Tell the World

By Myra Waverly

Have you ever had the feeling there was something you had to do? Something that starts being on your mind just about every day and soon after every minute of the day? This is how I felt for months. "Something", "Someone" wanted me to write and Tell the World. "It/He/They" showed me very clearly what to do ("Tell the World"). Left at a loss about what I was to "tell", I just started writing hoping things would become clearer soon. This is my story. The story of a Muslim raised girl growing up in France in humility and surrounded by family love, until faith crashed against emotions and unleashed an unexpected reaction to my life desires. Everything happens for a reason though and the chain of events that followed (and brought me to the United States) made me the person I am today. My book shares with the world what I faced and attempts to contrast the faith I thought I knew with what Salvation brought to my life. My confusion and uncertainty lead to a quest for truth and answers I never imagined.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Sep 10, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312500273

Book preview

Tell the World

Cover

Tell the World

By Myra Waverly

[e-mail]

978-1-304-85945-7

Copyright © 2014 Myra Waverly. All rights reserved.

Preface

With all my heart, I pray that this book is what You intended it to be. I am but a vessel in Your mighty plan and I will gladly serve you always. I pray this book will inspire readers to water the seed within and develop an everlasting, life-changing relationship with You.

No Matter your background, believe that there is only One, trust in Him, and you will live at peace. In writing this book, I initially did not understand what I was to tell the world; yet, there was no doubt that He wanted me to write it. Because I trust in Him and know this is all part of His divine plan, I followed His will and told my story, hoping that through this short journey every keystroke would bring me closer to the truth…my truth.

Do not be offended by any of my words, for this was not my intent. Instead, question, research, and find your own truth within, with what is hoped to be thought-provoking and God-seeking challenges. 

Chapter 1

Early Years

Born in Paris, France, in the glorious dragon year of 1976, I grew up in a small town just a few miles south of the capital. There, in a modest rented apartment, four of my sisters, two of my brothers, and I enjoyed a relatively peaceful life, raised by loving and caring parents. My parents were born in an adorable and quiet little village in the south of Algeria. Some of you might remember this country as the birthplace of author Albert Camus. Our village was as rural as it got, with mud houses and goats roaming around in the dry heat of the day.

As children, we spent our summers in the village, woken every morning by my grandma’s obnoxious donkey. If I had to characterize my childhood, I would probably use the terms happy, warm, and secure. Those were the days….

My parents were raised according to the pillars of Islam and, as a result, the whole family grew according to the Muslim faith as well. My father was born in 1929 and retired at the age of sixty from a warehouse laborer job. My mother, twelve years younger than him, never had a professional career (or should I say, never had time for a second job). The schedule she kept as a housewife and mother always filled each of her exhausting days. (What a rewarding, yet under-appreciated, life choice. If I could afford it, being a stay-at-home mom would, by far, be my dream.)

Humility was also practiced daily. I recall the times we had to obtain food from local food banks and how we received our Christmas gifts from the town hall donation center. Money never was abundant, but we always had something to eat and something to wear, albeit not of the latest fashion trends.

I’ll always remember the sunny day when my dear father decided to take me to the Montreuil market place to get me a new pair of shoes. I was about nine at the time, and I knew that I would come home with shoes I wouldn’t like. Unfortunately, when the worry of money rules and leads your choices, the preference of a little girl for those cute pink shoes or these white leather ones has to yield the way to less pretty, but durable, shoes.

The fact is, at such a young age, I could not understand these strategic parental decisions. It was even harder to fathom other children laughing at my ugly new shoes the day they were bought. Children can be cruel. The sad and humiliated little girl I was resolved that, one way or another, I would obtain mean-kids-approved, prettier shoes. With this in mind, that same evening, as everybody was watching television in the living room, I went to bed early. A little while later, when my parents thought that I was asleep in Morpheus’s arms, I started to pretend to talk in my sleep, letting them know that I didn’t like my new brown shoes.

Why or how did I come up with that idea? Sincerely, I have no clue. Did it work? Unfortunately, yes. After one of my older sisters came to hear what I was muttering in my sleep and reported it to my father, I heard him tell my mom to take me to get new shoes the next day.

Naturally, I am not proud of this, but the feeling a child gets when others make fun of the poor way she is dressed can make the imagination engine work like it never did before. If only that sudden creativity wasn’t followed by remorse.

For some reason, when I think of my quiet childhood, this sad anecdote always emerges in my head reviving the remorse I felt then and now.

Fortunately for me, I also have many happier childhood memories, including our kind neighbors. Mr. and Mrs. Fournier was a French couple that had a twin daughter and son. The daughter, Celine, older than us by a few years, always let her mother give away the toys she wasn’t playing with anymore. Filled with gratitude and excitement, we welcomed the out-of-fashion old Barbies and other dolls we would discover in the cardboard donation box. What more could we ask for? We had food, a roof, and even toys. God was certainly providing for us.

Another one of my favorite childhood memories involves my sisters. Picture this: three little girls - no older than eight or nine - playing with dolls in the living room sitting on an old rug. Apparently nothing exceptional, except that the only light revealing the scene was the shy moonlight gleam clearing a way through the tiny slits of the shutters. There, in the middle of the night, my two younger sisters and I were quietly playing with our dolls in an oasis of glimmer surrounded by a desert of darkness.

This was one of our usual rendez-vous scheduled the evening before, another one of my favorite memories. We actually got caught one night by our mom who sent us straight back to bed as you could imagine.

I always had good relationships with all of my sisters and brothers. Of course, I won’t pretend that I never argued with any of them (or even fought), but those things happen all the time in any big family. Besides, like the French proverb says: Who loves well, chastises well…especially between siblings.

My school years were delightful. I was a little girl who loved school, books, and my caring teachers. My satisfying report cards were always rewarded with a sticker from the teacher. I would also get a warm hug from my mother telling me how proud she was of me. I know that sometimes she wished she could have done more than just give me a big hug, but every penny was too important to be given away to a child to buy treats.

In 1987, when I was about ten years old or so, a winter school trip was planned to go Areches in the Alps for a month. Mrs. Angelle, my teacher at the time, correctly suspected that I wouldn’t be able to pay the $125 fee necessary to join my schoolmates on the trip. On a Sunday morning soon after, she came knocking on our door. She told me she wanted to talk to my parents, which she did for a short while. When she left, my father came to me in the kitchen and simply said: Well, looks like we have to find you a suitcase.

Thanks to all the teachers who contributed toward my ski trip, I was able to feel like a part of the group and I have unforgettable memories of snow-topped mountains and evergreen trees. My childhood was a serene play performed on a modest and unpretentious theater stage where all the actors learned the true values of life.

As the years passed, the teenager I became wasn’t much different from the little girl I left behind. Some things had changed, others had not. I was still a very good student and interested in learning. Just like my sisters and my little brother who was seven years younger than me, I wasn’t wearing any brand name clothes and I was