One of the many blessings I’ve discovered through joining American Christian Fiction Writers is the chance to connect with other Christian novelists. It’s amazing how much you can get to know, help, learn from, and network with each other online before ever meeting in person. One day last fall, one of these writers commented on […]
Read Part 1 here. When we reached the Window Rock monument, I climbed out of the car to follow my Navajo host, while his wife stayed in the car to write an anniversary card for their son and his wife. The two of us surveyed the Code Talker memorial, where he showed me the […]
The warm desert wind whipped my hair across my face and snapped the flags above me, flags of New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, and the Navajo Nation waving beside the Stars and Stripes. I gazed up at the towering red rocks, the round hole to the clear blue sky, above the Window Rock Veterans Memorial. Below […]
I bent forward over the lamplit table, following the fingers of my Navajo host as he sketched out words for me in my little notebook, repeating them aloud for me to try at pronouncing. Ya’at’eeh abini—the morning greeting Hagoóne’—the way to say farewell, a kind of blessing as you leave someone Again and again I […]
I spent this past weekend in New Mexico again, in the Diné Tah, that beautiful land of the Navajo people whom I am so privileged to continue learning from and writing about.There is much on my heart to write and share with you, from this trip and others, but I came home and promptly got […]
Last year I posted that I didn’t know what to think of Columbus Day anymore.This year I wanted to share this short video, made by a Navajo man seeking to further reconciliation and understanding between the native and immigrant peoples of our land today. And again this Columbus Day I want to say it: thank […]
God was so faithful on this most recent research trip to New Mexico. While I had a list of places to go and questions to ask, I really didn’t know how it would all work out or whom I would get to see—yet I sensed the Lord’s leading to go, and tried to trust He […]
“Yáat’eh,” I said, hoping I got the tones of the greeting right. It must have been okay, for the elderly Navajo man who had opened the door shook my hand, then pulled me into a hug. Tentative, amazed this was happening, I followed the missionary I had come with and this gracious man into his […]
It has, yet again, been a while since I last posted—I’m sorry, dear readers! But I’ve been in New Mexico, the land of the setting for my novel, and one deeply imbedded in my heart. It’s strange, how a place where I’ve lived only five years of my life became so much home that this […]
In a recent discussion on the American Christian Fiction Writers email loop, various writers shared how music intertwined with their writing. Some listen for inspiration but must write to silence, while others have certain music for different stories that helps them get into the setting and characters as they write. I am rather a mixture […]
