We have an interesting line up this week of authors sharing how they and their families commemorate the days leading up to Resurrection Sunday. Today Marlo Schalesky, a novelist and mom, shares with us a way to show our kids the meaning of the season. Welcome, Marlo, to Words to Go!
MARLO: Thanks, Patty. I love this time of year.
PATTY: So do I. Daffodils are springing up. I'll can green beans and salsa in the coming weeks and prepare my gardens for summer. But best of all, my lilies are starting to raise up from the soil. There are so many metaphors for spring during lily season--what was once dead is coming back to life and flowering. But you and I were recently discussing what you and your kids do this time of year. Would you mind sharing with everyone?
MARLO: I'd be glad to, Patty. We have a little craft with the kids for each day of the week. On the first day, we make little paper Jesus dolls, then we may make a little garden in a Tupperware container and put our Jesus dolls in there for the Garden of Gethsemane.
PATTY: So each child makes a paper doll of Christ?
MARLO: Yes. Then we place Jesus at the table for communion--the Last Supper.
PATTY: So you mean that you make a communion table out of paper too?
MARLO: Yes, we draw them and cut them out.
PATTY: My kids are grown but were arty too. But as a former children's pastor, let me add that there are patterns galore like this on the Internet--so don't think you have to be a Rembrandt to lead your kids in a paper craft. Now this sounds like a progressive craft, something that is done leading up to Resurrection Sunday.
MARLO: It is. Come Friday we make crosses out of popsicle sticks and put Jesus on them. Then we use little boxes and take Jesus down from the cross and put him in the box tomb. Then, on Sunday morning, the kids check the boxes/tombs and surprise! Jesus isn’t there. He is risen! Yay!
PATTY: You are a fun mom, Marlo! Makes me miss our days with our little ones. Bloggers, please feel free to post your feedback. As you can see, I'm doing this a week early, so everyone care share ideas and have time to prepare for coming holy season. See you tomorrow for more fun author chats on the eve of the holiest season of the year.
Fun Fact: Before becoming a novelist Patty worked alongside her hubby in children's ministry. She was Pitter Pat the clown and her troupe was the subject of a mini-documentary for the Children's Miracle Network.
Although author Joseph Bentz's first four books were novels, one non-fiction idea kept pursuing him so intently that he finally gave in and wrote When God Takes Too Long: Learning to Thrive During Life's Delays. The book sprang from his own bewilderment at God's often unusual timing. "One of my greatest frustrations as a Christian is that I am always waiting on God to act. I wrote this book to better understand how God uses "waiting" in our lives."
How well Joseph understands the trials of waiting: his first novel took ten years to write.Joseph has a fresh and unique perspective on his stories and I’ve already picked out one that I’m going to read. Joseph, we’re so glad you could drop by Words to Go today. Our readers visiting here are always on the prowl for a new and fresh read. I’m so glad to introduce them to you.
JOSEPH: Thank you, Patty.
PATTY: Waiting on God has been a recent theme of several of our authors. Why do you think this subject is one we all visit so regularly?
JOSEPH: I read the entire Bible with this issue in mind, and I was amazed at how crucial waiting was in the lives of such biblical figures as Moses, Joseph, Abraham, David, Jeremiah, Paul and others. From their stories, key principles emerge about how God's timing and methods differ from our own. For instance I wrote When God Takes Too Long to examine those principles and to help readers transform this frustration into a positive force in their lives."
PATTY: Is there a particular lesson you’ve learned you would share?
JOSEPH: I never thought a ceramic chicken could teach me anything, but recently I learned something about waiting on God from one. I’ve always been impatient for God to act in my life, which I guess is why I keep writing so much about Waiting, both in my fiction and non-fiction.
PATTY: A ceramic chicken?
JOSEPH: I’ll explain. I’m usually trying to hurry God along, but one thing I’m figuring out is that God’s answer is sometimes “Not now,” which doesn’t necessarily mean “Never.” I have a friend named Diana Glyer who is a writer and a Christian and is very attuned to God’s call in her life. She keeps a ceramic chicken in her office to help her deal with the times when God’s answer seems to be “Not yet.”
PATTY: I’ve been getting a lot of those lately.
JOSEPH: Sometimes the writing projects she is most passionate about get sidetracked or don't find a publisher, while other projects prosper. When this happens, she has learned to put the languishing project underneath the ceramic chicken. She continues to pray about that project, but she lets it sit there for as long as it needs to, maybe a month, maybe a year. Like an egg waiting to hatch, the project waits under the chicken until its proper time.
PATTY: I get it. That is really funny, though.
JOSEPH: I liked her idea so much that I went out and bought my own ceramic chicken, and it makes an appearance in the DVD for When God Takes Too Long.
PATTY: It obviously inspired you.
JOSEPH: As a writer I’m always getting ideas whose time has not yet come, but people outside of the writing world deal with this too. They get a glimmer of a dream or a call that they really believe is from God long before it’s possible to fulfill it. The calling might be real, but the timing might be wrong. Maybe that idea needs to go under the chicken, and with prayer and time and God's leading, it will hatch when the time is right.
PATTY: I do see this situation often at writer’s workshops. I’ll read a manuscript that I can sense seems like “the one” to the writer. But it’s underdeveloped or, because of the writer’s lack of training, doesn’t work. It’s agony to have to tell them their manuscript is not yet ready for human consumption.
JOSEPH: I teach literature at AzusaPacificUniversity, and right now we’re in the toughest time of the semester. Spring break is still a couple weeks away, people feel bogged down with work, and all of us are in a “get-through-it” mode. Seniors especially just want to “get the semester over with” so they can graduate. I know how they feel, but it also makes me regret how much time they—and I—spend wishing and waiting our lives away.
PATTY: I’m so glad you said that because the journey is something that life, God, or just the human condition is not going to evaporate just because we will it. We are going to embark on the journey when we set out on new terrain.
JOSEPH: When I look at my college students, I think, if I were in their shoes, I would enjoy every minute of the young, energetic lives they’ve been given.
PATTY: It’s hard for me to pick a favorite age to teach, but college kids are my favorite but also a challenge because they’re “raring at the bit” to get on with life. They seem to “do” more than “see” what is in front of them. As educators we have to help them slow down long enough to “see.”
JOSEPH: But most of them are focused on the future much of the time. They can't wait to get class over with so that they can get to their next class. Then they want that one to end as soon as possible so that they can get to their part-time jobs, and then they can't wait for those slow hours to pass so they can get back to campus to get their papers written so that they can get this semester over with so that they can move to the next semester so that they can get college over with so that they can graduate and get a job so that they can endure that long enough to get a better job.
PATTY: Sounds very familiar. I believe they learn this practice from dear old dad and mom.
JOSEPH: On and on this goes, but I have to admit I’m not much different, as if life is really about seeing how many items I can check off the to-do list. I find myself in “get through it” mode even with things I enjoy sometimes!
PATTY: In a couple of weeks, I’m asking some authors to talk about simplicity and slowing down to enjoy the process. It’s because it’s been a hard lesson I’ve had to learn.
JOSEPH: Lately I’ve made a deliberate effort to do what I can to slow down and enjoy the moment. I have made lists of those small pleasures in life that help get me through the day, like taking my morning run, losing myself in a good book, playing kickball with my kids in the backyard, relaxing for a few minutes on the porch after a long day, watching a movie in the quiet of the night with my wife after the kids have gone to bed.
PATTY: We have to remember that the life we’re striving for is paying for these stolen moments—so why not redeem them?
JOSEPH: I’ve sat in my office on some of the worst days and thought, I am overwhelmed by the decisions I have to make and the tasks I have to carry out. Nothing is going the way I want. I'm exhausted. I'm under siege….ButThen I'll step back into the arena and do battle. this cup of coffee tastes really good, and I am going to enjoy these few moments of respite and relish every sip, and I am going to look out at the sunshine and be grateful that I am alive.
PATTY: I think we writers have to practice these moments of respite or we’d never get a word down.
JOSEPH: I don’t want to “wait” my life away, thinking only about the future. I realize how sad it would be to get to the end of my life and think, I never really lived my life because I was always waiting for it to happen.
PATTY: “Life’s what happens when we’re busy doing other things.” John Lennon.
JOSEPH: I don’t want to sleepwalk through my life. As Ecclesiastes 11:8 puts it, "Even if you live a long time, don't take a single day for granted. Take delight in each light-filled hour."
PATTY: Joseph, we have certainly delighted in our talk with you. We’re so glad you jogged by and stopped by our front porch at Words to Go.
JOSEPH: I’m glad I did too, Patty.
PATTY: Joseph is giving away When God Takes Too Long and his novel A Son Comes Home, both excellent books that some lucky readers will soon add to their bookshelves in Saturday’s book give.
Tomorrow, novelist Marlo Schalesky is back and she’s going to share with moms her ideas for getting kids into the spirit of Easter. See you all tomorrow here at Words to Go.
If the weather has you holed up in your hacienda, today is a good day to invite a new author into your life. And we're getting ready to do just that for some happy winners. Here are the names drawn this morning from the Big Straw Hat from this week's author chats:
Carly Kendall has won Homestead by Jane Kirkpatrick
Ruth Dell has won A Flickering Light by Jane Kirkpatrick (release date in April)
Wanda Chamberlain has won Fatal Deduction by Gayle Roper
Alice Trego has won She's in a Better Place by Angela Elwell Hunt
I hope your weekend is full of reading and family time--or both. Don't discount the power of read-alouds. Our sons still talk the most about being read to all the way into their teen years. It's a great way to get kids to open up and talk about things they may not share otherwise.
"Our grandmothers, and even--with some scrambling--our mothers, lived in a circle small enough to let them implement in action most of the impulses of their hearts and minds." --Anne Morrow Lindbergh; Gifts From the Sea
Some might say that novelist Jane Kirkpatrick has led a charmed life. The Kirkpatrick's new life on their ranch has included "clearing sagebrush and wrestling wind and rattlesnakes" while "homesteading" land on the John DayRiver in a remote part of Oregon known locally as Starvation Point. She and her husband Jerry still live there today. "It's our 'rural 7-Eleven' since our home sits seven miles from the mailbox and eleven miles from the pavement" notes the author of fourteen novels and three non-fiction books. Welcome, Jane, to Words to Go!
JANE: Thank you, Patty. But first let me thank you for inviting me to meet your readers and to have this conversation.
PATTY: Yesterday, Gayle Roper shared the lessons she’s learned waiting on God. You’ve had a few of your own, haven’t you?
JANE: We all have to endure those lessons. For me, one is that the armor of battle is provided by God and I don’t have to fight in every battle. This lesson came 23 years ago this month though it began in January of 1986. We’d made this huge leap of faith by quitting our jobs and moving to 160 acres of rattlesnake and rock a couple of years before that, thinking we had stepped out onto a cloud a faith believing we wouldn’t fall through.
PATTY: I think for us it was twenty years of idealism and ten years of reality to understand that free-falling is not for the faint of heart.
JANE: My husband’s oldest son had been killed a few years before that and with a desire to live fully and to trust God’s guidance, we’d moved there to build a home and a new life there.
PATTY: It was your season of picking up the pieces.
JANE: God had been faithful through all the building woes that come with living seven miles from our mailbox and eleven miles from a paved road and 25 miles from the nearest market to buy milk.
PATTY: You’ve got one of those pioneer spirits. It works well in story telling, where we have a little control. But living in the reality of pioneering a new life is not easy, is it?
JANE: We’d had our setbacks but felt secure in His provision. Then in January during my prayer time when I asked God if he had anything he wanted to say to me this inner voice said “prepare for the battle.”
PATTY: I do that when in prayer. And then when He answers like that, I’ll say, “That’s okay. I don’t need to know.” Or “Could you replay that? I think I misunderstood you.”
JANE: I’m one of those people who doesn’t like to read about (or watch movies about) rare diseases because I always develop the symptoms! So I let that sit. But the next day, the same phrase came to me and I thought, well, what does one do when there’s a battle but you don’t know what it will be?
PATTY: It’s a feeling of exposure.
JANE: I remembered the verse about putting on the full armor of God and decided the best thing to do was to wait; but in the waiting time I delved more deeply into building my faith. I read Hebrews. I read biographies of wonderful Christian people who had endured. I prayed. I felt encouraged.
PATTY:That’s so pro-active, Jane.
JANE: Then we had a major flood. But that didn’t seem like the battle. We were told by the phone company that the seven miles of phone line we’d laid wouldn’t work and we’d have to do it over. But that wasn’t the battle.
PATTY: Do you see why Jane writes fiction? She has that great sense of foreboding.
JANE: In March we went flying one day with friends. We’d kept a small plane and both of us had licenses and that day we’d flown with our instructors for the biannual review that’s required by the FAA. All went well. We were on our way back with our friends (she was 7.5 months pregnant) and as we were coming in for a landing we hit a clear air wind shear.
PATTY: The shock of that must have taken your breath away.
JANE: We crashed in the streets of the nearby town where we kept the plane.Just after the point of impact when all the world to me had been white and I had said in my mind that we were about to die, I felt a pain that I likened to a thousand bee stings all at once. My elbow hit the back of the seat. The bone moved forward, disabling me. So I couldn’t get the seat belt off. I could hear my friend in the back gagging; heard her husband screaming her name; saw my husband’s face all bloody and had to ask if he was alive and then I knew the battle was this. I said to God then that he knew we were there and he would have to take care of things from there. I had never felt more bereft.
PATTY: You obviously lived.
JANE: We all survived.
PATTY: And the baby?
JANE: Our friend did not deliver early though she went in to labor. She has no memory of that accident and didn’t even have a bruise. Her husband had not even a sprain!
PATTY: But you and your husband were not as fortunate, were you?
JANE: Jerry and I got the broken bones--many of them. They put us into the same hospital room after my surgery.
PATTY: What about the crash site? Anyone hurt there?
JANE: The plane was totaled but we had missed all three houses, the power lines and there was no fire.
PATTY: But you still had recuperation ahead.
JANE: We had months and months of healing. And during that time, I found I could not pray, at least not for myself.
PATTY: It’s a hard thing to admit, Jane. But it helps others to hear it.
JANE: But I could pray for other people. Remembering one of the biographies I’d read about a woman in England who had been paralyzed all her life but was a great prayer warrior, she’d prayed for many things and I think it was Oswald Chambers who recognized her part in the great revival of that period.
PATTY: Intercession is such an important practice.
JANE: I know in part I was angry but equally confused. Why have me prepare for such a battle? Why not just stop the battle?
PATTY: Sounds familiar.
JANE: Here’s another lesson: our ways are not God’s ways. So I did keep doing what I’d done before: steeped myself in scripture, kept reading and praying for others during that time when my parents came to take care of us while we healed. One day I came across the scripture in 2 Chronicles where God tells the warriors that they did not have to go out to the battle that day, that the battle was the Lord’s. That was so redeeming! A huge weight lifted and I began to trust again that for whatever reason, something was being worked out within our battle.
PATTY: The times of refreshing come just when we need them.
JANE: In the years since then, I’ve seen evidence of battles worked out as a result of that accident.
PATTY: It set your mind in warrior mode. It made your prayers “effectually fervent”.
JANE: My husband’s youngest son and his wife came to live with us as they dealt with addictions after that; we now needed help on our ranch; they needed a place to heal. They gave birth to a healthy baby girl while they were clean and sober working on the ranch. Years later, when they relapsed, she came to live with us and several years after that, when she was a teenager, and they relapsed again, she again came to live with us and bless us with her life. They have now been clean and sober for nearly six years and my step-son works for us full time. God has given us the resources to sustain our two families in more ways than financial.
PATTY: I hope some of you joining us are remembering those times when it seemed your knees were turning to leather and how it’s turned out now. I know I am. But, Jane, this also set your heart in a locked and loaded position for story telling too, didn’t it?
JANE: I began writing after the accident, things for other people to read; and our friend who had been in the plane said when they got the letters they didn’t read them right away but waited until after supper, turned off the TV and read them out loud because they were like chapters in a book. They became my first book, Homestead, published first by Word in 1991. It isn’t a “how to” book about homesteading; but it is a book about following one’s heart and trusting in God on the journey.
PATTY: One of those beautiful metaphor books that teaches our souls as much as our minds.
JANE: There have been dozens of blessings as a result of that time of waiting and resting in God. From readers, of course; but in little unexpected ways that always bring me back to God being the master of my soul, my life, our lives and future.
PATTY: The journey doesn’t stop.
JANE: People came to help us do work on our land, people we didn’t know. One of the ranchers asked on a particular work day when Jerry and I sat with three legs in casts and three arms in casts how we were doing. “Terrible” I told him. “There are people here we don’t know; we can’t thank them enough; we’ll never be able to repay this.”
PATTY: Depending on God means that sometimes we have to depend on others—more often than not.
JANE: I didn’t say how we had never expected that we would need other people in our grand adventure to clear the land; we were going to do it all on our own! The rancher said “Oh Jane, you miss the point. We love doing this and you give to us when you let us do it for you. You’re right. You’ll never be able to pay it back. The best you can hope to do is pass it on.”
PATTY: What we know about God’s requirement of us in the beginning is miniscule compared to what he unpacks later.
JANE: I think about what the Lord requires of us: to love mercy, seek justice and walk humbly with our God. That verse came home to me as we learned the important lesson of how to receive and to pass that gracious gift on.
PATTY: And then there are the blessings of the fellow sojourners we meet along the way.
JANE: That’s so true. A woman who travels with me as my prayer partner when I lead retreats is the grandmother of that baby who was born full term in April of that fateful year. Her faithfulness has been an inspiration to my life and our friendship has deepened having endured the strain of the accident. God provides all our needs, including the emotional support necessary to help us endure.
PATTY: I have a friend who gets to travel with me when I speak. It makes the isolation of the road so much lighter.
JANE: Yet another lesson this last Sunday while we brought in our soup (we have soup Sundays from January through March to help us all get through the long winters) the retired sheriff was there with his pot of soup and he commented to my husband that wasn’t this the month of our accident. They stood talking and then the Sheriff asked if he’d ever told us that while he and the deputies and ambulances were there getting us off to the hospital that a small child in the house we’d missed choked on something and her mother ran out with her into the street and there were all those first responders and his deputy grabbed the girl and did the Heimlich maneuver and voila! She was fine! He said “if you hadn’t crashed that day right there, I think that little girl might not have made it. I’ve always thought that about that little girl.”
PATTY: Astonishing.
JANE: God worked out all sorts of things that we had no way of knowing about. And still, we keep learning.I’m not sure we would have made it either…God has been so good to us through these many years. I wouldn’t want those broken bones again but I wouldn’t give up the lessons learned from it either.
PATTY: Jane, you’ve schooled us in many ways today. Can I thank you profusely for coming by and chatting with us?
JANE: Thank you, Patty.
PATTY: We’re all on a journey. When we realize that we’re journeying together, not alone, not competing, but in reciprocal fellowship, we learn to rest in God. Jane, you rock!
JANE: I do have a gift.
PATTY: Let me guess.
JANE: The memoir I mentioned, HOMESTEAD—I’d love to send that to one of your bloggers in the give tomorrow. Plus, I have a new novel coming out in April. As soon as it releases, I’ll send a copy ofA FLICKERING LIGHTto one of your readers.
PATTY: Hot of the press, folks! Leave your feedback today and every day for a chance to win in Saturday’s Big Give. Next week the Author Buffet continues. Join us Monday for a special visit from an exceptionally talented novelist, Joseph Bentz. Be sure you check in tomorrow for the winner’s list. And do have a wonderful weekend, feasting on the fellowship of your circle of fellow sojourners.
If I could say anything about Gayle Roper it’s that she simply has the perfect combination of tenacity and talent to make it in the volatile world of publishing. She has written over 40 books, fiction and non-fiction, her specialty being romantic mysteries. She teaches on writing and women’s issues and has won a Rita Award for her fiction. When I gave her the choice of topics for our Author’s Buffet, it did not surprise me that Gayle chose as the subject near and dear to her heart the topic of waiting on the Lord.Welcome, Gayle, to Words to Go!
GAYLE: Thank you, Patty! It's interesting that the greatest lesson in waiting on the Lord has come mostly through my writing and the process of publication. I'm a choleric personality, very task oriented, very accomplishment driven.
PATTY: If you’re new to the temperaments, those of us trained in the Littauers' CLASS speaker’s services are highly versed in them. The choleric temperament is also called the A-type personality. As a matter of fact, I’ve just noticed the Alphas are leading the pack this week in chats. Gayle, how do you best describe our type of temperament?
GAYLE: Let's do it, and let's do it now and well. That mindset works well when it comes to writing. I have control here.
PATTY: For a bit, at least.
GAYLE: Oh, sure! Then, off the work goes and I've lost control. I’m forced to wait for other people to make choices over which I have no control. I am forced to wait on their time tables, their tastes, their corporate charts.
PATTY: Readers may not understand our story's tenuous journey from desk to publication.
GAYLE: If the work sees publication, then I'm forced to wait on the whims of salesmen, store owners, and buyers. Again no control.
PATTY: Well, at least little control.
GAYLE: This waiting has forced me to constantly go before the Lord, asking His grace for today, his peace for my straining urgency. I have been forced through the years to learn to say, over and over, "Not my will but Yours be done."
PATTY: But sometimes it’s easier said than done in practice at least.
GAYLE: I've observed that we all have at least one thorn that drives us to the Lord.
PATTY: Only one?
GAYLE: I have a sound marriage, two kids who love us, two daughters-in-law we love and who love us, and five great grandkids. Often family tensions and disappointments are what drive us to our knees, but that's not my situation--for which I thank the Lord daily.
PATTY: I feel blessed with my family too. But there are other types of thorns, you’re saying.
GAYLE: Sure, for some the thorn is health.
PATTY: As some author friends shared in last week’s “Greening of the Soul” chats.
GAYLE: For me that thorn has been the lack of control over my chosen career and ministry. Every day I live in an arena that swirls around without asking my opinion or seeking my wisdom. Every day I hand over work I've sweated over and prayed over for someone else to do with as they please. Much as it grates, it has also been one of the best things for me spiritually. "Not my will but Yours be done."
PATTY: Gayle, what do you consider the greatest goal in life to obtain?
GAYLE: So many of us can quote Eph.2:8,9: "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast." Great verses! But we often forget verse 10 which follows right after: "For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."
PATTY: And a workmanship is a work in progress, isn’t it?
GAYLE: My goal is to do the work Christ has called me to do. As a doer, I like that idea, but I also realize that there's a LOT more than mere doing tied up in this thought.
PATTY:Like the part we’re supposed to do?
GAYLE: Yes. There's spending enough time with the Lord so that I hear Him when He calls me toward a certain task. There's learning to be obedient to this call. There's learning to walk as He would walk as I do this work. There's having my speech seasoned with grace toward those I work with.
PATTY: The little things that can trip us up.
GAYLE: In other words, doing the work He has called me to do requires me to be conformed to the image of Christ.
PATTY: Not a fallible leader, but the One on the throne.
GAYLE: And there's a goal worth living for.
PATTY: Yes, because in our reaching, he is reaching back to help us out of our frailties. Gayle, this has been such a delight to chat with you today. Thanks for chatting with us today.
GAYLE:Thank you, Patty, for inviting me.
PATTY: Gayle is giving away a copy of her novel Fatal Deduction. Please leave feedback along with your first and last name for a chance to win in Saturday's Big Book Give. Please check Saturday's list to see if you won a book from our fabulous authors on this week's Author Buffet.
Living life through the filter of other people's perceptions is a good way to kill your passion for the very thing you’ve been called to do. Today my awesome friend Angela Elwell Hunt chats on Words to Go from the pastor’s wife’s perspective. Angela has written over a hundred books and has won a Christy Award. Welcome, Angie! I’m so glad you could chat with us today.
ANGIE: Thanks, Patty.
PATTY: A few years ago when ministry life led the Hickmans to Florida I was once again leaving behind friends like my writer’s group led by novelist Gilbert Morris. But then God gave me a wonderful new friendship. Angie and I would pull our heads out of our computers and go for what was supposed to be a quick hour for lunch. But hours later our husbands would be hunting us down, wondering if we had lost our way home. Besides being novelists, we are both also pastor’s wives. It’s a life that many people misunderstand, isn’t it, Angie?
ANGIE: Life as the spouse of a full-time minister is completely what you make it. You can make yourself--and your spouse--happy and fulfilled or miserable and resentful.
PATTY: You’ve known both sides of that coin, haven’t you, Angie?
ANGIE: When we were newlyweds, I wanted to feel that I was a priority in my hubby's life, but I didn't feel that way at home. He was a middle school youth pastor then and now, and during that first year, young girls who had crushes on him would write him notes and call and talk for long periods on the phone . . . hard for me to take. At our wedding, one of the girls said to me, "I hope you know how lucky you are to marry him." I smiled and said I did, but I wanted to reply that he wasn't exactly marrying chopped liver.
PATTY: No, you had come off a national tour as a vocalist—back then a gorgeous tall blonde—not exactly a dowdy pastor’s wife. (I do like the red too, BTW)
ANGIE: I wanted to love the kids, but I found myself resenting them--a lot. And they'd sit on the other side of him in church and cast daggers at me like I was some kind of Other Woman. When I tried to talk to Gary about it, he'd say, "Well, you knew you were marrying a man in ministry."
PATTY: The last thing that ministry couples do is construct the boundaries. Us too.
ANGIE: Finally, I broke down and confided to a friend that I was miserable. That I wouldn't divorce him, but I was resigned to misery for the rest of my life. She promptly told a friend of my husband's, and he confronted hubby and told him that he was "losing his wife."
PATTY: Sometimes they need a little jolt.
ANGIE: It was true. And somehow hearing it from that other person brought my husband to his senses. He learned to set up proper boundaries--no more calls at home. When he was home, he would be HOME. And he found that by "expanding" his ministry beyond the few girls who were so intensely infatuated, he was reaching many, many more students.
PATTY: God expects that of us, that we would erect our ministry to reach out to the ones along the peripheries of life.
ANGIE: And in return, instead of insisting on my "rights," I found myself able to loosen up and let him have even more freedom. It wasn't that I craved his attention 24/7 . . . it was that I wanted to feel that if I needed him, he'd be available for me. That I came first, not before his relationship with God, but before his relationship with everyone else. Once I had that security, I wasn't threatened by the kids, or his time away from home, or the demands of the ministry.
PATTY: I remember feeling as if I’ve was being selfish when I finally asked my hubby to put me ahead of the people in our mission field. Then once he did, things started clicking. God does have an order to things. Our first mission field should be our family.
ANGIE: When people hear that I'm a youth pastor's wife, they usually say, "Oh, boy, I'll bet your house is filled with young people all the time."
PATTY: Is it?
ANGIE: Oh, no. You do have to set boundaries. While we've always been quick to offer our home for meetings, kids who need a place to spend the night, and even kids who needed a place to stay for longer periods of time, I saw how becoming TOO involved tended to shut my own kids down and make them feel uncomfortable in their own home. (Bottom line: We're a family majority of introverts, except for the resident youth pastor.)
PATTY:I’ve seen pastor’s wives who worked feverishly to make their home grand central ministry. It can wear you to a frazzle, even becoming a tool of the enemy to bring you down exhausted and useless to your family or God. I say that as a recovering work-aholic pastor's wife.
ANGIE: I've learned to make home a safe place for the marriage, for our children, for our friends, and for ministry . . . within reason. And the rewards are amazing--some of the kids we've worked with over the years are so dear to me, they're like my own spiritual children. They're grown now, with children of their own, and they'll always be special.
PATTY: Yes, we know children from our past children’s ministry who’ve now grown up to be pastors and missionaries. We’re there to influence them and point them toward Christ. And you and Gary have done a stellar job of that, Angie. Thanks for coming today to Words to Go.
ANGIE: I’ve enjoyed it. And I’m giving away a book too. She’s in a Better Place, my latest release.
PATTY: This is the funeral home setting, some humor—a great read! So leave your feedback and your name goes in the Big Straw Hat for Saturday’s book give. Thanks for coming today and drop in tomorrow for a chat with award-winning novelist Gayle Roper.
This is editor and novelist Karen Ball’s second visit to Words to Go. When I asked some author friends to share with us a week of insider’s perspectives on what it’s like being in the ministry, two wonderful authors stepped up to bat—Karen Ball and Angie Hunt. So today we’ll hear from Karen and tomorrow, Angie. Karen is head of acquisitions for fiction at Broadman and Holman. Will you kill me, Karen, for saying B&H is Beth Moore’s publisher?
KAREN: Not at all!
PATTY: When I heard that Karen was taking the helm for their fiction, I said, “Look out—here comes the boss!” But Karen didn’t come by her calm yet assertive leadership style by chance. Her life was shaped by a succession of realizations, the first having been shaped out of being a “good girl.” You’ll remember when Lisa Samson and I approached this topic a few weeks back. Karen, I understand that you can offer some insight about what it's like to live on the "inside" of ministry life. What concessions did you have to make as a child of a pastor?
KAREN: First, let me say I've always loved being a PK and PGK (pastor's grandkid). I was immeasurably fortunate in that my parents knew their first ministry was their family. That's so rare. In fact, my older brother and I were just talking about this yesterday. We never felt the church came before we did.
PATTY: That is very rare.
KAREN: Even so, I'd heard too many people in other churches make comments about PKs along the lines of, "And she's a pastor's daughter!" or "And her father's a minister!" As though that meant the child was somehow exempt from all the mistakes and idiocy kids seem to embrace. I can't tell you how deeply it impacted my growing-up heart that when a PK acted out, it wasn't the kid who was blamed or criticized, but the pastoral parent.
PATTY: We actually sent our youngest to a summer camp just for PK’s. It was the best thing we ever did for him. Even though I had stood vigil over my kids, they still sensed outside pressure to “be good” rather than to obey Christ.
KAREN As a result of my parent's ministry, I determined early on no one would ever say such things about my dad because of me. So how did I accomplish that? By not letting anyone outside of the family see me angry or upset.
PATTY: That’s a lot for a little kid to take on. You must have looked “perfect” to the world but felt miserable from within.
KAREN: I worked very hard to maintain an image of being happy and content and smart and fun. To be the kind of kid other parents would hold up as a role model. Which meant I internalized a LOT.
PATTY: But tamping down has its ultimate costs, doesn’t it?
KAREN: Yes. Little wonder, then, that I ended up with ulcers when I was 16, and again in my 20s, and again... Well, let's just stay it took me a lot of years to realize what I was doing to myself.
PATTY: I think that may be true of a lot of us on many different levels. I both love and hate those realizations.(Hate that they come so late in life)
KAREN: To not just know in my head but in my heart that negative emotions aren't wrong, they're just part of being human. That it's what you do with, or because of, them that matters. I had to learn how to deal with those emotions in a healthy, non self-destructive manner. Shoot, I still have trouble letting anyone see me cry.
PATTY: Been there.
KAREN: That whole "fishbowl" syndrome pastoral families endure can be so harmful. Knowing your parents and their ministries--or even their call from God!--are judged by what you do and say? Devastating.
PATTY: It’s a great lesson, not just for ministry families, but also the church members to know.
KAREN: I know I escaped a lot of the downside of the ministry because of my parents' determination to be parents first, a pastoral family second. That's why I can say I'm a PK who loves the church. It's sad how unusual that is. People need to realize pastoral families are like any other family, just doing their best. And kids are kids, no matter what their parents are called to do.
PATTY: Exactly. We once had a friend who was a children's pastor. When he would come and take our children's ministry pulpit to give us a break in our children's ministry days, he would always pay special attention to our youngest making sure he got picked for the games and things his dad couldn't do because of looking as if he was being given privileges. There are ways that church members can respond to their pastor's children and wife to make them feel special and noticed. Thanks so much for stopping by again today, Karen. I know you are so busy but I love these chats we have. You’re always willing to be authentic. You help us all when you do that.
KAREN: Thanks for having me again, Patty.
Tomorrow, all rise—Angela Elwell Hunt is dropping in to pay us a visit at Words to Go. Angie and I have been friends since the years our ministry was in Florida. When Angie and I would finally come up for air from novel writing to do a girlfriend’s lunch, our “hour” would turn into two, then three. And then our husbands would be calling to see if we had up and run away from home. You’re going to love our chat tomorrow with best-selling, Christy winning novelist Angela Elwell Hunt, so drop in for fun and a chance to win Angie’s latest novel!
Welcome to a week's worth of author chats where every day is a surprise on the Words to Go menu. Tomorrow, popular editor and novelist Karen Ball and I are going to chat about her perspectives growing up in the fishbowl of ministry. To follow are more great author chats and the topic is different every day, but will provide us with some insight into authors and each of their very different lives.
Speaking of the ministry, it is very much like a fishbowl being married to the ministry. Pastors' families are often the unsung members of the flock. My sons are both in college now but I really had to protect their rights to just be kids like everyone else's kids in the church.
Once my daughter had a slumber party when she was a teen. She had invited girls from school and church into our home. The girls stayed up late and had a great time. But come Sunday a mom approached me. She did not allow her daughter to attend movies and our family loves a good film. So when Jessica and the girls started talking about a film some of them had seen, this teen, feeling left out, complained to her mom that "even the pastor's daughter" was allowed to go to the movies. This mom was prepared to blast Jessi and me for "allowing such a horrible practice." Very firmly, this woman who had intruded on my home life, was invited to take a step back out as I helped her construct a new paradigm--my boundaries for my family.
For seven years when we were in a ministry building phase, we did not even own a TV, reserving our evenings for family time, reading aloud, a family study, a season of home schooling, and prayer. So it was indeed a strange complaint to field on behalf of a daughter who was chaste, saving herself for marriage, and very obedient and loving. I never told Jessi about that mom's complaint. When she passed away, we were very close and my heart was full of gratitude for the fact that my husband and I placed our family above the ministry. Mothering cannot be done by church committee. Yes, we can seek support in small groups and should feel free to ask other moms opinions about what sort of parenting practices have worked. But kids cannot be reared in a fishbowl and come out of it knowing what they want or what they believe. They draw their confidence from us, not through some church filter.
So drop in tomorrow for a chat with editor and author Karen Ball as we kick off a fun week called Author's Buffet.
We’ve enjoyed a week of hearing how stormy seasons brought beauty to the lives of some of our favorite novelists. Today, we’re bringing beauty to the lives of some of our bloggers in Saturday’s Big Book Give. Every time you left feedback this week, your name was entered in the Big Straw Hat. Here are the winners:
Jennifer Eckert wins Healing Promises by Rene Gutteridge
Carly Kendall wins Like a Watered Garden by Patti Hill
Rose McCauley wins Always Green by Patti Hill
Lynette Sowell wins In Every Flower by Patti Hill
Wanda Elaine wins The Queen of Sleepy Eye by Patti Hill
Moonine Sue Watson wins Jacob’s List by Stephanie Grace Whitson
Joyce Mahan wins A Claim of Her Own by Stephanie Grace Whitson
Lilac Grandma wins How to Help a Grieving Friend by Stephanie Grace Whitson
Kay Huck wins Becoming Olivia by Roxanne Henke
Congratulations winners! Please email pattyhickman at bellsouth dot net with your mailing address and your book will be shipped to you the first of next week.
Next week we invite you to participate in our very first AUTHORS’ BUFFET, where every day is a surprise and a surprise guest author who will visit with us on any topic they choose—but it’s sure to be a surprisingly great time and more exciting great book gives! See you next week at Words to Go!
Rene Gutteridge has had an interesting writing career that includes playwriting and even novelizing a major motion picture—The Ultimate Gift.She wrote the Boo series, showing off her gift for humorous writing and will release another co-authored novel in June, Never the Bride that is also a movie. She is an avid weather watcher and has written her share of stormy stories. But when you read her own stormy life, you’ll understand why she’s become a veteran of traversing life’s storms. Rene Gutteridge, welcome to Words to Go!
RENE: I’m glad I’m finally getting my turn today.
PATTY: You’ve been very patient. Like our last two chat guests, you’ve had to overcome personal physical illness too, haven’t you?
RENE: Yes. And it took time to diagnose, a trial in and of itself. From the time my symptoms started, it took about two weeks for me to get the diagnosis of Interstitial Cystitis. I had never heard of it and was so confused about what was going on. They ruled out bladder cancer and MS and this is what they landed on. I remember they handed me a laminated sheet with about ten different foods on it and I said, "Oh, these are foods I need to avoid?" And the doctor said, "These are foods you can eat." I knew then that my life was changed.
PATTY: My friend, Lissa Halls Johnson, has a condition that only allows her to eat a very small list of foods. It’s a real challenge in a culture that runs on a rich diet.
RENE: For months I did a ton of research on the disease, trying to figure out how to win against it. One day I was standing in the kitchen and this overwhelming thought hit me: You are chronically ill. You are not going to beat this. It was one of the most sobering moments of my life.
PATTY: I think that we tend to think that only loss of a family member sends us into these steps, but it’s the loss of anything that’s become part of our life.
RENE: Up until that point, there was nothing in my life I felt I couldn’t overcome. I realized I wasn’t going to beat this and that I had to find a way to live with a significantly altered lifestyle. My quality of life had lowered. But my faith had really held strong. I had this feeling, "Well, why not me?" I knew that God had never promised a life free of problems. I was in horrible pain, but I never felt closer to God during the worst of it. I was terrified and was mourning the life I had to leave behind. But there was peace.
Then, with no warning at all, my son became very ill. And I’m just being honest, I was so mad at God. I felt it was too much. I was just climbing out of my hole, trying to get my life rebalanced. It’s one thing to get sick yourself. It’s like you can handle it, because you know how much you can take. But it’s a whole other level of pain to see your child suffer. I would lay out in my back yard, on the patio, in the middle of the night and want to scream. I couldn’t because I live in a neighborhood, so I would cry and cry and ask God how He could do this to us.
It challenged my belief in God for sure.
PATTY: The most freeing truth I got once in a fellowship group was that we all have a crisis of faith—just like the heroes of the Bible. As a young Christian—baby Christian for far too long—I thought that only the weak had a crisis of faith. That’s why Bible study groups are so important.
RENE: I had to come to terms with the fact that deep down inside I questioned whether or not God was really good. He felt so mean to me, so cruel. As much as I suffered, now my child was suffering as well. Beyond that, medical bills were piling up. And to add to all of it, this all took place during a time when my husband and I (both of us had been Christians for over thirty years) had made a commitment to give sacrificially. So all this money we were giving away could have been used for the medical debt that was accruing.
PATTY: It was your time of testing.
RENE: Those were dark days. I never gave up on God. I never turned my back. But I fought him and I fought him hard.
PATTY: I love it that we continue to see the same patterns to final surrender in all of these personal stories. There is thequestioning and then the wrestling match.
RENE: My heart was broken.
PATTY:. . . and then the brokenness.
RENE: I felt like my heavenly Father had decided to put upon us a severe test that we were sure to fail. I didn’t know what I was striving for, beyond keeping my head above water.
PATTY: But then, even though your circumstances weren’t changing, the real breakthrough came inside you, didn’t it?
RENE: Slowly, though, I began to calm down. I began seeing the ways God was working in our lives. Not mighty, all-healing miracles, but small things, like putting certain people in our path. I began realizing my faith had some major problems in it. I realized I did not fully trust God. Yes, I trusted him up to a certain point, as long as, like you said, I could come up for air. But at the point that I felt like I was drowning, my belief was that God’s hand was upon my head, holding me under.
PATTY: It does feel like that. I’ll admit it.
RENE: It took not weeks, not months, but years of dissecting all of this and allowing God to heal the part of me that doubted him. It has been a long road to realizing that my weak body has betrayed me and let me down and that this is the very path God laid down for me to find true strength.
PATTY: The big debate among fellow sufferers who are also believers is how they come out of it trusting or not trusting in God's sovereignty--or redefining it.
RENE: Well, for me it has only caused me to understand this: I must fully trust. I will never understand his nature. I can only take small glimpses of it. For example, I understand that I must cause some discomfort in my children’s lives for them to grow.
PATTY: Parenting and marriage—the ultimate object lessons for grown-ups.
RENE: So on a basic level, I understand that suffering is the only way to grow. I truly believe that. I know that if my life was cushy and without problems there would be nothing pushing me to change. But I am still often left wondering where he is and why he isn’t answering.
PATTY: Yes. I always feel like he’s nudging me toward an end. And I’ll argue with him and say, “If you’ll just tell me where it is you want me to go, I’ll go willingly without all of this awful waiting. But the process is the beautiful story unfolding. And where would we writers be without our stories?
RENE: Yes, true. And the Holy Spirit works so beautifully in my life. He whispers and I believe. I hear him say, "I am completely trustworthy." In my human nature, I suppose I will never stop trying to figure out the "why," but my spirit is filled with the capability of being okay with not knowing.
PATTY: How has this season of suffering affected your well of grace?
RENE: I figured out something pretty quickly when I became ill. The world is not kind to the chronically ill. If you’re dying of cancer, there is grace. Otherwise, suck it up. And I was one of those intolerant people. I had no tolerance for excuses. I was not weak and expected other people not to be either. When I was forced into weakness, it was so hard on my ego and pride.
PATTY: Well, if we’re confessing . . .
RENE: Making it worse, I had people in my life who disappointed me. It took grace to forgive them. I guess I understood them more than I wanted to admit.
PATTY: We have to remember that the people who disappoint us are even used by God to get us to where he is taking us. We have to give credit to God for the way he stages our life as part of his ultimate story of mankind.
RENE: I remember one night my son asked me, "Why am I sick?" And I had to answer, "I don’t know." And then he asked me, "Why are you sick?" I was about to answer I don’t know when I was suddenly filled with this revelation: "Maybe it’s so I could understand what it’s like to be sick...so I could understand what you’re going through and I could help you better."
PATTY: And he’ll understand and pass it on one day too.
RENE: I approach his illness completely differently than I would have had I not been sick myself. And I have a well of compassion that I never had before, for those who are weak. I am now weak myself and I reach out to people who have fallen on hard times, rather than judging them.
PATTY: Yes. I can still fill out one of those spiritual gifts surveys and flunk compassion because I’m being honest about the way I “feel.” But outwardly my actions resonate compassion because my actions are Spirit-led, not feelings led. It is Christ working through me, and in spite of me. But we have to get used to the fact that not all who proclaim Christ have surrendered to his leading, right, Rene?
RENE: It does astonish me at how harshly we are judged and how harshly we judge in the Christian community. But I am now one who will reach out my hand in compassion, because I desperately need it myself.
PATTY: And this is the big story here today, Rene. That he is leading us, not to be successfully famous or celebrated in some grand public way. God wants us humbled to the point that we are useful in his hands. We are the clay. Rene, I’m so glad we saved you for Friday.
RENE: Thanks for inviting me here today, Patty. Have a great weekend everyone!
PATTY:We’re going to have an awesome weekend because a bunch of our visitors to Words to Go are going to win books by the basketful. So please leave feedback and your name is entered in the Big Straw Hat. Watch tomorrow, Saturday for the winner’s list. Then just email me with your mailing address and each author will mail you an autographed novel or non-fiction book.
Thanks for stopping by this week. We’ve enjoyed getting to know you and hearing how your stories intersect with ours. Now visit your favorite neighborhood congregation and celebrate Sunday all that God is doing in and through you as he greens your beautiful soul.
This has been an amazing week as authors share their stories of how walking through some very deep valleys has helped to deepen their perspective on life, thus the Greening of the Soul. Today suspense writer Amy Wallace shares a personal story that will hold you spellbound as her Deep Chocolate Suspense will hold you spellbound. Amy Wallace, welcome to Words to Go!
AMY: I’m so glad to be here, Patty.
PATTY: What was your first remembrance of being initiated into the world of suffering.
AMY: Two circumstances come to mind when I consider my initiation into suffering. The first, was a diagnosis of diabetes when I was a senior in high school, already scared to death about the “real world” at my doorstep. The second was attending the funeral of a friend after praying for his healing from cancer for three years.
Both of those experiences stripped away any ability to control my spinning world. Asking God WHY used up a great deal of energy. As did anger. And doubt. I mean, how could God be good when life physically and emotionally hurt so much?
PATTY: In our culture, we tend to define good as something that happens to bring us pleasure rather than something that intrinsically makes us a deeper person. That’s why we default to bargaining with God instead of thanking him for walking with us throughit.
AMY: Looking back, the blessing of pain slowly crafted something of beauty in my soul, much like rushing water carved out the beauty of the Grand Canyon.
PATTY: So true. We forget about the beautiful thing that comes out of our time of desolation.
AMY: I learned at an early age that my choices had serious consequences: if I ignored a low blood sugar, I could die. If I ate too much without taking insulin or if I refused to deal with minor illnesses that skyrocketed my blood sugars, I could die or be seriously injured. Diabetes grew me up fast and taught me that dependence on God was the only good option for handling life. My chronic illness also gave me an early understanding that God is still at work, even in the painful portions of life.
PATTY: When we led a hospital ministry, that’s what we noticed about children with chronic and life threatening illnesses. They were wise beyond their years.
AMY: Watching my friend’s health deteriorate and then watching helplessly as God took him home, shook me to the core. For the first time in my life I didn’t want to talk to God. I’d prayed for Ken and God ignored me, why talk to Him about anything else?
PATTY: It’s not that God isn’t used to that type of response or can’t handle it, it’s that we slip away from the umbrella of his benefits when we run from the shelter of his wings.
AMY: When I turned my back on God, everything else slipped down that steep slope and crashed. But Ken’s widow spoke into my pain about the grace of God and how He gave her what she needed to live and He’d do the same for me. If I let Him.
PATTY: So you did. And how what did that unpack in you?
AMY: God also used these lessons to make me available to others in their pain. I’ve had the honor of being that helping hand to pull someone out of the pit that others have been to me. It’s beautiful to walk through that experience and see 2 Corinthians 1:4-5 lived out. “…who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.”
PATTY: I find that trait a commonality among believers who have “overcome” suffering, especially when suffering becomes intrinsic instead of going away—like Patti’s pain, my grief, etc.Has your view of God's sovereignty been redefined? OR would you like to share an example of how the process of suffering has helped reshape the way you explain God's often misunderstood nature?
AMY:My view of God’s sovereignty has been stretched, tumbled and strengthened. Having walked through suffering and come out with fewer answers and more empathy, I now speak into other’s lives differently than before…sometimes by silence, sometimes by sharing my story, and sometimes by lending a friend my hope until they find theirs again.
PATTY: In our noisy, advice giving culture, we have to relearn the healing practices like the quiet vigil of presence or silent listening.
AMY:I don’t pretend to understand God or have many answers, but I’ve looked into the face of pain and found a friend there to walk the path with me, a friend who never gives up, never lets go and never loves me less.
PATTY: That makes you my new best friend, Amy. And all of us are so happy to invite you here to share what you’ve gleaned from the depths of suffering.I understand you come bearing gifts.
AMY:Patty, I’d be happy to give a copy of Healing Promises away. In its pages are my wrestling match with God when my friend died of cancer and the tender way God showed Himself real to my questioning heart.
I think that a lot of our readers would love to have that or buy it. So we’ll add Healing Promises to our growing basketful of books in Saturday’s book give. Enter feedback in today’s blog chat and your name is entered in the Big Staw Hat for Saurday’s give. Tomorrow my friend novelist Rene Gutteridge will share her own story of how she walked through the valley of suffering and it’s all here at Words to Go. Here’s to God blessing your way with beautiful greening paths, friends!
Author Patti Hill has a seemingly perfect life—two sons in college. Her hubby’s gardening business has led to his own radio and TV show and, judging from the organic book covers, has certainly informed Patti’s novels. But Patti’s first novel also came with some nearly debilitating news. Today Patti Hill shares her own Greening of the Soul story. Welcome, Patti, to Words to Go!
PATTI: Thank you, Patty!
PATTY: You know we’re going to confuse people.
PATTI: I’m the one with the “I”.
PATTY: None of us ever asks for trouble in life. But sometimes it comes knocking, seemingly out of nowhere, doesn’t it?
PATTI: I’ve avoided reading I Peter, James, and those pesky beginning verses in Romans 5 whenever possible. I don’t like suffering. Pain hurts. Count it all joy? I don’t think so. Not that I didn’t have the doctrine of suffering down. I knew exactly how God used suffering in other people’s lives to refine them, draw them into a new intimacy with His Son, and to clear the dross out of a believer’s soul. So, other than giving birth to two sons and chronic migraines, pain was for people who needed it.
PATTY: If there’s one thing we know, life comes with the good and the bad, doesn’t it?
PATTI: For me, writing my first manuscript and my journey of suffering are a story that must be told together. I quit teaching in the spring of 1999 to answer the call to write that I’d first heard as a teenager. I needed every one of those in-between years to glean skills worthy of the Master. I’d earned an English Literature degree, attended fiction-writing seminars, and most importantly, developed a work ethic.
PATTY: For those emerging writers who visit Words to Go, this is often where the sheep and the goats are separated—the work ethic is ground zero for a pro writer.
PATTI: Once I no longer had 65-hour work weeks to hold me back, it only took a year to garner the courage—isn’t that what research is for?— to type the first words of Like a Watered Garden. I needed a deadline, so I paid for a critique at a writer’s conference. Lauraine Snelling was working as an acquisitions editor for Bethany House at the time. At our meeting, she sent me home to write two more chapters and a proposal. She also gave me the business card of her literary agent and advised me to contact her as well.
PATTY: And go to those writer’s conferences . . .
PATTI: I sweated over those first three chapters and prepared to mail the proposal to Bethany House and the literary agent. I remember sliding the proposal into the envelope, aware that my hands ached. Strange. Since I can read English and had access to the Internet, I diagnosed myself with carpal tunnel syndrome. I also prescribed treatment: two UGLY splints to wear 24/7.
PATTY: My doctor hates it when I self-diagnose.
PATTI: But the pain got worse and spread to my feet. Touching the gas pedal of the car became increasingly painful. I stopped driving and consulted a parade of doctors. Each one shook his head and sent me for one more scan in the MRI machine, six in all. And a spinal tap. And evoked response tests. And nerve conductivity tests. And odd exercises and home traction machines. Electrical current acupuncture was a definite low point. Nothing helped.
PATTY: This was probably when you were beginning to feel that awful loss of control over life, wasn’t it?
PATTI: Yes. Every day, I woke up with pain in my hands and feet that grew increasingly worse through the day, radiating up my arms and legs. By 9:00 AM, I wondered how I was going to make it through the rest of the day. The pain felt like blunt stakes being pressed through my hands and feet, a bittersweet fellowship I shared with our Lord.
PATTY: A beautiful metaphor for a horrible season.
PATTI: I couldn’t touch the dog or fold towels for the pain. It took several days to recover from riding in a car.
PATTY: Yet, your career as a novelist stretched before you.
PATTI:I started praying that Bethany House would reject the novel.
PATTY: For anyone suffering writer’s angst, this speaks highly to your degree of pain you were enduring.
PATTI: Exactly. God answered that prayer, so I stowed the manuscript in a spare closet and wept as if someone dear had died. The agent, however, called several days later to offer representation after reading the proposal. I told her I wasn’t sure I would be writing. After that phone call, I begged God to heal me. “Lord,” I said, “I can’t be a better person than I am right now!”
PATTY: Never pay that.
PATTI: He disagreed.
PATTY: But you responded in a healthy way.
PATTI: I was desperate. I spent my days reading every story of healing in the Bible, looking for a pattern, hoping for a surefire litany of sorts to compel God to heal me. There are no patterns and certainly no magic words. Healing is as individual as snowflakes, a demonstration of the Lord’s compassion and sovereignty. My goal was to cling to the hem of His garment. The pain had flayed me. The doctors had no answers. Jesus was my one and only hope.
PATTY: But if writing was painful, then . . .
PATTI: I could only read for short snippets of time. The rest of the day was spent on the floor, flat on my back, listening to worship songs like Just Give Me Jesus and I Am. I set the timer for 30 minutes because my PT wanted me to keep moving. I walked from the living room to the bedroom where I kept a stack of index cards with the names of my family members written on each one. I shuffled the deck and prayed for the person on the top card, before returning to the sunbeam and stereo. My world grew smaller and smaller.
PATTY: I’m sure you saw your dream slipping away as you struggled through each painful second.
PATTI: The months ticked away. My symptoms worsened. I became weaker and weaker. I taped instructions for my funeral to the inside cover of my Bible and told my husband to remarry—anyone but a woman named Bambi.
PATTY: This is a good idea. Note to self.
PATTI: My ministry during this time was twofold. First, I forgave well-meaning people who asked me if I harbored unconfessed sin in my life.
PATTY: Job’s friends. I’ve had a few too.
PATTI: You can bet I took care of that early on. I wanted so badly to live in faith during this time, but I didn’t know what that looked like. Would I stop going to doctors? Would I shred my exercise instructions? Honestly, I couldn’t picture what faith looked like with chronic pain that left me feeling raw and useless.And then I came across the story of Jesus taking the disciples across the lake after a particularly exhausting day of healings and teaching. In Luke 8 Jesus says, “Let’s go to the other side of the lake.” A vacation? The disciples jumped aboard, and remember, seven of them were fishermen. They knew boats. Jesus soon fell asleep on a bed of nets. His dreaming continued even when a squall swamped the boat. The disciples woke him saying, “We’re going to drown!”
PATTY: I’ve said that a few times, if I’m going to be honest.
PATTI: My throat tightened as I read this account. I knew just how those poor disciples felt. I’d followed Jesus for thirty years, and now, when I finally stood at the threshold of my calling, my life was being drained away by undiagnosed pain, and soon, if a majority of the doctors were right, I would be dead. I felt betrayed.
PATTY: But for every story I’ve heard like this, there is always that crisis of faith.
PATTI: The Bible story continues. Jesus wastes no time. He rebukes the wind and raging waters, and “all was calm.” “Calm my storm, Lord!” was my response. “Please, Lord, please.” But after calming the storm, Jesus turned to the disciples and asked, “Where is your faith?”How could he be so cruel? Didn’t he understand the fragility of humanity? The boat was sinking. I was getting weaker and weaker, the pain intractable. Have a heart, Jesus!
PATTY: Thankfully, he does.
PATTI: It took me a few days, maybe more, to ask Him this: If the disciples’ reaction to a real threat on their lives demonstrated a lack of faith, then what is faith supposed to look like when a boat is sinking? Would I have to stop baling, also known as hunting the Internet for a cure? Would I have to stop clinging to the mast, my way of living in fear? Should I rebuke the waves, take command over my malady? What?
PATTY: It’s true. My first response is to reach for the high road, for the character to do the right thing. But when the right thing is a muddle of multiple choice responses, all we can do is just stand.
PATTI: Yes! He responded. “I want you to lie on the nets with Me and take a nap.” “I drowning here,” I replied. “I told you we were going to the other side of the lake. Have I ever lied to you before?”“Never.”“Then rest with Me.”“Can I still go to my doctor’s appointments?”“Sure.”“How about my sleeping pills?”“I’m delivering you to the far shore. What happens between now and then matters very much to Me, but rest with Me for the journey.”
PATTY: This sounds familiar.
PATTI: Metaphors are my stock and trade, so I asked, “Where is this far shore? Is it like a shoreline where my pain ends and health begins, or is it the other side of the Jordan River? That could be thirty-five years from now, maybe longer.”
PATTY: It’s often the desire for control that he’s asking us to relinquish.
PATTI: “Whether you arrive at the far shore tomorrow or many years from now, I want you to rest with Me.” So, faith looks like a nap on fishing nets. I laid in the sunbeam, picturing myself on a swamping boat. The roiling sea pounded the deck with wave after wave as I clung to the mast.
PATTY: I think we were clinging to the mast in yesterday’s interview too. There’s a lot of that going around.
PATTI:Going to rest with Jesus meant letting go of the mast and walking toward a small door to the hull. Even in my imagination, I made false starts, only to cling to the mast that offered only superficial safety. When I finally opened that door and stepped down the ladder, Jesus raised his arm, inviting me to lay with him like two spoons in a drawer. I accepted his invitation for three nanoseconds. On subsequent tries, I tarried longer and longer. I had my picture of faith on stormy seas. What a gift!
PATTY: Sweet surrender.
PATTI: At fifteen months, I had surgery to fuse C-5 and C-6 with two screws and a titanium plate. For all those months, a ruptured disc had been rubbing against the sacral sack of my spinal cord whenever I tilted my head forward as to read or eat. The pain didn’t go away instantly. In fact, I still face limitations, especially when it comes to typing.
PATTY: My friend Terri Blackstock has had to endure a similar life of writing in pain. New writers take heed and take care of your body. Start that yoga class now.
PATTI: It’s all done by God’s grace. Six months after surgery, I could type half a page, and a couple of months later, I was pounding out a page a day. Within a year, I was typing three pages a day. I’m sure Like a Watered Garden and my subsequent offerings have been more honest about the human condition and the struggle to believe in the dark places more, all thanks to His work in me during my journey of suffering. In fact, although I’m likely to be found clinging to the mast on any given day, I see evidence of His refining grace in every facet of my life. And I am so grateful.
PATTY: The big debate among fellow sufferers who are also believers is how they come out of it trusting or not trusting in God's sovereignty--or redefining it. Gerry Sittser says, "The terror of randomness is enveloped by the mysterious purposes of God. . .Loss may appear to be random, but that does not mean that it is. It may fit into a scheme that surpasses even what our imaginations dare to think." Patti, has your view of God's sovereignty been redefined?
PATTI: I’m not a theologian. Truthfully, I don’t care why I suffered. Whether God pointed His finger at me or He chose to use a random injury to demonstrate His faithfulness doesn’t change the result. Others will put it more eloquently, but suffering has humbled me.
PATTY: Simplicity is eloquent.
PATTI: I can say “Thy will be done” and mean it. I’m only passing through, and while my passing through has been amazingly sweet on the whole, I definitely live for the far shore. I’m more aware of my homesick heart. I long to drink from the wedding cup in Jesus’ presence, to see the little mansion He’s prepared for me, and to join the throng in worship. And when I see Him face to face, I will kiss each palm with gratitude.
PATTY: It’s that eternal perspective that Steph and I were talking about yesterday. Interesting that each week, similar themes connect all of our stories into one big eternal story—God is in charge and we are not! Patti, thank you so much for stopping by and giving us a Word to Go. God has certainly greened the garden of your beautiful soul.
PATTI: Thanks for having me, Patti. I would like to leave you all with some presents from my garden.
PATTY: Please say books.
PATTI: My entire library. Like a Watered Garden, Always Green, In Every Flower, and The Queen of Sleepy Eye.
PATTY: You totally rock, girlfriend. Readers, just leave your feedback today and every day and your name will be entered in the Big Straw Hat for a tremendous garden of books to be given away Saturday! Thanks, Patti Hill for stopping by our front porch. That’s all for today at Words to Go!
Tomorrow join Patty as she chats with novelist Amy Wallace who shares another great "Greening of the Soul" story!
Stephanie Grace Whitson and I were mere acquaintances many moons ago when her husband contracted an incurable cancer. A few months later, when facing the shock and loss of losing our daughter, I reached out to Steph and we supported each other in cyberspace and also on our knees. She is the author of numerous historical fiction novels and in 2005 authored How to Help a Grieving Friend: A Candid Guide for Those Who Care. It’s my extreme pleasure to introduce you to award-winning novelist Stephanie Grace Whitson.
STEPHANIE: Thank you, Patty!
PATTY: Steph, what’s your earliest inkling that faith was going to be your forever lifeline?
STEPHANIE: My personal faith in a sovereign God has been a constant in my life for as long as I can remember. I honestly don't know when I became a believer. I do know that when I was baptized at age nine, I understood as well as any nine-year-old can the basics of the gospel message.
PATTY: Parents can help so much.
STEPHANIE: Beyond saving faith, I've been privileged to be part of a wonderful teaching ministry for years, so when 1996 arrived, I had a lot of head knowledge about what the Bible says. But 1996 left me feeling like a grain of sand at the mercy of hurricane-sized waves. My best friend died of breast cancer. Both my parents died within six weeks of each other. My oldest daughter and I were in a terrible car accident. My youngest daughter went through a prolonged and terrifying illness. And my husband was diagnosed with an incurable form of non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Cancer thrusts uncertainty about the future into our lives along with chemotherapy and medical visits and second opinions and, finally, a bone marrow transplant. Because Bob was an elder in our large church we had an ever-present sense that people were watching to see how we would we cope, and we had a strong desire to be found faithful. But we were terrified.
PATTY: We understand the aquarium and how people expect you to “behave” in a storm. But happy affirmations certainly fail you through devastating loss, don’t they?
STEPHANIE: More than once during the next few years I remember lying face down--literally face down on the floor--crying out to God for help. I didn't doubt his love for me. I didn't doubt His sovereignty. And yet, knowing these things and claiming the promise of Romans 8:28 didn't spare me the pain of the process. The fierceness of that emotional pain caught me off guard. I was a believer. I was well taught in the things of Scripture. Shouldn't I hurt less? Fear less?
PATTY: I compare it to being lashed to a ship’s mast in a hurricane. We tend to question our resolve and courage right about the time those virtues are hitting the cellar.
STEPHANIE: One of the most profound things I learned during that time was that faith doesn't protect the faithful from pain or fear. That's not what faith is for. Faith is what enables us to endure the pain and the fear while we cling to the truths presented in God's Word about who He is and what He is doing this side of heaven.
PATTY: I’d like to add, if Steph and I sound courageous today, we have the luxury of time and the healing process between us and the loss now. We’re speaking from a perspective that’s been earned while hanging from our fingernails. Steph, you did buckle, didn’t you?
STEPHANIE: Realizing that Bob was going to die drove me to my knees. I was living the worst thing I could ever imagine happening and I was powerless to change it. It was devastating. And yet I never doubted it was part of God's plan for me, because the God of the Bible is sovereign over the affairs of men. That is simple to say. Hard to live.
PATTY: I was probably a greater wreck as for many months I couldn’t vocalize God’s sovereignty to a friend who asked me to try. I had a lapse of spiritual vocabulary.
STEPHANIE: Bob used to say that wherever cancer took us was a place to share our faith. After he died, I had to come to a place where I could say "wherever widowhood takes me is a place to share my faith." The process was difficult, but God eventually took me to the place of peace where I could say "yes" to being alone. Widowhood was not my choosing, but I could be content in that place for as long as God asked me to remain there.
PATTY: It’s that moment where you found your Shelter in the emotional onslaught.
STEPHANIE: In human terms there were moments during those years that were horrible. Moments that still make me shudder when I think of them. But I can honestly say that because of cancer and widowhood, the sufficiency of God isn't some vague theological concept to me. It is real. I knew things intellectually before 1996 that I have now experienced. My faith is stronger.
PATTY: Yes, it was easy to “be good” and quote scriptures to others suffering pain when my own life was cheesecake. Everything shifts, doesn’t it?
STEPHANIE: Yes, one thing that has changed profoundly is the way I pray. I was struck not long ago with the realization that in their darkest moments, many of the giants of the faith didn't ask for deliverance. They requested perseverance and endurance.
PATTY: A few did, yes.
STEPHANIE: When I pray for others now, I pray less for the removal of trials and more for the endurance. Why? Because so often it's the trial that provides incredible opportunity for us to shine the light of Jesus into places we never would have gone without that trial. I think God wants me to spend less time begging for escape and more time praying for endurance.
PATTY: You become galvanized in a new skin. That doesn’t mean you’re pain proof, but have the endurance to weather difficulties with greater ease. I understand we have a mutual friend.
STEPHANIE: My brother in Christ Randy Alcorn was one of many prayer warriors who helped encourage Bob and me through our valley. Randy consistently challenges people to "invest in eternity," and that phrase has truly changed the way I look at trials.
PATTY: Randy is so faithful like that. When Jessi died, Randy was right there keeping vigil over my Randy and I. He’s like a spiritual medi-vac for God. He reminded me of the friends in the gospel who couldn’t get to Jesus, so they cut a hole in the roof and lowered the lame friend down through the ceiling. He knows who to go to on our behalf—his “eternal perspective” comes in handy when grenades are being thrown at you.
STEPHANIE: With fear and trembling I try to look beyond this "momentary light affliction" and forward to the "eternal weight of glory." Now, I emphasize again that I do these things "with fear and trembling" because I am human and weak and I just plain do not LIKE having to go through trials. But Bob's cancer and subsequent death were the catalyst for a major shift in the way I think about trials.
PATTY:The big debate among fellow sufferers who are also believers is how they come out of it trusting or not trusting in God's sovereignty--Has your view of God's sovereignty been redefined? OR would you like to share an example of how the process of suffering has helped reshape the way you explain God's often misunderstood nature?
STEPHANIE: There is always some tension in the life of faith. In the area of suffering I sometimes picture this: on one hand you have suffering and on the other is God's sovereignty. It is impossible for what I call my "pea-brain" to put the palms of those two hands together and lace the fingers. It's as if those two hands are opposing poles of a magnet and the more forcefully I try to bring them together, the more forcefully they are held apart. The life of faith takes place in that space between those two seemingly opposing forces.
PATTY: Beautiful example, Steph.
STEPHANIE: To me, faith is deciding to willingly remain in that place and consciously accept that not all my questions are going to be answered this side of the grave. I'm talking about a deliberate choice here, not fatalism.
PATTY: Yes, unfortunately in this post-Christian age, everything has to be explained.
STEPHANIE: The Scriptures tell us that "the secret things belong to God." I find great comfort in that phrase. One of the reasons that Job is my favorite book in the Bible is that the only answer Job was given for the awful things that happened to him was, "I am."
PATTY: We ask out of our smallness and God answers out of His bigness.
STEPHANIE: Job finally got to the place where he stopped questioning and said, "I place my hand over my mouth."
PATTY: I’m still working on that one.
STEPHANIE: I don't know that Job ever knew about God giving Satan permission to do what he did. But I think Job will be rewarded throughout eternity because of the generations upon generations of people like me who have learned from Job and been encouraged to endure their own tough times. If Job had a chance to go back and relive his life and have it be great, I think he'd choose to go back and have it be exactly as it was. Because now Job SEES what God was doing and he's being rewarded for it and he realizes that, in light of eternity those trials were "momentary light affliction." But while Job was on the earth, "the secret things belonged to God." They belong to God. And so do I.
PATTY: Stephanie, for those of you who don’t know, is a professional quilter. Notice how beautifully God has sewn together the patchwork of pain in her life and made it a thing of beauty. God finishes us and continues to finish us when we surrender to that work, no matter how painful.
STEPHANIE: Even as I share this, I want to make it very clear that while I believe them with all my heart, I don't always apply them consistently. Since Bob died I've remarried. When my new husband went through a situation that involved words like "suspicious tumor" and "surgery" and when I had the "cancer" word applied to me a couple of years ago (I'm fine), I had to go back again to the same reminders.
PATTY: And he’s a man of faith too, isn’t he?
STEPHANIE: When asked once how he could endure the illness and death of his first wife, my husband Dan said, "Life is a multiple choice test. A: God's in control. B: He's not. I choose 'A'." I've learned that that choice has to be made over and over again through life, sometimes about big things like cancer, sometimes about smaller things I don't understand. By God's grace, I choose 'A'.
PATTY: Steph, we’re so honored to have you share your story on Words to Go, and how pain and endurance contributed to the Greening of your beautiful soul. Thanks for stopping by.
STEPHANIE:Thanks for inviting me, Patty.
If you are going through your own dark night of the soul, we hope you found encouragement here today. I have a copy right off the presses of Stephanie’s newest novel A Claim of Her Own plus Steph is going to give away autographed copies of her novel Jacob's List and her How to Help a Grieving Friend book! I’m going to put them all in Saturday’s book give. So leave feedback and your name goes in the Big Straw Hat for the drawing. Tomorrow novelist Patti Hill shares her own story of how her soul grew in the valley of darkness and uncertainty.
In uncertain times, we can become confused when the valley seems to keep getting deeper, the bottom nowhere in sight. This week, five authors will share five different valley stories. But I ask you to consider how each author was changed through the process and then you may share with each other and us your comments.
Bestselling novelist Roxanne Henke is such a fun lady. She is lovely inside and out and asks that you call her Roxy. Her most recently released novel is On a Someday. Like me, she is a speaker and a CLASS graduate too! Today she shares with us her own story of THE GREENING OF THE SOUL. Welcome, Roxanne, to Words to Go!
ROXY: Thank you, Patty. I’m so glad to be here!
PATTY: Roxy, your story goes all the way back to when you were very young, doesn’t it?
ROXY: Yes, Patty. After a seven year roller-coaster ride with cancer, my dad died when I was seventeen years old.
PATTY: So young, and so many things left unsaid relationally, I’m sure.
ROXY: When this all happened, I was at a stage in life when my dad and I butted-heads often (mostly because of my stubborn attitude) and didn’t apologize nearly enough.
When my dad died I knew he loved me and I loved him, but I was filled with guilt that I hadn’t shown him my true feelings the way I should have. The easiest way to cope with those feelings was to stay emotionally tough. I barely shed a tear for fear if I started crying I’d never stop.
PATTY: Tamping down is such an unhealthy practice. It’s often the default behavior in our culture but sadly the most toxic.
ROXY: I didn’t know how to grieve and so I didn’t. I simply pushed aside my sadness and went off to college. And then I dropped out. And returned. Switched schools. Dropped out. Well, you get the idea.
PATTY: Not only do I get the idea, but followed the same pattern myself.
ROXY: Fast forward a bunch of years. . .I was happily married with two kids. In the intervening years my best friend in the whole world died from breast cancer (at the age of 29). An Aunt died of cancer. An Uncle died of cancer. Another friend’s child was diagnosed with cancer. And my favorite cousin was, too. Cancer was everywhere and still I denied its effect on me. Until a lump on my daughter’s arm turned out to contain pre-cancerous cells.
PATTY: You must have been to the point of explosion having practiced stuffing for so long.
ROXY: She had a couple of operations and was finally declared “all clear.” She was fine, I wasn’t.
PATTY: There’s always a Waterloo.
ROXY: No longer could I suppress my fears and grief. . .time had taken its toll and I slid into a deep, dark place. “Depression” the doctors called it. As much as I tried to deny the diagnosis, I couldn’t. After a series of medical tests there was no other explanation for the deep valley I was in.
PATTY: Some say that men deny depression, but we women do too.
ROXY: I railed and wailed to God. Why was I so miserable? Why now, when my daughter had been cleared of a cancer scare, was I in the grip of darkness? There was no answer. God was silent.
PATTY: He always does that.
ROXY: I was left to trudge through the night seemingly alone.I spent many, many hours in what I call my ‘prayer chair’ searching for answers. Calling on God to heal me. Trying to ‘think’ my way, pray my way, out of despair. But, most days, my mind was so muddled, my thinking so fuzzy, that I found I couldn’t even pray.
PATTY: Wrestling, stage two of surrender.
ROXY: It was then, in that pit of emptiness that I understood there is a reason we are called to pray for others. . .because there are times when we are unable to pray for ourselves.
PATTY: Why I have assembled a little intercessory prayer team for my book and speaking ministry.
ROXY: I spent many hours sitting in my chair, mostly in silence. . .sometimes in tears. . .simply sitting in the presence of God. In all the turmoil I was feeling my time with the Lord was often the only peace I might feel the entire day. The lowest point in my life was when I felt the closest to Him.
PATTY: I agree. But how would we survive those valley periods without Christ’s vigil over us?
ROXY: Eventually, with the help of doctors, counselors, medication, time, and lots of prayer, I climbed out of that pit. At the time I was grateful just to be feeling better. I still didn’t understand “why” I went through what I did. . .until almost ten years later.
PATTY: That’s why we write.
ROXY: Yes, exactly. I sat down to write a book. A fictional story that dealt with the topic of clinical depression. As I was writing that book I had the sense that those words were the “why” that had eluded me. God had a greater plan for my emotional pain. . .He wanted me to share my experience with others going through the same thing.
PATTY: And that is when your writing and stories become ministry.
ROXY: That book, “Becoming Olivia,” has ministered to countless people. When I speak, I’ve had people come up to my book table, pick up that book, hold it in front of me and say, “This book saved my life.”
PATTY: Wow!
ROXY: Little did I know how God would use my pain, my tears, my words, to minister to others.
PATTY: But now you do.
ROXY: Now, many years later, I do. He had a bigger plan and I am awestruck to be part of it.
PATTY:And we’re so thrilled that you continue to write and tell your stories to others, Roxy. Thank you for joining us today, Roxy.
ROXY: I’m glad I had the chance to share, Patty. Thank you.
I have great news. Roxy is going to give away Becoming Olivia in the drawing Saturday. If you’d like to leave questions for Roxy to answer, please feel free. You may share your own stories, whatever you’d like. But do leave feedback so your name will go in the Big Straw Hat for Saturday’s Book Give.
Roxeanne Henker is the author of the popular Coming Home to Brewster series...After Anne, Finding Ruth, Becoming Olivia, Always Jan, and, With Love, Libby. Also available...The Secret of Us, Learning to Fly, and my newest release: On a Someday! Check out her website at: www.roxannehenke.com
I've been told that there are emerging writers visiting Words to Go. I would like to invite you to take more time to revisit this past week's author chats. Memory is a potent resource for writing. I invite you to journal and write down specific scenes from your own past. For instance, the memory of little Karen Harrington standing on a tree stump yearning to see past her own yard is a vivid memory and its also true. Or Kathy Patrick in her bright yet eccentric clothes, Shellie Thomlinson in her thick glasses standing on top of her school desk singing The Streak Song, Melody Carlson believing she could get published in grade school, or the river that tempted me to look beyond my own small cup of a town. The flotsam of memory is great fodder for beginning your own story. The best way to start is to start. What are you waiting for?
Today's big winners for the book give are:
Joyce Mahan wins The Other Side of Darkness by Melody Carlson
Jennifer Eckert wins The Pulpwood Queens Tiara-Wearing, Book-Sharing Guide to Life by the Pulpwood Queen, Kathy Patrick
Congratulations, winners!
This next week on Words to Go we will visit the emotional subject of suffering and how the human soul grows through it as authors talk candidly about THE GREENING OF THE SOUL. Five days of popular authors will be your reason to come back and pay us a visit here at Words to Go!
One of the most exciting things about Words to Go is introducing a new author. Karen Harrington and I met at Girlfriend’s Weekend. She struck me first as a very reticent, but beautiful young redhead. But after she dragged me against my will out onto the dance floor at the Big Hair Ball, I realized I was quite wrong about Karen. But, hey, what happens at Girlfriend’s Weekend, stays at Girlfriend’s Weekend. Karen has written a compelling story called Janeology. It is part family saga, part legal thriller or what some folks call a hybrid or even, if may go so far as to say, spec fic. Karen is very warm and authentic and loved the idea about sharing her coming-of-age years with us. So I’m very excited to introduce you all to novelist Karen Harrington!
KAREN: Thank you for inviting me, Patty!
PATTY: Karen, I think that you, like so many novelists, can still revisit your formative years and easily revisit the emotional landscape that would eventually inform your writing.
KAREN: I have a theory about sensitive twelve-year old girls that I formed from, well, once having been a sensitive twelve year-old girl. I think they have a kind of wanderlust around this age. She senses there’s a big, interesting world beyond her common neighborhood and she wants to see it.
PATTY: I think that it’s why I repeatedly dreamed of flying at that age.
KAREN: She believes it’s not only different, but better, than her world. Problem is, she’s limited by what others around her can do for her, where and when they can take her. So she vacillates between falling back into a young girl’s thoughts and trying to stretch toward what? That nameless pulling forward toward a time when she’ll be independent. And since she can’t grow up any faster and get on with her life and experience all the world at once, she finds it useful to rev up her imagination.
PATTY: What do you see when you look back into that raw imagination of adolescence?
KAREN: Picture a girl standing on a dead, four feet tall tree stump in her front yard, looking out over the rooftops in her own blue-collar neighborhood. That’s me, around age twelve. I climbed this stump at night and looked at the houses and what I thought was a busy road just beyond our neighborhood. I stood up there until the stump finally gave out one night as I leapt off. But before that, it was my pedestal for a full summer. Spying on the neighborhood and the roads, I had all kinds of ideas about where everyone was driving. For example, maybe they were driving all the way to faraway Dallas! I saw families through their windows and conjured up what was being said and eaten inside, which was decidedly more interesting and flavorful than what took place in my house, I tell you.
PATTY: Ah, Coraline! Now, our readers can see how these transcendent threads are generated. Novelists never disconnect from the past but use the flotsam to float right into our story worlds. So your mom must have cooked like mine.
KAREN: No Hamburger Helper over there. I heard arguments and screeching car tires coming from the nearby apartments and instead of being afraid, I romanticized a lovers’ quarrel. Of course it was, I reasoned, because the very next sound coming from the apartments was someone playing a piano.
PATTY: Sights, sounds and emotions.
KAREN: My siblings thought I was a big dork for standing out there like a flagpole. They threatened to pelt me with basketballs. (This threat was carried out on more than one occasion.) And I can’t imagine what my single-dad father must have thought. Did he look out the window and shake his head and tell himself that it could have been worse? Did he rationalize that it was better than worrying about drugs or that boy down the street (who I dated for ten years against my Dad’s advice. Sorry Dad. He had a blue Camaro that matched his eyes.) At least Dad had the good sense to leave me there, because I might have found my way up to the roof if he’d prohibited me from the stump.
PATTY: Have you ever imagined being able to go back and see that little girl in you so that you could tell her that her yearnings were going to work out for her good?
KAREN: Wouldn’t I love to go back in time and talk to my younger self? Yes, I think I know all the reasons she wanted to stand there. I was beginning to understand there was more than one way to look at the world – one that you could make up, that you could make better with the right adjectives and dialogue. Maybe I was beginning to understand that if you have an unexplainable yearning to see something different, you could start by viewing the world from a different perspective. And if all you have is four feet of dead tree to prop you up and everyone thinks you’re a big dork, well, do it anyway.
PATTY: I think at that age it’s impossible to explain your yearnings except in sort of ambiguous summary that gets lost in the translation—so family members treat you like you’re one brick shy a load.
KAREN: All these years later, I’ve found that sitting in my front-yard and letting my imagination go is good for the soul. (Just don’t expect the blue-eyed boy to actually SAY the dialogue you’ve made up for him. You’ll be disappointed when he screws it up and just burps.)
PATTY: I’ve thought that before! A perfectly great conversation goes south just when you think you’ll use it. But even that is funny, Karen. How have you disciplined all of this emotional memory and placed it within the constructs of a story that caught the attention of a publisher?
KAREN:A long time ago, a writing professor said this to his class of delusional, over-confident novel writing students who just KNEW they were better than Stephen King and John Irving combined because it took them a whole YEAR to write their masterpieces: “Many writers have talent, but few have the temperament to make a career of it. This is why there are so many one-book published writers.”
Well, way to take all the fun out of writing, huh?
PATTY: If I had a dime for every person who has told me they have a novel inside them, I could help the whole country with this financial crisis. It’s so true, that while most people seem to delight in their own stories, they don’t have the discipline to navigate around their agendas, their time constraints, their wrong ideas about crafting a novel to actually do it. But you did it, Karen.How are you assimilating what that professor taught you?
KAREN: Honestly. Flash-forward eight years to that wonderful day when this author received her first publishing contract. I had a book. An ISBN. A page on Amazon! My career was launched. Now, I could just go back to writing the next great American novel, right?
No.
There is just as much work to come following the publication of a book. As you might imagine, it takes one kind of temperament to be a sensitive, solitary, disciplined person who can sit down for months and create a novel. But then there is the temperament that can also have a realistic, professional view on the publishing business – a business that sort of cares about your sensitive artistic feelings, but not as much as one would like.
PATTY: But it’s very unusual for someone as new as you are to the business to have your feet on the ground so early on. It was all those years of business writing that helped you build that sensitivity, I’m sure.
KAREN: I am so thankful that my professor gifted me with that reality. It continues to serve as a guidepost, like a sign that warns “slow down, curvy road ahead.” (i.e. – Are you going to be THAT kind of person and be a one-book wonder or do you have the temperament to make a career of it?)
PATTY: Emerging writers, take heed.
KAREN: After my book debuted last year, I was faced with any number of challenges that had nothing to do with the excitement of achieving my dream. Those challenges fell under the heading of wanting to vigorously defend myself against criticism, stretching the limits self-promotion, balancing work and life, or even the strange headiness of standing in a bookstore, being all puffed up with my authorly self, thinking it was a waste of time to sell three books in two hours.
PATTY: Yes, it’s not a life of laying on the sofa having grapes fed to you.
KAREN: My professor’s statement would bring me back to center like a slap to the forehead. Did I want to make this my career? Yes. Okay. That means being nice to everyone. Shrugging off criticism. Having a show-up-early-stay-up-late work ethic like any other profession. And, of course, getting back into that solitary space of being a writer that feeds my soul.
PATTY: And that feeds your books.
KAREN: And if you want to know, I went back to my Alma Mater, published book in hand, and told said professor in person how grateful I was for this advice. A proud day, that was.
PATTY: Congratulations on being able to do that. I was in a writing group led by a pubbed novelist. Two members had just announced that they had gotten contracts for multiple books.
I was feeling a little anxious. And then it happened—an editor called and wanted to offer me a multiple book deal. I was so excited. But I waited until everyone in the group had shared about their writing week, the usual preliminary stuff and then shared that I too had gotten a contract.
Those are very heady seasons. But as you say, Karen, so wisely, short-lived as we return to the solitary life of writing.
Thank you, Karen, for sharing today. Kathy Patrick is giving away her Pulpwood Queens Guide and Melody Carlson is giving away The Other Side of Darkness. Please leave your feedback and it will be entered in Saturdays book give-away!
Next week popular novelists Roxanne Henke, Stephanie Grace Whitson, Patti Hill, Amy Wallace, and Rene Gutteridge will chat with us about a very deep and emotional subject—that of the suffering we all face from time-to-time and how we grow through it. Join us next week for THE GREENING OF THE SOUL.
Melody Carlson has written what looks like forty novels for women and a plethora of books for young adults, teens, and non-fiction for adults and teens. She and her husband live in a cabin in the Cascade Mountains. She is a full time writer and I’m so glad to have known here these past few years. Her most recently released novel is The Other Side of Darkness. Welcome, Melody to Words to Go.
MELODY: I’m so glad to be here, Patty.
PATTY: Do you recall any memories from your childhood that helped to shape you into a storyteller?
MELODY: From as early as I can recall, I loved stories and storytelling. I “published” my first book when I was about seven. It was a picture book that I illustrated. I typed the text on an ancient typewriter with a couple of missing keys, which I filled in by hand. I bound the “book” in silver foil wrapping paper, stapled it together, titled it “Kitten on the Keys” (about a cat who played piano)—and my mom saved it for all these years.
PATTY: She must have had a suspicion that you had some serious literary leanings.
MELODY: I continued to write stories for fun and when I was about ten, my mother had a “connection” with someone who I thought was really going to publish my works. I still remember the rainy night we drove to meet this woman (it seemed a long ways) and I was so excited, imagining I was going to a real publishing house, but when we got there it was just a mobile home and the woman “published” her books in a way very similar to my seven year old attempt. I was devastated and probably thought my writing career was over.
PATTY: Not too many children have to face the hard knocks of publishing. But you didn’t stop, obviously.
MELODY: I continued to write—somewhat secretly. Because, yes, classmates thought I was weird. My saving grace was that I was also fairly athletic and somewhat bossy so I also had their respect, but if they wanted to get me they’d use words like “brainy,” which drove me nuts. And I was further humiliated when I won the book reading contest (for reading the most books) and my friends had been betting that Laurie Lund (a real bookworm, who wore glasses and never played sports) would win. I couldn’t believe I’d out-read her—and even though I liked the prize (a chess set) I was thoroughly embarrassed and tried my best to play it down.
PATTY: When did you see a glimmer of hope that you might become a writer?
MELODY: In sixth grade, a teacher and mentor talked me into starting a newspaper. We were the Brattain Buccaneers and the paper was called the BuccaNews. Naturally I was the editor—who else would want this thankless job? Unfortunately, my classmates didn’t have the interest (or maybe they lacked the skills or nerve) so I ended up writing, illustrating, and printing (on a mimeograph machine that I cranked by hand) most of the paper myself. I even used pseudonyms to make it look like there were other writers for the articles, jokes, puzzles, etc.. And I’m sure I probably delivered the paper too.
PATTY: Small beginnings are not to be despised, though.
MELODY: But my “literary life” changed drastically in junior high when I got worried about appearing too nerdy (plus I discovered boys). That was when writing was done clandestinely and reading was set aside for a few years. The benefit for this sacrifice was that I fully participated in “life” and this is probably why I write the way that I do for teens—because I remember what it was like. But I also remember feeling like an imposter (an academic nerd impersonating a cheerleader). And I even let my grades slip so I wouldn’t appear too smart.
PATTY: I remember the pressure to “let up.”
MELODY: Although it bothered me that I was being phony, it seemed the best way to survive adolescence. Thankfully I became a Christian in high school and that helped me to live a more authentic life—whether my peers liked it or not.
PATTY: If you don’t mind sharing, what sort of emotional loads did you have to carry?
MELODY: Another way I felt different as a child was that my parents divorced when I was very young. Growing up in the sixties in a “broken home” was not the norm. However, my mom (who returned to school for her teaching degree) exposed me to a lot of things I might’ve otherwise missed. I loved going to the museums on campus, music events, art lessons, and I even took ballet.
PATTY: You were blessed with a mother who compensated.
MELODY: What I missed out on in the typical “Ozzie and Harriet” lifestyle (which I always secretly envied) was replaced with experiences that probably helped broaden me as a writer. Plus, because we were relatively poor and lived in a poor neighborhood, I saw some slices of life that made me think more deeply and ultimately influenced my writing. And although I had numerous teachers who encouraged me in regard to writing, I never took their praise seriously.
PATTY: When I teach writing, I find this true of so many young people. They’re more interested in presenting a face to their peers that helps them blend into the herd rather than celebrating and honing their talents.
MELODY: Writing came so easily to me that I didn’t recognize it as anything very special and I never believed that I had the skill to become a “real author” or publish a “real book.” That was for someone else—someone famous or talented or some other mysterious ingredient that I lacked. Looking back, I realize that these teachers were seeing something that I had missed. I’m sure I stood out as unusual and, although I wasn’t always happy with who I was, I’m thankful now that God made me the way he did. And, all these published books later, I have no doubts that he designed me to be a writer.
PATTY: I have no doubts either, Melody. If you’d like to read a bit more about Melody’s life in the Pacific Northwest, you may visit her website at www.melodycarlson.com.
Tomorrow you will meet a new novelist who writes spec fiction.Karen Harringtonwill share with us her own stories of teenage angst and coming-of-age uniquely fitted for her future life as a storyteller. You won’t want to miss Friday’s Words to Go!
Kathy Patrick started a little Texas bookstore called Beauty and the Book and then a tiara-wearing book club called The Pulpwood Queens that went global. Because of her mission to “get the world reading” Kathy’s notoriety has newspapers, magazines, documentaries, and broadcast media—including Oprah’s Oxygen station-- talking about her the world over. But now her life is an open book as she tells her story within the pages of her own book The Pulpwood Queens Tiara Wearing Book Sharing Guide to Life—yes, we’re giving away an autographed copy Saturday. So here on Words to Go—Here Comes Trouble! Please welcome with me, Kathy Patrick, the Pulpwood Queen herself!
KATHY: Thank you, Patty, for having me.
PATTY: Kathy, you and I recently had a great off-the-cuff discussion that really was the impetus for this week’s theme. Would you like to share a bit about some of the ways you were a stand-out as a kid?
KATHY: When I was a kid, yes, I dressed a little bit different. My favorite outfit in the 5th grade was a Sears pink uncut corduroy jumper, white Peter Pan blouse worn with purple knee high socks and clear acrylic go-go boots. I wore on the top my sage green plaid coat with built in neck scarf with fringe and a real leopard beret with black python band that I swiped from my mother’s closet.
PATTY: Sure, just the normal attire of a fifth grader.
KATHY: I spent my lunch hour not at recess but up on the stage in the gym dancing with my girlfriends to 45’s on the record player. I did the Freddy, the twist, the jerk, the pony, but my favorite was swing dancing to Beatle songs and The Beach Boys.
PATTY: Those were the days.
KATHY: My favorite subject was art and reading and my teacher had me do all the backdrops for school plays and usually had the lead part in the play too. I was a pre-teen drama queen so move over Lindsay Lohan.
PATTY: Look out! Now, you had your own way of rebelling against kick ball too.
KATHY: Yes, instead of playing kickball, I played with my Troll dolls under this one specific tree that had this great base with a hole that we use to pretend they lived in. My best friend’s name was Debbie and we both liked the color blue, Girl Scouts, and building forts and tree houses. We did not have much time for girly girl stuff but enjoyed riding our bikes and having slumber parties. I was a model student though because I thought teachers were the most incredible women I had ever met. I never wanted to look bad in their eyes, they were just too important.
PATTY: I hear you. I idolized my teachers too. I asked Shellie Thomlinson yesterday—her book also a PWQ selection—what she was thankful for. So I’d like to ask you the same thing.
KATHY: All the relationships I have made since I opened Beauty and the Book, since starting my book club, The Pulpwood Queens and Timber Guys, becoming an author, and of course, all my author friends who still support me in huge ways.
PATTY: You are certainly a big fan of mine.
KATHY: No matter how much fame you accrue, how much money you make, how big a house, or expensive a car, you might dream of, the only thing that matters on God’s green earth is your relationships with family, friends, and others. Those are the true riches on this earth and because of that; I am one wealthy and happy woman. I am very, very thankful.
PATTY: You were once asked, “If you died, what would you want to be remembered the most for?” How did you answer?
KATHY: I would hope to be remembered as being a good mother.”
PATTY: Great answer!
KATHY: In hindsight, I found that answer fascinating as authors, books, reading, and promoting literacy is so important to me. But of this life I have lived so far I have learned that in order to truly change the world, we have to start treating and raising our children as the most precious gifts of all. I tried to do that with my children.
PATTY: This is an important banner over the Hickman household too.
KATHY: I wasn’t even near perfect, but I tried really hard to make them confident, young, ladies. I like to think I helped them develop their own person, gave them wings, and let them fly to find their own dreams. For me that was through reading as I read to them before they were born and still read to them today with one in high school and the oldest in college.
PATTY: I did that, read to them from the womb.
KATHY: I also believe that the more we climb the ladder to success through hard work and determination; we must also reach behind us and help others climb up too. It’s no fun at the mountaintop alone.
PATTY: You are a very purposeful lady, Kathy.
KATHY: That is why reading has led me to a higher purpose. I am currently teaching a life writing class at a nearby homeless shelter and I began this all because of a book, Same Kind of Different as Me by Ron Hall and Denver Moore. Here I thought I was going to be giving to them something precious of me, when what I have found is that their gifts to me have given me a true purpose in life.
PATTY: That was a special moment when at the Girlfriends’ Weekend, these guys came walking in. I talked with one of them and he was so moved by your commitment to them.
KATHY: I practically skip every time I go to meet them each month as this class has brought such joy to my life. Sorrow is there too but the relationships we have formed in this group will carry me through to my dying days.
PATTY: Any parting words of wisdom, Kathy?
KATHY: It’s better to give than receive, I mean, they weren’t kidding. So onward book soldiers, live your life as you would wish for your children.Tiara wearing and Book sharing, Kathy L. Patrick.
PATTY: Thanks so much for chatting here today as our special guest Kathy. As I said Kathy is going to autograph her book The Pulpwood Queen’s Tiara Wearing Book Sharing Guide to Life. I’m sitting here looking at the rhinestone tiara on my bookcase. Kathy Patrick sure knows how to create special memories for book lovers. So let’s do as Kathy says, give of ourselves and to our children.
Tomorrow, we have a special novelist in our midst as Melody Carlson drops in to pay us a visit. Our special week continues—Here Comes Trouble—on Words to Go!
More comfortably billed as a “talker” than a speaker, author Shellie Thomlinson enjoys entertaining and encouraging a wide range of audiences, as long as she can weave her faith through the stories. Whether sharing her humorous slant on growing up southern in civic and educational settings or offering inspiring devotional features in church services, seminars or weekend retreats, Shellie’s “talks” are full of laughs and motivation. Shellie is the author of “Lessons Learned on Bull Run Road”,“’Twas the Night before the Very First Christmas” and “Southern Comfort with Shellie Rushing Tomlinson” and the recently released title from Penguin Group USA, Suck Your Stomach In and Put Some Color On . Shellie is owner and publisher of a website called All Things Southern and the host of a daily radio show and weekly TV segment by the same name. I’m so pleased to invite Shellie as a guest author on Words to Go. Welcome, Shellie!
SHELLIE:Thank you, Patty, for inviting me.
PATTY: Shellie, As a kid, I didn't follow the herd very well. I got into trouble for starting a book club beneath a tree during kickball. When I persisted, I got sent to the classroom as punishment. That was great--no sweaty kickball in my gut and more time to read. Growing up a little different from the other kids, though, can be painful. Whether we learn passive resistance, mouthy behavior, or dressing above the expected mores for fashion, somehow artistic souls find expression. What is an early remembrance you have as a kid that says, I was different,and this is how it was either good or painful, you fill in the blank?
SHELLIE: When you grow up tone deaf in a family of songbirds sporting an extreme speech impediment and wearing thick coke bottle glasses and big ugly corrective shoes, the You Are Different Memo isn't necessary. Trust me on this.
PATTY: I married into a family of songbirds. I understand your pain.
SHELLIE: Add to that my earliest dreams of becoming a famous country western singer and/or a famous writer despite the obvious hindrances noted above and you have a stellar look into my world.
PATTY: What do you remember about your childhood?
SHELLIE: I settled early on just making the world around me smile, which I still contend is all I was trying to do in the fifth grade when Mrs. Gilly returned to the classroom to find me standing atop my desk and singing, "Oh, yes, they call him the Streak, look at that, look at that...fastest thing on two feet."
PATTY: I remember that song playing on our hometown radio station. What did your teacher do?
SHELLIE: I like to say I didn't have to turn around to know she was there. First, there was the sudden dead pan look of my previously laughing audience. (I'd been hoping for a better review.) Plus, I could feel her breath on my neck. Together with my parents and the principal, they convinced me to give up entertaining, at least for a while.
PATTY: Teachers were so humorless in those days. Some people just don’t have an imagination for fun. In hindsight, when you look now at how your life has unfolded as an author--truly, in your friends eyes, an elevation above the herd--what are you thankful for?
SHELLIE: I could write a novel here from a grateful heart, but as gracious as you are to have me come play at your place Patty, I think you're looking for something considerably shorter. I shall choose three. I'm grateful for the maternal grandmother who saw in me a famous writer and bought me a type-writer when I was eleven, who acted like I had something to say and people needed to hear it. Every child should have such a gift! I am grateful for the opportunity to use words to lighten the loads of those I come into contact with and I'm grateful for The Word that inspires and motivates everything I do.
PATTY: And we are grateful to have you visit us today here on Words to Go. Thank you, Shellie, for dropping in. You can pay a visit to Shellie’s place, All Things Southern, and read her thoughts and ruminations on life.
Tomorrow, I’m pleased to say that we another celebrity in our midst. Kathy Patrick is the founder of the world’s biggest book club and most famous as even Oprah talks about this lady’s book club The Pulpwood Queens. I met Kathy when she picked Painted Dresses as a Pulpwood Queens Selection. And now she has authored her own book too. So drop in and sit a while as we chat with Kathy Patrick—don’t forget your tiara.
Since I am a writer and storyteller, I’m going to slow down a bit here at Words to Go to talk about writing and how coming-of-age and feeling different from others plays into our stories. Tuesday through Friday, I’ll chat with other authors about this theme.
The Arkansas River promised me that one day I would float out of town and never look back.Rivers lie. The river runs through my hometown meandering around a golf course where John Daily got his start. Russellville is still dry. The college kids drive to the county line to buy rum and gin for the frat parties. Along the riverbanks is where teenagers drive even now to make out. The best make-out spot was up a hilltop drive called TwinkleLand. It overlooked the river. The sky by night and the dark hot-blooded river by night pumped through our teenage souls filling us with all kinds of yearnings.
Growing up near the river succored me with my first milky drop of ambition. The river wove through my town reminding me that there was a way out. But the way out is a two-way vortex that can tow you back home willing or not.
When my first book contract arrived on my doorstep in Baton Rouge, my father called to tell me my mother was dying of cancer.The news jolted a few neurons loose, pulling back the curtain on my childhood. Hearing that I was losing her was like twisting a magic lens to see my sister Judy and me sitting on our front porch saying what we would become; I could smell the sweat and the striving to rise out of the circumstances that paralyzed my mother and father and kept them wallowing in a life they claimed was killing them.
“Your sister is killing me,” my mother wailed.
“You’re killing me,” my father told my mother.
My father’s brothers and sisters were killing him; my mother’s spending would be our death. My mother redeemed soda pop bottles to buy fabric to sew clothes for my little sister and me, yet it was not enough according to my father; she was killing him. A brother I did not know had killed my mother. I killed my father when I left college and got married. When my husband quit his job at NASA to become a minister, Dad swore it would put him in the grave.
Finally, after all the years of predicting her own death, cancer was finally taking my mother. My father had to be jealous. My mother was finally getting her wish after years of threatening to die. But it broke my heart like the first time she predicted it.
When new writers sit in workshops gazing with that tortured look that I remember as the angst of the unpubbed writer, what they want is a magic bullet to publishing. But in a room of thirty or more emerging writers, the energy of their lust clouds their thinking and often they overlook the most important ingredient in finding their story, that of the striving that is going on inside of them in that instant.
If it were not for striving, I would not be a writer.
My mother and father strived to lie down and not live. But as they took breath, they took risks.Living is risky. Writing about it is even riskier. You tell a lie, and people think it’s true. You tell the truth, and people hate you.
The truth telling continues this week on Words to Go, but we predict you are going to love it. Stay tuned as authors Shellie Thomlinson, Kathy Patrick, Melody Carlson, and Karen Harrington share with me their stories—“Here Comes Trouble—How Our Stories Find a Way.”
If you left feedback for our author chats this week, your name was automatically placed in The Big Straw Hat for this week's Feel the Love Book Give.
To start out, we have two unclaimed books from awesome new author David W. Pierce. So we did a redraw of names from this week's postings. The winners are:
Don't Let Me Go--Jennifer EckertSalvage--Rick Estep
For this week's Feel the Love Books, the winners are:
Redeeming Gabriel by Elizabeth White--Connie Sue Larson Church of the Dog by Kaya McLaren--Wanda Elaine Butterfly Trees by Gail Martin--Carly Kendall The Cure by Harry Kraus--Joyce Mahan
Congratulations, Winners!! Please email me at pattyhickman@bellsouth.net with your mailing address. You will be shipped an autographed book. Please allow ten days to two weeks to receive your book.
Next week is another great week of author chats, but look out because "Here Comes Trouble!!"Did you grow up not quite fitting in with the "in" crowd? Did you question everyone and everything? Did you have your own "special" style, sit drawing in the margins instead of taking notes? This is a week of celebrating the artistic temperament and it will be a fun week as we chat with author, comedienne Shellie Thomlinson, The Pulpwood Queen Herself--Kathy Patrick, best selling author Melody Carlson, and spec-fic novelist Karen Harrington. You won't want to miss this fun-filled week of getting to know some of today's most beloved authors here on Words to Go!
Today on Words to Go, Dr. Harry Kraus, novelist and surgeon and now missionary doctor will share his amazing story of how he came to give his life away.
PATTY: Harry, you and I first met, I remember distinctly, in a hotel elevator. We were all attending an annual writer’s retreat. Our online group we belong to holds this retreat every year. We were giving away books and I had yours and we swapped autographs. I had already stolen a peek and was wowed at your style. But it was shortly after that you announced to our online community that you were going to the mission field. Would you like to share how you came to that crossroads?
HARRY: A few years ago, I was following a particular course in life, justifying every step. I was a successful surgeon, a partner in a prestigious group, owned a custom home on twelve acres in the country with 360 degree view of the mountains.
PATTY: Wow!
HARRY: Then, on a short term trip to Kenya, my life was upended. I was challenged not by the thought, "why should I serve here?" but "why SHOULD I NOT serve?" My answers quickly sounded shallow. I guess it was seeing the need, opening my eyes to the path I was following...so I took up a challenge that I read in Galations 6: "Whenever we have the opportunity, we should do good..."
PATTY: Yes, I often say, “I just want to be helpful.” But this is a giant step beyond just offering a helping hand.
HARRY: I didn't need any other "call." I felt it was an opportunity to do good, so I did it. We sold the house, quit my job, and moved to Kenya (with my wife and three sons), and took the "opportunity" to be love in action for so many poor Africans.
PATTY: My hubby and I were first called to Baton Rouge after we went through a similar “stripping down” of our life. We worked in urban neighborhoods building outreach teams. We fell in love with the families—especially those grandmothers who often were the families’ only stability. It changes you, doesn’t it?
HARRY: Compassion is nothing more than love in action. But, yes, everything changed! I committed "career suicide," leaving a successful practice in mid-stream. We sold out, moved to Africa, leaving family and friends. But God has been so faithful, providing for us every step of the way. He provided for my sons, giving them experiences they could never have had should we have stayed in America.
PATTY:My prayer as a mom was that God would look after our sons and their future. They’re both in college on scholarships. Like you, we feel our urban experience helped build character in our boys. Any regrets?
HARRY: None. This sacrifice for the sake of compassion was not difficult for us. We didn't have to serve. We got to serve. Serving our Lord in this way was a privilege, a grace. If I had to do it, the rewards would be wages. But it's not about wages; the Gospel is about grace.
PATTY: Where did you work in Africa?
HARRY: We lived in Kenya in a village for four years. I am back in US on furlough now.
PATTY: What exactly is the work you do?
HARRY: I am still an AIM missionary (Africa Inland Mission) officially on furlough. The work I did was work as a surgeon in a mission hospital. Many of my patients were Somali muslims who sought their care from us at the Christian hospital since their country is void of good care. I was supported as a missionary through supporters who give to A.I.M.
PATTY: The "call" you speak of has brought great benefit to your family, you seem to say. I'm sure it has given you new stories to write. Do your African stories now inform your novels?
HARRY: My next novel, Salty Like Blood has a subplot of a Somali woman. Next year’s novel, The Six Liter Club is the story of the daughter of an American surgeon missionary and his Congolese wife.
PATTY: Can you share a story about how your work there has benefited an individual? What did that do for you?
HARRY: I saw a couple of Muslim patients come to faith in Christ. The challenge of being the first Christian that many of these adults ever met was exciting and scary! To think that the first impression that they have of a real Christian came from me. All we can pray is that God will be large in us and that we will be small.
PATTY: Any memories that stand out from the rest?
HARRY: I've never been that thrilled with the way Kenyans sing. Always from the front of their throats. Nasal almost. A bit too squeezed and narrow, not supported and full the way we're taught to sing in choirs back home.
PATTY: I’ve seen videos, so I think I’m imagining that singing voice.
HARRY: But one morning something was different. I've been on my own as the only surgeon for the first ten days this month. And it's been crazy-busy, fun in a twisted way, but stressing me out a bit to be on-call 24/7 for so many days in a row, and wearying, especially when dealing with so many suffering people.
PATTY:Sure, not so nicely managed like our hospitals here at home.
HARRY: Saturday night brought me two assault victims, both with open skull fractures, one a victim of rape. Sunday and Monday brought me two babies, both with intussuception (a rather bazarre condition where the bowel telescopes inside out, rather like one section of bowel being pulled inside out and pushed downstream). Both had emergency surgery.
Tuesday, I spent hours doing a complicated burn scar reconstruction to free the arm of a young Somali boy who had healed from a bad burn so that his arm was one with his chest from the shoulder to the elbow. Wednesday, a tired bus driver turned the job over to an assistant who travelled less than three kilometers before crashing. We saw fifty patients from that one accident. The pace was near-brutal and I spent hours in the operating theatre repairing complex facial lacerations, and putting in chest tubes for punctured lung patients along with dealing with all of my elective case-load. Thursday after a full day in clinic, I had to face a revision of a head-and-neck cancer patient, and two abdominal explorations, one with peritonitis from tuberculosis (something I never saw back home, but that is common in Africa) and another with bowel perforations from typhoid fever.
PATTY: Non-stop action, sounds like.
HARRY: So this morning, I dragged back into the hospital wondering what craziness I would find. And that brings me back to the way the Kenyans sing. I was trying to write a note in a patient's chart when the private ward nurses gathered at the nurse’s station for morning devotions. The young female nurse began the song by herself, waiting for the others to join in.
"Burdens are lifted at Calvary.
Calvary. Calvary!
Burdens are lifted at Calvary.
Jesus is very near."
PATTY: Not something we’d see here in our hospitals.
HARRY: Immediately, my spirit soared with the message of the song. I cared little about the delivery. The message was water to my thirsty soul. Calvary. That's what makes all the work worthwhile. My eyes filled with tears. Another nurse asked me a question about one of my patients. Does she see my tears? I steadied my voice to answer her. The singing in the background continued.
"Days are filled with sorrow and care. Hearts are lonely and drear.
Burdens are lifted at Calvary. Jesus is very near."
I joined the chorus, not able to sing much beyond a whisper. "Burdens are lifted at Calvary. Calvary! Calvary!" How easy is it for me to forget that Calvary changed everything! I am forgiven. Clothed in Christ's righteousness, because He died in my place. I cannot even write these words without tearing up again.
"Cast your care on Jesus today. Leave your worry and fear. Burdens are lifted at Calvary. Jesus is very near."
Yes. Very near. Only I need eyes of faith for the water of the truth to penetrate the dusty cover over my soul.
I worked through the day with the song never far from my lips.
I realize that burdens are not necessarily evaporated because of the cross, but I've started to understand that God's grace, supremely manifested in the cross, is the same grace that sometimes comes disguised as daily "burdens". And that knowledge makes the burdens seem lighter. Sent by a sovereign God to work His way in me.
"Troubled soul, the Savior can see. Every heartache and fear. Burdens are lifted at Calvary. Calvary! Calvary! Burdens are lifted at Calvary. Jesus is very near."
I walked away from the private unit towards the operating theatre where I was met by a patient I'd treated months ago. He cried and hugged my neck in gratitude for a service I'd provided to him. He kissed my hand and handed me a large bag of Christmas presents. I am broken to receive his gift of four beautiful pineapples and eight bags of black Kenyan tea. His love to me was the second unexpected grace. Gentle grace water-whispers to dry ground.
Tonight, I returned to the hospital to see a pedestrian struck by a passing vehicle. He was directing his donkey cart a bit too close to fast traffic. He has broken at least five ribs and his scapula. After admitting him, I walk down the hospital corridor and again, I am touched by music, this time coming from the hospital chapel. "Hakuna kama wewe." ("There is none like you.") I let the meaning of the words wash over me. None like you, Jesus. None like you.
PATTY: That’s a gorgeous story, Harry. It so speaks to Christ’s comeliness in the midst of ugly terrain. It’s in places like this that we're are faced with his beatific essence. All we can do is kneel, humbled at how the humblest of his servants worship him, like stones crying out. What is a lesson you’ve learned from this experience?
HARRY: This is straight from my journal: “Today I'm here to serve these people, but today, they have served me. When I arrive home, I see a single strand of white lights that Sam and Kris strung along the roof of our house. Inside, a rather pitiful Christmas tree has been decorated with a few choice ornaments that Kris thoughtfully packed and brought to give our family a sense of home. I smiled. Yes, it is Christmas season in Kijabe.”
Here’s one way you can help authors like Harry and all of us. Buy our books—new! Harry’s next novel is set to release Mar. 24, 2009. If you can order his novel Salty Like Blood on that day, it increases his ranking on Amazon and, thus, brings it to the public eye so that more people are aware of it.
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Harry is giving away his book about love called The Cure in Saturday’s Feel the Love book give.
"Harry Kraus understands love—biblical, selfless, servant love—the way few do. Get lost in the lines of The Cure and remember once more the reason you’re here—to love and love well.”--Karen Kingsbury, author of Ever After and Between Sundays
Leave your feedback to be entered in the contest. And could you kindly tell your friends about Words to Go?
Next week I’ll chat with four different authors about what it’s like to grow up feeling as if there’s something a little different about you, your not sure what--but something tells you its going to end up really great! Join us for HERE COMES TROUBLE—GROWING UP ROUND IN A SQUARE PEG LIFE!
Reaching out in compassion has come into vogue again. It's considered high fashion now to help the needy, causes in Africa or India, adoptions, you fill-in-the blank. But each author was drawn to this week’s topic for a reason. Today I’m chatting with novelist Carolyne Aarsen who writes inspirational romances. As you enjoy our chat, you’ll find within its folds her inspiration for writing coming in the surprising package of a boy named Justin.
PATTY: Welcome, Carolyne, and thanks for chatting about this very personal time in your life. Could you first share the process that led you make these life-changing decisions.
CAROLYNE: Thank you, Patty. My husband and I had always talked about finding ways to save the world. We had always felt we had been given so much and wanted to give back. We had four children ourselves, so we knew that whatever we did had to happen at home. So we decided to foster.
PATTY:We did this a few years when our youngest was around two. That made six children in the Hickman hacienda. We were a little idealistic about it at first. How about you?
CAROLYNE: We had starry-eyed dreams of changing one child's life and making them a better person - of taking all the gifts we knew had been lavished on us and giving back. What was kind of interesting, looking back now, was that we had four children under the age of 9, we lived in a broken down house that we were renovating and my husband had just started his own business. Now, I wonder what we were thinking. But at the time, we were full of caring and generosity of spirit.
PATTY: It’s a courageous act, to bring children you don’t know under your roof with your own children.What sort of rearranging did you have to do in your life to include this kind of life change?
CAROLYNE: When we first applied to be foster parents, we specifically stated that we preferred younger children and that we didn't feel we were capable of taking care of a handicapped child.
PATTY: I’ve met those few angelic souls who specifically request a handicapped child, but it’s not something I would have asked for either. But sometimes we don’t always get what we ask for, do we?
CAROLYNE: That’s right. We got a phone call from Social Services about a one year old boy who had spent most of the first year of his life in the hospital. He had cerebral palsy, suffered from seizures, couldn't sit up, couldn't lift his head, and was malnourished. He also had a stomach tube. He sounded like a child that would be too much work. However, we discussed the matter and then I thought I would go see him for myself.
PATTY: That was brave.
CAROLYNE: When I held this helpless child in my arms, I smelled hospital and saw emptiness in his eyes. And I was hooked. We took him in and our entire life was turned upside down. The first week we had him, I went twice to the emergency department to get his stomach tube reinserted. After the first month, and more sudden trips to the emergency ward, I thought we had taken on too much and I wondered how we could keep on.
PATTY: I can relate to that sense of, “What have I done now?”
CAROLYNE: We leaned heavily on the Lord and on friends and family to take care of this child. But what really added to the burden was that on top of taking care of him, we were also supposed to be involved with his mother, a young single woman who already had one child. The supposed goal was to have her learn to take care of Justin and be able to take him back. I knew, after a month, that this girl had more than enough to deal with in her life and would never be in any position to take care of Justin and all his needs. However, we dutifully went through the motions. She came when she could, and we got to know each other over cups of tea and cookies.
PATTY: Grace in action.
CAROLYNE: Then, against all odds, Justin began to recognize us, began to put on weight. He finally grew teeth, his hair came back in, his eyes brightened and his skin took on a healthy glow. And we loved him even more. He grew and started learning to do all the things he should be doing.
PATTY: But probably more than even food and regular healthcare, he needed the abiding touch of people who loved him.
CAROLYNE: I got to know the pain and sorrow in his mother's life. How she had been abused and treated and how she was a lost and lonely soul herself. We always said we had two foster children when we had Justin - him and his mother. We learned, through spending time with her, of another side to our lovely town. The evening side, the darker side.
PATTY: Perspective comes with the package.
CAROLYNE: The people who get up at 2:00 in the afternoon, wander around town then party all night. We found out about drug abuse and physical abuse. We got to see, up close and person, the results of that lifestyle, made even more real when the young, pretty woman who came into our house every week, sat across from us in the hospital, her face a mass of cuts and bruises.
PATTY: You were now inviting those feet under your dinner table.
CAROLYNE:We hurt for her and felt inadequate. What could we offer this broken woman? Then, one day as we were sitting on our deck in the sunshine, she turned to me and gave me an awkward hug. "You're like a mother I never had," she said to me. It sounded cliche and in any movie I would have been watching it could easily have been corny. But she made me cry. And she made me want to do better for her.
PATTY: What seemed to you like an inadequate gesture to her was like making her a member of the family.
CAROLYNE: Our life was initially invaded by these two lost, hurting souls and there were many, many times that I felt I couldn't do this anymore. I couldn't face one more leak from a stomach tube, do one more round of physio, visit one more doctor or specialist, re-attach one more oxygen hose, clean out one more filter. I felt, at times, like I was cheating my own children of their precious childhood because of the time this child took up.
PATTY: How were you able to write?
CAROLYNE: I needed escape. I needed to find a place where I was in charge. Out of desperation and a need to find something that was just me, I started writing. I worked on my first book the entire time Justin was in our home and then, as his care grew too great, set it aside.
PATTY:How long did you care for Justin?
CAROLYNE: We carried on until, four years after we took him in, Justin went into the hospital to have hip surgery and, at the same time, a new stomach tube.
PATTY: This was a crisis for a little boy having already gone through so much.
CAROLYNE: The day before we were supposed to take him home, he passed away.
PATTY: I’m sorry.
CAROLYNE: We went through the grieving and loss and all the emotions attached to this rend in our lives. But after, as we began to heal, we realized the gift this child had been to us. The lessons he taught us. He was completely helpless, he had so little, yet his smile made us feel like we had given him the world. He gave us hope and he gave us pain.
PATTY: He taught you lessons.
CAROLYNE: But he showed us that maybe saving the world doesn't happen in big ways.
PATTY: Look at the small town ministry that Jesus carried on over such a short amount of time. It boils down to obedience in the small things.
CAROLYNE: My husband and I are no saints by any stretch of the imagination. And when we took Justin in, we learned more from him than we could have from any course, any book.
PATTY: There is so much wisdom found in opening our hearts to those who have never known an open heart. Perhaps Jesus spoke so long and hard on love was because he knew that when we unpacked it we’d find all the treasure his Word promises us.
CAROLYNE: As a writer, I'm trying to find the big dramatic finish to this story, but there really isn't any. We took a child in. Through him God tested us and blessed us in ways we could not have imagined. Our children learned compassion and caring. We are still learning. But Justin made a huge impact on us and I know our family has not regret for the time we had with him.
PATTY: Carolyn, that’s a beautiful epilogue to a life well-lived. Thank you so much for sharing with us today on Words to Go.
I appreciate all of your comments this week. Words to Go is provided for readers in order to help them connect in a more personal way with today’s popular writers. We share our stories to lift up and encourage rather than weigh down with obligation. Christ leads all of us to reach out in love within the circle of influence he’s placed us in. It can be as small as checking in on a grieving friend or as big as inviting a child into your family. It’s not about whether or not you get some impressive story out of it to write that ends with a big finale, as Carolyne so aptly put it; it’s really just another part of the story of the human condition, of humans connecting and joining God in His work. It’s a way of finding common ground, putting mistrust behind, and embracing people not like us for the purposes that their Creator had in mind.
Tomorrow, I can’t wait for you to hear novelist Harry Kraus’s astounding story of an adventure he and his family embarked on as they made room in their lives for compassion.
I’m so pleased to introduce you to romance author Elizabeth White. Beth’s story of compassion intrigued me so much that I thought about it for days. My hubby and I worked in the inner cities of Baton Rouge, so much of what she says resonates with me. It’s my pleasure to introduce you to Beth and her wonderful quill. Welcome, Beth, to Words to Go!
BETH: Thank you, Patty, and hello, new friends.
PATTY: How did you come to teach in an urban setting, Beth?
BETH: Through a long, God-orchestrated series of events, since last September I have found myself teaching chorus and piano at an all-black inner-city high school. Never mind that I have a shiny new masters degree in creative writing and my music certification lapsed fifteen years ago.
PATTY: What I remember is how urban work never ended and every week was a new nuance and a new chapter in the human condition. Have you found that to be true?
BETH: Yes, I've been challenged creatively, intellectually and spiritually every day. I go to school each morning with delight, looking for what God will do in the next eight hours. Sometimes there's great tension, sometimes the adversary snarls and flexes wicked claws. But I've seen that there's supernatural power in even a little bit of faith because "in my weakness HE is made strong."
PATTY: Do you feel this work is tailor made for you?
BETH: Oddly enough, I am not a naturally compassionate person. My spiritual gifts are discernment, prophecy and exhortation (not teaching, as you might think), which makes me fairly impatient when I confront perceived laziness. But in this job for the first time in a long time I've been exposed to material poverty (of course I watch TV and I've been to Mexico, so I know what real poverty looks like). I tend to think, Okay, we're in America. You can be whatever you want to be. Get a job.
PATTY: When a face and a name are attached to it, though, everything changes.
BETH: So true! As a teacher, I began to form relationships with teenagers who have little control over their circumstances and who often make stupid life choices because nobody is showing them an example of anything different. They may know who Jesus is and even have an emotional connection with church, but somehow that fails to translate to interpersonal relationships or moral choices.
PATTY: My hubby and I are now big advocates of character training. We found it to be core, no matter who we’re teaching.Can you give us an example of how your heart began to warm toward your students?
BETH: I remember when a 9th-grade girl in my beginner chorus walked in my office one morning and began to talk to me about the difficulty of living a pure Christian life when pressed on every side by immorality. I knew God was up to something. I told Ketra (not her real name) I would pray for her and began to observe her: a model student, always neatly pressed, diligent to follow rules, clearly determined to "make something of herself" (her words). She wants to become a pediatrician.
PATTY: I remember our “Ketras.” I was so drawn to the ones who were determined to rise above their circumstances.
BETH: About two weeks later, Ketra asked to speak to me again. Clearly distraught, she told me she'd been out all night walking the streets because she was afraid to go home. Then the story came out.. Father deceased, unemployed mother bringing a succession of druggie "boyfriends" into the house, a younger half-brother and -sister innocently involved, power turned off and little food in the house.
PATTY: Yes, it’s an oft-repeated scenario.
BETH: Ketra had been staying with a friend whose brother made her uncomfortable - which was the only reason she finally came to me. So I went to the school counselor, who got DHR involved. Until the paperwork involved in the case could be straightened out, I offered to bring Ketra home with me. I can't explain it, except to say I just felt compelled to act on her behalf.
PATTY: It adds a whole new meaning to bringing your work home.
BETH: For the moment the mother had custody, which meant even though she was negligent and/or abusive, DHR couldn't put Ketra in foster care. And Mom wasn't wild about letting Ketra go home with a white lady.
PATTY: We were once in a similar situation. We ended up with three extra little mouths to feed for five months. What did you do?
BETH: But I prayed. So Ketra spent two nights with me and my husband - who was a prince about the whole thing. I bought her a few items of clothing and supplies (she'd been getting by on one school uniform and one other change of clothes). By the next week, the mother released custody and Ketra was taken in at an Episcopal children's home here in Mobile. She's fully provided for now, at least for basic necessities of life.
PATTY:. What sort of rearranging did you have to do in your life to include this compassionate work? What was the commitment required of you?
RANDY: My husband and I are very careful with our money, though we tithe to our church and support our missions program. We have two children of our own and have, to this point in our marriage, been satisfied with making sure they have everything they need to become productive, responsible young adults. It's hard for me to let go of my money to benefit someone who doesn't belong to me, someone in whom I have little emotional investment. But God has clearly led me to open my heart to this young girl and make sure she has what she needs, the same as I would with my own daughter. Ketra has demonstrated gratitude, humility, and self-motivation, which makes it easy to help her. But even if she hadn't, I would obey.
PATTY: Compassion 201. Personal investment.
BETH: But it's not the financial obligation that’s most difficult for me. As a writer, I can be rather a hermit.
PATTY: Oh, yes!
BETH: Giving up a few hours to take a teenager shopping is, believe it or not, a real sacrifice. But I am finding a subtle, quiet joy in that sacrifice. I'm looking forward to seeing what God is going to do in Ketra. But you know what? My obedience isn't tied to her success or my getting anything back. I'm learning to release the results to God, though I'm fully confident He's got something extraordinary in mind.
PATTY: What has this personal investment in another person’s life taught you?
BETH: I've become more sensitive to other students who might be hiding needs under a facade of bravado or clowning or perfectionism
PATTY: It gives you a whole new radar, doesn’t it?
BETH: I'm changing. My time isn't to be hoarded. It's to be recklessly spent--invested, if you will--in whatever God shows me to do.
PATTY: Like the love God lavishes on us.
BETH: Like making phone calls to colleges on behalf of scholarship candidates (did I mention I hate using the telephone?). Like connecting a wealthy neighbor with a senior needing test fee money. Like taking my planning period to coach vocal solos.
PATTY: Like a drink offering, poured out.
BETH: Trust me, I am no saint. And I have spent a large chunk of my adult life being extremely reluctant to "waste time." I've just found that my concept of "waste" might have been a bit...skewed.
PATTY: There was this time when the disciples thought a woman was being wasteful for pouring a costly alabaster jar of oil over Christ’s feet. This is your act of worship, Beth.
Compassion 301! Do you have a present for us today!
BETH: I do have a book to give away. It's Redeeming Gabriel.
PATTY: Thank you so much for sharing how you’ve made room for compassion, Beth!
Beth’s latest novel is Redeeming Gabriel and a very fortunate blogger will win it Saturday.
BETH: Thanks for this opportunity, Patty!
Please leave your feedback for a chance to win one of many books in Saturday’s Feel the Love Book Give!
This week on Words to Go, I’m chatting with novelist friends about “Making Room For Compassion—Why I Did It.” Yesterday’s chat with novelist Kaya McLaren was the result of a spontaneous chat between Kaya and me and is available below. Each novelist is contributing a book for Saturday’s Feel the Love Book Give to winning bloggers leaving feedback this week.
Gail Martin is a prolific romance novelist. She has 21/2 million books in print. Many times readers think that we novelists have a glamorous life, we just stay home and write novels. But most of the novelists I know have a deeper life, one that has an integrated purpose because their personal faith has opened their hearts to the world around them.Gail Martin shared with me recently why she and her husband decided to make room for compassion:
PATTY: Welcome, Gail, to Words to Go.
GAIL: Thanks for inviting me, Patty
PATTY: First of all, Gail, why do you think that all of us first hold back from participating in compassionate works?
GAIL: We should. We could. What if? Phrases like these fill people’s minds about doing the right thing, but so often we let opportunity fly past and ignore the feelings we had that prompted those words.
PATTY: I know that I’ve rationalized away the “little voice” that says “do something.”
What brought you out of your chair and into action?
GAIL: My husband and I had talked numerous times about sponsoring a child from one of the charity organizations, but we wondered if the money really got to the children rather than funding the pockets of the bureaucracy.
PATTY:As one who started a charity, might I say that charities have materials available to anyone wants to ask about how their funds are used. Mine—98% of funds go to the moms and kids because I don’t take a salary. How did you find out about the group that first piqued your interest?
GAIL: It was during intermission of a Christian concert where we’d been lifted up with music by Michael W. Smith and Point of Grace, we came upon rows of tables filled with photos of children. My husband and I stood back and looked at each other, then moved forward together. I lifted the photo of a six-year old girl dressed in a pink satin dress, white ribbons in her hair, and lacy-topped stockings, but no smile. She stood on dirt with a cinder-block backdrop camouflaged by a tree limb leaning against the stark gray concrete.
PATTY: My husband wants to sponsor them all. The pictures get you every time.
GAIL: My heart ached and I saw the same emotion on my husband’s face. No words were spoken. My husband pulled a credit card from his wallet and we handed them to a Compassion representative and made a commitment to Rodjelie from Haiti.
PATTY: How did you find out this was a real child?
GAIL: We have been touched by her letters and her drawings along with the photographs of her these past six years. We encourage and pray, and she provides us with love. We believe in Compassion as an organization that gives totally to the children and their families.
PATTY:What I like about your story is that this is something that every person can do. It’s Compassion 101—child sponsorship. But you’ve also taken an active part in helping others find this work too, haven’t you?
GAIL: Yes. Last year, we arranged a Compassion Sunday at our church were twenty-three people agreed to sponsor children from various countries. When we eyed the few photos left on the table, I spotted an eight year old boy from India named Netram.
PATTY: Yesterday, Kaya alluded to sponsoring three. I think it must be addictive.
GAIL: It was for us. I drew my husband’s attention to the photo. “This boy is ours.” The child’s name was so similar to part of my husband’s email address where he uses our last name backward “nitram.”
PATTY: That is kind of remarkable, isn’t it?
GAIL: I felt as if the Lord had guided us to this child. Netram has been a joy to us with his loving letters and his faith in the Lord. He sends pages of coloring books he’s colored, and the letters fill us with God’s love. We sponsor both children and know that our small gifts of money we send is nothing compared to the joy and blessing we have received. With our prayers and contribution, we are touching the lives of not only a child but a family as they learn about Jesus and receive hope for a better future.
PATTY: And that’s Gail’s story. Within the simplicity of a decision, love filled her life. Sometimes we might feel as if we cannot add one more brick to our already towering wall we call our life. As a matter of fact in April I’ve invited authors like Randy Alcorn and Lisa Samson to share with us about how they found the joy of The Simple Life. Believe it or not, active compassion and the simple life go hand-in-hand.
Tomorrow my awesome new friend, novelist Elizabeth White shares a compelling personal story of how compassion got into her heart and changed her entire life!
I know you’re addicted now, so you might as well come back and chat with us for this very special week of how some of your favorite authors made room for compassion.
I’ve met a new general market novelist friend who sent me some thoughts on compassion, then didn’t think they were “Mother Theresa” worthy. I laughed because all of us holding this forum this week have confessed to our flaws regarding compassion. Different aspects factor into how we love others such as our temperament, how we spend our money, etc. But before I post some of author Kaya McLaren’s “confession”, I’d like to confess that my husband picks at me for my “lack of compassion.” Truthfully, we both show compassion differently. He’s a human golden retriever, so of course he’s kissing faces and drawing children into his lap. But God uses each of us differently, so here’s my take on compassion.
I’m an organizer. When there’s a problem, my cogs start turning, mentally mapping out a solution. I start at the top, piecing together the connecting cogs, the people attached to the cogs, etc. When the pro life movement was most visible, adoption seemed a good idea. I directed a children’s choir. I taught the kids a song by Amy Grant, “For the Children of the World.”
My hubby was on the board of Bethany Christian Services so I asked if he would invite in the Bethany folks with their materials on a Sunday morning at the big church where we were on staff. Following a slide presentation and this amazing choir song, the Bethany services lady gave a talk. There was another table, too, of children in foreign countries who needed sponsors. At the end of the service, there were many sponsors signed up that day. But there was also an amazing adoption story that took place.
Maybe I don’t come across as compassionate—my husband will tell you that I don’t care how I come across. Hm. I’m who I am and God uses me in different ways. He doesn’t see any of us as “unusable” because we don’t fit into some mold. We’re fitted perfectly for his greater purposes.
If you look to the side of this blog and scroll down, there’s also a great way to give to local kids and moms with AIDS called the Secret Angels Project. Again, that came out of some very non-emotional thinking and organization. I don’t want to give the impression that love has to be a “feeling.” It’s almost always an act, what Christ calls our “reasonable service.”
Here are some thoughts from general market novelist Kaya McLaren who chatted with me “off-the-record.” Amazing, because it’s such an unguarded chat:
PATTY: Why did you decide that you shouldn’t do this chat?
KAYA: I sponsor and write to three kids in Children International, but I don't want to brag about that. It's such a small thing. The truth is that I don't do as much as I could. I spend $300/month to support my horse when I could support charities.
PATTY: I find myself justifying my “little luxuries” and then feeling bad about them.
KAYA: I have a house that's big enough to take in a lot of homeless people, but I don't take them in. I drive an SUV that emits pollution. At the end of the day, I hope the good I did outweighed the expense of my existence on the planet, but I fear that at the end of the day, I'm just another American-- 5% of the world's population consuming 20% of its resources. And at the end of the day, I'm tired from teaching all day. I make dinner, write, and go to bed. I'm no Mother Theresa.
PATTY: You teach children. Why do you think your compassion is inadequate?
KAYA: I get confronted with how that isn't enough. Last Christmas, two more of my former students from the Apache Reservation took their own lives. Things like that make me feel so small, like my love, my prayers, and even my actions are so small in this big world with all its suffering. I don't know what the answer is. I just have to keep believing that my thoughts and my prayers do make a difference in this world, even if it isn't always enough. Maybe it's not mine to judge. My Gram often says, "Everything is in divine order," and I wonder about that.
PATTY: What else do you wonder about?
KAYA: Do we come to earth to experience polarity and all the things we couldn't experience in the plane from where our souls came? Does the imperfection here serve a divine purpose in that way? I mean, how many of us have been catapulted through an unpleasant experience into whatever it is we were born to do? Even if the all imperfections of the world serves a divine purpose, it doesn't make it easier for me or even possible to love those imperfections, and I sure don't think it lets me off the hook with regard to doing my best to make the world better.
PATTY: What do you see as the one thing that you can do to set the wobbliness of the world back in order?
KAYA: I've been thinking about forgiveness on so many levels lately, and how it truly creates a new beginning, a second chance. Forgiveness makes room for love and miracles. If God is love, we've got to make room for love. We've got to go in with forgiveness and clean house on a regular basis.
PATTY: Yes, I think that I tend to do that before I go to sleep. I’m so afraid I’ll go to bed with unforgiveness taking up residence in my heart. Then I’ll wake up ugly and turning into the very thing I hate. It’s a hard practice to see the ugliness in me and confess that to God.
KAYA: There is no room for love where there is resentment, or judgment, or anger. I know that in order to love the world better, I have to forgive all the ways the world seems wrong to me. I have to forgive people who are unkind or even violent with children.
PATTY: That’s been the hardest part of ministry life. As a pastor’s wife, I see child abuse, spousal abuse, teen abuse all up close.And then I’m not supposed to say anything because pastor’s wives are the church mutes.
KAYA: I have to forgive people who are unkind or violent with animals. I have to forgive people who pollute. I have to forgive people whose greed causes the suffering of so many. I have to forgive people who judge or harm others in the name of God.
PATTY: But they’re blind to it, seemingly. They see their harsh words as “corrective” but they are seemingly “uncorrectable.”
KAYA:If I get nothing else from (Jesus’) His life, from His teachings, I want to get that. I want to get it on deeper and deeper levels every day.
PATTY: Kaya, I think that this is the perfect way to start out a week where we’re talking about compassion and why we choose to love. If anyone is having trouble finding, in small ways, an act of love to pass on, perhaps the first thing they need to do is search the heart for trace elements that are more conducive to love. I think you’ve hit on the starting point and that is forgiveness. You’re so right.
And thanks for the offline chat. Kaya McLaren is writes lit fiction like Church of the Dog and her upcoming novel On the Divinity of Second Chances. I can't wait to read it.
The rest of the week, four more author friends are each going to share a personal journey to compassion. Some have made some simple changes to include others in their life while others have made drastic change. The point being that what the world needs now is love.
Tomorrow novelist Gail Martin shares a personal story of how one small thing led to another.
Your feedback might help you win some love from our guest authors this week who will contribute a book each in Saturday’s book give-away. What shall we call it? Ah—Words to Go’s Feel the Love Book Give!
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About Me
Patricia Hickman
Carolina Woman, NC, United States
Author Patricia Hickman writes Stories of Hearth, Home, and Havoc. She is currently writing her seventeenth novel. She is hailed by Publishers Weekly as a sparkling talent in fiction. Her stories are set in small towns, involve a journey, and spin out of quirky home life--"Stories of Hearth, Home, and Havoc."
Patricia earned an M.F.A. in creative writing from Queens University of Charlotte. She teaches in universities and conferences around the country.
Whether your road takes you on literal journeys or inward soul treks, you are welcome to stop by and leave a word to go for others who may pass by this word hub on the side of the road. There are places that you've seen that others might enjoy knowing about. Maybe you've gained some wisdom from your treks. Share and partake equitably. Journey with a benevolent eye. But do stop and muse. That is when the road has time to settle into memory and teach us the things we can't learn when we rush past overlooked places.
We have an interesting line up this week of authors sharing how they and their families commemorate the days leading up to Resurrection Sunday. Today Marlo Schalesky, a novelist and mom, shares with us a way to show our kids the meaning of the season. Welcome, Marlo, to Words to Go!
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