The True Passion of Christ

Maundy Thursday

In Him All Things Hold Together

“For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. 17He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” Colossians 1:16-17, NIV)

Added in response to comment: The amazing message in the video below comes from Louie Giglio, who heads up Passion Conferences for spiritual awakening on college campuses.

Adversity? What Adversity?

The theme for this month’s group writing project at Middle Zone Musings is What I Learned from Adversity.  If you’ve read my blog for any length of time, you might think I have plenty to write about.

I’ve been through a number of experiences that could be called adversity … things like:

• Rejection, both personal and professional
• Robbery and molestation at gunpoint
• An attack by a Doberman requiring more than 50 stitches in my head
• A burst appendix I didn’t know about for a week
• A stroke at the hands of a chiropractor that put in a wheelchair for five years
• Uncontrolled myoclonic seizures for six years, keeping me from participating in life fully

Yet in this Holy Week, I am contemplating what my Lord and Savior did for me, and I realize that, compared to Jesus, I’ve never suffered adversity.

As Isaiah (Chapter 53, KJV) prophesied:

 ¹Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed?

 ²For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.

 ³He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

 ⁴Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

 ⁵But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

 ⁶All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.

 ⁷He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.

 ⁸He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken.

 ⁹And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.

 ¹⁰Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.

 ¹¹He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities.

 ¹²Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

Nothing I have ever experienced or ever will experience can compare to our Lord and Savior being beaten, mocked, tortured, and murdered in the most vicious way.

And why? For my sins and your sins and the sins of the whole world. If I were the only person who needed redemption, Jesus would have died for me alone. My sin makes me Judas betraying Him, the chief priests and scribes condemning Him, Pilate washing his hands of Him, the crowd calling “Crucify Him!,” and the Roman soldiers killing Him. 

Yet Jesus prayed on the cross, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34, KJV)

What have I learned from adversity? I’ve learned that …

• Jesus “was oppressed, and he was afflicted” (Isaiah 53:7, KJV), and any adversity I will ever endure is mild compared to what He suffered.
• Whenever I go through adversity, Jesus is with me “for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.” (Hebrews 13:5, KJV)
• “The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” (Romans 8:18, KJV)

Memoir and Family History: Part 2—Memoir

As mentioned in Part 1, the term memoir can cover many types of writing. Usually a memoir is focused on one aspect of the author’s life. Perhaps you lived through an important historical event, and you want to share how that event affected your life. Maybe you overcame a problem, such as illness or abuse or addiction, and you want to help others through your own experiences. You might want to focus on the joys and challenges of raising a large family or tell readers about your spiritual journey. You can write about how the experiences of a certain phase of your life—childhood, college, marriage—helped form you into the person you are or about your vocation or avocation.

Reviewing your memories and choosing a focus can be an exercise in introspection as well as the starting point for your memoir. The book Thinking About Memoir may help you in this process.

William Zinsser, author of On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction and Writing About Your Life: A Journey into the Past, points out that you don’t have to include all the “important” events of your life but you do need to include the small things that stick in your memory. In How to Write a Memoir, he says:

Go to your desk on Monday morning and write about some event that’s still vivid in your memory. What you write doesn’t have to be long—three pages, five pages—but it should have a beginning and an end. Put that episode in a folder and get on with your life. On Tuesday morning, do the same thing. Tuesday’s episode doesn’t have to be related to Monday’s episode. Take whatever memory comes calling; your subconscious mind, having been put to work, will start delivering your past.

Keep this up for two months, or three months, or six months. Don’t be impatient to start writing your “memoir,” the one you had in mind before you began. Then, one day, take all your entries out of their folder and spread them on the floor. (The floor is often a writer’s best friend.) Read them through and see what they tell you and what patterns emerge. They will tell you what your memoir is about and what it’s not about. They will tell you what’s primary and what’s secondary, what’s interesting and what’s not, what’s emotional, what’s important, what’s funny, what’s unusual, what’s worth pursing and expanding. You’ll begin to glimpse your story’s narrative shape and the road you want to take.

A memoir is highly personal—it’s all about you. You decide which aspect(s) of your life to focus on and which specific incidents to include. You also decide the perspective you will write from. You can write from the perspective of the person you were at the time you’re writing about. For example, if you’re writing about your childhood, you can express the emotions and thoughts that you experienced as a child. Or you can write from the perspective of an adult looking back and evaluating the thoughts and beliefs you had as a child. It’s entirely up to you—but you will probably want to be consistent throughout the book rather than jumping back and forth.

Your memoir should be true (unless you write your story as fiction). However, the truth will depend on your perspective. We seldom see the absolute truth—our impressions are colored by our maturity, knowledge, and experiences. Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable because ten people can witness the same event and each see something different.

It’s like the old story of blind men describing an elephant: each touched a different part of the animal and described an elephant as being like what they touched. Since each touched something different—a tusk, a leg, the trunk, the side—their descriptions are totally different.

You may describe an incident as you remember it, and others may describe it differently.
However, several recent incidents of false memoirs demonstrate you shouldn’t make up your memoirs. Don’t write about spending time in jail if you were never arrested. Don’t say you won a medal for valor in the military if it never happened. When writing facts, stick to the truth. When writing emotions, you may rely on your memory.

For more about memoir writing, check out these resources:

• Discover the History Within Your Memoir
• Memory Writers Network
• The Story of Me: Tips on Memoir Writing
• Writer’s Digest Memoir and Life Story

The next installment, which will appear after Easter, will cover family history.

Memoir and Family History: Part 1—Leaving a Legacy

This is the first installment in a series about writing memoirs and family histories. A couple of months ago, I asked readers to take a short survey on what they would like to see on this blog. Most of the responses were split about 50-50; half of the respondents liked something, and the other half didn’t. Memoir/family history writing was the only subject with a consensus: 100% of the respondents said they would like to read a series on the subject. I am passionate about preserving personal and family memories—I encourage clients thinking about writing their personal or family story to do so, and I have written an e-book: Preserving Memories: How to Write a Family History.

I’ll start the series by talking about what memoirs and family histories are and why you might want to write one. The next two posts will focus on each genre individually, as there are distinct differences between them. Then the rest of the series will cover the process you can use to write and publish (no matter how limited) your personal or family story.

You may be wondering why you should consider writing a memoir or family history. The answer, in a word: legacy. If the one-word answer doesn’t motivate you, read  10 reasons anyone should write a memoir or 15 reasons to write a family history.

I’m not suggesting that you should necessarily write a memoir or family history with the expectation of having it published by a large publisher who will pay you a lot of money and distribute the book widely in bookstores. Unless your family is rich and famous or you have been involved in a major public scandal, the odds of your book appealing to a large publisher—or to a large mass market—are small. But just because you won’t be appearing on Oprah or seeing your book listed as #1 on the USA Today bestseller list doesn’t mean your memoir or family history isn’t important.

Ask yourself if you would like to read first-hand accounts of your great grandparents’ lives or the memoir of one of your ancestors. Then realize that your descendants will feel the same way. Genealogy has become one of the most popular hobbies in the US because people want to know about their roots. They want to know the answer to the question: Where did I come from? Your memoir or family history can help your descendants answer that question generations from now.

Writing your personal or family story can be beneficial for you and the current generation as well. When major events occur in our lives, we all think we couldn’t possibly forget any detail … but we do. By writing about them, you can experience the joy or learn the lesson all over again.

On the other hand, some things we take so much for granted that we don’t explain them to our children or our family members. How did cherished family traditions start? What event in your past changed the course of your life? Do your children or grandchildren know how you met your spouse or why you chose the career you did? Do they understand how the good and bad things that have happened to you have shaped the person you are today?

My own family has experienced firsthand both losing the legacy and passing it on.

My grandfather, who died when I was 12, was a cowboy in his early years and a marvelous storyteller in later years. Grandpa was always telling stories; no one ever bothered to write them down because they were so familiar. His children had heard the stories so many times they were convinced they would never forget them. But forget them they did, and now those fabulous cowboy tales are lost forever.

Memories of my mother haven’t been lost. She was depressed and lethargic after my father died. She couldn’t seem to get interested in anything until we convinced her to write her memories. To describe her “little stories,” as she called them, as a memoir would seem presumptuous to her. They weren’t written as a book—just as individual stories when she thought about something, in no order and with no theme. However, each Christmas, she gave copies of the latest stories to family members, who collected them in loose-leaf binders. Even the teenagers would put aside their games and cool stuff to read Grandma’s stories under the Christmas tree.

My mother-in-law wasn’t willing to write, but she dictated her life story into a tape recorder. I transcribed the recording and added photos, and she gave notebooks with her memories to family members.

Those simple loose-leaf binders have become precious to our family now that my mother and my mother-in-law are no longer with us. Family members can read the words in these binders, and it’s almost like hearing their voices once again—the words and style so familiar and so dear.

You can leave a similar legacy for your loved ones by writing your own memoir or family history.

What is a memoir or a family history? There are many definitions and many forms of each genre. Because they are so personal and individual, definitions can be elusive.

In general, a memoir is a form of autobiography, written by the person it’s about. Autobiography is often the preferred word in describing a chronological story of the author’s entire life, while memoir can focus on a specific time period or reflect on a particular topic. In trying to answer the question Memoir: What Is It, the nonprofit literary journal Memoir (and) says

We cannot confidently erect a fence and say this belongs inside, this is definitely outside.

Memoir can encompass prose or poetry, gravitas or humor, text or graphics. It is usually written in first person, and it always about the person who is writing it.

A family history is the story of a family rather than an individual. It often is written about one line of descent of a family and can cover one or many generations. Family history can be written as nonfiction or as fiction. People reading fictional family histories should be able to tell what is real history and what is fiction.

In Part 2, we’ll discuss memoirs in more detail.

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