Trying to Make Sense of My Life

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I’ve spent much time in recent years remembering and reflecting on events, relationships, and stories that have shaped who I am. It says a lot about my station in life. I’m poignantly aware of having exceeded by more than a decade my biblically allotted “three score years and ten.”

A few colleagues and several family members, including grandchildren, urged me to share stories from my life and more than sixty years of ordained ministry. It has been a daunting, emotional, frustrating, and yet healing process.

Reliving past struggles, mistakes, failures, hurts, griefs, disappointments, and losses resurfaces unresolved guilt and regrets. The grace I have proclaimed for six decades has been put to a test as a lived reality. Accepting forgiveness for myself is sometimes harder than extending it to others.

But the process of remembering, reflecting, and writing has been predominantly a source of healing, thanksgiving, and hope. I am in awe of the ineffable mystery and resilience of life. Each person’s finite story is mysteriously interwoven into an Infinite Story with limitless connections and possibilities.

Seemingly inconsequential events, encounters, or decisions in retrospect were life-transforming. “What ifs” are part of remembering: What if I had not gone to that conference? What if I had said “no” to a particular invitation? What if I had not enrolled in that school, or taken a different class, or entered an alternative vocation?

Life is a mysterious combination of choices made and conditions prescribed, situations over which we have control and circumstances beyond our control, the “givens” of nature and the influence of nurture.

Life is simply too complex, too interrelated, and mysterious to be fully described. Memory never records the totality of any incident and recall always reflects current contexts as much as the event itself.

Therefore, writing a memoir requires a stance of vulnerability and humility in remembering and interpreting the circumstances, experiences, events, perceptions, and relationships that constitute one’s life. The process is risky and fraught with temptations for distortion and misrepresentation.

The book, Shifting Margins: From Fear and Exclusion to Love and Belonging is my attempt to make sense of my own life. It began with simply putting memories on paper, starting with my earliest recalled experiences and moving through seven decades. Reviewing journals and accumulated files of correspondence and other documents resurfaced forgotten events, transitional experiences, and relationships. The result was almost six hundred pages!

With the help of a skilled editor (who happens to be my daughter), identifying themes, and creating a coherent and readable manuscript followed. Reducing the manuscript by two-thirds became symbolic of my reality. Life’s experiences are narrowing. The circle of engagement and involvement is diminishing. Physical energy is declining. Cognitive functioning remains but with less quickness and retention. The end is far closer than the beginning!

After all this remembering and reflecting, I have concluded that perhaps the goal isn’t to make sense of life. Rather, it is to participate in its unfolding mystery with love, perseverance, and hope.

Whatever the stage, there are opportunities to give and receive love. There are challenges to confront with determination and courage. There is hope that our stories ultimately fold into God’s Story of Endless Love and Resurrection Life.

To order Shifting Margins, https://www.marketsquarebooks.com/store/p123/Shifting_Margins.html

14 thoughts on “Trying to Make Sense of My Life”

  1. Dear Sir:

    I am 91, living in Springmoor LCRC in Raleigh. I look forward to reading and reminising through your book … as I have been doing a lot of that, myself.

    I will place the book in our library here at S’moor … after reading it, myself.

    I am a former member (10 years) in the SC Conference (’66-’76) before you came as Bishop.

    Thank you. Blessings.

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  2. Bishop Carder,

    You have influenced, challenged, and impacted so very many lives through your writing, your sermons, your presence – far more than you could ever imagine. Most recently, your homily at Jack Meadors’ funeral moved me to take notes and I have referred to them often. I look forward to reading this new book and fully expect to be blessed, yet again.

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  4. Thank you! Just in this blog you offer such freedom to live into my years. I think I have spent too much time trying “to make sense of my life.” I thank God that my path intersected with yours. You have taught me and shown me so many pearls of wisdom that has made my life better.

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  7. Ken,

    Thanks for this post.

    Toward the end of his life, my father wrote a 60-page autobiography which has become a family treasure. This motivated my oldest daughter to strongly encourage me to do the same, and this has become an ongoing project of mine (for which SHE will be the eventual editor). The deal I made with her is that I would do it, if SHE would also do it at some appropriate future point, continuing a “family library” of sorts.

    Decades ago, Robert Meacham recommended a book to me (“The Road Less Traveled”, M. Scott Peck), saying that it expressed thoughts he had had, but in much clearer language than he could manage. Your blog has a similar effect on me. This exercise has already been a journey, and as I turn from the easier stories to the more substantive ones, I’ve had thoughts that closely mirror some of what you’ve said beautifully here … so much so that I may borrow a few lines (with appropriate credit, of course) for a prologue.

    I’m sure my scribbles will never be anywhere near as profound as what you’ve written, but the process of recording life, linking it to what you’ve learned is truly meaningful, and sharing it with those with whom life has been shared, is quite an experience. Thanks for your insightful view of this exercise.

    And best wishes,

    • Max Morris

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    • Thank you, Max! I encourage you to follow your daughter’s advice and write the autobiography. I have preserved the much longer document for my family. Each person’s life is, in a sense, an incarnation of the love and presence of God; therefore, worthy to be remembered, especially by family. All the best in your endeavor.

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