Book Review: All My Knotted-up Life

In 2009, I had the time of my life returning to my old stomping grounds in DeKalb, IL, for a women's retreat where we did a Beth Moore Bible Study. I have also read a few Beth Moore books. Way back in 2008, I read Feathers from my Nest. I've even dipped into her poetry, in Things Pondered and Further Still. It turns out that her earliest poetry book was self-published. In this book, All My Knotted-up Life, Beth calls it "an earnest attempt," but "embarrassingly poorly done." Yet, I enjoyed them and found her vulnerability refreshing and real. This memoir hit on a few things that I knew from the poetry books, but extended it with more specifics. In the previous ones, she hinted at childhood sexual abuse. In this memoir, she identifies the perpetrator as her own father.

For the life of me, I cannot understand this dynamic. Yet, it happens repeatedly to young girls. How could a man do such a thing to his own daughter? The damage, the confliction, the abuse of power... all of it is just despicable. One who is meant to protect, turns everything on its head and perpetrates emotionally scarring abuse? "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked." (Jeremiah 17:9 KJV)

Then I read of the trauma Beth's husband experienced at the tender age of two, when his four-year-old brother was killed in front of his eyes in an explosion. My heart aches for Beth and Keith, trying to blend lives with enough baggage to sink a ship. And yet, they have endured. Internal conflicts, along with the external pressures of fame, did not drive them apart. They are to be commended.

This life-story was engrossing and disturbing, in equal measures. In the final chapters, Beth outlines the events and reactions that led her to leave the Southern Baptist denomination. It must have been excruciating to seek another church when your name is so well-known. Yet, they found comfort in an Anglican church and are healing their wounds. I appreciated Beth's vulnerability and honesty, her sincere transparency. It is clear she was not concerned with presenting a sanitized version of herself, the way some might. She lays it all out and admits her weaknesses and challenges. I pray people will cut her some slack and call off the dogs.