In which Imaginative Literature Stirs the Heart to Conversion (A Guest Post by Holly Ordway)

I am honoured to welcome Dr. Holly Ordway to my blog today.

In which Imaginative Literature Stirs the Heart to Conversion

How could a fierce atheist enter into Christian faith? There are many ways for God’s grace to work; my own story is one that highlights the importance of imaginative literature!

When I was firmly an atheist, I dismissed Christianity as superstitious nonsense, and I simply would not have listened to the arguments that ultimately convinced me that the Christian claim is objectively true. Apologetics arguments were (eventually) vitally important, but as I reflected and wrote about my journey, I recognized the importance of imagination as both the catalyst and the foundation of my rational exploration of the faith.

How did that happen?

Let me give you a little glimpse from my memoir of conversion, Not God’s Type: An Atheist Academic Lays Down Her Arms.

From my childhood:

Long before I gave any thought about whether Christianity was true, and long before I considered questions of faith and practice, my imagination was being fed Christianly. I delighted in the stories of King Arthur’s knights and the quest for the Holy Grail, without knowing that the Grail was the cup from the Last Supper. I had no idea that the Chronicles of Narnia had anything to do with Jesus, but images from the stories stuck with me, as bright and vivid in my memory as if I had caught sight of a real landscape, had a real encounter, with more significance than I could quite grasp.

And at some point in my childhood, I found J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and that changed everything. Not suddenly. Not even immediately. But slowly, surely. Like light from an invisible lamp, God’s grace was beginning to shine out from Tolkien’s works, illuminating my Godless imagination with a Christian vision.

I don’t remember reading The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit for the first time, only re-reading them again and again… Middle Earth was a world in which there is darkness, but also real light, a light that shines in the darkness and is not extinguished: Galadriel’s light, and the light of the star that Sam sees break through the clouds in Mordor, and the ray of sun that falls on the flower-crowned head of the king’s broken statue at the crossroads… I didn’t know, then, that my imagination had been, as it were, baptized in Middle Earth. But something took root in my reading of Tolkien that would flower many years later.

From my time at college:

The bumper-sticker expressions of Christian affirmation – “I’m not perfect, just forgiven!” “God is my co-pilot!” – and the kitsch art that I saw – a blue-eyed Jesus in drapey robes (polyester?) comforting some repentant hipster, or cuddling impossibly adorable children (none crying or distracted), presented faith as a kind of pious flag-waving. No thanks!

I didn’t know then how to say it, but I was looking for the cosmic Christ, the one by whom all things were made, the risen and glorified Jesus at the right hand of the Father.

The Catholic poet Gerard Manley Hopkins got past my allergic reaction to kitsch because it flowed naturally out of what he saw in the world.

Where his poetry was sweet, it had the sweetness of a perfectly ripe strawberry, or of the very best chocolate, creamy and rich – not the chemical sweetness of a low-fat sugar-free pudding with non-dairy whipped topping.

Where his poetry was bitter, it was bitter with the taste of real misery, the kind that fills up your awareness, squeezes out the memory of better times and draws a blank on tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow – not the faux-sadness of “Jesus died for you!” (so cheer up and get with the program already), the faux-compassion that can’t bear to look at a crucifix (so morbid).

Somehow for Hopkins the sweet and the bitter were not opposed; they were part of the same experience of being in the world, and undergirding all of it was something I didn’t understand at all, never having experienced it or known anyone who had: the reality of God, not as an abstract moral figure or as a name dropped to show off one’s piety, but a dynamic awareness of being in relationship with the Trinitarian God, an experienced reality bigger by far than the words used to point to it.

Years later, struggling with questions of meaning, wrestling with despair, I re-read Hopkins. I had no conscious desire to find God; I thought I knew that He did not exist. And yet something was at work in me, just as Hopkins wrote in “The Windhover”: “My heart in hiding / Stirred for a bird. . .” My heart stirred – for what? For something beyond my experience.

Poetry had done its work. I was ready to listen.

Holly Ordway is Professor of English and Director of the MA in Cultural Apologetics at Houston Baptist University, and the author of Not God’s Type: An Atheist Academic Lays Down Her Arms (Ignatius Press, 2014). She holds a PhD in English literature from the University of Massachusetts Amherst; her academic work focuses on imagination in apologetics, with special attention to the writings of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams.

What Children Know: What it Means to Truly Live (A Guest Post by Laura Boggess)

By Anita Mathias

I am honoured and excited to be hosting Laura Boggess today. I am reading her exquisite book Playdates with God with much delight. Do yourself a favour and buy it too–today!!

Playdates with God

What Children Know: What it Means to Truly Live

A few frail drops of rain fall and I sit at the breakfast table, wondering.

My New Testament reading this morning is on the Year of Jubilee and I am thinking of freedom. I am thinking of a broken figure in a hospital bed—one of the patients in the hospital where I work—held prisoner by a body that once was taken for granted.

I am thinking of brave words uttered from cracked lips, of a story telling long torment in an able body, of abuse and addiction, and how his eyes are opened now. I am thinking about what it takes to realize the gifts we are given each day of our life.

Do you feel like giving up?

It is something I have to ask, part of my job as a therapist.

Do you want to live?

I stare out my window and I ask myself this question:

What does it mean to truly live?

To feel each passing moment in my marrow, detect the pull of gravity on my spirit—measure each turn of the earth with outstretched arms? How can I hear a moment call for calm solitude? How to be present in each heartbeat and feel each wisp of breath travel through my nose—move through my body as it is carries life into my unknown places?

Today, I need a map. I am lost—all turned about in this thing I call living.

Yesterday, I asked my two boys, “What if today is the best day of your life and you miss it? What if you miss it because you are thinking about tomorrow? Or the next day?”

We were taking our dog, Bonnie, on her evening walk—our constitutional these autumn days. We missed our promise earlier, so we were walking in the dark—light from neighbors’ windows peeking out at us.

Their moon-faces and shadow-mouths shone bright and under cover of night the tide of their laughter swept over me and I knew. I knew they never would miss the best day of their life.

Children have a way of catching joy and carrying it out into their every day—into their walking around life.

Why don’t I?

The Year of Jubilee came after seven years of Sabbaths. Seven times seven years. In the fiftieth year, liberty is proclaimed. Debts were cancelled; land returned to its original owner, countrymen who were slaves were freed…

I know that Jesus is our Jubilee. He came to set the captives free.

But there are no answers for lost days here. Only questions. These empty eyes, these silent muscles do not know about the arcana of Jubilee. What do we miss in our grown-up lives while we wait for the promised freedom.

Isn’t there freedom now? In each moment, if only I choose to see?

I pray for faith like a child. I pray for eyes to see the holy in each moment.

And the Name, whispered, fills the room.

I feel each passing moment in my marrow; detect the pull of gravity on my spirit—stretch arms to feel the earth turning. I hear this moment call to me—it whispers all that is required. Each heartbeat ticks the seconds, each wisp of breath breathes life.

Do you want to live?

The Jubilee is inside of me. Sometimes I give it away.

Photo of Laura by Fall Meadow Photography.

Author of the newly-released Playdates with God: Having a Childlike Faith in a Grown-up World, Laura Boggess lives in a little valley in West Virginia with her husband and two sons. She is a content editor for TheHighCalling.org and blogs at lauraboggess.com. Connect with Laura on Facebook and Twitter.

Lucy Mills on her New Book, “Forgetful Heart,” and her Writing and Publishing Journey

By Anita Mathias

Lucy Mills has just published her first book, Forgetful Heart: Remembering God in a Distracted World (Darton, Longman and Todd) available on Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.

I ask Lucy a few questions about her book

What inspired your book?

There was no ‘one thing’ – at least not that I can remember (!)

I was aware of my own forgetfulness. My cluttered, distracted mind often results in silly mistakes, side-tracked intentions and confused moments.

I was coming out of a difficult patch in my life and faith and trying to re-orientate myself. I’d been reading through the Old Testament, and been struck how, particularly in Deuteronomy, God’s people are often called to remember him – not to forget all God had done for them.

I’d been feeling frustrated that things I’d learned in the past had slipped away from me. I’d studied for a degree in theology, which I loved – and it distressed me how the things I’d engaged with so passionately had then retreated somewhere in the dusty recesses of my mind.

But above all, I found I was forgetting the moments of profound revelation, the God-touches in my life. Instead of retelling my stories, I was allowing them to decay until the plot was hard to find.

I’d had ideas for books before, but none that took hold of me in quite this way. The book was part of my own journey, my own quest for remembering.

I ask the question: what does it mean to remember God in my life? If what I remember is essential to my identity, what am I choosing to dwell on day by day? Tell us about your writing journey

I struggled many years with a love-hate relationship with writing.

Many times I wanted to ‘drop it’ altogether and get on with other things. But it wouldn’t let me go. When at last I owned my vocation as a writer, I experienced a feeling of freedom. I couldn’t live my life thinking ‘perhaps I could’. I needed to grasp it and say ‘I will do this’, regardless of whether anyone else wanted to read my words.

I’m now glad that earlier attempts led to limited success. It took me until recently to discover my ‘voice,’ to mature into becoming the writer I want to be. I needed that time of waiting, internal conflict and ‘brewing’ – however difficult that was at the time!

As someone who struggles with CFS/ME, my life is by necessity punctuated by full stops – not always where I would like to put them!

I’ve had to be flexible in my expectations of myself and to accept the occasional ‘derailing’ of my dreams.

Please tell us about your publishing journey

I worked hard on my proposal before approaching publishers. I approached one publisher because I was acquainted with the commissioning editor and knew she would be constructive. The team was interested but they weren’t sure it would sell.

The second editor/publisher I approached was complimentary about both the idea and my writing style but, again, rejected the book.

I then started looking into a third publisher. As I researched them, I felt an affinity with them that I’d not experienced with anyone else. I needed more courage to contact them because of this! I got an out-of-office reply. The then commissioning editor wasn’t back from holiday until the next week. I was surprised to get a reply that next week, asking to see the complete manuscript (such as it was).

The team worked hard over the next few months to make publishing my book viable for them. I signed a contract with Darton, Longman and Todd in August 2013.

It’s worth finding a publisher who is a good ‘fit’ for your book, not just in genre and style but in ethos. What do they care about? What’s your common ground – and how can you bring this to their attention? Don’t just look at them as names on a list; look at the reasons you’d like to be published by them. Yes, it can make the rejection harder. But it will make an acceptance all the more sweet!

For me, finding a publishing team who grasped – from the outset – the ‘soul’ of the book, made a huge difference. I felt I could trust them with it. They wanted to publish my book because they liked it and they understood it. I feel very privileged to have been published by them, as a ‘new author on the block’. I’d love the book to sell well because I want to justify their faith in it.

Lucy’s website and blog are found at http://www.lucy-mills.com and she tweets as @lucymills. You can hear her read an extract from Chapter 16 of Forgetful Heart here:

Lucy Mills

Amy Boucher Pye guest-posts on her writing process and her work in progress

By Anita Mathias

Thank you to Anita for inviting me on the Monday blog tour. Pleasure to be dreaming beneath the spires with you, even if from a sunny garden in North London!

So the game is to share what we’re working on, why we write, and how the process works.

What I am working on

I’m writing and writing but still chasing after that first elusive book. Having worked as an editor in the Christian publishing field for yonks, I find I have to chain up my inner editor when I’m writing, and nowhere more so than with a book-length manuscript. My inner editor voice sees what I’m creating and chimes in with some not-so-helpful comments, “Are you sure you want to write that? You’re a first-time author. What about your platform, or lack thereof? Blah-de-blah-de-blah-de-blah.”

My journey to book publication has been rocky. A highlight was Easter 2013, when I was thrilled to secure a most fabulous literary agent to represent me, Steve Laube. He shopped around my idea of a memoir called Beloved of God, which traced my journey of awakening to God’s love and accepting my identity as his child. Result? Rejection. Ouch.

And so I’m back to the drawing board. I feel a bit stuck, to be honest, for that nasty inner editor can be so vocal, especially when my first attempt did not meet with success. But now that I’ve just finished with a busy season of speaking engagements, I’m going to clamp down and develop the book idea that keeps popping up, wanting to take a life of its own.

Why do I write what I do?

I’ve always loved words and writing. When I was 11, I was first published in the Minneapolis paper in the kids’ page, which I found thrilling. But when some schoolmates mocked me for scoring 104/100 on the poetry project, I started to lose confidence. Working for a great writer in my early 20s further eroded my willingness to put words on the page, as I thought about what I would write and found myself wanting (to be fair on my younger self, that author/thinker and I have very different styles!)

It was only after my world fell in, seemingly, when Zondervan axed my acquisitions (UK: commissioning) editor position that I started to develop my writing voice. I began writing regularly for publication (feature articles, columns, reviews, devotionals), enjoying the buzz of seeing the finished product and the interacting with readers.

One of my most favorite activities is writing devotionals – Bible reading notes. I learn so much by delving into the biblical text and commentaries, chewing it over with prayer and offering it up. I’ve written for New Daylight, Day by Day with God, Inspiring Women Every Day, Closer to God and Living Light. You can read some of my devotional series on my blog.

I’ve also always loved books, and so another joy is to run the Woman Alive Book Club. Every month I choose a book or two to review as well as interviewing Christian authors. We also publish 5 reader reviews. Our Facebook group is a wonderful place for discussion of books and authors; it’s a real community of grace. (Because I’m always in need of books to review for this monthly feature, publishers regularly send me their books to consider. Free books = result!)

How does my work differ from others in its genre?

The more I write, the more I celebrate the author’s individual voice. Made in the image of God, we all reflect his glory, truth, creativity and love in unique ways. That voice being expressed by words on a page (or a screen) to me is beautiful. The more sure I am about who am I am, rooted in him, the more eager I am to write and share and create.

And yes, I’m aware I didn’t really answer the question…

How does my writing process work?

Once I’ve taken the kids to school, I settle down in my hopefully sunny study. After some time reading the Bible and praying, and yep, catching up on social media, I get down to my task. If it’s a blog post or a short article, I take the hint of the idea that I want to flesh out and get down to writing. (I wrote about this creative process recently in a blog.) If I’m writing Bible reading notes, I delight in reading around the passage in commentaries and spending some time in prayer, asking God what he’d like me to share.

My busy family life means I can’t often go away for a period of uninterrupted writing, but those occasions when I’ve hidden myself away for a few days or even a week are blissful hard work. After getting my work space organized just so, I research and write and drink sparkling water and write and look out the window and drink more sparking water and write. Ah for one of those weeks…

I’ve found that any good writing comes after rewriting. And rewriting. And rewriting. Of course, we also have to learn how to stop the editing process too – and finally to finish off a piece before we destroy it – but going back over one’s work with a fresh eye, tweaking here and cutting there, gives stronger results.

To continue the blog tour, I nominate two fabulous Cathys: Cathy LeFeurve and Cathy Madavan. After all, my middle name is Catherine…

Amy Boucher Pye

Carolyn Weber muses on her writing, her writing process, & works in progress (Monday Blog Hop)

By Anita Mathias

I have been tagged by Anita Mathias to join the Monday Blog Hop, which involves a tour of UK/US writers. I am delighted and honoured at the invitation, and enjoyed myself in answering the questions she passed along.

Often stopping to reflect on one’s work brings a respite of clarity – I should do this more often, if I wasn’t so mired in the work itself! It’s a good reminder of the wisdom that re-evaluation brings. “Teach us to number our days, the we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Ps 90:12). Indeed.

I include the questions and my answers below, and then I take the liberty of tagging two faith writers I’ve admired in the blogosphere to join in the same, Rachel Marie Stone and Pilar Arsenec:

What are you working on?

I just finished a collection of poems – like one of my favourite poets Luci Shaw (who also managed to raise 5 children!) I have found poetry conducive to mothering. Perhaps it’s the efficiency of the genre, perhaps it’s the way I have found the world to speak more loudly to me now as a mother (in all sorts of ways), perhaps it’s how I can, with poetry, work drafts and revisions into the nooks and crannies of my day. Perhaps it really is a Wordsworthian overflow of emotion recollected in tranquility when I finally do get to sit. Or a combination of all these aforesaid things. I have also felt so many combined emotions returning to my hometown, and of course I love the natural world, and especially the Canadian landscape. As with authors I enjoy reading, I tend to immerse myself in genres as well when I write. Hence, a lot of poetry lately.

I’m also about to launch a line of children’s books. This has been a project long close to my heart, so do stay tuned! I should have more information up on my website shortly.

And finally, I have been working for some time on a book project about the spiritual discipline of reading. The project has a more academic bent, but I hope to make it attractive to all readers as well as it grows out of my love of literature and two decades of teaching it. I believe words are holy things, and that our relationship to them needs to be upheld and nurtured, especially in our culture today.

How does your work differ from others in its genre?

While I enjoy memoir as a vein throughout most of what I do, I hope that it is malleable as appropriate. As a memoirist, I want to be known for keeping the same trustworthy voice, but approaching different topics with it. I am drawn to the interweaving of stories (I love allusion, and how it opens ideas and associations like Russian dolls, through just one word or phrase), along with history, art, and literature to create other worlds (fictive and creative non-fictive) that challenge us to grow closer to God –with all the terrible beauty that implies.

Why do you write what you do?

Look. Taste. Hear. See. God is good. Art is the overcoming of evil with good. Without the ardent pursuit of beauty and truth, we are the living dead, indeed – a fate far worse than death.

How does your writing process work?

This is a question that always fascinates me with other writers. For me, right now at this season in my life, I’m afraid I don’t have any process that “works.” As a mother to four small children yet, I often feel I am living out Emily Dickinson’s maxim: “When I try to organize, my little Force explodes.”

I try to write regularly, i.e. daily, even in some small way, shape or form, but this attempt or even good intention is often subject to circumstance, no matter how hard I try: a child’s illness, an elderly parent’s needs, the toddler crying. It can be frustrating, but it can also be quite humbling in its required re-setting of one’s heart. Then, we you do get to really be with your words, you appreciate the process and the words themselves. Writing becomes a kind of worship.

Sometimes I have the rare chance – or more likely I snap – and hide and write for long periods at a time. This can be quite productive, as I’ve spent a long while “percolating” before hand, even when on the run during my day. One blessing is that I very rarely suffer from writer’s block when I do get to sit by myself with a cup of tea and the page before me!

Carolyn Weber and her gorgeous family

Carolyn Weber: Author of the critically acclaimed memoir Surprised by Oxford, Carolyn Weber holds her B.A. Honours in English from Huron College at the University of Western Ontario, Canada and her M.Phil. and D. Phil. Degrees in Romantic Literature from Oxford University, England. She has been a professor at the University of San Francisco, Seattle University, Westmont College and Oxford University, where she was also the first female dean of St. Peter’s College. An author, speaker and teacher, she currently resides in Southwestern Canada, with her husband and four spirited children.

On Training to be a Vicar in the Church of England (A Guest Post by Jules Middleton)

By Anita Mathias

I am excited to host this guest post by my friend, Jules Middleton, an ordinand in the Church of England.

Southwark Cathedral

Anita has asked me to write about my experiences at Vicar School. I am an Ordinand (ie: hoping to end up as a Vicar in the CofE), studying a 3 year part-time Foundation Degree in Theology for Ministry at SEITE (South East Institute for Theological Education). The college covers four dioceses, including both full and part time students, those doing lay courses (ie: they won’t get ordained at the end); and those hoping for paid jobs like me (stipendiary ministry) or those who will be self supporting (NSM or SSM). We all come from a wide range of churchmanship and traditions and are a very mixed bunch.

* * *

So, Vicar School – sounds so jolly nice doesn’t it? Almost conjures up images of greying men in tweed and middle-aged women in twin sets in wood panelled rooms, bibles open on our desks listening intently whilst we are taught good exegesis. Of course, the reality is rather different. On my course, we are very mixed: in age, churchmanship and dress – not sure I’ve seen a single twin set actually!

And it’s nice that we are all so different because we can learn so much from each other, but because so many of us are doing different things it can be harder to form strong relationships. For example there are people I only ever see when we’re away on study weekends which is about twice a term. It does get a bit confusing – I am just over half way through my first year and I think I’m just about getting the hang of it all!

So how did I end up here? Well, just getting into Vicar School is a slog in itself. Getting selected for me meant going through the ‘discernment process’ in the Church of England. My husband always jokes that this sounds like a bunch of bearded polo-necked men in a room thinking a lot, and well, there certainly was a lot of thinking involved. It’s a pretty thorough process that I usually describe as like going through intensive therapy. Very worthwhile but hard work and a bit of an emotional roller coaster too. So when I was finally selected and ready to go to college, it felt like the end of a rather long journey when the reality is, it’s actually just the beginning of another hard slog.

So, the course began back in September last year, with a weekend away with the other first years. Literally thrown in at the deep end: a weekend away with a bunch of strangers in surroundings that would be at home in a Harry Potter movie (ever been to Aylesford Priory?) Trouble with the weekends is that they start on a Friday evening and if you’re anything like me, by Friday evening all I am capable of is vegging on the sofa with a glass of red and some trashy telly.

And yet, here I was, all ready for some academic hard stuff. I’ve got to admit I wrote in my journal on that first evening ‘what the **** I doing here?!’ Since then it’s been pretty full on. We’ve had several weekends away, had some fantastic teaching, done our Mission Placement and begun to form friendships too.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised at God working through the course to teach me, mould me and guide me, but I am. From the first term’s teaching on church history, which I thought would be massively dull but actually really loved; to getting fed up with more traditional worship styles (I’m a charismatic) and then finding myself weeping uncontrollably during a Eucharist. From reluctantly starting the discipline of the Daily Office and then finding that God speaks to me through it every day; to realising that at heart I am an Anglican. It’s been quite staggering really (especially the Anglican bit…).

I’m also loving how what I am studying is really feeding into my work – I work for my church and it’s amazing how things that seem pretty irrelevant just slot into what I am working on. For instance, I’m currently preparing a report for church on mission and growth, most of which will also feature in an essay I’m doing (rather convenient that one…)

Of course there are still moments when I wonder what on earth God has got me into. Weeks when I have work and college deadlines looming, or when my kids are on school hols and I still have to find time to study, or, as is coming up shortly, planning for the dreaded whole week away at Easter. There have been days when I have wished that I were the kind of person who would be content to be a stay at home mum, when it all seems just too much.

And yet these are the moments when I am reliant on God more than ever. To be honest, without him I think I’d have walked away after the first evening.

So, as I look ahead there is a certain level of mild panic at what the future holds, at where God might send us, but at the same time there is excitement too. I have learned so much already and yet I still have so much to learn. I am loving learning, loving getting back into academic writing, loving the reading (well most of it, not so sure on Kantian ethics….) and the research.

This is a path that whilst being terrifying and unsettling, also feels completely right and where I am meant to be.

Over to you: Have you considered ordination, or been through the selection process or “Vicar School”? Share your story?

Jules Middleton

P.S. Jules is asking for your help if you’ve been through the discernment process.

Jules Middleton is a mum and wife, Christian, artist, ordinand and blogger. Her blog Apples of Gold reflects her Christian journey in every day life.

In which Sarah Bessey Writes a Guest Post: The Genesis of a Jesus Feminist

By Anita Mathias

Jesus Feminist

Jesus Feminist grew organically out of my life in Christ.

As a writer and blogger, I love to write through my life to figure out what I think and believe and dream about God, as well as the Church, marriage, motherhood, community, global issues, all of it.

So as I was writing through these intersections of women and Scripture, the kingdom of God and missional theology, freedom and justice, through my own habit of storytelling, the book simply began to grow in my heart and mind. It wasn’t born out of anger or bitterness or even a need to set the record straight about anything.

Instead Jesus Feminist took shape out of my own history as a beloved daughter, in my experiences in the Church as a woman, in my heart for justice and wholeness for God’s daughters, my passion for writing out my life, and most particularly in my adoration of Jesus and commitment to live into the Kingdom of God. All those things came together and over the course of a few years, the book began to grow.

* * *

I define feminism as the simple belief that women are people, too. At the core, feminism simply means that we champion the dignity, rights, responsibilities, and glories of women as equal in importance to those of men, and we refuse discrimination against women. That’s it. [Read more…]

Why I Run: A Guest Post by Jennifer Luitwieler

By Anita Mathias

Read on and be inspired by this guest post from Jennifer Luitwieler, pictured here running in the Pittsburgh Marathon

If it is true that every act is sacred, then running is my most perfect sacred act.

Sometimes, running is my sacrifice, where I haul all my insecurities, inhibitions, pains and frustrations to the altar and leave them there. Where I remember that to run the race efficiently, it is wisest to race unencumbered. We tend to think these things we lug around with us are precious and personal and eternal. But we are not so special, we are not unique to the experience of pain. And so, when I run, I can cut the ties on the baggage straps, sacrificing the dross for the breath of life.

Sometimes, running is my penance. I am no stranger to bad mom or bad wife moments. I have been a bad friend, a horrible listener, a disrespectful daughter or arrogant teacher. I have been the urgent and Very Important Driver behind you in traffic. Strapping on my runnings shoes is not akin to shrugging into the hair shirt, but there are days when I want to outrun the pain I may have caused others.

Sometimes, running is my joy. Believe me when I say I never saw that coming. My athletic endeavors had been restricted to required phys ed class in high school lo these many years ago. But there are days now, sometimes even consecutive days, when to run is to remember what it was like to be a child, loping free on the grass, the uncontained, irrational pleasure of youth.

Sometimes…no, every time, running is my prayer. Running is my worship. If prayer is relationship and worship is experiencing His presence, then running is my prayer. Because when I run, He has set my feet in a wide place. When I run, I am in the safest place to admit the depths of my wounds, to express the heights of my gratitude. When I am running is the only time I feel like I can say exactly the words I want to say to Him. And when I can hear the smallest murmur. When I run, I can rage, and praise and doubt. And when I run, I am engaged with every part of me.

Running is my sacred expression.

Jennifer Luitwieler is a writer in Tulsa, OK. She and her husband have three children, and homeschool one of them. She is an fan of both American football and football. She started running to take care of The Dog’s business. Now, she runs to take care of her own. Her book Run With Me: An Accidental Runner and the Power of Poo was published in 2011 by Civitas Press. She writes a family fitness column for Tulsa Kids and a monthly essay for Deeper Story. You can also read more from her at Jennifer Luitwieler. Find her on twitter and facebook, too.