More than Writers

    In 2017, Josh Harris, the author of “I kissed dating goodbye”, a book that was hugely popular in the late 90’s, publicly renounced what he wrote after hearing stories of how people had used his book to cause pain and shame. Since then, there’s been a wariness and even a backlash against other Christian books on the theme of relationships. Coincidentally, 2017 was the year I published my own Christian book for singles, about relationships and marriage. What great timing! Thankfully, I had never read Josh Harris’s book, even though I was the target age for it in 1997, so it had a minimal influence on my own work, but it did make me very aware, about the power of our words to influence. For example, before publishing my book I was encouraged to collect ‘endorsements’ that would be printed inside the book, so I sent a pdf to several people and awaited their feedback. One person told me that reading my book had changed her life. Instead of being happy that my book was f...

I’ve been reflecting on the nature of time this week. Not out of any great philosophical revelation, but simply due to the fact that my daughter turns twenty years old today, and that feels like a big thing, like something to sit with a while. I know twenty-one is the big one, but twenty feels new and different and scary. Twenty ages me so much more than nineteen, and throws me into a whirl of memories and well-worn cliches about where-on-earth-did-those-years-go. It was yesterday, surely, that she was a tiny newborn, snuffling in my arms. Time is wrong, isn’t it? It has to be. As writers, and as creatives in general, we have a unique privilege when it comes to matters of time: we can manipulate it. We can bend it and travel through it, we can look back over it and forward to years we will never see. We can even break it, sometimes. Some of the most fascinating books play with time – think of Life After Life by Kate Atkinson, or The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, or The ...

A good friend (the best) came out with a verse for me recently. We were on the phone and I was confiding in her about a decision I made twenty five years ago whose ramifications I still regret and worry about. It was an intensely personal memory and I'd only ever discussed it with my husband. My friend, who is a writer and Jesus-lover, paused for a moment then said, "You know that verse about restoring the years the locusts have eaten? Well, it just popped into my head and I wonder, you know, whether it's for you..." Here is the verse: - "I'll make up for the years of the locust, the great locust devastation...You'll eat your fill of good food. You'll be full of praise to your God, The God who has set you back on your heels in wonder." Joel 2:25,26 The Message When she mentioned it, I felt that thing - call it what you will - a pull at the throat, a lancing of the spirit, a sigh. I looked out over the morning garden - threads of sunshine,...