Last week my friend Jamie and I drove up to Nashville for our annual summer writers’ retreat for The Habit. It is always a weekend of richness, a beautiful convergence of likeminded people. I try to make time ahead of the retreat for solitude and silence because I know I’m going to be pouring out in deep conversation and receiving back equal portions. I often come home worried I might be getting a cold—I’m exhausted, and my throat is raw. Then within a day back I’m fine, and I realize again I just talked a lot and focused very intently, soaking in the truth, goodness, and beauty of my fellow writers.

The theme1 this year was “A Taste of Reality” and one of our sessions delved into what we meant by “reality.” We discussed the tendency to narrow reality by forcing it into boxes. There is the naturalistic box where reality is only what we can see and touch in the material world. As Christians, that one is immediately tossed out, and our current culture seems to be reacting against this box, too. There is too much evidence and longing for something “more than” in our world.

Another box is that reality is a grim, gritty picture; the world is mapped out in black, gray, and white. Trauma rules in this box, and evil gets the final word. Power is always negative. This is a tricky zone for writers because these things do exist in the world, and if we want to write what is true we can’t ignore them. It becomes problematic, though, if that’s the only side of life we show. It is a limited picture. In reality, there is also color and hope.

One of the reality boxes I’ve felt lately, and one I’ve experienced growing up, is a tendency among Christians to shove everything into a “must share Christ” box. It shows up in churches under the necessary command to bring the hope and joy of Jesus’ death for our sin and his resurrection—this truth is essential to who we are and how we engage with the world. When I was growing up, I often heard this analogy: “If you had a cure for cancer, wouldn’t you share it with everyone? We have the cure for death! How can we hide it?”

But even this well-intentioned truth can become a faulty reality box. Kraig and I have seen it in a misguided perspective of what it means to have unity in the church. In essence it shows up as, “We are ‘united’ and don’t get sidetracked by internal church squabbles if we all have the same goal of sharing Christ with the lost.” I have struggled with this concept for years because most of my spheres of life have been in teaching and working in Christian circles. The concept that all of the Christian life is sharing Christ ignores the reality that is clearly shown throughout the New Testament: we are various parts of one body, and every part is needed. My own gifts flourish in places where I am teaching or talking with other Christians, trying to give them tools to help them live life as a Christ follower, or to encourage them to keep on keeping on, that God is with them and there is hope, even in dark days. When I’m told I have to “present the Gospel” to everyone I meet (and the “Gospel” is only that Jesus died for our sins and rose again, whether the person I’m speaking to even knows who Jesus is) my soul shrivels a bit, and I feel burdened by a huge weight. I don’t feel like that’s an accurate picture of what life in Christ should look like.

The other week I wrote about my feeling of overwhelm and I reminded myself that I have to live the life God has put before me. I was writing from a place of weakness, sort of showing you all where I was and who I am. I was surprised how many reached out saying they identified with that feeling, and I felt a truth I believe—that I am not alone. Not only that, my weakness is part of God’s design. If I know I can’t do certain things, I sometimes wallow in shame and guilt, or I try to force myself to do those things and beg God to change me. It’s true that sometimes there are things I need to work on and improve. I can’t just rest in my weakness or use it as an excuse. At the same time, if I am willing to accept that I have strengths in certain areas and limitations in others, and I see that as how God made me, I am free to see where others have strengths I lack and I can lean into their expertise. Others in turn can rely on my strengths. The beauty of this is that as these various parts come together, a whole results. We then reflect Reality in all its complex beauty and messiness, and understand a better picture of who God is and how he created us.

“When I am weak, then I am strong,” the Apostle Paul says2. He speaks of finding his strength in Christ, that Christ works through our weaknesses. But Paul doesn’t see himself as a lone piece, or even just a “him and Jesus” piece. He sees himself as a part of community—the Body, the Church.3

Our local churches should live in this Reality, too. If people within a church are leaning into each other’s strengths and helping one another despite differences, encouraging each other to depend on each one’s strengths, our community is going to become a strange and wondrous anomaly in the world we live in. Imagine in this age of broken families, horrific traumas, disease and disabilities, and divisive politics—imagine seeing in this a group of people who help each other and care for each other despite all their differences. Imagine entering that community, and being welcomed in, accepted as you are, but then given the tools and support to transform into someone better. Imagine being a part of that community. I’d be eager to tell others about it, as much as I love to talk about my writing community or things I’m learning. I’d want to share why this community works and who I live for.

This, I think, is Reality without a box.

3

1 Corinthians 12 (and all over Paul’s letters)

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Art for the week:

This one is “heart art,” not visual. I had my soul-filling experience last weekend, but during this past week our son Jon had camp to kick off his year in LeTourneau’s Passage Institute, a fellowship program for students who want to dig deeper into theology and how that applies to their life. The week concludes with parents invited for a taste of the kids’ worship time, held in Speer Chapel, the one original building on LeTourneau’s campus. As I write, Jon is debriefing with his sister Ev who went through the program over her senior year. I can’t wait to see how God works in Jon’s life over this next year.

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Check out my Daughter of Arden Trilogy at Bandersnatchbooks.com, along with other great titles.

You can find links to more of my writing at A Shaft of Sun Through the Rain and my old blog, Willing, Wanting, Waiting.

Facebook - Author Page

Instagram - Author Account

Don’t forget to check out Bandersnatch Books’ podcast, including my interview in Season 1, episode 2!

I’m excited to share Flicker.Press with you, the latest creation of Bandersnatch Books’ Rachel Donahue and her husband, Mick. You can read more about it here, but the gist of the site is it’s a place where readers can preview the first chapter of various books, then buy credits to read further on. It’s a great way to get a taste of something you might be interested in. Apparently there are other sites like this out there, but their content isn’t monitored, so they include work created by AI, and a lot of garbage. Flicker.Press, on the other hand, is closely curated, and promotes what is good, true, and beautiful.

They currently have all of Bandersnatch Books’ titles on their site (so my trilogy), along with works by various authors in The Habit, the writing community I’m a member of. One fun feature is that authors can post a work in progress, and there is a place for readers to give feedback. Check it out!

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Our family has entered the summer of 2026 and with that some scattering. On Monday, our eldest, Clare, headed northeast about 1000 miles for a summer internship. It’s a great opportunity, and she’s been looking forward to it, but it’s all new territory for her and for us. It’s her first time away that she’s not right by family and she has to do more fending for herself than she’s ever done and creating her own new story. Meanwhile back home, Evie is bouncing between a few different kinds of jobs that keep her from being bored—she can switch up her routines as needed. Her creative energy has exploded across the house. Jon is working his first consistent summer job as a “carpenter’s helper” (a.k.a. odd jobs and anything else needed) for facilities on LeTourneau’s campus. He’s thrilled to be earning a paycheck, and his learning curve this summer will be seeing if he can save any of it. As for Kraig, he’s focusing on consulting jobs and a few little house projects. At some point this summer he’ll likely head north to help one of his brothers with some significantly bigger house projects.

And what am I up to in the midst of all this? What is my story for the summer? I have an arm-long list of things to do—house stuff, reading, writing, connecting with friends. There are closets to sort, Bible studies to prep, stories to write, books to read for book clubs, and manuscripts to read for Clare and a writer friend.

As I write this, I’m sitting in a silent house looking out at our shady green front yard while a squirrel sips water from the birdbath under our Japanese magnolia. It’s all a peaceful setting, yet internally I’m struggling to feel focused or purposeful. I’m distracted by all the possible things to do, and every time I put my hand to one thing, I wonder if I should concentrate on something else. I keep putting off working on my newest book because 1) it requires focused attention and diligence, and 2) I mentally fight to justify the writing when there are all the other things that need to be done.

At the same time that I struggle with navigating my own story and life-path, I can’t help but think I’m probably not alone. How often do we get the message that we really should be doing something other than what we are doing? Instead of focusing on my home, my writing, and the people my life intersects with shouldn’t I be more politically vocal? Or maybe I need to be actively telling people about Jesus—everywhere and all the time. Shouldn’t I be saying something about all of the social and geographical issues? Ah—I should get more involved in active community service. Oh, or perhaps I need to get a “real job in the real world” and do what an emancipated woman of the 21^st century can do. “Obviously,” our society or culture or even our church implies, “These stories are more important than the one you are living.”

But the truth is I only have one life story to live. I am a single point of view character, and my Author is the only one who can help me take the paths I need to take. I have to trust him to lead me, I have to be obedient to the ways he opens, and I believe that in the end I will accomplish what he purposed for me. I wish I could change the way my brain works so that I wasn’t so constantly overwhelmed by the feeling that I can’t do even the little that is on my own path, but I have to accept who I am—who God made me to be—and live faithfully in that. I can’t live someone else’s story—not Clare’s, Ev’s, Jon’s, Kraig’s, or the 8+ billion people on this planet. If I did try to live another person’s story, God’s whole story couldn’t be told, because each one of us has our own role to play. It’s a good idea to live that role with joy and purpose and not wish I was living a different life, or feel guilty that I am not doing what someone else suggests I should.

I’ve been reading Jennifer Trafton’s beautiful new book, If Only We Could See. It’s a biography of Lilias Trotter, an artist and missionary from the late 1800s through the first part of the 20^th century. Hers is a story of a woman of many talents and a spirit of adventure. She could have done many things and perhaps have become famous, but she chose to follow the path she saw God laying out for her in Northern Africa. It was a path that led to a prolific outpouring of her many gifts on many lives, and it was one that brought her great joy. I am challenged by her life, but it doesn’t make me feel inadequate and like a failure. Rather, I have been deeply encouraged, because I see a woman who showed that the best way to live was to faithfully abide according to the Author’s story. That is something I can do, and it is all that he asks of me.

Art for the week:

During the spring semester, Ev took a seminar that went through C. S. Lewis’ space trilogy. She thoroughly enjoyed it, and as a thank you to her prof, she drew these three images to represent each book. Honestly, I’d buy a set of the trilogy with these covers!

Check out Daughter of Arden at Bandersnatchbooks.com, along with other great titles.

You can find links to more of my writing at A Shaft of Sun Through the Rain and my old blog, Willing, Wanting, Waiting.

Facebook - Author Page

Instagram - Author Account

Don’t forget to check out Bandersnatch Books’ podcast. I loved a recent episode (Season 5, Episode 7) with Melissa Woodruff, the newest member of the Bandersnatch team. I admit I’m biased, because she geeked out extensively on my Daughter of Arden Trilogy—but really, it’s a fun interview!

I spent a couple hours yesterday writing out two potential newsletter posts. In the first, I wrote about a current project that’s happening in my writing community, The Habit. This summer, Jonathan Rogers’ Habit podcast is going to feature a series of stories written and read by Habit members; the theme is “Leaving Home.” A few years ago, Jonathan hosted a series of hometown stories in this vein, and my story “Butterscotch Candy and Lion’s Teeth” was included. When I wrote yesterday, I wrote about how I’ve been struggling to formulate a whole story from my multiple fragmented memories of my many leaving home stories. Would I write about going to the Philippines as a kid? Leaving the Philippines to return to the States? How about moving to Mexico with Kraig and our kids, or moving to Texas? The story I kept circling was about when I left Michigan for college in eastern Pennsylvania at the same time my family headed to Hong Kong for a year. I kept pondering it, but couldn’t figure out how to make it into more than an anecdote.

I concluded my first potential newsletter outflow by saying that I did much better with stories when I took the fragments of my memories and wove them into fiction. Memoir writing just doesn’t seem to be my thing. I either have painful memories I don’t like to spend a lot of time with, or I have snippets of stories where I can’t remember enough to make them whole.

To say the least, this “Leaving Home” project has been a struggle for me. Perhaps I should take the time to psychoanalyze why I don’t want to sit down with these memories and really dig out the details. But who has time for that? I have family visiting from out of town, my friend Doanie’s memorial service this weekend, my nephew’s play to attend, Sunday Bible study prep, our last college student Sunday dinner to host, and my Hebrew class final to study for. I think I’d rather live life than pull apart past events, particularly the sad ones. They are a part of who I am, yes, but I am here now, and I need to move forward with who I am now.

With all these things happening, though, I did have time Friday to sit and write, and when I wrote out my first newsletter draft, I remembered that I had originally intended to start it with a different scenario—a memory of digging up my journal from college to see if I’d written down a particular story from the beginning of my first year. I decided to go ahead and restart my newsletter with that beginning, and I went from there into a very rough draft of that story. As I drew it to a close I realized I might have actually stumbled on to my “Leaving Home” story after all, so I’ll post it in the Habit for others to give me feedback, and start editing it. If it doesn’t get used on the Habit podcast this summer I’ll share it here on Sun Shafts, in a more polished form than it is now.

I still don’t think narrative nonfiction or memoir writing is my strong suit. I’ll focus on these newsletters, letters to friends, and my fiction. I’ll swap my anecdotes of memories with friends and family around the dinner table. This experience has encouraged me, though. It really is true that if I sit for long enough and force myself to write, words and stories will emerge into a cohesive narrative.

Now to take that reminder and get back to work on my next novel….

Art for the week:

Speaking of incoherent narratives….

The other day my Hebrew class played “telepictionary,” where the first person in line writes out a scenario, the second person draws a picture of it, the third writes his or her interpretation of the picture, etc. I’ve been reading through the book of Judges, and had just read about Abimelech, the nefarious son of Gideon, who locked a bunch of townspeople in a tower. One of the women in the tower took a millstone and threw it down onto Abimelech, cracking his head open. He called for one of his men and ordered him to finish him off so it wouldn’t be told that a woman killed him.

Anyway, Clare drew what I thought was a pretty clear rendering of this scene, as you can see here. Imagine our surprise, when the next person down the row changed the entire story to that of Rapunzel letting down her hair…. Poor Abimelech. He’s not even remembered for dying in this new tale.

And another beautiful piece to look forward to:

My friend Emma C. Fox has a book coming out this summer. It’s the second of her Russian fairytale retellings, a companion novel to The Carver and the Queen. The other day her publisher, Owl’s Nest, did a cover reveal for her forthcoming book, Heart of Stone. You can see both the first and second cover here, art by Amy Grimes. Aren’t they lovely?

Here’s a description of the novel:

Ever since her father’s mysterious death six years ago on Serpent Hill, Lilia Stepanovna has struggled to help her family make ends meet. So when an old woman claiming to be her great aunt arrives and offers to show her the way to hidden treasure, Lilia leaps at the opportunity. Curious magic soon entwines her, though, and Lilia finds herself trapped by a sorcerer’s devious plot to seize the Russian empire. Dmitri always expected to follow in his parents’ footsteps as a stonecarver, until a terrible accident left both his hands, and his dreams, crushed. When his best friend, Lilia, is swept off to Petersburg under suspicious circumstances, Dmitri embarks on a perilous journey to save the girl he loves—and to stop the dark powers that are working through her to take over all of Russia.

Preorders for HEART OF STONE will open in May. THE CARVER AND THE QUEEN is available for purchase in paperback, hardcover, and Kindle editions wherever books are sold.

Check out Daughter of Arden at Bandersnatchbooks.com, along with other great titles.

You can find links to more of my writing at A Shaft of Sun Through the Rain and my old blog, Willing, Wanting, Waiting.

Facebook - Author Page

Instagram - Author Account

Don’t forget to check out Bandersnatch Books’ podcast, including my interview in Season 1, episode 2!

Announcing

I’m excited to share Flicker.Press with you, the latest creation of Bandersnatch Books’ Rachel Donahue and her husband, Mick. You can read more about it here, but the gist of the site is it’s a place where readers can preview the first chapter of various books, then buy credits to read further on. It’s a great way to get a taste of something you might be interested in. Apparently there are other sites like this out there, but their content isn’t monitored, so they include work created by AI, and a lot of garbage. Flicker.Press, on the other hand, is closely curated, and promotes what is good, true, and beautiful.

They currently have all of Bandersnatch Books’ titles on their site (so my trilogy), along with works by various authors in The Habit, the writing community I’m a member of. One fun feature is that authors can post a work in progress, and there is a place for readers to give feedback. Check it out!

A few weeks ago I picked up M. M. Kaye’s epic historical fiction work, The Far Pavilions. I last read it about ten years ago, and loved it, and it was high time for a reread. It’s a commitment: the old paperback I’m reading through has 1,189 pages, and it’s an immersive read, not a nail-biter. I prefer immersive, and I’m halfway through despite the many other things happening in life. I love getting lost in a setting and among characters.

If you haven’t heard of The Far Pavilions, it’s the story of Ash, a British national born in India about four years before the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. His mother dies days after he’s born, and a few years later his father, a British anthropologist, dies of cholera along with most of his camp. Only Ash and his Hindu nurse survive. His nurse tries to honor his father’s last wishes and take Ash to Delhi to British friends there, but the two arrive just on the heels of the mutiny. Fearing for Ash’s life, she runs north with him, up into modern-day Pakistan, and for the first eleven years of his life, he believes he’s Indian. When events lead to the revelation of his actual ethnicity, he’s sent to England for “proper training” for seven years, but he gets back to India as soon as he can as a member of the Guides, an elite military force in India.

And it goes from there. I’m touching the very surface with this description of initial events. While the book covers various historical events in India from 1857 to about 1880, the main thread of the story is Ash himself and his journey of the soul. Who is he really? Soon after his return to India, in a conversation with an old Muslim Indian mentor Ash describes how he feels like he is two people within one skin. His mentor gently responds,

“That I understand. But you will find it easier if you keep the two separate and do not try to be both at one time. And some day—who knows?—you may discover in yourself a third person who is neither Ashok or Pelham-Sahib, but someone who is whole and complete: yourself.”

The author of The Far Pavilions, M. M. Kaye, wrote what she knew. She, too, was born in India, and while she knew her heritage, she was steeped in the culture and people of India and loved the nation deeply. She was British, she was Indian, she was both and neither. She was a “third culture kid,” a term common among those who have lived a significant portion of their lives in a culture not native to their families.

As a third culture kid myself (I lived in the Philippines from the time I was five to nine), and having lived in Mexico for a couple years as an adult, and also transplanting from Michigan to East Texas, I can identify with this internal conflict. Most of the time I don’t think about it, but every now and then a conversation or a situation occurs where I realize I’m “not from around here,” and I’m not quite sure how I fit in, if I’ll ever be fully accepted…or if I want to fit in and be accepted. Many times I feel like I’m looking at things from more angles than those around me, and I can’t understand why there isn’t more nuance in conversations. Unfortunately I can still be judgmental and critical, but my criticisms are based on what I see as narrow-mindedness and blindness to various sides of a situation.

This doesn’t need to be the default attitude, and I was refreshed and given a better approach in Amy Baik Lee’s beautiful book, This Homeward Ache, which I recently finished. Lee is also a third culture kid, born in the United States to Korean parents, transplanted to Korea for her teen years, then back to the U.S. for college. Her book takes a look at sensucht, the concept of longing for something we haven’t yet seen or experienced. C. S. Lewis refers to it as a flash of joy, a brief lifting of the veil between the world around us, and something more. Lee speaks of the longing she has for places she has been, but can’t really go back to, and ties it to the Place she longs for where that homesickness will be gone and all the longing is fulfilled. For this is why the ache is a homeward one—we all long for home, and particularly a home that won’t ever be taken away from us. For Lee, this home is the kingdom of heaven and the new creation; for Ash in The Far Pavilions it is a hidden valley among the Far Pavilions, the Himalayan mountains.

It’s good to recognize what the ache is, and why it’s there. Lee sees this clearly: “For now, I still carry disconnected life chapters with me. Some resonate with people where I live now, some make better sense on the other side of the planet, and some are familiar only to those who know what it’s like to be caught in between worlds” (p. 159). She doesn’t just leave the reader with the longing, though. She unpacks what we can do with this inevitable ache so that we can live for Christ in the here and now, turning the ache into a beautiful part of the process of growing while we await our final Home.

Sometimes I need a wake-up call like this to be reminded that I won’t ever be completely at home in my own skin, not to mention my culture and world. It’s a reminder that there is something so much bigger and better to look forward to, a place where all of the differences will be harmonized. I don’t have too be so critical of narrow-mindedness because I know there will come a time when we’ll all see more clearly, and be able to enjoy our differences.

In chapter 13 of Lee’s book, “Between East and West,” she delves into this. “But I find deep consolation in the fact that the Creator of the universe knows all the traits of the people groups he created. He holds their stories.” She reflects on the beauty of the future kingdom in the new creation which shall “encompass cultures and identities that make them uniquely beautiful without homogenizing them. We are told ‘the nations will walk by [the light of the glory of God and the Lamb]…’” (p. 157).

I love this picture of Christians from all the cultures of the world, not to mention believers from various denominations, coming together before God’s throne. It’s a reminder that the Body of Christ is not one part that is all the same—it is many parts, and all are necessary for the whole. I imagine the joy of finally being able to communicate in harmony with people who see life differently than me because they come from a different culture and language. What aspect of God do they understand that I completely miss because of my own perspective? In our world here and now we constantly run into conflict because of these differences. We make judgments, we put up walls to protect ourselves (sometimes necessarily, sometimes in fear of “the other”)—there is no denying that we live in a broken, sin-filled world, and we only get glimpses of—a homeward ache for— true harmony. But one day, one day, we will be whole. We will be our true complete selves because we will be whole in Christ.

Art for the week:

I forgot to share this lovely wood-burned piece that Evie made me for my birthday. She works in The Maker’s Lab on campus and has access to the laser-cutters, 3D printers, woodburners, etc. She drew this, then scanned the sketch into the machine that then replicated it into wood.

Check out Daughter of Arden at Bandersnatchbooks.com, along with other great titles.

You can find links to more of my writing at A Shaft of Sun Through the Rain and my old blog, Willing, Wanting, Waiting.

Facebook - Author Page

Instagram - Author Account

Don’t forget to check out Bandersnatch Books’ podcast, including my interview in Season 1, episode 2!

Don’t forget!

I’m excited to share Flicker.Press with you, the latest creation of Bandersnatch Books’ Rachel Donahue and her husband, Mick. You can read more about it here, but the gist of the site is it’s a place where readers can preview the first chapter of various books, then buy credits to read further on. It’s a great way to get a taste of something you might be interested in. Apparently there are other sites like this out there, but their content isn’t monitored, so they include work created by AI, and a lot of garbage. Flicker.Press, on the other hand, is closely curated, and promotes what is good, true, and beautiful.

They currently have all of Bandersnatch Books’ titles on their site (so my trilogy), along with works by various authors in The Habit, the writing community I’m a member of. One fun feature is that authors can post a work in progress, and there is a place for readers to give feedback. Check it out!

I’ve been contemplating life and death more than usual lately. Or actually, let me put that in a better order. I’ve been contemplating death and life.

One would think that with spring in full flower here in East Texas, and Easter Sunday waiting to burst that tomb open tomorrow, my mind would be fixed on life. The truth is, though, that the foretaste of that life is death, and we’re deep in it at the end of Lent and the contemplations of Holy Week. I’m remembering Palm Sunday a year ago when Kraig’s mom took her final breath. I’m remembering a friend of my sister’s who died years ago on Easter Sunday after a rapid progression of cancer. I’m thinking of my friend Doanie whose family is wrapped close around her while her days dwindle. Each of these are cancer stories that don’t have endings in life right now. They’re wrong, all wrong—broken cells spreading malignancy through the body….

And yet. And yet!

A couple weeks ago I heard a message about the Transfiguration of Jesus. It’s one of those Bible stories I’ve read so often I tend to skim over it: Jesus takes his disciples—Peter, James, and John—up on a mountain, and while his disciples get sleepy Jesus starts shining, and then he’s standing there chatting with Moses and Elijah. Peter, good ol’ foot-in-mouth, thinks it’s a perfect time to suggest they build shelters for Jesus and friends, and while he’s talking, God the Father descends in a cloud of glory and says, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!” 1

Not surprisingly, the three disciples fall facedown, terrified. “But Jesus came and touched them. ‘Get up,’ he said. ‘Don’t be afraid.’ When they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus.”2

So yeah, crazy story, but so familiar I rarely look at it closely. But as the pastor worked through the passage the other week, he started pulling out details that brought it to life. For one, the passage is full of parallels to the exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt. There’s the glorious cloud of God, there’s the transfiguring light (in Exodus, Moses’ face shines every time he meets with God), there’s a mountain, there is a suggestion of a shelter, that is, the tabernacle, where God’s glory dwells. If my whole frame of reference for these images was the same as Peter, James, and John, I’d have been flat on my face with terror, too. After all, when God came down in a cloud of glory in Exodus the instruction given to the people was, “Be careful that you do not go up the mountain or touch the foot of it. Whoever touches the mountain shall surely be put to death”3, and here were the three disciples up on a mountain surrounded by this bright glory.

“But Jesus came and touched them….”

God, wrapped in humanity, touched his disciples, and not only did they live to tell the tale, but he reassured them that they had nothing to fear.

In the past week I’ve been reminded a couple times4 of how when Jesus touched people he restored them. Those afraid received courage, those lost in sin and shame received forgiveness, those sick or dead received wholeness and new life. Under Old Testament Law, touching something unclean made the one who touched the object unclean. In contrast, Jesus would touch something or someone unclean and it became clean, a reverse contamination. It was the glory of God shining through the darkness and shredding it.

So it comes back to Holy Week and to death first. At his crucifixion, Jesus, God with us, the pure and innocent one, willingly touched death and submitted fully to it. His blood, rather than staining us with filth, became the means to wash us clean. Because of who he was, his glory couldn’t be held by death, the ultimate contamination. Jesus broke death wide open on that first day of the week, opening the way so that any who accept the truth of his death and resurrection can also walk through death and come out alive on the other side.

It is death and life. It is hope and anticipation. It is the fulfillment and the restoration that changes the shadow life we live in right now to real life for eternity.

Art for the week:

A few months ago, E. R. Scrivener of a new literary magazine The Drowsy Dragon reached out to me, asking if I could submit a story for their spring/summer edition. In the process, she learned about my daughter Ev’s art, and bought one of her pieces for the cover. We just received our copies, and they’re just lovely! There are five stories in this issue, including my story “Lynette and the Ambassador’s Warchamori,” plus some recipes and a guide if you’d like to use the issue for a book club. I’m looking forward to seeing all that’s in store for The Drowsy Dragon!

Here’s our copy with Ev’s painting, Storm Tossed Trees.

Check out Daughter of Arden at Bandersnatchbooks.com, along with other great titles.

You can find links to more of my writing at A Shaft of Sun Through the Rain and my old blog, Willing, Wanting, Waiting.

Facebook - Author Page

Instagram - Author Account

Don’t forget to check out Bandersnatch Books’ podcast, including my interview in Season 1, episode 2!

Announcing

I’m excited to share Flicker.Press with you, the latest creation of Bandersnatch Books’ Rachel Donahue and her husband, Mick. You can read more about it here, but the gist of the site is it’s a place where readers can preview the first chapter of various books, then buy credits to read further on. It’s a great way to get a taste of something you might be interested in. Apparently there are other sites like this out there, but their content isn’t monitored, so they include work created by AI, and a lot of garbage. Flicker.Press, on the other hand, is closely curated, and promotes what is good, true, and beautiful.

They currently have all of Bandersnatch Books’ titles on their site (so my trilogy), along with works by various authors in The Habit, the writing community I’m a member of. One fun feature is that authors can post a work in progress, and there is a place for readers to give feedback. Check it out!

The other week I spent a Thursday morning flying from Longview, Texas, to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In that time, two flights plus a long layover in Dallas, I didn’t see a single person I knew. I made eye contact with a few people, exchanged pleasantries one, put in a food order with a human being, but other than that I was completely alone.

The thing is, though I was alone, I knew I had friends or acquaintances I could contact if needed in any of my stopping places. Chances are, if I had had conversation with more people along the way, we’d have found a connection point—a place, a person, a culture—something we had in common. Also, I had left home where I have my nuclear family, friends, and multiple connections through our university, church, and homeschool community. I was headed to more connections—my parents, my sister and family, and many friends from The Habit who I connected with at the Square Halo conference near my parents that Friday and Saturday.

Those relationship connections go deeper still, crossing in multiple points. My friend Elizabeth came to the Square Halo conference from Montana, but I first met her a couple years ago during an online conference, Fieldmoot. She was moderating a Zoom discussion after a lecture given by my Habit friend Alicia (who got to meet Elizabeth in person at Square Halo this year). Elizabeth and I made the connection that I was in Longview and Kraig taught at LeTourneau; it turned out she was a grad, and her father had taught there for years, retiring just a couple years after we arrived. At the point Elizabeth and I met, her daughter was planning to come to LeTourneau. Our daughters connected, became good friends last year, and her daughter and Clare are now roommates.

Most of us have heard of the concept of six degrees of separation, that when you meet someone you’re always within six people of someone you both know. I remember years ago hearing someone say that among Christians, this connection is closer to three, and among missionaries you’re usually only one person away from a mutual acquaintance. This proved the case at our church missions conference last month when a visiting couple saw our last name and asked if we knew Kraig’s parents. They had worked with them in Mali, West Africa. Another missionary couple our church supports knew a Habit friend of mine from their home in North Carolina. I’ve found that this close web of connection extends between many spheres I hang out in nowadays. In fact, nowadays it’s more surprising to me when I can’t find a connection.

We have a joke in our family that my dad knows someone everywhere he goes. When we lived in Mexico, though, we thought we might have ended up somewhere without his connections. I mean, there was one couple we met briefly on our preview trip, the wife of whom had been a student of my dad’s years before, but they lived on the other side of the city, so there was little chance to build a relationship. In the two years we were there, the only other time we saw them was when Mom and Dad came for a visit. Dad did have a faint hope, though, of visiting the missionary couple who had hosted him when on a college mission trip to Mexico forty years before—he’d recently reconnected with them, but didn’t know where they were in Mexico. I remember him sinking onto our couch the evening he and Mom arrived, and pulling out the email he’d had from them, but this time when he said their name I did a double-take. “Wait. Who?” I asked. He repeated their last name. “Dave and Sandy?” I asked.

Turns out this couple only lived a few hours from us. We had met them, too—not once, but twice, because they were close family friends of friends of ours at our church in Guadalajara. We were able to spend a weekend with them during Dad and Mom’s trip, seeing a part of Mexico we didn’t know we’d get a chance to see.

And in the course of the visit, Mom and Dad found out that another friend from our church in Guadalajara was the cousin of other old friends of theirs. I have given up being surprised.

I’ve realized, though, that these many connections are only strong because of a given level of trust. It would be impossible to know any of these people unless both sides of the connection opened our lives enough to let the other in. We know who the other is, where they are, where they come from. We share interests, we share beliefs. Betrayal of this trust means painful breakage—a severing of a connection that vibrates outward along all the linked lines. As a result we are, perhaps, careful to maintain the trust and work out the areas of friction. Ideally. I wonder if the more interweaving there is, the more maintenance occurs…. It’s impossible to hold a connection together if there is no trust, and no place to link the two sides.

I recently met a woman who seemed completely alone in the world. Family connections were broken for various reasons (all of which, according to her tale, were the fault of the other people). New connections rapidly grew toxic or dangerous for her. She was reaching out for help, but in our entire conversation the only time we had a moment of connection was when she realized I was about her same age. I had gone into the conversation tentatively, not sure if I could trust her, and afraid I might reveal too much of myself. I didn’t need to worry. She carried the whole conversation with vague details of her own life, and my main role was to ask a clarifying question now and then, and say, “Oh! Uh-huh? Hmmm….”

I think it was at that point I realized how much of connection is based on trust and multiple intersections of people, places, interests, and beliefs. If we aren’t willing or able to find these points, we’ll have no place to connect. As a result, we’re unmoored and alone, hanging out in a crowded airport without a soul to call and ask for a ride home.

Art for the week:

Speaking of connections, my daughter Ev created this cover for her Habit Student Edition acquaintance, Ella Rose Becker. Soon after it was published, a friend of mine from college sent me a photo of the book—her daughter had ordered it, because Ella is a friend of hers from her college.

Don’t forget!

I’m excited to share Flicker.Press with you, the latest creation of Bandersnatch Books’ Rachel Donahue and her husband, Mick. You can read more about it here, but the gist of the site is it’s a place where readers can preview the first chapter of various books, then buy credits to read further on. It’s a great way to get a taste of something you might be interested in. Apparently there are other sites like this out there, but their content isn’t monitored, so they include work created by AI, and a lot of garbage. Flicker.Press, on the other hand, is closely curated, and promotes what is good, true, and beautiful.

They currently have all of Bandersnatch Books’ titles on their site (so my trilogy), along with works by various authors in The Habit, the writing community I’m a member of. One fun feature is that authors can post a work in progress, and there is a place for readers to give feedback. Check it out!

Check out Daughter of Arden at Bandersnatchbooks.com, along with other great titles.

You can find links to more of my writing at A Shaft of Sun Through the Rain and my old blog, Willing, Wanting, Waiting.

Facebook - Author Page

Instagram - Author Account

Don’t forget to check out Bandersnatch Books’ podcast, including my interview in Season 1, episode 2!

We talk about structures a lot at our house. We also talk about—to name a few topics—infrastructure, soils and geographical features, sewers and water treatment, loads and concrete (not to be confused with cement!), and lots and lots of math. This is what happens when your husband is a civil engineer, you have two daughters who have decided to pursue branches of it, and a son who plans to go into mechanical engineering. Then there are the college students who come for lunch on Sundays who are mostly in these fields, including our nephew who’s studying environmental engineering. When I say “we” talk about these things, I primarily mean everyone at the table besides me. I do a lot of listening.

I never would have imagined this would be my life now. I grew up in a missionary family where my parents helped start the communications department for their mission organization, SEND International. Mom provided the writing, editing, etc., and Dad specialized in photography and multimedia presentations. I grew up watching multi-projector slideshows (remember those?) that eventually shifted to video and powerpoint presentations. I learned early on important tips for balancing the composition of a photo and writing an engaging missionary newsletter. My parents were also Bible teachers and trainers in various cross-cultural fields. My interests followed theirs, with Bible, art, writing, and cross-cultural experiences. In my world, math was a necessary evil, and when I got through my required courses in high school I managed to never take another math class. Kraig says I’d have loved math more if I’d just been given the right teaching. I beg to differ. I had excellent teachers, and I appreciate math, but I will never love it. Every time I feel like I have almost grasped a concept it wafts away and I’m left with a few incomprehensible fragments.

I can’t complain about my life now, though, and thankfully parts of the engineering discussion that happens is very—um—concrete (sorry, I couldn’t resist that one). It’s incredibly convenient to have engineers on hand when I’m writing stories. When I created my world of the Seven Kingdoms in which my Daughter of Arden Trilogy takes place, Kraig and I worked on the map together. Kraig helped me make sure the land and water features made sense. I held to it all pretty closely, too, until I realized when writing the third book that I need to add a new river,. That just about broke my daughter’s heart (or patience), because it’s location makes no sense for the geography. Ah well. Sometimes reality must bow to art (don’t quote me on that!). When I created Maid Maleen’s tower, Kraig was my sounding board to know if it could actually work (that I did hold to carefully).

Yesterday morning we were talking about my new work in progress where the primary city is modeled after the ancient Mexican city of Tenochtitlan. Tenochtitlan was built on a swampy island, and the central temple tended to sink over the years, and new ones were built on top of it. In my book, I’m including a temple with a sinking problem and I have a central room that has sunk below the ground. I mentioned this to Kraig and he asked, “What’s the water table? Is this room above it? Otherwise it’ll have water seeping in.” Sigh. I realized he was right. If my temple was in the place I wanted it, and the condition I wanted it in, the water level was going to encroach on this special room I’d imagined. I couldn’t just magic the water away.

It’s moments like these when I wish I didn’t have someone around who automatically thinks of the practicalities. I want to fly off into the story, and Kraig brings me right back to earth. When I was writing my trilogy, Kraig was my first reader. As a result, he got the brunt of my frustrated reactions to his questions and suggestions. What did he know anyway? I was the writer, and it was my world and characters.

Thankfully he put up with my tirades, and eventually I noticed a pattern. Kraig would bring up a problem, or make a suggestion. I’d yoller and holler about how impossible it was to incorporate that idea. A few days would pass, and during that time I’d ponder my story and wrangle with Kraig’s idea, and lo and behold, suddenly a whole new idea would unfold that brought together bits of my story and parts of his idea into a beautiful structure, perfect for the tale. It’s gotten to where sometimes it doesn’t even take a few days (and I don’t fume as much). When Kraig brought up the problem of the water this morning, we bounced it around for a little, and within a few minutes I struck on a few new ideas that opened up another layer in my world and culture. I’m looking forward to exploring it!

I love how there are always new things to discover in this world. The older I get, the more I appreciate all the many angles and perspectives. I can make connections between more and more kinds of structures and ways of life. I may not get some of it—there are plenty of times when I can’t fathom why somebody believes something I disagree with, or enjoys something I can’t appreciate. Sometimes I have a judgment about it based on my own foundational beliefs; sometimes I can see it’s just my opinion. Whatever the case, though, it expands my world and makes me think more deeply. I have to wrangle with the new concept, lay it against what I believe, and determine if I will shift or sit on my foundation. Even if I end up staying, a new piece of the structure is revealed and I am stronger because of it.

Art for the week:

I may have shared this one before—I can’t remember—but since I’m writing about structures, Clare’s drawing of various buildings seems like a good finale.

Announcing

I’m excited to share Flicker.Press with you, the latest creation of Bandersnatch Books’ Rachel Donahue and her husband, Mick. You can read more about it here, but the gist of the site is it’s a place where readers can preview the first chapter of various books, then buy credits to read further on. It’s a great way to get a taste of something you might be interested in. Apparently there are other sites like this out there, but their content isn’t monitored, so they include work created by AI, and a lot of garbage. Flicker.Press, on the other hand, is closely curated, and promotes what is good, true, and beautiful.

They currently have all of Bandersnatch Books’ titles on their site (so my trilogy), along with works by various authors in The Habit, the writing community I’m a member of. One fun feature is that authors can post a work in progress, and there is a place for readers to give feedback. Check it out!

Check out Daughter of Arden at Bandersnatchbooks.com, along with other great titles.

You can find links to more of my writing at A Shaft of Sun Through the Rain and my old blog, Willing, Wanting, Waiting.

Facebook - Author Page

Instagram - Author Account

Don’t forget to check out Bandersnatch Books’ podcast, including my interview in Season 1, episode 2!

There are an awful lot of things going on in the world. A lot of them are horrible, many are beautiful, and we can’t begin to put a number to the amount of things that are completely unremarkable. When I started writing this, for instance, I was sitting in a university library writing in a notebook. It was quiet, the way a library should be, and the sun poured through the great window beside me, warming me from the outside in. A little before that I was studying for our Sunday class’s lesson in Acts. There was a couple at a nearby table chatting, as far as I could gather, about stock options. I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop—they were speaking loudly enough to be clearly heard, and I was tempted to ask them to pipe down because 1) library etiquette, and 2) I really didn’t care to hear about stock options.

But I digress. As I was saying, there are many things happening all at the same time (including conversations about stocks). Nowadays we can be instantly aware of multiple events. A headline may pop up on our phone, or someone will post a social media reel, or comment about events in a podcast. We may read someone’s post or thoughts on various events. We’re faced with a deluge of information, filtered and unfiltered, and are often asked or expected to make a judgment call no matter how much we know about the incident.

A few questions come to my mind when I’m faced with this overabundance of information. How much do I really know? How much do I need to know? Is it important to my life right now to know, understand, and draw a conclusion about the events that are happening across the globe, in another state, or even in a building on the other side of the university campus?

I think it’s good to be aware of big picture events, and to have a general idea of what is happening in the world or my country. At the same time, though, I can’t always feel responsible to do something, or even make a definitive judgment. If I try, my stress level leaps up exponentially—it’s just too much weight for one person to carry. I need to focus on the things right in front of me, and the people directly in my sphere. What is God asking of me right now? How can I be obedient to his calling on my life in this moment?

The truth of the matter is I can only live my own life, and the narrative I tell reduces this even further. You are only reading one thread of my story right now—there are plenty of details I haven’t mentioned. For example, while I was distracted by the couple talking stocks, I couldn’t help but wonder what the relationship was between this guy and girl. Were they friends? Were they dating? The guy waxed eloquently (and lengthily) in a warm baritone, not an unpleasant nasal twang, and the girl’s soprano lilted in and out with questions and comments. She certainly didn’t seem bored. I have no idea what their story was, but I kept pondering it, even as I pulled out another commentary to see if I could discover more about the apostle Paul’s message to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20.

So yes, there was more than one thread of story happening in that single moment, but I choose which one to focus on. The more I write stories, and the more I read, the more I see how authors pick and choose what parts are needed to move a narrative forward. Our study of Acts has been a great case in point for this. As our class has studied this book, we’ve seen again and again how the author, Luke, describes some events in detail, while other parts of the story are left out completely. Sometimes we go on deep dives and try to figure out what was left out and why, but usually we try to see why Luke included the parts he did. What is his point for the narrative? What does it show us about God and his plan?

I’m currently reading an epic fantasy novel where there are three point of view characters. Each chapter is from one of these character’s point of view, and the author uses this to give the reader a broader experience of all the things happening. She’s also using these various threads to keep the story moving, and so the reader can be aware of ways these different parts may come together in the end. At the same time, even with this broad scope, she doesn’t share everything with the reader. If she wrote everything that the characters experienced, the book would take a lifetime to read! There also would be numerous unimportant details that would confuse and bog down the story.

When I wrote my Daughter of Arden Trilogy, I chose to stick with one character’s point of view. Everything that happens within the pages of the books is something Maleen experiences directly, or learns from other characters. She has to navigate her life based on what she knows and understands, much like I have to navigate my own life. Interestingly, though, as the author of her story I had to know details she didn’t. In the first book, Exile, Maleen spends half of the book in a tower while a war rages outside. I realized early on that while Maleen didn’t know what was happening outside, I needed to know because it would affect Maleen’s story later in Wandering and Promise. As a result, soon after Kraig and I married we spent a good chunk of one vacation mapping out a three-year war. I still have the notes! Some of those details never made it into the books, but that was okay. Maleen didn’t need to know every detail for her narrative to be complete.

I suppose my lifelong love of books and my experience with writing have given me a way to navigate the stories in my own life and world. I can’t see all of the details that are out there, but I know that God, the Author, can. He knows the multiple narrative threads intimately, and he can work in the lives of every character in his grand story. I don’t have to worry about most of those threads, but I do need to consider my own story and walk it wisely and faithfully. I need to let go of the things I can’t control, but be willing to step up and help in the places that I can. If one of those greater world events does impact my life here and now, I’ll navigate that with my own community, and trust my Author to bring all the threads together for the best ending imaginable.

Art for the week

Here’s a glimpse of LeTourneau’s bell tower and evening sky, captured by my daughter, Ev, on a 3”x3” canvas.

Announcing…

I’m excited to share Flicker.Press with you, the latest creation of Bandersnatch Books’ Rachel Donahue and her husband, Mick. You can read more about it here, but the gist of the site is it’s a place where readers can preview the first chapter of various books, then buy credits to read further on. It’s a great way to get a taste of something you might be interested in. Apparently there are other sites like this out there, but their content isn’t monitored, so they include work created by AI, and a lot of garbage. Flicker.Press, on the other hand, is closely curated, and promotes what is good, true, and beautiful.

They currently have all of Bandersnatch Books’ titles on their site (so my trilogy), along with works by various authors in The Habit, the writing community I’m a member of. One fun feature is that authors can post a work in progress, and there is a place for readers to give feedback. Check it out!

Check out Daughter of Arden at Bandersnatchbooks.com, along with other great titles.

You can find links to more of my writing at A Shaft of Sun Through the Rain and my old blog, Willing, Wanting, Waiting.

Facebook - Author Page

Instagram - Author Account

Don’t forget to check out Bandersnatch Books’ podcast, including my interview in Season 1, episode 2!

Last week I looked my list of potential newsletter topics and chose one to develop for this week. I find it’s useful to keep an ongoing list of ideas, and I have a reminder that shows up on my calendar a week ahead so I start actively pondering. I hold these topics loosely, though, because sometimes another idea rises, or events take me in a new direction. In this week’s case it was more the latter—to the extent that I didn’t even get a letter out on Wednesday.

Usually if I don’t get a letter written for my self-imposed deadline, I let it go, and aim for my next date. Looking at this semester’s schedule, though, I think I may shift my biweekly date altogether. I realize that none of this affects any of you, but now, for better or for worse, you have one more glimpse into how the mind of Loren works ;-) .

So what events shifted me from my intended topic? A few. Last Saturday I had a twinge in my lower back that by Sunday afternoon became a significant pain. I spent Sunday night through Monday night babying it. Thankfully we had no events Monday because of MLK Day, and by Tuesday I was able to tackle things again. A good thing, because Tuesday was packed. I’m still treating my back with care, but it’s much better, and I hope I’ve gained more empathy for those who suffer chronic back pain.

It’s that concept of suffering which has knocked out my previous topic choice. I’m not going to give suffering a full treatise here, but my run-in with back pain, two interactions Tuesday, and a conversation Wednesday got me thinking about it more. In my Wednesday conversation, a friend who’s dealing with an aging father and insurance headaches admitted she wished there was a shortcut for it all. Wouldn’t it be lovely if we could get past the bother to the solution? To the end? But the more we talked about it, we realized how the process of pain and navigating with people is part of the purpose.

What purpose?

I don’t often chooses a word for the year, but since the beginning of January the concept of Immanuel, God with us, has pressed into my consciousness again and again. So many times in life we can’t see why we’re dealing with what we are dealing with. We can’t see how in the world it’s a good thing, or at all beneficial. At this point we have options. We can respond in despair: The world is a tragedy, there is no God, and the best we can do is struggle along and hope for sunny days. Things might improve if we have just the right technology, or a person to love (but really, can you trust anyone?). Another response is a fairly typical spiritual one: There is a God, yes, but the world is fallen and sinful, and so there’s suffering. We just have to live with it, and look forward to heaven, or God’s judgment of evil, and his restoration with the new heaven and new earth. While this is a more accurate view of the future than despair, it doesn’t really help with the now factor.

Does God care about us in the now?

That’s where Immanuel steps in. Jesus didn’t come to earth, do his work, and then leave. God sent his Comforter, the Spirit, to continue on with us. When inevitable suffering occurs, I can choose to ignore God or recognize that God is in the midst of it all with me.

I admit it’s more easy to mentally acknowledge God’s presence with us in the midst of suffering that to feel it. So that still begs the question of how it really makes a difference. I don’t have a definitive answer for that. I know that when my back pain was at its worst a few days ago I wasn’t serenely dwelling on the presence of God in my life. Rather I was desperately throwing up prayers for relief and taking more ibuprofen.

I mentioned two interactions Tuesday that got me thinking more about this. Tuesday afternoon I visited a close friend facing a lot of pain right now due to advanced cancer. She mentioned with a laugh at one point that “if she were a good Christian” she’d be reading her Bible constantly and other theological tomes. The problem is, it’s impossible for her to concentrate when the pain is severe. Instead, she’s relying on the truths of scripture that she’s steeped in for years…and reading space operas where the stories sometimes remind her of truths she’s internalized. Tuesday night another good friend reached out by text to a small group of us to let us know of a new crisis in a family drama that’s gone on for years. None of us are physically close enough to be with her in person, and we reached back in the only way we could, with strong words of encouragement and prayer that she would be able to hang onto the truth of our words and that God would wrap her closely in her arms, because he was there with her.

In each of these situations, there is little one can do. In the midst of suffering, we definitely won’t be taking great life-changing or world-lifting action. We won’t be “reaching the lost” (to use a common evangelical phrase), and we won’t be reforming social and political systems. If God is with us, though, right here in the midst of it all, we can take one step forward, and then another step. We can recognize there is more in the moment than the pain. There is still beauty and hope, even if we can’t see them, and if we have any sort of community, there are others out there who care for us. When others are suffering, our presence with them helps them hang on, too. It’s a matter of being together that is so important. God is still at work in us and in the world, and we can trust him that this time of suffering is part of that greater picture. We can’t make sense of it all—we may not even have the strength or capacity to think it through—but we can rest in the truth that God is with us. Presence is the point.

Check out Daughter of Arden at Bandersnatchbooks.com, along with other great titles.

You can find links to more of my writing at A Shaft of Sun Through the Rain and my old blog, Willing, Wanting, Waiting.

Facebook - Author Page

Instagram - Author Account

Don’t forget to check out Bandersnatch Books’ podcast, including my interview in Season 1, episode 2!

Happy New Year!

We have come to the beginning of 2026, stepping into it whether we want to or not. December’s Winter Solstice is behind us, that longest, darkest night of the year. Christmas with its joy, and often stress, has come and gone, as has any hectic celebrations of New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day (ours was fairly quiet, partly because a bunch of us were wiped out with a head cold). We’ve even passed Twelfth Night on January 5, and yesterday was Epiphany—Three Kings Day—so I think we can say it’s officially a new season.

The flood of celebrations is a bit exhausting, but there is an exhilaration to them that can’t be ignored. Each one is there to, in some way, bring light to the darkness. This time of year in the northern hemisphere would be pretty grim and dark without them. Even here in East Texas where Christmas Day was in the mid-70s I was glad for the white twinkle lights on our mantlepiece, and the colored lights glowing on our tree.

A few days ago I started my annual Bible reading, and I was struck by the fact that the first thing God created was light. There it was, in the very beginning of things. God called it into existence and showed up the darkness for what it is—the un-light, the nothingness, the chaos. In this first creation, God showed that darkness can’t compete with the light. As soon as there’s a sliver of light, it reveals the truth of the darkness.

We can all understand this image of light in the darkness no matter our perspective. I’ve known many who focus more on the darkness—the grime, the grit, the depression and sorrow. I know some who are beaten down by life and can’t seem to see any light, but they know it’s there and that makes it almost worse than if it wasn’t. This year looms as a great dark unknown—more of the same of last year and the years before. Maybe they do see the light but shy away from it because it hurts too much to look at it. The light holds as much mystery as the darkness, and that’s frightening. However, I also have friends who are stuck in the midst of a lot of darkness right now and still look toward the light. In the midst of uncertainty, of sickness and grief, these friends look at the light and point it out to those around them.

I want to be the kind of person who points to the light. I tend that direction more—I admit my personality is more optimist than pessimist—but I hope some of my bent is because of practice and a long-time faith. I remember giving a talk back in high school about being certain of the solid foundation I had in Christ Jesus, and that even in difficult times I could feel him there, solid beneath my feet. I can still say that today despite the dark times, and to shift the metaphor, Jesus is my light who is always with me. Sometimes it hurts to look at him, and there are times I’m afraid of how his light will change me, but life would be infinitely worse if he wasn’t with me, and all was darkness.

I remember the day our daughter Keren died. It was late January in Michigan, seventeen years ago this month (how has it been seventeen years?). Snow fell heavily, blanketing the world in silence. Keren was in an ambulance headed to the hospital and I drove after, not knowing if she was still alive. As I drove, the snowfall eased and I glanced out at a field just as a finger of the sun pushed through the cloud cover and touched a white field. I felt God’s arms about me in that moment, and it was as if he said, “I am here. I am holding you. I am holding Keren.” I knew beyond a shadow of doubt that we were all okay no matter what happened. The light in the darkness wasn’t going away.

When I put a website together a few years ago I wanted a concrete name for it. I’d originally called it “Light Dreamer,” a play on old nicknames my family has for me, but while that hit on the essence I was aiming for, it wasn’t memorable. We need concrete images to help us remember. At last I landed on A Shaft of Sun in the Rain, and when I started my Substack newsletter, I took the core, Sun Shafts, for my title. For me, that image says just about everything. In the midst of darkness and rain, sunlight can break through, and even if we can’t see it, its light is behind the clouds. I want my writing to reflect that truth.

It is early January and there is still a lot of darkness. Last year was full of it, and it’s bleeding into this year already. But the light is still here, too, separate from the dark, showing the dark up for the dirty secret it is. The light is impossible to ignore, and the more we look toward it, the more we can bear it, and the more beauty we will see. God is with us now, just as he was in the beginning, just as he was when born in a stable over 2000 years ago, just as he was when he died on a cross and the world went black, just as he was three days later when the world rocked and the stone of his tomb rolled away.

In this new year, may his light be a shaft of sun through the rain for you.

God is with us.

Art for the week:

Clare and Ev have been home for their college break, and the art has been flowing. There’s been music, sewing projects, creative writing, and of course visual arts. This is one Clare did and I felt like the feel of it fitted my topic this week. I did notice, though, that her characters have a harder task ahead of them than I’d realized at first. They’ll need to adjust which arm is grasping which….

Check out Daughter of Arden at Bandersnatchbooks.com, along with other great titles.

You can find links to more of my writing at A Shaft of Sun Through the Rain and my old blog, Willing, Wanting, Waiting.

Facebook - Author Page

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Don’t forget to check out Bandersnatch Books’ podcast, including my interview in Season 1, episode 2!

I’ve mentioned a number of times how we enjoy having students over for dinner—that’s been particularly true this fall as we’ve had a regular influx each Sunday. With food comes conversation, and these range all over the place. That said, since Kraig teaches civil engineering, and since LeTourneau is a polytechnic university, the majority of the students are in engineering fields, and conversation leans heavily into technical concepts. This is not my field, so there are plenty of times I phase out of the conversation and my presence is more of a smile, a nod, and a plate full of food.

A few weeks ago when I was prepping for our Sunday class I noticed that the word Paul uses that is translated “art” in Acts 17:29 is “techne” in Greek. Apparently the word can be translated as “art,” “occupation,” or “craft,” so it has a broad use, but it struck me that we don’t often think of technology or tech as artistic. Yet the skills Kraig and his students learn and employ have a beauty of their own when they’re done well. There is a beauty in their usefulness—a loveliness in things that work well. When I drive on a road, cross a bridge, or enter a building, I like to know that the ones who built it made the correct calculations and followed through on them.

I’m also very thankful I don’t need to understand the math myself and can focus on the skills I do have. My own gifts are different, and that’s a good thing. I can also delight in the gifts that others have without feeling jealous or less important. After all, if all of us were creating buildings, who would make the meals, or write the stories, or tell others about Christ? The important thing is that we lean into the gifts we have and use them well.

This year I’ve been working my way through a book of letters of novelist and playwright, Dorothy L. Sayers. I also read a series of essays by author Flannery O’Connor. Both women, writing in the middle of the 20^th Century on opposite sides of the Atlantic, emphasized a similar theme regarding how we do our work.

In one letter Sayers takes on “flabby and sentimental theology which necessarily produces flabby and sentimental art.” She says, “…for any work of art to be acceptable to God is must first be right with itself. That is to say, the artist must serve God in the technique of his craft; for example, a good religious play must first and foremost be a good play before it can begin to be good religion.”^⁠1

This theme comes up again and again in Sayers’ work. Even her heroine Harriet Vane from her Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries reflects it in Gaudy Night when someone asks her how she can justify writing about murders in her detective novels.

“I know what your thinking” [Harriet says] “—that anybody with proper sensitive feeling would rather scrub floors for a living. But I should scrub floors very badly, and I write detective stories rather well.”

The other author, Flannery O’Connor, wrote short stories that often come across as grim and shocking, yet gleam with a strong shot of grace if you read them correctly. When you’re writing to people who don’t hold the same beliefs as yourself, she states, then “you have to make your vision apparent by shock—to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.^⁠2” She was certainly skilled in this. I don’t feel any need to write the same way, but I agree with her point. This thought as well: “…what is good in itself glorifies God because it reflects God. The artist has his hands full and does his duty if he attends to his art. He can safely leave evangelizing to the evangelists. He must first of all be aware of his limitations as an artist—for art transcends its limitations only by staying within them.”^⁠3

I hope all this is resonating with you! I’ve had these various thoughts running around in my head for a while, and I’m trying to pull them together in a cohesive piece. This morning I mentioned to some friends that I needed to see if I could get my thoughts onto the page today, and my friend Karen sent the December 15 entry from Oswald Chambers classic devotional, My Utmost for His Highest. It echoed what I’m trying to get across:

“Strive to re-express a truth of God to yourself clearly and understandably, and God will use the same explanation when you share it with someone else. But you must be willing to go through God’s winepress where the grapes are crushed. You must struggle, experiment, and rehearse your words to express God’s truth clearly.”

In this entry Chambers starts with 2 Timothy 2:15, “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.”

Every action I take, every word I write, is a reflection of what’s going on inside me, and a pouring out, in some way, of the gifts God has given me. When those actions and words don’t ring true, or they fail, it often means I haven’t worked through them enough to present them rightly. However, sometimes it might mean I’m trying to use gifts God didn’t give me.

When it comes down to it, I want civil engineers to be planning infrastructure, mechanical engineers to design machines I use, visual and tactile artists to make things that I can see and touch, poets and musicians to pull together words and music in ways that make my heart sing, pastors and teachers to bring light into dark places. I cannot do all of these things (you really wouldn’t want me to design a bridge, and I can’t design and sew clothes at all), but I can do the things I’m gifted in. Living within my own limitations is the way I can best glorify God, and it gives me ample room to freely rejoice in the gifts of others. I can let the engineers have their technical conversations, and I will feed them a tasty dinner…and write about all of it.

These are gifts I have to give, this Christmas and beyond. What’s your gift?

¹ “Letter to Brother George Every, 12 May 1941.” The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers, Volume II, 1937-1942, From Novelist to Playwright. St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1998, p. 261.

² “The Fiction Writer and His Country,” Mystery and Manners—Occasional Prose. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York, 1969.

³ “Catholic Novelists,” Mystery and Manners—Occasional Prose. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York, 1969.

Art for the week

Even a polytechnic university has a dramatic flair, and last Saturday LeTourneau’s drama club put on “The Troy Saga,” from the musical, Epic. The blocking and acting was great—so much fun. Our nephew was “young Odysseus,” and Evie helped bring a few of the costumes to life, including our nephew’s. They even had a platform…that Kraig and the other civil engineers in the audience tried very hard not to look at closely!

Check out Daughter of Arden at Bandersnatchbooks.com, along with other great titles.

You can find links to more of my writing at A Shaft of Sun Through the Rain and my old blog, Willing, Wanting, Waiting.

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Don’t forget to check out Bandersnatch Books’ podcast, including my interview in Season 1, episode 2!

Kraig and I joke that if we ever reach a point where we need to rent a storage unit, it will be a clear sign that we need to purge. We would rather purge than pay to store stuff. The thing is, we have a good bit of space in our house, so we have a way to go before we must take that step. But even with space there are times when the stuff presses in, and right now it’s high time we got rid of some things. I’m working through some of those items this week in anticipation of family visiting at Christmas.

I am plagued, though, with a personality that has a hard time letting go. Once in a while it’s an easy decision: I actually have some books I don’t feel any need to keep, particularly old curriculum from when the kids were younger, or sometimes there’s a book I bought for a book club but didn’t like enough to keep on my shelf. I know I can get rid of older financial papers and receipts once we’ve passed the right number of years…if I get around to sorting through them. Then there are the continual cummulations of cardboard boxes and glass jars and plastic containers and grocery bags. I’m happy to get rid of those, but we don’t have local recycling pickup…so I have to be deliberate about taking them somewhere.

Yeah, those are the easier things to eliminate. The hard things to consider are parts of heritage passed down through family generations, or curios we’ve collected over the course of our own lives. I have books that were my grandmother’s and her sisters. My great-grandfather sold books for Dodd, Mead & Company early in the 20^th century, and he brought gorgeous editions of books home to his daughters. Tennyson, Longfellow, and Grimm’s Fairy Tales with illustrations by Arthur Rackham are just a few now on my shelf. Then there are other old pieces like brass candlesticks and a set of my great-grandmother’s china, maple bedsteads and a cedar chest. I regularly use my grandmother’s potato masher, and a “Baptist church spatula” from my mother. Kraig’s grandmother’s painting lives on one wall alongside a quilt made by a close family friend, a ceramic wall hanging created by an artisan potter I met in Mexico, and two original ink sketches Kraig and I got from a couple who were downsizing right at the point we married and had nothing for our walls. After going through Kraig’s parents’ curios this summer with his siblings, we now have more treasures from around the world, not to mention the photos I need to scan and distribute to family.

All of these things and many others make our house home, and homey, but they do take up space. There are times when I wonder why I hang on to them, or I realize the empty value of stuff in light of a finite life. Already there are many things we don’t know the story of—the original owner was gone before we thought to ask, or even knew to. This is a loss, even while we treasure the beauty of the piece that remains. Sometimes when I sink into a chair and ponder all of the potential worlds waiting in the books on our shelves, or I relish the beauty of a piece of art, a niggling question flits through my mind: “What if something happened and all of this was destroyed?” I usually shy away from that thought, because I can’t bear to imagine it. And that makes me wonder if I would be able to accept the loss. I’m reminded, too, that our time on earth is finite. We felt that this summer as we went through Kraig’s parents’ things. I think of it when I read an older friend’s note about preparing to downsize and move to a retirement community, something my parents did a few years ago. The older I get, the more my own focus shifts.

I find these thoughts eventually turn me back toward God, and the undercurrent of reassurance that he holds me and those I love, and that, in the end, I don’t need to worry about all of the things. I can enjoy them now, but I don’t have to cling to them, or worry about what would happen if they were torn away from me. In fact, when I really lean into Christ, I am more willing to share our things with others because I remember they aren’t really mine to begin with. When it comes down to it, the hope of a new creation outweighs the wealth of earth, and knowing I will have eternity to learn more about God and learn more from him is a comfort and encouragement. I will never know him completely, and there will always be more to discover. For that matter, there will always be more beauty to create, beauty that will glorify him and lift others up. And that truth is more lovely than any book, painting, piece of furniture…or potato masher.

If you want to add new, beautiful books to your library, be sure to head to Bandersnatchbooks.com starting this Friday for Holiday sales. Most books will be 40% off, including my trilogy! (If you’re local to me, I have copies of all the Bandersnatch titles for sale.)

You can find links to more of my writing at A Shaft of Sun Through the Rain and my old blog, Willing, Wanting, Waiting.

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Don’t forget to check out Bandersnatch Books’ podcast, including my interview in Season 1, episode 2!

If you’ve spent more than a few minutes in my company over the past week you may have noticed one or two of the following:

1) I was more than usually distracted and possibly a little giddy.

2) I kept pulling out my Kindle or headphones and “disappearing” in plain sight. (I would have pulled out a read book, but alas, I have no physical copies. Guess what’s going on my Christmas wish list.)

3) I gushed about what I was reading, and possibly subjected you to a few paragraphs.

I was, in a word, lost in a new-to-me series. I was enthralled, delighted, inspired…. It was like a crush, the wonderful thrill of being totally and utterly in love. It was so bad that I forgot to do my Hebrew homework last Wednesday, and when I realized I’d forgotten it (Thursday afternoon), I didn’t even care. Honestly, the only reason meals happened at our house was because the audio books were readily available through our library; other required items happened slowly. This text conversation I had with my daughter Saturday afternoon shows just how dangerously lost I was (granted, she was dragging for other reasons):

And what was this fantastic series? One I’ve heard about from reliable sources for a few years, but kept putting off: The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, volumes 1-8, by Beth Brower. I won’t go into detail about the book plots here, you can look up the summaries yourself. What I want to communicate is the absolute joy of finding a fresh series that hit all of the beats that I love in books. I haven’t been swept away by a new book for a long time, and it felt marvelous. All eight of the books have made me want to sit down and write my own stories, and dream of creating something as brilliant as Emma M. Lion.

But what specifically are these traits I loved?

For one, the characters. The protagonist, Emma, is witty, curious, and optimistic. She isn’t just a clear glass of sunshine, though. In her 21 years she’s dealt with real sorrows, and at the beginning of the tales she’s entering a challenging new season. But she enters it with hope and courage, on the lookout for joy and beauty. I love this kind of character. Emma is a refreshing reprieve from all the traumatic tales and angst-filled heroines that so many books lean into these days.

And there’s not just Emma’s character; she is surrounded by a community of all kinds. Some are farcical and extreme like one of Emma’s undesired suitors. I read a scene to a young friend where this character is described, and she said, “He sounds like Charlie Sloane!” which was an excellent call out to Anne of Green Gables and the marvelous characters L. M. Montgomery created. I wonder if Brower was giving a nod to Anne with this character? I wouldn’t be at all surprised. There are also obnoxious characters, and mysterious ones. And then there are the core characters who are Emma’s friends, people with depth, with graces and flaws, who, despite their failings, are trustworthy. I found as I moved further into the series that my initial tentative trust in them was rewarded by the author; even when flaws were revealed, there was hope and stability. So many books nowadays seem to thrive on the gotcha moment: “You thought you could trust this person, but no! Look! They were planning to stab you in the back the whole time!” I was refreshed and encouraged by Emma’s friends because they are like many of my own friends and family, and characters I’ve written myself—dependable, even in frustrating times.

What else? Humor, for sure. There are so many scenes that had me bursting out laughing—many reminded me of P. G. Wodehouse. Emma’s Aunt Eugenia could definitely fit alongside any of Bertie Wooster’s eccentric aunts. But while Wodehouse never really gives one a break from the hysterical, Brower balances her humor with a gravitas of story, pulling one further in with each sentence. And while a humorous, ridiculous character may continue in that vein, I found that as the series progressed, aspects would come to light that built nuance in these people, giving me a reason for compassion.

Another element I loved? The romance—yes, there are definitely threads of this. Again, they’re handled beautifully, woven in throughout the story without overtaking it. Emma’s own romance starts with a thrum of possibility, a hum of uncertainty, a slow awakening, a zing of connection…. For her, things are unfolding well there. I have high hopes for the future novels (because, yes, there will be more). The other thing I deeply appreciated was that while certain male characters were presented as eminently attractive, and certain women are described with beauty and grace, the descriptions avoid sensuality. Brower touches on the heart of beauty and she doesn’t play on the reader’s emotions and desires, a problem I’ve seen more and more in romances in modern fiction, particularly young adult novels. Brower knows that what readers really want (at least readers like me) are men like Mr. Darcy, Gilbert Blythe, and Lord Peter Wimsey, and women like Elizabeth Bennet, Anne Shirley, and Harriet Vane. Characters like these are ones we can admire and love, and we can love to see them learn to love without coming out of the book feeling like we’ve touched something tawdry.

Have I mentioned how brilliantly Brower writes? In addition to all of these delights, she throws descriptions around like poetry…and her characters refer to poems and essays and histories without a blink. Wordsworth, Shakespeare, Plutarch, Emerson—bits of each are sprinkled in at the right moments, making me want to run to my shelf, pull off a book of poetry or history, and dwell in it.

So yes, it’s been completely worth getting lost to the world for a week. I can’t allow myself this pleasure very often. In fact, I tend to avoid books I love, or immersing myself in writing my own stories, because it’s easy for me to lose touch with reality, and unfortunately there is much reality which must be handled. However, it is wonderful to let go now and then, and discovering that pleasure in a new series reassures me that there is still good work being done in the world. I find that I have come out of this new crush with a deeper, truer love for life, and the air around me is full of light.

Art for the week:

Here’s a sketch of a character Clare’s created for one of her stories. From what she’s told me, I believe he’s a bit of a rascal, but a lovable one.

Check out Daughter of Arden at Bandersnatchbooks.com, along with other great titles.

You can find links to more of my writing at A Shaft of Sun Through the Rain and my old blog, Willing, Wanting, Waiting.

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Don’t forget to check out Bandersnatch Books’ podcast, including my interview in Season 1, episode 2!

By the way! If you missed Bandersnatch Books’ Kickstarter for this fabulous anthology of poetry for kids you can still preorder it and get a copy in time for Christmas! The art I’ve seen is beautiful, and many of the poems are written by gifted poet friends of mine. Find your copy here!

For the past year, our pastor has been going through a sermon series on Acts. Kraig and my Sunday class that we lead is an inductive Bible study in which we take the passage the pastor will be using each week, and starting with the text at word level, the class gradually works its way out to a bigger application picture. We love it, and every week, God reveals himself in ways we didn’t plan. This study of Acts has been particularly rich, as we’ve been able to dive deeply into how the author, Luke, structured this book, and discuss why he made the choices he did to include some things, and not others.

Last Sunday we studied the beginning of Acts 16, in which the apostle Paul and his companions start out on what’s typically called the second missionary journey. This follows directly on the heels of a big split he had with Barnabas, his first ministry partner and advocate; they had had a “sharp disagreement” (the Greek word is the the root of “paroxysm”) over John Mark, Barnabas’ young relative who had joined them on their first journey, but left before they’d gone far. Barnabas wanted to bring him again; Paul did not. And so, a fight, a split, and they headed in separate directions. Paul and his new partner, Silas, headed to some of the new churches that had been formed on the first missionary journey. They spent some time encouraging the churches, and they added Timothy to their company, a young Christian whom Paul continued to mentor throughout his life.

After this point, the texts notes some interesting details, and leaves a lot unspoken. Paul and crew tried to head south to Asia (modern day southern Turkey, including Ephesus) and they were “forbidden by the Holy Spirit.” So they turned north and “tried to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them.” The verb for “tried to” is imperfect, implying they attempted more than once. The only forward direction they could go was west, and finally, after crossing through multiple mountains they made it to Troas on the western coast of Asia Minor. It was only at this point that God sent the famous vision of the man from Macedonia who called for Paul to come over and help them.

Typically this passage is taught with the end in mind. God wanted Paul and company to go to Macedonia at this time, and he was about to to use them to open all of Greece to the good news of salvation through Jesus. This is what happened, true, but if we only see those closed doors in Asia as redirection to a greater goal, we miss a lot. Consider this: from Antioch in Syria where Paul’s team started, to Troas, it’s 830 miles by land. While some of that travel was spent encouraging and strengthening young churches, and definitely in discipling Timothy, much of it was spent pushing against doors that God kept closing. Another thing: throughout Acts, Luke uses references to the Holy Spirit very deliberately, so it is interesting that the “no’s” at this point are the first time that the Holy Spirit has been mentioned in a bit. He was noticeably absent when Paul initiated this trip and had the fallout with Barnabas.

If God wanted Paul’s company to head to Macedonia, why didn’t he direct them earlier? Why did they have to face all of the closed doors? Imagine the rising frustration and exhaustion in the group as path after path was blocked. Paul isn’t known to be a meek and mild character, either—how did he handle this? What did he model to Timothy as he was continually stymied? I couldn’t help but wonder if God was just as concerned with this company’s personal spiritual formation as he was about getting them to Macedonia and to people who hadn’t heard the good news of Christ. From our perspective, this was a colossal waste of time. But so often, God works on a different timeline.

All of this reminded me of the second book of my trilogy, Wandering, and my family’s life over the years I was writing it. In Wandering, my protagonist Maleen has a goal. She knows where she plans to go, and why it’s so important to go that way. It is a good reason. There’s only one problem. I knew she couldn’t go there, and I knew where she did need to go in order for the story to reach its necessary ending. Obviously Maleen had to go through some major things and face significant obstacles before she could be redirected, and even when she was headed the right way, my way, her path was far from easy and certain. Amazingly this wandering path made for a good tale in itself, and a whole book came out of it. But more importantly, Maleen’s character grew, as did her dependence on the Mighty One. The only reason the events in the third book of the trilogy could take place was because of the inner and outer journey Maleen took in the second book. It was anything but wasted time.

Wandering took the longest of my trilogy to write because so many things happened in Kraig and my life during those years. We finished our schooling with the plan to head overseas into ministry, but God gave us Keren, and six-and-a-half years inhabiting the special needs world. When Keren died, we tried to keep contact with that world, but God pulled us away. Not forcefully, but gradually and inevitably. We slowly moved back toward our goal of international work, which became two years in Mexico. Then that door and other doors overseas closed, and the door to Kraig teaching at LeTourneau opened. We’ve now been here nine, fruitful years. Should we have come here first? That’s a silly question. Those other years of open and closed doors were vital to our relationship with God.

No wandering is wasted when we’re waiting on God. Even the obstacles he brings are a chance to grow in relationship with him and with others. Obstacles give us a space to ask questions and reevaluate decisions and areas where we might need to realign with God’s view. They present time to pray and seek guidance. I’m sure that on Paul’s journey during those many hampered miles, he had to go through much of this. And once he reached Troas and God gave him the new direction, it wasn’t like Paul was perfected. He was, though, willing to listen, and ready to follow, and God continued to work in and through him, on his own timeline. “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain,” Paul writes in Philippians 1:21. Seems to me that includes dealing with closed doors.

Art for the week:

My daughters have been a part of the student edition of The Habit for a few years now. Last year, they took part in a group of young writers and illustrators from this group who wanted to put together and publish an anthology that reflected their work. Clare and Ev decided not to write stories, but they did step up to illustrate some of the pieces. In addition to that, Evie was asked to create the cover of the anthology, and yesterday it was revealed. Check it out!

The mentor for these writers, Andrea Yenne, has been posting fun interviews of many of these authors and illustrators. You can follow these at The S. E. Collaborative Guild of Authors and Artists.

Check out Daughter of Arden at Bandersnatchbooks.com, along with other great titles.

You can find links to more of my writing at A Shaft of Sun Through the Rain and my old blog, Willing, Wanting, Waiting.

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Don’t forget to check out Bandersnatch Books’ podcast. This week’s episode is a lovely interview with the illustrator of their forthcoming anthology of children’s poetry. You can also find my interview in Season 1, episode 2!

This week’s letter is another exercise from my Habit memoir class—we were looking at the idea of a repeated event. I had my mom (who is also a writer) work through this and add some memories as well as tweaking, so this is a true collaborative effort. Enjoy!

When I was in college, I lived near my grandmother, and many Sundays a few college friends and I would head to Grandmom’s for Sunday dinner after church. Dinner was a midday meal in classic fashion, a full home-cooked spread. At Grandmom’s this could be crispy baked chicken, pot roast with potatoes, onions, and carrots, corned beef or ham with rutabaga, carrots, and potatoes, or a good rump roast with a rich dark gravy, mashed potatoes, and green beans. The food was the base, and conversation was layered on top of it.

Often other guests joined us—friends from church, new visitors, visiting global workers—so topics ranged all over the globe, through generations, and across theologies and philosophies. Grandmom reigned over the meal, the benevolent hostess, a role she had played with my grandfather over decades of marriage. Both were Bible teachers and educators, so conversations went deep and humor sparkled. One friend of my parents from college days was a rather shy kid from a small New England town. He says that when he first joined the “college Sunday dinners” at my grandparents, he spent his whole first year watching the conversation like a tennis match. By his second year, he joined, and by graduation, he was active in the fray.

For me, the Sunday dinner experience at Grandmom’s was not new to my college years. My mom learned well from Grandmom. My dad also came into marriage with a good taste for this interactive Sunday meal, both from his own family and from his college years when he joined students at my grandparents’ table. For me, all during my growing up years Sunday dinner was an institution in our home, usually with guests who were of the same flavor as the guests of Grandmom and my grandfather.

My family lived in the Philippines when I was in elementary school, so in addition to Grandmom’s classics, Mom added various curries, peppery chicken adobo, savory spaghetti sauces, and hearty soups. Years later when my sister and I became parents, grandchildren joined the table as soon as they could sit in a high chair, mess accepted and included.

I learned the gravy-making skills from Grandmom and Mom, and the art of a good roast. Again, the meals formed the foundation, and the conversations flowed over the surface, thick and rich. I sat in on these feasts for the mind, my ears bent to the mysteries of the God I was learning to love, the fantastic world he created, and our battle alongside him against the darkness.

It was inevitable, with this history, that Sunday dinner became a thing for my husband Kraig and me and our kids. Our foods have expanded further—we’ve added fajitas, chili, butter chicken, Thai curries…. But a nicely roasted chicken shows up now and then, and once in a while I splurge and go for a good rump roast. I pulled this off a couple weeks ago, and it was, of course, accompanied by mashed potatoes, green beans, and a dark, rich gravy.

Our Sunday table right now is filled with college students as our daughters are attending the university where my husband teaches civil engineering. We still have stories from around the globe, from our own experiences and those of guests, and theology and its intersection with life make up a hearty portion of discussion. A new flavor in this generation is that of structures, science, and higher math calculations as future engineers mix with future computer scientists and other technical fields. And, of course, there are debates about current movies, music, and memes—it is the 2020s after all.

At some point over the roast beef the other Sunday I mentioned all of these memories that this particular meal brought back.

“Do you make your roast like your grandmother did?” someone asked.

“Yep,” Kraig said, cutting his slice of beef and dabbing it in some gravy. He, too, had meals at both my grandmother’s table and my parents’. He spoke with the authority of an expert.

“And we cut off both sides of the roast to fit it in the pan, just the way it’s always been done,” our eldest quipped.

She knows, though, the truth of the matter. The food, especially the gravy, is rich and important, but it is simply the foundation for the real value—deep, sweeping, intergenerational conversation.

Art for the week:

Clare and I had fun in our Hebrew class the other week as we worked through some translation of Isaiah 6:1-8. Our prof believes in a hands-on experience, so as we explored the possible meaning of “seraphim” each student got to play with a dragon. Here are our two checking out our work:

Check out Daughter of Arden at Bandersnatchbooks.com, along with other great titles.

You can find links to more of my writing at A Shaft of Sun Through the Rain and my old blog, Willing, Wanting, Waiting.

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Don’t forget to check out Bandersnatch Books’ podcast—they’ve got a new season going with great author interviews. Or you can dig back into season 1, episode 2 for my interview!

I’m currently taking a memoir writing class in The Habit, my online writing community. It’s a great opportunity to build up a few cohesive stories for this newsletter, and I thought you’d enjoy this experience that I wrote about for our exercise last week. This story comes from the summer of 2016, just before we left Mexico.

One of our family jokes is that Puebla City, Mexico, is flat. If you don’t know about this city or have never been there, this joke doesn’t mean a thing, but for anyone who has been there for more than the two days we were, you’ll probably squint your eyes in confusion, tip your head, and repeat, “Puebla is flat?”

Because the truth is that the valley of Puebla City is circled by mountains and four volcanoes, two of which are active. The most famous of these, Popocatépetl, was the one we’d particularly looked forward to seeing. Its snowy, smoking conical peak is often pictured in the background of the great pyramid mound and cathedral of the town of Cholula. We knew this from guide books and friends who’d seen it. For us, though, during the days we were there, all of the surrounding mountains were invisible.

It wasn’t stormy. It wasn’t even foggy. The sun shone, and large cumulus clouds hung in the sky. The only indication that there was something off in the atmosphere was a slight haziness along the horizon. We strained our eyes, gazing into sky, and saw…nothing.

It’s hard to see clearly when you don’t know where to look. This was part of our problem. I had one moment when I was peering out our hotel window and I suddenly saw an angled line of a slope in the distance. I excitedly called Kraig and our kids over to see, and for a few minutes we ogled the sign that there was something massive out there. We could follow the line to where it disappeared and imagine just how far it went, and how big the mountain was. When it vanished, though, I couldn’t even pinpoint where I had seen it.

Our goal during our time in Puebla was to visit the mound and cathedral in Cholula. We drove to the historical site, hoping the half-hour distance from the metropolis of Puebla might lift the veil on Popocatépetl. It didn’t, but the temple mound was easy to find, and we parked and entered the site. The hill is actually the location of the largest pyramid in the world, by volume. While archeologists didn’t start excavations till the 1930s, everyone knew there was a temple there, hidden by earth and trees. The Spaniards who colonized the area in the 1500s had no doubt, which is why they built their elegant ochre and white cathedral on top of it. Christ had conquered the ancient gods, seen and unseen. The goddess of rain was now Mary of the Remedies.

We climbed the hill, visited the cathedral, and checked out the view. Cholula lay below us, a sprawling town—we could see miles of it. But at the place where we knew Popocatépetl stood we saw…nothing. The sun shone down merrily, great puffy clouds sailed the blue skies, but the horizon was a hazy blank.

I believe the photos I’ve seen. The mountain does exist. I even bought a little souvenir that shows the iconic image of the mound and cathedral and Popocatépetl smoking away behind them. In my mind I can see it, even though my physical eyes never did. It is just as real as the excavated passageways of the temple under the mound that we wended our way through, a place of complete darkness that electricity illuminated for us so we could see.

At the bottom of the mound, outside in the ancient court, we browsed the ruins of altars, contemplating one that memorialized the end of a drought. A plaque informed us that the bones of six and seven year old children were found there when the altar was excavated. The priests had sacrificed them to the rain goddess. I was glad I couldn’t see the bones, but from where we stood, we could just make out the cathedral claiming the hilltop, and we pondered the fact that, despite known atrocities committed by Spanish colonizers, what they put an end to was even worse. Even God used the Babylonians to end the idolatry of Judaisms. It’s an old, old tale. I don’t understand how it all works in God’s sight, but now and then the veil lifts and I see a bit of the glorious truth of it.

On the day we drove away from Puebla, I caught a final glimpse of the slope of one of the volcanoes. It lurks in my memory, and I still find myself straining my mental eyes, trying to see it clearly. I want to go back and really see it all because I know it is there. For now, though, our family will continue to joke about flat Puebla City. It eases the ache a little, that sorrow that we hold because we could not see clearly, and that because of the veil we missed something magnificent.

Art for the week

I missed including some recent art for you in my last post—it’s harder to get new pieces from my daughters when they’re living away from home! But Clare shared a few of her newer drawings with me recently, so I’ll pass this one along to you today:

Check out Daughter of Arden at Bandersnatchbooks.com, along with other great titles.

You can find links to more of my writing at A Shaft of Sun Through the Rain and my old blog, Willing, Wanting, Waiting.

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Don’t forget to check out Bandersnatch Books’ podcast—they’ve got a new season going with great author interviews. Or you can dig back into season 1, episode 2 for my interview!

A couple weeks ago when my self-imposed deadline for my newsletter loomed, I had nothing. No ideas. No time to sit and write. No urge to put words on paper. So I didn’t post anything. Now I’m sitting here two weeks later, and my head is stuffed with ideas and thoughts, and I don’t know where to start, or where to focus. Because of that, I’m putting pen to paper (literally—I often start these notes longhand) partly to see which idea moves to the forefront, and partly to reveal a bit of my writing process to you.

It really is a process, and it’s one that typically needs to be kickstarted for me. I have to force myself to sit down and start writing. If I have an external deadline, one not dependent on me, then it’s easier to accomplish the task. In fact, as I mentioned in passing the last time I wrote, I’m taking a Hebrew class this fall. Believe me, the deadlines for that class keep me on my toes. I’ve always been a good student, primarily because I’m highly motivated by grades. The other week when I had my self-imposed newsletter deadline, I knew if I made time and forced myself to sit down and write, I would have come up with something. But I wasn’t motivated enough to do it, even though many of you who read my notes give me the encouragement that something in them has resonated with you. That’s immensely inspiring…but apparently not as much as acing my Hebrew vocab quiz. I apologize. (I’ll also have you know, I’m still kicking myself over missing a word on Monday’s quiz, and I don’t really regret that I didn’t write a note here the other week. What does that say?)

Yes, process takes effort—progress takes effort. I hope that my slow movement from one writing project to the next is building a cumulative good in my skills, and hopefully my moral fiber, too. I know that over the years my writing has improved and I’m able to formulate stories and ideas better with practice. I know I have a long way to go, but for now, here, I’ve improved in relation to the past.

My sixteen-year-old son, Jon, does not enjoy writing in any form. In his mind, he knows how to write—how to put words on a page in an order that makes sense to the reader. Why then, he wondered last year when he had to take composition classes, did he have to practice? Why did he have to plan and prepare before actually writing a paper? The answer, of course, is that writing is a skill that has to be practiced in order for it to come more easily, and the process is as important, if not more so, than the result. It will get easier, hopefully, the more one does it. Even if it doesn’t get easier (and I know Jon has a hard time transferring thoughts into words), one will have learned something through the doing. I think someday Jon will grasp this, and someday I’ll get it too—this truth that sitting down to write is worth the sweat and strain, and it might be okay that I don’t get the next “vital thing” done right now. Taking the time to write is important, even if it’s difficult.

I’m not saying anything new about the importance of process and building a skill. In fact, I’ve heard this more and more frequently as we’ve leaped into the age of AI. Many voices1 have suddenly realized we’re out of our depth and we really don’t know how to swim in these artificial waters. As we dog paddle to keep ourselves afloat, we’re searching for the shore—for something solid and slow that will hold against the breakneck current we’ve found ourselves in.

Slow, hands-on work is one of those solid bits. The process of practicing something and gradually building a skill is grounding. I’m encouraged every time I see my daughters or friends write a story or create a poem, because I know they haven’t eschewed the process and snatched something from ChatGPT. I love to see the art of my friend Bethany who builds Lego models that she then refers to when she creates digital art for her webcomics. It makes my heart rise when my daughter Ev pulls out watercolor paints and spends a few hours trying something out, or when my daughter Clare wrangles through a hefty problem in her dynamics class. Kraig puts in careful hours to check and double-check projects for consulting jobs, ensuring that the numbers add up so buildings will stand strong. He takes the time to work through students’ homework, trying to help them see why they need to be diligent. Jon may fight writing, but he takes the time to work through the ins and outs of a 3D printer, and he’s been practicing his Spanish diligently for a class—he knows he won’t remember vocabulary without taking time to review it. I guess I’m learning that I need to plan more intentionally to come up with better ways to get to the kind of work I’m called to, rather than just rushing from one to-do to the next. I’m slowly learning this.

Meanwhile, in a couple weeks I should have more to say.

1

I’ve appreciated insights from Josh Brake at The Absent-Minded Professor, and Alan Noble. Ted Gioia has a lot of thoughts in this area, too, along with illustrators from SVS Learn.

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Promo news!

This week my publisher, Bandersnatch Books, is celebrating their 5^th anniversary. They’ve got a week of fun contests and giveaways happening, and today a bunch of their books are 25% off when you include the code “ANNIVERSARY”. Just today (9/17), though, so if you want something, hop on over to Bandersnatchbooks.com. I highly recommend one particular trilogy—oh wait…. Seriously, Bandersnatch is publishing some great stuff. And not only is the content written and drawn by humans, but the physical books are wonderful quality. I’m proud that I get to play a small part for their team.

In other writing news, my previous post received a boost when The Story Warren asked if they could repost it on their site. I’ve always loved this site, created by S. D. Smith, for “allies in imagination,” but I could never think of a topic to submit. You can see that post here. A few days later, my sister let me know that long-time blogger and pastor, Tim Challies, had included a link to my piece in his weekly roundup. Talk about an extra-special encouragement! I love it when God gives unexpected gifts like these.

Thanks for reading Sun Shafts! This post is public so feel free to share it.

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The Daughter of Arden Trilogy

Check out Daughter of Arden at Bandersnatchbooks.com, along with other great titles.

You can find links to more of my writing at A Shaft of Sun Through the Rain and my old blog, Willing, Wanting, Waiting.

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That moment is the one my parents always pointed back to to demonstrate my hatred for change. I don’t know if I leaned into it and made it an aspect of my identity, or if it was just a vivid visual example of parts of my existing personality. Whatever the case I’ve known change for a long time and sometimes I want to throw a tantrum about it, and sometimes I am happy to see it come. The one thing I know for sure is that change is inevitable. I also know that I can’t have a meltdown every time it happens. This isn’t just because tantrums are obnoxious for everyone in their vicinity, but also because it’s impossible to live life if everything grinds to a dramatic halt whenever change happens.

We have begun a new school year, and once again we are in the midst of change. Last weekend we settled our second daughter on campus, and on Monday our eldest returned there. In some ways, this is a minimal change for us. Both girls are attending LeTourneau University where Kraig teaches, and it’s twenty minutes from home, so we see them regularly (I’m even taking an Elementary Hebrew class with our eldest this fall!). Our situation is not like Kraig’s brother’s family who drove down from Michigan last week to bring their eldest to LeTU for his first year of college—this is a huge change for them in many ways, and it’s going to take a lot of adjustment. However this is still a significant change for us—both of our girls are away now, and suddenly our house feels much emptier. Last night I set dinner for Kraig, Jon, and I at the small table in our kitchen because the dining room table looked too big. I put comforters on the girls’ deserted beds just to give the room a little life, but that doesn’t help the bare look with all their bits and pieces missing. Perhaps the shift seems more dramatic because we had a few days of a full house with extended family here, but it is still a shift, and we’ll have to adjust.

I think I manage a lot of change nowadays by mentally separating myself from the emotions that change stirs up. It helps to know that change is the cause of my welling eyes, the knots in my stomach, and my aching head. Once I know what the trigger is for these symptoms, I can manage the effects better. This has been true for me with trips I take. I know now that the leaden feeling in my stomach in the days leading up to a trip is the fact that I am going to transfer from point A to point B, and I don’t know how that change will play out. I still feel the emotion and the stress, but I can move forward because I recognize it for what it is, and can set it to the side as I prepare. Also, after years of experiencing this, I also know that there will come a time when the shift will have finished and I’ll have adjusted to the “new normal.”

Sometimes the new thing is beautiful. In nature I love watching the seasons shift—even the subtle season changes here in East Texas are worth watching for and experiencing as they come. A few years ago we experienced a major change when we remodeled our kitchen, and I’ve never regretted that. In our family, I love to see how my kids are growing and who God is forming them into. I enjoy seeing what we’ve learned together, and what new things are opening before us. I’m thankful for the big changes I’ve experienced, like living in the Philippines from the time I was five to nine, or our family’s two years in Mexico before we came to Texas. Those changes were hard, but they also opened new beauties and experiences to us that we would never have known if we hadn’t gone through the change. Even the horrible change of death—the death of our daughter Keren, and more recently Kraig’s folks—those awful changes have given way to new spaces we didn’t know before, and ways to share in the lives of others who have gone through that kind of pain and change.

The other day I read the words to the old hymn “Abide with Me” and the second stanza rang out with a needed reminder:

Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day;
Earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away;
Change and decay in all around I see;
O thou who changest not, abide with me.

God is outside of time; he is outside of my timeline that is only change—it’s impossible for me to live, to even move, without change occurring. But God doesn’t change. He is the constant in my ever-shifting world, and really, when it comes down to it, the only reason I can accept change is because I know that he abides with me in the midst of it.

I’m writing this to encourage any of you who grapple with change, but I am also writing this for me, because I think I’ll need a lifetime of change before I grasp this truth. In fact, I doubt I’ll really see the whole beauty of it until I am face to face with he who does not change.

*in· ex· o· ra· ble (i-ˈnek-sə-rə-bəl ); adjective: not to be persuaded, moved, or stopped: RELENTLESS

Art for the week:

The girls got these pieces up on the wall of their room the week before they moved out. Both of them contributed to the big piece on the left, and Ev created the two on the right.

Check out Daughter of Arden at Bandersnatchbooks.com, along with other great titles.

You can find links to more of my writing at A Shaft of Sun Through the Rain and my old blog, Willing, Wanting, Waiting.

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Last week I hopped on a plane and flew to Michigan where I joined up with my sister Carrie to help represent Bandersnatch Books at the Realm Makers Conference Expo. I’ve been flying on planes since I was little—our family jetted to the other side of the world when I was five, and there have been plenty of flights since. As a child, I loved to fly, and I took the airplane rides completely for granted. I had no concerns about their airworthiness. The older I’ve gotten, though, the more I have to shut off part of my brain each time I enter an airplane, particularly at takeoff. On Monday evening, as my last flight rose into the air, I couldn’t help but think how absolutely surreal it was that this metal tube^⁠1 could lift off the ground. This particular plane was a smaller one, and it didn’t seem like we were going nearly fast enough when the nose rose and the body followed—smoothly, effortlessly, soaring like a bird. As we rose, the phrase “suspension of disbelief” floated into my mind, and I almost laughed out loud. I was literally suspended, but I was fighting to believe it.

I first learned this phrase, “suspension of disbelief,” when I was student teaching and my mentor teacher explained the concept as the students prepped to read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I remember I took notes right along with the students, navigating this new idea (to me) that there were stories that we could fall into and accept because the author had given us a way to believe something that in our “real” world is impossible. When I read Frankenstein, for instance, I don’t wrangle with the impossibility of Victor Frankenstein cobbling together a man from dead pieces of humans, and then bringing the spark of life to his creation. The story carries me along with it, and within its frame, Frankenstein’s tragic monster is completely acceptable. I can suspend—pause—my disbelief, and as a result, the truth of the story comes through.

“Suspension of disbelief” is key to speculative fiction. In a fantasy or science fiction story, if the literary world one sets before the reader has too may holes, or pieces of the story stretch disbelief too far, the reader crashes down, back into our own world, and any hope the author had of carrying the reader to a new place is lost. Jonathan Rogers of The Habit often says, “In the world that God made,” and then talks about how we can stretch reality only so far. C. S. Lewis wrote of a world where the seas are copper-colored, the lands are jewel tones, and fibrous islands ride the waves (Perelandra), and the Lady of the world is emerald green. It’s a world that takes me by the hand and comes alive with its bubble trees and bread-like fruit. I have no trouble accepting it. If he had then tried to convince me, though, that it would be perfectly fine for the Green Lady to sleep on the Fixed Land, something Maleldil had forbidden, the story would have deconstructed, just like our world did when Eve believed the serpent who told her God really didn’t mind if she ate the forbidden fruit. Some boundaries can’t be crossed without suspension of disbelief crashing and burning.

I spent the weekend in the real world, chatting with real people about fantastical realms—places that can only be dreamed up in the imagination of humans. For some, fantasy is their choice of story, whether tales of descendants of the Little Mermaid, or warrior dwarfs suffering PTSD who find restoration working in a garden. Others take on science fiction and weave tales where AI has become the norm, or being a Christian is safe so long as one stays in certain communities, or people convince themselves they are safe from the dark so long as they keep everything light. Each of these stories include aspects that aren’t part of our world as we know it, but they deal with concepts and truth we can all relate to. The trick is for them to build a strong enough world internal to the story so that any disbelief is forgotten. Sometimes the truth can only come through stories like these, and it’s one reason why fantasy and sci fi are important as genres.

The other reason they’re important is because, as Tolkien speaks of in his essay “On Fairy Stories,” they offer escape—not escape from reality, but escape to reality, escape from prison. Good stories will open the door for us and either give us the strength we need to deal with hard things in our lives, or give us new eyes to see the beauty and wonder of the world God made. One of Bandersnatch Books titles, Above, Not Up, by Mark Forrester, tells of an average teenage boy who meets a being from the fourth dimension who opens up the wonder of our world to him—things we can see, and things we can’t see that actually exist. It is a wonder that we live is such a world, a world where humans have discovered and created so many marvelous things, including metal tubes that lift into the air like birds and bring us safely home again. I know some of the logistics of this fantastical process, but who am I kidding—I can’t grasp the reality of it! I have to willingly suspend my disbelief, trust the builders and the pilots, and most of all, trust God.

¹ N. D. Wilson was the first author who I first heard use this description of airplanes. He’s gifted at getting people to see the wonder of our world. This bio gives a taste.

Art for the week:

I had an excellent view of one of God’s pieces of artwork—my mediocre video captures a taste of it. Watch closely!

Check out Daughter of Arden at Bandersnatchbooks.com, along with other great titles.

You can find links to more of my writing at A Shaft of Sun Through the Rain and my old blog, Willing, Wanting, Waiting.

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Last Tuesday, July 1, Kraig and I celebrated our thirtieth anniversary. Of course “celebrated” is a bit misleading as we spent the day sorting things at his folks’ home and packing a trailer with his brother so our two families could get back to Texas and Oklahoma with everything we were taking. We did have a bit of a celebration on Monday the 30^th—we took our kids to downtown Detroit where we haven’t been for years and gave them a taste of the riverfront, the buildings, and, in particular, PizzaPapalis, a Chicago-style pizza chain found in Detroit and only a few other towns around there. The girls agreed that Detroit, even at its finest (from Kraig and my perspective), made a pretty good setting for a dystopian novel. On the other hand, Jon loved it—the buildings, the cars, the metalwork…. It was a lovely afternoon.

But Tuesday was more of our normal kind of wedding celebration. We seem to have made an art of not celebrating the way many couples I know celebrate. Big trip? Weekend away? Ha! That’s for typical people. We go the extra mile to be strange. Here are a few examples of our unique celebrations:

• 2000—5^th anniversary—Can’t remember anything except we were probably prepping for my sister’s September wedding.

• 2005—10^th anniversary—Daughter Clare’s birth imminent, so we weren’t going anywhere!

• 2010—15^th anniversary—New roof needed, and I selected our new shingle color.

• 2015—20^th anniversary—We were in Mexico that year, but had to come home during the summer due to our visa status. Some people go to exotic international locations for their anniversary. We left the exotic and came to Canton, Michigan.

• 2020—25^th anniversary—Need I say more? This was the year my parents celebrated their 50^th, and my sister and brother-in-law celebrated their 20^th. My parents had prepped and planned for a number of years so our whole family could go on a cruise to the Baltic. We did get to go on a Caribbean cruise with the family in 2022, but the Baltic is still a dream.

• 2025—30^th anniversary—Here were are! Just practicing our normal.

I suppose one could look at this list as a tragedy, but I hope you don’t. It’s become a story for us, and a humorous one. More than that, it’s a reflection of life together—thirty years together! I can’t help but wonder what monumental events we’ll pull off for future big dates. Maybe we’ll be like my parents who spent their 55^th anniversary on June 27 driving from Pennsylvania to Michigan so they could join all of us for the memorial service.

One of my jobs during our two weeks in Michigan was to sort through family photos, and it wasn’t an accident that on Tuesday I found snapshots from our wedding. There were so many photos of the family; we were a good bit younger and prettier, but we’re still here, and there are many more of us now, too. And those of us who have gone on, like Mom and Dad Warnemuende, are there smiling with all of us, a beautiful memory, and a hope for the future.

Nope, I can’t complain. Kraig and I took each other for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, thirty years ago. We’ve seen those vows played out in our own marriage, and we know we aren’t done with them yet. We’ve seen those vows played out in both our parents’ marriages, an unusual picture these days that we take less for granted the older we get. We’ve seen those vows fractured and broken in our extended family, making us value them all the more. Our kids are watching us—they see us at our best and our worst—and hopefully, we pray, we’re giving them a tiny glimpse of what being united in Christ means. We’re definitely still on the learning curve ourselves. Here’s to another 30 years to keep learning!

Art for the week:

Monday a week ago my short story, “The Gift of the Capuchin Thief,” released on The Habit Portfolio Substack. Those of you who have read my Daughter of Arden trilogy will recognize one of the characters in this story. I had a lot of fun writing it!

The Habit Portfolio

The Gift of the Capuchin Thief

If the little capuchin monkey hadn’t stolen four-year-old Bhadra’s gold coin, Apelles might never have learned to read the Holy Words…

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a year ago · 10 likes · Loren Warnemuende

In other news:

I was pretty excited when my sister let me know the other week that my trilogy had a lovely review in WORLD magazine—talk about a confidence booster! You can read the review here.

Next week I’m flying back to Michigan (can’t keep away this summer!) to join my sister Carrie and another Bandersnatch Books author, Matt Mellema, to help man the Bandersnatch Books booth at the Realm Makers Expo in Grand Rapids, Michigan. If you’re in the area and you love to find new speculative fiction authors, not to mention games, media, art, etc., come on by! You can find tickets here.

Check out Daughter of Arden at Bandersnatchbooks.com, along with other great titles.

You can find links to more of my writing at A Shaft of Sun Through the Rain and my old blog, Willing, Wanting, Waiting.

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