From The Heart

“...and Mary treasured up all these things, and pondered them in her heart.”

Most mothers love to tell about the day their children were born. These are some of our best stories, overflowing with life-threatening suspense, transformation, the miraculous and in the end, joy.

But none of our stories can match Mary’s. How happy she must have been to sit down with Luke and have a chance to tell her account of Jesus’ miraculous conception and dramatic birth, which she had been treasuring for decades.

Recently, I conducted an interview with an author about her latest book. The conversation ranged to a lot of different subjects: life, the writing process, seeking God in our art. Click here to read it.. The article was a long one, and when I published it, I received some great comments—but my favorite one came from my Dad.

“I like it, but did you type that whole thing? Isn’t there an app now that can do that for you?”

Dad’s notion was similar to my own thought while I wrote up that interview. It’s been some time since I did such a thing, and I forgot how much work it is. Journalism isn’t the writing without a net labor that fiction is. But taking on the responsibility to pass on other peoples’ most important stories to the world evokes its own kind of weighty thrill.

My little article was nothing compared to Luke’s master work. There was Mary, with one of the most amazing stories ever told waiting inside her. There came Luke, ready and willing to pass on her account to the world even though it contained information so explosive and counter to the powers that be, it would risk all their lives. He listened to Mary’s story, added it to others’ eye-witness accounts, and wove the jaw-dropping tapestry of Jesus’ life that we call the Book of Luke:

“Now in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man named Joseph, a descendent of King David. The girl’s name was Mary…

“Gabriel came to her and said, Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you… 

"Behold, you will have a son, and you should name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give him the throne of His father David; and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and His kingdom will have no end...

"The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; for that reason the holy child shall be called the Son of God…

“Mary responded, Behold, the bondslave of the Lord; may it be done to me according to your word…

"And she gave birth to her first-born son; and she wrapped him in cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no guestroom in the inn."

We've no indication that Mary was especially smart, or brave, or good. But we know this: God called her to make visible His love for all of us, and she was willing to risk everything to do what He asked. So was Luke. So should we all.

No Safe Place

I had a chance to catch a cup of coffee and a great discussion with Hilarey Johnson, author of Heart of Petra and Sovereign Ground. We talked about books, writing, God, church, art and Christianity...join us...

Lisa Michelle Hess: You have a new book out, Heart of Petra. Tell me about that.

Hilarey Johnson: If you think of my previous novel, Sovereign Ground, as the story of a girl trapped outside the church, then Heart of Petra is the story of a girl trapped inside the church. It’s about a girl raised in a religious home where her parents do truly love her, but they’ve lost sight of what it means to be led by God and the Holy Spirit. The parents are trapped in legalism and control…and appearances, especially. When you’re involved in ministry you do feel responsibility to not even have the appearance of evil. So, the premise of Heart of Petra was: What if you feel like you’re the only dirty one inside a church?

LMH: That idea of not having even the appearance of evil, which I think we always have in the back of our minds as Christians, for better or worse. Was that the seed that grew into Petra’s story?

HJ: Yes, and also because I’ve been through many church splits. The very first split I went through was right after my parents became Christians. It was painful. So much so, that we walked away from the church at that point, and didn’t attend church at all while I was in high school. When my kids were in junior high, we were involved in a church that was just really…sick, and went through split after split. We were involved in ministry there, so we stayed through them all. But, we eventually felt released by God to leave there, and we slipped away as quietly as possible. My kids were about the same age as I was when we walked away because of a church split, and I didn’t want it to happen to them. So we picked a church and we showed up, bitter and angry and we didn’t agree with all their doctrine…and they just accepted us with open arms. They were so sweet, and there was a lot of healing that went on there. But I guess I still had a lot of, well, bitterness about church. It’s hard to heal from that—it can be like a divorce, especially when it’s not done right. You know, it’s fine if there are doctrinal issues, or this church wants to sing a cappella and that church wants to do contemporary music. It’s fine if you can still love each other and separate. You’ll have two good, different kinds of churches that appeal to different kinds of people. But when one church is preaching from the pulpit about how bad this other church is…

LMH: It’s just wrong…

HJ: Yeah, you can’t spend your whole Christian walk making sure other Christians are preparing for Y2K! I mean, we can laugh about that now, but back in the day, people left churches over that issue.

LMH: It was huge. You can look at other churches or back on past controversies, and it would be laughable (if it wasn’t so sad) the things churches will split over. But at the time, it feels like life and death, like this is that line you cannot cross. Why is that?

HJ: Yes! Why is that? Because when you read the Old Testament, look at the things that God hates—he doesn’t hate gay people, he doesn’t hate sex. He hates “haughty eyes, feet that run toward evil and those who stir dissension among the brethren.” He hates what Christians do to each other. Look, what is edgy to one person is pornography to another and wherever you are in your life, you need to listen to God. If He says so, put it aside, don’t read it, don’t listen to it, hear what God is calling you to do. But by no means spend your time ensuring others follow those rules you’ve been given. And that’s what we too often do. So, if you think following God means giving up coffee (the Christian cocaine), homeschooling, or having tons of babies, don’t preach that everyone is required to do it for intimacy with God. Our rules are not “the way, the truth and the life.” Yielding our lives to Jesus is “the way, the truth and the life.” And everybody’s walk looks different. (Not that that should be an excuse to hold on to some sin God is telling you to give up, just because you aren’t “there” yet.)

LMH: So how do you do that? We know that God wants us to listen to his voice. He tells us that over and over throughout scripture. How do you, personally, hear his voice? How do you do that in your writing?

HJ: I try to write bravely and not pull back. I don’t know if there’s any secret. I continually pray when I’m writing. I don’t have a special procedure. We need to seek Him in our work and not be afraid. I can always delete it later if I feel like I’m crossing a line. There were a lot more cuss words in the first drafts of Sovereign Ground and I ended up smoothing them over…I think I used the word “prick” once.

LMH: And I think, for me, that was kind of the tour de force of Sovereign Ground. This is a novel about the sex industry, but there’s no cussing and no sex. Yet, it feels very authentic, to the point where many people believe that this really is your story.

HJ: Yeah, a lot of people have asked me that but I’ve never been inside a strip club. I really did not want to describe gratuitous sex in SG. I didn’t want anything that people would see as attractive or intriguing. I didn’t want any extra draw to the industry. One of the comments I got back from an early critique, I could tell it was a man…he said, “She seems so naïve and yet, she’s so successful in this mysterious and alluring industry.” I thought, really? You don’t think these young girls are naïve? How do you think they get into it? They think they can do a little work and make a little money and it’s not going to destroy them.

LMH: Well, let’s talk about Sovereign Ground, because I know that was a pretty incredible journey for you…

HJ: Right, well, I never intended to write about a stripper. I just had a vision in my mind of a cop carrying a girl out of a bar, and her not having a lot of clothes on…and the bar being on fire. So I tried writing a traditional romance—I’m not a traditional romance reader—but I kept trying to write a romance. I tried writing it from her point-of-view and his p.o.v., third person…and that was the point where that book was mysteriously deleted. I was three or four chapters into it, and it was just not on my computer one day.

LMH: Whoa…

HJ: So I stomped into the other room and paced for a while. And at some point grouched, “Okay, God, fine! How do you want it to start?” and I heard that opening line in my mind, “Sometimes I dream of dancing.” Which, at that moment, when I realized what that meant, was troubling. I thought, who’s going to want to read that? But it just kept coming and it came from her perspective. I had never written in first person before and it was really scary for me to put that out in first person. Not because I thought people would think it was my story. I’m actually pleased when I hear that, because then I know they think it’s authentic.

LMH: And it’s gotten great reviews and you’ve garnered some pretty incredible endorsements from the likes of Tosca Lee. Yet, you chose to self-publish both Sovereign Ground and Heart of Petra. Tell me how you made that decision.

HJ: When I was bringing SG to the industry, I was told that the writing was good, that it was where it needed to be—

LMH: And we’re talking about Christian publishing—

HJ: Right. Christian publishers, Christian agents/editors. But the next thing was, “Wow, I just don’t know where I’d put you.” There was also one that stuck out the most (and I won’t say what publisher) but he said Christians just don’t want to read about the sex industry. It’s too dark. So, that may have been true at the time and at the time there was so much turmoil in the publishing industry and people were just trying to “save the ship” so they were only going to publish what they were sure would sell.

LMH: That’s still happening.

HJ: Well, I know that some of what I went through was just between God and me. God had to bring me to a new place, and it really was painful. I was being broken, I was searching the Bible for answers, and I wrestled with Him. I can look back at all the things He was revealing to me about trusting Him and…it really came down, for me, to the idea of not “seeking the approval of men.” I had the story, it was ready to be published, and there was nowhere to put it. It seemed like God was saying, “I gave it to you, what more do you need?”

LMH: So you put it out there. If you weren’t concerned about people thinking SG was your story, what did concern you about it? You said it was scary, to write it in first person…

HJ: Well, a lot of people just want an escape. As Christians, we don’t want to go back to that place we were saved from. And we’d rather see people on the other side, cleaned up and fixed. It’s hard to walk through the fall with someone.

LMH: So are people in the industry right, then? Will Christians not buy fiction that is really dealing with the modern-day, on-the-ground human condition?

HJ: But everywhere you go on-line, you’ll see people commenting about how they’re looking for good, different, edgy fiction. So those people—it sounds like there’s a market out there—why wouldn’t they buy these books. Why wouldn’t they tell someone else when they find one?

 LMH: You have a pretty edgy cover on Sovereign Ground, and it’s interesting, because I have friends that I was recommending it to, and I know that if it had been a secular novel, they wouldn’t have blinked at the cover, they would have just trusted me that it was good. But because it was a Christian novel, that cover gave them pause, about whether or not they should read it…

HJ: The designer that created it…one of the things we liked about that cover was that her face was hidden. So it had the sense of sexuality and allure, but also the sense of shame and darkness. And we didn’t want the cover to appeal to the over churched who have it all figured out. It wasn’t their story. Heart of Petra is their story. Sovereign Ground is for the people who are still trying to figure things out, who are willing to read Christian fiction, but haven’t come to the point where they have chosen God for themselves. And I wrote it for teens, many of whom are reading really sexualized books. I didn’t want them to be tempted, but I wanted them to be drawn in enough to see the allure of it, and then see what God has to offer instead. My sister let her eleven-year-old daughter read it. It showed up on her Kindle and my niece was like, “Oh, Mom, this is Aunt Hilarey’s. Can I read it?” My sister wasn’t sure, but she did, in the end, let her read it, and then asked her what she thought. My niece said, “I think that she thought she was in control, but we’re never really in control, are we Mom?” My sister was able to say to her eleven-year-old daughter, “Right. You either give your control to boys, money, or God. Those are kind of your three big options.” They were able to have that discussion and she got it. She may be more mature than your average eleven-year-old, but I know what I was reading at eleven, twelve, thirteen. If Christian parents think that their kids don’t have access to this stuff, they must be living off the grid. We know the kind of stuff we would access when we were that age. Today, it’s a hundred times more readily accessible to our children.

LMH: Kids, and adults for that matter, are curious. They’re looking for answers, they’re looking for salvation, for heroes, right now, in their modern lives. So it would seem like…if God’s calling you to write allegory or fantasy, obviously, go ahead and do that. But it can’t be that there are this few Christians being called to write authentic, modern-day fiction—it’s seems like we’re shying away from it. Like we’re scared or squeamish. I saw this quote the other day: “These days, real-world believers are shouting more and drawing larger, more startling figures—from pulpits, in political rallies, on the Internet. In response, writers with Christian preoccupations have taken the opposite tack, writing fiction in which belief acts obscurely and inconclusively.”

HJ: When I was writing Sovereign Ground, my daughter at one point said to me, “Mom, do you want to write a book that nobody remembers and everybody kind of liked?” I think I would rather write something that some people might hate, but that makes people think for a long time, after they’re done reading it.

LMH: So, speaking of the things we do to each other, there are a lot of factions out there…a lot of disdain, even among Christians, for Christian art, Christian fiction. Things that have that label. People have been talking about this for decades. They throw around quotes and names like Madeleine L’Engle, C.S. Lewis, Flannery O’Conner. You hear about bands like Switchfoot talking about not wanting to get trapped in the “Christian box…”

HJ: So why does this keep coming up? Why can’t we get past it?

LMH: Yes!

HJ: Well, here’s one possible reason: We are so mean to each other. Christians will tear each other down so much sooner than the world. And we zero in on silly things like, “That sounds a little pre-trib, so I’m not going to read that.” Or, “That music sounds like they might be talking about the gift of tongues, so I’m not listening to that.” We latch onto these dogmatic, little details instead of looking at the bigger picture, or the work as a whole. We don’t have a safe place as Christian artists, because the world doesn’t want to hear the message, and Christians lose themselves in the details.

LMH: Why do you think we feel like we need to hide what we believe about God and reality and living in the world as Christians, in fairy tale formats, or historical fiction, or allegories and fantasy?

HJ: I think we should be really clear on the idea that we don’t need to protect God and we don’t need to embellish God. You need to do what you’re called to do, bravely. Living in the Spirit is wild and can be scary. Creating art as a Christian requires trust. It’s a spiritual act that goes on between you and God, it’s work and you can’t follow anyone else’s choreography…and you know, I am seeing this more and more in Christian fiction. Where people are dealing in their work with realistic injustice and pain and evil in the world and portraying much more realistic reactions to those injustices than we have seen in the past—

LMH: And not just for the shock value, but wrestling with it in an authentic way—

HJ: Right. I think it is changing. I don’t think there’s any quick fix to all of this. You’re going to have the world pick up a book and be irritated because you alluded to the One True God, and you’re going to have Christians pick up the same book and say that you didn’t put enough God in it. You have to produce what you’re called to create, live the life that you’re called to live, take the abuse and try to ignore the praise!

LMH: So how do you handle the abuse?

HJ: I haven’t suffered too much abuse…yet.

LMH: That’s good.

HJ: I probably give myself the worst abuse. I criticize myself louder than anyone else. When you were talking about “Christian artists,” I was thinking, well, I’m not really a Christian artist…I don’t consider myself an artist. But then I thought, I bruise easily and I create stuff, so I guess that does make me an artist…

LMH: …and you’re good at what you do. So you can take that praise and just say thank you. 

HJ: Thank you.

I'm All Right

I have a complicated relationship with a couple of things in my life: My hair, and stuff that many of my fellow believers commonly refer to as "blessings."

The guy who cuts my hair, we’ll just call him “Mark,” should be hair stylist to the stars in LA or New York. But, for some reason, he’s cutting hair in a salon in downtown Boise, taking any Idaho cowgirl that walks in the door and sending her out looking like a Vidal Sassoon shampoo commercial…except for me.

Well, he has been making me look fabulous for months, but a few days ago, I sat down in the chair with a sigh and, “Mark,” I said, “I’m tired of looking like a female announcer on Fox News.” I could see him raise an eyebrow at me in the mirror, but I forged on. “I mean, what you’ve done is beautiful, but I don’t have naturally straight hair, you know? My hair is wild and wavy and I like that, it fits me. Can’t we do something to work with the wave so I can wash it, scrunch it, and go? The forty-five minutes with the blow dryer and the straightening iron—I just can’t take it anymore.”

This was the point where Mark gave me a look that was beyond verbal description but definitely had connotations of, “You are an annoying middle-aged lady who doesn’t know from pretty.” And then he picked up his scissors, and went crazy. Little pieces of hair landed everywhere—on the floor, on me, on him, on my friend who’d come along and was sitting in the chair next to us. It was sort of like a scene from Edward Scissorhands.

By the time he was done, I looked like an aging British rock star—although my husband says I look like Meg Ryan, God bless him, which is why we’re still married after twenty-six years. You can be the judge.

Thing is, he did exactly what I wanted, and I love this cut. I step out of the shower, squoosh some gel and leave-in conditioner into my locks, and I go. It’s awesome! I feel like myself again.

It reminded me of my relationship to my current home. There’s a blog post floating around the web that I love, about someone’s joy in realizing that her 70s kitchen really is a blessing. Click here to read it. I’ve had a bunch of houses with 70s kitchens, so I can relate, but my current kitchen is much more fashionable.

This house is the newest house I’ve ever lived in. The story of how we ended up here is a long, “sold high and bought low,” “in the right place at the right time” kind of story. We’ve lived here for three years now, and I’m trying to feel at home, but it’s hard. (Which sounds so stupid. Talk about first-world problems.) This is not my beautiful house…is it? Shouldn’t I be living in something built in 1947, with paneling on the wall in the basement and plumbing that makes that kerchunk sound when you turn on the faucet?

This attitude that I’m slowly seeing in myself is puzzling and more than a little disconcerting. Mark, who only charges me a little more than the gal at Great Clips charges, but who gives me a cut that’s about a bazillion times better, is a blessing, as is my kitchen. What is it about me that can’t just settle into it? I have hair that keeps growing no matter what I do, and a roof over my head. What difference does it make what they look like today? And if I have this much trouble with these things, how will I deal with heaven? I have no idea what living in the physical presence of God will be like, but I know it will be a gift I don’t feel like I deserve.

All kidding aside, I’ve been dismayed to discover an attitude in myself that reminds me of friends who grew up in less than functional families or came out of lives of addiction. One of the hardest things for them about living a “normal” life is that it feels surreal, like they’re faking it. As if the life they are living isn’t really theirs to live.

In thinking about those friends, that’s when I get my Ah-ha! moment. Because here is the secret that some of those friends have discovered: It’s all a blessing.

The good, the bad, all the normal boring in between—when you’re a Jesus follower, He uses it all. Your crazy past, your unknowable future, your surreal present—your life and everything in it are putty in His hands, to move you forward, grow you up, transform you.

Sometimes, the blessings look like a first-world suburban dream, sometimes they look like a studio apartment on the weird side of town complete with cockroaches (been there)—sometimes they look like tragedy on a Kurdish hillside. But in the end, He’s promised, He’ll make it all good—and He hasn’t lied to us yet.

There is no question about how God responds to the circumstances in our lives. He uses them to draw us closer to Him. But while we cannot do anything to thwart the will of our Creator God, one of the paradoxes of the Christian faith is this: how we operate is important. Our response to our circumstances means something, to God and to the work He is doing in us. The question is, how do we respond to adversity, with anger and doubt or with faith? How do we respond to plenty, with pride and a sense of entitlement, or gratitude, open hearts and open hands?

We have these ideas of who we are or who we should be. In the end, none of that will matter, when we see him face-to-face. What matters is that He saved us from ourselves--and I don't know about you, but that's a blessing that is more than all right with me.

Pilgrim Hope

                                                                                      Photo by Melissa Rose Boord

We’ve had some dark days of late. You know what I’m talking about—Ferguson, the Middle East, suicide, genocide—take your pick. But God has taught me, over the years, something important about dark days. Pilgrim steps have taken me into the darkest of emotional and spiritual places three times. Many of you will recognize these places. Many of you have been there yourselves.

1. I was nineteen, and I had to decide what I desired. I could continue on the path I had embarked upon, pursuing what the world said I should want—passion, money, adrenalized adventure, success, fame. Or I could pursue a life that might include all or none of those things, the life that God desired for me. In the simplest of terms: did I want what God wanted, or not? It was an agonizing question of trust and control from which, I was fairly certain, there would be no turning back. At the time, the answer felt like life and death. I still think it was.

2. I was in my early thirties. One minute, she was laughing and vibrant. A world without her was unimaginable. The next minute, I was holding her in my arms, watching her life drain away. This darkness was the most humanly familiar of the three, and the deepest cut. It was also the most transforming. When the clouds began to clear, ah! A shining silver lining—I discovered that my faith didn’t rely on me, but was held safe and unassailable in the hands of my Savior.

3. Six weeks of medication-induced nightmare depression in my early forties. Yet here, also, a bright side, beyond the joy of finding out how easily I, unlike most people, could exit that shadow land. After years of praying that I would somehow better love and understand my friends and family who struggle with depression and anxiety—prayer answered. Now, rather than being mystified and a little judgmental, I am floored by their courage.

The Apostle Paul also knew about dark days. He said that dark days “produce endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint,” because hope—that is God’s love poured into our hearts. It’s the proof that He abides with us.

It is sin in our world that produces dark days. Sin produces death and the Bible is clear on this: death is the enemy. But in his ever-paradoxical way, God turns even dark days into light and hope, if we desire it. It is in darkness that we who believe begin to see ourselves and God more clearly.

And so, in these dark days, we mourn with the mothers who have lost their children—my fellow believers, it doesn’t matter why or how they have lost them—and we pray for peace and a way to love those, in our own country and in our world, that we do not understand.

We mourn for those who are trapped in darkness by their own minds and emotions. We pray and hope for their relief and vow to be there for them, no matter what.

We mourn for those who are deceived, who have been drilled from their earliest days to believe that God desires hate and murder from them. We pray and hope that they will see the light—and there is light. A Christian in Iran tells us: “Do not pray for us, pray with us. If you pray for us, you will pray that our suffering will cease. Instead, pray that we will have courage and be light in our sufferings, because it is those sufferings that are turning others to Christ.” (Confession: I can’t help it. I still pray for, as well as with them).

We do not mourn as those who have no hope. We do not become weighed down by others’ burdens, angry or defensive. That is not who we are. Instead, we access the power of our hope to lighten their loads, to lift them up. It doesn’t matter that we don’t understand, that we would have done things differently, that they are our enemy. It doesn’t matter. And saying, “That’s hard. I’m so sorry. Let me help,” does not change who we are or what we believe.

Yes, this can be difficult, mourning with hope, compassionate joy. Sympathy when fear and righteous indignation comes so much more easily. Intentional action that means something instead of merely going through the motions. This is work that takes training, thought, heart, presence, and courage. It takes eyes that see the world differently than everyone around you. It takes the Spirit of the living God.

But we were made for this. We’re not just standing alone and waiting to be rescued. We are on this pilgrim journey home, together, and we’re supposed to be gathering as many stragglers as we can along the way. He has told us, so many times and in so many ways: He walks with us, this journey is worth the cost, and it will not disappoint.

*Photo by Melissa Rose Boord

Many Kindnesses

“Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do…but how much love we put in that action.”  ~Mother Teresa

Ahhh, home.

Just returned from a week-long visit with a friend who needed some help after a life-threatening illness and emergency surgery. Beyond comfort and company (and the changing of some bandages), I did for her family basically what I do for mine everyday—laundry, dishes, dinner, errands, drop-offs and pick-ups—I love these people and it felt so good to have the opportunity to do this for them. Somewhere along the way, as I was thanking God for that opportunity, a little voice in my head said, “When was the last time you thanked God for the opportunity to do these things for your own family?”

Oh, I don’t know, the answer to that question might be, “Never.”

Someone once said, “Many kindnesses are spread around…that should have stayed at home.” Why is it so often that serving others feels like the greatest thing in the world to do, except when it comes to the people closest to us, the ones we live with every day? I love my life, adore my family and I’m satisfied. I’m truly thankful for them. But I can’t remember the last time I felt deeply grateful to God for the chance to serve them. You know, that “job well-done,” sleep the sleep of the righteous feeling you get from helping others?

It isn’t that I don’t love the life I’ve chosen—I  do. It isn’t that I feel unloved or underappreciated—I don’t. It’s just that, if I get to the end of the day and I’ve “only” had the opportunity to meet my family’s needs, I feel like I haven’t done enough. And that’s crazy talk.

Sure, God calls us to reach beyond our family and meet needs sometimes (and sometimes, often). When He calls, by all means, answer the call, say “Yes!”

But in the meantime—Mother Teresa and the needy of Calcutta/You and your family—there really is no difference. Be deeply grateful for the chance to serve them. And sleep well.

Writing Without a Wife

Recently, I attended a really great writer’s conference, which brought back memories and comparisons to other conferences. I learned early on, in college, not to ask that newbie writer question: “How do you find the time to write when there are so many other things in life crying out for your attention?” It elicits the usual smug look from the Author with the microphone – the gaze down the nose and the answer (say it with me, now), “You don’t find the time, you make the time.” Touché.

Many years later, after marriage and children, as I was beginning to catch glimpses of the world beyond sleepless nights, childhood illnesses, and so, so many diapers, I decided I wanted to write fiction. When I attended my first fiction writers conference I was more confident and just curious enough to ask that famous newbie question of the male keynote speaker – but from a new vantage point. It went something like this:

"I’m feeling the call to write, but it takes a lot of time to do well. I have small children and a husband with his own stressful career. I’ve been wondering lately whether and how much it is appropriate to take time from my spouse and parenting roles to give to my writing?”

As I suspected he would, the man in front blustered about being wholeheartedly committed to your calling, and spouted truisms like “writers write.” Finally, he kind of wound down…I don’t know, it may have had something to do with the faces of the women in the audience. After a pause he shrugged his shoulders and said, “The truth is, I have a really great wife. She takes care of all that while I write.” While I appreciated his honesty, I almost responded, “So what you’re saying is that to be successful, I should get myself a good wife?” I didn’t say it. I was confident, but I wasn’t that confident.

At this most recent conference, the speaker had a running joke. When someone called him about taking on a project his first question was, “Does it pay?” You would need to hear the whole series to understand why this was funny, and it was funny. It was said somewhat tongue-in-cheek. But I couldn’t help wonder what a wife’s first question would be: something along the lines of, “Who will take care of the children?” Or maybe, “Will it conflict with my husband’s travel schedule?” Questions that the keynote speaker didn’t have to hesitate about because, I’m assuming, his wife took care of that. I’m also betting she did some major sacrificing in order to make ends meet in-between those paying gigs.

I’m not saying there is anything wrong with how these men arranged their lives and made their decisions. They were answering God’s call, gave appropriate credit for their success to their wifely partners, and I know acted courageously and sacrificially in their own ways. In addition and understand, there is no way I’m going to let my role as wife and mother or my calling as a writer become excuses to shirk any of the roles and jobs I’m called to do. God forbid.

It all just helped me realize I needed to carry over a lesson from my last career. As I began to take on leadership roles and management positions, I looked around for mentors – people who could teach me how to manage well. Many of the best leaders and managers I knew were men, and I did learn from them. But it didn’t take long to realize that following their example could only take me so far. What worked for them wouldn’t necessarily work for me for the simple reason that they were men and I was a woman. I had to find my own way, or find women who could help me, and twenty years ago, that was easier said than done.

Lately, I’ve been reading the Old Testament book of Numbers, which can be mind-numbingly (numbingly…get it?) boring in places. But it’s also helped me see how much context matters. The Old Testament God, without the revelation of Jesus Christ, could be seen as vindictive, a puppet master, ruthlessly moving human pawns in some unfathomable game. But taken in the context of Christ, who taught us that God would make the ultimate sacrifice to save us, that he loves us like children he would die to protect, suddenly so many of the Old Testament laws look different…they look like love.

As I’ve pondered this latest writer’s conference, there’s another verse from the Bible that I’m seeing differently, in love’s light, and taking it to heart. 

“And older women, likewise…should teach what is good, so that they may encourage the younger women...”

I have a lot to learn, but I have also learned a few things over the years about being a woman, a wife and mother, and having a call to write. I’ll share some of what I’ve learned in a future post, but in the meantime, how about you other Christian women living a life in the arts, or just involved in the art of living. What is your one best jewel of wisdom that you would share with “the younger women?”

Of Motherhood, Careers and Salvation

There’s been a lot of shouting over the fence lately. Christians on each side, weighing in on the debate:

Is being a mom enough, or do women also need a career to find true fulfillment?

As if there aren't whole lives to be lived before and after our child-rearing years. Alexander the Great conquered the known world by the time he was thirty - my sisters, what are you waiting for? Seriously, I’m not here to put down anyone else’s journey. But I do feel called to add my voice and my experience, mostly for my sons, and so...

Dear Sons,

It’s been about fourteen years since, at the age of thirty-three, I chucked a successful career in order to parent and homeschool you full time. The regret I have is the same one I had the minute they placed you in my arms: I wish I’d done it much, much earlier. I was blown away by the feelings I had for you - I wasn't one of those baby crazy girls. I wasn't even sure I would like you until I saw you, but you had me at "hello."

I know you'll roll your eyes at this part. "Oh, Mom," you'll say. But if I lost that career only to gain the chance to tickle your little baby toes with kisses every morning, breathe in your milky breaths as you drifted off to sleep, nuzzle your wrinkly necks, be there for your first smiles, and your first words and your first steps – it would have been enough.

The Bible says that women will be saved through child bearing, if they continue in faith and love and holiness with self-control. It’s a notoriously difficult and mysterious verse, especially in our culture, and one open to a lot of misinterpretation. It’s a verse I preferred to ignore, until I had children.

Jesus walked with me on my journey of enlightenment through all of your many incarnations: the screaming at 2:00 a.m. infant, the exhausting never stop toddler, the astonishing man-child and the amazing young adult. Both of you on more than one occasion came close to death and I was nearly undone. Even so, every day with you has been full of life – and if I haven’t loved every moment, I’ve loved every phase. I kid you not, each year I’ve thought, “This age is the best.”

While I worked in partnership with your two fathers, the earthly one and the Heavenly One, to love you and grow you up, this is what grew in me: love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Hmmm, where have I seen that list before?

Like the Book says, there is a season for everything under the sun. Over the next few years, our season, the one where you get the best of my creativity and the lion’s share of my time, will come to an end. More and more, God will use my gifts and talents elsewhere.

But I want to be clear, I’m not leaving you in order to find myself. I’m not leaving you at all, and I already know who I am – a strong and courageous child of the living God; someone who knows how to love, sacrifice, comfort, and show compassion and mercy; a woman whose faith in her Savior can no longer be shaken, and I became this person while I was your mom. My sons, know this: So many times and in so many ways being your mother has saved me. For that, and for you, I will be eternally grateful.

Secret Identity

So many people to be…so little time. A recent article in Wired titled Hunting the Ghost reminded me why, for a while, I wanted to be an investigative journalist. I’ve also been reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories over the break, while simultaneously streaming the first two seasons of the BBC’s Sherlock Holmes – a surreal experience that has put me in a detective-loving mood and filled my dreams with riddles.

But back to the story in Wired about “the world’s best bounty hunter,” a woman named Michelle Gomez who does something called “skip tracing.” In the words of the article, “a skip tracer finds people and things that have disappeared on purpose. Gomez specializes in hard-to-locate recoveries. She prefers cases others can’t solve.”

How Sherlock of her.

The article went on to tell the story of Gomez tracking down, not a criminal mastermind, no modern-day Moriarty, but a criminal who stumbled on a genius method of distraction. This bad guy discovered that by creating multiple identities via the Internet, credit cards, and social networking, his true identity became so obscured that it left him practically untraceable. Not untraceable for our Sherlock, of course. Gomez made short work of him.

…he confided that three days before his capture he’d had a feeling something was wrong and thought then about moving to a new location. “I wish I had listened to myself,” he said.

Gomez laughs when she hears this. “Maybe he lost track of which self he was, until I came along to remind him.”

by Melissa Rose

And I thought, I’ve done that. Lost track of which self I am, where my identity is found. Haven’t we all? In an age of “self-branding,” we use social media to create different versions of ourselves about which only we know the real truth or lie.

This is nothing new. People have been fooling themselves and others since people first walked and talked. That was the great thing about Jesus. He came along and instantly knew who everyone was, better than they knew themselves. He happily shared his knowledge:

• The women weren’t chattel, the children weren’t burdens, the old and poor and sick weren’t useless. They were important, valued, and the kingdom of heaven belonged to such as them. 
• The religious elite weren’t good or God-fearing. They were “white-washed” tombs, full of darkness and death, who couldn’t even manage generosity, let alone righteousness. 
• A group of uneducated fishermen weren't beaten down men stuck in dead-end jobs. They were the strong rocks on which Christ would build his church and save the world.

Then there was one of my personal favorites: the encounter with the woman at the well. Jesus gently cuts through all the “branding” that had been done to her and by her, and then does the thing she needs most, though she hadn’t realized it. He reveals who He is, her Savior, her God, the only place in which she could find her true identity: “If you knew who you were talking to you would ask me for the water that gives life.” The woman reveals she’s been hoping for the Messiah, that she believes when He comes He will “explain everything to us.” Jesus tells her simply, “I am that one, and I am speaking to you now.”

Jesus is very clear on who we are and who He is. This is no secret to Him. We are the confused ones. Through the static and the noise and the digital identities we create for ourselves, He speaks. Ignoring the false names we call ourselves and others, He’s happy to tell us who we are.

"I am speaking to you now."

Down all the wrong paths we’ve taken (He, too, prefers cases that others can’t solve). Despite the ways we’ve been branded and the lies we’ve believed and our stupid, stupid pride.

"I am speaking to you now."

We drink of the water He offers, and He names us: Chosen, Holy, Blameless Before God. Beloved, Redeemed, A New Creation.

I forget sometimes who I really am...until He comes along and reminds me.