‘It’s a good song,’ he said to her, ‘It’s just the first verse that needs a little more work.’ We were sitting in a semi-circle, me and a handful of other Christian songwriters. One woman had taken the courageous step of sharing her song with us. We were in the delicate process of giving her […]
My Writing Tribe
There’s lots to love in a writing conference. Workshops, speakers and bookstalls for that all-important retail therapy. It’s a great chance to network and and garner contacts for editing and publishing, something all writers need (whether we are aiming for traditional or self-publishing). But there’s one thing I love most about these kinds of writerly […]
My Bible Hero
I was caught unawares in a recent interview* on childlessness when the interviewer asked, ‘Who are your bible heroes?’ I thought fast. Who is my hero in childlessness, the one who most inspires me? I thought about Jesus. I thought about Paul. I thought about the disciples. I thought about the old testament too. And […]
Birthing Babies
I sent off another copy of Surviving Childlessness this week and, as always, I felt like I was saying goodbye to my baby. Birthing a book baby is a strange feeling. I am overjoyed at the result, a book I can hold in my hands that looks and feels exactly as I always imagined it would. But […]
Legacies of Faith: The God Who Weeps
It’s Mother’s Day again. My church is holding a Mother’s Day service. Other childless Christians might appreciate the dilemma this presents. On the one hand, I love my church and want to be part of it. On the other hand, Mother’s Day can be one of the toughest days in the calendar year. There are […]
Why I Write About Childlessness
I relate to the boy with the loaves and fish. In John 6, Jesus fed a crowd of five thousand people by taking an anonymous boy’s food, five loaves of bread and two fish, and handing it out. Not only was everyone satisfied, they had twelve baskets full of leftovers. I feel like that as […]
Why I Sing When I’m Sad
I was recently interviewed for the Childless and Christian online conference, and while listening back to myself (which can be both horrifying and reassuring), I was struck by how creativity can help us in our grief. Five months ago, I was watching a movie when I was struck with an image of my daughter, the […]
What Would I Want the Next Generation of Christian Women to Know?
I was recently interviewed by Fixing Her Eyes* and they asked me a difficult question: What would I want to tell the next generation of Christian women? What would I want them to know? I believe this worthy question warrants more than the couple of paragraphs I originally wrote. So here goes. To Christian women […]
Singledom and Social Media
I recently left a singles-focused social media group. Or, to be more accurate, I was asked to leave and re-join, something I was not prepared to do (due to personal circumstances). So I left altogether. In a way, I am glad. I have noticed this group seems particularly fond of positive singledom narratives. You know, […]
This Jesus
Have you ever found church tiring? I know I have. We have internal church politics, fanatical offshoots, people leaving the church in droves. We have hypocrisy and apathy and disillusionment. We have COVID-19-weariness, the effort of trying to keep the living body of Christ alive in lockdown. We live in a world where Zoom fatigue […]