Why Christian Fiction?

When I was a child, faith in God was very easy. I grew up in a family and a neighborhood that was centered around our local church. All of us children loved the Baby Jesus, and we felt terrible that He had suffered for our sins on the Cross. We trooped off to Mass and Confession every week, secure and confident that we were of supreme importance to God and that He loved us very much.

A child’s life is simple, but the world of an adult is not And faith is a work-in-progress. It will be tested by the world, and if it isn’t nurtured, it can wither. This is what happened to me.

In my early child-rearing years I was so busy, so caught up with my family, my animals, and my increasingly successful writing career, that my relationship with God faded into the background. I always went to Sunday mass, but it was something I did from long habit, not something that really filled me with spiritual grace. Outside of that weekly hour at church, I virtually ceased to pray.

I have suffered from migraines and chronic daily headache all my life. With medication, I had managed to maintain a fairly normal life, but as the years went by, the medications began to make me very sick. I couldn’t take them any more, and the headache became constant and unbearable. Finally my doctor sent me out to a well-known specialty hospital in Michigan. The doctors there didn’t help me and I began to despair.

Joan and Daughter Pam

It was then that my life swung back toward Jesus. There simply was nowhere else to go. I tried so hard to feel Him in my heart, to feel His love in my pain. I asked Him to help me, and He did. Technically, the credit for my cure goes to a new therapy, but I know I was given a miracle. And I knew I had to give Him something back.

My husband and I currently run my church’s food pantry, distributing food to all the people in our town who need it. With the current economic situation, the pantry has become almost a full-time job. Frankly, it takes a lot out of me, but I am constantly amazed by the faith in God I see in all the suffering people that I help. They awe me; and they inspire me too. My deepest hope is that my books about Esther and Mary Magdalene, and their respective journeys to God, will inspire my readers to understand Him better and to love Him more.