Confessions of a Mennonite Girl at AWSA

This year I tried something new. I joined the Advanced Writers and Speakers Association, an association of Christian women, and traveled to Lexington, Kentucky, with my sweet husband to attend the AWSA conference. Ivan spent a day and a half watching the baby while I attended workshops and made connections with other Christian women writers and speakers. Overnights we stayed with Eli and Ruth, Ivan’s brother and wife, 50 minutes away in Cynthiana.

I enjoyed the conference. I wanted to go to find out more of what AWSA was about and make some of those networking friendships that are so important for an author. I wasn’t able to be involved in everything, since we were gone in the evenings and mornings, but I am grateful for the learning and connections I did absorb. The women were friendly and open and inspiring in their desire to honor God. I appreciated that so much and only wish I had been able to be in on more of the together times.

Sunday afternoon, AWSA hosted the Golden Scroll banquet, another reason Ivan and I decided to make the conference work this year, since Turtle Heart was a finalist. I am honored to say she took third place in the memoir category.

The banquet was quite a bit fancier than our typical country kitchen affairs. “What am I supposed to do with all these forks?” Ivan asked me when we sat down. So I told him what I knew about salad forks and meat forks and dessert forks, and the fact that he should put his napkin in his lap and take a pat of butter to his plate rather than buttering from the butter dish.

In the end, we wouldn’t have had to worry about manners. We had chosen an empty table at the very back in order to give our lively one-year-old space to move around and drop things. Our table stayed empty, my napkin ended up on the floor in my efforts to feed my child, and Annalise ran around to the nearby tables and charmed the women and waiters with her friendly smiles and waves.

Sharon Elliot–who acted as emcee for part of the conference–and one of her companions at a nearby table asked Ivan to take their picture. “You must be a strong man,” they told him. “Coming here with all these women.” I am not certain, but I think he blushed. (And just for the record, there were a few other men at the banquet as well).

Ivan is a strong man. I am so grateful to him for sitting hot and bored in Lexington for a day and a half with our baby to make the conference possible for me. We didn’t take many photos, but did try a selfie or two at the banquet. As usual, our selfie skills weren’t great.

On the six-hour drive home, I read Ivan two chapters from our autographed copy of Men Are Like Waffles, Women Are Like Spaghetti by Bill and Pam Farrel. Pam was at the conference, a very interesting woman with a hat and a memorable voice who told me as we passed each other once, “Good job for getting your memoirs out there!” and I had to think about how she’d KNOWN I published two memoirs until I remembered we’d sat through a workshop together, and I’d asked a question or two about getting my memoirs on audiobook.

Small words of kindness mean much.

I highly recommend the Waffles and Spaghetti book. After two chapters, I’ve already used it to help navigate a conversation or two, AND it taught me that men have a blank white space in their waffle brains.

Ivan makes so much more sense now.

My introverted brain got rather overloaded at the conference, and I sat around grumpily the first part of the week, processing. I think the air is starting to clear. Writing this blog post helped me, honestly. Writing helps me sort the thoughts that are all interwoven like cold pasty spaghetti.

I am happy for my award, but I also don’t know how to reconcile achievement with humility and writing for God with selling books, so the conference and awards banquet made me feel more jumbled than joyful. I really just want to sit in a corner and never be seen…but I also want people to read my books. I want to be a good mama and always available for my little girl–I remember how my mom always had time to listen to me–but how do I DO that, and how do I know when I’m doing it well?

I was in such a different world at AWSA, and I think that’s part of my confusion. I was with women who are smart, professional, and successful in what they do. They do it for God, yes, but they also make money at it. And that’s a good thing…we all have to eat and Jesus says the laborer is worthy of his hire…but in my setting, few other women write or speak as a career. I always feel that if I do, especially if I’m a mom and especially if I try to make money at it, it’s dirty and distasteful, like hanging out my underwear on the banisters at church. Women are supposed to be keepers at home, not career women. They’re supposed to be gentle and wise and support their husband’s careers–but I feel like Ivan does more to support mine than I do his.

I worry I am too involved in my writing too often when Annalise needs me. I always carry a bit of mom guilt around. Another author, Robyn Dykstra, met me in the bathroom after the banquet and said with great feeling something that has been rolling around and around in my mind. “Choose your priorities,” she said. “You can always write and speak, but you won’t always have your children. She is beautiful.” I don’t think that means I should postpone writing altogether, but how do I strike the right balance?

At the final keynote, Eva Marie Everson challenged us to lay down our pens like Moses laid down his rod, and pick them up again in the way God instructed. I want to do that, but I don’t know how. I distrust the genuineness of my own heart. I know how much I love acclaim and love being best…from all the way back in elementary school when my ice cream cone 100’s chart towered above all the other children’s ice cream cone charts on the wall.

Ivan tells me to just write me and not change my words to what I think will please others…and I even mistrust myself in that. I think I have been getting better at it, though. Better at choosing the lifestyle I want to live, the kind of marketing I want to do, rather than comparing myself to other authors and living with a constant stream of guilt–the other stream of guilt in my life that nicely complements the mom guilt, lol.

Some of you told me you pray for our family sometimes, and I appreciate that so much. If you’ve read all the way to the end of these lengthy confessions, and if you pray for me, pray this: that I can reconcile all these conflicting streams in my mind in a way that honors God, and feel peace. James says a double-minded person is unstable in all her ways.

Thank you.

And I just want to add one more positive note, something that may encourage those of you praying about needs, issues, or areas of confusion in your own lives. When I was 15, I got so sick and tired of always hating myself and feeling inferior, I prayed God would take those negative feelings away. He did. When I was 25, I got so sick and tired of doubting my faith and whether God even existed, I prayed he would take those doubt away once and for all. He did. Now that I am 35 and praying for clarity–for a single stream, a pure heart, and a sense of direction–I am confident he will give what I ask for. He always has before.