The Afterword [Episode 4: Melissa Kruger] | Word First

welcome to episode four of the afterward our series of conversations on books reading and the church my name is josiah pettit i'm the director here at the westminster bookstore and here at wtsbooks.com we do what we do because we believe that books and reading play a profound role in the life and health of the church as a team we continue to be just so encouraged by your response to the afterward it's been fun and we've loved sharing a little bit of the process behind what makes a good book great as well as introducing you to the authors that are behind these books that have been a blessing to so many in the coming months we'll be featuring episodes with nancy guthrie ed welch darby strickland and mark dever so we hope you'll stay tuned and spread the word tonight we're glad to have johnny gibson back from vacation to host melissa krueger melissa is the director of women's content at the gospel coalition as well as the author of envy of eve and growing together her latest book was published just last week by the good book company it's called wherever you go i want you to know and uh we we've got it on sale right now for a special uh launch window so you can pick up bulk quantities at up to 60 percent off so if you haven't already i'd encourage you to hop on over to our website wtsbooks.com afterward and pick up a copy in this episode melissa and johnny will be chatting about blog writing versus book writing they'll be talking about mentoring and discipleship and of course also be talking about melissa's new kids book so with that by way of introduction let me turn it over to johnny and melissa with a question what was the first thing you wrote that was published in some sort of public format uh the first publishable thing that i wrote josiah um was way back in the early 90s i wrote a book review for a website my brother and i were work that we put up called beginning with moses and i wrote a book review uh for that and it was put up on the website but uh i wrote it and rewrote it and rewrote it and then wrote it again and um it was just before i was going to head off to theological college and i remember thinking i know why i'm heading to theological college when i can't even write a book review so uh uh and at times i feel like nothing's improved since then but um yeah what about you melissa what was the first uh thing that went public that you ever wrote you know i'm a little bit embarrassed to admit this um the first publishable thing i wrote was my book the nvme i had never never written an article i had i didn't consider myself a writer at all um and yet i had started writing bible studies for women just in my church never thinking they should be published you know just it kind of happened because we couldn't find bible studies at the time that we really liked and then women would miss so i started writing summaries for them and then people started saying you should publish these and i was thinking no you know no and um so it's it's really funny to me i did everything wrong as a writer i i mean you know you should start with articles and i didn't so the first thing was the mvp okay and so um since then you've published a number of books and you have a uh a regular blog that you write for um what have you learned about writing from that first book that you produced to nye yeah yeah i think um the main thing i've learned is use less words um that if it can be said in less words use less of them to communicate the point and i think the other thing i've really learned is illustrations can do so much to help guide your reader into what you're trying to show them and that can be done very quickly it doesn't have to be two and a half pages i mean you know when i think of thomas brooks and precious remedies against satan's devices and he says you know satan he'll he'll show the bait and he'll hide the hook okay that two you know few word illustration speaks so much in his explanation of how satan's working to try to lure you in and you know it's still relevant hundreds of years later he used nature to prove his point and so i think good writing often takes something that we know to be true and uses it to explain a spiritual point i think i remember reading c.s lewis in one of his uh letters to his chi to the children you know he had that book on letters and children i think he makes the same point if you can say it unless words do you know um yeah have there been any books on actual writing that you've read and found helpful yeah i think on on this the first thing i always tell people is just to read good books period even before you read books on writing i i know i think there is something about hearing a sentence and the more you put yourself in good books and it doesn't have to be in the same genre you know it can be fiction it can be um historical narrative it can be you know whatever you're reading can really help you learn how sentences should be yeah i mean it's great to read a book on writing but for me i think some of the most helpful thing has just been reading beautiful beautifully written books by different authors but one i really did love was have you read on writing well by um william zinser i don't know if i'm saying that right yeah um i loved his book because what he would tell you to do he would do in the next sentence so is you know he was saying don't use overly long sentences because they really bore the audience when you go on and on and on and on and then you change yeah and he would be doing what he's telling you not to do so i thought it was very creative but do you have one that you like i always have to read them yeah uh i have two books that have helped me one's called uh styling sentences and uh what the author says is that in the english language there are uh about 20 structure sentence structures that exist 20 ways to write a sentence uh with different sort of formats where you put the verb where you put the subject object prepositional phrase etc and so he they in the book they show you the 20 structures and that helped me because i my problem was i wasn't much of a reader growing up so i lacked this ability that you've just said to sort of caught a lot of good writing and it sort of comes more naturally that's not being the case with me so i needed something to actually show me how sentences are structured uh so that was very helpful and then i read a really nice humorous book on punctuation called eats shoots and leaves by lynn truss a british author and she just talks about punctuation and the importance of it and the importance of where you put the comma and the titles uh comes from a joke about a panda who goes into a bar and eats shoots and leaves well doesn't shoot the bar owner or does he eat shoots and leaves it's all to do with where you put the comma right and um she talks about how punctuation is sort of like good manners and it's it's a way to help your readers not trip up on what you're trying where you're trying to lead them that if you punctuate well uh they actually have a smooth journey where you take them whereas if it's not punctuated well they keep tripping up and having to go back and read the sentence so those are two books that i find i want to read this especially that second one i feel like i'm terrible at your punctuation she'll make you a bit ocd about it like so i i know when i'm watching an advert and tv i'll say to jackie look there there's a typo and it's it's the compound adjective typo it's missing a hyphen you know the 24r delivery and there's no hyphen between the 24 and the the r or something like that and uh so i spot them all the time and adverts in the street and you know so she'll maybe a little bit ocd about punctuation i need to read this because i was actually i was a math major in college so i what what i learned there are lots of math rules too but a math rule is always based in a fact you can always go back to real numbers and just remind yourself of the rule so that's how i i could always remind myself grammar facts are never based in a necessary rule it's just like this is the fact and so i'm terrible at remembering yes where should that period go is it after the parentheses where yeah those those things i just i i need to read that book that'd be really helpful well i think you'd enjoy it because similar to the other one you mentioned on writing well she illustrates it in her own writing and with very funny and humorous examples and also some quite interesting historical examples with telegrams that were sent with punctuation missing and how it led to you know a war in a country or something like that that sort of if only it had been punctuated right different outcomes so so it's quite some quite interesting uh historical and humorous uh facts yeah now melissa you um you've written books and you also write a blog so uh what's the difference for you between writing a blog and a book and what's your process for each yeah i mean when it comes to blog writing i i find that you need to really focus on saying one thing and saying it well um one thing i've noticed i actually edit for the gospel coalition and some people you know want to take one article and say 20 different things in it and they're so excited and they have all these thoughts and they want to talk about the goodness of god from 20 different angles and you know like just talk about it from one angle you know give one thing and you know maybe have one main point and have three points that support it um and try to keep your word count to 800 or 900 words that's my big um and that means you go through and you tighten yeah that's what i i would i would kind of say to myself tighten this up tighten this up so i i kind of write it all and normally it's way too many words and then a day or two later you start chiseling and i think that's what can make a an article that will be actually read online because the problem with online reading you are competing with every ding and notification of someone's phone so if if someone's reading online they can scroll onto something much more interesting than your article so you've got to really think how do i make this sentence make them want to read the next sentence and actually keep an attention span because you know online reading is really difficult to stay focused yeah that's helpful um when you actually have an idea for a blog post where do you begin do you begin typing some notes on your phone on your ipad are you a pencil and pen or on paper person that has to sort of scribble ideas down and then you go and type them up what's your process there yeah i keep random scraps of paper like because you always think of the best article ideas you know like in the carpool line picking up your kids or something so normally for me it's the scrap of paper somewhere tucked away and i'll find it and i'm like oh yeah that's an article i wanted to write you know because the three points will come in these random places so yeah i have a lot of scraps of paper i actually keep a little notebook in my purse that i can pull out and write down ideas but when it actually comes to writing i am a sit down in front of my computer and plug it out i rarely write um you know i rarely write an article by hand um but uh by the time i get to the actual forming the sentences you know it's it's on the computer but most of my ideas and outlines are on scrap pieces of paper yeah and so when you come to write a book do you uh write out the sort of analytical skeleton outline first and and then do you go bit by bit or do you sort of just write as it comes to you yeah i wish i was kind of the latter that would terrify me to just start writing a book and just go for it i am um again i think it's my structured mathematical brain how i like it's very much i have to see the beginning and the end where what is my argument what am i trying to say throughout this book and so for me i i yeah for every book i've written i've had a full outline i knew where each chapter was going to actually keep word documents for every chapter so that when i have an idea but that's for chapter seven i go and just type it and say remember to put in that cs lewis quote you know in chapter seven it's not meant for chapter two you know and i'm on chapter two now and so i keep kind of buckets to throw stuff in um but that's how my brain works i admire people who can just write you know i mean i really do i don't know what your process is like but i i just need the safety of an outline to know where i'm going but i really do admire people who just can put it out there and somehow come to a beautiful conclusion yeah but i sit in the other right and then when you finally do get your draft on say of a chapter do you print it off and pencil and pan to edit it or do you edit it on the screen how do you how do you go about actually tightening it as you mentioned earlier yeah when i get down to final edits i print it and i i just go at it with yeah i read it almost like an editor yeah so i look at it and say oh move this paragraph here mark that one out didn't need to be there anyway and but i have to have space from that i have to have time away from it because you know when you read it the next day it makes complete sense but when you read it a month later sometimes you're like that what was i trying to say this is terrible um or you just think of it the better word choice you know when you that you couldn't think of when you were writing it three weeks before so i tend to write it and then go on to the next chapter and then come back to that chapter i need the pauses to breathe yeah and uh have you had anyone who uh has mentored you in your writing i know you've talked about um you know just reading good books and picking it up you know some writing is better caught than taught but has there been anyone who over this journey and we're going to get on to the idea of mentoring in a moment has there been anyone who's sort of taken you under their wing and helped you with your writing yeah i would say having good editors is so helpful um and yeah i've been i've been really blessed to work with great editors at the gospel coalition and so honestly i can tell you colin hansen and matt smithhurst and megan hill you know i love giving them my words and saying help me um especially megan and i megan is an author herself and she works she's our she's an editor for us and she i'll just say oh you make me sound better you know it's like oh you know it's like when you go to the hairdresser and someone else says your hair it's still your hair but man they made it look better and so having good friends like that you really learn from them um it's it's really helpful to have people and it's a real kindness of them to sit down and look at your work um and and i'll say this i think one of the most important things younger writers can do is accept the editing help if you want to be a better writer someone who's who's willing to take the time to read your chapter and offer feedback that's a kindness they are trying to help you and and normally they're seeing something that you might not and so i would say definitely that's been the way my writing has improved is by having good friends who are willing to tell me that didn't really make sense yeah yeah and so it's helpful yeah i uh was fortunate to um study under the regis professor of hebrew at cambridge and uh he never he published a good bit of work but somebody said he never published a magnum opus because his students were his magnum opus and he poured himself into our writing you know he would just mark all over the page a lot of professors supervisors just sort of read it and tell you yeah it's fine fix it up but he meticulously went through and said that sentence needs better word there's punctuation missing here and it did it made made me a better writer because each time i wanted to have less marks on the page from them it was like a school teacher again i was back in school thinking am i gonna get a gold star this week and uh but it yeah it was that sort of fine-tuning process of um someone else looking at your work you know um uh one of the bookstore uh folk here wanted me to ask you um what's it like being married to another author uh do you and mike uh collaborate on projects um what's that like it's actually really fun um i will say and and honestly i never would have written a thing with without him kind of cheering me on and encouraging me to do it um but he and he's been so great he has read everything i've written and uh you know normally i'm just saying make sure i'm not a heretic in some way please we please make sure i haven't gone astray in some way but it's it's really fun because we both think in outlines you know and so whether it's him preparing a sermon and us chewing on hey what would be a good point to illustrate that because yeah there's there's a lot of similarities to preparing a talk and preparing a chapter um you know if you're trying to give a structure an organization they're very very similar and so we actually have a lot of fun you know i mean it's something we didn't know that we both were going to do this neither of us were english majors or anything like that but we both love sitting around at the dinner table talking about different ideas and chewing on how could you do that book what would that be like i'm really excited about one he has coming out next spring it's actually we have a a daughter who's in she's she's at college and she's at a large secular school and it's basically you know his advice on the christian mind to college students and it's been so fun that was one i could actually talk to him about because most of his are like on the canon or christianity in the second century so i'm like no help for him you know but this one was really really fun to get to just chew on together yeah is there a title for it that we can look out for there is a title and i should know the title but i am not a very good wife and so that is why i cannot remember the title right now so i sorry for putting you on this talk but it's on the christian mind at college yes i think it's i think it's something like surviving religion 101. okay um how to be in college without losing your faith it's something in that yeah i'm so sorry or not you can just say that's the working title that's the working title that's my title but um it's it's all letters to our daughter and it's really um because what we both faced we both um went to the same school actually university of north carolina chapel hill and we both took new testament from bart ehrman and so we you know you walk in as a 19 year old and here you are and he's telling you all these things about the new testament you've never heard and you know you're sitting there realizing he studied he's very smart he knows a lot more than i do what do you do as a student when you're when you're there anyway that's yeah so it's it's it's something we both faced going to university yeah that's great and uh that i think that sort of moves us into this topic of mentoring because in a sense what mike's trying to do there is mentor your daughter and also a next generation of how to think well and engage with these perspectives that challenge the bible and uh that brings me to your book growing together this lovely book with the subtitle taking mentoring beyond small talk and prayer requests uh why did you write a book about mentoring um you know there were a lot of reasons one i was mentored so well um in my early christian faith and i'm so thankful for that i think i felt this need to um tell others how important this is to do but the other thing i worked for 10 years in women's ministry at my church and um i kept hearing from younger women this desire to have an older woman who could spiritually mentor them and then i would ask older women who i knew loved the lord and knew their bibles and they would look at me and say what does she want me to do with her and they were completely intimidated um to enter in to this mentor relationship it just felt like an intimidating thing and so basically i was just trying to provide a pathway for these really relationships to happen by no means a prescription i i would never want this to be like well this is the book to mentor um i think there are so many good ways we can help one another grow in the faith but i just wanted to provide one lifeline like here's one path if you're struggling to know what to do here's what you could do together um because i just saw so many women who both wanted to do this but not knowing how to do it yeah and i i learned a new word in this book and that is uh mentee i uh i've never heard that word before a mentor and a mentee i've heard a counselor and counselling interviewer interviewee but i thought of course of course it's mentee it's a very odd word meant to be mentee um so how would you define mentoring uh is it synonymous with discipleship or is there a difference yeah that's a good question i would say if you looked at discipleship as an umbrella it's a form of discipleship but discipleship's a much broader umbrella i mean i think discipleship happens when you hear the word preached on a sunday in some sense this passing on of the truths of the gospel um but mentoring so i would say and i would i do want to stress it's spiritual mentoring um it's not just mentoring on you know how to fix a car or how you know i mean that that can happen but we're talking about spiritual mentoring and you know the easy definition i like to say is equipping the saints for the work of ministry for the glory of god so equipping the saints you know for for the work of ministry for the glory of god so it's not just someone to sit down and talk about your feelings so you may talk about your feelings but there's a real purpose that i'm in a sense investing in you to build up christ's church for the glory of god i'm not investing in you so i'll have a new friend i'm not that although hopefully that's a byproduct i'm investing in you because i believe i'm supposed to call back and pass on to the next generation the truths of the gospel and that that's how the church is built and and essentially i think that's what jesus did he lived i mean yes he wouldn't preach to the 5000 but for three years he mainly lived with 12 men and he invested in them and they shared meals together and they did life together and somehow from those 11 this movement called christianity was born you know i mean that's that's really really what he did and the gospel went forward from his investment and so i believe that's how the church is strengthened and encouraged as we invest life on life with one another yeah and uh you have a lovely illustration at the beginning um about your dad and a a tree that was bent over in your garden um maybe by the store maybe by a young girl swinging in it um but uh tell us the story about that and and it's reflected on the cover of the book i think really beautifully but i think it really captures what mentoring is so do you want to share that illustration with us yeah i remember coming out and seeing my dad um tying these two trees together and i was thinking why on earth do you see doing that like i say because we were playing on the bent over one it was the one we would bounce on which was not helping that tree at all and it had been bent over from a storm and he essentially tethered it to an old oak that was standing beside it and i asked him why he was doing it and he said this is what's going to help this younger tree grow straight so it's going to help it and its development when i think about mentoring why why i use that image is because in a sense that older tree is simply standing beside the younger tree they aren't making them grow they're not the sun and the rain you know they're just standing beside and offering the strength they've been given essentially through surviving many storms and so when i think about mentoring i think of older people standing beside younger people and saying i can't make you grow you know only god can do that but i can stand beside you and offer the strength that the lord has given to me as as i've walked with him through many seasons of life and i think that takes pressure off both people it helps the mentee have right expectations this person can't solve my life this person can't make me grow but this person can stand beside me and it takes a lot of pressure off the mentor because they understand i'm just here to offer up what i've been given but i can't save this person and i can't i can't make them grow spiritually and so there's a lot of freedom um i think in that picture of mentoring and you know as you read the bible you sort of see these relationships actually all the way through don't you you see a moses and a joshua uh you see a paul and a timothy or a paul and a titus and uh and you see the fruitfulness of a life in a joshua or a timothy or a titus um or even a ruth with the naomi uh the fruitfulness of a life with an older person there he's been just further along the path on the pilgrimage it's able to look back and give give you advice and help along the way i think i think it's a a really important idea that's firmly rooted in in scripture has there been any relationships that you've experienced as a mentee with a mentor that was really helpful formative in your christian life absolutely when i was in high school a teacher at my local high school was a believer and she really just mentored us by being a christian in the workplace and she ran this ministry called the fellowship of christian athletes and really she was just available to us and i mean she never what i would say formally mentored me she just shared life with us and would pass on so much good wisdom i mean i could still hear the things she used to say to us you know like look don't think you need to be up front if you're not really spending time with jesus yeah i mean she would just put it to us she didn't want our service without a deep love for the lord and those things stuck with me and then when i went to college i actually had a an intervarsity staff worker who mentored me for three years every week she met with me for three years and we studied first peter together i can still remember studying it with her but then we just sometimes we just chatted about life in ministry but she invested in me for three years in a row and it was just such a blessing to have someone take the time to sit down with with me every week and and really invest so i'm very thankful for those women yeah uh you mentioned um in your book uh other women who have helped you've mentioned elizabeth elliot k arthur did you know elizabeth elliott personally no i did write her you know and i did write her and she wrote me back yeah which uh you know i was i was just writing her to thank her for her books you know just how much they had impacted me and she took the time to write me back which completely surprised me i did not expect that um and it was it was so kind of have that letter somewhere you know and something but um yeah just her words i know you said that she had really her works had really impacted you as well yeah i i was just fascinated by the the jim elliott and the five missionaries who were slaughtered by the alka indians and so that i was brought up as a missionary kid in africa and i've always had a hard permission and so that's just always interested me so yeah i read a lot of the jim elliott journals and then uh read her books about that and then started reading her other book so the mark of a man that she wrote i read and i remember it had a big impact on me in my early 20s and but like yourself i wrote to her once and uh i got a reply i preached a sermon on job 23 on the sovereignty of god and the suffering of his people is in my early 20s and i used her as an illustration i sort of wanted to encourage her so i i bizarrely found a friend of a friend who in scotland was like a niece to her from her second marriage or something like this so i got the address and returned yeah she wrote back typed letter yeah and uh i have it somewhere in my house i don't know where but yeah so i i think she was a great example to you know to younger women of an older godly woman who took um you know her her christian life so seriously and submission to god even in the midst of some very great suffering it's a great example to us yeah yeah uh have you had any relationships uh the other way around where you've mentored and you've seen a young girl really grow in her faith because of being taken under your wing or maybe some other women who've taken other girls under their wing have you seen some nice examples of growth there yeah one thing um that i loved watching at um the church where i did women's ministry for all those years we actually form mentoring groups um and so rather than it be one-on-one we actually did one to two to four um because in some ways that made the relationship stay more on track sometimes rather than get off into one person's kind of circumstantial issues you know it really kept the groups pretty focused um and so i watched so many sweet relationships bloom out of those that so much so that they were just set up to be a year and some groups said no we want to keep meeting and so they would continue to meet even after the year and they would continue to get together and just talk with one another and and walk through life with one another and for me it's been great to be here in the seminary community my husband's at reform theological seminary and um to to get to just see women who are getting ready to go into ministry a lot of times with their husbands or maybe they're in school themselves and they're going in and just it's been such a privilege to get to know these women and then watch the lord scatter them all over the world i'm sure the same is at westminster you know you see these students who come in for this little time and now we have good friends in prague and spain and all these places around the world doing gospel work and we get to hear back from them and it's it's a wonderful thing to get to be a part a small part of that larger story in their lives that's great it's one of the great things isn't it of ministry where you see people grow in their christian faith either with their if you've been in past ministry or not seminary and hear stories years later of what they've got up to and either serving the lord in the kingdom it's it's a great encouragement and a little scary sometimes because of the things they remember that you said i don't know if you ever have this experience you're like oh that's what you remember that i said you know i don't remember saying that but you know the little nuggets that will get passed on yeah when i hear that i'm sometimes i'm thinking yeah and i've changed my view on that but do i tell you that i'll just keep quiet i'll just keep going um i was gonna ask was um so maybe uh there are some women listening here thinking well i'd love to mentor a younger woman but i don't really know where to start and what would even be the structure that i would use for that mentoring relationship what would your advice be there do you have a sort of a general structure that you recommend or encourage women to use um yeah well the first thing i would always say that older women or younger women who are looking for is to go where they are meaning it's really easy to pick groups and bible studies with people who are all the same age you know as we are both for the older women and the younger women and so i would just encourage you if you're an older woman go to some events where the younger women are if you're a younger woman join a small group that has some older women in it because it's nice to just get to know people relationally before you ask will you be my mentor that's kind of a big question and then the second thing i say is then just ask them to coffee yeah just say can we get coffee rather than again will you be my mentor can be very intimidating but if if you are kind of at that place where you're establishing a more formal mentoring relationship i would say it's really helpful to just put um kind of boundaries on it like when are we going to meet with how long are we going to meet um what time you know we're going to meet the first tuesday of every month or are we going to meet every other week those type questions because you're both coming into it with different expectations and different availability and so i just find having that conversation on the front end can help with you know things goes more smoothly because you both had it on your calendar um because i know i get so busy that you just forget oh it's already been a month and we haven't met but if i have it on my calendar that it's the fourth friday of every month well then we're gonna get together and and remember to do that so i do think having some structure and then i i think so that's kind of the structure of the time but then having something you're actually going to talk about is really helpful too so if the person wants to go in their prayer life maybe you read a book on prayer if the person wants to grow in evangelism maybe you read j.i packer evangelist and sovereignty of god together yeah i mean like that you have some curriculum you're trying to grow i mean it could just be just read the book of john together i mean it doesn't have to be a book someone wrote but just to have some content that you're gonna study so that the time isn't just spent on circumstantial happenstance and let's get caught up with one another because i think that's what can happen sometimes is that we just stay in the circumstantial and we never really move into the spiritual growth part of mentoring yeah and just being even more practical so when you say open the bible together do you have a set format a set where you approach just beginning a bible study the way you prepare for that if it's one-on-one that's so much easier because you can just read it together and say do you notice any words that are repeated in this passage do you notice any things like therefore do you notice any contrasting words do you notice any lists i mean those are just some simple questions as you're studying and then be curious together what don't you understand that was confusing what on earth did that mean i mean you know this morning i was reading romans 7 and i'm confused by it i wish i had someone to mentor me through it you know as i'm reading them like what is paul talking about here and just kind of sharing that together and just to have someone to talk through the questions you're both facing as you enter the text and talk about it um so i don't when it's one-on-one i don't really have structure just more questions and i i think that's really a great way what do you learn about god from this passage yeah what do you learn about man from this passage yeah all those type questions i think are really helpful yeah i think about 10 30 tonight as you're heading to bed you should ask mike what he thinks of roman 7 oh i i know i tell him all the time you have to help me i don't put you through school you i i you owe me that's what i what i thought i i have a lot of questions for him yeah yeah um so we've uh we've talked about mentoring and uh how do you mike uh look on mentoring in the family with your children emma john keat what do you view it as a unique kind of mentoring or same kind of thing yeah i think it's i mean it's lifelong i mean what a beautiful thing really to get to grow up in a christian home and what a huge responsibility is christian parents and in this sense um our kids know if we're fakes and so i i think mentoring our children really begins um you know i think back to deuteronomy 6 you know we have to ourselves love the lord with all our heart soul and strength and his word has to be on our heart before we teach it to them and the reality is it's the most intensive mentoring we'll ever have because they see the pattern of our lives like no one else will ever see and so in a lot of ways we're putting a shape before them of what a christian looks like um not just by our words but by our actions so i mean it's terrifying the reality of it is terrifying and so i hope more than anything what they've seen from us is that we listen to the lord we love the lord and and by his grace we try to obey him um i i think that life on life mentoring and you know and of course we teach them the word and we we do all the the other but i think the mentoring is really as life on life as you can get um and so it's a privilege but it is it is such a responsibility because they learn the christian life from watching us um and it's a joy but and and as i've lived it what i will say is the bible is meant for families yeah because we're told what do you do with your sin because guess what every one of you are going to yell at each other at some point and thankfully the bible tells us the healthy way to deal with that say you're sorry ask repent yeah repent and ask for forgiveness and um it's it's it's really when you see these precepts really do in some sense work in practice that's a healthy way to respond to our sin and we're teaching them all those things but um doesn't mean it's easy to do yeah well you've written a lovely book for your children which is sort of part of the mentoring process of instilling a great truth in them this is the book um wherever you go i want you to know um where'd you get the idea to write this book from my daughter was heading off to college she was a junior in high school and actually the kind of strange part of the story is i broke my ankle um and i was home from church one sunday and so the house was quiet which is rare you know for anyone and actually i was journaling i had just finished praying for her just not knowing you there's a lot of pressure on high school students where they'll go to school the grades they're making how they're going to score on these tests and you start thinking as a parent what did i teach them it all went so fast did i teach them how to clean the toilet did i teach them to cook anything do they know anything about life and kind of what settled in my soul is have i have i told her the one thing that matters have i told her the one thing it doesn't matter what she does it doesn't matter where she goes does she just know all all i really care about is that she loves jesus she can do whatever she wants to do she can you know be poor she you know whatever like all those things don't matter just she loved jesus and so it kind of welled up from thinking about my my child going off to college okay uh well it's got a lovely title wherever you go i want you to know i i noticed the uh alliteration wherever and want and the uh end rhyme go no and then the five syllables balancing it out so it's a perfect little refrain which you repeat throughout the book and that's what makes it so memorable did did it take you long to come up with that did that take a lot of tightening or was that something that actually came quite inspirational and came quickly to yeah i was actually i went back and filmed my journal thinking about this and it's funny it was it was the very first thing i had written was that kind of refrain that went through you know i was looking back and i i don't know anything about writing poetry so it was just the thing that came to me was this little this little rhyme um and and i had no idea i i wasn't it just sounded right if i that makes sense but i i didn't really plan it ah wow well it's perfectly balanced you know five syllables in on each section of the sentence it would probably be one of those 20 style sentences in you know earlier um no it's lovely it's a it's a lovely little book and it's poetic all the way through so did that actually take you long to you know make everything rhyme all the way through yeah this little the little different parts i had written it was really fun again to go back like i'm sitting here with this little journal right here and i had just marked out different bits and written different bets and it just kind of came together and um i have no idea i mean i wasn't thinking of a children's book when i was writing this it was just you know i found myself doing that through the years we actually lost a child to miscarriage and i wrote a poem for that child someone had told me um you find a way to mark that child in your heart yeah you don't have a grave you don't have yeah but it's this how do you how do you kind of honor that child and so i woke up at like two in the morning when i knew i was losing the baby and i wrote this poem it was called child of the womb and it was it just came out and that's kind of what happened in this instance it just kind of was the groaning of the heart you know and the the putting forth of of what we think and so um yeah it just kind of happened yeah oh that's well i i actually think a lot of writing is actually inspired not in the uh theaters god breathes but uh i really do think writing good writing is often just something that's inspired in the best sense of the word where you just get that um urge to write something down that feeling i got to get this down i need to write about this particular thing and even though it maybe goes through many many drafts before it's fine-tuned it's still you know the original inspiration is what actually makes it so good i think you know uh what do um what are your kids emma john and kate think of it they've had so much fun with it because we did start editing it actually katie morgan at the good book company helped just saying hey can you add in some things like about life circumstances you know failing or succeeding she was so helpful through the process and so i remember one car ride i was getting the kids to help me i was like how does this sound and you know we just had so much fun as a family kind of working on it together and they were laughing at different parts and so it's been really fun to get to do with them you know that's great um they're beautiful illustrations by isabel lundy um did you have much input to that you know tell listeners what the process is like between the author and the illustrator and the relationship there before that you actually get the product yeah so they sent me a different a few different illustrations from a few different illustrators and when i saw hers i just loved it i loved how it was whimsical and fun and i actually was was writing to her the other day and i said but i love she the first picture i saw was this picture of the king um and you could you could cook meals for a king that was the line and the little girl was holding all this food but then her foot's kicked out and there's a teacup sitting on the foot and i was like oh this is perfect you know it just was so cute and whimsical um and so i love that about it i know you did a kid's book as well did you work with just one illustrator and and do that process yeah um a bit like you they sent me i think a couple of examples and then i i said i want this guy joe hawks who had um illustrated for a new growth press because the kids book i did was a true story about us losing our daughter laila and a conversation with ben and me so i wanted me and ben to look like us and want jackie to look like she did and uh he was really good he was so sensitive to the whole sort of progress progression of the pregnancy but he really built up the excitement that ben was expecting you know um he had a t-shirt on you know i'm going to be a big brother he just added touches that we never asked him to but we thought wow you've been so sensitive to all the expectations we had that we were about to have a little girl join the family and then she didn't um in the live sense of the word but uh of the term of family but uh um yeah he uh he was excellent i mean there was one time he uh one one page where he had me wearing sort of slightly pink pajamas so i had to ask him to change those because i thought my mates are never going to let me live this down if they see me in pink pajamas he was great and you know there were some things i said oh could you fix this or change that and he was very flexible we actually have a funeral scene at the back of the book uh because we had a funeral for layla a white coffin at the front but i i sent him a photo of my family and friends who are at the graveside and i said would you mind just putting you know people in that look like this and it's so basically at the back of the book it's it's our whole extended family drawn in to the church scene and um so that's really nice for all of us who were there to remember that day which was bittersweet as we said our final farewell so yeah i think it's good for listeners to hear that i think an illustrator of a kids book really makes it isn't it i mean your poem is really well done but if you didn't have good illustrations the book would sort of flop absolutely the words would fly but the con the pictures would just not capture whereas this is it's got both it's got great words and uh great illustrations yeah it was so surprising because some of the things she couldn't have known um like there's a picture of a boy with a big it looks like a zucchini or something but my son loves to grow watermelons and he will come in with these huge watermelons and it was just it was so funny because you know she couldn't have known that and then you see it in the picture you're like that's perfect you know and so it's really fun i i found it a more fun process than any other book yes yeah pictures are a lot better than editing words yeah yeah very true um do you have any other kids books planned as a result of producing your first one i have an idea for one that i've discussed um with a friend and so we're we're kind of thinking through it would it work and so um i love children's books my mom was so great i i had books around my house all growing up um wonderful books that stick to me it's it's interesting there's this book called the little rabbit who wanted red wings and it's really a book about envy and i find it interesting that that was my first book you know these you know the moral formation that happens through children's book is pretty profound um and it wasn't a book in the bible or wasn't but it was just a story that kind of told right and wrong and i think there's a real place for that you know in the in the christian world just telling the stories that make us love what is good and hate what is evil without necessarily being a bible story you know yeah yeah that's great and do you have any other books in the pipeline you know for women or adults that you i feel done i just want to i i have ideas but i'm putting them on maybe in five years i just i thought i thought kovac you would have been you know writing away on some three books at one time or something no no i'm ready for a break my my writing my writing fingers feel numb so i'm ready to take a little break yeah well what would you say to uh folk listening who may have an idea for starting a blog or writing a book but they just think well i'd love to do it i think i've got something i want to write on but they've never done it what would your advice be yeah i would encourage them to start trying to write um an article or send a pitch to a publisher i do think it's really helpful even then it's less intimidating than starting your whole blog you know to think am i going to have something to keep saying i mean that takes a lot of time whereas if you maybe have one article send it off to a publication and try to get published and it's great to have the editing help um because you know i think one of the worst things that can happen is hitting posts too soon and so having someone who can help you in that process and even edit you before you start really writing on a regular basis is really helpful because the honest truth is people who work in editing are trying to protect you you know we don't want it to blow up in a negative way for you so so sometimes they've seen the blow-ups happen so they know what to look for um and so it's kind of helpful to you know i i know it's great to just start blogging and and write in that way but i do think it's really helpful to write in places where you can also be edited and and and do that but also just talking to people who write and say hey would you mind looking over this um yeah jen wilkin has a great article on having a friend editorial team friend editorial she put it all in one word um you know she has the theologian she likes to have reader work but she also has just the average layperson reader work and and and that's that's really helpful to know is this something you should spend your time on um does it resonate with people and and getting back advice is really helpful yeah yeah does um i was going to ask does mike edit your work but i think you did answer that earlier he does read over everything do you yes do you ever edit his stuff just from a outside person yes you know yes his blogs and things we'll we'll talk about yes on those those i can read and help him with normally but a lot of times for both of us it's just it's so helpful to have another person who can just look at it and say oh i think you should move this here and do this here yes we both reach others a good bit um which is helpful i think the thing you mentioned it earlier at the beginning but uh you've just sort of touched on it there by moving things around i think people read good writing and they think like wow this must just flow out of their fingers or pen and i i remember j.i packer when i read packer like knowing god i i think he's sitting beside me talking you know it's so effortless it just flows but i remember him saying that all his writing has been like something like i've forgotten a number but six to eight drafts yeah of going over it and over it and over it and i think that sort of can help young riders realize it's like building a wall with bricks you sort of start building then your eyes are a brick doesn't fit there needs to go over here and this bit needs to go there and it really is like a building process isn't it where you sort of build sort of break down again build again and and only then at the end does it actually sort of look half decent yes but it really is a process it's not something that just comes naturally i i was thinking about it today i was trying to write a preface for a book i'm editing and it's taken me three days to write a two-page preface and i thought this is really a result of the fall like why can i not just sit and write two pages and that they flow logically why am i always moving sentences around but it is just part of the fallen world isn't it trying to write with uh fallen minds yeah yeah i remember i was talking to james anderson as a professor down here and he said just get something out and think of it like a big block of marble and then you start to chisel it yeah and you're gonna cut just similar to that block imagery and that's what i think now i say to myself i've got one hour just get something on the page you can chisel it later and so i'll write the bad sentences and i'll but i'll just get something out and that that keeps me writing yeah is is that it doesn't have to be perfect yes yeah um finally melissa you you're involved in mentoring women's ministry in your oval church but you're also involved with the gospel coalition you're the coordinator for women's ministries and initiatives of the gospel coalition we know your conference was postponed unfortunately judah covert you want to give us a wee update on that and what the plans are for that as we close yes hopefully we will be gathering in april we have you know but as we all are learning to say if the lord wills which is it's funny we're studying james the book of james which is our theme is steadfastness and it's been very needed this year and and so we've laughed we're like well we are having to be steadfast about planning this conference and trusting the lord you know if he wills hopefully we will have it in april um so we love being together with that conference as women it's you know we we had over 10 000 women registered to be there it's it's such a wonderful thing to get to gather together and study and learn and then have an amazing bookstore all these things and we love it so i hope it will happen but yeah we're trusting the lord as we go forward yeah well we will pray it is the lord's will that it happens and you can all gather together and be fed from the book of james that would be wonderful yeah melissa it's been wonderful having you on the afterword and uh thanks for joining us and we wish you every blessing with your books that are already out there and your family and mike and uh pray that you keep writing and serving the church uh in this way so thanks so much thanks for having me it's been so fun you get to talk you're welcome i'm going to hand back to josiah and i who's going to tell us who's coming up in the next episode well thanks johnny and melissa for joining us tonight i'm happy to announce that on episode 5 of the afterword we'll be hosting ccef's ed welch and darby strickland ed and darby will be on for a conversation about darth's new book which releases next month from p r publishing her book is called is it abuse and it's available for 50 off on our website so if i'd encourage you to hop over to our website wtsbooks.com afterward you can pre-order the book and find out more about episode 5. you can download the afterward in podcast format it's available on all major platforms also we watch episodes on our youtube channel thanks for joining us that's it for now and we hope to see you next time on the afterwards you