Seasons

Happy June.

Our inboxes are awfully full, so I’m suspecting you haven’t noticed that I took a step away from this newsletter for a few months. It was a season of letting a few things go as I needed to be present for others. My oldest graduated from high school (which I discovered is not one event, but a long string of them), my middle son played a jam-packed first season of high school baseball, and my youngest is never one to be left in the dust. (And even if it’s too late, he still lets me read to him at bedtime, even if he only keeps his eyes open for a few pages.)

This month I celebrated a birthday, and while the day held some lovely moments, I experienced a few melancholy ones, too. Time keeps marching on, at times making me feel like I’m chasing it, begging it to slow down or at least allow me to catch my breath.

It’s been years since I first read Shauna Niequist’s book, Bittersweet, but these words have lingered with me: “It's not hard to decide what you want your life to be about. What's hard is figuring out what you're willing to give up in order to do the things you really care about.”

Perhaps one of the most common questions I’ve received since my book was published was how I found time to write it. The answer to that is about moments carved out, but it’s also what I didn’t get done. I am not a stickler about laundry and don’t believe in a whole lot of folding—my kids’ clean clothes are just tossed into baskets. I pay a friend to clean my house every other week. I don’t garden as much as I’d like, and other than The Great British Baking Show, I don’t keep up with TV. And on the topic of seasons, I completed most of the manuscript for Enemies in the Orchard during the pandemic when many vacations and plans were cancelled.

For the same reason, my writing life has been a bit more sporadic lately. In this season of life, I have made other choices. Not good or bad ones, but ones that allow me some peace in my heart.

I don’t mean to oversimplify this. I stress about it. I would love to figure out how to squeeze some extra hours out of my mornings without my alarm going off any earlier than it already does. A new exercise routine, which is good for my health, has gotten in the way of my pre-dawn writing. I love watching my kids’ play sports, but the hours steal time away from time our family could spend pursuing other things — or relaxing and pursuing nothing. And I love my job working as a literacy consultant, but some days wish I had more brain space for creating words of my own.

I often say that one of the things I love most about living in Michigan and working in education are the distinct seasons. The greens of spring fade winter’s cold bite. The turning leaves of fall urge us to let go of our tight grip on summer.

Like nature’s seasons, life has seasons, too. And I’m trying to keep my hands and heart open to receive and embrace them all.

In our backyard last night, after a storm.

A few other things to share:

1. Part throw-back to my days as a college journalist and part ode to my graduate, in a recent blog on the Reformed Journal I shared with my son (and other graduates) a bit of unsolicited advice.

2. Big thanks to Melissa Taylor for including Enemies in the Orchard in the Middle Grade Reading Road Trip on her Imagination Soup website as one of the featured reads for Michigan. I’m thrilled to be included next to Christopher Paul Curtis’s well-loved Bud Not Buddy and Anna Rose Johnson’s The Star that Always Stays, which takes place on Beaver Island, a place my family has vacationed.

   

3. I met my writing soul mate, Elizabeth Felicetti when we were both MFA students. In the five years we’ve been emailing and checking in with each other daily, she’s fought breast and now lung cancer. In July, she and her friend Samantha Vincent-Alexander will release Irreverent Prayers: Talking to God When You’re Seriously Sick. I have no doubt the book will be a much-needed gift to those struggling with how or what to pray as they endure illness and pain.

   “We struggled a bit with the word ‘irreverent.’ We certainly don’t be unbiblical. We find the prayers in this book solidly biblical. Reverence, however, can be linked to fear. Our parishioners and many Christians are afraid to express their emotions to God. But God took on flesh so that through Jesus God experienced the emotions we feel….We hope that others seeking prayer when ill can reach from this book when other prayers seem to pious and all they want to do is scream, except they can’t because it would hurt too much.”

   -Introduction of Irreverent Prayers: Talking to God When You’re Seriously Sick

Also, my review of Elizabeth’s first book, Unexpected Abundance: The Fruitful Lives of Women without Children, ran in the Reformed Journal on Mother’s Day week. I highly recommend both books!

4. Fellow teacher and baseball mom, Amanda Zieba (the Word Nerd) and I connected via Instagram, and I had fun chatting with her online during an interview as part of her First Friday Read Aloud series. You can listen to Amanda read also the beginning of Enemies in the Orchard, which concludes with our interview on her YouTube Channel.

   

I’m not wishing away summer…

but I am starting to book in-person and online events for fall. I love visiting schools, groups, libraries, or even orchards to share about Enemies in the Orchard, its historical background, and my writing process. I love to do Q&As, and as a former middle school English teacher, I am intentional about keeping my presentations engaging and interactive, and am happy to lead hands-on writing exercises. 

Contact me — dana.vanderlugt@gmail.com — to talk about visiting your students, library, or community. I’d be excited to hear from you.

With gratitude and deep breaths as we navigate life’s seasons,

Dana