Dressing the clouds - the wonder of putting words to our own stories by Tracy Willimaosn

I was lying on the grass basking in the sun.  I squeezed my eyes shut against the glare and drifted in the beautiful heat filled haze.  A shadow fell upon me and I opened my eyes. A tiny puff ball cloud was edging its way into the sun’s territory.  So small yet seemingly of far greater power, the sun’s reign

momentarily conquered.  Bit by bit the fierce golden orb was obliterated but nothing could put out its light.  The cloud turned charcoal grey with waving streaks of red, gold and pink streaming from its edges.  As surely as the sun was hidden by the cloud, so the cloud was changed by the sun. 

I gazed up marvelling at the beauty and stretched out my arms longing to take hold of the cloud, bring it down to earth and tether it.  I wanted to see, to know it and hold it close to me, but it constantly eluded my grasp and in minutes it was gone, travelling on its unseen path, dwindling into the distance. I gazed after it as I basked once again in the sun’s unhindered rays and knew I would never see that particular cloud again.

So with memories -

When I was faced this year with the task of writing the memoir of mine and my friend and ministry partner Marilyn Baker’s lives and ministry together I found the process as nebulous as trying to catch hold of the passing clouds.  My mind was full of fleeting memories past and present.  Childhood with all its joys and sorrows – how could I possibly put those years into words that would enable the reader to step through a gateway and suddenly be in my world? How could I even approach those ‘clouds’ that had seemingly obliterated the light of my developing personality, let alone catch hold of them and dress their actuality and emotion with words? Or those glorious, yet to us ordinary, experiences of being in itinerant ministry?  How could those fleeting glimpses and dwindling memories be captured and held to be gazed upon and entered in by others?

It seemed an impossible task and yet a vital one for unlike the clouds in the sky which will always be replaced by another, the clouds of our memories are all irreplaceable, all uniquely real, an essential part of what we have been and who we are now.  And I discovered a most awesome thing, that as I caught hold of a fleeting glimpse of a memory and wrote it down, that very process of dressing it with words, brought the memory alive again and together with the facts and locations of the experiences came the emotions – the wonder, the joy, the fear and terror, the helplessness, the awe, the shame and the beauty, the laughter and the tears.

Telling my story and Marilyn’s – was with the original aim of inviting readers to know us and our history, to walk our journey with us and be inspired, entertained, made to laugh or made to cry.  But I found it was so much more than that, for as I took each one of those fleeting clouds of memory and painted them with words, I began to see something so beautiful it made me cry, that the hand of God had been over our lives from the very beginning, weaving strands together, forming, shaping, speaking His love, care and beauty, transforming even the darkest moments to qualities that would enable us to shine for Him. 

The combination of our memories and our words are supremely powerful for they open a window not just for others to see in, but for us to see ourselves, to understand, to feel, to grow and be changed; to have our hearts opened to God’s presence in our lives, to see Him, understand Him, to worship and be changed.

I am so grateful now for the invitation to write our memoir and believe its an invitation God is giving to us all.  It’s not about writing a book and being published so much as finding that picture of who we are in God and discovering that everything counts in His kingdom.  Words and sentences enabling us to catch the clouds and dress them with the reality of God’s dazzling grace.

Why not start the adventure of writing your own memoir and catching your own clouds today?

 

Tracy Williamson is an author and speaker working alongside blind singer/songwriter Marilyn Baker for MBM Trust an itinerant music and speaking ministry.  Their memoir, A Beautiful Tapestry will be published by Authentic Media in Nov 2020.