Mommy, Tell Me a Story

Kim's words give me courage.
And validation.

Kim told her story in a couple memoirs. The first,
In the Wilderness: Coming of Age in Unknown Country and her second, Hungry for the World tell her story of growing up in the Idaho wilderness in the midst of a Pentecostal family and how she grew through that experience to come of age. These books are well worth the read. One of them was nominated for a Pulitzer. She nearly won.

Kim and I went to college together. She was the student that most kept me on my toes. Smart. Funny. Beautiful. Talented. Much more mature than I for a gal in her mid twenties.

She went on to get her master's degree in creative writing and became a professor at a state university. She married one of our college professors and is raising two children.

I went on to a year as a full-time volunteer campus minister. Then I married, had a couple kids, went through divorce, deaths, blah blah blah. My post-educational dreams did not materialize.

In our years since being students together, I've kept an eye on Kim, read her books and tracked down some of her magazine articles. Her writing is like liquid gold. It blows me away.

Standing in line for her autograph after her book reading last Fall, my heart was racing. I've been in awe of her abilities all these years. Would she even recognize me?

But she did. And we hugged. I told her how much I enjoy her writing, how brave she was to be able to tell the story of her life. She said she wasn't brave. She had to do it. She's a writer. She writes. This was her way of putting some perspective on her growing-up years.

I introduced Kim to my daughter. Looking right in my daughter's eyes, she said, "Your mother is brilliant!" I was flabbergasted at that praise.

She signed my book for me, and moved on to the next person in line.

The words she inscribed are in the quotation above. "Remember that your story is sacred."

My life is not the one I wrote for myself as an undergraduate, but it is the life I have. It came part by chance, but a whole lot by choice. This life is my own ... and the stories that took me from college graduate to a colorful woman of 50+ years are as worthy as the next guy's. This is my life. My story is sacred.

I feel the truth of that in my bones.
How do I find the courage to use it?