For the past five or six days, I have been involved in writing a brief Memoir, summarizing the main time frames of my life, where I lived from birth to now, and major life events. I am now at the editing stage. I have been thinking about what I want to do with this memoir. Its purpose was just to provide a record for my children, in case they wonder about the details of my life, as they get older. They could possibly find some answers from this memoir document.
Honestly, writing that all down has left me a little bit depressed, because it was painful having to re-live so many challenges, difficulties, crises, and trauma. That led me to think that maybe I will just leave a copy in one of my plastic tubs downstairs. I have a collection of Notes of Appreciation and Scrapbooks of letters from all the parishes I have served. Over the past few weeks, I have been reading some of those notes. The idea occurred to me that I would put the Thank You notes and the Scrapbooks into one tub together. Til now, they have been scattered.
In all that process, I took out the Scrapbook of Letters from the Moravia years, which I had not opened for a very long time. I read a two page letter there that just blew my mind. While I am feeling sad and depressed about the struggles I had as a single parent, there was a woman's letter showing me clearly how
my having been a single pastor, and now a pastor, had transformed
her life!
She had come to church with her mother one time, just to humor her mother. Apparently, that particular day, in the pastoral prayer, I had lifted up "single mothers" and prayed for them, for whatever reason.
This letter writer said she had never heard anyone pray for single mothers. In fact, she carried a huge burden of guilt from being one herself. There was really no reason for her guilt, because her husband had died years earlier. She had not even been divorced. However, I do understand the guilt, because as a single parent, one never feels like they can do enough for your children. She strongly felt the stigma of her single parent identity. She asked her mother: "Why in the world did she pray for single mothers? I've never heard anyone do that!" Her mother said: "Because she used to be one."
This young woman who was visiting was somehow miraculous freed from her 'single parent' guilt and stigma, because "if she was a single parent and God loves her, then maybe God loves me too," or something very much to that effect. She was still attending there when I moved on to another church, thus the letter. We obviously had many interactions which were especially meaningful to her. For me, I was just ordinary pastoral ministry.
As I read her letter today, after having just written my memoir, with all its trauma and pain, I cried! I never cry, no matter what. But her words moved me mightily!---perhaps not unlike my words had moved her years before.
She goes on to tell how much things changed in her life, how she went back to school, got a good job, all because she was able to shed her guilt and shame from being a 'single mother.'
Who ever knows how or when or why God might use our story to help heal another person? Perhaps it was God who moved me to pray for single mothers that day.
I assume that the tears that I shed as I read her letter today will will be healing tears for me.
I could even imagine that God gave me her letter, long buried in the basement, at
this moment as a special gift. For such is the nature of God.
I read an article this morning about Savannah Guthrie who is a host of the Today show. She confessed that the one thing she has never felt good about is her body! She is a skillful interviewer, famous, has a great personality, and is successful by any measure. She is also quite slender. So it was a shock for me to read that she felt that way about her body.