There is a wise bit of advice often given to writers: write what you know. Obviously, knowledge of a topic can come either from experience or research, and there is a very solid place for research. (My amazing hubby’s research for his dissertation, for instance, is giving him a great deal of understanding!). But when it comes to writing about walking through life, it has often seemed to me that research without experience can lead to a sense of untested idealism. Advice is tied up in a neat package, but it leaves readers in the trenches feeling like failures because their experience doesn’t fit into the neat package that a writer presents.
I’m a practical person, so I tend to get frustrated by those who write out of a sense of idealism. This is why I have long felt that I need to have experience before I write. I need to be able to say, “I’ve been there!” Experience shines a light into corners that research never reaches, granting a sense of companionship and camaraderie between the writer and the reader. Because of this conviction, I’ve put certain topics on the shelf, convinced that I really don’t have a solid leg to stand on when it comes to writing on those topics, no matter how passionate I was about them and how much I’d studied them.
Then along came the story of an author I follow, and suddenly my conviction waffled.
Don’t get me wrong — I still don’t like untried idealism. But…well, let me tell you about Shelly Miller, and you’ll understand what I mean.
I first “met” Shelly Miller through her book Rhythms of Rest: Finding the Spirit of Sabbath in a Busy World. I’d been studying Sabbath as my family attempted to begin incorporating it into the fabric of our weekly lives, and Rhythms of Rest provided another source of insight. I found Shelly to be real and accessible, her insights presented from the perspective of one who had pushed through the complications of observing Sabbath in a culture that, well, didn’t. And, to top it all off, she knew what it meant to figure out Sabbath from within the world of ministry. All in all, Rhythms of Rest was obviously a book that stemmed from experience. I could trust Shelly to tell me like it was, not spout of some idealistic nonsense that a homeschooling pastor’s wife like me could never implement.
In late 2019, I started noticing references to a new book by Shelly Miller, one that would come out in 2020. It was entitled Searching for Certainty: Finding God in the Disruptions of Life. I immediately put it on my wish list. I knew the Millers had experienced their ups and downs, their times of struggle and uncertainty. I knew, once again, that I could trust her.
That was proven a few months later when Shelly was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of cancer. Suddenly, the book she’d already written — the one that was just waiting to process through the steps necessary to get it to publication — was coming back to strengthen her. She found herself revisiting all that she had explored, studied, and researched to compile this book, almost afraid that it wouldn’t hold up to a real disruption. But it did. All that she’d studied was now proving true in her life, and she was drawing real comfort from the truths she’d written about.
Don’t get me wrong…she’d known before what it meant to find God in disruptions and uncertainties. But she was now experiencing a disruption greater than any she’d experienced before. And the truths were still holding up. God had prepared her. She thought she was sharing with her readers. Instead, she was storing up truths for what she and her family were about to face.
How powerful that the last book she’d ever get to write would also hold the very truths that she’d have to lean on to get her through her final months on earth.
So the question comes to me: Do I trust my God to be big enough to teach me truths before the experience, truths that will hold firm during the experience?
You see, there is research and study and experience. Then there is God. There’s a God who can teach us what we need before we need it. There’s a God who can build in us and prepare us and strengthen us. There’s training and growth that comes from experience, and then there’s training and growth that comes simply because we’re daily immersing ourselves in the Word, allowing ourselves to be taught by the Spirit, and dwelling in the presence of a holy, omniscient God who loves us and desires to equip us in every way.
That’s the God I want to serve.
The God who can teach me through it all.
While on the one hand, I need to be willing to admit when what I’ve said, taught, or written has been rife with idealism (because, trust me, I’ve been guilty of that!). But, sometimes I need to go ahead and say it, then prove that God is who He says He is when the time comes for the lessons to be tested.
Not Quite Ordinary 