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2018 is shaping up to be an exciting year. On July 3rd, the sequel to The Day the Angels Fell enters the big, wide world: The Edge of Over There. I have had such a generous response to the first book, and I know a lot of you are looking forward to the sequel. Stay tuned as we get closer to the release date.

But one of the most exciting things about this year is that I’ll be at a few retreats and book-signings. Here are a few places our paths might cross in 2018:

On February 13th, I’ll be at the Christian Product Expo here in Lancaster, signing copies of The Day the Angels Fell. If you’re a bookstore owner and you plan on being there, stop by and say hi.

On March 23rd, I’ll be signing copies of The Day the Angels Fell at the Philadelphia Public Library Association Conference. Calling all librarians! Come and say hello!

On Saturday, April 7th, I’ll be doing a fiction-writing presentation at the Lancaster Christian Writers one-day conference. I’ll be talking about writing magical realism, from idea to publication. If you pre-register, it’s only $55 for the entire day, including lunch!

From April 12th to the 14th, I’ll be at the Festival of Faith and Writing at Calvin College in Grand Rapids. I’ll be presenting on a panel about co-writing (with Seth Haines and Kathy Khang), and I’ll also be doing a fiction writing workshop on how to develop new ideas and jump-start them into novel length. I was at FFW two years ago and it was amazing, both the content of the panelists and the online friends I finally got to meet in real life. I highly recommend it.

Last but definitely not least, one of my favorite weekends of the year is at God’s Whisper Farm where Andi Cumbo-Floyd, Kelly Chripczuk, and I host a writers’ retreat. Join us from June 22-24 for some laid-back time with other writers. There are excellent workshops, good home cooking, and plenty of time to wander around the farm and think. Register now and get special early-bird pricing, or submit a workshop proposal and if yours is selected for the conference, you’ll get free registration!

After last weeks post about us confronting a neighbor who hit her little girl, we’ve had a lot of feedback, all over the map. Maile and I have continued to talk about it, and I asked her to please write something for my blog because 1) I’ll do just about anything to convince her to share her writing voice with the world and, 2) I think she has some really good things to say about what happened. Here is what she would like to offer to the conversation.

I’ve made it a practice of mine not to get too involved with my husband’s blog. It’s his thing, not mine. I love reading his posts, hearing his perspective on this wild and wooly life of ours, but his blog and his community here is just that: his. But when he posted last week about our recent volatile exchange with the neighbor, myself co-starring in that low-budget drama, I felt the need to respond.

I actually hadn’t seen the blog post until my brother texted me, saying that he read it and how proud he was of me for standing up for injustice, not remaining silent. Like any little sister who wants to impress her older brother (despite the fact that we are now well into middle age) I was flattered by his words. But I immediately noticed an unsettling deep in my belly, an unsettling that I recognized as the same churning I felt the week before when I saw my neighbor hitting her daughter.

I immediately put down my phone after texting my brother back and went on a hunt for my computer, not a small feat in a house with six children who are well trained in the art of laptop misplacement. I found it, got on Shawn’s blog, and read his recount of the event, tears in my eyes as I relived it through his words.

Damn, he’s a good writer.

But when I came to the end, I didn’t want to read the comments. It still felt too fresh; I still hadn’t come to terms with how it all played out. I wanted to call Shawn and tell him to take the post down and delete all the comments. The truth is that I didn’t want people applauding me, but I didn’t want them criticizing me either. I had too many conflicting feeling of my own about it all, and I felt unable to shoulder the feelings of others.

Immediately after the blow up with my neighbor, I felt angry and ashamed and hypocritical. I couldn’t turn a blind eye to someone beating a small child in front of me. I shouldn’t have, and I’m glad I didn’t. A couple days later I shared the story of the incident with a friend, and she said something that gave me some comfort: she said perhaps that girl will remember that someone stood up for her once; that someone said that hitting her wasn’t okay. I hope so.

But while I definitely had compassion for the daughter, I neglected to show compassion for her mother. I don’t know what her life has been like up until now. Clearly, from the fact that her car was being towed and she was tearing down the sidewalk and apartment buildings with her screaming because of it, she wasn’t having a great day. And who was I to point a finger at her when someone could have easily pointed a finger at me during one of the many times I’ve lost it with one of my children; I am no perfect parent. So when the dust settled after the event, the overwhelming feeling that hung over me was failure.

A couple days later, I listened to a sermon by Richard Rohr where he talked about Christ as the Divine Mirror. Rohr’s lesson centered around the passage where Jesus speaks with the Samaritan woman at the well. In the course of their conversation, Jesus basically “holds a mirror” up to the woman, telling her the things about her life that he shouldn’t have known: her sleeping around, her current live-in boyfriend. But Jesus doesn’t say these things in an accusatory way. He simply holds up a mirror to her face for her to see her life as it really is. Rohr suggests that in this divine “holding up of the mirror” in our own lives, Christ’s love and grace will not produce guilt or shame, but it will fill us a feeling of great responsibility.

That phrase “great responsibility” perfectly verbalized the sense that filled me nearly to bursting after the interchange with my neighbor. I was keenly aware that there was a better way to have handled that situation than I did. My greatest regret in it all, or should I say, my greatest wish is that my interaction with her would have led to building a road, no matter how gravelly and pot-holed, that connected us, a road that would allow for exchanging our names and an occasional “hello”, perhaps a road that her daughter could cross to sit beside our children on a sunny spring afternoon to make pastel chalk pictures on the city sidewalks. Instead, my yelling at her without extending any form of compassion built up a wall, and, at this point, that feels nearly impossible to overcome.

Thankfully, I’ve finally come to the realization that God doesn’t see what happened as a failure, but I do clearly recognize the great responsibility He has placed in my heart. I hope I get another chance to do things differently, to write a different story for my neighbor and I.

I hope.

* * * * *

You can read the original post HERE.

For some good thoughts about how to intervene when you see someone treating a child improperly, check out this article. I know I wish I would have read it sooner. What about you? Have you ever witnessed an adult physically abusing a child in public? What did you do, if anything?

There is rich, dark earth under
these streets. I know.
I saw it myself when the machines
dug up the asphalt, replacing the veins
of this city.

So we went out into the backyard
all seven of us
into our small patch of green
searching for that rich earth.
A gutted building looked down
smiled at us through broken
teeth, gashed
eyes, and we smiled back
toasted him with raised rakes

then
tore up the new grass
the barely-spring mud.
Shovels clanged against unforeseen
problems
rocks
old bricks
a line of beams that used
to border a walkway
someone worked hard to build
now covered.

Lucy
working on the soil where tomatoes
will soon grow
called out

Dad

What’s this?

In her pale palm, shining
in the sunlight,
hollowed out and jagged,
a crack pipe
filled with mud, it’s bulb
round and smooth
the stem mostly missing.

I told her what it was
because this is the world
this is where we live
and sometimes the easiest
answer to a hard question is simply
the answer.

Then I threw it in the trash
and kept digging
because sometimes it’s okay
to go back to pretending these things
don’t exist
at least for an afternoon
or until she’s a teenager.

We turned over old soil
cutting it open
lining it with furrows.
Cade planted tiny seeds one
after the other one
after the other one
after the other.

Sam and Abra
on hands and muddy knees
crept along the rows and
covered everything
and we prayed for death
because
unless a seed dies.

We took a deep breath
looked at the brown yard
the fresh dirt
the tell-tale rows.
Leo crawled on the patio,
brown smudges on his face.
He smiled
eating
rich earth.

We exhaled
gathered our things
went inside

and prayed for rain
or whatever it takes
to get us through the
waiting.

You can get my ebook of poems for FREE today: We Might Never Die.

This post first appeared at Nish Weiseth’s beautiful old site, Deeper Story. I have an unbelievably fond place in my heart for that website and especially for the people who wrote there alongside me. I wrote some of my best material for Deeper Story, and what I wrote in this post three years ago is even truer today. There is a Ring of Power presented to all of us, and there is a quiet river, and ne’er the twain shall meet.

I took the trail I had never taken before, the one that bore off to the right and ducked through a small cove before clinging to the rocky edges of the creek. Clouds rolled in from the west, heavy with expectation. First, the distant role call of thunder. Then the chattering patter of rain drops on a million leaves.

The unfamiliar path went up up up to the top of the hill, but I was still blinded by too many trees. Then down the hill I went with huge, massive strides jumping from long-dead roots on to smooth rocks.

At the bottom, a train track, stretching north and south, bending into eternity. I crossed the tracks, passed through the last grove of trees, and there it was: the river.

* * * * *

My son rides his small tricycle around me on the deck while I write, the plastic wheels thump-thump-thumping over each and every deck board.

Give me space to think, I want to say. Take this noisy life somewhere else, at least for a few precious moments.

But I try to be a good father. I say nothing. And his noisy life grounds me in this moment, this August breeze, these smooth boards under my feet.

He crashes into one of the chairs on the patio. He looks at me. I smile.

* * * * *

There is a scene in The Fellowship of the Ring where Frodo offers the ring of power to the Lady Galadriel. As she considers what it would be like to be the most powerful being in existence, she grows large and dark and fearful.

“In the place of a Dark Lord you would have a Queen! Not dark but beautiful and terrible as the Morn! Treacherous as the Seas! Stronger than the foundations of the Earth! All shall love me and despair!”

But then she sighs and turns her back on power and fame. Her whispering voice trembles.

“I have passed the test. I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.”

* * * * *

I found the river as I had never seen it before: the dam a mile downstream must have been opened, and the water level was low. A long land bridge stretched out into the deep, and I walked on its smooth stones. I sat down at the very end of it so that I could only see the water. It felt like I was sitting in the movement of time, watching the ages pass.

Later, I walked back towards the railroad tracks and found a small ring of stones and a few blackened logs. It gave me a strange feeling, in that quiet place, knowing that someone had spent the night there. Someone had a drink, probably on their own. For all I knew, they were still there, resting in the shadows, waiting for me to move on.

* * * * *

Last week I walked through the large hall at a conference held by the publisher of my latest book. I hovered around the sales area, hoping to be noticed, hoping someone would look up at me, begin to think very hard, and then, as complete and utter joy took over their countenance, they would recognize me, grab my arm, pull me over to their small circle of friends and gush about the wonderful book I had just written. Everyone would sheepishly pull a copy of the book from their bags, shrug their shoulders as if to say they could not help themselves, then ask me to sign their copy.

This never happened. Not even once.

If Frodo would have offered me the Ring of Power at this conference, I’m afraid to say I would probably have humbly accepted. I grew giddy at even the possibility of fame. I wanted to be important, recognized. Thankfully, there are no questing hobbits in Orlando offering rings of power.

In hindsight I smile with embarrassment and see myself for what I am: a small boy riding a loud tricycle on a wooden deck, making an endless amount of noise, crashing into anything that gets in my way, then looking up at my Father with a sheepish grin before riding on. As if that is all I have been created to do.

Make noise. Crash into things.

But when I listen, when I really listen, I realize my true purpose is not located within a hundred miles of the latest conference, the most popular speakers. When I listen, really listen, the same Father I’m too content to ride circles around beckons me to follow him down a much-neglected path. A path of silence. A path of hiddenness.

At the end of the path lies a river. I follow Him out to the end, and we sit there, watching the ages pass.