The very first writers conference I ever attended was the national ACFW conference in 2007. I was pregnant with Rowyn at that conference–and I met another young woman also pregnant (with her first), who was carrying the same red leather briefcase. We struck up a conversation, eventually exchanged emails, and eighteen years later, she’s still my best friend (hi, Stephanie! LOL). In fact, I realized before going that I’ve been a member of this organization for 21 years. Clearly, ahem, I joined at age 7. 😉

I’ve been to quite a few ACFW conferences since that first time, but it’s been a while. In fact, I think the last I attended this conference was twelve years ago, when I first went as an editor representing WhiteFire Publishing. I’ve been to many other conferences in the meantime, including quite a few regional ACFW ones. But this is the first I’ve gotten to go back to this big, wonderful national conference–and yet again, I’m representing WhiteFire. And this time, David came to rep the company too!

I’ll admit that we weren’t off to the best start, when driving from dropping our daughter off at college and then driving from Annapolis to the airport resulted in a cracked windshield (boo!). But from there, things were great. We’d managed to find super-cheap upgrades to first class, which meant free checked bags…which meant I could bring my books for the bookstore in a suitcase. I think that upgrade actually ended up saving us money in book shipping! 

In the airport, I looked over and saw who I was 98% sure was Tamela Hancock Murray, agent in the Steve Laube Agency (Steve is my agent). I was about ready just to call out, “Tamela!” and see if she looked over, but she beat me to it. She came over and said hello, and that was fun! Turns out, another conferee was on the plane too, though I didn’t realize it until the next day, at a meet and greet. She said she saw me on the plane and nearly fan-girled but thought it would be weird, so didn’t. I assured her no fangirling was ever unwelcome, LOL.

We had a friendly, chatty, helpful Uber driver from airport to hotel, and oh my word, y’all, the Peabody! It has live ducks in the fountain, with a duck parade every day from rooftop to lobby, and duck-themed everything. It was so cute! And the hotel is super posh. It was an absolutely delightful stay.

On Thursday, before the official start of the conference, I had a chance to enjoy a leisurely breakfast with the aforementioned agent Steve. I’ve met him before, but not since he’s been my agent, so it was fun to catch up. Then in the afternoon, I got to sit down with two ladies from the Tyndale team. I just learned on Tuesday that my acquisitions editor is leaving (sad!) but that Stephanie, who I met there (she’s head of the fiction line) will be taking me on (happy!). David and I also joined the Tyndale team and the other Tyndale authors at the conference for dinner of Friday night, which was amazing. I also had a chance to hug my previous editor from Bethany House and catch up with her, which was also a joy.

Thursday night was the “Milestones Dinner,” and I got a lovely little pin honoring my 50th book release.  They also do ribbons for your lanyard, and I had the 20+ year member ribbon, as well the “honor roll” ribbon…which I had to ask someone to explain to me, LOL. It’s for being on a bestseller list and/or winning other awards. And pins, too, for my two Carol Award finalist titles this year.

As an editor, I got to meet with quite a few authors who were pitching their books to me, and that is always a delight. I look forward to seeing what might come of those meetings in the weeks and months to come!

For me, though, the most amazing thing was that every time I went anywhere, someone called out my name. Sometimes to say how much they love my books, but ALWAYS to say they’ve been praying for me. Guys…that just makes me teary and smiley and humbled and awed. It was strange, first of all, to be recognized–the last time I’d attended the national conference, I had some friends there, of course, but it was nothing like this.

Saturday evening was the Carol Awards gala. The dinner was scrumptious, and I was all dolled up in a vintage style dress (that I found for $8 on Poshmark!). I had two books that were finalists: The Collector of Burned Books for the Historical Romance category, and The Christmas Book Flood for novella. I will admit that, of the two, I thought Collector had a better chance of winning. But the Historical Romance category went to the super-sweet Christine Hill Suntz, who I’d had the chance to get to know at all the Tyndale dinners and hang-out times, for The Lawyer and the Laundress, and I was thrilled to cheer for her! But then The Christmas Book Flood won for novella! How lovely!

Two of my Patrons & Peers ladies were at the conference, and hanging out with them was just wonderful. We closed the ballroom down chatting after the award ceremony. =) Total delight.

Of course, we had to leave for the airport on Sunday morning at a ghastly 4:15 a.m., which wasn’t the most fun in the world. A young lady from our Mid-Atlantic zone joined us on the Uber ride (she was understandably leery of riding by herself at 4 a.m.), and Tamela was yet again on our flight home, LOL. 

All in all, it was a wonderful experience all round (minus the chipped windshield, but they were able to repair it, it didn’t require replacement! So even that isn’t so bad!), and I can’t wait to go back! I was amazed that it still felt like home, even after so many years away. Because they’re my people–fellow Christian writers, fellow Christian novelists even. What a joy it was to visit with old friends and make new ones…and just to hear straight from people’s mouths how many prayers have been covering people.

David joked that he was less “publisher of WhiteFire” and more “Roseanna’s husband” there, but he said it was amazing to hear how loved I am. The last day, I kept catching him thanking everyone for their support of me (my editor and agent specifically).

I can’t wait to return!

The Peabody Ducks

My Carol Award acceptance speech. The video picks up a couple seconds in–I begin with “I did prepare something to say, then, much like with my outlines, I chucked it out the window…”

Have you ever wondered where we get the idea of the Trinity, of a threefold God, when the word itself is never used in the Bible?

Well, the word may not be, but the concept is all through it. In studying it, though, what left me breathless with epiphany was when I read that the verse “God is love” is where all these triune understandings are rooted.

Love doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Love doesn’t exist in nothingness. Love can’t exist on its own, outside of a few crucial things.

First, someone to do the loving. That is God the Father.

Next, someone to be loved. That is God the Son.

Third, the outpouring of that love between them, the love itself. That is God the Holy Spirit.

This is an incredibly old teaching and way of understanding the Trinity, but it’s one I only encountered a few years ago. It struck me then, and it struck me even more when I came across it again recently.

Because the beauty of this concept is rooted in a truth so deep it goes back to the very beginning. To before the beginning. To what made the beginning. Why, we might ask, did God create us? Why did He speak that Word by which all that is came into being? Why did the Spirit go forth and hover over the waters?

Love.

First, before the world, that love still existed. It existed in God Himself. It is God Himself. He loved, and so the force of that love created something–created everything. He loved, and the world and all that’s in it came into being. He loved, and mankind sprang up. He loved, and all of history unspooled.

That first love–Father, Son, and Spirit–is the eidos, the ultimate form that all creation then harkens back to. We belong in families because our Creator IS a family. And made in His image as we are, we naturally long for that. We need that. We, too, are a dim reflection of that triune love.

We are the lover.
We are the beloved.
We are the physical representation of the love of our parents.

I am, of course, speaking in ideals–the “act of love” is not always done in love, I know that. But it’s meant to be. Which means we are meant to be that manifestation, that outpouring of love.

Just as we are meant to love others with our whole hearts, undefiled.

Just as we are meant to receive love wholly and openly and truly.

We are meant to embody that love here on earth, with our fellow-men. Just as we are meant to return that love to the Lord, as we receive it from Him.

I don’t know about you, but pondering that just leaves me in awe. That all of creation, all of history, all of everything is rooted in that one little word, that one boundless concept, that one thing we all know yet can’t know fully while we’re bound up in these selfish, sinful bodies:

LOVE.

If we spend our lives seeking to give it, to receive it, to embody it…well then, we’re spending our lives seeking to better understand Him.

The first Lover.
The first Beloved.
And the Love itself that pours out into all of creation.

What exactly is an idol? Why are they dangerous?

Over the last couple months, it seems like the subject has come at me from many different directions, several of them including some historical insights that I was grateful to receive. And then, as I wrote A Storm to Still, which is set during the reign of King David but takes place largely in Philistia, I got to explore those lessons and themes in ways I hadn’t done before.

If you look idol up in the dictionary, you get these definitions:

1: an object of extreme devotion
2: a representation or symbol of an object of worship
     broadly : a false god
3: a likeness of something
4: a false conception
5: a form or appearance visible but without substance

But there’s more to it, historically, than that.

You see, part of the ancient practice of creating an idol involved ceremony. It was not just carving a figure. It was saying words meant to attach the god to that figure. (Which means that not every carved figure was an idol–ONLY those that supposedly had the god attached, and hence were worthy of worship.)

In our modern world, where overt idol-worship has gone out of style, we tend to think of it only with those metaphorical, broad definitions. Idols, we’ve all heard pastors and teachers say, are the things we put above God. The things that come between us and God. And there is definitely truth to that

But it wasn’t until I learned about that “attaching” thing that I began to understand something deeper, more fundamental about idols…and how we fall into idol-worship today. Because, you see, one of the biggest differences between God and the gods of the rest of the world, is that He cannot be contained–not by a figure made with human hands…and not by the boxes we try to put Him in.

To us, this might sound like an “of course.” But it is, in fact, HUGE.

It means that, unlike every other god, the Lord is not just the God of one city or place, bound to those lands.

It means that, unlike every other god, the Lord cannot be forced to act in a given way because we say given words.

It means that, unlike every other god, His power is not shackled to an object, and so praying to that object does not do anything.

Now, that is NOT to say that God doesn’t have sacred objects! He was pretty specific about the creation of the arc of the covenant and the tabernacle, down to the most minute detail. They were important. They mattered. But not because He was contained by them or in them–rather, because they are meant to be a reminder of His glory.

This is a crucial difference. Our sacred objects should never make us limit God–they should only ever make us remember how limitless He is.

So how do we actually create idols today? 

Yes, I think they are the things we put before God: money, power, fame, influence, success, even things like our families or people we, ahem, idolize.

But I’ve recently come to understand it’s other things too.

It’s expecting to make God move by doing certain things.

It’s putting God into a box, creating Him in our image.

It’s trying to contain Him.

It’s telling Him how to do His job, or what He does or does not like, or limiting His movement.

How many times in the Gospels did Jesus rebuke the Pharisees with words like “You say…but I say…”? Those strict adherents to the Law would have been indignant if anyone called them idol-worshipers–it was the very thing they made all those rules to prevent! But it is, in fact, what they’d fallen into. Because they worshiped the Law above the Giver of the Law. They worshiped the Words instead of the Heart behind the Words. And in so doing, they tried to bind God to their understanding of God.

I daresay none of us have physical idols in our houses. But have we done the same? Have we tried to limit Him to our own understanding?

In A Storm to Still, my heroine, Shaala, finds herself before an idol-seller’s stall in a Philistine market. She sees all those carved and cast and shaped idols, along with amulet necklaces. She, too, wears a necklace–a silver pendant with the Shema (“Hear, O Israel: the Lord your God, the Lord is One”) inscribed on it. At a glance, her necklace looks exactly like some of those amulets.

But with that key difference: hers is meant to remind her to turn to the Lord. It, in itself, has no power; it can do nothing. She has to do something, to communicate with God–humble herself, call upon Him, remove whatever is between them, ask forgiveness for her sins.

It’s not the words of a prayer that matter–it’s the heart of the one who prays.

It’s not the words in our Bible that save us–it’s the Word who became flesh.

It’s not anything we do or make or say that makes God act–it’s His love for us that made Him condescend to us.

Lord, help us not to limit you. And never stop reminding us of your glory.