This month, my church chose my first book, Confessions of a Prodigal Daughter, for its book club. I hadn’t volunteered the fact that I had written a book, and it was published under my maiden name, so I was surprised that someone managed to find it.
I’m not sure how common it is for authors to attend book clubs that discuss their own book, but I felt I should attend for no other reason except to reiterate how I’m not the same person I was when I wrote it. At 22 years old, there are some literary choices I made that I wouldn’t make today. It feels like reading an old journal (actually, many passages were taken directly from old journals).
I wasn’t aiming for shock value, but I was conscious of not appearing “too Christian” for some of the non-religious family and friends who might pick it up. So there is a smattering of bad words. Unsavory details about a rape. And very under-developed, at times blatantly immature theology (which is to be expected of someone who had only been following Christ for about three years at that point).
There are some passages written with a naive-but-innocent-enough-to-be-charming kind of faith. And then there are passages that are embarrassing to reread. It is for this reason I sometimes wish I’d waited to publish, at least until my frontal lobe was fully developed by age 25 (let this be a lesson for any autobiographical young writers out there!). Sometimes I read the occasional 1 or 2-star reviews on Amazon and actually agree with them!
All those self-deprecating thoughts aside, someone at my church first read my book and decided it was appropriate enough to recommend for book club. So I attended, not quite knowing what to expect.
I will first say that I should have expected better of the ladies (it’s a club of all ladies) at my church. I showed up not to face a Heresy Hunting squad, but a group of kind, compassionate sisters who were excited at the chance to learn more about me, considering I’m intensely introverted. Many of them commented on learning things about Jewish culture that they didn’t know before. For all my young fumbling and struggling, it was clear to them that God had his hand on me from the beginning (can’t argue with that).
At one point, I mentioned that my fear with promoting this book is that the Christian I am today will be judged by the type of Christian I was back then: the one who felt caught between conservative and progressive groups; who wanted to be faithful but also feared causing offense.
One woman told me that that inner tension seemed rather obvious to her throughout the book. “I wouldn’t worry about the things you got ‘wrong,’” she told me. “I just saw a young girl trying to find God and her way in the world after going through some very hard things.”
Those were healing words for me to hear. That sentiment wasn’t so obvious to some critical reviewers on Amazon, but it was to the flesh-and-blood sister in Christ I worship next to weekly, and that should be all that matters.
There’s a real danger in putting your life out there in a book to be judged by strangers. There’s nothing you can do to prevent people from forming judgments about you. That’s one big reason why I’m hesitant to write another memoir ever again.
But as a full-length explanation of the events and circumstances that led a Jewish suburban girl to discover Christ, the book stands as a testament of something remarkable. Perhaps I need to show myself more grace, as the ladies in the church book club did so beautifully.
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