Remembering A Good and Perfect Gift

Last updated on: April 19, 2013 at 2:20 pm by Amy Julia Becker

Remembering A Good and Perfect Gift 2013-04-19T14:20:34-04:00 Amy Julia Becker

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I haven’t done any speaking events this past year, intentionally. I knew the travel would be too much for me and for our family. But as the winter wore on, I agreed to a few events this spring–a talk at St. Luke’s in Darien, CT, last Sunday, a local book club next week, and a few more local venues in the months to come.

As I got ready for the St. Luke’s talk, I couldn’t find my copy of A Good and Perfect Gift. I searched the boxes in the hallway on the third floor. I searched the half-unpacked closet in my office. I scoured the bookshelves in Peter’s study. But it was nowhere to be found. So I opened a new one, and I read through the passages I often share and I began to mark it up to read. It brought me back to a comment a friend had made years ago, that a memoir is a three-part process, beginning with living a story, then writing that story, and then seeing how people respond to that story. Sometimes I forget how grateful I am for that third part. But Sunday morning was a sweet reminder that God has changed my life through the gift of our daughter, and that God can use that transformation not just to bless me but to bless others as well.

David Anderson, the rector of St. Luke’s, wrote a blog post in response to my talk. He wrote:

…at some point the false identity becomes too much to bear. We realize it’s pitiful and futile and joyless to live behind that mask a day longer. For Becker, that moment came when they placed into her arms a little girl who broke her heart because she was never, ever going to be able to do enough. But that heartbreak broke her through, into the truth, not only about Penny but about herself.

“That heartbreak broke her through.” And I couldn’t be more grateful, for God has pieced my heart back together into one that experiences far more joy and love and hope and peace than ever before.

**On a somewhat related note, the Kindle version of A Good and Perfect Gift is on sale, this week only, for $1.99.

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