Michelle Ule's Blog, page 50
August 11, 2017
What is My Utmost for His Highest?
I laughed out loud and asked the question after glancing through my list of blog posts.
If you’re not familiar with the devotional, you might not know why I write about it all the time.
Here are some descriptions and explanations
A devotional
My Utmost for His Highest at its most basic is a Christian devotional
.
Compiled from lectures Bible teacher Oswald Chambers gave in America, England and Egypt between 1910 and 1917, it’s 366 short readings.
There’s one for every day of the year.
Each day features a short Bible verse from which the theme is taken.
Several paragraphs follow to expand on what the verse means.
One devotional per page, about 250 words long. A relatively quick read, if you’re skimming.
A convictor
Photo by Kathleen Isaacson
If you’re skimming My Utmost for His Highest , it can be difficult to understand.
But, if you ponder the words (“Brood over the ideas,” as Oswald used to say) it can convict you.
The truths are simple yet straight to the point.
Sometimes I pray while reading it a second time to try to figure out why I feel uncomfortable.
A confuser
Many people struggle to understand what it means.
My husband discovered the same issue when using My Utmost for His Highest in his college-age Sunday School class.
You can learn his tips here.
You can also read about Drs. Jed and Cecilie Macosko’s A Daily Companion to My Utmost for His Highest in an interview here and here!
I wrote on the same subject here.
A way of life
The point of a Christian devotional is to read it every day as part of your “quiet time.”
They’re designed to compliment your Bible reading, often using short stories (one page) to amplify at teaching.
I’ve written about Christians devotionals here.
You can read the full post here.
Many people like me read My Utmost for His Highest daily, month after month, year after year.
2017 marks my 18th year of reading it every day.
You can read how it affects me here.
A labor of love
I’m perhaps more intimate with My Utmost for His Highest because I wrote Mrs. Oswald Chambers–the biography of the compiler.
Biddy Chambers undertook a task given by God, to share her husband’s works and ideas about God with the world.
She endured deprivation, poverty, hard work and three years of combing through all her notes to produce the devotional.
In her forward, which makes no mention of her work, Biddy quoted Robert Murray McCheyne:
“Men return again and again to the few who have mastered the spiritual secret, whose life has been hid with Christ in God.
“These are of the old time religion, hung to the nails of the Cross.”
The final paragraph explains “B. C.’s” reasoning:
It is because it is felt that the author is one to whose teaching men will return that this book has been prepared, and it is sent out with the prayer that day by day the message may continue to bring the quickening life and inspiration of the Holy Spirit.”
A blessing
My Utmost for His Highest has not been out of print since Biddy first released it to the world in October, 1927.
It has encouraged, strengthened and blessed millions of people, worldwide, in at least 40 languages over the last ninety years.
Isn’t it remarkable what a significant influence a small book can have on so very many people?
Have you read My Utmost for His Highest ? How has it affected you?
Tweetables
What is My Utmost for His Highest? Click to Tweet
A devotional that confuses, convicts and endures: My Utmost for His Highest. Click to Tweet
90 years of Holy Spirit inspiration: My Utmost for His Highest. Click to Tweet
Every month in 2017, I’ll be telling the stories about God’s leading and my blessed–and astonished–reactions while writing Mrs. Oswald Chambers
The next newsletter comes out August 20: In which the Holy Spirit surprises me while I write
Sign up for my newsletter here.
The post What is My Utmost for His Highest? appeared first on Michelle Ule, Author.
August 8, 2017
How to Support a Missionary
I’ve been reading about missionaries quite a bit the last several years.
Certainly, we donate to missionaries.
But recently, I realized we can help a missionary without handing out any money at all.
Indeed, there are several ways.
Prayer
When a good friend lived with us on furlough several years ago, she needed to raise support for her task in a foreign land.
More than funds, she recognized she needed prayer support.
As she traveled about our area, she always asked for prayer, never for funds.
Her faith remained fixed on God, believing that the Holy Spirit should inspire people to give what they had.
Sometimes that was money.
Sometimes people gave her cars to drive, lunches, a computer, plane tickets.
She never asked for anything except for prayer.
Every missionary I know craves prayer support more than anything.
Visits
We’ve visited that particular missionary overseas.
My husband and I stopped by once to worship at a church we helped plant.
We traveled to Mexico and helped paint and repair a building.
Nicaragua captured our hearts when we traveled there for a short term missionary project several years ago.
(You can read my seventeen posts on that trip starting here, or search the website for Nicaragua).
Mail and packages
I’ve been collecting a variety of items to mail to a missionary friend soon.
She asked for a few items she can’t get overseas (baking powder, food coloring, San Francisco Giants baseball team magazine).
I include past issues of Christianity Today and World Magazine, along with books she might like.
A birthday present will be tucked inside, too.
She’s a long way from home.
I also like to send Amazon gift cards and ebooks.
Internet
I just finished chatting with my friend on Facebook Messenger.
We Skype or Facetime periodically.
She sent me a Youtube video recently.
Several friends send daily updates while on short term mission projects.
Presentations
Our church’s youth group returned last night from their annual mission trip.
We love to attend their presentation at church.
Over the years, their recounting has grown to include scads of photos, video and an entire booklet filled with personal testimonies.
The Nicaragua team (our church goes yearly to provide an eyeglass ministry) will be on tap in two weeks to tell their story.
I love the stories and the room is always packed.
Other Practical Helps
Oh, go ahead. Of course you can send money!
My daughter got caught between trips last week. She returned from Africa on Monday afternoon and left for Nicaragua Friday night.
Of her four nights home, she slept the first and second (for 16 and 12 hours respectively) and worked the other two.
She needed to write up her Africa adventures, prepare for Central America, work and pack out her apartment for a move.
I pulled a Biddy and flew down to help her.
True, I wanted to hear the stories first hand, but she needed help.
So, this retired Navy wife packed, brought food, ran errands, washed the car and filled it up, reviewed her paper and took her out to lunch.
I also answered questions about lost paperwork at midnight when she got off shift.
It was a pleasure to help her–because I love her–but also because it made me (a tiny) part of that Nicaragua mission trip.
Ephesians 4:10 talks about the need to build up the body of Christ, and lists some of the roles.
Curious how money isn’t on that list.
But don’t let that stop you from giving, helping, praying,visiting, attending presentations, packing, running errands, sending packages and watching videos.
In doing so, we’re all part of the Great Commission!
Tweetables
Practical ways to help missionaries. Click to Tweet
How to help missionaries besides giving money. Click to Tweet
Non-monetary ways to help missionaries. Click to Tweet
If you’re a fan of My Utmost for His Highest, I’m looking for stories about how reading that devotional changed your life–or at least an event in your life. If you wouldn’t mind being interviewed for a prospective blog post on this website, please contact me through the website, or here. Thanks.
The post How to Support a Missionary appeared first on Michelle Ule, Author.
August 4, 2017
To “Pull a Biddy,” and Other Adventures
I may be the only person who uses that term, but my family understands what I mean.
They’ve been living with the Biddy and Oswald Chambers story just as much as I have for the last four years!
But what does it mean and how do you use it?
Not to mention, where does the concept come from and why?
Definition and Source
To “pull a Biddy,” in our terminology means to choose to believe God is going to do something, despite appearances.
It means stepping out in faith.
Biddy stepped out in crazy faith many times in her life, as I recount in Mrs. Oswald Chambers.
To name just one incident, she married a man who explained at his proposal their home would be meager.
“With our lives going heart and soul into literary and itinerating work for Him. It will be hard and glorious and arduous.”
If that wasn’t sufficiently romantic, he added a postscript:
“I have nothing to offer you but my love and steady lavish service for Him.”
Biddy’s heart was tuned to God and she loved the man. She stepped forward into an extraordinary life with confidence.
(To be fair, without using the term, life with my guy required me to “pull a Biddy” many times during our marriage. I just hadn’t coined the term yet.)
What does it look like in 2017?
She always set her face like a flint–especially in faith matters
In my recent case, I was in a hurry and unexpectedly behind.
I’d misjudged when to leave for the airport and upon climbing into the car discovered I had no gas.
I also had to stop at the library.
My heart began to race.
The “what ifs?” threatened to overtake me before I’d even exited the driveway.
I had plenty of hurdles to jump before I even got to the plane–scheduled to depart in 2.5 hours.
My normal response would be to hyperventilate and worry all the way down the freeway, across a bridge, through a major city (where the traffic always snarls) and scream into airport parking.
Instead, I took a deep breath and said out loud, “I’m going to pull a Biddy. I’m going to believe that I will make the plane in time, no matter what.”
Driving down the road, I stayed in the speed limit and did not pass at every opportunity.
But the traffic was like a scene out of The Truman Show–trucks cutting me off, cars (not mine) darted in and out.
I turned off the podcast on my phone, deliberately did not turn on the radio and sang hymns.
For an hour.
Once or twice I darted a look at the clock in the dashboard, then decided to ignore it.
Perhaps God could arrange a Philippian transfer (as in the book of Acts)?
Is it Scriptural?
Would Biddy indulge in something not Scriptural?
I went to James 1:6:
“But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.”
The sign at the usual traffic snarl advised a 20 minute drive to the airport–which would have me there at noon.
But I had to park.
I had to lug two 25-pound bags (full of Bibles) to the check in counter, go through TSA and find the gate.
“This is your trip, Lord. I’ll accept whatever comes.”
My heart rate sped up.
I took another deep breath.
“I’m going to believe you’ll get me there, Lord.”
I exited the freeway at noon. Which parking lot? Economy or hourly.
Life savers come in all sorts of forms.
What a ridiculous question.
Economy, of course.
Was there a convenient parking spot?
Were you expecting one?
I grabbed the bags–neatly balanced in each hand–locked the doors and hurried across the wide parking lot.
Any sign of the shuttle?
Come on, do you really expect one?
My plane left in an hour, but those bags were so heavy. I couldn’t run, I could barely carry them.
“Okay, Lord, this is your idea. Can you send me an angel to help?”
A whole lot of people walked past without glancing my way.
But there, at Terminal One (of course my plane was at Terminal Two), I saw a savior.
Who cares if it cost $5!
I loaded the bags and ran!
At the terminal
I had to check in and check the bags.
Why would a machine be available?
Why wouldn’t I get tangled in the sticky baggage claim tag?
But there was no line and I deposited the bags in good order.
Mercy! I had pre-TSA boarding.
But I got in the wrong line.
I dropped my ID card.
The agent chastised me.
My bag got tangled in the machine.
However, they let me through.
I had twenty minutes to spare.
Laughter
Of course, my gate was the final one on the longest arm away.
Of course the latch didn’t work on the bathroom stall.
Who ever had the bottle fill water cooler not work?
I made it with five minutes to spare.
Sometimes we need to borrow another person’s faith to get us through tricky situations.
All I can say is, “Why don’t I pull a Biddy every time?”
Tweetables
Claiming Biddy Chambers’ faith to make a plane. Click to Tweet
How Biddy Chambers’ godly example soothed a traveler. Click to Tweet
Choosing to believe, like Biddy Chambers, simplified. Click to Tweet
If you’re a fan of My Utmost for His Highest, I’m looking for stories about how reading that devotional changed your life–or at least an event in your life. If you wouldn’t mind being interviewed for a prospective blog post on this website, please contact me through the website, or here. Thanks.
The post To “Pull a Biddy,” and Other Adventures appeared first on Michelle Ule, Author.
August 1, 2017
Can a Researcher Ever Stop Researching?
I’ve been asking myself that question for a couple years now.
The thrill of the hunt never ends–even when it seems like I’ve mined all the data out there.
But you never know . . .
And that’s what keeps me going.
Researching like a puzzle builderWhile on our family vacation recently, we worked a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle.
As I raked through the pieces, hunting, considering, picking up and setting down, it reminded me of research.
I examine everything, read everything, consider every piece–because I don’t know which one will be important.
In putting together a jigsaw puzzle, I always start with the frame.
Once that’s in place, I consider the other pieces: by color, mostly.
Researching a new subject is the same way.
I like to build a frame: what am I looking for?
I then comb through the material, sorting it into how it looks against the frame.
In a 1000 piece puzzle, you examine a lot of pieces.
In a book project, the material opportunities are even greater.
Meanwhile, back at the library . . .
See how happy I look!
I can’t seem to stop, even when I’ve finished the book and turned it in.
For example, yesterday, I contacted a fellow writer to ask if she thought one of her contacts might have a photo I sought.
Mrs. Oswald Chambers releases in three months, why bother a friend?
(Well, blogging provides plenty of opportunities for never-ending research).
I need to let Biddy go and move on to another poor subject.
And that’s what I did–as soon as I returned from vacation.
For the first time ever, my local library had obtained an Inter-Library Loan that I requested.
I thought it was 17 pages on a microfiche.
It turned out to be far more on microfilm!
Researching with microfilm is quite a task, and I hadn’t done it in this century.
Raking through material, reading as fast as I could, I felt the thrill of the hunt rise.
But I had no time, the microfilm belonged to Yale University Library and they only lent it for three weeks.
What to do?
I’m sorry to report, I killed several trees.
With so much more material than I had time to read off the microfilm, I simply copied it.
Plenty of work ahead of me!
1197 pieces of paper.
Yikes!
I’ll have to read everything.
The researching will take months.
Will my need to research ever disappear?
But maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to let my quest for one more tidbit about Biddy Chambers fade away.
If I had time, I’d be researching the likelihood of that!
How does any researcher know when the researching is done?
(By the way, I stood at the machine copying and staring at our local genealogical library’s Tennessee genealogy.
It was really hard not to return to the census information–my great-great-great-grandfather was born there in 1809 . . . )
Done!
Tweetables
Can a researcher ever stop researching? How? Click to Tweet
Researching as a way of life–whether I like it or not! Click to Tweet
One microfilm to examine, 1197 pages to read! Click to Tweet
The post Can a Researcher Ever Stop Researching? appeared first on Michelle Ule, Author.
July 28, 2017
Privacy and the Biographer
As in, what if you stumble on something intimate, do you share or do you shield?
Or perhaps, side-step?
What would you do if you found a comment like this by your subject’s only child:
“She was always very hesitant, you see, I mean a lot of the things I’ve told you, she wouldn’t dream of putting in the book, you see, and both of them [her parents] sort of felt so much, their personal things, their personal experiences, were private, and their personal experiences with God were private.”
Well?
What would you do if a biographer asked you?
Is there privacy in the age of the Internet?
Biddy Chambers died 50 years ago; Oswald died 100 years ago. Kathleen Chambers died 20 years ago. Does it matter now?
They have no descendents and little family. Who would care if I revealed secrets I stumbled upon?
I would care.
I’m not interested in being a gossip monger about people who cannot defend themselves and who lived in a different era.
Oswald and Biddy were both born during Queen Victoria’s reign. Their personal scruples mirrored mine in some areas and didn’t bother me in others.
So many well-known people have their lives shredded by the Internet these days, did I really want to follow suit?
Of course not.
Not to mention all the admonitions in the Bible about not slandering people, lying or giving poor reports.
In case you’re wondering, there’s nothing salacious in either Oswald or Biddy’s life.
Nor Kathleen’s life, for that matter.
Still, in a few areas, Kathleen’s comment made me wonder.
Seeking counsel about privacy
Most of the information I have about Biddy’s personal life came from a lengthy series of interviews author David McCasland and a friend conducted with Kathleen Chambers in 1991-92.
Confetti marks the interesting material!
At that time, Kathleen was 78 years old.
As I did background and confirming research on her statements, I found irregularities.
None of them were profound, undoubtedly the result of her age, the fact her father died when she was four, and not having many relatives alive anymore.
I have a transcript of those interviews which I obtained from Wheaton College‘s Special Collections Library.
It’s all marked up and tabbed with post-it notes, now.
Several times, Kathleen revealed information that gave me pause. Do I include, or not?
Does it matter?
How much do I need to shield and protect?
(Or, when is it research and when is it voyeurism?)
Most of the information wasn’t important, do you really care about which boarding school Kathleen attended?
But, one issue was very important.
My husband and I discussed it; I appealed to two spiritually wise friends whom I trusted.
The three made suggestions, books pertinent to the subject crossed my path and I thought and prayed.
Finally, I went to a source.
David McCasland
Biographer David McCasland’s Oswald Chambers: Abandoned to God is the source of most information for Chambers researchers.
I examined the notes and primary source information he obtained while writing his biography in the 1990s during the week I spent at Wheaton College’s library.
I could not have written Mrs. Oswald Chambers without his material and his wise counsel when I wrote to ask him for it.
Since he participated in those 1991-1992 interviews, I knew he would have insight into how Kathleen felt, or what she believed, that I could not pick up from the edited version of the video I’ve seen.
So, I called him and discussed my few issues and concerns.
Just as in every email he’s ever replied to me, he was wise, kind, insightful and helpful.
After our conversation, I knew what and how I needed to address those personal issues–which was a great relief.
It always helps to return to a primary source when you have questions.
How do you expect a biographer to handle potential problems with their subject in writing their book?
Tweetables
Privacy issues and a biographer. Click to Tweet
How to deal with sensitive issues while writing a biography. Click to Tweet
On writing a biography; what to do with salacious and true? Click to Tweet
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July 25, 2017
A Fascination with Historic Color Photos
I read the article with interest. I’d always been a Russophile.
An art museum in Seattle held an exhibit many years ago of work by “the photographer to the Tsar,” Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii. It featured several dozen color photos from the early 1900s.
Not an historic old photo–but Ypres all the same (Unsplash by Stijn Swinnen)
I’d never seen anything like them in those long ago pre-Internet days.
We decided to visit the museum
Color Photos
Photographers have taken photographs in color for a long time, of course, but it was an expensive process.
Some photos were hand tinted–my mother-in-law did that in the WWII years.
Others used a complicated process I won’t attempt to explain.
But those photos hung in the Seattle gallery were the original ones, found somewhere and displayed for the first time.
I walked among them marveling. They transported me back in time, far from Washington and the three boys trailing after me.
Historic color photos depicting reality
Several stand out all these years later.
One was of the colorful cupolas of the Moscow kremlin.
Certainly, I’d seen plenty of photos of that structure, I didn’t need to be reminded of their colors.
But the photographer took the historic color photo while Nicholas II sat on the throne. I could view the church as he saw it 100 years before.
Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii (Wikimedia Commons)
Beautiful. Totally unique and unusual.
I saw a green hillside of grass with a sheep herder, the crenelated walls of a city in the distance.
A trio of rabbis, replete with curls and head garments mingled with their long dark robes.
They lived and breathed before my eyes, seemingly, on that wall.
It all seemed different, somehow, to know someone had worked the bulky camera, hauled the plates and developed the glass plates in a dark room.
Today on the Internet
Historic color photos are common on the Internet today.
But a post on Facebook last week reminded me yet again of the fascination.
I paged through them, enthralled all over again.
As an historical fiction writer, along with being a biographer, I pour over old photos all the time, trying to grasp what life was like.
In Bored Panda’s photos, I recognize the grinding poverty of Ireland–notice few of the children wear shoes.
I’m surprised–and I laugh at the realization–that flowers looked the same 100 years ago. I recognize daisies and iris!
The hats, the ruffles on the clothing, the buttons in place of zippers– from them I learn what clothing looked like.
Here are some from the Albert Khan collection.
World War I
By Paul Castelnau (Wikipedia Commons)
Because I wrote a World War I novel, I’ve used Pinterest to catalog photographs of the era.
Pinterest and a Facebook group led me to colorized photos from the Great War.
It’s so much more poignant to see blue uniforms, colorful flowers and the dreadful mud covering the landscape as far as I can see.
Time Magazine also provided a photo essay in 2013.
As we dig into archives world-wide, all manner of fascinating photography turns up.
Viewing the past through the window of today is the best use I’ve found for the Internet.
How about a video of the Russian tsar?
Tweetables
Fascinating historic color photos send us back in time! Click to Tweet
Links to fascinating historic color photos. Click to Tweet
Mesmerizing original video of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. Click to Tweet
The post A Fascination with Historic Color Photos appeared first on Michelle Ule, Author.
July 21, 2017
Oswald Chambers’ Birthday
The two were born 11 days shy of nine years apart–Oswald entering the world in Scotland on July 24, 1874.
The seventh of eight children of Reverend Clarence and Hannah Chambers, Oswald had four sisters and three brothers.
Oswald grew up in a busy household, and there’s no telling how he celebrated as a child.
But his diary tells of two personal birthday celebrations.
Oswald Chambers’ birthday at seaIn 1906, Oswald sailed to Japan with his friend Juji Nakada.
He’d had a momentous year and his diary (from Oswald Chambers: His Life and Work) reflected his thoughts:
“July 24th. My birthday morning. This year I spend it on the Pacific, last year I was at Keswick [Convention]. 33 today, praise God.
“The text for the morning on the League [of Prayer] calendar is “The Lord rewarded me…for I have kept the ways of the Lord.”
He saw the weeks-long voyage as “an unspeakable spiritual boon for they have physically refreshed and recreated me, and I am more and more convinced that this is essential to true full-orbed spirituality.”
A celebration awaited him, instigated by Nakada:
“Without any warning at the close of dinner the head waiter and all the others in a string lined up to my table with trays, with presents on each, the head waiter was carrying a splendid birthday cake with a candle burning on it.
“They presented the presents to me, and then burst out with cries of ‘speech’, which I duly gave, and then cut the cake and handed it all round. It was a great occasion, and on reflecting I do not know how I got through it as well as I did, but it was the suddenness of it. Then they took me to the deck and serenaded me with Scotch songs and Jubilee singer pieces.”
The final birthday
The wrangler hat was a gift from an ANZAC soldier
Oswald’s final birthday, though he did not know it, came ten years later in Egypt.
July 24, 1917 found him a mature, albeit exhausted, servant of God. He noted in his diary:
“July 24. This is my birthday, my 43rd, the Psalms for the day are great—106–108.
It has been a glorious day in all ways, very hot but psychically very fine, and as it was a summarizing time for me.”
He recounted his statement of beliefs in the diary entry, reflecting on how he had changed from his art-loving youth, much like one of his favorite writers John Ruskin.
“My inner career at the beginning was heavy and strong, and even lurid and very agonizing in the earlier phases; latterly, austere and peaceful, and now it is merging into a joy which is truly the receiving of a hundredfold more.”
After two and a half years in the savage World War I-focused desert of Egypt, Oswald reflected the redemption provided by Christ needed to be the basis of human life.
His passion for Jesus and the Holy Spirit controlled who he was and what he did.
I particularly like his statement: “the Holy Spirit must be recognized as the sagacious Ruler in the saint’s affairs, not astute common sense.”
I’m sure I was more than 43 years-old before I recognized that truth.
Happy birthday, Oswald Chambers, born 143 years ago (as of 2017).
Tweetables
Oswald Chambers’ birthday celebration at sea. Click to Tweet
What Oswald Chambers learned by his final birthday 100 years ago. Click to Tweet
A cake, speeches and Scottish songs; happy birthday, Oswald Chambers! Click to Tweet
The post Oswald Chambers’ Birthday appeared first on Michelle Ule, Author.
July 18, 2017
8 Favorite Memoirs
It’s important to remember memoirs and biographies are different.
While biographies tell an entire life’s story, a memoir generally limits itself a slice of time, or a particular event.
I love memoirs even more than biographies, in part because narrative non-fiction is my favorite genre.
(Memoirs also fall into the narrative non-fiction category. They’re fungible, as needed!)
Reading a great memoir feels like touching an author with that age-old question: “Tell me a story.”
Here’s a list of eight favorite memoirs (in reverse alphabetical order, for fun).
White Road
I’ve written about Olga Ilyin’s memoir before. The story of a brand new mother fleeing the Cossacks during the upheaval of the Russian Revolution, is fascinating. It’s also horrifying as they took off in winter. Filled with stories of the baby’s final bottle, the last diaper pin, wolves, dachas in the woods and incredible cold, this one kept me on the edge of my seat.
Beautifully written by a poet, it also features a most improbable, yet deeply satisfying ending.
Waiting for Snow in Havana
Yale religion profession Carlos Eire wrote a rollicking memoir of his pre-Castro youth in Havana that won the National Book award.
He used glorious Latinate language, clever stories, laugh-out-loud improbabilities and a picture into a world long lost. Fantastico!
Victim of Grace
This is my favorite of novelist Robin Jones Gunn‘s many bestselling books. Filled with her signature melding of laughter, romance and truth, Gunn does not disappoint in her storytelling.
Several images and stories have remained with me ever since I read this wonderful, fun and moving memoir of her life with God.
Same Kind of Different as Me
What a wonderful story of God at work in amazing ways through a reluctant husband in Texas and a wise homeless man. Fashioned by Ron Hall, Denver Moore and Lynn Vincent, this memoir resonates in my heart and insists I look at a homeless person with sympathy and hope. A mesmerizing and wonderfully encouraging story.
In Love and War
A family memoir written by James and Sybil Stockdale in his/her alternating chapters. This is the story of their seven years while Jim was held captive in Vietnam’s Hanoi Hilton during the war. I read it first as a young Navy wife and came away with a great appreciation for what it means to be part of that select group.
It’s a wonderful story of a marriage that simply did not give up despite overwhelming odds.
Crosswicks Journals
I like several of Madeleine L’Engle‘s Crosswicks Journals, so I just included all four. The Summer of the Great-Grandmother is wonderful storytelling through generations of time and memories. A Circle of Quiet and The Irrational Season gave me hope as an awkward young woman that I might some day smooth out into a confident and wise woman. (Still hoping . . . ).
L’Engle’s voice can become grating with time, but these books met me in a strategic point in my life for good.
Surprised by Oxford
I read Carolyn Weber’s Surprised by Oxford in one sitting. The next year, I reread it on the train while traveling to Oxford, England.
A glorious literary romp, conversion story wrapped in romance. This memoir will delight to anyone who fits into those categories. C.S. Lewis fans will appreciate Weber’s book as well.
Haven Kimmel’s story of her childhood is just plain funny.
The stories ridiculous, the tone warm and loving, this is a great read for a summer day on the porche or swinging in a hammock.
Memoirs in time and place
You’ll notice I included where I was in time or life while reading the memoirs listed above.
I can feel the nubly couch from reading Zippy, along with the clack of the train while pouring through Oxford.
I remember the wonder of my life to come while devouring L’Engle’s books and my awe at Sybil Stockton’s devotion.
White Road convinced me I needed jewelry and I read Eire’s book by flashlight while chaperoning the sixth graders to outdoor ed.
Vincent and Gunn’s books just made me feel encouraged all over–though perhaps that’s because I heard their voices in my head while reading!
Maybe a memoir just needs to hit you in the right time and place for it to stay in your heart?
What are some of your favorite memoirs? I’m always looking for suggestions!
Tweetables
8 favorite memoirs for summer fun and erudition. Click to Tweet
Grandmothers, Zippy, Snow, Havana and great memoirs. Click to Tweet
Victim of Grace, White Road, Same Kind of Different; great memoirs. Click to Tweet
Every month in 2017, I’ll be telling the stories about God’s leading and my blessed–and astonished–reactions while writing Mrs. Oswald Chambers
The next newsletter comes out July 20: Why an inspirational historical romance writer could write a biography.
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July 14, 2017
Happy Birthday, Biddy Chambers!
Born July 13, 1883 in Woolwich, Kent, England, Gertrude Annie Hobbs grew up to become Biddy Chambers.
Henry and Emily Gardner Hobbs gave their third of three children a popular and conventional first name and a family name for the middle.
Coming in at #22 out of the Gertrude’s family called her “Gert” or “Truda.”
The Annie came from her maternal grandmother, Ann Whiteman Gardner who lived 20 miles away in Gravesend.
Born in the shadow of the Woolwich Arsenal where most of the British armaments were made for several hundred years, her birthday was “celebrated” a few weeks later when a rocket escaped the grounds!
A birthday marked in Seed Thoughts Calendar
I’ve written before about how writers put together devotionals.
They usually choose “anchor days,” to help them decide what devotion goes where on a 366-day calendar.
As Biddy compiled devotionals using her husband’s words, it’s interesting to see what she included on her birthday.
Seed Thoughts Calendar (modern version called Run Today’s Race) was the first book she organized after Oswald Chambers‘s 1917 death, while she still lived in Egypt.
Designed to fit into a World War I soldier’s breast pocket, the slim booklet contained a single clever sentence for each day of the year.
Oswald liked to stimulate the imagination of soldiers visiting his devotional hut at Zeitoun.
He wrote his pithy sayings on a chalkboard each day.
The latest edition of Seed Thoughts Calendar, is called Run Today’s Race.
Some were amusing, like: “Beware! There is a religious talk here each evening!”
Biddy used Oswald’s word to explain why and how:
“December 9: Our Lord was never impatient. He simply planted seed thoughts in the disciples’ minds and surrounded them with the atmosphere of His own life. We get impatient and take men by the scruff of the neck and say: “You must believe this and that.”
You cannot make a man see moral truth by persuading his intellect. “When He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He shall guide you into all the truth.”
What did Biddy choose to mark her own birthday?
“July 13: Satan has no power to dispossess God of me.”
Remember, she chose that statement to mark her personal birthday a year after her husband died.
What does the birthday statement mean?
Oswald and Biddy had a straightforward understanding of Satan as the enemy of God and man.
Elsewhere, Oswald explains the danger:
“Satan does not tempt us just to make us do wrong things— he tempts us to make us lose what God has put into us through regeneration, namely, the possibility of being of value to God. He does not come to us on the premise of tempting us to sin, but on the premise of shifting our point of view, and only the Spirit of God can detect this as a temptation of the devil.”
Satan’s the tempter, and that’s what this statement indicates.
1. to put (a person) out of possession, especially of real property; oust. 2. to banish.
To rephrase Biddy’s birthday calendar seed thought: “The temptor cannot take me away from God.”
Consider the pressure on Biddy during that difficult time following Oswald’s death (not to mention the rest of her life).
As the new head of the YMCA‘s huts at Zeitoun, she needed to display a confidence Oswald’s death did not surprise God.
Happy birthday at the beach with Kathleen? [Wheaton Special Collections]
She also needed to hang on to her own faith.Her idea and relationship with the Lord was so strong that she determined nothing would separate her soul for God’s.On July 13, she made her statement and kept to it the rest of her life.
As her daughter Kathleen explained:
“All my life my mother . . . never for half a second questioned what God allowed to happen, ever. She might have been puzzled, but was unperturbed and never desperate.
She believed God would be there in the middle of the situation, or beside her, no matter what happened.”
For her birthday, Biddy made that statement for all the world to see.
Tweetables
Happy birthday, Biddy Chambers! Click to Tweet
A statement of faith on Biddy Chambers’ birthday. Click to Tweet
“Satan has no power,” said Biddy Chambers on her birthday. Click to Tweet
Every month in 2017, I’ll be telling the stories about God’s leading and my blessed–and astonished–reactions while writing Mrs. Oswald Chambers
The next newsletter comes out July 20: How a novelist could write a biography.
Sign up for my newsletter here.
The post Happy Birthday, Biddy Chambers! appeared first on Michelle Ule, Author.
July 11, 2017
An Amateur, Passion and the Civil War
The word amateur comes from the Latin base, amator, to love.
We’ve taken that word and turned it into a person who loves something so inordinately passionately that they don’t care if it has any monetary value. Amateurs love something for the sake of loving it–and they usually want to share that passion with everyone they meet.
Civil War amateurs
Amateurs in the purist sense, is a good definition for the folks I met at Civil War Days in Duncan Mills, California. Tony Horwitz‘ book Confederates in the Attic, describes the lengths for which Civil War reenactors go for authenticity. Men routinely diet so as to resemble starving soldiers on the field.
I didn’t meet anyone like that.[image error]
But I did encounter people who loved the Civil War and could wax lyrical on the most minor of minutiae. I loved listening to and watching them detail their personal area of expertise.
Why else would they devote their weekend to working a Civil War era blacksmith shop, or demonstrating how to fire a 150 year-old cannon?
Many looked their parts and lectured me with joy on their subject matter!
Their passion came out as they discussed their parts and as an historian, they were invaluable to me.
Horse amateurs
I visited the Civil War games for detailed information for my novella, An Inconvenient Gamble, part of The Texas Brides Collection. Set in 1867 Texas, the story features a cavalry man who rode with John Morgan. I needed some details–what type of saddle would he have used?
An ostler for the “Union Army” gave me a 20-minute tutorial in the types of saddles, an 1865 McClellan no doubt, and how a cavalry man would have adjusted it for his own.
No saddle horn; they would have used leather straps to carry things on their horse. The black saddle bag is all they would have had to carry rations.
My horsemaster source also
demonstrated the different ways the saddle would be cinched to thAll Postse horse, discussed how much forage a horse required and the distance they could travel if necessary. (Morgan’s men rode for two weeks on a 1200 mile raid from Kentucky. You do the math and understand how tired the horses were!)
My husband laughed afterwards. “You made that man’s day. You took notes while he gave you far more details than you’ll ever need.”
He’s right. I didn’t need most of the information, but it was so much fun to watch the amateur’s face as he told me everything he knew about saddles and the Union cavalry, I couldn’t stop asking questions.
Amateurs, lovers, with their infectious zeal will do that to you!
Tweetables
Amateurs, passion and the Civil War Click to Tweet
What fuels cannons, horses and hoop skirts? Click to Tweet
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