The Next Chapter

For the last ten years or so, I’ve been entirely focused on homeschooling my five kids, navigating the choppy waters of faith and grief, playing on my local roller derby team, and recovering from the grueling gauntlet that led to my Ph.D. in English.  This past year, God seems to have flung open a door that I barely found the courage to knock on with one, shaky knuckle.  At the encouragement of some publishing friends, I am writing things down. Now, I’m trying to shim the edges of my fraction-teaching, read-aloud days with little slivers of book writing.  I’m writing about lessons I learned from a bunch of brutal and beautiful women on the best roller derby team in South-central Indiana — lessons about loving like Jesus that I somehow missed over a lifetime of Sunday school.  I’m writing about the joy and reverence of incorporating Hebrew holidays into our family’s liturgical calendar. I’m writing about the deep freedom that I have as an image-bearer to create and to serve, and I’m writing about the difficult journey into ministry that challenged me to learn so much about the God who loves us all.