Example of autobiography spiritual

Origins

It is hard to know where to start a story about faith. We all come from God. If things go well, by God’s grace, we are all headed back to God. But the road is almost never very clear, and it is the ruts and hurdles that make up the stuff of a story. Mine started in Seattle more than half a century ago in a family quarrel.

Elizabeth, my mother-to-be, had just introduced the man she meant to marry, Donald, to her mother, Blanche. There must have been some sort of meal. There must have been some sort of conversation. Elizabeth had grown up the unwanted second and last child of a relatively wealthy couple. Her best friend from school came from a big loving family that provided a refuge for Elizabeth growing up, and she wanted that life for herself. She had been engaged once before to a well-placed young man who shared her dream, but he had died of leukemia. Now she had found Donald. Unfortunately, Donald had told her that they could not marry unless she gave up on having children. And now her mother was telling her that something about Donald was “not right.” In a spirit of defiant optimism, Elizabeth married Donald over Blanche’s objections. I was born ten months later.

Elizabeth had thought that no one could really object to a baby. She had imagined that, once I ar

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