Telling My Story

I wrote a story for the April issue of GUIDEPOSTS magazine. When it came out, I showed it to a few people, then carefully filed my copies away and went back to work. I didn’t really tell many people, and I didn’t do much to celebrate. Hopefully, my story would inspire someone, and that would be celebration enough.

Then last week I got a frantic email from my mother: “WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME YOU HAD A STORY IN GUIDEPOSTS MAGAZINE?!” I could practically hear the hurt in the email.

My first reaction was frustration. Who had outed me? I demanded to know who told her about it. Apparently my mom’s friend Leta is a subscriber and had brought the magazine in to work and shown it around to all my mom’s co-workers. Argh. So now not only did my mom know, but all of my mom’s friends knew too.

I wrote back and told my mom something about how I just hadn’t quite gotten around to mentioning it yet, and promised I’d send her a copy of the magazine. Then I bent over and hit my head on my desk. I should have known that with 5 million readers, someone would have pointed the story out to my mom. I should have just told her about it.

So why didn’t I?

The truth is, my story, like all stories in GUIDEPOSTS, is very personal. It’s about a time when I was incredibly vulnerable and questioning everything I thought I knew. The life my parents had built for me and the faith my mom had passed down to me was a part of that.

Somehow, I was kind of embarrassed for her to know about that. I guess I didn’t really want her to see how badly I had struggled. For some reason, telling my story to the 5 million readers of GUIDEPOSTS didn’t seem like a big deal, but opening up to the people I love about what was really going on in one of the most difficult periods of my life felt a lot more scary.

Isn’t it funny how the people we love most are the hardest to be honest with?

After my mom’s reaction, I sent a copy to my grandfather, and he called me last night to tell me he’d shown it off at church as soon as it came in the mail. He also said he was proud of me, which I think is what my mom was trying to say too. So I guess opening myself up was worth it in the end—I know at least two people who the story helped.

Actually, counting me, I know three.  

Beth Adams is the creator and editor of GUIDEPOSTS’ Home to Heather Creek fiction series.