Photos of a blessed week

July 1, 2013 by Kelli

The boys handing out bags to the kids coming to the fun day we had planned for them. From crafts to snacks to music and dentistry, these kids had the opportunity to receive trinkets that will likely become treasured possessions.

Kids lined up to receive their food. They are fed a hot, solid meal three times a week inside this dirt floored church – the Body in action meeting needs.

We lost count at how many teeth were pulled this day. A combination of poor nutrition, lack of hygiene and zero flouride means most of these children had a mouth full of painful, rotting teeth. Education and prevention are some of the things Servant’s Heart is working to provide for these precious kids.

My son talked the pastor of the local church into taking him on a motorcycle ride. Huge highlight of the trip for this boy.

Kyna – our rock star dentist.

Gorgeous countryside.

Who found Dominican Nutella? THIS GIRL!!!

My 5-year-old painting flouride on teeth. Who says good things can’t come in small packages?

We are exhausted and my head is a jumbled mess as I try to process everything we saw and experienced this past week. There were so many beautiful things that happened and so many difficult things to see. The impact of this week will settle on all of us in different ways.

Today however, instead of trying to articulate some of the scrambled pictures in my head, I just wanted to share some of the real pictures. I have thoughts to mull over and ideas to share, but today I want to say thanks for the emails and the tweets and the Facebook messages that so many of you sent. It is good to know you’re covered in prayer and it’s a wonderful feeling to know you’re loved so much. You guys are the best.

Happy Monday!

Filed Under: faith, Family, Kids, Life, Ministry, Missions Weeks Tagged With: Dominican Republic, faith, Family Missions, God, Mission trip for children, Servants Heart Ministry

The Rhythm of Celestial Experience

June 12, 2013 by Kelli

“Music. A meaningless acceleration in the rhythm of celestial experience.”

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

As a music lover, a singer and a worshiper in the church, I find myself more and more learning and understanding the art of worship, because it really is an art. Worship cannot be approached devoid of passion and yet, so often, that’s exactly what happens. I watch as worshipers, both on stage and in the congregation, stand unmoved, unimpressed, sometimes even annoyed, throughout the entire worship portion of a church service and I want to grab them by the hand and squeeze tight while whispering in their ears, “This is the God of the Universe to whom we sing. Rejoice and be glad!”

I don’t do that, of course, because that would be weird and slightly intrusive…

There are some obvious reasons to me why this happens to worshipers and they are reasons that I understand. Some of them are valid and some just need to be worked through a bit. (And to make things perfectly clear, the specific worship I am discussing here today is the actual worship portion of a church service. Not the every day worship of living out faith.)

The first reason why I think many struggle to worship passionately is a perceived lack of talent. I see it in their eyes, sometimes even in the ones standing in front of the microphone. There is a fleeting (or not so fleeting) look of fear, of doubt, maybe even embarrassment as they begin to sing. I can almost see the thought bubble float above their heads.

I’m not good enough.

There is some truth to the idea that a person leading worship should, indeed, be able to carry a tune and carry it well. Beautiful harmonies accelerate the rhythm of celestial experience and there’s no way to get around that. But most churches have some process of vetting singers, so if you’ve been placed before a microphone by the person in charge, chances are you have been given that responsibility with some measure of confidence so my advice to you is this: embrace it.

If you are actual leader of worship, lead boldly and passionately. Don’t look out at the congregation with wide, scared eyes like your grandma shoved you on stage and ordered you to sing. Sing because you can and smile because you enjoy it.

Read the rest at KelliStuart.com

Filed Under: faith, Grace, Ministry Tagged With: faith, Kelli Stuart.com, Song, Worship

Saying Yes to the Good and Bad

May 28, 2013 by Kelli

I’m learning a lot right now about what it means to say yes. By nature, my first response is not generally yes. I’m more of a “maybe, let me think about it, I’ll get back to you,” kind of a girl. Saying yes is scary because saying yes usually comes with some sort of responsibility attached.

(Unless, of course, someone asks me if I’d like some Nutella, at which point saying yes is non-negotiable and always rewarding…)

Last year Lee and I said “Yes” together to adoption and as most of you know – that didn’t work out so well. But we said yes. We agreed because saying “No” didn’t feel right. If you talk to Lee and I individually about our motives to adopt, you’ll hear two different stories. Mine is the longer one.

Naturally.

Lee’s story is quite simple and I love the purity of his answer. When he was asked last summer why he decided to step forward with the adoption he said, “Because God didn’t give me the freedom to say no.”

That was it.

He couldn’t say no because he didn’t feel like GOD (not me – I had given him full permission to say no) had given him the freedom to say no. So he said yes.

I will confess that I still struggle with some bitterness and disappointment that God didn’t lay “No” on Lee’s heart. I still don’t understand why He brought us to this point in the adoption process. But obviously there were lessons of faith and trust and dependence that I needed to learn and so even though I’m disappointed in the circumstance and sometimes even in God Himself, I can still say He is good.

I still have faith, even though my faith feels much shakier than it did before. It’s being tested and burned and molded – it will come out stronger, but I have to wrestle through this.

As we prayed and sought and searched and looked at what our next step should be after the adoption was terminated, Lee felt a deep desire to go as a family on a mission trip this summer, and this time it was my turn to be reluctant. I didn’t want to go because I didn’t want to spend the money. I knew that money could be spent on transferring our adoption to a different country. But Lee felt really strongly that we should take the kids on a mission trip.

And I didn’t have the freedom to say no, so yes was the only other option.

We began to search different missions opportunities that we could take with the kids. We needed to find something that fit into Lee’s hectic work schedule and after a lot of thought, we decided to join forces with Servant’s Heart Ministry on a mission trip to the Dominican Republic.

One month from today we will board a plane with our children to meet and serve the children of the Dominican Republic. I will confess that my heart is still unsure, not of the trip – I have no doubt the trip will be amazing. But I am still unsure about where we stand with the adoption and I still struggle daily with this idea of saying yes to God.

But what is faith if we don’t say yes to the things that don’t make sense – even those things that may not go as planned? And how will we ever teach our children how to serve those in desperate need if we don’t go and do? Even if it costs money? Even if it sets us back in the adoption?

Or maybe it’s a step forward…

God has been terribly silent through all this adoption stuff, but I have this sense of peace that as we continue to say yes to the things in front of us, He will slowly reveal His plan for our family. As I said earlier, saying yes is scary because the outcome is not always certain, but if there is one thing I have been able to cling to in these months of questioning and doubt it’s that God is good and His plan is perfect, even when I don’t understand it.

So we are saying yes to the things that are scary, the things that are good, the things that could go wrong or right. We’re saying yes because when presented with an opportunity to bless another person, is saying “No” really an option at all?

What about you? What have you said yes to lately?

(And as a PS to those who gave money toward our adoption – please know that we have those donations set aside and we will not touch them until we decide what we are going to do. Should we ultimately decide not to proceed with another adoption, those funds will be returned. I just wanted to offer that explanation in an effort to be fully transparent. We don’t yet feel that God has shut the door on adoption so we continue to save in anticipation of adopting. We are walking in faith making each decision with an enormous sense of trust.)

Filed Under: Adoption, Adoption, faith, Family, Lee, Life, Ministry, Travel Tagged With: faith, Family Mission Trips, Saying Yes, Servant's Heart

What is Obvious is This: I Stink at Waiting

May 1, 2013 by Kelli

My sweet, sweet online friends. I am not in a happy, happy, joy, joy mood these days. I’m lost in introspection and I am, once again, fighting a wave of emotion that follows this path of shattered dreams. I convince myself that it’s not worth this amount of emotional energy – that compared to the problems people are facing all over the world, mine is small and miniscule and hardly worth the river of tears I seem prone to spill.

And yet…

I’ve spent quite a bit of time talking to God over this one. With the statistics rolling through my brain of the millions of orphaned children worldwide that are breathing the toxic air of feeling unwanted, unloved, unneeded and unseen, I question why this road has been so hard for us.

I’ve tried to wrap my mind around this situation from a theological standpoint. I know God to be Omniscient and Omnipotent. The Past and the Future all belong to His Present Now. He is not swayed or affected by time, nor is he a magician who must consult the cracked glass of a crystal ball to understand what will come tomorrow.

So when we began this process, He already knew. He knew we would not finish what we started – at least not in the manner in which we started it. As a balm, I’ve tried to convince myself that this means we were never supposed to have a child from Russia.

I tell myself that God didn’t want us to bring a Russian orphan home, because if He did, we would have been able to do so.

That’s a really nice way to try and weasel my way out of this predicament of heartache, but I must confess I am not doing a very good job at convincing myself of its truth. Because in the back of my mind I wonder What if?

What if we were supposed to and the sin of this world prevented it?

Ah, but that negates God’s Omniscience.

This is the point that smoke trickles from my ears and I sigh heavily.

I still pray for her, even though perhaps she was never meant to be. Because the fact of the matter is quite simply this: There is a little girl in an orphanage in St. Petersburg who could have had a home. She could have had a father to pick her up and tell her that she was loved and wanted and beautiful. She could have had a mother to shower her with kisses from morning until night.

She could have had two big brothers to protect her and a sister to show her the ropes.

I am praying for this little girl and I pray that she still gets those things – her and all of the others like her. I pray that someday the little girl who could have had…will have. Praying this prayer makes it easier for me, in a way. It makes the situation less ambiguous and overwhelming.

Because if I try to pray for the 750,000 orphaned children in Russia I can hardly breathe. But her – the girl that could have had? I can manage to pray for her.

And yet, I still have hope and a sense of wonder at what God is doing here in us? I read this quote by Jen Hatmaker today and it made me gasp because THIS – this is how I feel:

“When you say YES to adoption, you are saying YES to enter the suffering of the orphan, and that suffering includes WAITING FOR YOU TO GET TO THEM. I promise you, their suffering is worse than yours. We say YES to the tears, YES to the longing, YES to the maddening process, YES to the money, YES to hope, YES to the screaming frustration of it all, YES to going the distance through every unforeseen discouragement and delay. Do not imagine that something outside of “your perfect plan” means you heard God wrong. There is NO perfect adoption. EVERY adoption has snags. We Americans invented the “show me a sign” or “this is a sign” or “this must mean God is closing a door” or “God must not be in this because it is hard,” but all that is garbage. You know what’s hard? Being an orphan. They need us to be champions and heroes for them, fighting like hell to get them home. So we will. We may cry and rage and scream and wail in the process, but get them home we will.”
—Jen Hatmaker

On Christmas day, when I sat alone in front of the tree, I had visions of a child dancing around it – a child whose face was not yet revealed to me. And I knew I needed to wait, but wait for what? I don’t know what I’m waiting for and I’m so tired of waiting. Were those visions merely projections of something that I just desperately want, or were they true visions of something to come?

I don’t know. I wish I could say for certain, but I just don’t know.

You know what is beautiful, though? God’s mercies in the waiting. On Monday, my newest nephew made his entrance into this world. (His Mom is Becke‘. You know Becke’, don’t you? You should know Becke’…)

Everyone, meet Asher:

Right?!

I mean…how beautiful is he and how much do you want to kiss those squishy baby cheeks? And you know what? This precious baby is a picture of grace. He was prayed for and waited for and there were bumps in the road, and heartaches to be worked through but God was faithful to deliver what the heart desired.

Some days, when I’m feeling particularly dark, the only thing I can cling to is the knowledge that God is not cruel. I know that He isn’t, and so I repeat it.

But other days I find that I’m able to go a step further and say, He is so good. I look at Asher and I can say without reservation He Is So Good.

I’m not good at the waiting, but I’m trying and I’m learning and I’m stumbling through it. That’s the best I can do right now and somehow…

I think it’s enough.

Filed Under: Adoption, faith, Family Tagged With: Failed Adoption, faith, God, Goodness, Grace, Heartache, Life

On Christianity and Social Justice

April 30, 2013 by Kelli

From The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis:

“About the general connection between Christianity and politics, our (the demon’s) position is more delicate.

Certainly we do not want men to allow their Christianity to flow over into their political life, for the establishment of anything like a really just society would be a major disaster.

On the other hand, we do want, and want very much, to make men treat Christianity as a means; preferably, of course, as a means to their own advancement, but, failing that, as a means to anything—even to social justice.

The thing to do is to get a man at first to value social justice as a thing which the Enemy (God) demands, and then work him on to the stage at which he values Christianity because it may produce social justice. For the Enemy will not be used as a convenience. Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of Heaven as a short cut to the nearest chemist’s shop. Fortunately it is quite easy to coax humans round this little corner.”

When I read the above statement written by C.S. Lewis in 1941, it took me several moments to wrap my brain around the concept presented. I then had to read the letter a second time, then a third, then I waited for our group of friends to come to our house in the hopes that someone would unpack it for me.

The mere definition of social justice itself causes my brain to turn over. What does that phrase even mean? In my search for some kind of answer, I turned to Professor Google to help me out:

– According to the National Association of Social Workers, social justice is “the view that everyone deserves equal economic, political and social rights and opportunities. Social workers aim to open the doors of access and opportunity for everyone, particularly those in greatest need.”

– According to BusinessDictionary.com social justice is defined as “The fair and proper administration of laws conforming to the natural law that all persons, irrespective of ethnic origin, gender, possessions, race, religion, etc., are to be treated equally and without prejudice. See also civil rights.”

– The Catholic World Report informs us that the idea of social justice was first presented by a Jesuit Philosopher named Luigi Taparelli D’Azeglio. This early philospher’s theory was described by Thomas C. Behr of The University of Houston as “a legal order and normative ideal within a society by which individuals and their various associations are given the maximum range of liberty in pursuit of their proper ends, with a minimum of interference from superior authorities, i.e., only to the extent necessary to orient general activity towards the common good, and governed by the principles of conflicting rights, prudence, and, ultimately, of charity.”

When I read this post at Cardus.com, my mind almost exploded with the range and depth of thought that was given to this idea of social justice. Read through the theories slowly and carefully and take a moment to chew on the difference between social justice and social charity.

Without doubt, “Social Justice” is a buzz word and it seems to have been one for centuries. It sounds noble to claim that we are for social justice, but the fact is it is a phrase without a real definition and you cannot really back up the notion of social justice scripturally.

In today’s modern society (particularly Western society), social justice is quickly followed by a list of those things we believe to be rights and we all seem to have a mountain we’re ready to die on when it comes to social justice.

It has become so prevalent to fight for the modern social justice, that even the Church as a whole is separate on the issue with I myself taking part in the noise. But lately I’ve had to pause and ask the question: Is social justice demanded of us by God?

Did Jesus fight for social justice?

We’re told in Acts 2 that the early church was “together and had all things in common; and they began selling their property and possessions and were sharing them with all, as anyone might have need.” It seems to me, as I read through this passage, that this is a picture of the church operating in Love, not under some forced and false notion of social justice.

Perhaps the most common argument used by Christians when trying to define social justice is the fact that Jesus stood for Love and if Jesus is Love, then we must be that as well. This is true, but do Love and social justice go hand in hand? I think, again, it depends on how we define social justice.

What are your thoughts on this issue? How do you define social justice and within the paramenters of that definition, how do you apply it to your faith? What does it mean to Love and serve others as Jesus commanded of us? I’d love some discussion on this because my brain spins when I try to grasp it.

Update: The term I’m looking to discuss is “social justice,” which I believe is entirely different than the term justice as defined by God. We are definately called to seek justice, but how have we warped that calling? We have politicized and twisted the idea of justice and made it a thing that is to be held in the same hand as faith.

To channel Linda Richman…”Talk amongst yaselves.”

Filed Under: faith, Ministry, politics Tagged With: C.S. Lewis, Christianity, faith, Questions, Social Justice and God

The Peace and Comfort of Art Created

April 24, 2013 by Kelli

I am deep in the trenches of editing my book, which is more overwhelming than it sounds. As I read through it a second time, this time with the words of those who have read and offered constructive criticism, I find myself swallowed in the process. It is equally daunting and peaceful.

In the background, the Mozart station plays on Pandora filling my mind with the peace and comfort of art created. I love the way the notes mold and push and swell and fall and each have their place.

My mind still feels full and twisted and confused by all that has happened over the last few months. Sometimes I feel like a lost little puppy. But when I stop thinking and start creating, peace takes over and wraps me tight. I just re-read these words from my novel. They were spoken by a father who had to let go of his son. I wrote this two years ago, but I needed to read again it today.

“Pain is an interesting emotion. It’s more than physical, though it certainly manifests itself in physical ways. As I hug my son for the last time, my arms physically ache as though the muscles are tearing from the bone. And when I pull back and look into his brave but tear filled eyes, I feel my heart rip.

I think I even hear it.

I won’t get that piece of my heart back. And that is the interesting thing about pain. It never leaves you. Sometimes it dulls and other times you may feel healed, but pain always leaves a mark – a scar as a reminder that life and love aren’t free. Pain changes everything.”

©Kelli Stuart, April 2013

I hope I don’t sound terribly angsty and sad. I’m not – in fact, right now in this moment I am enormously satisfied. I still feel unsure of what tomorrow will bring, but today is alright.

Today there is peace in the process of creating.

And there is Mozart.

And…well, I can’t lie – there’s also some coffee and a little bit of chocolate involved.

So tell me friends – how do you all find peace and calm when life feels twisty and unsure?

Filed Under: faith, Novel, writing Tagged With: contentment, faith, Grace, Novel, Peace, writing

Where the Present Touches Eternity

April 16, 2013 by Kelli

Image by AvodahImages.com

“We (the demons) want [man] to be in the maximum uncertainty, so that his mind will be filled with contradictory pictures of the future, every one of which arouses hope or fear. There is nothing like suspense and anxiety for barricading a himan’s mind against [God]. He want men to ce concentrated with what they do; our business is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them.” C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

This present time and age rocks and churns with uncertainty. With each bomb exploded, each innocent child killed senselessly, each cry of anguish and pain that gathers like a cloud over and around us, it’s easy to feel lost. Beauty is marred and history now tainted.

How many more cities must erect a memorial in honor of the victims?

In times like this, we have to be careful not to wallow in the uncertainty of this present age. As Americans, we are a toddler nation still youthful in our page of history. The rest of the world is pitted and scarred with the darkness of evil, but beauty and goodness shine bright. Just visit the cathedrals that still stand in the Italian countryside, their centuries old paintings revealing beauty in ashes.

Look at the statues carved from stone and close your eyes and take in the brilliant, soul stirring symphonies of Mozart and Beethoven, Gershwin and Chopin. Read Pushkin and Akhmatova and get lost in the words of those brilliant poets who weave pictures with pen and paper that send color into the dark world.

Most of the great beauty in this world has risen from the heat of evil.

When the world gets dark and smoky, it’s easy to fall into cynicism. We wonder what kind of world we’re living, what kind of darkness our children will have to endure as they grow.

But we can also remember that these things, though shocking and revolting and vile and senseless, are not new and they are not the end of beauty or hope or joy or goodness. All you had to do was watch footage of the first responders to know that goodness wins. And really, without the ugly how would we ever know what beauty truly looked like?

Without evil, how could there possibly be good?

These last few months have rocked me to my core. They’ve tested my faith and pushed me down into the heap of ashes. I’ve lamented and cried over the child in the orphanage who may never know how much she was already loved – a child who could have had a home but now may never know the comfort and security of a family. I’ve wept bitterly over the children who could have known love.

I’ve looked hard at the darkness, the ability for man to make all of life into a giant mess, and I’ve wondered where the beauty lies in all of it. I’ve looked around and seen the world with new eyes and realized…we are all covered in ashes. And what are we to do with that?

We keep loving. We keep rushing forward into the dark and we be the light. We teach our children what it means to be the light. As for me, I am working on finding the beauty. I can’t focus on the darkness because there is no hope there and life without hope is life without beauty. I cannot dwell on the fear of the future, the unknown and unfulfilled desires of the heart – instead I must trust that the only true impact I can have on this world is living fully right now, in this present moment.

“The humans live in time but our Enemy (God) destines them to eternity. He therefore, I believe, wants them to attend chiefly to two things, to eternity itself, and to that point of time which they call the Present. For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity.” C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

It sounds cliche and almost trite to say I’m praying for Boston today, but I am. I am praying for all the hurting hearts and the darkened souls. And I’m praying that today I will be ready to act – ready to be light, to show love, to speak well and bring out the beauty.

Live for the Present friends. Let’s touch eternity together.

Filed Under: faith, Grace, Life Tagged With: Beauty in Pain, Boston Marathon Bombing, faith, Life, The Thinks I Think

Catching water in your hands

April 9, 2013 by Kelli

“Now you will have noticed that nothing throws [man] into a passion so easily as to find a tract of time which he reckoned on having at his own disposal unexpectedly taken from him…[This] angers him because he regards his time as his own and feels that it is being stolen. You must therefore zealously guard in his mind the curious assumption ‘My time is my own.’ Let him have the feeling that he starts each day as the lawful possessor of twenty-four hours.” C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

This curious assumption of time is a topic that is not unfamiliar to anyone, least of all the mother of three young children. Time is a curious mystery, fleeting and entirely elusive, yet ever constant and unchanging. Each day allots the same amount of time in which to operate, but it often feels as though time slips right through our fingers like a gush of water.

Lee first read this passage to me late one evening. We were laying in bed and I was trying to do something wildly important like read Facebook statuses and catch up on blogs. My husband, on the other hand, was trying to improve his mind by reading an actual book.

(You remember books, don’t you? They’re made of paper and bound together so that you have to physically turn each page in order to find out what happens next. Fascinating contraptions…)

As he read, he would put his arm on mine and go, “Ooohhh…listen to this.” It was cute the first time, endearing the second time, annoying the third time and so on. He was interrupting my quiet time – my time at the end of the day when I can turn my brain off and waste time without guilt. Could he not see the reverence and near holiness of my solitude?

It was at this point he read me the above passage that made me stop and think. Do I regard myself the lawful possessor of twenty-four hours? I believe that I do!

How has this attitude affected my life and the lives of the people around me?

I will confess that there are few things that irk me more than my kids waltzing in and interrupting me when I am alone. I feel immediately violated and ridiculously offended at their assumption that they can just come in and make demands of me when I am clearly having a moment to myself.

How dare you want food, water, love, attention?!

Shame on me.

“You (the demon, Wormwood, who is tasked with tempting this particular man) have here a delicate task. The assumption which you want him to go on making is so absurd that, if once it is questioned, even we cannot find a shred of argument in its defense. The man can neither make, nor retain, one moment of time; it all comes to him by pure gift; he might as well regard the sun and moon as his chattels.” C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

Time is a gift. Every moment of every day is purely a gift. None of it is mine and I have no right to claim possession of a single moment. What I do in each moment is a reflection of how grateful I am for this ever changing, moving and fleeting gift.

Does this mean I shouldn’t guard some time to be alone? Absolutely not. A healthy mother knows to teach her children the importance of granting her time alone. Time spent away from children strengthens every parent and should be taken regularly.

Time together with my husband is not to be interrupted and I guard it as jealously as I can because this is a healthy use of my time. This is using the gift I’ve been given wisely.

But when the time does get interrupted, what is my reaction? Many times, I confess it is not a holy reaction. As C.S. Lewis wrote so beautifully in this same letter from the demon Screwtape, “The more claims on life, therefore, that your patient [man] can be induced to make, the more often he will feel injured and, as a result, ill-tempered.”

So what is my reaction? Well, more times than not, it is ill-tempered and that makes me sad, because such an attitude toward life is, I believe, what makes life often feel so fleeting.

If I recognize time as a gift and do not hold firm the belief that I am the lawful possessor of my moments, I can react graciously when time is interrupted – when random hugs need to be given while I’m working on a blog post, or the phone rings when I’m working on my book – when a neighbor knocks on the door while we’re eating dinner, or my husband wants to read to me while I’m trying to shut down for the evening.

What’s more, when I regard time as a gift, I will be able to use my time to bless others. When I’m less focused on time being my own then I can help those who need my help and do so in a way that makes them feel important and not so much like they were an interruption.

If I embrace each moment as a gift, I am more likely to live for the moment, to love in the moment, to bless in the moment and maybe every once in a while, I could catch a moment in my hand and hold it for a lifetime.

Filed Under: faith, Grace, Kids, Motherhood Tagged With: C.S. Lewis, faith, Grace, Motherhood, Raising children, The Scretape Letters, Time

On writing and grief and finishing that book

March 26, 2013 by Kelli

I finished my initial read through of the book last night. My first reaction? Thank God it’s not too bad. I’ve never done this whole writing a 450 page novel thing. This is my first rodeo, so I didn’t know what to expect. Couple that with the fact that it’s been almost three years since I started this draft of the book and you have a writer who’s a bit nervous.

I wrote the beginning of the book a long, long time before I wrote The End. What if it didn’t connect?

Now admittedly, there are a few gaps to be worked out and the ending needs some sharpening. I wanted to finish so badly that my fingers were literally flying over the keyboard. It took me a little over two years to write the first 150 pages of that books. It took me just shy of 9 months to write the final 300 pages.

The story finally came tumbling out.

In a lot of ways, the book writing process very much mirrors a birth process. Only, honestly, I think it’s mentally and emotionally harder to write a book than have a baby.

I am connected to this story in a way that no one else will ever really understand. The characters became real to me. I dream about them at night. I hear their voices in my head. It all sounds so strange, but it’s not unlike the connection I felt to my unborn children.

I knew them before I saw them. I dreamed of them. I was connected to them in a way no one else could be, because they were a part of me.

Parts of my story are connected to this story. I used to feel a little ashamed and embarrassed about how long it took me to write this book, but I realized in the last week as I read through it that I needed to take that time. There are parts of this story that I could not have written if I hadn’t had the experiences I had.

I needed to experience childbirth and motherhood.

I needed to experience the heartache of losing the hope of a child.

I needed to experience the darkness of depression.

Friends, the last few months have been very, very hard. I’ve tried not to overdo the drama of it all on the blog, but I have not been in a good place. I am always right on the edge of an emotional breakdown. Most of the people who see me on a regular basis know this all too well as I basically cry at the drop of a hat.

In truth, I hardly remember the month of January. It’s as though that entire month has been blocked from my subconscious. I have never felt more alone or experienced a deeper pain than I did in that month. I couldn’t eat, I was in a constant state of fatigue and I lived from moment to moment in a fog of emotional pain.

Feburary is a bit brighter, but the memory of that month is shrouded in fog. That was the month I began to process my heartache – to share it and open up about the depths of the pain I felt.

March has been a little better, but the wound is still fresh and the grief can be set off at any moment.

And in these two and a half months since grief crashed down on me, I’ve written 175 pages. The words poured out and they became cathartic and brought about healing in an almost beautiful way. I transferred my grief to my characters, people who were experiencing a darkness much deeper than my own.

I don’t know if I wrote the story well, but I do know that writing the story helped me heal.

Writing a book requires that you pour your heart out. It’s hard and long and arduous and painful, but in the end, a sort of life is birthed from the process. Your hard work produces a miracle. A piece of you is transferred to the outside and you have a tangible evidence of the labor and pain.

It is, indeed, like the birth of a baby…if you were birthing a baby while running a marathon and spinning plates on a long, tall stick. The metaphor gets convoluted – roll with it.

I’ve passed my book out to my first round of test readers. I have several people lined up waiting to read it and I’m both excited and terrified. I know it needs work, but I also believe in the potential of the story. There are edits to comb through and rewrites to prepare for. There are holes to fill and there’s probably more research to be done.

(Oh sweet mercy, how I hate research. Can I just take a brief moment to tell you how many times I wished I had been given something easier to write about? Why couldn’t I just make up my world and my people? Historical fiction?! Oy…)

But all of that is okay, because there is still room for healing in my heart. The world isn’t dark and lonely anymore, thanks to a few people who have stepped up beside me and begun walking through the grief with me, and also thanks to the process of pouring my heart out to the story that I was given.

I needed to write this story at this time – to give birth to the characters in this way. Soon I pray I will have the opportunity to introduce this book to the world, but for now I covet your prayers as I begin editing. I long to present a book of excellence – a story that brings honor not to my name, but to the God who entrusted me with these stories.

Will you pray with me?

Filed Under: books, faith, Grace, Novel, writing Tagged With: Depression, faith, Grace, grief, healing, Novel, writing

Miracles in the Pocket

February 27, 2013 by Kelli

Peering out the airplane window, all I could see was glaring, sear your eyes white. The morning sun stood high above miles and miles of clouds, completely obscuring the world below. With no real marker below to give away our speed, it felt as though we were floating. Were it not for the man crammed very snugly against my side, I think it would have been the most serene and peaceful I’ve felt in many months.

The bell chimed and the captain’s voice broke through the speakers. “Folks, we’re making our initial descent into New Orleans. We have a bit of weather ahead of us, so I’m going to ask that you return to your seats and put on your seatbelts as we make our way down.”

And still I watched, my forehead pressed tight against the cool glass, as we slowly drifted down, closer and closer to the white peaks below. The clouds were thick and full, a world of shapes dancing beneathe me, all waiting to be discovered. Just beyond the horizon of white stood the vibrant blue sky and a perfectly round sun beyond that. And still we dropped until…