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Hymns: “Be Thou My Vision,” “O Teach Me What It Meaneth,” “Fairest Lord Jesus” – I’m just getting started.

Pasttimes:

Traveling with Walt
Playing with the grandchildren
Watching the waves at Devil’s Cauldron (Point Lobos)
Doing cross-stitchery
Visiting an art museum
Singing
Reading
I’m learning to sketch with a pen and my right brain.


PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS:

INSTITUTE FOR HISTORICAL STUDY since 1984 (See LastingLinks)
LITERATURE MINISTRY PRAYER FELLOWSHIP since 1982

AD LIB since 1996 (See Lasting Links)

PARTS OF SPEECH since 1975. I am the only remaining charter member of this prayer and critique group. Former members have scattered around the world. Some do not write any longer. Others have important books doing important things in many corners of the globe. Some names you might recognize are Robin Jones Gunn, Lissa Halls Johnson, Berit Kjos, and Patsy Oda. We meet twice a month at my dining room table (See article below) and help each other create and refine our manuscripts.

MAGAZINES I READ (At least partly):

WORLD Magazine (News)
PULSE (Missionary news)

CHRISTIANITY AND THE ARTS

PRAY!

CONSUMER REPORTS

ATLANTIC MONTHLY

REGENERATION QUARTERLY

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELER

CHRISTIAN HISTORY MAGAZINE

BOOKS AND CULTURE

FAMILY TREASURE, SITE OF LITERARY MILESTONE

In 1962, when our family moved to The Netherlands, we encountered great difficulty locating a house to rent. With the help of a Dutch missionary, we found half of an enormous old manor house with sixteen-foot ceilings and three floors of drafty rooms.

Because the previous occupant of the house had left a rather sizable debt behind, the landlord had confiscated her furniture. We had to buy an entire house full of furniture in order to get the house. This worked out well for us at the moment, since we had taken very little with us from America.

At the end of our three-year tour, we either sold or gave away most of the pieces before we left the country. But the lovely cherry dining room set with its ten spindle-back chairs, follwed us to Texas and later to California, where we still have it today.

It has not only seen the growth of our children and the many other things that a dining room set sees in the course of a family’s nearly forty-year history. I did all my early writing projects, including my first book, on this table, wherever it lodged in the many houses we called home. I may even have been sitting at this table when I read the first lines of the book that launched me into my studies of Dutch history. For sure, my first notes about William of Orange and the Reformation were scribbled here.

When my husband, Walt, left the Air Force and I graduated to a desk built of moving crates, the old table became a literary center for friends who met here to critique one another’s work. During the twenty-five years that members of our critique group have shoved their feet under this table, it has presided over the production of many good books, articles, poems, songs, fillers, and even an occasional play script. On one occasion Jinny Muir then from TYNDALE HOUSE, sat here and signed a contract with one of my students.

On Christmas morning of 1993, we awoke to the smell of smoke coming from the dining room table where a candle had been left burning. God was gracious, and we lost very little. But we were given a choice with the table—either replace it completely, or give it new top and a much needed refinishing job. Here was my chance to have any kind of dining room set I wanted.

Often I had dreamed of this opportunity. But when it came, I couldn’t do it. Too many memories and roots attached me to this old table. We paid a friend who bought a beautiful new cherry top and rebuilt the entire set.

In July 1995, I received a contract from BETHANY HOUSE for a series of three novels based on the gems of Dutch history I had discovered while working at this table. I didn’t even think twice about the procedure. I knew where I had to sign my contract. So, Walt and I dressed for the occasion and our son took photos of this historic moment.

If you scan the picture closely with your imagination, you might even see and hear a few filmy hints of past literary struggles, prayers and discoveries, tears and shouts, and an incredible glow of glory!