The Memoir

Shawshee and Allison

This Christmas we got a card from some old friends, who shared how they had enjoyed our Christmas letter. At the end of the note they asked if we had a memoir in the works and if we didn't that we should.
This isn't the first time someone has suggested to me that I should write my family's story.
Since I'm a writer it apparently seems only fitting for me to write an autobiography, but I'll let you know that I already tried writing an autobiography once.
I was about 8 years old and had just finished watching the movie "Little Woman." I was so inspired by "Joe's" writing about her life that I pulled out a notebook, wrote "Little Girls" on the top, and started to write about my two sisters and I. After about the first paragraph I stopped because I realized the story was going to be very boring!
I wanted to write this post and say I'm not writing a memoir and have no intentions to, but the reality is, I already am.
No it's not all connected together and printed in an official book, but it's here. It's can be read all over Taking Hebron, Pages for the Dark Horses, Rachel Peterson's Books blog, and every novel in The Treasures of the Secret Places series. It can be seen in every family movie I've ever compiled, email I've typed, and Christmas letter I've written. What I've written here in the present has quickly become a memory in the past. And if some future generation wanted to they could compile it all together and try and sell it to the masses.
So just incase the masses should ever read about my life, here is what I have to say.

GET UP! Put that book down, and LIVE!

The Lord has done amazing and wonderful things in my life and my family's life, but this isn't just for us. The Author of Life wants to write your story too! A life story worthy of a memoir! A memoir you'll never have to read because you lived it!
Don't lie to yourself that you couldn't have such a life! He's not looking for some saintly being He's looking for people! That's you! You're a person! And you can start right now. Just take a step forward. You don't have to know everything, or do everything "right" you just have to keep moving forward with the Lord. One step at a time.
I think the concept of a memoir or autobiography seems undesirable to me because my family is a very forward looking family. It's not that we never remember anything, but we are always in anticipation of what the Lord will do today and in the years to come. And that's the trouble with memoirs, they only look at the past. They can't tell about the future, and they aren't long enough to tell about the wonders that happen every day.
Even with everything I've written I can't do justice to the story He is writing. All the little moments in the mundane of daily living are what make the seemingly "big" moments special.
My younger sister likes to keep bugs in a little bug catcher cage. She looks at them and wonders what they eat. To you that's a cute picture, but to me that's a miracle. Because I was there all those years when she used to scream in fear at microscopic bugs that the rest of us could barely see.
I couldn't fit all of those kinds of stories in a memoir, but He writes every smile onto her face when someone brings her a grasshopper they caught in the yard.
He wants to write every moment of your life too. Open your heart, open your hands, open up your life and let Him in. Let the Lord touch you and change you, one little moment at a time.
Then someday you'll glance back over your shoulder and be speechless and teary eyed when you see all that He has done. Yet when you look up, He'll smile and with a little chuckle say, "Come now, we've only just begun..."