Maile and Shawn talk about the previous episode, where they got their kids’ opinions on having writers for parents.
They also realize that their current strategy to get Maile writing isn’t working anymore, so they regroup and make a new plan.
Finally, Shawn’s latest royalty statement arrives.
To listen to this latest episode, click on the play button in the image above, visit our website for The Stories Between Us, or check out the podcast on Apple’s podcasts.
Dear Jen,
Bright sunlight shines through the cold glass. The house is quiet and empty, but outside I hear the traffic on James Street and the out-of-place, intermittent buzzing of a chainsaw as someone works to prune one of the large trees that line our sidewalk. The sky is a cotton candy blue, and a few remaining leaves twist in the cold December breeze, somehow still hanging on.
It has been a long two weeks since we last corresponded. The day after your last letter, somewhere in the middle of a normal Saturday morning, I learned that a close friend of mine went into his only son’s room to wake him up, discovering that his 16-year-old had died in the night. He was a happy, loving teenager with doting parents and a kind sister. He was excited about his future and loved by his classmates. His death has left Maile and I reeling, shaking our heads, and crying quiet tears at unexpected times. What is this fragile life?
Six days later, I got the call that my grandma died at her home in Florida. She lived with my parents for half of the year here in Pennsylvania and spent her winters down south. Her passing was not unexpected, but she had such a gentle presence and a steadiness that will be greatly missed in our family. It’s interesting to me how someone who was so quiet, such a good listener, can leave such an intense void.
Last night, we went to my parents’ house and I walked through my grandma’s adjoining apartment, taking in the strange stillness. There are pictures of her on the wall, some with my aunt who died of cancer only a few years ago. There are pictures of my cousins when they were little. There is the chair where she spent so many afternoons, watching baseball of all things.
These losses have felt like axe blows against a tree—shuddering, and personal, and biting. Most of the time now, I feel only empty.
In your last letter you talked about patience and faithfulness and how “we want our work, whether in marriage or parenting or friendship or ministry or professional vocation, to be as effortless as instant coffee. We don’t want to be patient.” I feel that so much now, especially in regards to grief. I’d like to cry hard for an afternoon, or an evening, or maybe a week, but then I’d like to set this ache to the side and move on with life.
I’m realizing now that grief, like writing or marriage or parenting, requires a kind of determined patience, a commitment to relinquishing anything that looks like a time frame, a giving up of ourselves to this day and nothing beyond it. My good friend who lost his son told me that he cannot imagine how he can ever live an entire life without his beautiful boy, so instead, when he wakes up, he determines that he will get through the day in front of him and trust that somehow time will do its work. A tenacious, almost ruthless, patience.
What wisdom. Maybe this is how I should view all of these important things we have been writing to each other about. Marriage. Parenting. Writing. I cannot imagine how I will do all of those things well for an entire lifetime. But today I can do my best. Today I can write the words that come to me. Today I can love Maile well. Today I can try to accompany my children on their journey and hold them up, keep bringing them back onto good paths.
Matthew, quoting Isaiah, writes, “the people living in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.” I have been clinging to that verse. Perhaps this is what our patience in every area of life is teaching us, or growing within us: the patience that will see us through these great periods of darkness, the kind of patience that gives us the strength we need to keep our eyes open, waiting for that great light.
In darkness and in light,
Shawn
In the newest podcast episode (titled, “How Have We Screwed You Up”), Shawn and Maile invite their two oldest children onto the podcast to discuss everything creative: What’s it like being creative kids in a large family? How did they feel when they realized both of their parents are writers? Would Lucy, after seeing the creative struggles of her stay-at-home mom, choose to have children or get married someday?
Cade and Lucy shed some light on what it’s like to grow up in a creative household and how they think this will effect their futures.
To listen, click on the play button in the image above. You can also listen over at our website or in the Apple podcast app.
Maile and Shawn begin by talking about royalty statements and how sometimes they can be a twice-annual reminder of a book you wrote that didn’t quite meet your hopes or expectations. Shawn vents about online courses and how many of them try to exploit writers. And they each end the episode by mentioning something they’re thankful for in their writing life.
There may or may not be a child interrupting the end of the episode saying he has to “make a poop.” Oh, wait, that was last episode. Never mind.
You can listen by clicking the play button in the image above or by going to The Stories Between Us website. We’re also available on the iTunes podcast app–just search for The Stories Between Us.
Mentioned in the podcast:
Andi Cumbo-Floyd’s online Facebook community for writers
Hopewriters Community
Today, Jen Pollock Michel and I continue our ongoing correspondence about creativity and writing. In her latest letter to me, she writes,
“I fear that most of us, me included, want a glossy, sparkly faithfulness. We want to stage it for Instagram. We want our work, whether in marriage or parenting or friendship or ministry or professional vocation, to be as effortless as instant coffee. We don’t want to be patient. But if it’s true that most of faithfulness is found in the gritty in-between, we’re going to have to accommodate ourselves to the idea that a life in the making takes a lifetime to make. Faithfulness requires a slow and steady hand.”
To read the rest of her letter to me, head over to Jen’s website.
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What began as a Twitter conversation between two writers on creative work and family life has become an exchange of letters. Here is where Postmarked began:
This is it, the episode we’ve been putting off.
Maile reflects on how a recently-watched episode of the Berenstain Bears having to do with envy reflected some of her feelings of jealousy towards Shawn and where he is in his writing journey. Shawn admits his cluelessness about various aspects of their marriage. It’s also an episode where they talk about important questions that have come up in their lives.
Maile asks, “What am I doing to feel alive in my own right?”
Sam asked, “I thought Mom went to college to be a mom?”
There is the difficult conversation. And the even more difficult conversation. All in one episode.
To listen, click the play button in the image above.
To check out all five episodes, you can head over to the website for The Stories Between Us.
You can also find it on Apple podcasts. (If you listen there, please leave us a rating!)
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