Yesterday, I ran a giveaway/launch for my children’s book, Prodigal Fox. Here are a few thoughts about the making of the book.
Off-putting Origins
I’ve never considered myself a writer. Ironic, right? Here you are reading words that I assembled into sentences and paragraphs. Isn’t that the labor of a writer? I was required as a student to journal. Every. Single. Day. I didn’t consider that my rural upbringing provided much in the way of interest, and I recall many a journal entry that read something like this:
“I did school. I ate breakfast. I worked in the garden. I played basketball.”
There may have been a few entries that were more exotic, but they were scattered at best.
I did make a couple of ventures into poetry, especially as a child. My most renowned verse began:
“I love the Lord in His house,
But I just don’t love a mouse.”
You can probably quote the rest.
In college, English majors seemed to be a mysterious and clannish lot. They wandered about campus reading poetry and drinking coffee or, more likely, tea in quiet corners (which now sounds amazing and idyllic!). If you approached one with conversation, they would probably reply in some verbiage that was incomprehensible to normal Americans.
English majors had set up walls around the library with bio metric security systems to prevent breaching by those of us who did not appreciate the rich beauty of language.
So the act of writing was relegated in my mind and heart to homework and the occasional letter or email. Which was exactly where I wanted it. I wasn’t a writer. I was an artist. I worked in oil paint and ink and soft pastels and photographs and clay and wood and fabric and bread dough.
But, deep in the recesses of my soul, I was also a reader. As far back as I can remember, I was hiding books under the covers, long past when I was supposed to be asleep. There are authors that I feel are some of my dearest friends, though we’ve never met. And readers seem to inevitably move toward the origins of reading: writing.
Well-practiced Practice
Fast forward with me a wedding, four moves, two renovated houses, and five kids, please. I’m a firm believer that our kids do the things they see their parents do, and I wanted my kids to learn to write. I’m also a firm believer in practice. I’ve said to many people, many times that I’m terrible at watercolor. But I’m quite certain that if I painted with watercolor for 20 minutes every day for the next year, I could produce some decent paintings. One time, I wanted to make better handmade pasta. So I stopped buying dried pasta for six months! It was horrible! Every time we wanted spaghetti for dinner (which was frequently!), I had to pull out flour, eggs, water, salt, knead stiff pasta dough, roll it, cut it! It was a huge process for a dinner that had always been absolute simplicity. It was also amazing!
Handmade pasta will be served in the Italian quarter at the marriage feast of the Lamb. No doubts.
At the beginning of 2018, I made a determination that I wanted to practice writing. I had no goals other than to practice writing. My heart had been through a lot in the past year, and I wanted to see what Jesus might grow out of those seeds. Every day, I made it a point to put a pen to paper and form some kind of words. Prayers, song lyrics, prose, whatever.
In the spring, I had told a funny little bedtime story to our four-nado who was very much walking to beat of his own drum. He loved and hated it! The little fox goes through quite a few trials in his determination that he knows what is best, and must learn the hard way that maybe the old way of doing things has merit. My own little fox would ask me to tell the tale to him again and again.
Then came the day (or days) when I determined to write it down. I had told the story many times, but the writing of it! I agonized over words and phrases and how does this sound? I read it aloud in every accent and voice I could think of! Refining and reducing and reworking and remaking. Adjective after adjective, it became a “real” story.
Author and Perfector
I think that’s what God does in our lives. The Author and Perfector takes our raw, untamed selves and cleans us with a scouring brush! When it feels like every person around us has a blade in hand and each in turn removes a piece of our soul, when we lay bleeding and broken and crying and the hand-planes come to remove more layers or us, it feels like destruction. Angry grit of sandpaper takes pass after pass, turning what was whole into dust within our very beings. It feels like the people and circumstances around us are doing this awful work.
But I know better!
This shaping and humbling is not from people’s hands.
This is the work of the Carpenter,
the Author of all Creation, removing unnecessary words and phrases, scratching out lines that don’t belong, editing our beings of sin and making us into a work of pure beauty. We have no idea what He is making or why the pieces He has removed had to go, but He. Is. The. Master!! King and God! Mighty Savior.