When life jackets aren’t enough…

When life jackets aren’t enough…

IMG_1187You see that little girl? The one on the right? Yes, it’s me. I was six and a half years old that summer. That’s right—the girl in the lifejacket, the one who wanted life to be safe.

Some of my family’s pictures reveal a time in my life when I was free to be a child in a child’s world. Utterly unselfconscious. I was given that privilege, that chance to grow up naturally, slowly, as a flower opens in the spring.

SDH TeenagerBut that time of innocence melted away. I soon became a contemplative teenager, and a very different world emerged. I saw pain in other people’s faces. I heard traumatic stories. I learned about abuse, divorce, racism, prostitution, drug overdoses, mental illness, and death. Where was God in all the chaos and tragedy?

I wanted to be safe and keep others safe too, but life jackets would not suffice.

How does one reconcile the idea of a loving God with the pain in human existence–particularly when it comes to unjust suffering? Is it brazen to think God isn’t doing a good job of being God? How can you get close to Him, if you don’t trust Him? Those deep brooding questions were tucked away in the dark places of my heart, even though I’d been a Christian for a while.

And those are Iris Somerset’s questions too.

Closeup IrisIris is the main character in my newly released novel, Bird, Horse, and Muffin. She’s ten years old. Ten and a half to be precise. Half years are important when you’re keeping up with a snarky teenage brother like Wyeth.

God speaks to her for the first time in a school parking lot. From that point on, her family life begins a nosedive. Yet her spiritual curiosity is stirred. God brought her terrible news. Still God was the One Who told her. How intriguing and confusing to a young girl with a heart full of questions?

My editor, Mick Silva, wrote me during the writing process. “You know you’re Iris, right? You get that don’t you?”

I tilted my head. It was a curious thought. I didn’t lose my mother at a young age. My father wasn’t anything like Hank, Iris’ father, and I didn’t have a volatile older brother to contend with. But in truth, my spiritual questions were the same. I wrote back. “Well, yes. You’re right. Maybe she’ll figure things out for me.”

BHMfrontcoverFINAL copyStory writing is like that. As an author, I was laying out my own questions and struggles, my own vulnerabilities and dismay that life is different than I’d hoped for. I searched for answers and pressed into God when I came up empty. At times my characters took me places and showed me a few things. And some of my own questions resolved.

Wyeth and Car closeupMostly I hope this story will resonate with those who have lost a parent, or have had to grow up too quickly, or lived under the instability of alcoholism. I want to show a real God in the midst of human loss–that when you reach your absolute rock bottom, God is there.

Still one has to choose between despair and faith. It’s not an easy choice. Despair is the shipwreck of the soul, and the journey of faith is often without a clear path. As a kid might say, it’s a choice between worse and worser. And yet along the way—through faith—the unseen becomes more real than what is seen. And that brings hope—the kind of hope that lights the way.

Candles WaxAs Uncle Skeets explains to Iris in the story—“To go on with God, you have to be willing to walk in days of mystery.”

All the God encounters in my novel are based on true stories, lending authenticity to the ways God enters our human struggle.

May you have your own encounter with God as you read the story!

Bird, Horse, and Muffin is available now on Amazon and Kindle. If you’d like to be part of my “Street Team” and help put out the word on social networking, write me at sdhill747@hotmail, and receive a free, signed copy. With 5,000 new books printed every day—900 alone in the U.S.—the only way to extend the reach of my message is through word of mouth. Your help would involve less than an hour of time and would be greatly appreciated! Enjoy the fabulous book trailer created by Filmmaker Scott Chestnut with the help of my son, Nate!

Click here to watch the book trailer

The Pleasure of God

The Pleasure of God

Who can say how these moments arrive? A sudden awareness, an unseen presence descending like a soothing breeze.

It happened to me one glorious fall day. The late afternoon sun felt warm on my skin. I’d been picking up trash, strewn along the roadside by our house.

IMG_1154With my garbage sack full, I strolled up the driveway, thinking about how seasons come and go and years slip by. A vague kind of loneliness came over me as one thought led to another. And then, God came near.

You’re so beautiful to Me, He whispered.

It had nothing to do with physical beauty. Time fades all that. Besides, I was grimy with dirt and perspiration. It seemed like such an odd thing for Him to say. Why then?

It had nothing to do with the fact that I was picking up other people’s garbage, as if that were something special. Concerned citizens in our town organize that kind of effort all the time.

It wasn’t like I’d just accomplished some great thing in my life. I was simply carrying a load of garbage up the driveway. But God seems to catch me off guard in quiet, solitary, mundane moments—maybe on purpose—so I won’t associate it with anything I’ve done.

He just wanted me to feel His pleasure.

Jesus BaptismJesus hadn’t even started his ministry when John baptized him in the Jordan River. Still, God said, “This is my son, in whom I am well pleased.” Of course, one might say, “That’s because it was Jesus,” but that same pleasure is for us.

Kindness Words in Sky Compassionate Generous BackgroundGod smiles when someone does the right thing and no one is looking. He rejoices over the marriage bed of a husband and wife who’ve remained faithful. He is moved by true contrition and forgiveness. He delights when we step into the purposes for which He made us. He notices surprising generosity, private worship, and honest prayers. He exults over each person who comes out of darkness into light.

It might sound prideful or pompous to say God takes pleasure in us. One could even say it smacks of self-righteousness. But His pleasure isn’t necessarily tied to our good behavior…Continue reading

Bird, Horse, and Muffin

Bird, Horse, and Muffin

Dear Friends,

After seven years, my second book—Bird, Horse, and Muffin—will be released in a matter of weeks. This time I wrote a novel. Here’s a short synopsis:

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BHMcoverfinalTen-year-old Iris Somerset encounters a living God when her mother dies unexpectedly. She and her two brothers face a troubling future with an unstable father. His secret abuse of alcohol rips and tears at the sense of family Iris longs to keep. Yet God is there—speaking and moving.

Her budding faith carries her through frightful uncertainty, until her belief in God’s goodness is shattered by her father’s reckless choice one fine summer day.

As her world unravels, Iris and her older brother travel to post-Amin Uganda with their uncle, who runs a home for street kids. In a land of utter despondency, Iris’ heart begins to mend as she confronts her worst fears and experiences the wonder of God through the eyes of war orphans.

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Believe it or not, I was one of those people who said, “I’ll never write a book.” That was before I wrote my spiritual memoir—Closer Than Your Skin.

Then, after eating those words, I said, “Well, I’ll never write fiction.” You’d think I’d know better. All I can say is that God surprises me every time I set limits. He continually stretches me far beyond my comfort level to speak and travel and write in ways I never imagined.

And this novel is a good example. It all started with my friend Kathleen.

I met Kathleen in 1997 when she joined my women’s group. One of those Wednesdays, she described her earliest experience with God: It was an ordinary day in a school parking lot. She was alone, waiting for her friend. Suddenly, out of nowhere, God spoke to her. He told her something she would not have humanly known—and it proved to be true. She was ten years old…and this remarkable encounter essentially inspired the beginning of my novel.

Secondly, music artist Don Potter performed a spontaneous song in Holland years ago. Fortunately, the event was recorded. When I heard the song and pondered its meaning, a story started to unfold in my mind. Here are the lyrics…

How graceful is your grace?

How much lovingkindness is forever?

How much mercy is there, when it comes new every morning?

How much love is there, when blood is the only cure?

How much fire of desire must be in my Lord.

How much anger is the wrath on injustice?

How much fear will come on the wicked man?

How much shouting will be done,

When a white horse comes through the clouds in splendor?

How much love does it take to save a man?

It takes it all, it takes it all, it takes it all.

Every bit, it takes it all.

Nothing held back, nothing kept in reserve, nothing kept for another day.

Nothing spent on something else that we don’t know about,

It’s all been spent and it was spent in a day.

It’s all been done, it’s all been said, it’s all been spent

And it was finished…yes, it was finished…in a day.[i]

***

For the last twenty-five years, I’ve collected many true accounts like Kathleen’s experience including some of my own. In Bird, Horse, and Muffin, I’ve woven true God stories into a fictional storyline with fictional characters so readers can see the variety of ways God is moving, speaking, guiding, encouraging, warning, and loving ordinary people like you and me.

I fervently believe that God seeks out points of contact with us. When it happens, we often think, that’s amazing! And yet, it’s not so farfetched when you remember this same God chose to enter the human race.

Still, everywhere I go, I meet people who are faithfully living the Christian life but say they have no real experience of God. Like me, they may feel touched at a candlelit Christmas Eve service. They may find countless biblical truths relevant to their lives. Still they shrug when it comes to any authentic experience with God. They’re leery of being called crackpots, yet they long for something real, beyond mere religious activity and rhetoric.

It is my hope that Iris’ story will inspire you to look for God’s fingerprints in your own world of divine happenstance—that you will take time to consider a dream, notice a seeming coincidence, look up that Scripture, ponder some song lyrics, and develop your understanding of symbolic, metaphorical language—believing that God wants to speak to you personally.

Next Sunday I will post Chapter One on my website so you can get a taste of the story.

In the meantime, I am gearing up to launch the book in the next month and wonder if any of you would like to be what some authors call their “Street Team”? Would you and some of your friends be interested in receiving a free copy of Bird, Horse, and Muffin? Write me at sdhill747@hotmail.com.

More details to follow!

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[i] “How Much Love” is a spontaneous song inspired by the Lord, done in Holland by Don Potter www.potterhausmusic.net. Used by permission. All rights reserved.