Here’s the second half of Biddy Chambers interviews her biographer.
(You can read the first half here)
This is an imagined exchange between Biddy and Michelle Ule–written by me.
Why did you write about Biddy?
BC: “My question is why you wrote about me in the first place.”
MU: You were such an engaging character when I wrote my World War I novel–in fact, you stole several scenes and changed the plot–I wanted to know more about who you were.
Besides, Nicholas suggested it.
Nicholas holding David’s book!
Oswald Chambers: “A good man, Nicholas.”
BC: “The focus of my life was serving Jesus Christ, as it is for any believer. I did not need a book written about me.”
MU: Yet, you exemplified the title of your most famous work so very well in your life. You really did live your life to God’s utmost over the course of an extraordinary set of circumstances.
BC: “That was Oswald’s title.”
MU: He was dead. You titled the book.
BC: “But that was Oswald’s goal, that everyone should live their life for one purpose: to glorify God.”
MU: You showed us how.
Oswald Chambers: “Very true, Beloved Disciple.”
Where did you get this information?
BC: “How did you discover all this information?”
MU: The transcription of Kathleen’s interview with David McCasland was the major source, along with Oswald Chambers: His Life and Works and David McCasland’s book Oswald Chambers: Abandoned to God.
Speaking of David, did you two interview him?
Oswald Chambers laughs.
BC: “David did not have some of the information you included in your book.”
MU: David wrote his book 25 years before I wrote mine. The Internet was in its infancy at that time; he had no way of discovering some of the things I learned.
BC: “You made use of something called Google?”
MU: Google is a search engine that enabled me to scour documents effortlessly from my office. Ancestry.com, a genealogy site, provided information about your family, which I often cross-referenced with Google–their books, maps, and general searches.
My interviews included talking with Eva’s son and grandson and exchanging information with Gladys’ niece and daughter. I found Marian’s grandson and great-grandson and also Mary’s niece; they all answered questions.
I never found any of your relatives, however, or Oswald’s, to interview. Brother Andrew affectionately remembered you and Kathleen.
BC: “We enjoyed knowing him and were pleased to provide copies of My Utmost for His Highest, which he smuggled into the Iron Curtain.”
MU: Those books made a real difference in people’s lives, Biddy. I’m glad you were friends with Brother Andrew and his ministry.
BC: “Kathleen, too.”
Anything else?
BC: ” Isn’t that your favorite question? Is there anything else you’d like to say?”
MU: Thank you for everything. Oswald’s words and the books you made from them have changed my life. The last four and a half years have been wonderful for me personally.
I’ve learned a great deal about God. You showed me an astonishing way of living for God’s glory.
The way you handled money, your insistence we are not “amateur providences” for God, and the example you set time and again for choosing the harder way, continue to astonish me.
I’m not sure I’ll ever get over your reaction to the London Blitz destroying all the books, nor Kathleen’s example of trust following her father’s death.
Going to Egypt during a war with a toddler–is not the choice I would have made.
Holding the book for the first time.
Yet all of those examples of living in faith affected me and encouraged me.
Thank you. It was a joy and a pleasure to write your biography.
BC: Blinks quickly but says nothing
Oswald Chambers, however, stands up and hugs me.
At least in my imagination . . .
Tweetables
What questions would you ask your biographer? Click to Tweet
Mrs Oswald Chambers responds to her biographer. Click to Tweet
An imagined interview between Mrs. Oswald Chambers and her biographer. Click to Tweet
Every month in 2017, I related the stories about God’s leading and my blessed–and astonished–reactions while writing Mrs. Oswald Chambers
Thoughts? Reactions? Lurker?