Jessica Snell's Blog

Recent Publications

Well, sort of recent publications! Sorry for being so tardy, but I thought I should at least make sure they were linked here, at the blog-of-record.

This past December, I was delighted to get to write about Advent both at For the Church and at The Advent Project.

At For the Church, I wrote an article called "Advent: Two Kinds of Waiting at Once." Here's a snippet:

...what if there was a judge who could mete out justice—punishment and reward alike—with no ugliness and no error? A judge who would hear the cries of the hungry, see the sorrow of the oppressed, and heed the pleas of the downtrodden? And not only heed them, but rectify them? What if there was a judge who could make all things right? 

That is what we long for; that is what we hope for. And, in Advent, that is what we affirm that we eagerly expect.

At Biola University's Advent Project, I wrote a devotional about Anna and Simeon. Here's a taste of it:

Rejoice in the kindness of the Lord, who did not leave us alone in our loneliness and our damnation and our fear, but became one of us, the greatest making Himself the smallest, the Creator becoming a child who could be wrapped in blankets, who could be circumcised, who could be held in His mother’s arms, who could be delighted over by the widow, who could be seen by the prophet.

Even though it's a bit late for Advent reading, I hope you'll take a peek at these articles. It might not be Advent anymore, but it's never a bad time to revisit the wonderful news that God loved us so much that He sent His only Son to earth to save us.

Hope you had a good Advent, a wonderful Christmas, and that you're enjoying a blessed Epiphany!

-Jessica Snell 

Recent Publications: "Paperback Christmas" and "The Health of the Heart"

Hi folks - 
I wanted to let you know about a few recent publications of mine!
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The first is an essay, "Paperback Christmas," which appears in the latest Chicken Soup for the Soul book, The Wonder of Christmas. My essay is about books and family, two of my very favorite things, and so I hope you'll pick up a copy and take a look!

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The second is a short story, "The Health of the Heart," which appears in this month's issue of Spark. I had a lot of fun with this one. It's a flash fiction romance piece about a doctor and a hospital volunteer--and one rather lovely therapy dog. 

(And me being me, there is also some nerdiness in there--I was in the middle of reading  The Body Keeps Score  when I wrote it, and so the plot revolves around some interesting medical and psychological theories about trauma and healing.)

Anyway, Spark is a great magazine chock-a-block with short, intense, uplifting fiction, so pick up a copy and let me know what you think!

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell




This post contains Amazon affiliate links; if you purchase a book from this link, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. I will probably use it to buy more books. (See full disclosure on sidebar of my blog.)

Sunday Reading Links!

Happy Sunday to you! Here are some good links for your weekend reading pleasure:

-"Think of the End to Motivate the Action"--short and simple, but oh-so-good-and-true.

-"A New Kind of Theological Master's Degree"--My reaction to this in a nutshell? OhNoYouGuysIMightHaveToGoBackToSchool. (Um, seriously. I'm a little disturbed at how much I want to do this.)

-"Counterpoint Reading"--a cool reading strategy.

-"A Cold Take on the Kavanaugh Debacle"--I really, really liked this.

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-"When Fear Tempts You to Quit"--I can't even pretend to this level of faith, but I am challenged and even encouraged by it.

-"Learning to Pray Again"--okay, so this is very Roman Catholic, and I'd quibble with her theology of the Eucharist somewhat, but...this is so worth reading, guys. I think she's very right about bringing your actual self to the Lord in prayer, and not the self you think He wants to see. Great reminder.


(And for more links and quotations and such than I ever manage to post here on the blog, follow me on Twitter!)

That's it for this week! I hope you had a good weekend!


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Monday Links!

Well, I missed the weekend, so here are links to some good reading for your Monday!

-From Anne Kennedy: "Girl, Go to Church."

-And, speaking of Anne, I love this too: "Trading Ash for Honey."

-And here is something very good, from Fred Sanders, about a sort-of oblique approach to iconography and the Trinity: "The Prepared Throne."

-This is about reading the authors that the authors you love loved to read: "Climbing Your Own Family Tree."

-Emily Hubbard, who I worked with on Not Alone, wrote this piece on Medium, and I think it's worth signal-boosting: "Use Accurate Language When You Talk About People Who Have Experienced Sexual Abuse or Assault Please."

-I love the college students at our parish, and so I loved this article: "Welcome to College. Join a Church."

-This is so cool: "Europe's Oldest Intact Book Is Discovered Inside the Coffin of a Saint."

-I enjoyed this article: "Fantasy vs. Reality through the Lens of To All the Boys I've Loved Before."

-Ouch: "Back to the Sources: A plagiarism incident involving Ann Voskamp shows the new dynamics of Christian publishing in a digital age."


From the Archives
-That time I met one of my literary heroines, Robin Jones Gunn.
-And the difference meeting her ended up making in my writing life.



(And for more links and quotations and such than I ever manage to post here on the blog, follow me on Twitter!)

That's it for this week! I hope you had a good weekend!


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Book Notes: "One Beautiful Dream," by Jennifer Fulwiler

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So, this is a book I gulped down. Jennifer Fulwiler’s writing voice is so good—if this was fiction, you’d call her a compelling protagonist, one you’re rooting for, and one who makes you want to know what’s going to happen next.

(On that note, may I just say, Wow, I miss Jen’s blog! I was a fan of it over a decade ago, and I’m sure she’s doing wonderful things on her radio show now, and she’s clearly still writing glorious books, but…I miss her blog. It just has to be said.)

So, what is One Beautiful Dream about? It’s about fulfilling a creative vocation while mothering a whole passel of kids. Which totally makes it what you'd call “relevant to my interests.”

In it, Jennifer tells the story of writing her first book, while not just mothering the kids she had, but gestating and giving birth to a few more. It’s about how she learned to stop treating her vocation as a mother as if it were an enemy of her vocation as a writer—as if in order to make room for her writing, her mothering vocation had to be the lion she held back with a whip and a chair.

I really love this bit, which I think sums up a lot of what the book’s about:

There is a tendency with anyone who loves any kind of work to fantasize that if you just had endless time for it, you’d be able to achieve perfection in this field. Yet what I’d discovered is that when you put love first, not only does your life improve, but your work improves…In my case, I faced interruption after interruption in my house full of babies. And, in the process, I finally learned how to write a book.

It is, like all good memoirs, a story that spends time on details that support the theme, and elides past those that don’t. For instance, from my experience as a NICU mom, I’m sure that a whole book could have been written about Jennifer’s experience of having a baby in the NICU, yet she only spends a short span of pages there.

And that’s okay, because that’s not what this particular book is about…but little spaces like that make me realize how much I’d like, someday, to read about the bits that happened in the spaces.

If she ever feels like writing those books, that is. Jennifer’s an author I’d trust to decide when and where to tell which stories--no author should feel pressure to write the things she doesn't want to write.

But all I have to say is: at this point, I’m here to read whatever books she feels like writing. I definitely recommend this book.


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell


This post contains Amazon affiliate links; if you purchase a book from this link, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. I will probably use it to buy more books. (See full disclosure on sidebar of my blog.)

Anxiety and a Rule of Life

In my second post about writing a Rule of Life, I talked about discerning the need for a Rule, and in my third, I talked about keeping track of what I was already doing. At the end of that third post, I implied that my next post was going to be about the prayer retreat where I wrote the first draft of my Rule.

But I’m going to take a one-post diversion away from that sequence, because there’s something else I want to talk about first.

I want to talk about how having a Rule of Life has helped me with my anxiety. *

One of the best things having a Rule of Life has done for me is that it has let me make big decisions from a place of rest and peace—and that has helped me make good decisions on the smaller stuff, even when I’m in a place of worry and exhaustion.

By taking the time to pray through my schedule and my responsibilities, I was able to decide what my days and my weeks should look like. What was most important? What did I want to do, for sure, every day? What came after that? When was the right time of day for each activity? And, what was my plan for days that weren’t normal—days when things went wrong? What was I going to do when someone got sick or a friend or family member needed me?

I thought through all of that, and I prayed through all of that, on my retreat. I made those decisions in a place of peace.

And it has made all the difference on the days when I've felt crowded and anxious and in the dark.

What was the key? Trusting the decisions I made in peace. On days when I'm anxious, I can tell myself, “I know you think the world is ending. I know you think this is a disaster. I know you think nothing can ever be right again. But we’re not listening to you right now”— (yes, I know, apparently when I talk to myself I either think I’m plural or I’m using the royal we) —“right now, we are going to do what we already decided we’re going to do. We’re not changing the plan because you feel awful. We’re just going to do the next right thing.”

And—this is the brilliant part—I knew what the next right thing was!!! I’d already prayed about it. I’d already held my thoughts and desires before the Lord, I’d meditated on His word, I’d prayed and listened and thought it all through.

I let my peaceful self make the decisions. And that kept my anxious self from having to bear that burden.

You know that old truism that you only have so much will-power during a given day? A Rule of Life means you only have one decision to make: Am I going to follow my Rule or not?

Life-changing, guys. It’s been life-changing.

Does that mean I never make tweaks or small adjustments? Of course not! I am still a mom, and not a monk. I can look at a given situation and say, “Yeah, the wise thing to do now is toss the plan and just sit and listen to this kid.” 

But, honestly, even that kind of thing is something I thought about while making my Rule. My duty is first to God, and then to my husband and kids. Then other duties follow. So if my family is in need, that’s the kind of thing that takes priority. (You do have to have some kind of flexibility. I said that I’m a mom and not a monk—but even monks are monks and not robots.)

Still, even with the un-eveness of daily life, having a structure to my days has been life-changing, and it’s been especially life-changing on the days when I’m feeling anxious. I tend to make bad decisions when I’m anxious. I make decisions that make my world smaller and scarier and harder.

So, having a Rule that has already made a good deal of my daily decisions for me? Has kept my bad days from making my whole life bad. Because if I have a terrible day in which I still know what my duty is and I still do it, that means that when I start my next day—which might be a good one!—I don’t have any awful messes to clean up. I haven’t fallen horribly behind.

And instead of feeling angry at my yesterday’s-self, I feel grateful to her. She had a hard time, and she kept going anyway, because she wasn’t confused about what the right thing to do was.

A Rule is a guide-line. Even if you’re blind-folded, you can keep your hand on it and keep walking in the right direction. You might walk more slowly, but at least you won’t be walking in circles.

And when you’re able to take the blindfold off, you’ll know where you are.

I am so grateful for my Rule of Life.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell




* Important note: Clinical anxiety is something that deserves clinical treatment. I have sought help from my doctor and from a psychologist in the past, when my anxiety actually was that acute, and I’m glad that I did. I’d encourage you to do the same, if yours is serious. I’m not talking about serious, diagnosable anxiety in this post. Having a Rule is a tool that you might use in that case—as I do myself!—but I would not look to a Rule as a cure or as sufficient if you’re in the middle of, say, panic attacks. Please seek professional help if you need it—it’s there for that reason, and it’s a great blessing—much along the lines of the availability of insulin for diabetics and eye surgery for cataracts!

(Also, it should go without saying, but: I am not a medical professional and nothing in here is medical advice.)

Links!

Here are links to some good reading, for what's left of your weekend:

-"Sperm Count Zero"--well, this is sobering.

-While we're on "sobering," here are a few recent articles about sad happenings in the Christian writing community:
   -"Sexual Harassment Uncovered at Christian Writing Conferences"
   -"Cheap Grace"
   -"Twelve Responses to Abuse Accusations in Christian Conferences, Part I"

-Now for something encouraging: "5 Lessons on Evangelism from a Man Named Ichabod"

-"Tossed Salad and Scrambled Eggs: An Oral History of Fraiser"--as a fan of the show, I really enjoyed reading this.


(And for more links and quotations and such than I ever manage to post here on the blog, follow me on Twitter!)

That's it for this week! I hope you had a good weekend!


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Links for Labor Day!

Here are links to some good reading and listening, for what's left of your weekend:

-"The Strange Truth About the Pill" - this article from the BBC has been making the rounds, and it's well-worth the read.

-"I Don't Want a Celebration of Life, I Want a Burial Service" - a friend from our parish posted this to his Facebook page, and I really liked it.

-"What Should We Make of the Sign Gifts?" - I loved this--so sensible, and Biblically-grounded. (And neither hard cessationist nor extreme charismatic. Very thoughtful, and worth listening to, whichever side of the debate you're on.) 

-And here is a very, very good sermon on wisdom, discernment, and growing in maturity.

-"On Wildness, Cracked Worlds, Monsters, and the Odd Nature of the Short Story" - this one is for my fellow writers out there, though I think the vibrancy of it will appeal to any reader. Also, this part seems like good advice for...many, many things:

“Here’s my theory on trail maintenance,” he said to us over and over again. “You take the worst stretch of trail, and you turn it into the best.” It was good advice, as it turns out.

(And for more links than I ever manage to post here on the blog, follow me on Twitter!)

That's it for this week! I hope you had a good Labor Day weekend!

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

7 Quick Takes on kids using the internet

Not a cesspool.
One of my children is a teenager, and the rest of them will be soon, and so we've started dealing with introducing our kids to the email, social media, and all the rest of the internet.

But...only one of my children is a teenager, I've raised a grand total of ZERO children to adulthood, so I can't point to any success stories here--not yet, anyway.

So this blog post is very much in the vein of Some Thoughts On the Subject, and emphatically NOT in the great writerly tradition of Do As I Have Successfully Done.

Here my thoughts:

1) Proper online behavior/use of the internet IS a skill we have to teach our children. I have to start here because, well...this is a parenting task I really don't want to do! But the internet is a technology my kids are going to have to use--actually, are already required to use for school. I'm old enough that my parents didn't have to teach me about this stuff when I was a kid--I didn't even get my first email address until I was in college. So I don't have a model to look at.

But I do have to teach my kids about this stuff. They're going to have to use it, and would I rather have them learn about it from me or from the world? Yeah.

2) Given that you have to teach them to use it, it's worth thinking through how you're going to teach them to use it well. This is likely going to look a bit different from family to family, given different personalities and resources. But, you've got to look at your kids and think, If you're going to use this, how can we help you learn to use this well?  if this is something you HAVE to do...  who do you need to be in order to do it virtuously? how can we help you become that person?


3) Rules are necessary. 
I mean...there might be a sewer near your house, but you don't let your kid swim in it, right? Likewise, there are cesspools out there on the internet (and cesspools within those cesspools , and cesspools that pretend to be swimming pools, and cesspools that pride themselves in being the STINKIEST CESSPOOL EVER HAVE YOU SEEN OUR CESSPOOL PICTURES JUST CLICK HERE).

So, no. I don't think you hand your kid a computer and say, "Good luck, champ." You don't abandon them in the middle of the internet any more than you'd abandon them in the middle of a freeway.

On the other hand, they're going to be adults soon, and then they WILL have to navigate online spaces on their own, so you want them to learn good habits now. (They will eventually be driving on those freeways. Which is good. That's what freeways are for.) The end-game of parenting is adulthood. You want to protect your kids while they're kids, but you don't want to protect them from growing up. You want to help them become good grown-ups.

And while our kids will be able to make all their own choices as adults, and it's not unlikely that they'll fall into bad habits and choices somewhere along the way, I think they've got much better chances of finally settling into good habits and good choices if they've already got a baseline of what good habits and good choices feel like. Of what it's like to live virtuously--of the joy and the light and the peace that good habits and good choices can bring.

So, I want to help them practice good habits now, while I can enforce them. Not because I think that guarantees that they'll be perfect adults. But because I think experiencing goodness is one of the best ways to learn to love goodness--and, when you've fallen away from goodness, you still have that memory, that experience, that will help keep you from denying that goodness is possible.

4) Teach it like you'd teach anything else: thoughtful introduction, plenty of practice, growing freedom, and keeping the end in mind. Again, this will look a bit different for each family, and maybe even for each kid. But help them learn how to use email, search engines, social media, etc., just like you'll help them learn how to balance a checkbook. Have their passwords, not because you want to impinge on their privacy, but because they're kids, and knowing Mom and Dad are gonna do random checks to make sure everything looks okay will prompt better choices. (And because, frankly, you're still legally responsible for them, so it's just prudent.) Realize you can't police everything, but don't abandon them.

And don't be an idiot--"screens stay in the public areas of the house" is probably the oldest parenting rule in this new online world, but it's still one of the smartest.

5) Talk to them about porn, privacy, and predators. There are plenty of people who've given good advice on these things, so I won't elaborate much here--just enough to say: teaching kids basic common sense about these things is a good idea. Being a parent who they can talk with openly about these things might be an even better one.

6) Don't be a hypocrite. Use the internet wisely and virtuously yourself.

7) Slowly give more freedom. This has to come as the capstone on building good habits.


Alright, so, that's about as far as I've gotten on this one. We're still definitely in the trial-and-error stage. You have to have a plan, if only so you have a place to start. The good thing about plans is that they can be adjusted as you go--most robust systems go through multiple iterations. That's fine.

But it's good to think about things like this--good to start somewhere.

Check out more and better Quick Takes over at This Ain't the Lyceum.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell




*Note: If a technology is such that it can't be used virtuously, of course you don't teach your kids how to use it. And I'd probably argue some such technologies exist. But I'd also argue that the internet is more like the printing press--using books and computers (i.e., creating a certain sort of literate/connected society) is going to be formative in a certain way, but they're still both technologies capable of being used for both good and for evil.

spreading out the bad news (Hezekiah and prayer)

I love the Old Testament. Partly because it has such great stories about prayer. 

Here's one that struck me lately, in Isaiah 37.* Jerusalem is under threat from the Assyrians, who've been striking down their enemies right and left. Destroying everyone. Winning every battle. Terrifying their enemies.

And then Hezekiah, the king in Jerusalem, receives a letter from the Assyrians, talking about all the people they've destroyed, and about how Jerusalem is next, and so don't think your God can save you.

Hezekiah, true son of David that he is, knows that the enemies of God are especially in trouble when they defy God (think Goliath). And so this is what he does:

Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers, and read it; and Hezekiah went up to the house of the Lord, and spread it before the Lord.

He takes the bad news, and he spreads it out in front of God.

I love that.

Hezekiah also (again, true son of David that he is), pleads for God to help for God's own great name's sake.

O Lord, the God of Israel, enthroned above the cherubim, you are the God, you alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth; you have made heaven and earth. Incline your ear, O Lord, and hear; open your eyes, O Lord, and see; and hear the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to mock the living God. Truly, O Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste the nations and their lands and have cast their gods into the fire, for they were not gods, but the work of men's hands, wood and stone. Therefore they were destroyed. So now, O Lord our God, save us, please, from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you, O Lord, are God alone.

You and I are not Hezekiah. But we do follow the even greater, even truer Son of David. And I think that when we get bad news, Hezekiah's example is not a bad one to follow. 

We are also not God, and so we don't know which outcomes will most glorify His great name--maybe what we ask for isn't what He wants. (To quote another good example, "But if not..." ) 

But we are God's people, and so when we get bad news, we can spread it before Him, and beg Him for His help.

And we can trust in Him who alone can save us.


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell








*The story is also recorded in 2 Kings 19.