Waiting for Wisdom

Those are good words for me as I think about my week--the first full one with all of my kids back in school. I did spend a lot of time with my manuscript (oh, how I've missed it), making little changes, adding depth to scenes, trying to cut words.

I'm still stuck on the first three chapters. I've been stuck on them forever, it seems. These have been my most critiqued, with two Genesis, and one First Impressions entries, and the critique has been good. Worth the money, nerves, and false hope? I don't know yet. There is a learning curve with entering contests. It still creates a lot of unnecessary stress for me.

But I do know it has been good for my story to edit it with the voice of one of the judges in my brain: "Your character seems like she is just being carried along."

I was defensive about it at first. "That's kind of the point," I said out loud as I read the critique. But six months later, a freelancer who offered to edit a chapter for free made an almost identical comment. That's what it took for me to see the truth in it. That's how long I had to wait for wisdom.

Once I had that sweet nugget of wisdom, I got to work. Again. I revised the first three chapters for the umpteenth time (I literally have no idea how many times I've revised it). Instead of my character getting yanked around by oppressive forces without voicing her thoughts about any of it, I've revised those early pages to show how she longs to be loved. That's the driving force of the next 60,000 words. Now it's built into the beginning. Such an improvement! Why haven't I seen it until now?

Four years ago when I typed "Chapter One" my character was little more than a scared child, watching events unfold. Then she became a bumbling klutz, incompetent at household chores (some elements of that I have kept for the sake of the story). For a time she lacked maternal instincts, resenting her role as care-taker of young siblings, I but revised that too, making her joy and her consolation her presence in her siblings' lives.

When I think about who she was four years ago compared to who she is now, I realize that I have simply been getting to know her. She has revealed herself to me over these years, often through others' critique.


It was they who showed me she was flat, cliche, and unlikable. Now she's full-bodied and real. Her longings are clear and consistent. They make sense. It's not just about the story anymore. It's about this flesh and blood person who lives in the story. It has taken this long for me to get here.



I'm convinced it could not have come any quicker. I'm too slow to learn from critique. My imagination needs time to receive it, to think on it, meditate, make connections, and to build layer upon layer.

So for the rest of wisdom, I will wait, and I will continue to work, to revise, and to submit for critique. Because, like Calvin, I can ascribe nothing to myself.

Why I Write: Young Adult

Continuing my summer series on Why I Write.

Last week I explained Why I Write: Fiction.

Today I'll tell you Why I Write: Young Adult (or YA). I didn't intend to write YA when I began. I was reading a lot of Francine Rivers and Deanne Gist back then, and beginners emulate. It's the way of many creative pursuits.

Well into my first draft I began to have some doubts. Was my character too young? Were her problems too juvenile? Were her friends too immature? Near the halfway point, I had a sudden, liberating realization: I was actually writing YA.

This freed me in many ways, and excited me. I have always loved YA. My favorite course in college was Dr. Shively's YA Lit class, where I was reintroduced to brilliant authors like Lois Lowry, Chris Crutcher, S.E. Hinton, Sandra Sisneros, Harper Lee, and L.M Montgomery. I had read their books as a kid, but now, studying them as an adult, their work became something new, fascinating, and wonderful to me.

They speak a different literary language. They're frank, bold, and unapologetically serious about problems that plague young adults.

They don't shy away from topics, or water things down. I love that. They don't talk down to their audience, or assume their young readers need words, sentences, issues, or stories simplified. They respect their audience, and the stage of life their audience is in.

Young readers need that. I needed that.

I was such a confused, love-sick, angst-filled young reader myself. I know this because I left a paper trail of all my confusion and heartache. I desperately needed to know I was not alone. I needed to know God was still real, and he was still near; still active and working in my life and in the world.

It was a time of questioning, and doubting, and seeking answers in the wrong place, and being so darn sure about every single thing I decided was true. It was a time of rebellion, of taking risks, of making mistakes. It was when I realized how important friendship was, and now that I'm an adult, I see how important my choice of friends was.

Most tragically, it was a time when I was obsessed with trying to figure out what would make me happy. The world was constantly shoving down my youthful throat that my happiness was all that mattered. Not my parents, not my future, and certainly not God.

"Do whatever makes you happy," is Satan's battle cry. It's an insidious command that leads to irreparably broken relationships. Young adults are so dangerously susceptible to it. Even faithful young adults.

That's why I write YA.

This question of personal happiness is my character's biggest struggle. It's why she teeters on the edge of a family that expects her to obey, and why she might miss out on sharing in their great destiny on the Mayflower. She believes obedience will lead to a life of misery, and she has an opportunity to leave her family and seek her own happiness. Will she take it? Will her desire for what she thinks will make her happy win in the end? What will become of her if she chooses happiness over duty, sacrifice, and perseverance?

Readers, even young readers, who have much to learn about consequences know the answers. They know her desire for happiness will lead her down a dark path, even though they may despise her father for saying it. They still know.

It's different to see this play out in someone else's life rather than one's own. An observer can see more clearly, with less emotion.

Readers will (I hope) yearn for her to choose obedience, to see her make the treacherous ocean crossing with her family, and watch her persevere with the rest of them in the New World.

And my earnest, constant prayer, is that readers will be encouraged by this story, so that when the time comes for them to choose obedience or happiness, they will be ready, strengthened, and buoyed. Capable of seeing the grand scheme, the next step, the joy to be had in a life of steady perseverance.

Why I Write: Fiction

This is the second installment in my summer series: Why I Write. Today I'll tell you why I write made-up stories about made-up people with made-up problems.

I wrote about the Power of a Story for my other blog, Quills and Inkblotts. The purpose of this piece today isn't to argue the merits of fiction. Rather, to explain why I choose to write it, or more accurately, why I need to write it.

I love conversation. Not idle chit-chat. I hate that. If small-talk were a sport, I'd be the last one picked for the team. Give me an interesting topic (and an interested listener) and I'll win the Olympics of conversation. But, put me in a room with doughnut holes and coffee and five minutes until church starts, and I turn into Socially Awkward Penguin.

Then Facebook was invented. It's a blessing and a curse, isn't it? I've had some great conversations there. I can respond at my leisure, after thinking about what I want to say. I can read over my words a couple times to make sure my meaning is clear (and my typos are fixed). In this way, it's a great tool for the socially awkward to engage in meaningful conversation.

Until it isn't.

A few months ago I came across a wonderful, thought-provoking article on the Magna Carta in the Wall Street Journal. You can read it if you want to (please do!). Turns out, last summer was its 800th anniversary--who knew?

I thought about that article all day, the implication of the document on me as an American, as a descendant of Anglo-Europeans, who are so often thought of as the oppressors by modern...let's say "intellectuals," and how that thinking came about over the last hundred years or so.

I shared the link to the article on Facebook, but not until after carefully planning what I would say about it. I didn't want to come across as a snobbish know-it-all. I genuinely wanted my little Facebook community to be as intrigued as I was by it, to read it, to form their own thoughts, and to have a conversation about it. Of course, no one did. It turns out people have lives!

Having a constantly churning mind and no one to share its ruminations with can be lonely and stifling.

Enjolras had his men of the ABC Society.

William Wilberforce had the Claphamites.

Hannah More had her Bluestocking Group.

I need an outlet too, a more reliable source of conversation than fickle Facebook. So I write fiction. I hold conversations with myself about the beauty of the Pilgrims, about their faith, about God's faithfulness to them, about what it's like to grow up with a father who doesn't easily show love, about being a girl in a patriarchal society, about love, about grief, about friendship, about having faith in a God who feels very far away.

And the voices in my head do answer. They have comebacks I would never have the guts to say. Sometimes they scream and cry. Sometimes they laugh and enjoy each other's company. Sometimes they fall in love.

Sometimes I don't know what I know, or how I feel until the voices have had their say. In some ways it's better than engaging real life people who grow bored, or get offended, or misbehave. The voices are enough. They do more than sustain me--they energize me. They keep me sharp, focused, interested in many things. They demand knowledge gained by research, and excellence gained by revision.

When no one in real life cares about the Magna Carta, or King James, or religious persecution in the 17th Century, or Reformation theology, or being a lovesick teenage girl, the voices do. They care because these things are their fictional lives.

These things are my life. Because I need to have these conversations. Because I write fiction.

"For I am full of words; the spirit within me constrains me. Behold my belly is like wine that has no vent; like new wineskins ready to burst. I must speak, that I may find relief."

Job 33:18-20

The Value of Keeping a Journal

Thinking today about the importance of telling my own story as it's happening, instead of retroactively. There's something useful about that, I think. Not knowing how the story will end, but telling it anyway.

I've been a nearly lifelong journaler, though not with any sort of rigorous discipline. I do it when I feel like it. Sometimes I write two days in a row. Sometimes a week goes by. Sometimes a year. Somehow I've managed to fill several volumes over the years. These are the ones I've managed to preserve.

In the green box at the top of the heap are my earliest scratchings when I was an angst-filled, love-starved teenager. I didn't have a fancy book with a built-in ribbon bookmark back then. It was simply lined paper ripped from a spiral notebook in which I also did homework, folded up, and tucked away some place where no one would find it.

I don't know how they survived intact and unread all these years, but I found them this morning, stuffed in a storage bin in my closet, the breathings of my 17 year old heart, and I read them for the first time in nearly 20 years. When I plucked a random folded paper from the box, unfolded it, read my old bubbly script, tried to recall my world, my circumstances, and my heart, I cringed, as you might imagine.

It was painful to see how confused I was about the world, how obsessed I was with trying to figure out what would make me happiest, and especially, how far I was from God.

I was headed down what, I am confident now in saying, was a path to destruction. I was dating a boy I had no business going out with, probably as an act of rebellion against my parents, who I was sure were disappointed in me, and who, I frequently admitted in my writing, had no reason to be proud of me. It was also a rebellion against my sister, who had been doing things right, and was about to be married to a wonderful man.

I suppose you could call it a self-fulfilling prophecy. A head-first dive into a whirlpool in which I would be sucked voluntarily into a downward spiral. My shame in my poor decisions was compounded by each deliberate step I took down that path. And when shame doesn't result in repentance, it turns into something altogether different: contempt, anger, haughtiness, and pride.

I wrote many rambling pages before and during my relationship with this boy, justifying, rationalizing, and explaining why it was okay. Despite the youthful bluster, there is a sadness in my writing. A reigning cluelessness, a desperation to avoid pain and regret.

I spent a lot of time thinking (I had forgotten this) about moving out of my parents' house before I graduated. I had a job, after all (in 1997 minimum wage was about $5.15 an hour). And the people I had been hanging around--the family of this boy--were my picture of what this life looked like, which, in a word, was poverty.

But I didn't care. I wanted to be independent. I wanted to be away from my parents. I didn't see it at the time, but now I recognize that what I really desired was to be done feeling ashamed, which I felt every time they looked at me, or tried to talk to me.

That was a powerful longing, but there was a still more powerful being at work in me, and I didn't even know it.

I broke up with the boy before summer was over, though I feared he would probably never talk to me again (he didn't). I wrote on one of these folded up papers, "I don't know what changed. I just see things differently now."

That chapter ended--just like that. The page was turned and a new chapter began. Within a year I would be far away from that town and that life, studying for a teaching degree, and reconciled to my parents. I didn't pull myself out of that pit by my own maturity, wisdom, clarity, or strength. I had none of that. I was dragged out by my collar with a mighty hand, unwitting and unwilling, by a God who had already ordained my eventual salvation.

It would be another 6 years, a college education, a husband, a teaching position, and a child, before I would be converted. But the work was begun during that awful time of rebellion. My journaling revealed that to me.

God saved me by his restraining grace and I didn't even want it at the time. He took me off that path of destruction and set me on a path that will ultimately culminate in righteousness, and I can take no credit for it.

How I thanked him this morning when I read those cringe-inducing words of my youth. How grateful I am that he prompted me to write them down, even while I was in the pit, with no desire to get out of it, so that I could, 20 years later, sit on the floor of my closet, with tears in my eyes, praising him for the good work he began in me so long ago.

That's why I spend my days writing and editing a fictional story for young adults. It's why my heroine is 17 years old, why her heart churns with the same dangerous concoction of pride and shame that mine did so many years ago. It's why she teeters on the edge of a family that expects more of her, and comes dangerously close to missing out on sharing their great destiny.

This story is my witness to the world, in the way I know best how to communicate. It's my testimony to the faithfulness of God, my response to his saving grace.

Where would I be if he hadn't pulled me from that path of destruction?

Where would any of us be?

What's your story?

How are you sharing it?

Inspiration has struck!

Did you know that the Pilgrims spent nearly 10 years in Holland before coming to America?  They left England not with the original intent of laying the foundation of the greatest nation to ever grace this broken earth.  They just wanted to get out from under the corruption of the Church of England and escape the persecution they faced for resisting its authority.  Not very romantic, is it?

I'm not sure why they picked Holland.  Maybe the politics of the region led them to believe they'd be left alone there.  Maybe someone had family there.

I want to share a paragraph that I read in a book about the early days of American history that just fascinates me.  This came from a letter written by William Bradford, a man who, though not the pastor of the congregation, had been with them from the beginning and was always considered a leader among them.  These are his reasons for giving up on Holland by the time 1620 rolled around:

"1. Their life (though they never complained of it) was so hard that almost no others were coming from England to join them..., 2. Their life was aging them prematurely (everyone old enough to hold a job worked 12 to 15 hours a day), and was so debilitating them that, should the time come when they would have to move again, they might not physically be able to do so, 3. Their children were also being worn down, and many were being drawn away by the lures of the world around them, 4. They had cherished a 'great hope and inward zeal' of at least playing a part, if as only a stepping stone for others, in the carrying forth of the Light of Christ to remote parts of the world."

Can you guess which sentence in the paragraph above sparked an idea for a new story?  Ok, ok, I'll just tell you.  It's sentence number 3 about their children.  I read that and thought to myself, "Aha!  They were humans like us!  They had the same challenges in raising their kids to love God--just like us!" 

I forget this when my kids bring home worksheets every Thanksgiving with silly-looking Pilgrims donning huge black hats and shaking hands with Squanto.  They bury the fish with the corn kernels and the next thing you know, it's time to eat!  Happy Thanksg-er, uh, Happy Turkey Day!

The Pilgrims become cartoon characters to us, ceasing to be real. But if you dig around through history, you'll find that they were, in fact very real.  Both in their superhero-like abilities to deal with hardship, and in their weaknesses, of which they had in abundance too. 

This is what makes a story really great, I think.  I don't need my hero or heroine to be so pure and flawless that his/her perfection is completely unattainable and thereby unrelatable.  In the same way, I want my villain to have some redeeming qualities because we ALL have a little bit of darkness in us, right?   

To think of the Pilgrims, or any other historical figures as any less complex than that is to misunderstand history.  And to miss out on a great story.

So, inspiration has struck.  I'm living in the world of 17th Century Holland, at least in my mind.  And when you're a teenage girl who has lived a brutally challenging life and you finally get a taste of freedom, who is the villain?  Why it's your parents, of course, who want you to stay the course of a faithful life of servitude and sacrifice.  Or maybe...it's the hunky guy who calls himself a Christian but who only lives for himself and diminishes your parents and their crazy notion to go to the New World.

Will she she make the choice in the end that honors God?  Will she end up on the Mayflower with her family?  I can't even say for sure because the characters and the plot tend to take on a life of their own as they develop in my mind.  But one thing I DO know.  They will be human.  They will breath life into a group of people that seem plastic and cartoonish even to those of us today who know our American history.

As a Christian and an American who has benefited in so many ways from the toil and sacrifice of these 102 brave souls who left such a giant thumbprint on the world, it's the least I can do.

Choosing to read (and write) about things that matter

So, I had the sudden crazy thought a few weeks ago as I was contemplating my story, that it is really well-suited for the young adult reader.  That happens to be one of my favorite genres of literature.  Not because I'm too shallow for the grown-up stuff, but because I am fascinated by the process of self-discovery and life change that happens at that age. 

For some inexplicable reason, I have a heart to reach the young with the message of grace.  I find myself repeatedly telling my group of kids on Sunday mornings that we all have a choice to make.  "Oh, that you would choose life!" (Deuteronomy 30:19)  It seems simple, I tell them, when you are young, and your moms and dads bring you to church every week, and following directions is just...what you do when you're 7 or 8. 

But one day, I say, you are going to be a teenager and things are going to get really complicated.  Right and wrong will become blurred.  Your friends will go different ways and you will question the things that your parents have always taught you.  Truth will be elusive.  But, I always tell them, God will never EVER be surprised by anything you choose to do.  Even if you mess up really bad.  He'll always be waiting for you to come back to Him and that is something you can always count on.

I will never get tired of telling kids that.

So, thinking about my story, I began to wonder...what are teens reading these days?  What makes a marketable work of young adult fiction?

That's why I picked up a random book on the teen fiction counter at Barnes and Noble yesterday that had an interesting cover.  I won't give away the author because 1-I don't want to poke fun at him personally, and 2-I don't want to peak anyone's curiosity enough to actually pick it up and read it.

It's not that it wasn't good.  It was!  Well, save for the writer's voice which was clearly an adult trying to sound like a teen.  "'Hey, watch it, man,' my friend was like."  That's just a sample of the dialoge in the first couple of pages.  Yuck.  Other than that, it really was good.  Like all good writers, this one had an uncanny ability to take an ordinary experience, i.e. talking about things when you're depressed, and describing it in a way that is fresh and unusual, yet totally relatable.  "Your words come out like ice that's been ground up in the ice-crushing thing in the refrigerator."  (I'm paraphrasing here.) 

That's what writing fiction is, really, I think.  Taking a character who is extraordinary in some way: determined, brave, frightened or strengthened by what's happening around them, quirky, gifted, troubled, insane, etc. and making them seem human so that anyone can learn from their experience. 

But then I read a page further while I stood in the middle of the store and found out that this 16 year old boy is sitting in a bedroom with his friends who are passing a joint around.  Ummm....what?  This is young adult lit??  Shake it off and keep reading, Robin.  He passes the joint on without smoking.  Oh good.  Wait.  He's doing an experiment to see if his depression is brought on by the pot.  But sometimes he smokes a lot of it at once to see what happens to him then.  Great. 

What is this book about anyway?  I flip it over and read the plot summary on the back cover.  This boy eventually finds himself in the psych ward of a hospital.  This is a story of his time there and the friends he meets, inluding one transgender person who is addicted to sex.

I set the book down, thinking it was a little too adult even for me.  I'm struggling in my own story with whether or not to edit some of the kissing scenes--there are three, which are never gratuitous, by the way.  They are strategically included as tools to shape the character and reveal her motivations, her weakness, her self-doubts, her triumphs, and her joys, and to make her real, which all help to advance the story.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for truth being told in literature, movies, and other art forms.  I don't mind gritty, explicit subject matter as long as it's there to reveal a truth about something bigger.  As long as it is redeemed in the end. 

Maybe I'm just not giving this book I found at B and N enough of a chance but my instinct tells me that there will be no redemption in the end.  I think it will just be some writer, albeit a good one, telling a raunchy, sordid tale of teen angst where the "hero" (I use that term loosely) learns that life is all about him and whatever feels good in the moment.

What irritates me so much is that it really is good writing.  Which means that there is a thoughtful, intelligent, articulate, human being punching letters into a computer that tell a story in a skillful way.  I'm sure he's much more talented than I am.  But he's using his talent to perpetuate a lazy truth that popculture has already filled our minds with again and again and again.  Since the beginning time, really.

Maybe my story isn't marketable at all.  Maybe my writing isn't good enough to get within reach of a publisher.  It's alright, I'm not sitting here kidding myself.  I do think I have an appropriate amount of humility.  I mean, I'm trying, aren't I?  I just really, really wish that the more talented thinkers, creators, writers, and artists out there, whose work gets produced, published, watched, read, and beloved by audiences were telling a truth that matters.  A truth that we can always count on.

I actually pray that God would open my eyes and my mind to resources, and thoughts, and ideas that would make my writing better.  Not because I want to see my book on a B and N table (ok, that would nice, I admit).  But seriously, I'm not looking for any kind of accolades or praise, or anything like that.  Those are things people crave that don't matter in the grand scheme.  I just want my story to be heard by young girls who mistakenly think that one screw-up ruins everything.  Who mistakenly think that having comfort and security is the ultimate goal in life.  Who wonder why God made them and what they are supposed to do with their lives.  Girls who would be encouraged and uplifted by the story of a true heroine who learns these things for herself.

These are the things that matter.  Particulary to teens who are on the cusp of adulthood and figuring out life on their own terms.  Or am I just totally wrong?

No time to blog! Too busy writing!!!

I know all my adoring fans are just dying to know how the old novel is coming along....wait, er, well, one person asked.  Soooo, I'm just going to treat you all to a little summary of my progress so far.

Before I tell you anything else, I have to say that this has been a strange and wonderful mixture of completely terrifying and supremely pleasurable.  I once read that a writer should force him/herself to write at least a little bit every single day, "come hell or high water."  Even on the holidays.  No days off.  Thou shalt not rest on Sundays.  Sounded like a chore when I read that.  But when I really got going on my own story, I found that I couldn't bear to let a day go by that I wasn't adding to it.  I think it's probably safe to say that I've had my computer on and click-clacked away at it every day since November 6.  Even Thanksgiving when I packed my computer and hauled it down to Mom's.  I'm not joking.

In the roughly six weeks that have passed I have written approximately 60,000 words and 18 chapters in what will probably be about a 24 chapter book.  How have I found the time you ask?  What with my three young children, my work at church, occassional babysitting, and my house to take care of (I even threw in a little girl's slumber party during that time!)? 

For one thing I haven't watched a television show in its entirety since I began writing.  Not even Bill O'Reilly.  If you know me, you know that he has such a presence in our house that we refer to him as Uncle Bill (not to be confused with my real Uncle Bill).  But he comes on in one of those precious hours when the girls are in bed and I can WRITE!  So no Bill for me. 

Second, there is no idle brain time.  That means, if I can't write, I'm thinking on purpose about my story.  I have a notebook that is bursting with sticky notes, grocery lists that I have dug out of my purse, junk mail envelopes that I have written on, etc.  No matter where I am or what I'm doing, I'm thinking about my story and when something pops into my head, I jot it down and tuck it away for later.  If I'm home but not able to write, I'm reading a book about writing.  Or reading another work of fiction so that I can study what the author does that I like or don't like.

And if I can't do that?  Well, there are simply some hours of the day when I need to be wife and mom. I block off sections of my morning and evening when cooking or babysitting combines with laundry and dusting.  Amazingly, hubby has only run out of clean underwear once in the last 6 weeks.

Also amazingly, he has not written me off as a total nut job for spending hours with my mini HP on something that may just prove to be a fruitless endeavor.  I think he's secretly hoping that it's good enough that a publisher will want to buy it.

Is it good enough?  Um, I'm not sure.  Truthfully, I'm not sure.  It's kind of in the style of a Deanne Gist, although written more for the young reader.  It's not as good as, say, a Francine Rivers.  But it's waaaay better than a Karen Kingsbury.  But that's just my opinion.  I read "The Help" while I was in the midst of writing and practically despaired because I knew it was light years ahead of my skill level.  But I'm not giving up because that's just not what I do.  I actually used that experience to make my story better.  I added a scene that provided conflict and developed an antagonist from the beginning that now makes appearances throughout the story because I so enjoyed the tension between Miss Skeeter and her nemisis, Hilly Hollbrook.

My story is one of those classic romances where girl meets guy, girl falls for guy, and then, uh-oh, something happens that pulls them apart...will they get together in the end?  It's got all the good stuff too,  ya know, hearts pounding, lips meeting.  But it doesn't go too far.  As Drew Barrymore says in "The Wedding Singer," it's church-tongue!  ;)

There is guilt, love, danger, fist-fighting, self-doubt, being negatively influenced by a shallow friend, a longing to hear God's voice, grace, forgiveness, misunderstanding, loss, and realizing one's calling in life.  Who hasn't experienced those things?  Better yet, who doesn't want to experience those things vicariously through a herione that you are rooting for?  But maybe that's just me.  I love a good story.

But it's also one of those "inspiriational" types where God is practically a main character.  So if you're not into spiritual things, there will probably be lots of eye-rolling.  I just can't spend all this time on a story if the character doesn't figure life out without looking through the lense of scripture.  It's how I make sense of the world.  I teach a room full of kids every single week how to make sense of the world by looking at scripture.  So naturally, a character that comes right out of my imagination would too.

That's all for now.  I've just thought of something I want to change in the last little bit of dialogue I wrote.  Ah, dialogue.  I could write an entire blog just on what I've learned about dialogue!  It's not what you might think! 

So, until I get another few minutes when I'm not writing, working, reading, cooking, teaching, or caring for the chillin's, wish  me luck!  Say a prayer!  I'll keep you posted.

Living in the Dark

"I had never seen a spectacle that was so repulsive, yet so intriguing as that which I saw on a blistering hot afternoon in August of my 16^th year on this earth."

Not me, of course.  My 16th year was tragically dull and verifiably consumed with whatever it took to be "cool" in my little corner of the world.

These are the words of a girl whose life is much more exciting than mine.  If it wasn't, who would want to read about her?  I promised in my last blog, so.....this is the first sentence of my story.  Or a variation of it.  It will likely be revised about two dozen times as I get to know my girl.  But it will be something this.

And now you know a few things about her.  For one thing, you know that she has seen something unusual.  Something that has repulsed her and drawn her to it.  Ever seen anything like that?  Think car crash, video footage of a suicide jumper, those commercials for starving children.  She has seen something along those lines.  But I'm not telling what it is.  Maybe in another blog! 

You also know that she's 16.  Why 16?  Well, in her world a 16 year old would already have been married.  She is not so this puts her at a bit of a social disadvantage.  But I would say it puts her maturity level at about a 25 year old today.  I couldn't make her 25 because she would be middle-aged during a time when the average life expectancy was about 43.  Actually, it's probably younger due to disease but there are no records I can rely on to be sure.  There are very little records of what life was like in the Medieval world, or the Dark Ages, if you prefer.  Why this time in history for my story?  That's a very good question--I'm glad you asked!

I happened to be watching the History Channel one night and caught a documentary on life in the Dark Ages.  I remember the discussion of how it must have felt to see crumbling evidence of the Roman Empire all around: roads, aqueducts, buildings, etc.  To live a life that was so bleak, that was defined by hunger and poverty, and then to see with your own eyes that before your lifetime was a time of brilliance, innovation, wealth, and greatness.  To know that humanity had already peaked and you were unfortunate to be born on the miserable downhill side of it.  That captured my imagination.  I also began to wonder: how on earth did Christianity survive this time in history?  A time before scriptures were available to anyone but learned clergy, a time when superstition and heresy dominated popular thought.  But somehow, this period of history gave way to the Reformation and the Rennaisance.  Even after all the research I've done, it's still pretty much a mystery.

So I began to imagine a character who has a feeling deep down that God is real but has no where to go for answers.  How would God make himself known to this character, propelling her foward in her quest?  What kind of resistance would she meet along the way?  What mistakes would she make?  What character flaws would make her feel inadequate to do this "thing" of seeking answers, particularly in a world that did not respect women?  How would the experience of reading scripture for the first time make her feel?  Scripture like Hebrews 2:14-15 "Because God's children are human beings--made of flesh and blood--the Son also became flesh and blood.  For only as a human being could he die, and only by dying could he break the power of the devil, who had the power of death.  Only in this way could he set fee all who have lived their lives as slaves to the fear of dying."  We take verses like this for granted today because we hear the same message every Sunday.  Plus, we tend to think we're immortal and don't give much thought to dying.  But imagine...you're life is miserable, everything is stacked against you surviving, and yet the thought of hell being worse than this life is too awful to bear.  But you don't know how to avoid hell.  You don't personally know anyone who has access to scripture and even if you did, you can't read.  Maybe the local priest recites the Apostle's Creed in Latin during mass, but for the most part, leaves the concept of grace a total mystery (maybe he's even a bit confused by it?  Oh!  An unexpected plot twist!).  And then, after risking everything--after experiencing this great adventure, you make the discovery that you are set free.  Free from fear of death, free from the fear of hell, free from penance, free from the darkness of just not knowing.  

Remember how it felt the first time you really realized that someone came before you to break the power of hell (which, in this ancient world was very, very real)?  The first time you felt that love--and then immediately felt unworthy of that love?  Maybe it's just me, but I think that makes for an incredibly compelling story! 

But that's just a part of the journey--a part of the story.  Because as any believer will tell you, belief is really just the beginning.  Like I tell the kids in Kid's Church, if you were lucky enough to wake up this morning, you have a job to do!

And now I'm  off to mine.  That's right, fixing lunch for a hungry toddler.  Because such is my life!