Two Memoirs

We got home from two weeks in Africa yesterday afternoon and are trying to stay awake and get back into a work-day rhythm.  John and I keep looking at each other and saying “What time is it?  What day is it?”  The good news is that with about 159 hours of flight time, there was lots of opportunity to get books read (even for a slug-slow reader like me).

Among the titles I tackled were two fantastic memoirs I’d highly recommend!  When we Were on Fire by Addie Zierman, and Table in the Darkness by Lee Wolfe Blum.

Both are gritty, honest, brave accounts of women whose stories contain pain and healing and stumbling attempts to find Jesus.  There’s no black and white in these accounts. Only true.  Throughout the pages of each of these memoirs Addie and Lee strive to find their true identity in Christ and understand a church that is full of broken people just like them.

Lee’s story is one of overcoming an eating disorder rooted in a broken view of herself. Addie’s is a journey experiencing the abuses of misguided evangelicalism.  On this Fearless Friday I think it’s appropriate to highlight both these women who overcame a fear of seeing both themselves and God for who they really are.

“The layers of protection surrounding my soul are falling off.  Pieces land softly in the air as I learn to trust, learn not to run – as I learn to let go of the me I thought I was supposed to be to become the me God wants me to be…free from the me I pretend to be.”  Lee Wolfe Blum

“…this story is too big for all these words.  The Christian-y ones that have been used so badly.  The evangelical words-turned-weapons.  They have grown so heavy; they groan, now under the weight of all their baggage.”

“If you have learned anything over the last fifteen years, it’s that the world is not made of stereotypes but of people, complex and real.  And faith – that changes too.  It has to.  It is a cardboard kaleidoscope, ever turning and being turned.  You look through it into the Light over and over again, and you never see exactly the same thing.”  Addie Zierman

I so admire both of these writers and the tremendous soul work they have done to bring their stories to us in order that we might better see ourselves and God in them.