A Sad Goodbye - and New Beginnings

Note: The editors at The High Calling are beginning to post final stories about the years we spent working on the online publication. I’ll be posting links to the articles as they’re published; my own is scheduled to publish here on Aug. 31.

Here’s the beginning and link to the article posted by Dena Dyer.

A Sad Goodbye – and New Beginnings

By Dena Dyer

“Hi, I’m Dena,” I said to a dark-haired man, about my age, sitting down the row from me. We were both waiting for the “newbies” meeting at Mount Hermon Writer’s Conference to begin.

“I’m Marcus,” he replied, and as we chatted about poetry (his passion) and non-fiction (mine), we discovered that we lived twenty minutes away from one another in Texas. It was a God-incidence, and soon after our initial meeting, Marcus asked me to write for The High Calling about my work as a singer and actress in a theater company. So began a friendship, and a professional relationship, for which I’ll always be grateful.

To continue reading, please visit Dena at her blog, Dena Dyer: Hope and Humor for Hurting Women.


Photograph: The Frio River, which you have to drive through to reach Laity Lodge, where The High Calling staff met annually.

“Wounded Women of the Bible” by Dyer and Samples

It’s a book clearly aimed at women. It’s about women, women of the Bible. It’s written by women. The contemporary stories it includes are about women.

Readers are even addressed as “Ladies.”

Nevertheless, I persevered. I forgot being addressed as a lady and instead focused on the story that was being told.

And Wounded Women of the Bible by Tina Samples and Dena Dyer is quite a story, a story with a point: God uses wounding and brokenness to create something often surprising and sometimes plain astounding.

I like what Dyer and Samples do. They both write each chapter in their own words, and their own understanding and experience. The work from the same Bible character in the each chapter, but they approach their subjects differently, and call upon their own stories and the stories of the people they know today.

Such an approach, of course, transforms the Biblical into the immediately recognizable. We know people like these women. Their stories are familiar. Some of us are living these stories. And the stories are true.

The women they address include the two who argued before Solomon over whose baby was dead, and whose was alive; Abigail, the wife of David; Dinah, the daughter of Jacob and sister to the 12 brothers who became 12 tribes; Ruth of Moab; Hagar, maidservant of Sarah; sisters Mary and Martha who both loved Jesus; the widow who in faith gave the prophet the last of her food.

And others. Weary women. Wounded women. Struggling women. Women who endured tragedy through no fault of their own.

Dyer and Samples put their own skin on the story as well. They tell their stories here, and the stories of friends and family. Wounded Women of the Bible is a book for women, but it’s also a book their husbands, fathers, sons and boyfriends should read, too.

The point of this story of struggle and wounding is, ultimately, the story of hope.

Photograph by x posid via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Dena Dyer’s “Grace for the Race”

The entire time I was reading Dena Dyer’s Grace for the Race: Meditations for Busy Moms, I had the picture of my daughter-in-law in my mind. The daughter-in-law with the 2-year-old and the infant. The daughter-in-law whose idea of heaven has evolved to a 10-minute shower during the time both boys might be asleep at the same time.

It’s a funny book, this Grace for the Race. It’s a funny book – but also a wise book, written by a mother who has not only been there, but is still there.

Every wonder why all the neighborhood kids cluster at our house and clean out your refrigerator?

Do you ask yourself the question where did this flood of emotion and tears come from?

Do you notice how you’re the only mother in a t-shirt and jeans when you drop the kids off at school – while the other mothers are dressed for tea with the Queen?

Have you tried to sneak the sleeping toddler from the car seat to his bed without waking him up?

Do you discover you’re using exactly the same threats as your mother did – the ones you swore you would never use with your own children?

Dena Dyer has.

Dyer is an author, writer, speaker, and editor for The High Calling – and most importantly, a wife and mother. (She blogs at Mother Inferior.)

The book is designed for a quick read. Each meditation takes about a minute to a minute-and-a-half to read. Each is structured around a story and followed by “Notes from the Coach” – Bible verses that apply to the particular situation. The mediations are grouped into nine thematic sections – Training Well, Warming Up and Stretching Out, The First Lap, Using Proper Equipment, Hopping over the Hurdles, Handing It Off, The Final Stretch, Crosssing the Finish Line, and On the Podium.

It looks like a simple book – but like motherhood, it’s anything but simple. What Grace for the Race should do more than anything else is provide encouragement: mothers, you’re not alone. Someone has gone through this before. And kept her sanity. Or at least most of it.

First published in 2004, it’s been reissued as an e-book by Patheos Press. (I thought of my daughter-in-law here, too – it would work perfectly on her iPad, except the two-year-old knows the pass code and she hasn’t had time to change it.)

Related:

The High Calling has published an excerpt from the book, Operation Enduring Sleep.