Many parts of his early life story were uncomfortably familiar to mine even through the details were vastly different.
And painful though it was to be taken back to my some of my traumatic memories through hearing his, in total, the book was a confirmation to me that I have made a similar journey out of poverty and chaos and addicition into stability and even prosperity.
Vance credits specific people who helped him.
He also admits to making many difficult choices to leave, to change, and even to forsake one way of life for another that was totally foreign to him.
There were strategic people in my life, too. (People at church.)
I also consistently made painful choices- some mental, some spiritual, but many, if not most, were simply practical and physical- and these choices led me out and away from the life I may have inherited otherwise.
In many ways, Vance's book was a secular explanation of how one person got out of poverty, but then again, almost didn't.
I realize that someone could describe my life on similar, merely secular terms.
She got a scholarship.
She managed to keep it somehow.
She met a guy who had been raised in a different way of life.
She learned one million little ways of doing life differently than she had had life modeled for me, and she did those things consistently, and now, her life is totally different.
But, at least for my story, I'll say that any merely secular version of my story is only 1% of the truth, and if you described my life in material terms alone, you'd miss the real story about the greater, unseen realities at work.
I gave my life to Christ when I was a teenager, really gave Him the whole thing- and that has made all the difference- even the material, physical difference.
Vance's book was a painfully beautiful story that honors his roots, while nevertheless, tells the awful truth about the realities of poverty, addition, and disorder in many American families.
It prompts me to remember and give thanks for so much.
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