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

As promised…Chapter One

As promised…Chapter One

BHMcoverfinalI am not old, but I’m no longer a child. Sometimes I’m brave enough to think about those days—days of suffocating fear and weeks when sadness had no end, and I lived with many questions tapping on my brain like a relentless woodpecker. Each new bend in the road of twists and turns thrust me into the unknown like a wild mustang ride—snorting, rearing, and trampling my simple world. And when the quiet came at night, my heart seemed as cold as the bottom of the great lake.

Yet Nana’s gentle hand on my arm, or the look in Skeets’ kind eyes, well, they kept something muffin alive in me. They made me believe a greater thing could happen, something I’ve never quite been able to explain—that calm knowing inside, the surge of boldness I felt, and the certainty of where it was from. I sometimes wonder at how easily I could have ignored it. I could’ve been distracted and missed it.

But I didn’t. Somehow, I didn’t.

Chapter 1

How graceful is your grace?

The first time I heard God speak was in a school parking lot. I was ten years old.

My heart flipped violently. The words were unmistakable, as if He stood right behind me and whispered in my left ear. I twirled a complete circle but found no one. Chills rippled across my skin like electric current. I sank to my knees. God sounded calm. Still I gasped, because Mama said He didn’t lie. A perfect summer day had become a muted fuzzy dream.

The morning had started with warm rays through my bedroom window and the fresh earth smell that follows a summer rain. I bounded down the stairs like a cat that smells tuna in the air, but I stopped short on the landing.

Our only happy-family picture hung on the wall, slightly askew. I tilted my head. There, in black and white, we huddled on our sailboat with the mainsail for a backdrop. The wind had played with our hair, and we were all smiles. Grace, or Mama as we called her, held my little brother Tuck on her hip. My older brother Wyeth posed behind me. He made bunny-ears at the back of my head, which he later claimed was just a peace sign. Being the only girl, I remained an easy target. Our father, Hank, looked rather handsome but towered over us with a firm grip on the tiller. Somehow, his smile didn’t belong to his face.

My chest tightened. I turned away.

The sound of running water in the kitchen sink spread uneasiness through my body. I always calmed myself down before entering the kitchen, because it was Father’s Command Central in the mornings. He had a set routine—making his coffee just so, arranging his spoon, sugar bowl, and Cleveland Indians mug in a line on the counter. He’d lay The Plain Dealer on the table with a freshly sharpened pencil for the crossword puzzle. I swore acid rain came out his pores if that pencil went missing. Mornings were not a time to be boisterous. Noise or commotion made him grouchy. I had learned that the hard way one time, when Wyeth gave my knee a horse-bite at breakfast. The tablecloth concealed the fact that he started it. Father shouted at me for kicking and shrieking, while my brother got off scot-free, the weasel. But none of that mattered now. Two weeks ago, Father had left us.Continue reading

Suddenlies

Suddenlies

Several months after my friend Terry died, I pulled out an Early American songbook to play something familiar on my piano. It was an ordinary afternoon. I started with the marching chords of The Battle Hymn of The Republic. As the opening words streamed through my thoughts, I considered their meaning—as if for the very first time.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord… 

I realize those printed lyrics aren’t going to have the same impact on you as they did on me that day. It’s hard to describe the rush of emotion that came over me. I couldn’t play another note. I folded my arms on the piano and wept with great sighing sobs.

It was so unexpected.

The cross of GolgathaThe Holy Spirit suddenly overwhelmed the grief rising up in my heart—with hope. He melded together His plan for good with my earthly disappointment, surrounding me with a tangible presence of love. I was undone.

In a way, the cross itself was an intersection love, hope, and sorrow…

See from His head, His hands, His feet,

Sorrow and love flow mingled down!

Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,

Or thorns compose so rich a crown?

God is known for surprise visits.

Depressed woman on a benchHe moves us beyond the natural to the spiritual, from the temporal to the eternal, from the loneliness of sorrow to the fullness of His love. He doesn’t give up when we do. Author Gregory Boyle calls it the “no-matter-what-ness of God.”Continue reading