On Writing (More)
“To enjoy your work and accept your lot in life—this is indeed a gift from God.”
“If God gives you something that you can do, why in God’s name wouldn’t you do it?”
Last week, I started dreaming about a new writing project. This would be THE project. The One that would challenge and push me. The One that would require an honesty and determination that I’m not sure I possess. The One that captures everything I love in life. But when I began to share it with my husband, he raised both hands to stop me.
“I don’t want to hear about it.”
“Wha—“
“You heard me. I don’t want to hear about it. I want you to write it. You write it and then I’ll read it.”
It’s not that my husband is unsupportive of my writing; he’s so supportive, in fact, that he refuses to listen to me talk about writing. With every conversation, he knows that the likelihood I will actually write decreases exponentially . I know this too, and so last week, I also made my 12-year-old daughter swear that she would not let me share ideas with her, either. She has my full permission to instruct me to SHUT YOUR MOUTH, MOTHER when I sidle up to her to tell her about my latest, greatest project.
And so in the spirit of the New Year, I’m publicly resolving to talk less and write more.
It’s not about producing more content so much as taking writing seriously. Over the last five years, I’ve watched (often incredulously) as writing has morphed from hobby to part-time work to vocation. I’ve known for a while that I needed to shift my approach to writing—to act as if it were truly vocation—but I’ve found plenty of excuses not to, counting on the off chance that if I didn’t own it as vocation then I wouldn’t be responsible for it.
But to riff off Miss O'Connor, our callings don't change according to our ability to stomach them. If God has given me something to do, then I'd better get doing it.
No Comment The first step I’m taking toward talking less and writing more is to remove the comment section from the blog. Common wisdom says that a comment section helps build platform because it drives traffic and forms community. Not-so-common wisdom says that the comment section inhibits my writing because I feel responsible to respond to praise, questions, and critique. This is not a statement about the quality or quantity of comments at SAL, but the very likely possibility that I could write a 700 word essay only to expend 1500 words in the comment section.
By removing the comment section, I’m also clarifying what’s happening here. Instead of seeing this blog as a common meeting space, I see it as a workspace --a space where I craft ideas to send out into other spaces. My goal is not for you to discuss ideas here but for you to discuss them with the people you actually live, work, and worship with—your pastor, your wife, your friend.
I don’t want to build a community around my writing; I want my writing to help you build your community.
Having said this, I believe there is value in online community. I have benefited from new ideas and the comfort of knowing that I am not alone in my concerns and joys. But online interaction can very quickly become a closed circuit, especially when the writing begins to support the community that has grown up around… the writing… which now must support the community… which has grown…
I don’t want this for my writing and I don’t want it for my readers. Instead, I want my writing to support the work that’s happening in our real lives, not draw you (or me) further away from it. There may be a day when the comment section won't draw me away, but I'm not there yet.
Social Media Dis-engagement In order to write more, I’m also taking steps to limit my social media engagement. This too flies of the face of current wisdom about How to Become Successful Online (in Ninety Days or Your Money Back).
The problem with social media is that it is primarily about being… social. It rewards extroverts and those who know how to work a room. It rewards public presence and being personally accessible—or worse, for crafting an image of accessibility, for giving readers the impression that you're personally invested in them. In short, social media rewards you for inviting more and more people into your private life.
Which is the exact opposite of what it takes to write well.
Writers serve readers best, not by hanging out in the public square, but by hiding themselves away to actually… write. For some of us, this hiding away is no sacrifice; for others, it is a discipline, an act of self-control rooted in faith and obedience. Writing well requires space for reflection in a “room of one’s own." But in our digital world, that room is often packed with hundreds, if not thousands, of friends and followers.
Beyond simply being a distraction, I’ve also found that social media can actually undermine my motivation to write. For me, writing has always been about working through ideas. Questions pop into my head (yes, they really do *pop* in--most of the time uninvited) and I use the process of writing to resolve them. But as I write, I'm also cutting a path for readers to follow so that they can work through the ideas themselves. Social media allows me to resolve a question without actually having to write about it—or at least write in a way that readers can follow.
Here’s what happens: I’ll read an interesting article or someone will pose a question. My brain immediately starts turning so I respond with a comment or tweet. Someone else engages. We dialogue and 700 words later, the question is resolved; unfortunately, my need to write about it is also resolved. Because the answer is obvious now (to me at least), I don’t feel the need to develop it any further or guide others along the same mental process. And so I don’t write.
Sometimes I wonder if we’ve lost more books to Facebook threads and Twitter rants than the Alexandrians lost to fire.
Five years ago, I started this blog as a way to keep myself accountable to write. Today I’m returning to it for the same reason. I understand that being a writer in the digital age means having a social media presence; I also understand that shaping ideas requires community. But I don’t believe God has called me to be a social media magnate. He has called me to write.
And often the work of writing is simply that: work. Work that happens word by word, line by line in quiet consistency. It’s no more glamorous than laying brick or filing medical charts. Or at least, it shouldn’t be. But like laying brick and filing medical charts, writing is good, steady, faith-filled work. And when God has given you the opportunity and ability to do good work, what possible justification could you have for not doing it?
When God Surprises You
This Tuesday, my book Humble Roots finally released. Several weeks ago, I'd made a plea for help in spreading the word; this plea was met with overwhelming enthusiasm and support from around the country and around the world. And yesterday, one day after release, Humble Roots, with its message of finding rest through humility, topped Amazon's Inspiration & Spirituality category
I found myself needing to sit down a lot yesterday.
But this experience also reminded me of a section in Humble Roots. In chapter 9, I tell the story of a handful of green beans carelessly tossed into a pile of dirt late one summer. A month earlier, my husband had tried to cultivate these same green beans in our garden but to no avail. He planted, he tended, he watered, he staked. But after several weeks, all he had to show for his efforts was a lush vine with no fruit. A couple of weeks later, however, my son found the bag of leftover beans and "planted" them in the dirt next to our recently constructed patio. The beans sprouted, blossomed, and produced more fruit than my husband's carefully tended ones did.
Part of humility means trusting God with our plans and submitting to the possibility that they will not be fulfilled... But part of humility means trusting God with our plans and submitting to the possibility that they will be fulfilled in ways that we cannot imagine. Because we can't know the future, we also don't know when He will choose to bless us with abundance...
The fact that success can come without our efforts is testimony, yet again, to God's surpassing power and goodness. God delights to use small, out-of-the-way, unexpected means to showcase His glory... So, what if God can grow beans in a pile of unattended dirt? What if God can bring about good things without us? What if grace is true?
I never expected Humble Roots to rank so well one day after release. But I'm learning that God often does the unexpected. And sometimes the unexpected means calling us to places of leadership and influence that we did not seek. But even here, humility guides us because humility reminds us that this--all of this--was never about us in the first place.
I've often seen women struggle when their influence grows--whether it's in a church, community, or even in the home. Sociologists tell us that women often lack the confidence to assume leadership; and so when they're put in places of influence, they can doubt their own abilities, withdraw, and self-sabotage. (On the other hand, men--as a general category--do not seem to struggle with confidence in their own abilities.) I know this lack of confidence to be true in my own life. When I'm put in front of people or receive public praise, all I want to do is close up shop and hide, preferring abdication over the need to meet expectations about future growth. But as much as humility reminds us that God is the one who makes our work flourish, humility also frees us to flourish in the midst of that work. Humility frees us to become men and women of influence.
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to write a short post for womensministry.net, a site devoted to supporting and encouraging women who are called to serve in position of influence in the church. I wrote about how humility is the very thing that makes our leadership effective. Instead of leading us away from growing influence, humility frees us to step into God's call on our lives by freeing us from preoccupation with ourselves. Specifically,
1. Humility rescues us from the need to make a name for ourselves.
2. Humility frees us from the paralysis of criticism.
3. Humility gives us the confidence to obey God's call.
You can read the whole article there, but ironically enough, this was the very article that I needed to (re)read yesterday. In the midst of all the excitement and busyness of Launch Week, I'm learning to take my own medicine and remember that this isn't about me.
Praise Jesus and thank heavens, none of this is about me.
Beauty Will Save the World
In hard times, beauty is among the first things we abandon; in hard times, beauty is among the things we need most.
In a recent op-ed in the New York Times, David Brooks recounts how Frederick Douglass, a former slave and abolitionist, used photography to change the nation’s view of slavery. Renowned as a statesman and activist, Douglass was also something of an artist, carefully selecting his posture, dress, and demeanor to communicate his intrinsic humanity. Near the end of the piece, Brooks confesses
I don't understand why artists want to get involved in partisanship and legislation. The real power lies in the ability to recode the mental maps people project into the world.
Brooks may not understand the temptation, but I do.
When the world is falling to pieces around you, beauty can seem trivial. When the world is falling to pieces around you, it’s so much easier to embrace utilitarianism. Why arrange flowers to set on the table underneath the window where the sunbeam falls when all flesh is grass and the grass withers and the flower fades?
In the span of seven months, this year has brought us terror and death and anger and division and violence. These may not be the worst of times, but they are, by no measure, the best. And in times like these, it’s tempting to bypass beauty and settle for whatever gets the job done. Go directly to the punch. Take the shortest route. Cut to the chase. And then, once your work is done, Cinderella, you can think about going to the ball. Once your work is done, Cinderella, you can sit down to read a novel. Once your work is done, Cinderella, you can write a song.
But what if the work is never done? What if the work can never be done without beauty?
A few weeks ago, I listened to a 2015 interview with Sonia Manzano, best known to millions of children and their parents as "Maria" from Sesame Street. Sonia assumed her alter ego in 1971 and spent the next 44 years showing us a community who lived and loved together, who fought and forgave each other. But that world was not the world Sonia knew as a child. Growing up, Sonia’s world was plagued by domestic violence and poverty.
And in those dark times, beauty became a refuge.
“I found a lot of comfort on television when I was a kid,” Manzano writes. “So I think it's interesting that I ended up on a show that offered a bit of comfort to children who lived in the inner city… Here was a moment, an hour, where there's order, where there's humor, where there's love in a place that looks like your home.”
Award-winning children’s illustrator Jerry Pinkney, echoes a similar thought:
Our work is to create books that act as wide-open doors—books that allow all children to walk through and feel safe enough to stay.
But beauty is not simply about creating an escape from present difficulties. The work of beauty is to create a vision of the world as it was meant to be. It is a way to see past the present darkness to a future beyond. To the tired, beauty promises rest. To the oppressed, it offers freedom. To the fearful, it whispers “Hope.”
“Poets, prophets and reformers are all picture makers,” Frederick Douglass writes, “and this ability is the secret of their power and of their achievements.”
What poets and prophets and reformers offer us is a vision of the world set right. This is why beauty is so powerful and why human beings have always made art, in even the most difficult times and most hardscrabble places. The Appalachian mamaw, fingers bent and eyes straining, thrusts her needle through bits of scrap, quilting together utility and beauty. The island child, malnourished and broken by disease, still gathers bits and bobs to fashion a toy.
This is human heart searching for its home. Searching for safety. Searching for the world as it should be. For in the beginning, it was good; and in the end, it will be good again.
I write this as an act of confession. A confession of what I know to be true; a confession what I fail to do. In the turmoil of 2016, I find myself abandoning beauty in favor of the utilitarian. I find myself focusing on the immediate, preferring argumentation to persuasion. They say talk is cheap and I believe them because talk is easy. It’s easy to pontificate. It’s easy to argue. It’s easy to analyze.
It’s so much harder to hope. It’s so much harder to believe. It’s so much harder to keep faith. It’s so much harder to create.
So hard, in fact, that pursuit of beauty requires Divine intervention. To live beautifully, to live full of love and joy and peace and longsuffering and gentleness and meekness, means being filled with God himself.
And so, as with every other Divine filling, beauty begins with humility. Beauty begins when we repent of our failure to see the world beyond this present darkness. Beauty begins when repent of our failure to see the Power who is greater than evil. Beauty begins when we repent of our lack of faith, and yes, even our lack of imagination.
St. Augustine, that confessing saint, once wrote of God: “Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new.”
One measure of faith, it seems, is whether we can recognize the Beauty around us. One measure of faith, it seems, is whether we work to create beauty around us. One measure of faith, it seems, is whether we offer hope to those who themselves struggle to believe. Because this is what every artist knows: Show. Don’t tell.
Do not simply tell us what is wrong; show us what is right. Do not simply tell us what we must understand; show us how to understand it at a level deeper than words. Do not simply tell us what the world is; show us what it should be.
Show us beauty Show us kindness Show us courage Show us faith Show us conviction Show us love
In these hard times, we must not abandon the work of beauty. We must take up our cross and discipline ourselves to celebrate it—the quiet moments, the simple pleasures, the secret joys--even as the world falls to pieces around us. But we must do more than this. In these hard times, we must take up our cross and discipline ourselves to create beauty. We must discipline ourselves to rebuild the world even as it falls to pieces around us.
So go. Set the table with the good dishes. Pick the wildflowers that will tomorrow die. Compose a song you already know by heart. Write that novel and build that better mousetrap. And in so doing, remind us all of what the world can and must and one day will be.
Leveling the Playing Field: Professional Sports and the Success of Women's Ministry
This weekend the Indiana Fever and the Minnesota Lynx will face off in the first game of the WNBA finals. Now, if you didn’t know the WNBA finals were happening this weekend, don’t worry; you’re in good company. By and large, women’s professional sports have failed to gain the attention that men’s team sports enjoy. And despite your brother-in-law’s assertions, the disconnect probably has little to do with women being less athletic or less interesting than men. Thank you, US Women’s National Soccer Team.
Famed sports’ commentator Frank Deford recently joined NPR’s Steve Inskeep to discuss why women’s professional sports get less attention then men's sports. His conclusion? Inertia. The media is used to covering sports a certain way, and the public is used to watching sports a certain way. So that even as Title IX invited girls and women into the world of sports, they are still limited by how far they can go.
As I listened, I couldn’t help but think of the parallels to women in the Church. Generally, I’ve been encouraged by how women are taking ownership of their faith and are teaching others to do the same. They love their families, are active in social justice, and committed to personal growth through the means of grace. At the same time, I do worry that this growth could be stalled if we don’t take a hard look at infrastructure.
Like sports’ fans, many of us are accustomed to church ministry happening a certain way. And unless we change this, women’s contributions to the Kingdom will end up mirroring what’s happened in professional sports. Yes, women will have opportunities, but they will continue to exist outside the mainstream. Simply having Christian women top the NYT’s best seller list doesn’t mean that Christian women are flourishing in the Church any more than the existence of the WNBA finals means that women are flourishing in professional sports.
So what can we do? Deford offers some valuable insights to how women’s sports can gain more visibility and credibility, and most of them relate to changes in infrastructure. As I listened, I realized that his insights could be equally valuable to us.
1. Tie it to money. In order to raise the profile of women’s professional sports, Deford recommends that league officials high tail it to Vegas and open betting lines. Without realizing it, Deford is echoing something that Christ himself taught: “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” So while I don’t recommend taking bets on who will lead your church's women’s ministry next year, I do think money is part of the equation. If we don’t invest our resources in equipping women, our hearts won’t be invested either. For a local congregation, this may mean budgeting to bring in a female speaker, hiring more women on staff, or helping women afford theological education. When resources are on the line, we're more likely to care about the final outcome. In other words, when we place a bet, we'll watch the game.
2. Link women’s efforts to men’s efforts. Another part of the WNBA’s trouble is that their season runs during the summer, with the playoffs hitting just as football season is opening. For many sports fans, this sends a subtle signal that the WNBA is not *really* basketball because it doesn’t happen during “basketball season.” Deford notes that women athletes who enjoy the most visibility are those who compete in tournaments alongside their male peers, such as in golf or tennis. Women and men don’t compete against each other, but they compete at the same time and place. So that in the public eye, women athletes have just as much credibility as the men do.
When it comes to local churches, it is very common for women’s ministry to be siloed from the main mission of the church. For many church leaders, the “women’s auxiliary” is precisely that—auxiliary to the day to day functioning of the church which is often led and conducted by men. This presents several dangers including sending the signal to the congregation that what the women are doing is not truly “ministry” in much the same way the public sees the WNBA as something less than “basketball.”
Because men are already established in places of visibility and influence in the Church, the surest way to promote women’s calling is to tie it to them and the central mission of the Church. When male leaders visibly work alongside female leaders, the congregation learns that female contributions are just as valuable and necessary as male.
3. Work as a team. The third thing Deford notes is that women’s sports will only gain visibility through team efforts. The success of women like Serena Williams or Lindsey Vonn does not mean that female athletes are meeting success across the board. Correspondingly, the success of a Beth Moore, Ann Voskamp, or Jen Hatmaker does not mean that women are flourishing or that their gifts are being used in local churches.
The reality is that most women working for the Kingdom are working in isolation. Part of this stems from an emphasis on home and family as a significant part of a woman’s calling. As an eleven-year veteran of the “domestic industry,” I can assure you that home can be a very lonely place. But beyond this, women leaders are simply not networked the way men are. Men in ministry often develop professional ties during their undergrad and seminary years and maintain them through professional conferences. Most of the women leaders I know came into their calling, not through academia, but through their passion and gifting. They are paraprofessionals and lack the professional support and network of other leaders.
Thankfully, the digital age offers women more opportunities to work as a team; but online interaction is not enough. Our most effective efforts happen in community, growing out of our work in local churches. Women leaders need to be invited onto the team of the church; they need to be present at staff meetings, prayer times, and leadership retreats. Otherwise, they will continue to serve in isolation and only a certain type of woman—those gifted with communication and extroverted personalities—will gain visibility and influence.
I’m sure that some will question the significance of women’s contributions to the Church much the same way some question the significance of women’s contributions to professional sports. But given the rampant sexuality, substance abuse, and violence that’s part of the ethos of professional sports, I can’t help but believe that we’d all be better with a stronger female presence. For me at least, I’d rather see women contributing to what’s happening on the field than on the sidelines as sex objects.
If you are a pastor or a women’s ministry leader, remember this: Women make up over half the human population and over 60% of your congregation. As presidential hopeful Carly Fiorina says, “We are not a special interest group.” Ultimately this isn’t a question of representation or fairness; it is a question of organizational effectiveness. When women are free to flourish—whether on the tennis court or in the Church—everybody wins.
Summer Daze
Chalk it up to the latent truancy that exists in parent and child alike, but I've been less than motivated these last few weeks. From the middle of May onward, I found myself slogging through the final projects, class picnics, and end-of-school year programs. I bought the ice cream, clapped for the perfect attendance awards, and sniffled through fifth-grade graduation. When the last bell rang, my kids weren't the only ones ready to be done.
No more lunches to pack...
No more homework to muddle through...
No more waking up in the middle of the night to remember what I forgot...
At least for the next 104 days or so.
I grew up in a teacher's home; in fact, it was a two-teacher home. Both my mother and father spent their days schooling future generations in the finer points of history and science. For our family, life existed in discreet increments of 9 weeks that gradually worked their way toward the ultimate goal of summer vacation. Dad often had to take odd jobs during his months off to make ends meet, but occasionally, every so often, there was a glorious summer when we had enough. He could stay with us, tend his garden, putter in his orchard, and simply enjoy working at home.
Of course, we still had responsibilities, even as children; but there was something marked about the sense of freedom we felt when school wrapped up. Instead of lesson planning and testing and grade books, our days were filled with berry picking, camping, ice cream, and lounging on the couch watching cartoons. We might go on vacation or travel to see relatives, but the joy of summer was directly tied to the fact that we didn't HAVE TO. Dewy June mornings evaporated into hot July afternoons which eventually gave way to the muggy nights of August. And all of them blissfully unscheduled.
At least, that's how I remember it.
Later in life, I learned that this wasn't exactly the norm. My sense of extended vacation was, in many ways, the result of both my childhood naivete and my parents unusual work schedules. Most of my friends didn't experience summer the way I did, especially if both their parents worked and they ended up at grandma's or in multiple sessions of day camp topped off with nightly VBS. In many ways, our family lived in a world apart, moving to our own rhythms, resisting outside forces. We did participate in church activities, offering up our service at Bible school or youth group camping trips, but for the most part, my parents felt no need to live their lives the way everyone else did.
For me, this meant that I carried some interesting expectations into adulthood, particularly that the world should slow down during the months of June, July, and August. In these times, you'd need only do the bare minimum outside your home. Certainly you must work. Those afternoons in front of the television often included snapping green beans, but somehow it was different. We were working for ourselves. We were investing in our own home and family. We weren't obligated to anyone else.
Eighteen summers of this will shape a person. So that even today, my heart seems to skip a few beats faster when June rolls around. June means freedom. June means family.
At dinner the other night, after a discussion of loose teeth, why ice doesn't sink, and the obligatory knock-knock joke, I leaned over to my husband.
"You do realize," I said, looking conspiratorially into those brown eyes that got us here in the first place, "you do realize that we are living in a Beverly Clearly novel."
A Beverly Clearly novel set smack-dab in the middle of summer.
I tell you all this to explain where I'll be for the next few months. The last bell has rung, and I'm taking the summer off. I might pop in now and again, but don't expect to see much of me. There may be some previously scheduled posts on FB or Twitter, and I might work up the effort to record a podcast or two, but for the most part, it's going to be quiet.
Somebody's got to teach these kids how summer's done.
Pulling Together: Marriage, Ministry, and Calling
Yesterday, Bible teacher, Christian radio host, and conference speaker Nancy Leigh DeMoss announced that she will marry Robert Wolgemuth this coming fall. If you’re familiar with DeMoss’s ministry, “Revive Our Hearts,” you’ll understand the significance of this news. For years, DeMoss has been an advocate for Christian women to embrace the “freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness” found in Christ, including the unique calling to home and motherhood. At the same time she has confidently and comfortably embraced her own singleness, believing it to be a gift that has allowed her to commit herself to ministry.
But as God does, just when we think we know the plan, He changes it. Recently, He has brought widowed Wolgemuth and DeMoss together in order “to continue serving Him wholeheartedly, trusting Him to make us even more spiritually fruitful together than we could be apart.”
DeMoss continues:
I love this man dearly and look forward to becoming Mrs. Robert Wolgemuth. But my life mission has not changed. It will now be our life mission to magnify the Lord together… We envision a continued robust Revive Our Hearts ministry. Our longing is for even more women (and men) around the world to experience freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.
And Wolgemuth adds:
My promise to our heavenly Shepherd, to Nancy, to her precious ministry family, and to the thousands around the world who love Nancy Leigh DeMoss, is that I will come alongside her and her ministry with my prayers, encouragement, and support.
And all God’s people said, “AMEN!” This is precisely how we should talk about married women and their calling to Christ’s kingdom.
Unfortunately, I don’t hear this language employed very often. Instead, I regularly hear Christian women being told to seek their callings through their husbands. Don’t get me wrong. I am fully convinced that a woman is called to minister to her husband and family. And I’ll be the first the trumpet the imago Dei-quality of a well-made peanut-butter-and- jelly sandwich or a properly laundered (and folded) pair of boxer shorts. What I’m concerned about is how often we confuse our prepositions—how often we misunderstand the difference between through and to.
In I Corinthians 7, Paul makes it clear that husbands and wives must cultivate and care for each other. Of all the neighbors you are called to love, your spouse is the closest one. This means that being married will naturally limit your ability to pursue other callings in the Church. But Scripture also makes it clear that the call to marry is rooted in a larger call so that even as we enter it, we remember that marriage itself is not all-consuming. It is only part of how we serve the Lord with our whole hearts and lives. This is true for men. This is true for women.
It may sound like I’m stating the obvious. Don’t Christian women understand this? No, I’m afraid that some don’t. Some, in fact, believe that the calling to help their husbands trumps every other ministry calling or desire. Sometimes they believe this because of their own immaturity; and sometimes they believe it because this is what they have been explicitly told. The result is confusion and frustration as women wrestle with their own gifting and place in the Church. They either become weak and directionless, unable to serve apart from their husbands; or they become frustrated and manipulative as they attempt to live out their own passions and gifting through their husbands.
How do I know? I used to be one.
Early in our marriage, when my husband first entered professional ministry, I honestly believed that my calling in the Church would be fulfilled through him. So whatever he needed me to do to further “his” ministry, I did. But I also ended up crossing a lot of boundaries I shouldn’t have crossed. I invested myself too deeply in his career, attempted to do the Holy Spirit’s work in his heart, and meddled in things that were not my concern—all in the name of “supporting” his calling.
What I was really doing was longing for a way to use my own gifting to serve the Church.
God was faithful despite my immaturity, and today I work beside my husband as a wife, mother, and active member of our local church. Out of the Holy Spirit’s gifting, I offer advice, counsel, and support as he needs it; but what he most certainly does not need is for me to confuse my calling with his. As I’ve found the freedom to develop my own gifts, God has led me to a place I never expected. Today, a significant part of my ministry happens independently of my husband’s. It happens through mothering and homemaking, to be sure, but it also happens through blog posts and articles just like this one.
The result? Today my husband and I are more fruitful for the Kingdom than we have ever been.
You may know that I live in the Blue Ridge of southwest Virginia. You may not know that this is railroad country. Our county and the surrounding area was built on rail and to this day, Norfolk-Southern is one of our largest employers. We also have a lot—A LOT—of mountains. So it’s not unusual to see two engines coupled together pulling a load of cars. With hills this big and loads this large, one engine simply can’t do the job alone.
In many ways, marriage is the same. Both men and women have the same basic calling: We are called to work for Christ’s Kingdom. We have to get the load up the mountain. But just like one engine can’t do it alone, neither can men nor women do it alone. “So God said that it is not good that man should be alone; I’ll give him a second engine to help him.” (That’s from the SWVA version of the Bible which also translates the plural of you as “ya’ll.”)
But here’s the thing: too often, we think of a woman as the coal car that fuels the man’s mission; in reality, she is a strong, second engine tasked with the same mission that he is. His engine may be out in front, and she may even be a different make and model, but make no mistake, they are both tasked with getting the load to the top of the mountain.
I am thrilled to see Nancy Leigh DeMoss and her fiancé confirm the work that God has called her to. I am thrilled that in God’s providence, He has brought them together to serve His Church as husband and wife. But mostly, I am thrilled that they will be able to model this for the rest of us. Because ultimately this is what a truly Christian marriage looks like—two people bound together by a mission greater than either one of them. two people bound together to love Christ and serve His people.
Frost Date
It's finally spring in our hills. Officially, it's been spring for over a month, but an Appalachian spring is not a spring you can trust, especially if you are a gardener. The mountains tease and tempt you, blossoming one moment and freezing the next. That's why "frost date" is so important. This is "the day of the year, based on these 30 year averages, that there is only a 10% chance that there will be a frost." Statistically speaking, this means that you should be safe to plant after this day. For us, it tends to fall at the end of April.
But every year, I watch grown men and women tempt this "frost date." For people staunchly opposed to all forms of gambling and avarice, the gardeners I know have a particular penchant toward risk. If you put out your seedlings early enough, and the weather holds, you might also be the first to put out home-grown tomatoes at a church supper. But if you presume too much upon spring, and put them out too soon, your tomatoes won't show up until August because you'll have to replant them after they die. (Of course, you could always do what one friend of our does--tend your plants in a greenhouse until they're nearly grown and then put them out already in bloom--but for the most part, this kind of behavior is frowned upon.)
I spent my childhood watching my father worry and wait until the frost date had finally passed. Today I watch my husband do the same; in fact, as I type, he is out in his garden finally putting out his broccoli and cabbages and tomatoes. He hasn't been this happy in months. Last year, I wrote a short poem about this angst-ridden season and remembered it just today--a day far enough past frost date to ensure that we will have tomatoes come July.
Frost Date
Spring comes to these hills on lilting steps of two forward, one back. The man who has known eighty lifts his hat and smooths down wisps of white. “You cannot trust these days; they’re as fickle as a woman.” But these days seduce old men (and young too) to sow their seeds of hope– a hope that is less than confidence– lest April make fools of them all.
Think Before You Write
This is a second post in a recurring series that addresses questions of craft for those writing in “the-in-between.” ______________________________________________________________________
Q: My friend Rachael and I were talking a few days ago when she brought up this question: How do you find time to write, especially in the busy seasons of life?
A: Those of us writing in “the-in-between” have a lot of questions, but this is THE question. Whether you work a full-time job, are invested in a busy season of ministry, or are running after toddlers, finding time to write is one of the biggest obstacles to actually... writing. (Case in point: While I was in the middle of writing this post, my husband came down stairs to ask me to cut his hair.) Last week, Taryn Hutchison offered some helpful tips at Redbud Writers Guild; and when I posed Rachael's question to a group of writing friends, several sagely pointed out the need to keep reasonable expectations. Some seasons of life will simply be more productive than others.
Still others swear by early rising, spouses who pitch in, and dedicating space in your weekly calendar. Truthfully, though, I’m not that organized. In our house, no two weeks (let alone days) look the same. And while I do sometimes stay up late to work a piece, it’s usually because I can’t sleep, not because I’ve reached a new level of productivity. But I have found one technique that I swear by. In fact, if I didn't do this one thing, I'm convinced that I'd never have enough time to write.
So what do I do? I write on my feet. More accurately, I think on my feet.
Many people mistakenly believe that writing is the work of arranging words on a page, of finding just the right sequence of letters and punctuation. They believe that "writing" happens with pen and notebook in hand or sitting in front of a computer. But writing is NOT simply about words; it is just as much about the about the ideas behind the words. And until you learn to think through your ideas, all the time in the world won’t be enough to write about them.
The good news is that you can think anywhere. Ideas bombard me in the shower, at the grocery store, listening to the news, and scrolling through Facebook; the place they are least likely to form is sitting in front of a computer screen. If I wait to begin "writing" until I plop myself in a chair, more often than not, the words won’t form because the ideas haven’t formed yet.
So I’ve learned to think on my feet. And as the ideas come, I’ve learned to capture them and squirrel them away. Forget Scrivener; the first draft of Made for More was written on the backs of church bulletins, restaurant napkins, and grocery receipts.
I also make notes on my phone, send myself emails, and record myself talking if my hands aren’t free. (Nor am I above asking my 10yo daughter to act as my secretary—“What’s trans-sub-stan-ti-a-tion mean, Mommy?”) By the time I actually sit down in front of a screen, it’s just a matter of arranging the bits and bobs into a coherent whole.
Don’t misunderstand. When I say “bits and bobs,” I mean a thesis and all the examples that support that thesis. For me, the process of collecting these can take anywhere from a couple days to several weeks, but I don’t sit down in front of the screen it until everything “clicks” –until all the random thoughts actually form into a concept. And then once I know what to “write,” the time I do have to write is much more productive.
That doesn't mean that I don't struggle once I sit down, but when I do, it’s usually because I need to step away and think about the ideas some more. If the words don’t come easily, I don’t waste my time sitting in front of the computer because I probably need to spend more time thinking. So I go clean a toilet, make dinner, or do laundry. But I keep thinking while I do.
I don’t want to make it sound simpler than it is. I don’t want to minimize the time that good writing takes. And I certainly don’t want to suggest that you check out of your real life in order to puzzle out the mysteries of the universe. But you probably have more time to write than you realize because finding time to write well doesn't begin with hours in a coffee shop, long walks along a placid lake, or evenings spent scribbling in your moleskin notebook. Finding time to write well begins with thinking well.
"A Quotation Is a Handy Thing"
Last week, some friends and I ended up in conversation about blogging and writing. Like me, many of them have benefited from the opportunities of the tech age and have dug up long-buried passions in order to blog, write e-books, and contribute to online journals. But with these opportunities have come a whole slew of questions about how to write well.
Unfortunately, much of the broader conversation has trended toward answering questions about platform development and navigating the publishing industry. I say “unfortunately” because most of the Christian bloggers I know are not pursuing an elusive book contract or trying to be the next internet sensation. Most are like the majority of local church pastors I know. They want to serve people through their gifting. They want to communicate the hope of the gospel. They want to do good work.
So in order to help expand the conversation beyond platform building, I want to develop a recurring series that addresses questions that faith-based bloggers/writers often encounter. This series is not aimed at professional writers but to those of us typing away at our kitchen table, on an (unmade) bed, or at our lunchtime breaks. If you find yourself in that group, feel free to leave suggested topics and questions in the comment section below.
To get us started, here’s a question Megan Hill posed to a group of us this week:
Q: What principles/criteria do you use when deciding whether to quote another writer in your articles? Frequently, I find myself wanting to quote a valuable and truthful word from someone whose theology, life, or perspective I couldn't wholeheartedly "amen." Quoting them with a lengthy and often distracting caveat--"while I don't agree with this writer on everything blah blah blah"--doesn't seem completely satisfactory, but maybe it's the way of wisdom. What do you do?
A. The church tradition that I grew up in had a strong commitment to separating from false teaching and worldliness. One way this worked itself out was that pastors, teachers, and writers rarely quoted other pastors, teachers, and writers outside our tradition. If they did, it was with massive caveats. Even the books in our church library (and then later in college) had a sticker pasted on the flyleaf to remind us that the content of said volume may or may not be in keeping with the views and values of our church. This background makes me sensitive to the question of who and what to quote in my own writing. On one hand, a quote is influential because it presents the author as a sort of “expert witness.” But, then again, maybe we were over-thinking it. Here are some things to keep in mind:
- Recognize that no one is perfect. Don’t lull yourself into thinking that some writers are “safe” while others are not. This is a particular challenge for those us operating online—a world that is often driven by tribes and celebrity status. It’s just too easy to give certain authors a pass at the same time that we over-scrutinize those outside our own camp.
- Consider whether the author of the quote is using the ideas and words in the same way that you are. For example, if I quote a Jehovah’s Witness speaking about Jesus as the Messiah, I’m pretty much guaranteed that she and I aren’t talking about the same thing. Closer to home, even orthodox Christians can have different understandings of the nature of faith, grace, and the kingdom. Make sure you mean the same thing.
- Ask yourself why you are using a quote in the first place. There are many reasons writers use quotations, sometimes simply as a way to associate their own writing with the success of the author of the quote. But a common reason we use quotations is because we haven’t actually worked through the ideas ourselves yet. Like A. A. Milne said, “[A] quotation is a handy thing to have about, saving one the trouble of thinking for oneself, always a laborious business." (See what I did there?)
- When in doubt, quote a dead guy. More than likely, the truth that you “discovered” from a modern writer isn’t original with that writer. Those of us who are honest know that writing is primarily an exercise in borrowing ideas and repacking them for a specific audience. By quoting those who are long dead, you can side-step any current controversies that may distract from your core message.
- Give honor to whom honor is due. If a certain author did open up a concept for you, perhaps in a way that no one else did, it would be wrong to not attribute it. Don’t let your fear of how others perceive him or her drive your choice of whether to quote or not. (Rabbit Trail: Don’t EVER write from fear.)
- If you use a caveat, don’t let it undermine the flow of the text or the significance of the truth that you are trying to communicate. When the caveat overshadows your main point, it becomes the main point. And all the benefit gained from the actual quotation is lost. Instead, write with grace; briefly acknowledge the point of disagreement but devote the majority of your time and words to affirming the shared perspective.
- Finally, remember that all truth is God’s truth. If a writer is communicating truth, it doesn’t belong to him; it belongs to God. And nothing he can do can make that truth any less true. In fact, the truth of God is so powerful that not even the father of lies himself can corrupt it.
Writing is often a perplexing activity. The hows and whos and whys are not always easily answered; at the same time, I believe that many of the challenges can be resolved by simply thinking more, working harder, and praying longer. In the end, regardless of who or what you choose to quote, don't take the easy way out.
So You Want to Be in "The Ministry"
When I was in college, a lot of my friends were preparing to go into “The Ministry.” Some were full of holy zeal for mission work, some had plans for pastoral ministry, and some were simply caught up in the whirlwind of surrender. The “Preacher Boys” dated and married the girls called to be “Pastors’ Wives” and we all dreamed of future service.
Somehow when the dust had settled, I found myself married to one of those “Preacher Boys” despite no pressing need to be a "Pastor's Wife" or to be in vocational ministry. Our first years together were spent finishing up school, going through the process of ordination, and eventually launching out into “The Ministry.” But nearly a decade and a half later, I’ve learned a few things. And most of them bear no resemblance to what I thought I knew.
I was reminded of this today when I read this piece from Jared Wilson about watching one of his parishioners waste away in hospice. Wilson is a popular blogger and author, but he spends most of his time in the trenches as a pastor, and this piece particularly captures the realities of ministry. The pain, the heartbreak, the inexplicable hope of the gospel. The joy of watching people triumph over death through the power of Christ.
We didn't talk about these things in college.
So to those you who want to go into "The Ministry," let me offer a few words of unsolicited advice: What you think is “The Ministry” probably isn’t.
- ”The Ministry” is not carefully crafted schedules and specific days off. It means working holidays, late nights, and weekends.
- “The Ministry” doesn’t read the popular blogs, know the latest buzzwords, or buy the best-selling books. It doesn’t always understand things like “small groups” or “missional living” or all those marks that you plan to evaluate a church by.
- “The Ministry” does not consist of praying several hours every day, talking with other folks in “The Ministry,” or having your nose in one of the 1,542 books that flank your office walls. You’ll do those things, but in between the hospital visits and Wal-mart runs and counseling sessions.
- “The Ministry” is not a source of affirmation for your own insecurities.
- “The Ministry” doesn’t mean making a name for yourself, working the network, or using people as stepping stones. If you’re not content with obscurity, don’t go into “The Ministry.”
- “The Ministry” does not inoculate you from suffering and your own sin.
Today, my husband and I have a bit of unconventional advice for people weighing the call to ministry:
“Do anything else that you can do—try everything else—for heaven’s sake, please, please, make sure this is the only thing that you can do.” You see, none of us chooses to go into ministry. We are sent. Sometimes kicking and screaming. And eventually, surrendered and docile because we understand that there is no use resisting the King of the Universe. But when the King calls, you go.
You go because nothing else fits. You go because He has placed a love for His people and His word deep inside you and to resist it would be to resist your own self. You go because you know that despite the challenges, despite the struggles, you will be happy no where else.
And when you do, you realize that “The Ministry” is better than all your pre-conceived notions and pipe dreams. It is more layered, more challenging, more beautiful than anything you could have ever envisioned. It is more because He is more and the people being transformed to His likeness are more--more than objects, more than templates, and more than spreadsheets, charts, or trends.
So what is “The Ministry”?
It means tie-dying t-shirts at VBS and occasionally dressing up like Elijah.
It’s packing backpacks of food to send home with at-risk kids.
It’s poring over the Scripture, crafting a sermon, and then teaching with the passion and care that only someone who has been changed by the Spirit can.
It’s taking your life in your hands to ride the curves and twists of the mountains with an 88-year-old man who wants to take you to see a model steam engine.
It’s rearranging your family’s schedule because you must preach a funeral.
It’s having the courage and love to approach a member/friend about an area of sin.
It’s being humble enough to confess your own short-comings and failures.
It means sorting out the details of who misplaced the key to the janitor’s closet and grabbing a bucket when the roof leaks (again).
It’s carrying the sadness of your congregation, sitting with them in the hospital or crying with them when a wife leaves. Just sitting and bearing. No Psalm 23, no platitudes, no answers.
It’s rejoicing with the angels over each soul that comes in repentance, each new job, and each new life swaddled in Dreft-scented blankets.
Sorry folks. There are no pedestals. No boys' clubs. No making a name for yourself. But there is a lot of giving and loving and serving. There is a lot of Jesus and very little of you. There is a lot of dying to yourself so that others might live. And this girl who never had any intentions of marrying a “Preacher Boy” wouldn’t trade it for the world.
The Whole Woman
This coming Sunday is Mother’s Day, and like most moms with young children, I completely forgot about it until my husband reminded me. The irony of Mother’s Day is that mothering is the kind of work you celebrate by actually doing it. And in the midst of laundry, prepping for a yard sale, and running kids to ball practice and piano lessons, the last thing I have time to do is to cultivate expectations of Hallmark moments, breakfast in bed, and keepsake necklaces.
Still there is a tension that surrounds mothering and I’ve recently read several good pieces that explore motherhood as it relates to the questions of work, calling, and gifting. In pieces at Her.meneutics, Sharon Hodde Miller asks whether we should talk of motherhood as a “calling” while Courtney Reissig explores the false construct between being a stay-at-home-mom and being a “working” mom. (In this Slate piece, Ester Bloom argues that we need to do away with the term “stay-at-home-mom” altogether and return to the more encompassing title of “homemaker.”)
But my favorite piece is Jen Pollock Michel’s review of Matt Perman’s new book on productivity, What’s Best Next? While Michel has good things to say about the book, she points out that it doesn’t address the very real work that it takes to manage a home and nurture a family. She writes, “When does Perman do his laundry? Make dinner or do the dishes? Where does he fit in carpool? And once his children are tucked into bed, who is packing the lunch boxes?”
Michel's point is this: productivity and work cannot be defined by an office or job description. All people work because all people—whether SAHMs or CEOs---are made in the image of a God who works. And because of this, the questions women ask about “work/life balance" are not really questions about womanhood or motherhood at all. At their core, these questions are about what it means to be image bearers. These are questions about what it means to live holistically in the image of a God who is wholeness Himself.
One of the lesser discussed attributes of God’s character is His simplicity--the truth that the various parts of His nature (even the three persons of the Trinity) exist in perfect union and peace. But God’s simplicity is more than a good “work/life balance.” In the purest sense, He cannot even be separated into parts. He is love; He is justice; He is peace. All at the same time.
The implication for us as image bearers is that we are made to live holistically as well. We simply cannot divide our existence into categories. There is no such thing as "work" vs. "home" vs. "gifting" vs. "motherhood." I am a wife, mother, writer, extrovert, saint, and sinner --all at the same time. In fact, we damage our own humanity when we try to separate them.
And yet, achieving simplicity is not a simple thing. Over the course of a single day, the responsibilities of life will pull us in a hundred different directions and if you are anything like me, you’ll find yourself asking,
- How am I supposed to pursue my gifting when the laundry hasn’t been done and my five-year-old had to borrow his older brother’s underpants (yet again)?
- How am I supposed to live “missionally” –to take a meal to my neighbor when my own family is eating very non-organic, nitrate-laden hot dogs tonight?
- How am I supposed live this multi-dimensional existence, to live in the image of an infinite God, when I am so very limited?
The thing that few of us acknowledge and that fewer of us want to embrace is that we are limited. We cannot reflect God’s simplicity on our own. We cannot achieve wholeness by simply being more or managing our time better. We must achieve wholeness through His wholeness.
In many ways, our limitations are the very things that God is using to draw us to Himself. Just like the opposing facets of a diamond work in coordination to refract light, God is using the different facets of our lives to display His glory. So that as we grow in dependence on Him, as each facet of life is aligned to His nature, we will begin to experience a bit of His wholeness.
Categories like calling and work and motherhood are not wrong; but they are limited. Alone they will never be large enough to contain creatures who bear the image of a infinite God. Alone, they will never be able to reflect the complexity and brilliance of His nature. Nothing but God Himself can do this. But as He becomes the unifying element of our existence—not simply our ability to multi-task or draw boundaries—His Light will suddenly come bursting forth in brilliant splendor.
And in this Light, we will finally see.
What Is in Your Hand?
A little over a week ago, I sat at my kitchen table and listened to my friend Heather explain the world of widgets and add-ons and web hosting. I know she was talking because I saw her mouth moving, and my ears seemed to be receiving some sort of sound; but if you were to ask me what she said, I'd probably end up giving you my best impersonation of Charlie Brown's teacher.
Heather is helping me through some very necessary updates to Sometimes a Light (stay tuned); and within a matter of minutes, she had cleared up several things that have eluded me for the last two years. (If you've ever wondered why SAL seems a little low tech, it's not because of some Luddite idealism on my part. It's sheer, unadulterated ignorance.) But sitting there, watching Heather work her magic, something else happened: I remembered of why I believe so strongly in providence.
In Made for More, I describe providence as God's love and His power working together to make us exactly who we are meant to be. You see, it's one thing to embrace the fact that we all reflect God's nature, but it's another thing entirely to understand how the details of our lives allow us to do that. Because just as much as I sat there in awe of Heather's gifting, she expressed the same awe at mine.
But the truth is that that I couldn't explain to her why I ended up writing a book anymore than I could explain why I can't organize a spreadsheet without having to call my husband for tech support. I couldn't explain why I received a Christian education for 17 years (K-5 through B.A.) or why I ended up working beside my husband in church ministry. It's not because I was more committed to God or a "better" Christian or a even a harder worker. The only reason I could come up with was thatGod put the pieces of my life together so I could do what He has called me to do; just like He put the pieces of Heather's life together so she could do what He has called her to do.
And most of the time, those pieces are more mundane than we realize.
Exodus 3-4 tells us about the time God meets Moses in the wilderness and commissions him to return to Egypt. From the flaming boughs of a dessert shrub, God tells Moses of His grand plan to redeem Israel and keep the promises that He made to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. He is going to bring His enslaved children into a land that flows with milk and honey, to provide their every need, to be their God. Moses responded to all this with a question. Essentially he asks "So you're expecting me to do what exactly?"
Undeterred, God asks Moses a question of His own: "What is that in your hand?"
What Moses was holding was a shepherd's staff. A staff that he'd been carrying around for the last forty years. A staff that he'd been using to nudge stubborn sheep and support himself in times of weariness. A staff that God was going to use to humble Pharaoh's magicians, part the Red Sea, and lead His people through the wilderness
In many ways, my experience has been a lot like Moses' with his staff. When I first started blogging, I had no way of understanding what God would eventually do. I only knew what He had placed in my hand. I only knew what His providence had given me to serve Him. And once God drew my attention to it, a funny thing happened. Once I realized that I was gifted to write, I automatically realized what I was NOT gifted to do (*ahem* web design) and so I was free to affirm the gifting of others. At the same time that I was freed to use what God had given me, I was also freed to celebrate how God was using others.
In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul teaches that differences in our gifting actually draw into dependence on each other and join us into one body: the body of Jesus Christ. And here's where imago dei identity comes full circle. God intends not only to reveal Himself through us individually, but through the relationships we share as well. God, who Himself exists in intimate relationship as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who binds Himself to us through loving covenant, does not intend for His image bearers to live in isolated, self-sufficiency. He intends for our abilities (and our lack of abilities), our weakness and our strengths, to join us together. He intends for us to reflect His nature through the Body of His Son.
When I sat across from Heather that morning, my mind was mostly consumed with just keeping up. But something else was happening too. I had a glimpse and a glimmer that we were participating in something bigger than either one of us. As Heather used her gifting to help me and as I used mine to bless her, we were freed to live as we were meant to live; we were free to live in God's image.
____________________________________________________________________ So what is in your hand? How has God providentially shaped your life to reflect Him in a way that someone else cannot? How does your gifting allow you to serve others? How do your limitations allow others to serve you?
If You Give a Girl a Blog
If You Give a Girl a Blog(with apologies to Laura Numeroff) If you give a girl a blog…
She’s going to ask you to read it.
When you read it, she’ll probably ask you to share it.
When you do, she’ll get so excited she’ll stay awake all night.
When she stays awake all night, she’ll start getting big ideas.
So she’ll probably write those down too.
When she’s finished, she’ll share them with you.
And she’ll start planning more.
She might get carried away and write a book proposal.
She might even send that proposal to a publisher.
She may end up signing a book contract.
When she does, she’ll feel overwhelmed and want to hide.
She’ll wonder why she ever agreed to it in the first place.
She’ll probably want to quit altogether.
When she remembers, she’ll get so excited that she’ll start writing again.
She’ll spend even more time in front of the computer and miss your favorite shows.
She’ll stay up late at night.
When she stays up late at night, she’ll get sleep-deprived and won’t be able to finish chapter 8.
So she’ll take a nap.
(She’ll take lots of naps.)
When she wakes up, she’ll finish chapter 8.
And 9, 10, 11 and 12.
When she finishes chapter 12, she’ll send it to the publisher.
Then she’ll have to wait.
While she’s waiting, she’ll start to feel hungry.
So she’ll eat a snack.
(She’ll eat lots of snacks.)
Eating lots of snacks will make her feel pudgy.
Feeling pudgy will make her think about going on a diet.
Thinking about going on a diet will make her think about other things too.
So she’ll write them down.
When she writes them down, it will remind her of writing a book.
And chances are, when she writes a book…
She’s going to want to blog about it.
O Zion, Haste
I grew up in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in a region dotted by dilapidated family farms and former coal towns. We are the second poorest county in the state and the most exotic animal we ever saw was the occasional bear or mountain lion. But within the church I discovered the world.
I met women like Amy Carmichael and Mary Slessor and learned that the measure of womanhood was not your relationship status or professional accomplishments, but whether you lived your life in service of God and others. In elementary school, I knew the flags of over thirty nations—not because of the Olympics but because we hung them from the ceiling every year during our missions’ conference week. I became versed in cold-war politics when for two summers we sent our VBS nickels and dimes to the underground church in the Soviet Union.
The story of Christian missions is a complicated one. When I was young, it was all about adventure and holy passion and converting cannibals. As I grew older, I discovered that mission efforts often ran parallel to and sometimes intersected the darker story of western colonization. I read Achebe and Paton and Forster and had to face the reality that when David Livingston was taking the gospel to free souls in the interior of Africa, the United States was embroiled in a civil war to keep their cousins enslaved.
Until recently, sorting through the complicated picture of Christian missions has been more a question of presuppositions and sanitized history. And to some degree, it always will be; but thanks to sociologist Robert Woodberry, it might be getting a bit clearer. In the latest edition of Christianity Today, Andrea Palpant Dilley writes about Woodberry’s work to find a “significant statistical link” between democracy and Protestantism. And after years of detailed research, extensive travel, and with the help of some elaborate computer models, he has.
Woodberry’s research can be summed up by this claim:
“Areas where Protestant missionaries had a significant presence in the past are on average more economically developed today, with comparatively better health, lower infant mortality, lower corruption, greater literacy, higher educational attainment (especially for women), and more robust membership in nongovernmental associations.”
In a word, when I was learning about Amy Carmichael and Mary Slessor, I was learning about the greatest promoters of sustainable democracy.
If my childhood was shaped by the stories of missionaries and conversion, my adult life has been shaped by the stories of soldiers and violence. I was a newly-married 22-year-old on September 11, 2001, still naïve enough to believe that our response would be limited to fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. But over the subsequent decade, our attempts to “bring democracy’ to the Middle East have failed; and if this has taught us anything, it’s that we cannot win “hearts and minds” with guns and tanks. In fact, if Woodberry’s claims are correct, this is best accomplished through the gospel of peace.
But it’s even more startling than that.
According to Woodberry, the missionaries who had the most profound influence on developing democracies were “conversionary Protestants.” They were missionaries whose social work—the work of building schools and hospitals and advocating for the rights of the oppressed--was motivated directly by their evangelistic impulses. In other words, these missionaries did not go to the far-flung corners of the world in the name of social activism; they went to convert souls in the name of Jesus Christ and in the process, changed the world.
So my question is why? Why must conversion be a vital part of missiology in order to affect real and lasting social change?
I think the answer is wrapped up in what conversion is. True, gospel conversion is fundamentally about change. It changes how we understand God, ourselves, and each other. For people like David Livingstone and Amy Carmichael, the gospel so profoundly changed them that they ended up changing the world. Perhaps without even realizing it.
At the same time, Woodberry’s research also reminds us that the gospel is not simply about future flourishing. The gospel changes life here and now by reconciling us to God and each other. When the gospel teaches us to fight greed, violence, and apathy in our own hearts—when it teaches us that we are truly our brother’s keeper because God is ours—the gospel sets the foundation for societies that can flourish.
And if it isn’t doing this, you can be pretty sure it’s not the gospel.
More than anything Woodberry’s research confirms what the Scripture already teaches us. It confirms that where the Prince of Peace reigns, there is peace; where the Bread of Life grows, hunger will not; where the Great Physician is at work, disease and death flee. And ultimately, it confirms that when the Author of Life is allowed to write the story of our lives, we will finally be free to live in the abundant life that He has promised.
They Also Serve
And most of the time, I feel like I’m failing on all counts.
Every morning, I wake up with more on my “to do” list than is humanly possible, and every night I go bed having proven it. But instead of simply acknowledging my limitations, I regularly feel discouraged and overwhelmed. In fact, I have been feeling this way so often that I finally had to face a harsh reality. I am a prime candidate to join that particular type of support group that meets in musty church basements. I need to draw my chair up into the circle and when it’s my turn, bravely stand and say, “Hello, my name is Hannah and I have a messiah complex.” But I don’t think I’ll be alone there.
I’ve noticed a certain agitation among women of my age, a longing to do more. We are tempted to believe that what we are already doing is not enough, that the dishes and laundry and school lunches are not “real,” that ministry that is not global or public or exciting (like reconciling races or saving orphans) is not true ministry. We see the brokenness around us. We want to change the world. We are ready.
But I worry. I worry because if this impulse is not properly rooted, it will very quickly lead to burnout.
I've seen it in my own life. All that holy passion and zeal, the joy of finally discovering my voice, of finding my place in the kingdom can quickly be replaced by needing to save the kingdom all by myself. And when I can’t—when I’m busy with more mundane things—the guilt creeps in. I hear a voice saying, “You have so much to do. Don't you dare rest yet.” And “How selfish of you—you live a life of privilege and ease. Why aren’t you suffering for the gospel?”
I grew up in a context that, for good or bad, heavily emphasized what we needed to do for God. We were told to sacrifice this life for the next, to be sold out, to be surrendered, to be on fire, to be radical. And I was. And I am. But the older I grow and the busier I become, the more I believe that being sold out to God means first learning about my own limitations.
In order to work for Him, I must first learn to rest in Him.
Micah 6:8 has become something of a theme song for our generation. “What does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” The cause of justice and equality pulses through our veins. We long to “proclaim good news to the poor… to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
But can I say something? Can I ask you to stop trying to save the world? Can I encourage you to embrace your life of limitation? Because here in the weakness, in the failure, in the inability, He is strong. And here, only in your limitation, will you ever learn to walk humbly with Him.
And it is only when you learn to walk humbly with Him that you will be able to do justice and love kindness the way that He does.
Almost 400 years ago, there was a man who had a tremendous gift. He was a poet and statesman, an active political thinker and even deeper personal philosopher. But then the lights went out. By the time he was 44, he was completely blind. It seemed like a cruel joke--how did God expect him to use his talent for the kingdom when he couldn’t even see to write? “Does God exact day-labour, light denied?” he asked.
The answer he found is one that we need today:
"God doth not need Either man's work or his own gifts: who best Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed And post o'er land and ocean without rest: They also serve who only stand and wait."
God is inviting us to work in His kingdom. He is calling us to something more than this world can offer. But He is calling us first to Himself, to remember that He is the Messiah. Not us. And He is calling us to believe that those “who best bear his mild yoke, they serve him best.”
Even if they only stand and wait.
Putting the "Christian" in Christian Publishing
Let me say up front that I’m new to publishing, and I come with all the innocence of freshly born babe. I’ve been given a remarkable opportunity (a gift really) to write a book with Moody Publishers which will release in April; and I have to consistently thank my editors and marketing gurus for holding my hand through whole the process. So, please understand that I write out of innocence, as the girl in the crowd who might just be able to see that the emperor’s clothes are not as magnificent as everyone claims.
In fact, they may not even be there at all.
Of course, this innocence could be nothing more than naïveté. Perhaps with time, I will understand what others already know. I’ll understand the pressures of balance sheets and payrolls. I’ll understand that while idealism may write books, pragmatism sells them. I’ll understand that this is simply “the way the world works.” Still I can’t help but wonder whether our concerns about publishing—the questions of plagiarism and ghost writing and the cult of celebrity—stem from precisely this. This is the way the world works.
In his first epistle, John warns us against being conformed to the ethos of the world. When I was growing up, I understood this “worldliness” to be certain style of dress or music; and while these things can certainly reflect the world system, worldliness is much more insidious. Worldliness is a short-sighted vision that is concerned only with this present age. Given this, we shouldn’t be surprised that pragmatism is the world’s modus operandi. If this life is the only thing that matters, then we ‘d better get while the getting is good.
In contrast, a truly Christian perspective understands that reality is not defined only by the “here and now” but also by the “there and then.” On this time table, the goal isn’t only success in this life but success that will last into the next. When we apply that to publishing, being a truly Christian publisher means more than simply producing content that is “Christian” but publishing in such a way where both means and end are guided by the timeless gospel we proclaim. To co-opt James K. A. Smith, we must never forget that the liturgy of our publishing actually shapes the things published.
With this in mind, here are a few thoughts about what should characterize our publishing efforts. Truly Christian publishing…
1. Does not disdain small platforms because it understands that God uses weak things to confound the mighty. Don’t misunderstand; having a small platform doesn’t mean you deserve to be published any more than having a large one does. (A small platform may indicate an inability to write.) But having a small platform doesn’t mean that you DON’T deserve to be published either. In God’s kingdom, size is of little importance because in comparison to Him, we’re all miniscule. 2. Will make space for unique gifting even if it is not trendy. One of the dangers of the celebrity culture is that it inevitably elevates a certain style or approach to the standard, tempting everyone else to copy it. Soon titles sound the same; graphic design becomes interchangeable; buzz words emerge; and everybody ends up quoting everybody else. It reminds me of Marcus Mumford’s frustration that every other band now sounds like Mumford and Sons: "That's kind of what we're reacting against. When we started, it was quite fun doing what we're doing, 'cause no one else was doing it. It was like our little secret." Truly Christian publishing understands that God places the members in the Body as He wills and aims to develop the unique voice of each—even if it is one crying in the wilderness.
3. Must be based in community. There’s a bit of a myth that “creatives” work best in isolation where they are free from the obligations of relationship. Within Christianity, this myth sometimes presents itself as freedom from the obligations of a local church. Now, as a mother of three, I’ll be the first to lobby for enough quiet space to put two thoughts together, but as a Christian, I also believe that my craft cannot be separated from those who live closest to me. Made in God’s image, we are designed to both create AND live in intimacy with other image bearers; these relationships lend accountability and inspiration for the work we do. So that in God’s wisdom, we actually end up doing our best work when we are doing it in context of relationships, when we are doing it in service to God and others.
4. Works collaboratively. Bringing a book to the public involves a whole host of gifted individuals using their talents to achieve a final goal—editors, marketers, publishers, and yes, even bookstores like LifeWay. Quite frankly, an author does not a book make. And as authors, we don’t have the right to say whatever the $#!@% we like because we are not the only ones involved in the process. (If you need more control, there are plenty of self-publishing options available these days.) At the same time, publishers must be willing to catch the author’s vision and let this guide the marketing, design, and distribution. Instead of forcing a book into prefabricated models of marketability, we must allow the content to shape even the delivery.
5. Moves with the Spirit. Here’s something that neither publishers nor authors will like: some of us have only one book in us. I’ve thought about this as I wrapped up final edits on my manuscript—I know God gave me this particular message but I have no guarantee that He will give me another one. Of course, I like to think He will, that this book will be the first of many, but I must be willing to submit to His plan if it is not. I cannot expect to hold Him to a timetable of a book a year or even every two years. When His spirit moves, I move—beyond that I can’t promise anybody anything and I’d be foolish to try.
6. Writes, publishes, and markets with humility. One of the biggest marks of wordliness is trusting the systems and structures of the age instead of trusting the Lord of the universe. Instead of saying “if the Lord wills, tomorrow we will do such and such,” the world whips out charts and stats and logarithms. Certainly, we must work, we must plan, we must analyze data, we must be effective; but even as we do, we must also understand that if God doesn’t build the house… well, all our effort is useless. Truly Christian publishing knows that the One who first gave the message is the same One who will carry it forward.
Publishing is risky business. It takes guts to invest this much time and money into projects that have no guarantee of reimbursement. I’m thankful for publishers like Moody who take those risks in order to honor God and further His gospel. But I’d also like to suggest that because publishing is such a risky business, it will require more faith of us, not less. Faith to follow where God leads; faith to pursue kingdom rewards instead of monetary ones; faith to believe that even the power of celebrity isn’t more powerful than God Himself.
But if we do, if we have this kind of faith, even the world can’t stop us. Because as John reminds us, this is the victory that overcomes the world—even our faith.
The Writer's Life
DeYoung’s advice was aimed at those in ministry, but I think it applies to most writers for this reason: Very, very few of us will actually make our living as a “writer.”
Very, very few of us will spend our working days in front of a computer (or scribbling in our moleskin notebooks) in order to share our deepest thoughts with a waiting world. Even if we get that elusive “book deal.” Case in point: a friend of mine has published four novels with a major Christian house, has a contract for more and still finds that she has to work at something other than writing. So she works another job, is a wife and mother, and only in the in-between moments, a writer.
Like her, the majority of us write for the sheer passion of it. We have been gifted to do this; we have heard God’s call to speak a specific message; and in His providence, He has given us opportunities to proclaim that message. But along the way, we end up doing a lot of other things. And this is fine. In fact, I believe it’s more than fine. It is good.
So much of this goes back to how we understand calling and gifting. (Or should I say, how we misunderstand calling and gifting.) When I was younger, I believed that my calling was some sort of magic—that God would reveal “His will” for my life and I would then commit myself to a specific job. In high school, I thought it might be mission work. When I was in college, I thought it would be teaching. After I married a boy headed to ministry, I thought it would be found in being a pastor’s wife. And once I had children, I thought my “calling” would be motherhood.
But there was something I misunderstood. God does not call His image bearers to categories or abstractions. God calls them to life. He call them to a specific embodiment in a specific place and time for a specific purpose. In my case, it is a life that includes being a pastor’s wife, a mother, a writer and a whole host of other things that work in coordination to reflect Him in a unique way. Truth be told, we really can’t even discuss calling apart from the specific image bearer who is called.
Here’s what I mean: about two weeks ago, I posted a link to a video that celebrated the life of the stay-at-home-mom. Many of the scenes were familiar to me—the small acts of care, the late nights and early mornings, the countless hours in the kitchen. I found it beautiful and affirming of work that often goes unheralded. But shortly after I posted it, a friend tweeted this response: “It was pretty sweet, but a very specific kind of motherhood for a specific cultural context. Not my experience.”
At first, I was surprised, but then I realized, of course, it wasn’t. This film wasn’t depicting an abstract calling—it couldn’t; it was depicting the lives of three specific women who happened to be stay-at-home moms. There is no such thing as a “job” apart from the one who embodies that job. There is no such thing as a role apart from person who gives form to that role. There is no such thing as a position apart from the image bearer who lends life to that position.
What does this mean for writing?
Those of us who write must have faith to believe that the other things we do—whether it is pastoral work or motherhood—make us the people that God calls us to be. We must have enough faith to believe that these things are not in conflict with each other but are all part of His Providence. We—no, I—must have enough faith to believe that being a mother makes me a better writer and being a writer makes me a better mother because He has called me to both.
This is not easy, and often we feel like we will be torn apart by the very things that God has created us to do. We crave the safety that comes from ordering our lives in an efficient hierarchy. We long to know ourselves in terms of job descriptions and boundaries; we want to understand where we belong—to be able to definitively identify ourselves, to say, “I am a ____________.”
But what if God never intended for us to find safety in anything other than Him? What if He is the only One who can make sense of the competing forces in our lives? What if He is the only One who can reconcile all things under His feet—even our unique callings?
What if this is precisely what He intends to do?
The God who Himself exists in wholeness invites us to live in this wholeness. He calls us to peace. But this only happens when everything in life comes under His headship. When every part of us is submitted to Jesus Christ, when He pervades every facet of our being, when nothing else—not our writing, not our motherhood, not our pastoral roles—has preeminence. Because when He is supreme over all, all will be unified. All the different parts of our lives will work together because they have been united by something greater than themselves.
And suddenly there is peace.
I don’t know what this means for your life. For me, it means submitting to the calling to write and mother and love my husband and clean the kitchen floors and hem the curtains. It means submitting to the multi-dimensional, layered, crazy existence God has given me. It means pursuing my work with passion and abandon, at the same time that I hold it loosely, never once believing that these roles give me my core identity. For me, embracing God’s calling for my life starts by embracing Him. By finally understanding that all things—my motherhood, my writing, my personality, my gifting—all these things “flow from Him and through Him and unto Him." To him be glory forever. Amen.
Who's Afraid of Proverbs 31?
But recently, several women have been challenging a typical approach to this text. At the recent Q event, Women and Calling, progressive blogger and author Rachel Held Evans reiterated her long-standing concern that we tend to misuse this passage, making it more of a “Pintrest page come to life” than the poem it is. Sarah Bessey makes the same point in the recently released Jesus Feminist. She writes:
Some evangelicals have turned Proverbs 31 into a woman’s job description instead of what it actually is: the blessing and affirmation of valor for the lives of women… It is meant as a celebration for the everyday moments of valor for everyday women, not as an impossible exhausting standard.
These women have a legitimate concern. How many Mother’s Day sermons or Bible studies have turned Proverbs 31 into a checklist? How many times have teachers used it to reinforce their private applications of gender? How many times have you felt defeated from just listening to such sermons? So let me go on record as saying that I agree with Evans and Bessey. With one caveat.
Proverbs 31 is intended as a blessing and affirmation, not of all women, but of a certain kind of woman: a wise one.
Because while Proverbs 31 isn’t prescriptive, it is descriptive. It is designed to tell us the kind of woman who deserves honor and praise. In this sense, the poem is the culmination of an entire book whose main goal is to teach the difference between wisdom and foolishness. But as the beginning and end of Proverbs point out, you don’t become wise via a checklist; you become wise by fearing the Lord.
To be fair, it’s easy to confuse prescriptive and descriptive passages. Obviously it happens in Proverbs 31, but it happens just as often in less controversial texts. The Beatitudes or the Fruit of the Spirit can quickly become metaphysical checklists if we divorce them from their Source and view them as goals to meet in our own strength.
Just be peaceful. Check. Just be kind. Check. Just be humble. Check.
Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera…
But while these passages are not intended as “To Do” lists, they are a kind of “field guide” given to describe what we will look like if our hearts are being changed by God. They describe the fruit and bark and leaves of the tree so you can know what kind of tree you’re looking at. In the case of Proverbs 31, the poem shows how wisdom embodies itself in feminine form; so that in a beauty only God Himself could conceive, a book written primarily to young men doesn't climax with a description of a mature man but with a description of a mature woman.
Evans rightly pointed this out during the Q event. She noted that the original audience of Proverbs 31 was men, and joked, “Can you imagine a men's conference where that was the central text?“ (It was a pretty funny thought.) But even this isn’t the whole picture. The main audience of Proverbs 31 is men—true—but it’s given to men in order to teach them the kind of women they should celebrate. One of the assumed purposes is to distinguish wise women from foolish ones in order to help men “find” a good wife.
Talk about sexist.
Or maybe not. Maybe this actually affirms a woman’s imago dei. To understand what I mean, consider Proverbs as a whole. Throughout it, you’ll find this recurring theme: weak men can be ruined by strong men but strong men can be ruined by foolish… women. Yes, women.
And here’s why: Women are men’s spiritual equal.
Think about it. If a woman were not equal to a man, then her spiritual life would be of little consequence to him. She simply wouldn't be able to influence him for either good or bad. But if, as we are, equal image bearers, reigning as queens alongside earthly kings, then the kind of women we become is of supreme significance. We have intrinsic power that we can use for either great benefit or great destruction.
Because of this, Proverbs is intent on teaching young men to flee from foolish women in order to embrace and affirm wise women. This is why they are to avoid the adulteress but to delight in the wife of their youth. They are to avoid women who are quarrelsome but to celebrate those who speak with kindness. They are to avoid women who tear down their homes and to run to those who build them up.
In other words, a wise woman can make a man; and a foolish one can break him.
This assumption of a woman’s power is implicit in the description of the Proverbs 31 woman who wields influence over both her home and society. Because of her wisdom, her husband sits in the gates. Because of her wisdom, her household doesn’t fear the coming winter. Because of her wisdom, her children rise up and call her blessed.
In this sense, Proverbs 31 is both a song of affirmation AND a standard of what maturity looks like. We must not shy away from the descriptive principles simply because they have been misused. Apart from them—apart from knowing that a wise women “stretches out her hand to the needy”—we wouldn’t be able to distinguish her from a foolish one and we’d end up assuming that ALL women deserve praise when in reality, not all of us do.
To quote The Incredibles: “When everyone’s super, no one is.”
Not all women are sacrificial. Not all women work hard. Not all women are kind. Not all women are generous Not all women are joyful.
Some women are selfish. Some women are lazy. Some women are mean. Some women are stingy. Some women are bitter.
But a woman who is wise, a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised. She is such a rare find, so exceptionally valuable that Proverbs 31 describes her as more precious than a jewel. A beautiful, expensive, glittering jewel. So that just like light reflects and radiates through a diamond, the light of God’s nature reflects and radiates through her, bursting forth in resplendent glory.
And for this kind of wise woman, wise men get up on their feet and cheer.
So, yes, please don’t reduce Proverbs 31 to a checklist or a Pintrest page come to life. But let’s also remember a harder truth. Wisdom doesn’t come naturally to any of us. Our only hope of being this kind of noble woman comes by looking into the face of the One who is Wisdom Himself and allowing Him to conform us to His own likeness. And when we do, He will make us the fully formed image bearers we are destined to be. He will make us women of kindness and grace and sacrifice and love and joy. He will make us like Himself.
Hope for Monday
It was Monday.
In our culture, Monday holds a certain psychological mystique. It’s the bully of the week. The day that knocks you down and laughs. The day that steals your lunch money. The day that many of us just hope to survive. In the words of Alexander, Monday is a “terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.”
A lot of this is because Monday is the first day back to normal after the weekend. It’s the first day back to business—the first day back to school lunches and briefcases and time cards. The coming week looms large before us, and instead of being invigorated, we feel helpless. Instead of charging forward, carpe diem, we drag and slide and haul ourselves forward, bleary-eyed and overwhelmed.
Later that Monday, after a search and rescue operation to recovery bunny, I was thinking about how we approach this day. How we tend to dread it and make jokes and commiserate on Facebook about needing two cups of coffee to make it through the morning. And suddenly, it struck me: Jesus arose from the grave on a “Monday.”
Our sense of time is a funny thing, as flexible as the cultures we are part of. Over the course of human history, calendars have been based on the moon and the sun; they’ve shifted by decrees of caesars and papal mandate. In modern history, most societies operate on a seven-day week devoting at least one day to rest. But we arrange those days differently. Some of us rest on Friday; some on Saturday, and some on Sunday.
For example, a couple of years ago, my husband and I visited our friends, O. and N., in their native Israel. At that time, they lived in a Jewish suburb of Tel Aviv but as we traveled around the country, they pointed out that many towns around them were not Jewish. Instead they were identified by whatever culture group lived there. One town was Jewish; the one next door was Islamic; and one further down the road was predominantly Christian. It’s convenient they assured us. If the shops are closed in your town because of sabbath, you simply have to visit a shop in another town to get what you need.
For those of us with Christian roots, our day of rest happens on Sunday in memory of the Jesus’ Resurrection. This makes Monday is our first day back to work. But here’s the catch: in first century Judaism, Sunday was actually the first day back to work. Modeling God at Creation, the Jews began their workweek on the first day (Sunday) and ran through Friday, with a day of rest on Saturday.
So that the day that Jesus Christ rose from the grave was actually the first day back to work. That morning almost 2000 years ago, when a handful of women made their way to the tomb, it was a “Monday.” It was their first day back to caring for children, their first day back to the marketplace, their first day back to facing the realities that had happened over the weekend. All that we associate with “Monday” they felt that morning in the garden.
And in an irony that only God Himself can offer, Jesus Christ rose from the dead on that day. After three days, He stretched out His limbs, shook off the sleep of death, got up, and got to work. He rose in power and triumph over the darkness and is right now redeeming and restoring His creation. He is right now bringing all things under His feet. And it started on the first day of the week. Just like He shined light into the darkness on the first day of creation, He shined light into our darkness through that first-day-of-the-week-Resurrection. And just like He once fashioned creatures in His own image, He is right now making us into new creatures like Himself.
It’s as if He laughed and said, “Let’s redeem this world. Let’s get down to business.”
So Monday, you don't intimidate us anymore with all your doom and gloom and promises of failure. You don't intimidate us anymore because Jesus Christ rose on the first day of the work week. And by that same power, we enter our own work week, confident that the One who works on our behalf has already gone before us and conquered all things. Even--especially--Monday.
Woman in the Image of God
Last Friday, Edith Schaeffer passed away at the age of 98. Despite the potential to have been overshadowed by her husband, Christian apologist Francis Schaeffer, she held her own as a writer and thinker, delivering a message of joi de vivre and teaching a generation of women that there is power in the small moments, that even things like mothering and domesticity are an expression of God’s image. She taught us that when God takes up residency, our homes will be filled with His nature—filled with art and music and beauty and wonder and hospitality and joy.
But something’s happened to Christian women in the subsequent years--something that I’m not sure even Mrs. Schaeffer herself would approve. Over the last several decades, we’ve flipped the paradigm; instead of seeing womanhood (and all that comes with it) as an expression of imago dei, we've come to see our womanhood as an end in itself. We’ve come to believe that our core sense of self rests in our gender and our ability to conform to certain paradigms. And in doing so, I’m afraid we’ve developed a bit of identity myopia.
This idea has been rolling around in my head for a while now, but I didn’t quite see it clearly, didn’t quite have the words to speak it, until one day. It was the same day that I resolved to start blogging. It was the same day that I realized that my daughter was growing up.
She was six at the time, maybe seven, and I remember this moment of awareness that she was being shaped, not simply by her school work or television, but by the routines and liturgies that were happening in our home. She was being shaped by me. Every moment of every day, she was forming an idea about what it meant to be a woman. When I put on my makeup, she put on hers. When I wrote my stories, she wrote hers in a hot pink, spiral-bound notebook. She was becoming the woman I was.
This awareness made me consider what kind of woman I wanted her to become, and I realized that it wasn’t enough to teach her simply about womanhood—I had to teach her about what it meant to be a person. What it meant to be made in God’s image. Because all that is true about my womanhood--all that is beautiful and glorious and lovely--flows out of this deeper identity. If I didn’t start there, nothing else would make sense.
At the same time, I began to observe a kind of identity myopia among my peers. I saw women desperately striving to fulfill roles. And then angrily casting them off when the weight and expectations were more than they could carry. I saw women judging those who couldn’t carry them. I saw woman fighting loneliness and a pervasive sense of loss because they were single or not yet mothers. I saw women defining themselves by their sexuality or dress size. I saw women lost and wandering, confused about who they were and what they were supposed to be.
And I knew that there had to be an answer.
There had to be a truth that could speak to all of us. There had to be a truth that could transcend all the differences, that could bring order to the chaos. And that truth was this: each of us is made in God’s image and we will never be at peace until we live in it.
You see, being made in God’s image does more than establish the equality of all people (although is does); it is does more than simply level the playing field between men and women (although it does); it does more than argue for the sanctity of human life (although it does). Understanding that you are made in the image of God gives you a way to finally make sense of your life, to finally know who you are.
To know that your nature flows from His, to know that your identity mirrors His, to know that “in Him you live and move and have your being” to know that you are destined to be like Him, to know that He will move heaven and earth until you are.
This is what it means to live imago dei. This is what it means to be human.
And this is what Jesus Christ came to do. The perfect Image became the perfect Image Bearer to restore what we have lost, to redeem what we have sold away--the bits of ourselves that we have prostituted off to smaller gods. The perfect Image became the perfect Image Bearer so that we could finally be what we were meant to be, so that we could finally be like Him.
Which brings me to the book I’m working on. When I first started talking with Moody Publishers about writing for them, one of the questions they asked was, “How do you want to influence women?”
This is how.
More than anything, I want women, I want my daughter, I want myself to understand that the point of our existence—the answer to the question “Who am I and why am I here?”—is not found simply in being a woman, but in living imago dei. Our core sense of self comes, not in our domesticity or our careers, not in our relationships or motherhood, not in our brokenness or our fears, but from God’s nature. It's not that the details are unimportant; it's that they only make sense in the scope of the larger picture. In the end, I want what Edith Schaeffer did: I want all of life--all the domesticity, all the arts, all the beauty, all the love, all the philosophy, all the theology—to flow from this central Truth:
You were made to reflect and represent God on this earth. You were made for glory.
The writing is going well; but as you might expect, it’s slow at times. Something as heavy and intricately-layered as the image of God doesn’t come easily, and it’s just like me to try take on the world in one fell swoop. And yet, even this serves as a reminder that the whole point of living imago dei is living in dependence on Him, of following Him one faltering step at a time.
As you think of it, pray for me. I don’t view this so much as “my” book or a chance “break into the market.” It is a sacred trust. It is both a privilege and a responsibility. And most days, it scares me to death.
But just as quickly as I become afraid, His Spirit comes and whispers to my quivering heart, “Do not fear, my daughter; I have made you for this. I will give you the words that you need. For this moment, for this time, this is your work; this is how you reflect and represent me. My daughter, this is what it means to live imago dei.”