Book Lessons

I haven’t been writing here much, mostly because I’ve been immersed in working on my book, trying to finish the new version of Chapter Two before school lets out. The only problem is that on Wednesday I realized that Chapter Two should really be Chapter Three and a piece of what was Chapter Three should become Chapter One. The rest of Chapter Three should become Chapter Four, etc. You can see how a person could forget to blog.

With all the ideas of the book swirling around my head, it seems like a good time to pull together some thoughts on what I’m learning so far, especially from the interviews I’ve been doing. So here are some observations:

1. People are amazing. What we go through is amazing, and listening to people who have come through struggle with humor and wisdom is inspiring. Many of the people I’m interviewing should write down their own life stories. In fact, everyone should.

2. God is amazing. Hearing people share how God has worked in their lives fuels my faith. One example that comes to mind is a woman who was being abused by her husband. He was choking her and saying, “I love you.” In that moment, she heard God say, “I love you more.” She took her children and left that day.

3. People grow up with an awful lot of baggage about God. I’ve noticed that for several people I interviewed, discarding their childhood ideas about God has been a real turning point in their lives. I remember one woman getting choked up recalling the first time she heard the idea that God could live within her. “God could live in me?” she said with emotion. “I thought God was out there punishing me.” Looking at our assumptions about God is my new Chapter One.

4. We need each other. We never know how a new person is going to affect our lives, and we don’t know how something we say will affect someone else. But often people’s lives have been changed by a casual comment, like, “You seem like a Quaker,” mentioned to a person who had never heard a Quakers and then went looking for them. We should be faithful to those little messages that pop up every day when we’re with people.

I’m also being confirmed in the knowledge that I love writing, even though it is a lot of work, and I’m not very fast at it. That’s OK though. I think wanting to be quick and efficient is my issue, not God’s.