Category: Writing
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Blog 3.0
I’ve been blogging for a long, long time. Digital platforms come and go (anyone reading this who had a MySpace site?), but the human need to connect and communicate is hard-wired in us by our Maker. I wrote a little bit about my history as a blogger here as a way of announcing that I’ll…
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Translating the past
When author Dani Shapiro took a DNA test at age 54, she discovered that the man who’d raised her wasn’t her father. Her 2019 book Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love, details her search for answers surrounding her conception and her painful and miraculous journey toward gaining a truer expression of her identity.…
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I’m excited to share some news with you!
I’m pleased to announce I just signed a contract with Moody Publishers to write my 5th book! The working title is Nowhere To Lay My Head. (Those working titles, I’ve learned, often get tweaked and changed during the book creation process. But for now, this is what we’re calling it.) Here’s a summary of the…
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ParableLife
In ParableLife many of Jesus’ most familiar parables are examined in three ways: From the context of the text, through an imaginative retelling of the story behind the story of the parable, and how the parable looks today in real time through actual stories of people living now. There is a growing conversation about what…
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My 2012 writing life: shock absorbers and flat tires
I am preaching the message below to myself. I wrote the words below four years ago, and need to revisit them again today: One of our former pastors (that’s a depressing phrase, but I digress…) had a catchy little way of summarizing spiritual growth. He would tell the congregation that as they followed the Lord,…
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Graduating from my own writing “school”
“Mrs. Van Loon, I couldn’t do my assignment for you because I was too busy doing my work for Mrs. Stewart’s class. Three or four other kids sang back-up to that excuse: “Me either…Too busy….Mrs. Stewart.” I was teaching a writing class for a home school co-op, and had asked the middle-school group to pull…