On Almost Having a 16-Year-Old in the House (and When God Tells You “Not Yet”)

Though he couldn’t possibly remember it, this first son of ours who turns 16 this week was born in a kind of faerie land, on a property called Rocketer.  It was a warm June morning in Wendover, England, and his mother paced the tiny kitchen while I timed her contractions. The cottage was at the bottom of the hill on a large, 100-acre estate, made up of mostly trees, and our hedge-lined garden welcomed Maile as she took her laboring outside. At the top of the hill was a path worn three feet deep in the earth, a path taken by pilgrims for hundreds of years on their way to Canterbury. Or so the legend went.

But on that day in June, 2003, Maile made many laps around the garden, breathing methodically, pausing when the contractions came down. The sheep, with their mid-summer lambs, looked on, chewing the grass, bleating, wandering along the fence row. We were young in 2003. I was 26. Maile was 24. We were babies.

We could never have imagined who that about-to-be-born-boy would become. Some things are outside the realm of our imagination.

Eventually, we drove our Mini along narrow, English roads to the hospital ten minutes away. Maile’s mom braided her hair from the back seat. Maile’s breathing was intense but in control. When we arrived, the midwife examined her, smiled gently, and said she wasn’t dilated yet, that we should come back later, when the contractions were closer together.

* * * * *

How often I think I’m ready for the next phase! Ready to bring into existence something new! Bring it! I’m good to go! I’ve got everything figured out! And then God taps me on the head and smiles gently and says, in the kindest way possible, “Keep doing what you were doing, son. Keep breathing. Keep laboring. It’s not quite time yet.”

* * * * *

A few hours later, the trip to the hospital looked a little bit different. Maile’s feet were braced on the dashboard, and she shout-moaned through each contraction. She could barely walk when we got out of the car. She labored hard and long and, finally, late that night, after shifting over onto her side, our first son came into the world.

So small that he fit easily into my arms. I was terrified. A son? How was I supposed to raise a son? I had grown up with all sisters.

Now he is inches taller than me, broader in the shoulder, looking for a job. He has read almost all of my favorite books, and they are his favorites. Now he walks a mile through the city to school during the year and navigates issues I never even had to think about. He is finding his own way. Soon, too soon, he will leave us.

We will tell him not to look back.

* * * * *

While I was writing Light from Distant Stars, this book that’s coming out July 16th, I kept a daily journal that I would write in prior to working on the novel. In it, I talked about the difficulties I was facing as a writer, what I was trying to write, and just sort of my general process. If you preorder the novel now (preordering a book is one of the most helpful things you can do for a writer), I’ll email you the 51-page journal. Find out how to get it HERE.

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Our daughter putting on our son’s tie for him before the prom. Having children who are best friends is such an unexpected blessing.

A Look Inside the Writing of a Novel

Photo by John Sanderson of Sanderson Images

It happens in long stretches of disciplined days, where much goes according to plan. It happens in late evenings when the children are finally asleep and Maile is writing in the bed beside me. It happens while I’m waiting at long athletic practices and on the front porch and sometimes in the early mornings when it’s only Leo and me sitting at the dining room table.

This is how a novel gets written: in the cracks and crevices of an ordinary life. In both scheduled and unexpected bursts, until 100 words pile up to 1,000 words, and chapters form and arcs are fulfilled and characters emerge while 80,000 or 90,000 or 100,000 words come together, like atoms gathering.

When I wrote Light from Distant Stars, I decided to keep a journal every day. I wrote a short entry each morning before my novel-writing time, sometimes about life, sometimes about writing. It was a warm-up for me, a time to stretch my mind before diving into that day’s work.

I would like to give this journal to you – all you have to do is preorder Light from Distant Stars from any of the following book sellers:

Aaron’s Books, Lititz, PA – call 717-627-1990
Amazon
Baker Bookhouse
Barnes and Noble
Books-a-Million
Christianbook.com
Hearts and Minds Bookstore 
Indiebound

Then, enter your information here:

http://eepurl.com/guv5kb

…and the PDF of my journal entries will magically appear in your inbox. It’s not available anywhere else. You can’t buy it. The only way you can get it right now is by preordering Light from Distant Stars.

Also, everyone who preorders will be entered into a drawing for a $50 gift card to the bookstore of their choice and a signed copy of four of my other books: The Day the Angels Fell, The Edge of Over There, Once We Were Strangers, and How to Use a Runaway Truck Ramp!

I hope you enjoy the journal! Here’s a little excerpt:

Is there ever a perfect time to begin writing a novel?

For at least the last month or two, I had today, January 8th, earmarked as the day I would begin writing my next novel. Mondays and Fridays will always be difficult days for me to get my writing in – I’m in between co-writing jobs at the moment, which means I need to drive for Uber and Lyft on those two days to make some extra money. Making enough to feed six children is no joke. But I planned on getting up early, writing my at-least-1000-words for the day, and then moving on to ridesharing.

Is there ever a perfect day to begin writing a novel?

Our younger two took longer than usual to fall asleep last night, so I didn’t fall asleep early, as planned. Leo was up multiple times in the night. My (ambitious for me) plan to wake up at five o’clock faded quickly. I had imagined the perfect morning – me, sitting in a quiet living room, children asleep, radiators hot, my fingers gliding over the keys. Instead it was a chaotic morning, making breakfast, waking up the older kids, folding laundry, and trying to get out the door to an 8:30am meeting with a friend.

Is there ever a perfect day to begin writing a novel?

I’ve never run a marathon, but is there ever a perfect day to run a marathon? Do you ever wake up to perfect temperatures, zero mental and emotional qualms, a body that feels ready, all after a perfect night’s sleep? I suppose it happens. I suppose there will be days that go perfectly during the writing of this novel. I suppose.

But this morning was a good reminder to me. I must fit the writing into not-so-perfect days. I must find a way to write through the self-doubt and hesitations. If I am going to write this novel, there can be precious few things I put ahead of it. So, even on a morning that doesn’t go as planned, I push everything else back. Everything else must wait until I get my words written for this day. This is the cost of writing a novel. This is the price I must be willing to pay for the next three months. Four months. Six months.

Now, I begin. And beginning a novel is one of the most wondrous things in the world.

What Stories Have Done for Poppy (and What They Might Do For You)

Maile calls for Poppy, summons her from some other place within the house, and she doesn’t have good news.

“Poppy!” Maile says, trying to keep her voice light. “It’s time to brush your hair!”

Poppy is nearly three, with long, light-brown locks, and she doesn’t like keeping it up, so it’s almost always a snarly mess. Brushing it brings tears rushing to the surface. But recently, when Maile calls for Poppy to come have her hair brushed, Poppy has a new response.

“I want Daddy to brush it,” she says, pouting, her big brown eyes full as two moons.

And there is a reason for this. It’s not that I am able to brush her hair without inflicting pain, and it’s not that I’m particularly good at the brushing (though I did have three sisters to practice on). The reason Poppy calls for me is because, recently, I’ve started telling her stories while I brush.

* * * * *

“Where did you find the dragon this time?” I ask Poppy, taking a rope’s width of hair and running the brush through it.

“At Mimi and Papa’s,” she says, referring to her grandparents’ house.

“Oh, interesting,” I say, moving the brush through the tangles, taking another handful. “And where exactly did you see it at their house? Was it under the deck again?”

“Yes,” she says, and there is mischief in her voice, and curiosity.

“And was the dragon hungry, or did it already have food?”

“It was hungry,” she says, lifting her shoulder to ward off the brush when it sticks in a knot. But I pull it back and start in a different spot.

“What kind of food did you decide to give it?” We are halfway.

“Ice cream,” she says, and I can hear the grin in her voice.

“Oh, that’s yummy. Did the dragon share with Leo or keep it all to himself?”

“He shared,” she says, matter-of-fact, and now I’m brushing the area right behind her ears, where it always seems to hurt the most.

“After the dragon ate the ice cream, he came out, and he was feeling so much happier, because you shared with him, and then he shared with Leo. Isn’t that amazing? So he took you both on a flight around the neighborhood, and dropped you back at Mimi and Papa’s, and then he flew away.”

She turns to look at me, her eyes sparkling.

“All finished,” I say, holding up the brush, as if it was magic, and I had nothing to do with it.

* * * * *

I recently read an article about Neil Gaiman’s 96-year-old cousin who, during the Holocaust, hid a copy of Gone With the Wind behind a brick. She would stay up late every night reading it, and then the next morning she’d tell her friends what had happened. This way, the days passed, and they got through one of the most difficult times in history.

Neil Gamain went on to say, “Helen’s story – this story – made me realise that what I do is not trivial. If you make up stuff for a living, which is basically what I do, you can feel kind of trivial sometimes but this made me realise that fiction is not just escapism, it can actually be escape, and it’s worth dying for.”

Stories are good for us, for so many reasons. Sometimes they help us see the world differently. Sometimes they give us something to live for. And sometimes, every so often, they even help to make the hair-brushing a little less painful.

* * * * *

What have stories done for you?

* * * * *

Just a reminder that one of the kindest things you can do for the author you love is preorder their books! Check out this page for places where you can preorder Light from Distant Stars.

Please Give Her Back! We Shall Keep Asking You

Photo by Cherry Laithang via Unsplash

“When we held Owen Meany above our heads, when we passed him back and forth — so effortlessly — we believed that Owen weighed nothing at all. We did not realize that there were forces beyond our play. Now I know they were the forces that contributed to our illusion of Owen’s weightlessness: they were the forces we didn’t have the faith to feel, they were the forces we failed to believe in — and they were also lifting up Owen Meany, taking him out of our hands. O God — please give him back! I shall keep asking You.”

A Prayer for Owen Meany

* * * * *

The man stood in the middle of the lecture room, haggard and breathing oxygen through a small plastic tube perched under his nose. When he paused, we could hear that gentle wheezing in the microphone. The room was overflowing, so that many who had come to hear him sat on the floor behind him, or at his feet at the front, or stood in the corners, or listened from the hall once they stopped letting people in.

This man, Walt Wangerin, author of some of my favorite books, gave a long, wide-ranging talk that was part sermon, part poetry, part creative reading. He told us the story of his cancer diagnosis, the various reactions of his children, how one of them vanished into sadness, and what it was like to journey into this wilderness, a place the Bible referred to in the original language as “a nothing in a nowhere.”

“And when I die,” he said in a gentle voice. “I will become that nothing in a nowhere.”

Sobs broke out at various places in the crowd as we contemplated the death of this precious man. The silence was a blanket. There was loud sniffling as we pulled back tears.

“But then, in that deep darkness, Jesus will call out, ‘WALT,’ and I will be.”

* * * * *

I sit in stunned silence in front of my computer. Rachel has died.

* * * * *

I told this story once on Twitter, when I first heard that Rachel was in a coma, and I told it again yesterday on Facebook, when I heard of her passing. But I will tell it here for you one more time, if you will listen.

Eight or nine years ago,Rachel Held Evans was in Lancaster researching her second book, and a friend of mine was hosting her. So we all had dinner together at our house one evening. From the moment Rachel and Dan pulled up in their old clunky car, they were both so kind and generous. Rachel was full of life and eager to listen. Dan was quiet and kind and looked at her the way husbands do, when they are amazed that they have found themselves traveling through life with someone remarkable, someone who loves them more than they thought possible.

I know this look. I am always looking at Maile this way.

The next day Rachel and I had coffee together, and when she heard about all the books I had co-written, she looked at me with a smile and asked, “So when are you going to start writing your own books?” The question disarmed me. I can honestly say that question sparked something in me that I needed, an additional motivation to pursue my own writing. In the next few years, she allowed me to guest-post on her blog multiple times, even as her blog became more and more popular.

We didn’t stay in regular contact, but every so often she encouraged me on Twitter and Facebook to keep writing.

* * * * *

It seems that one of the things Jesus did on a regular basis was to call people into their true being. Waking the little girl who was “sleeping.” Asking the man if he wanted to be well. Naming Peter. Calling to Lazarus, deep in the grave, to come out and be.

I realize now that this is what Rachel did. Yes, she wrote and spoke beautifully. Yes, she is one of the smartest people I know. But these things alone were not what made her special – it was her ability to call us into being that was perhaps her greatest gift. Countless stories have emerged this weekend of people who Rachel, with some word, some act, some unlikely invitation, called into their true being. There were voices, previously unheard, who she propped up with her platform, and at no gain to herself. There were women, who after feeling Rachel’s nudge, pursued their calling to preach, to go to seminary. There were writers who had been silent for years, who she encouraged to pick up the pen.

So many of us responded to her gentle call. So many of us, deep in the darkness, feeling like a nothing in a nowhere, heard her voice encouraging us to be, and suddenly we were.

* * * * *

I am heartbroken today, mostly for Dan and their two small children, and also for those who were much closer to Rachel than I. I think of the words at the end of CS Lewis’s The Last Battle and have such a desperate hope that there is indeed a Great Story and that Rachel has finally entered into it. Could it be true that we will see her again? Could it be true that when that great nothingness comes for us, a voice will call our name, and we will, in some previously unknowable way, finally be?

“And as He spoke, He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

* * * * *

Even now, those of us who knew Rachel even a little bit keep praying, O God — please give her back! We shall keep asking You.

Late on a Friday Night

Photo by Krista Mangulsone via Unsplash

It’s late on a Friday night. Our two older kids are in the basement, watching a movie with a friend. Our two middle kids are in the living room, playing video games. Friday night is the one time of the week where we kind of back off the screen patrol and let everyone unwind. It works for us. You do you.

Meanwhile, I’m in the gliding rocker in the babies’ room, enjoying the peace and quiet and basking in the glow of my computer screen. I say babies, but Leo turns five this summer and Poppy will be three right behind him. In my honest moments, I have to face the fact that we don’t have babies anymore. This is a strange thing. Soon, Poppy will be potty-trained, and we’ll have put 15 years of on-again, off-again diaper-changing behind us. That’s a strange thought. Our first baby is almost a sophomore in high school. An even stranger thought.

When Maile is away, the sleeping life of our older three kids doesn’t change much. They go to bed in their own rooms, at bed time, and the world keeps spinning. But, when Maile is away, I end up sleeping on the floor in the babies’ room. So does Sam. So there are four of us in the smallest bedroom in the house, two of us on the floor (sometimes three if Leo crawls out of bed and decides to join us). But I love it. It’s warm in their room, and dark, and we keep a fan going. It’s a huge conglomeration of blankets and pillows and little bodies and sometimes I wake up with some little person’s stinky-sweet breath right in my face. Or a foot. Or a hand.

Someday, this house will be empty of everyone except Maile and me. Right now, it’s very full. I’ll take it.

It’s been strange, Maile away, on the road, getting ready to speak at a women’s conference in Orlando. I’m usually the one on the road. I’m the one who leaves, who comes home. This has been a good thing for our family. Maybe not for Poppy, who keeps asking, incessantly, “Where’s my Mama?” But for me, I get to see why Maile can’t always take my calls when I’m the one who’s away (laundry, kid-taxi, making food, changing diapers, baths, trying to find time to write, etc etc etc), or why she seems distracted when she does. I understand better why she is simultaneously excited for and annoyed with me when I do go away. I hope she gets to do this a lot. She’s done so much for all of us, so much for me, in the last twenty years. It’s long past her turn, and she has a lot to offer the rest of the world.

In about three months, my next book releases, Light from Distant Stars (do yourself and me both a favor and preorder it now). I can’t wait for you to read it. But to be honest, I haven’t been thinking about it too much, because I’m already deep, deep into writing the next one. Writing novels is a strange thing–I’m watching my writing evolve in front of my own eyes. Each one is a deep dive into something new, some alternate universe, and it changes me. Each novel sets the stage for the one that will come after it, in some tangible way. What a journey.

Well, I was going to work on that novel, but now I’m tired, and the fan is droning on and on, and Leo is asleep. I think I’ll just slide down onto the floor, vanish under a pile of blankets and pillows, and get some sleep. These kids are wearing me out.

Enjoy your weekend. Don’t forget, in the midst of this crazy life, to do something you love to do.

* * * * *

You can now get The Edge of Over There (sequel to The Day the Angels Fell) in paperback! Head here for a list of places where you can order it.

An Update on Leo and Further Thoughts on Pain

Our crew, circa October, 2017. Yes, Poppy is chewing on a stick.

Leo looks at me nervously while I move to change his bandage.

“Wait, Dad, let me tell you something!” he exclaims, so I relent, and I listen (again) to some small thing he is using to delay the inevitable. Except the changing of the bandages doesn’t hurt anymore. But he’s still nervous about it, so he stalls. It is the memory of pain that scares him now, and it is as intense for him as the real thing.

When he’s finally ready to let me do what I have to do, he slumps his shoulders, worried. I move to change the dressings, and he says quietly, as if to himself, “Gently, gently.” This makes me smile. He grins, too, as the bandages come off, realizing (or remembering) that it doesn’t hurt anymore. It really doesn’t. That particular pain is behind us.

He looks up at me, smiling. “I really love you, Dad.” That gets me every time.

* * * * *

Since Leo’s surgery, I’ve been thinking a lot about pain, how being in its proximity (whether in proximity to our pain or someone else’s) will always change us, often at a very deep level.

The pain Leo experienced after his minor surgery, the emotional pain Maile and I went through in trying to help him heal, these are things that will not leave us for a long time, maybe never. Our relationship with him is fundamentally different because of the journey we’ve traveled over the last week. I’m not sure if “better” or “worse” are helpful words when describing how things change when pain is involved. I think I feel things deeper now, especially when it comes to my children.

I also have a different view of healing, the long arc we are all on when it comes to getting better, whether from disease or emotional pain or old hurts that linger. I have a lot of questions about the relationship between pain and healing. I need to think about it a bit more.

* * * * *

Maile is away this weekend, speaking at a women’s conference in Orlando, Florida, and I am so, so proud of her. If you’ve followed along in this space, you know our family has been trying to adapt to some changes (which I wrote about in my most-read post of all time, “In Which We are Beginning to Find Our Way”), trying to rediscover a new way forward. Like any birthing process, it has its own discomfort, pain, and a sense of disorientation.

Early yesterday morning, before the house had woken up, Maile kissed my face and said good-bye. She was off on her adventure. She said some other things to me, but I was too tired to really hear her. The door sensor rang three times when she walked out, and I went back to sleep.

* * * * *

The sun is out this afternoon, and spring is here. There’s no denying it. The trees are blossoming, daffodils are peeking up through the ground, and kids’ eyes are getting itchy. Every season, something new.

We’re entering a new season of life, and I’m not talking about spring. Maile is growing towards a new light, my writing is evolving, the kids are getting older. Our family is changing, but it’s a good thing, a necessary thing. I know there will be more pain, but for the pain there is always healing in some form or other. This is the hope I hold on to.