It was from a little acorn ...

A word from God, reluctant obedience, little obvious fruit … is that the end of the story? Sometimes! But  not in this case.

When I felt God challenge me to write a book for women who were lone worshippers, I had written two novels for children, winning a competition for new writers when I did so, and fully expected that to be my writing journey. I had no thought of writing non-fiction, although I had written a few articles in between the books and having babies! But a book on a subject of which I had no first hand knowledge seemed a very tall order.

I knew enough about the writing business by then, to query a publisher before spending lots of time on a project that might have no future.  The first publisher to whom I wrote, came back to me with a resounding ‘No’.  ‘’We wouldn’t publish a book on such a topic” the editor replied “for two reasons. First  it is a very sensitive subject and for a woman to have a book about it lying around the house, might be unhelpful if her husband picked it up. And secondly there aren’t many women in this position!”

I don’t know what planet he was living on! My experience before and since has demonstrated that this is a very common situation that many women face, and most of them wouldn’t leave a book around if they thought that it would increase rather than lessen tension in their marriage. However I couldn’t argue and normally would have been sufficiently discouraged to close the door on the project.

 But God … Once again He kept reminding me of Doreen and the things she had shared, and so I approached a second small publisher. This time there was cautious encouragement. “ We agree that there is a need.”,” they said “Write the book … and we’ll see.”

Exciting stuff! But where on earth could I begin?

I prayed and as I did so, I realised that I now knew a few people who had been vocal at the Coffee Morning and to whom I could talk. I discovered women’s groups in various churches, whose members were prepared to fill in questionnaires – and pass them on to others. One group met in a country farmhouse and recorded their answers to the questions I’d asked. I believe that statistically you’re lucky if you get around a 10% response to questionnaires. I must have had about 50% returned. I was in business.

It was only a little book. 25,000 or so words long. But it was published and women pounced on it. It was published in America and sold some 75,000 copies in 12 years. Suddenly I was an ‘expert!’   But that book wasn’t the only fruit …!

Do you remember that old hymn ‘O Love that will not let me go’… In it is the line ‘I trace the rainbow through the rain.’ What rainbows can you trace, especially if you have written something short or long? I’d love to hear about it.

One step at a time ....

And so the adventure with God began. Graciously He had gone before us. When I mentioned the Coffee Morning to my next door neighbour, I discovered that not only did she share my faith, but that she would be delighted to come and make the coffee. Ethel recruited Mary, a toddler loving friend, whose own children were at school, and we bought a bargain box of mugs. We were in business!




For two years we jogged along happily, meeting fortnightly during term time. There were a few ‘interesting’ moments. One morning the speaker’s daughter managed to lock herself in the downstairs toilet, and had to be rescued by me squeezing through the open window, while her mother chatted happily to the assembled guests, completely unaware of the excitement in the hall. We hung the key on a hook on the wall after that!


The children did get sick occasionally. All of my three contracted chicken pox, and spent the morning tucked up in our double bed, while I ran up and down stairs for a visit every few minutes, and were none the worse for the experience. But nothing obvious HAPPENED spiritually until Doreen came to speak to us.


She had come to faith eight years after she was married and her husband was deeply unimpressed by this new passion in her life. She told us about the ways this personal relationship with Jesus had impacted her marriage, and her audience hung on her every word. We always had an opportunity for questions, but normally our guests just chatted among themselves. Not on that occasion. She was bombarded with questions.


‘What do you do about the children?’ asked one.


‘I’d love to have a faith but I’m afraid of what it would do to my marriage!’ said another.


‘What do you do about going to church when he wants to go out for the day?’


‘My husband reckons that the church is just after your money. I don’t have any money of my own so how could I give?’


On and on the questions flowed until finally I asked the assembled company ‘Isn’t there a book that looks at marriage from this perspective?’


‘Oh no!’ they assured me ‘All the books on marriage we’ve seen, assume that you share your faith.’


They just haven’t looked in the right place, I thought to myself. But when I began to research the subject I found it was true. There was one book available from the US at that time called ‘Unequally yoked Wives’ with a rather unhelpful cover decorated with chains, and that was that.


‘You write a book for these women’ God whispered.


‘How can I?’ I protested, not really believing what I was hearing ‘Gordon and I were both Christians when we got married. What do I know about such a challenging situation? Anyway I write fiction for children, not adult non-fiction.’


‘Step out in faith and I will help you’


It was another ‘I am sending you to Pharaoh’ moment. I wriggled and struggled but this time I wasn’t quite so slow to respond, even thought I hadn’t the slightest idea how to set about it..