Books Can Bust You Up

I have my list of compulsions and illusions, and you have yours.

I’m overjoyed to share that today, my first book Orphaned Believers releases into the world. It’s available in paperback, ebook, and audiobook everywhere books are sold.

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The darkest night of the year is behind us, and we’re moving towards enough light to walk the dog after dinner. Soon, the top of the dutch door will swing open. The screens will go back in. There is one more minute of evidence a day that we’re moving towards something good.

The shift of the seasons, graduation, marriage, birth, adoption: there are far more ordinary days than occasions like these in our lives like these when we can mark a moment. Other times, we mark the end of something painful or bittersweet and it becomes a real defining point. Getting clean, ending a relationship, leaving a job, moving on.

The most important thing about a milestone or turning point is not the day of, but where we go from there. And more specifically, what the state of our soul is as we look forward.

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You probably know by now I wrote a book called Orphaned Believers. You know this because the work of bringing a book into the world comes in two phases: you write a book, and then you talk about it.

The first part, the writing, was 65,000 words written in a basement office. It was hidden work, full of research, dead ends, new connections, and a few moments of levity.

Like coming out of a movie theater into blinding sun, the second part of writing a book, the talking about it, came with a jolt. Instead of ideating, there is marketing. It is public work, full of general writerly awkwardness, prolonged exhaustion, some real moments of connection, and even pure joy.

My friend Drew Brown at

Slow Faith

(one of my favorites on Substack, please subscribe!) shared some Henri Nouwen passages last week in his letter, and they busted me up. I’ve thought about the following sentences every day since, talked to my husband about them. Prayed about the ideas they stirred this morning.

Drew shared the following in his letter:

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Henri

Henri Nouwen decided to enter a monastery for seven months at the height of his fame. He was teaching classes, traveling the country, and writing books. But he was tired. In The Genesee Diary: Reports from a Trappist Monastery, he writes of that decision,

Maybe I spoke more about God than with him. Maybe my writing about prayer kept me from a prayerful life. Maybe I was more concerned about the praise of men and women than the love of God. Maybe I was slowly becoming a prisoner of people’s expectations instead of a man liberated by divine promises.

He wrote and lectured on the importance of solitude but was afraid to actually enter it; his soul was restless, and going into the monastery was an attempt to discover what was missing. He writes,

I started to see how much I had indeed fallen in love with my own compulsions and illusions, and how much I needed to step back and wonder, “Is there a quiet stream underneath the fluctuating affirmations and rejections of my little world?”

He joined the monastery on June 1st, 1974—a famous theologian choosing solitude over productivity, introspection over fame.

If he lived today, would he have felt free to do the same?

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This is a question for any of us doing public work, be it neighborly, parachurch or pastoral; teaching or writing about faith or social media-ing.

Someone said you’re a writer before you’re an author, and after a book is in the world you’re a writer again, no matter how the book is received. You don’t lose your identity as a writer when you publish. But by bringing a book into the world, you are asked to release what you kept close for a long time.

I thought when I was pregnant, the vulnerability of pregnancy would dim and dissipate when the baby was here. Parenting has taught me that the waves of vulnerability, instead of leaving, come in thick and strong. No one knows what they’re doing. We’re all making it up as we go along. What was formed inside takes on a life of its own, and that is gorgeous and complicated and sometimes quite difficult.

It’s the same with a book, or any project we make: an album or an exhibition or teaching a class. We can create under the guise of secret control. But when you go public, there is the full realization that you were never going to be able to curate your way to control. Along the way, all sides of yourself will surface. In the three years of writing and marketing Orphaned Believers, I met sides of myself I didn’t know that I had. Some I liked: perseverance, empathy, understanding, even tenderness. Others I recoiled from, starting with ego.

The ego is a wild temptation. Our ego, which feels very much like our own identity, can quickly melt into our notion of “calling “and become nearly impossible to pluck out. It’s like a fly in taffy.

Ego lifts and withers, it makes you feel like a middle school kid in the lunchroom and a beauty queen and the last picked in tag and the king-of-the-world. If that’s not a trace of the enemy of our soul, I don’t know what is.

Ego is so attached to social media, with its own e-fragility and fluctuations of “putting yourself out there.” The algorithm is noise, far from a monastery of the mind. Maybe if we feel ego flare up it’s a defense against it becoming out of control, and that’s something.

Like Nouwen, I have my list of compulsions and illusions, and you have yours. If we are not rooted in Christ, if our identities are not formed from the inside out, we are so easily swayed. Again, at all turns, on days of pure joy—or pure grief—there is an invitation: Create in me a clean heart, oh God. And renew a right spirit within me.

With humility, fatigue, self-kindness, and a crap ton of gratitude, I’m bringing this book to life. It happened with help from a lot of smart and generous people. And it won’t matter without you. If you’ve read it, shared it, thank you. I can’t tell you how much it means to have your support behind this project. As a writer, honestly, I’m without words.

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Practically, I can share a few ways you can help more folks find the book:

• Buy the book if you haven’t hit purchase yet.

• Request it at your local bookstore or library. And if you see a copy of the book in the wild, please snap a photo and send it to me. I’d float on air.

• If you’re on Goodreads, please mark as “currently reading” and leave an honest review when you’re done.

• I saved the most important ask for last: If you bought the book on Amazon, please rate and leave an honest review. It helps with book discoverability, provides “legitimacy” to books from first-time authors, and is one of the most helpful things readers can do to help with the book’s success.

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I’ve added upcoming events online. Here’s a list of places I’ll talk about Orphaned Believers online and in-person in the coming months. Michigan, Illinois, I’m headed your way!