Welcome!

Welcome to A Sparrow's Worth!

For some time, I've felt God prompting me to write about my faith, but I didn't want to.  I write secular fiction for a living (on purpose--I deliberately chose not to write Christian fiction.  More on that in a future post.) and I didn't see how writing secular fiction and writing about my faith could be done. When you're a writer, you almost get "typecast".  I write upmarket women's fiction with elements of magical realism.  That's how the publishing world can categorize me. The thought of writing Christian nonfiction felt strange.   I didn't know where I would fit if I wrote both secular fiction and Christian nonfiction.  But God kept speaking to me.  I'd hear something at church or read something on Facebook, and He'd whisper: Write about this.  "But I can't," I'd say.  "I'm not that kind of writer." If you know anything about Jesus, you know He's a rule breaker.  He brings whips into temples and calls out religious leaders on their hypocrisy.  He hangs out with the wrong crowd, having the audacity to love the unlovable.  He didn't really care what kind of writer I was.  He just wanted me to write. So I took the first step.  I bought this domain name.  Then I took the next step and started to design it.  I still didn't really have a direction for the blog/site.  I just knew this was what I was supposed to do.  God only revealed one step at a time, and the next step was the hardest.  I shared my testimony.  All of it.  For the first time.  It was terrifying.  And shameful.  And liberating.  And it gave me the direction for this site.

Broken can be beautiful

I want this to be a place of transparency.  We live in a world where (especially as Christians) we're pressured to be appear perfect all of the time.  It's exhausting.  And it's soul crushing.  Most of all, it's not real. Jesus said, "In this world you will have trouble."  John 16:33  So why do we hide our troubles?  We didn't author our salvation.  Even at our best, we're too broken for that.  Salvation depends on Jesus.  But we stop there.  We don't move on to the obvious next step: Our entire lives depend on Jesus.  The good and the bad.  The ugly and the beautiful.  The shameful and the liberating.  This site is a call to Radical Transparency.  That doesn't mean we spill out our life story and all of our troubles whenever anyone asks how we are.  It does mean we stop pretending to be OK when we aren't.  We stop trying to measure up to the lives we see on Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram.  We acknowledge that our "troubles" didn't stop when we became a Christian.  (In some cases, they intensified.)  We accept our beautiful brokenness.  We allow our brothers and sisters to minister to us as Christ's hands and feet.  We don't judge or condemn people (Christian or not) we are struggling.  We share our troubles in the hopes of lifting each other up.  In the hope that someone will experience a "me too" moment.  In the hope that when Jesus stoops down and lifts us up, that His light shines through our broken spaces for all the world to see.