I’ve just sent the final draft of Dancing on the Moon: The Non-Ordinary Life I Never Saw Coming, a Spiritual Memoir, to my publisher. It’ll be out in the fall. I started the journey three years ago and, along the way, it’s taken me down many twists and turns. Starts. Stops. Re-dos. Should this stay in, come out? Sometimes it’s felt like taking old photographs from a cedar chest, faded and dusty, to hold gently once again and to hear what is still whispering across time. Some of those old photos have asked that I sit long and quiet to see what part they may still want to play in this new photo-story album. In these cases, nothing less than an excavation of the heart was needed.
My memoir begins with an incident that happened with my grandfather when I was ten years old, leaving me a stutter, and culminates with my TEDx talk in 2018. I would outgrow the stutter but, truly, came to know it was the essential beginning. It, together, with a 30 second encounter with a public speaking teacher, Miss Shirely Curtis, to whom this memoir is dedicated, would set my trajectory and ignite my path.
I was a sophomore in high school and had read a story I’d written with minimal stuttering. After class, she told me she was going to recommend me for the school speech club because she said, “You have something to say.” (Blessedly, one of my lifelong friends, who’s endorsed my memoir, remembers being with me that day to witness that fortuitous event.) But this sent me to the edge of the greatest fear I’d ever known, to the edge of an abyss, where I was sure there was only death. Yet, stepping, I discovered a soft landing in the hand of God and a love beyond all I could possibly have held, known, or understood at the time. It’s only been in hindsight that I’ve come to see how that soft landing opened me to an unequivocal faith and trust in God, and at the very same time let me know I was nothing more than a reflection of moonlight from the One I’d come to love the most. How amazingly gracious and good is God . . .
I know some will be surprised to read my story. Perhaps those who met me later in life or have only known me in professional or academic settings. Even a few extended family and friends who only knew me in the summers at my grandparents, for it remained the only place I felt relaxed and carefree. And for one who’s been blessed with so many moments of grace as I have, well, I suspect there could be naysayers. It’s okay. I don’t write for them. I write for all those who have something they may feel is insurmountable, something that can’t be overcome. I write to show that, sometimes, what we may think is the absolute worst possible thing that could happen might just hold hidden gifts—gifts our beloved God is waiting to use through us to create a more full, beautiful, life and, in the end, to help us serve a greater good well beyond our imaginings.
In the end, I think of my memoir as a kind of “thank you” gift back to God for my life. After all, it’s the very least I can do when I’ve been made to shine, so often, like moonlight.
If you’ve read my blog over the years, you’ll find many familiar stories. But I tell others I’ve never shared publicly. Mostly, as I share stories from some long-faded photos alongside more recent one, my hope is you’ll see some reflection of yourself there, discover some gem that will serve your journey.
If so, who knows? Maybe you too will find yourself dancing on the moon.
(I don’t know what cover Wipf and Stock will design but I’ve chosen this one for this community blog as it reminds me how, back then, I could have never imagined the life coming.)
Stephanie Rutt 