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How do you balance making your family a priority while also writing?
--As a wife and mother of three and an author bringing Christ's voice into often dark places, Elrena Evans blends faith and family together in her writing. She recently co-edited a book entitled Mama, PhD: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic Life. Join in our conversation as Elrena shares about her family, her writing, and her mission.
How do you balance making your family a priority while also writing?
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I've also learned that I have to value the work that I do; I have to make it a priority. That's really difficult to me, sometimes, because it can feel like anything that takes any time away from my children is by definition wrong! Leslie Leyland Fields, Christian writer and mother of six, has a quote in her newest book that I just love: "For me, serving God means that I will spend some of my hours at home in front of the computer writing, instead of spending that time with my family, as I obey one of the callings God has placed on my life." I love that quote, I love the idea of being obedient to God in all of the callings He has placed on our lives. And when I look at my life that way, the question of balance becomes even more important: these are my callings, both of them. And if this is what God wants me to do, He will help me find a way to make it all work. Eric Liddell has a quote in Chariots of Fire: "I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure." I resonate with that: my children are my purpose, but when I write I feel God's pleasure.
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I could also answer that I've gotten very good at multi-tasking; I often joke that I spent more time working on Mama, PhD while nursing than while I wasn't, but I honestly think if you added up all of the hours I worked on that book, the majority would be hours spent typing and nursing at the same time!
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One of your late projects was the monthly column at Literary Mama, Me and My House, an unashamedly Christian peice in the mostly secular world of mama-centric literature. Has being one of the few Christian voices in this genre affected your writing in any way? What inspired you to start this column?
-Being an unabashedly Christian voice in a secular publication has taught me, if anything, the importance of listening to my own voice. I was inspired to start the column because I was reading all of this wonderful mama-literature, but I didn't see myself there, I didn't see women who were Christians writing about their faith. Which isn't at all to say that those voices aren't out there, just that I believe they are underrepresented.
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What I found, though, when I went to write my first column was that I was almost paralyzed by the thought of who would be reading it--what will my Christian friends think? What will my non-Christian friends think? I'm a bit of a people-pleaser by nature, and that's one thing you can't control when your writing becomes public--different people are going to feel differently about your work, and it's absolutely impossible to please everyone. What I had to realize, eventually, was that that was the wrong goal: I wasn't writing the column to please anyone, really, except God. So I had to learn to be true to myself and what I wanted to say, and not worry so much about what people were going to think. Which isn't to say I don't still worry...it's an ongoing struggle for me.
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You've written a lot of creative essays and stories, contributed to two anthologies, and even co-created your own anthology, Mama, PhD, for women seeking the balance of families and the academic world. What is the mission that you seek to embody in all your varied writings?
-When I was in college, I took a class where we studied the works of J.S. Bach, and I learned that he wrote the letters "SDG" on all of his compositions: Solo Deo Gloria, to the glory of God alone. I can't think of a better mission. And it's also a challenge, I think--a challenge I gave myself at one point: was I willing to write those words on every single thing I did? To not only identify myself as a Christian, but to be able to answer honestly, yes, this is for God's glory, this is my very best work? When the stakes are that high, I think it requires an even greater level of excellence--I am putting my name on this piece of paper as a Christian, as an ambassador for the Lord, as His hands and feet on the earth. That will make me go back do one more read-through even when I don't feel like it!
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You've consistently defined yourself as a Christian feminist. Since these words are often considered antithetical, what is your definition of this?
-In one of my columns, I wrote: "I picture Christianity and feminism as overlapping circles--a Venn diagram, if you will--with my personal ethos falling firmly into the center of the overlap. Being a feminist means I try to stand up for women's rights, whether they be the right to equal pay for equal work or the right to stay home with a family. It means I try to keep my eyes peeled for injustice, speak up for the voiceless whenever I can, and do my best to bring about justice and peace on the earth. That last bit is a line from the Book of Common Prayer, actually. My faith and my feminism go hand in hand as I search the Scriptures and see over and over again: feed the hungry. Clothe the naked. Look after the poor, the widowed, the orphaned...[and] more often than not, the poor, the downtrodden, and the oppressed are disproportionately women."
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To expand on that a bit, I heard a sermon once that talked about Jesus as being one of the first feminists--and I'll admit that caused a quizzical eyebrow raising on my part at the time, but when I really listened to what the pastor said, it made sense to me. God created us in His image, male and female, both representatives of Himself. Historically, though, women have often been seen as being less than men--and I don't think that was ever God's intent. So what did He do? He chose to come to earth, to be born of a woman in a very patriarchal culture, and through his ministry he consistently reached out to women as well as men. And it was to women that he first appeared in his resurrected form.
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When I look at the status of women now, not only in this country but on a global scale, it breaks my heart. I think it breaks God's heart, as well. By being a Christian feminist I want to speak out that injustice against women is wrong, it is--like so much in our culture--out of line with what God created, what God intended. Being a Christian feminist means that I will work against that injustice, in whatever little ways I can. We live in a culture that has gotten so far off course: it doesn't value women, it doesn't value children, it doesn't value the incredible work that mothers do in raising their children. As a feminist I want to say yes, this is important, this work that I am doing to raise the next generation is invaluable. I'd like to see that work honored, respected.
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I'd also like to stop the exploitation of women's bodies in popular media. I think it's so hard for our little girls to see themselves as precious women of God when everywhere we look the media is telling us otherwise, and it's so hard to get away from. My family doesn't own a TV that gets any channels (we use it to watch videos...an awful lot of VeggieTales!) and I've taken myself off of every single catalog mailing list I can to try and stop the bombardment of advertising arriving in my mailbox, most of it featuring dangerously underweight (and seriously underclothed) women, but I still can't block it all out. Advertising is everywhere, and so much of it is degrading to women. I don't want my daughter--or my son--to grow up surrounded by those images. I don't even like to put gasoline in the car when I have my children with me, because now the gas stations have screens at each pump, running advertisements, foisting cultural values on their viewers that are so antithetical to what I stand for as a Christian.
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I could go on and on and on, but for now I'll just say that it's very important to me to raise my children, both my daughter and my son, to recognize that God has created us all in His image. And if we could start to value women and the work that they do, even on small scales, my prayer is that it will spiral outwards and work against the values we're exposed to in our culture.
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You've shined Christ's light into this dark corner by bringing your version of feminism to different feminist events. What have you learned from standing alone for a different cause in these sometimes hostile environments?
-Two things come to mind: The first was a Women's Studies conference at which I was presenting, where they were selling T-shirts that said "This is what a feminist looks like." I went and asked if they had any maternity or nursing T-shirts, and got a very blank, puzzled stare in response. So then I had the opportunity to explain that I'm a feminist, and at this point in my life I need clothes that are maternity and breast-feeding friendly! And we talked about that for awhile--can you be a feminist and a stay-at-home mother? A wife? A Christian? And if the answer, as mine is, is yes, then do pregnancy and childbirth and breast-feeding become feminist issues? Again, my answer is yes, absolutely. And although some feminists would agree with that right off the bat, many don't--so I was glad to have an opportunity to have that discussion.
-The other thing that comes to mind is the importance of being able to listen. I took a class in graduate school on feminism, and at the start of the class the professor made a comment that you couldn't be a feminist and be pro-life. Up goes my hand--obviously!--and we talked about it for quite a while, but I never really felt like she was listening to what I had to say. But then I turned that around a bit: was I really listening to her? That was hard. I'm so committed to being pro-life, I really can't imagine being anything else--there is no other option for me. But can I listen to what some who isn't pro-life is saying? It was very, very difficult. I tried to put myself in her shoes, to understand the terror of being pregnant in difficult circumstances--and again, in a culture that doesn't value children or motherhood and does little, if anything, to truly support either. I was trying to look for places where we agreed, so we could move on with the conversation, but it was difficult.
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The issue of being pro-life is probably the most tricky for me when I talk to other feminists who aren't believers, because I've found that most people are willing to listen to me talk about my faith, but people are not willing to listen or even try and hear what the other side has to say about abortion. And I think that inability to listen is hurting our nation. Because there are things we agree on--traditional Christians and traditional feminists--but we can't move forward and act on them because we can't seem to hear each other. Personally, I would love to see feminists take on abortion from the other side, as a feminist issue, as something that hurts women and needs to be stopped...but we're a long way from that at this point.
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Do you have any tips for aspiring writers?-
Almost every writer I know says "write every day," and for a long time I struggled with that advice because, for me, it just isn't possible. I would say write as much as you can, and live every day. Writers draw so much of their inspiration from lived experience, and learning that was incredibly helpful for me--maybe I'm not going to get to write anything today or tomorrow or all week, but all of that time I'm living my life as fully as I can, immersing myself in all the blessings God has given me, and I think that makes me a better writer in the end.
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My other piece of advice would be to learn from your strengths and weaknesses. For me, I really like editing my work, which a lot of writers don't, so knowing that I have that strength helps me craft my work time to make it be the most productive. I don't worry about anything when I write my first drafts (and often I'll leave little notes to myself like "Oh, wow, that's cliche!" or "Fix this, obviously!") but I've learned not to get hung up on those first drafts because I know I'm going to go over it again and again--I just have to have something on the paper to start.
And weaknesses...well, one of the comments I get most frequently from editors is that I lack visual description, I don't tend to describe how things look. Now that I know that about myself, I can pay attention to it, but even more so, I can try to figure out why that is. I think it's because I am more interested in what people think and feel and say than in how they look, and that carries over into my writing. But knowing that I tend to be spare on the description helps me find ways that I can work what I'm good at--editing for one!--into helping me with some of my weaker points.
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To read more about Elrena and her work, visit http://www.elrenaevans.com/.
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Article originally published in the Winter 2008 issue of Bloom! Magazine.
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Article originally published in the Winter 2008 issue of Bloom! Magazine.
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1 comments:
Wow, that totally lines up with a lot of what I believe. I must say though that I never thought of being a feminist like that. I personally and very cautious about the whole feminist thing, because I look back at the time when the movements for womens rights were happening, and women were starting to act more and more like men. Such as working, doing hardier jobs, cutting their hair ridiculously short and dressing like men. But now I see that you can look at it the other way. And yes, my mom HATES the disgusting advertising that people are using. And yes, we watch Veggie Tales ALL THE TIME! I want to be an author and stay-at-home mom when I grow up, so it's neat to hear about a real live one in action. Thanks so much for the advice and encouragement!
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