaller one was quite a bit longer than today’s sleds, but very fast, and had exquisitely sensitive steering. The larger one was meant for several sledders sitting upright but was too heavy to be much fun, especially when you had to pull it back up a hill.

I’d never seen my mother wear slacks, but on the great sledding day she borrowed a pair of my sister’s and joined us and a large number of neighbors on Dinner Bell Hill.

Actually, I think she was looking forward to the ride down the hill. We instructed her carefully, but as things turned out, not thoroughly enough. Everyone was laughing and having a lot of fun sledding that day, both adults and children. We waited in happy anticipation of the wonderful ride Mom would have.

Well, Mom took off belly down on the sled as instructed and everything seemed just fine until she hit a snow bump kids had built earlier so they could go airborne. It was a small bump, but totally unexpected. We hadn’t noticed it.

At least Mom enjoyed the ride on the top part of the hill, but as soon as she hit the bump she fell off the sled, but only partially, continuing to hang on as it gathered momentum. More and more shivering snow got shoved up under her jacket onto her bare back.

Faster and faster she went down the hill as Dad and I yelled at her to let go, but she couldn’t hear us above neighbor’s laughter and her own increasingly loud squeals as more icy cold snow packed up her back.

She finally came to a stop at the bottom of the hill looking a little humiliated and very cold! She picked herself up, shook out as much snow as she could, dusted herself off and, in spite of our loud pleas to give it another try, headed home through fields past the other sledding spot with the wide ditch, her head hung low.

Mom never asked to go sled riding again, in fact, never talked about her disastrous ride. It seemed hilarious to us at the time for we were used to such things happening, but in retrospect, I felt sorry that it happened to my beloved mom. It was a happy thing to have her be a part of our play, even briefly, for she sacrificed so much to make a nice home for our family. We felt proud of her and gave her credit for trying.

Though Mom died over thirty years ago, I wish I could give her a nice safe sled ride now, one she would enjoy and remember forever. I’d sit behind her, hold her tightly, steer for her, avoid all bumps, and give her a grand ride to be proud of.

I think Mom was ashamed of falling off the sled, especially in front of so many neighbors who were used to snow and sledding. I wish I had known then to tell her that Jesus took all her shame when He hung on the cross and gave her His glory in exchange. What an exchange! If her heart had known that, she would have willingly taken many joyful rides down Dinner Bell Hill, waving triumphantly to neighbors all the way down, and feeling like the conqueror she truly was because of what Jesus did for her. She didn’t have to carry any shame. Even if she had fallen off the sled again, with Jesus by her side I know she would have gotten up and just smiled and waved to neighbors again all the way down shouting triumphantly, “I belong to Him! I belong to Him! I’m a conqueror!”

When we have Jesus in our hearts we are conquerors no matter what, for nothing can ever separate us from His love, including any of life’s bumps and spills.

from Songs of the Heart; copyright © 2012 Eleanor O’Malley 

“A time to be born and a time to die”

One dear lady gasped in horror when I said,

In writing your stories, teach your readers how to live,

but do more than that: Teach them how to die.

I was teaching a memoir class at the New Tribes Missions’ training center and apparently she thought I meant we should teach our readers how to commit suicide. No, no, no! That’s not what I meant!

I was thinking more along the lines of: “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die…” (Ecclesiastes 3:1-2).

Maybe I should have said:

Write stories that show readers how to live well and,

when their time comes, how to die well.

Most of us feel uncomfortable discussing dying and death. Diana Trautwein writes of the “sinking queasiness, this revelation and recognition that death is an unavoidable part of life.…” 

In her blog post, Reflections on Mortality and Holy Week, Diana addresses the fact that “death happens everywhere. We are surrounded by it, entangled by it,” yet “we cover it up, tuck it away, move it aside.” 

Yes, the experience of dying and death remains elusive and mysterious and can be scary for all of us, especially for young people, so perhaps we should explore those topics in our memoirs—for the benefit of both ourselves and our readers.

This will stir up some thoughts:

“You, as all God’s children, live one final breath from your own funeral. Which, from God’s perspective, is nothing to grieve. He responds to these grave facts with this great news: ‘The day you die is better than the day you are born’ (Ecclesiastes 7:1). Now there is a twist. Heaven enjoys a maternity-ward reaction to funerals. Angels watch body burials the same way grandparents monitor delivery-room doors. ‘He’ll be coming through any minute!’ They can’t wait to see the new arrival. While we’re driving hearses and wearing black, they’re hanging pink and blue streamers and passing out cigars….” (“When Death Becomes Birth,” from Come Thirsty by Max Lucado)

If you’re not afraid to die, write a vignette explaining why.

What do you think heaven will be like?

“…Someday God will wipe away your tears. The same hands that stretched the heavens will touch your cheeks. The same hands that formed the mountains will caress your face. The same hands that curled in agony as the Roman spike cut through will someday cup your face and brush away your tears. Forever.” (Max Lucado, The Applause of Heaven; also see Revelation 21)

At the end of your time on earth, what will it be like to stand before God face to face, one on one?

The lyrics of I Can Only Imagine (MercyMe) ponder that question.

“I can only imagine what my eyes will see when Your face is before me.…

Surrounded by Your glory, what will my heart feel…?

Will I dance for You…?

Will I stand in Your presence, or to my knees will I fall?

Will I sing hallelujah?

Will I be able to speak at all?

I can only imagine.…”

Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 13:12, “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”

For years I’ve asked myself, “What will it be like, face to face with God, the Almighty, the Creator, knowing Him fully even as He knows me?”

I envision the scene: I am surrounded by His blinding-brilliant glory, and I am speechless.

I imagine I’ll fall on my face, sobbing in worship and wonder and gratitude.

What about you? What do you envision?

What stories can you write to help your readers ponder life and death and God and heaven? What stories will show readers how to live well and, when their time on earth draws to an end, how to die well?