by Kat Silverglate ©2024

Writers, by and large, are an insecure lot. Imposter syndrome comes relentlessly like sugar ants marching through razor thin kitchen crevices or mosquitos invading summer’s rest. To write a book-length work is to live 24/7 like Nehemiah; one hand building while the other wields a weapon to ward off forces that come against anything remotely good.

Sound dramatic? Read just about any book on writing by writers or join any serious writing community. It’s a thing. It’s often the thing that prevents us from telling stories that need to be told. Stories that are a balm for another’s gaping wound. Stories that weaken our own self-constructed, walled-in, hardened-heart spaces. 

At the same time, understanding the insecurity that accompanies the act of laying bare vulnerable bits of life for strangers to delight in or dismiss – it draws us in. Who hasn’t read a piece that left us feeling like the author went back to their former hell just for us. To find us where they once were in order to bring us their hope story? Who hasn’t whispered a tear-stained “thanks” to a storyteller we’ll never meet or the God who gave them strength to get from an idea to the finished work that dripped light into dark times like medicine into a PICC line?

Georgie Davis is in the middle of that journey, pen in one hand and bat in the other beating off the resistance. She has a story to tell. A tragic, hope-laden story. A story she can’t tell without revisiting unspeakable pain and loss and hundreds of unopened letters. A story she can’t tell without clinging to the God who brought her through it at 17 to her 59^th year of life.

“Blah blah blah,” she says with wide emphatic eyes. “When I write, I feel like I’m running down scattered rabbit holes. To me, my story sounds like a whole lot of blah blah blah. Who’s gonna want to read all this blah blah blah?” She’s three chapters shy of finishing her first full draft.

An anonymous critique of one of her early chapters would have sent most of us packing: “Memoirs tend to be very much about you, and unless it is written brilliantly, you are famous, and/or the story is something extraordinary, this [referring to her chapter] probably won’t work.”  It was a blow but not a knock-out. She didn’t pack up her pen. She picked up her bat.

“I’m not famous, my life isn’t extraordinary, and I’m not a brilliant writer, but I have a story to tell. If I wait for brilliance, I’ll never write. So, I plug along.”

Georgie describes plugging along as something akin to the pain of epidural-less childbirth. “Unlike childbirth however, in writing, I’m grateful I can control the narrative. When the aches come, I stop them. Do a different task. Go to bed… But I know, if I don’t push through the pain, I will never give birth to it.”  So, she pushes in a way she didn’t know how to at 17 when her 18-year-old sister Bertie drowned in a riptide off the Ivory Coast.

“Growing up in Liberia with missionary parents, death was a regular part of life. Malaria, tuberculosis, malnutrition… and wars brought burial after burial. People in Liberia often develop a sense of hardness from the constant pain that comes from so much loss. Their emotions wear out. After 17 years in Liberia, I developed a similar response to death. I guess you could say a callousness set in. That is until my only biological sister Bertie died. And then I was shattered.”

Georgie and Bertie had a bond forged as much by their identity as Third Culture Kids as their closeness in age—one year. Born to white American parents who were already raising two black Liberian daughters and who would adopt two more after Georgie’s birth, the sisters lived between cultures—primarily in Liberia with periodic furloughs to the United States. As is typical of Third Culture Kids, they didn’t feel completely part of either world; rather, they found a ‘third culture’—their nuclear family who clung to each other as they moved together between two countries.

“I’m blue eyed, fair skinned and fair haired. Growing up, I was the only white girl in my grade, surrounded by people whose beautiful dark skin I envied. For the longest time, I wanted to be black like my sisters and friends. The reaction of the children when my dad arrived in the villages where he ministered stood in stark contrast to our experience in America. The village kids would run to touch his hairy arms and pull at it until they could see his pasty white skin below. It fascinated them. They embraced and loved him. When we took our diverse family back to the United States on furlough, people’s reactions were painful and confusing. My sisters and I found comfort by clinging to each other. We formed a tight bond.”

In preparation for college, Georgie and Bertie’s parents sent them to boarding school in the Ivory Coast. For the first time, they met other Third Culture Kids. Kids who’d grown up between worlds. Homeless except for the family that gave them a consistent culture. Kids who were finding, maybe for the first time, others who understood. Wanting desperately to attend college together, Georgie convinced her parents to let her live with an aunt in the United States during Bertie’s last trimester. Her plan was to fast track her own graduation so they’d be in sync. She’d been state-side for two months when the call came. There would be no college-together-dream. Robertta “Bertie” Hungerpiller, slated to be the valedictorian at her Ivory Coast graduation, was dead at 18. 

Georgie’s calloused heart opened long enough to be shattered by the loss, to make it back to Liberia for the funeral, to make it back to the States; and then, a hardening set in. Like a hard rock. Bullet proof against the processing of Bertie’s death.

“Life just kept going. And I put my head down and went with it. When I’d visit my parents in Liberia, my mom would try to talk to me about Bertie. I didn’t even respond. I couldn’t go there. I didn’t know how. I was on lock down.”

Georgie got married. Had children. Ran a multi-ethnic church with her pastor husband for decades. Went to college. Was the president of a successful company. Had grandchildren. The narrative never really slowed down enough to properly process the loss. Sure, there were cracks in the lock down. She went on mission trips to Liberia and even moved her sister’s remains to new land where her family was involved in mission work, but the narrative didn’t slow down enough to hear the Lord say, “it’s time.” Not until she and her husband retired. That’s when she heard the Lord speak—

Georgie learned in real time that the Lord doesn’t call the equipped, He equips the called. And for her, that equipment came in the form of letters. Hundreds of them. Bertie’s high school letters to her parents. Her parents’ letters to friends and relatives about the loss of their daughter. Her grandmothers’ letters. And then access to the people who were in the water that day. On the shore. Friends at her boarding school. Forty years had passed and finally she was listening, for the first time, to a couple who was with Bertie in her final moments. The husband’s efforts to save her sister were nothing short of heroic.

“The beach trip was Bertie's senior outing. The last hurrah three weeks before graduation.  A young couple who had graduated a few years earlier were invited to tag along on the trip. Locals warned the kids of where the undertow was, but a storm had reversed the current. Thinking they were entering a safe area, four of the seniors were swimming right into the danger zone. Three made it back to shore. The husband of the couple swam out to help Bertie. For 45 minutes, he and Bertie drifted further and further out into the turbulent waves. But he was unsuccessful. He barely made it back to shore himself.”

Georgie’s heart walls finally came crashing down while listening to the wife’s harrowing account of her steadfast presence by Bertie’s side. With their parents out of reach in Liberia, it was the wife who stepped forward to advocate for her sister’s dignity and honor. From accompanying her remains to the mortuary to ensuring that the necessary arrangements were made to transport the body back to Liberia – it was a magnificent display of selflessness. In a way, she was like Jesus, standing in the gap with love and compassion during the family's absence.

Georgie’s in the thick of it now, pen in one hand, bat in the other. As she goes back to this painful place, God is remaking her. Moving where He does His best work – in the heart. Breaking down barriers. Filling in gaps. Clearly, He’s not done with her one ridiculous life. And if you’re reading this, He’s not done with yours either.

In Luke 19 we find Jesus on a donkey riding into Jerusalem. The triumphal entry into the holy city surrounded by the people who have a whole-heck-of-a-lot to blah blah blah about. The people who have been touched and healed and transformed by the Lord of Lords.

When the religious people try to shut down the rejoicing over all the true God-stories, Jesus says this:  

We may not be eloquent, or brilliant or famous, but surely we can speak better than the stones! Surely our blah blah blah beats a pebble? If we don’t speak about what God has done, the rocks will. God intends for the hurting world to know His hand. His heart. His ways. His kids. Their God stories. Because someone, somewhere, is in a valley that you’ve already traversed, and they need hope. Not from a brilliant writer. Not from a famous person. But from perfectly imperfect you. Because He carried YOU. Because if we stop at the fear that our simple words sound like BLAH BLAH BLAH, we’ll miss God’s invitation to be a part of the hope party He has planned for a hurting soldier on the battlefield of life.  

Nuff said!

Let’s talk about our May Mission.

In your mission pack you have three sticky notes that say “blah.” Together they say “blah, blah, blah.” If you don't have a set and would like one, go to our contact link above and we'll get one out to your right away.

Can you look back over your life and identify God’s mighty hand in three separate places? Have you taken the time to write each story? To revisit each moment? To meditate on it? To ask God to break up any hard spots that have formed as you wonder, maybe, where He was in the darkest parts?

Could it be that the call in 1 Peter 3:15 is an invitation to blah blah blah?  “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect…”

We don’t have to write a book, but are we prepared to share our hope stories? When the Lord asks us to share hope with “gentleness and respect,” is He, in part, asking us to visit these painful places with peace in our hearts? Calm? So that when we share we are meek. Like putty, as Georgie says.

At the bottom of each sticky note, you will find the words “Nuff said.” As you complete each story, check this box. You’ve “blah’d.” You’ve prepared yourself to share. Not brilliantly. Not to be famous. But to find Him on the pages of our lives and to be ready to give hope to the one who is walking through the valley.

Blah blah blah?

Nope. More like - hope hope hope!

Amen?

Amen!