Emily Wierenga’s “Atlas Girl”

A story of being a caregiver for a mother afflicted by brain cancer.

A story of the daily battle that is anorexia.

A story of falling in love, getting married – and bringing anorexia into the marriage.

A story of the deep desire to have children

A story of missions – of being involved in missions in places like the Mideast where the murder

of Christians is not unknown.

A story of being a PK – a pastor’s kid.

And a story of finding hope in the one place you didn’t expect to find it.

One could write a book, or a series of books, on any one of those things. Emily Wierenga chose to write a book on all of those things. Welcome to Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look.

Atlas Girl is a memoir, yes; at least, that’s probably the genre you’d find it on Amazon or in the bookstore. But it is more than that, too. Brutally honest; occasionally shocking; sometimes so raw you can feel the roughness of it. But all of it real.

It’s the story of a life.

Wierenga has talked about her battles with anorexia in Chasing Siilhouettes. Atlas Girl puts those battles in the context of her life, her family, her husband, and her missions work.

She doesn’t tell her story in chronological order. We may live our lives chronologically or sequentially, one event or one day after another. But it takes an approach like she demonstrates here to knit those chronological events into a cohesive, integrated whole. And this is true for any of us – we don’t make sense of our lives by examining them chronologically.

And Wierenga travels (it’s not called Atlas Girl for no good reason). Across Canada. The United States. Korea. The Congo. Amsterdam. Lebanon. Jordan. Japan. China. Australia. Dominican Republic. Italy. Mexico. Part of her travel has to do with missions. And part of it has to do with a restless spirit that is looking for something.

Memoir, autobiography, meditation, personal journalism. Atlas Girl is all of these things.

And it’s the story of young woman who’s honest enough to tell it.

Related:

My review of Emily’s Chasing Silhouettes.

Book trailer for Atlas Girl.

Atlas Girl web site.

Image by Dawn Hudson via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

The Best Vacation(s) Ever

My friend Emily Wierenga has a new book coming out July 1 – Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look. I pre-ordered on my Kindle; I’m hearing that the paperback version is already shipping, but I suppose I have to wait until July 1 for the Kindle maginc to happen.

Emily went traveling to find herself, and to fine home – Canada, Central America, the united States, the Middle East, Asia and Australia. And she posed a question to those of us interested in reading her book. Actually, she posed several. The one that intrigued me was what inspires you to travel?

I don’t really travel, at least in the sense Emily means. When I think of travelers, I think of Bruce Chatwin and Paul Theroux or, more popularly, Rick Steves.

But we have been blessed in our married life to have taken some wonderful vacations.

Before kids came along, my wife worked for the Houston Chronicle in the department that did the travel section, and one time I got to tag along on one of her business trips to Hawaii (Maui, to be specific) for the price of my plane ticket. A few years later, as the result of recognition for a huge project I completed at work, she got to tag along on one of my business trips to Hawaii.

A tenth anniversary trip to London. A couple of family trips to Gulf Shores, Alabama. A week in Charleston, South Carolina when tourists had cancelled plans because of a hurricane scare; we held on to our reservations, the hurricane went north, and we had the city virtually to ourselves. A 25^th anniversary trip to Amsterdam and Paris. A week in Montreal (we loved Montreal; I was even able to do a bike ride along the St. Lawrence River and a nearby 15-mile canal).

If I had to pick a best trip, however, I would have to pick two – back-to-back trips to London, in 2012 and 2013, each trip about two weeks. The first one inspired the second one; I think them as one vacation with a pause in between.

In 2012, we arrived at the tail end of the Paralympics and the 2012 Summer Olympics; the Paralympics marathon passed right in front of our hotel on the south bank, right across the Thames from Parliament. And we went to the parade called by the Queen to honor the athletes of both events, joining millions of Londoners and Britons (and waving our British flags, too). We experienced perfect weather, too; I didn’t open the umbrella once the entire time. We did a side-trip to Oxford, and my wife fell in love with the place (me, too, truth be told). And our seats for the play version of Chariots of Fire in London’s West End were on the stage – we were part of the Olympic stadium “crowd.”

In 2013, our hotel was three blocks from Buckingham Palace and two blocks from Westminster Abbey. The room was wonderful, as was the breakfast they would serve in our room any morning we wanted it. The normal London weather had returned, however; it rained every day we were there. We didn’t care (much).This time, we took a side-trip to Canterbury. We got to see James Earl Jones and Vanessa Redgrave in Much Ado About Nothing at the Old Vic Theatre. I spent a morning at the Charles Dickens House near Russell Square.

The back of Westminster Chapel as seen from our hotel room.

Two things happened on this trip that turned a wonderful vacation into something unexpected, and almost profound. I’ve written about them before. One was my Sunday morning visit to Westminster Chapel, a short half-block from our hotel. The congregation prayed out loud during the individual prayer time; I’d never seen or experienced anything like it.

The other was what happened during the daily 3 p.m. prayer time at Canterbury Cathedral. This is a daily event; all activity in the church stops for a few minutes as a prayer is said over a loudspeaker. I was standing next to a group of Japanese tourists (yes, with their cameras) and when we were invited to join in saying the Lord’s Prayer, they joined in as well, saying the Lord’s Prayer in English. To be standing in one of major sites of Christendom on the planet and saying the Lord’s Prayer with all the rest of the tourists was, most likely, the highlight of the entire trip.

We take vacations for any number of reasons – to get away, break the routine, see something we haven’t seen before. In a city like London, we are drawn to the museums (and especially the art museums), the theater, and day-trips to places we have read about but never experienced. And while our vacations have been exciting, stimulating, informing, and exhausting, the one I would call our best vacation was best because of prayer.

While this is a very different kind of travel from what Emily describes in her book, it appears we ended up in something of the same place.

If you have a great vacation story to tell, The High Calling wants to hear from. Check The High Calling's web site for information on submission and linkup.

“Mom in the Mirror”

I read a book that’s aimed at women, mothers, and young women. And it’s a book that should be read by men, fathers, and young men.

It’s a book about women and their attitudes about their bodies, before, during and after – even long after – their pregnancies. It’s about the culture we live in, and what it tells women they should think about their bodies. It’s about what women will do to meet those cultural expectations. And it’s about a different path women (and men, indirectly) can take, and likely should take.

Mom in the Mirror: Body Image, Beauty, and Life After Pregnancy, by Dena Cabrera and Emily Wierenga, is the book. It’s important to read. I learned things I didn’t know, about my own mother, my wife, and my daughter-in-law.

“We live in a society that demonizes fat,” they write; “meanwhile, we are more overweight than ever before. Every day at least ten million women deny themselves acceptance and love by abusing food in some way, shape, or form. Clearly, something is wrong.”

Something is wrong, and it’s not a simple fix. Cabrera and Wierenga walk the reader through the complexities, which can include eating disorders, the influence of a woman’s own mother, anxiety, the changes a woman’s body experiences, the demands of pregnancy and childrearing, the stages a woman’s body goes through from childhood to adulthood, competitiveness with other women, balancing marriage with motherhood, and many other aspects. And they offer encouragement, guidance, and resources on how to get help.

And their underlying message is itself about encouragement and hope: learn to love, starting with yourself.

Cabrera is a licensed clinical psychologist and eating disorder specialist, working at the Rosewood Centers for Eating Disorders in Wickenburg, Arizona. Wierenga is a married mother of two living in Canada, who battled anorexia and told her story in Chasing Silhouettes. (I reviewed Chasing Silhouettes here and did a two-part interview with Emily for The High Calling and here.)

Mom in the Mirror is a book whose time is now. Women and mothers need it. So do men and fathers.

Photograph by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Saturday Good Reads: Two on Faith, One on Writing

Three blog posts stuck in my head this week. Three different subjects, three very different writers, and yet they do share at least one thing in common. They look deeply into what they write about.

Chaplain Mike at Internet Monk posted on Evangelicalism as a Way Station, making the statement that evangelicalism works best as a mission, not a church tradition. It threw me, because so much of my faith has been shaped by evangelicalism, although I’m in a more denominational church now and have been for the last eight or nine years.

On the same day that I posted about an experience in Erfurt, Germany, Emily Wierenga at Imperfect Prose posted about what happened in her own house: “The Day I Met Jesus in My Bedroom.” I read it, and I didn’t doubt it for a minute. I recognized what she was describing.

And then Seth Haines at On Writing, one of my favorite writers (even if he is a lawyer in his day job). It’s a short post, but packed with meaning and asking the question, “Why do you write?” And the post begins with a poem by Billy Collins, which immediately hooked me.

All good stuff. Great stuff.

Painting: Writing to Father by Eastman Johnson (1863), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

A Light Shining: 2 Reviews (and a Giveaway)

I’ve tweeted and posted the links on Facebook, but I wanted to make special note here of two of the reviews that have come in for A Light Shining.

Laura Boggess at The Wellspring said this:

“In turns suspenseful and heartwarming, A Light Shining has all the qualities of those classic tales that stay with you for the long journey. These characters become friends and fellow sojourners…making their way into a reader’s heart and encouraging a deeper faith—one that has hands and feet. We all need such role models as Michael and Sarah Kent-Hughes.

“I don’t want to give away the plot, but I was hooked in the first few pages. Glynn Young’s masterfully developed characters and gift of story make this book hard to put down.

“If you are partial to a good yarn, A Light Shining does not disappoint. And if you haven’t read Dancing Priest? You might want to start there. Nothing like a good book to ward off the chill of the cold season coming on.

“Go ahead. Find a cozy. Read all day.

“You are going to want to.”

And Diana Trautwein at Just Wondering said this:

"’A Light Shining’ is a very different book from ‘The Dancing Priest.’ Yes, the same characters are here and some fascinating new ones, too. Yes, there is, once again, cross-continental travel in this saga, as well as glimpses into Michael's everyday life as an Anglican priest. But from the very first sentence, you know that we are most definitely not in Kansas anymore. There is something ominous afoot, a threat that hangs heavy over every page.

“Initially, I found this almost off-putting. I love these characters and did not want anything terrible to happen to them! So as the story began, I was cautious. However, I was very quickly drawn into the unfolding of this drama, once again a willing and happy prisoner of the strong plotting and wonderful characters. I will not go into that plot in this review because I actually think that sense of dread is important to the reading of this particular story. Rather than romance, this story is filled with mystery and intrigue, hooking you early and well.”

Thanks to both Laura and Diana for their wonderful (and encouraging) words.

Giveaway

Finally, we still have a giveaway going on at Emily Weirenga’s place. It will be by random drawing, and the winner gets his or her choice of either Dancing Priest or A Light Shining. Just leave a comment. The winner will be announced tomorrow.

Thanks to Emily for hosting the giveaway.

What I’m learning from readers (and a giveaway)

Today, I have a guest post at Imperfect Prose, Emily Wierenga’s blog, talking about what I’m learning about fiction, my own books, and myself from the people who have read Dancing Priest and (now) A Light Shining.

There’s also a giveaway of a copy of either of the two books – just leave a comment and a name will be selected at random and announced next Friday. (And many thanks to Emily for hosting my article.)

I’ve also set up an author’s page at Amazon. (It’s one weird feeling to do that.) I used one of the photos my wife took when we were in London. You can visit it at Amazon.

"I Felt Very, Very Old"

At The High Calling today, I have Part 1 an interview with Emily Wierenga, author of the recently released Chasing Silhouettes: How to help a loved one battling an eating disorder. Part 2 is below.

Q: In two periods in your life, you’ve had to come to grips with battling anorexia, first as a young girl, and then as a young married wife. How easy is it to slip into old behaviors, and how would you advise someone to be on their guard about their own tendencies?

Sadly it’s incredibly easy to fall back into old behaviors. Former disordered eaters are, in many ways, like recovered alcoholics. You may be healed, but you can never go back there.

You need to be aware of your triggers, the hang-ups that make you question yourself, question your worth, and fall backwards into self-abuse. You need accountability partners. You need to surround yourself with positive influences and people.

You need to foster a strong relationship with your Maker. And you need to avoid food-related topics, calorie-related conversations and anything that might distract you, like fashion magazines, weigh scales, and friends or acquaintances who talk negatively about their bodies or restrict their eating.

You need to advocate for yourself. Stand up and be your own bodyguard. Learn to recognize “the voice”, and whenever you start to hear the negative whispers, counter them with positive affirmation. Tell yourself, “I love you, Body.” Thank God for your arms which hold your babies, and legs which carry you places. And ask Him to continually renew your mind. As mentioned in Chasing Silhouettes, it is crucial to put on the armor of God each day. One of the best ways to do this is by following the advice by the authors of Intuitive Eating:

10 Principles

1. Reject the Diet Mentality Throw out the diet books and magazine articles that offer you false hope of losing weight quickly, easily, and permanently. Get angry at the lies that have led you to feel as if you were a failure every time a new diet stopped working and you gained back all of the weight. If you allow even one small hope to linger that a new and better diet might be lurking around the corner, it will prevent you from being free to rediscover Intuitive Eating.

2. Honor Your Hunger Keep your body biologically fed with adequate energy and carbohydrates. Otherwise you can trigger a primal drive to overeat. Once you reach the moment of excessive hunger, all intentions of moderate, conscious eating are fleeting and irrelevant. Learning to honor this first biological signal sets the stage for re-building trust with yourself and food.

3. Make Peace with Food Call a truce, stop the food fight! Give yourself unconditional permission to eat. If you tell yourself that you can't or shouldn't have a particular food, it can lead to intense feelings of deprivation that build into uncontrollable cravings and, often, bingeing When you finally “give-in” to your forbidden food, eating will be experienced with such intensity, it usually results in Last Supper overeating, and overwhelming guilt.

4. Challenge the Food Police .Scream a loud "NO" to thoughts in your head that declare you're "good" for eating minimal calories or "bad" because you ate a piece of chocolate cake. The Food Police monitor the unreasonable rules that dieting has created . The police station is housed deep in your psyche, and its loud speaker shouts negative barbs, hopeless phrases, and guilt-provoking indictments. Chasing the Food Police away is a critical step in returning to Intuitive Eating.

5. Respect Your Fullness Listen for the body signals that tell you that you are no longer hungry. Observe the signs that show that you're comfortably full. Pause in the middle of a meal or food and ask yourself how the food tastes, and what is your current fullness level?

6. Discover the Satisfaction Factor The Japanese have the wisdom to promote pleasure as one of their goals of healthy living In our fury to be thin and healthy, we often overlook one of the most basic gifts of existence--the pleasure and satisfaction that can be found in the eating experience. When you eat what you really want, in an environment that is inviting and conducive, the pleasure you derive will be a powerful force in helping you feel satisfied and content. By providing this experience for yourself, you will find that it takes much less food to decide you've had "enough".

7. Honor Your Feelings Without Using Food Find ways to comfort , nurture, distract, and resolve your issues without using food. Anxiety, loneliness, boredom, anger are emotions we all experience throughout life. Each has its own trigger, and each has its own appeasement. Food won't fix any of these feelings. It may comfort for the short term, distract from the pain, or even numb you into a food hangover. But food won't solve the problem. If anything, eating for an emotional hunger will only make you feel worse in the long run. You'll ultimately have to deal with the source of the emotion, as well as the discomfort of overeating.

8. Respect Your Body Accept your genetic blueprint. Just as a person with a shoe size of eight would not expect to realistically squeeze into a size six, it is equally as futile (and uncomfortable) to have the same expectation with body size. But mostly, respect your body, so you can feel better about who you are. It's hard to reject the diet mentality if you are unrealistic and overly critical about your body shape.

9. Exercise--Feel the Difference Forget militant exercise. Just get active and feel the difference. Shift your focus to how it feels to move your body, rather than the calorie burning effect of exercise. If you focus on how you feel from working out, such as energized, it can make the difference between rolling out of bed for a brisk morning walk or hitting the snooze alarm. If when you wake up, your only goal is to lose weight, it's usually not a motivating factor in that moment of time.

10. Honor Your Health--Gentle Nutrition Make food choices that honor your health and tastebuds while making you feel well. Remember that you don't have to eat a perfect diet to be healthy. You will not suddenly get a nutrient deficiency or gain weight from one snack, one meal, or one day of eating. It's what you eat consistently over time that matters, progress not perfection is what counts.

(copied with permission from www.intuitiveeating.org)  

Q: You include several stories in the appendix, including the story of Andrew. A major surprise for me was that, while eating disorders are most common in girls and women, boys and young men are not immune, either.

Yes, the fact that 10 percent of males struggle with bulimia and anorexia, and 35 percent battle binge-eating disorder, is largely hidden, and I desperately want to unveil the truth to both society and churches that many of us—men and women, boys and girls—need to re-learn how to eat, how to love and how to live. My father’s disordered eating was a very negative influence on me, and still is. He tends to be so restrictive (or careful), 90 percent of the year, and then leans towards binging when he’s on vacation. It taught me to be afraid of food—and I never really learned to relax about it and enjoy it, until I met my husband, for whom food is an absolute delight. A celebration—but in moderation.

Q: We like to believe that problems like this exist “out there in the culture” and not within the church, but the fact is the church, too, has people suffering with eating disorders. What can we as the church do to provide help and support?

I long to abolish the stigma that eating disorders and other mental illnesses have within the church. I know Christians struggle. My dad is a pastor. I am a pastor’s daughter. And my parents had no one to turn to, for fear of losing the respect of the Christian community.

Christians struggle with sickness, disease and warfare as much as any people group. The difference is, we don’t have to be ashamed of it. Because we already believe we’re a mess. Isn’t that the whole message of the Bible? That Jesus came to save us IN our weakness? Why do we always think we have to have it together? We, of all people, should know that we’re damned without God; the only one who can save us is the one who holds the cure. Jesus Christ is our Savior, but he can only save us if we are desperate. So let’s free up those who are suffering, let’s free them up to need Jesus. Let’s carry them to the cross so they can touch Jesus’ feet and let’s be loving about it all.

Because if church isn’t Christ-like, then the world has no hope.

Related:

Part 1 of the interview at The High Calling

My review of Chasing Silhouettes

Emily Wierenga’s “Chasing Silhouettes”

I’m haunted by the eyes of a nine-year-old girl – a nine-year-old girl who thinks she’s too fat and begins to starve herself.

Nine years old. Those eyes belonged – still belong – to Emily Wierenga, and she’s now writing about what happened.

Chasing Silhouettes: How to help a loved one battling an eating disorder may well be one of the most important books published for the church this year. That’s right, I said for the church. Because eating disorders don’t just happen outside the church; they happen in the church, too, to pastors’ daughters like Wierenga. And the church can do great good – and great harm – in how it responds.

The book is a painful read. It is also a hopeful read.

Wierenga has structured each major section of Chasing Silhouettes with a story, including perspectives of both the person with the disorder and family and friends; observations and insights by medical professionals; practical advice on what to do and not do if you’re trying to help; and then a prayer.

What this structure does is to provide a comprehensive look at what constitutes an eating disorder – it is physical, biological, emotional, and spiritual. Those are the roads Wierenga takes us down as she opens up her own experience, mind, and heart. And one of the critical points she makes is this – you cannot heal a loved one of an eating disorder. They have to decide that they want to be healed, and you cannot make that decision for them, no matter how much you love them.

And it happens to girls as young as seven. And to young men, whose commitment to physical training crosses a line into obsession.

So this is a book for people suffering eating disorders and the people who often have to watch in pain and agony as someone lives through – and sometimes dies – from an eating disorder. As Wierenga writes in the prologue: “I was that girl you are trying to save. The one who is all rib and screaming and slamming the door., the one who once laughed, who now wants to die. And this is killing you…While I was that girl, I’m now a woman who wants desperately to live.”

Chasing Silhouettes is about pain and tragedy, yes. But it is mostly about hope.