The story in me:

Was ready to be born

I did not ever intend to write a book in spite of the fact that I had been carrying a story that I had been writing for 70 years of my life.

Our youngest son kept telling me that I should write a book about my life.

I remember the first time that he suggested it.

He had just finished reading Ta-Nehisi Coates book Between the World and Me.

I had read the book as well and I remember how much the book moved me.

“Dad,” our son said, “ you could have written that story, because that story is your story .”

A challenge that I heard but that I quickly put out of my mind.

I remember once I made the decision to revisit our son’s challenge saying to the editor that I was no Ta-Nehisi Coates.

I expected her to agree with me and that would be the end of it.

Instead her words were: “No, you are not Ta-Nehisi Coates but you have a story to tell and it is a story that needs to be told and only you can tell it.”

Her words were enough to break me out of my self-doubt.

When I sat down to write the words would come easy. But remembering the pain of growing up In the Jim Crow South would not be as easy.

I had buried a lot and yet I knew that if I was going to tell the truth I had to peel back layers and layers of stuff associated with that pain.

There came a point in writing my book where I knew I was all in. There was no turning back.

10 months of writing sometimes getting up in the middle of the night when a memory would pop into my head or getting up early in the morning to do a complete rewrite of a section.

Finally, a book, my book which looks at America and the white Protestant Church denomination that I served in as an ordained Pastor for 30 years.

However neither the country nor the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America knew what to do with me as a Black man.

Country and Church are so imprisoned by white supremacy and racism that it keeps them locked in a sickness that will result in death.

If you want to know more I invite you to read

An Evangelical Pastor’s Cry, Alarm and Warning

US: The Resurrection of American Terror

Rev. Kenneth W. Wheeler