Guest Post – Page 3

Come and Write Your Story

October 6, 2016 by Ann Leave a Comment

This is the start of my newest article for The Gospel Coalition.
You can read the article in its entirety here!

I’m not gifted at comprehending my own spiritual growth while still in the midst of it. I don’t typically live through trials and victories with my antennae attuned to how God’s transforming me. I wish it were otherwise; I wish I had the ability to see my immediate experiences through the lens of spiritual development. But most of the time I’m just doing my best to love God and my family—and make it through the day intact. I’m not necessarily looking for the big themes or revelations the Lord is weaving into my life in the moment.

But I know God has numbered the days of my life (Ps. 139:16) and that he’s working out all things for my good as he conforms me to the image of his Son (Rom. 8:28–29). I don’t want to miss these things; I want to be able to point to how God’s transforming me “from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor. 3:18) as I walk with him.

I turn to two things in order to help me understand my spiritual growth: my Bible and my pen. via @TGC #amwriting Share on X

So I turn to two things in order to help me understand my spiritual growth: my Bible and my pen. Reading the Word and writing my story—these are how I’ve learned to experience my life as a purposeful whole, even when the days feel splintered and confusing.

Read the rest of the article here–and let me know how you understand your spiritual growth over at TGC!

And, if you’re interested in writing your story, make sure to check out the Writing with Grace: Memoir class that I’m teaching this fall. Registration is only open until October 11th, so don’t miss this opportunity to learn how to write your story powerfully and hear from industry experts! See you there!

Filed Under: God, Guest Post, Writing Tagged With: Ann Swindell, Christian writer, come and write your story, how do I write my story, memoir, The Gospel Coalition, write your memoir, write your story, writing your story

Yes, the World Needs Your Story

October 3, 2016 by Ann 1 Comment

This is the start of my newest piece for Darling Magazine.
You can read the whole article here!

For those of us who find ourselves drawn to the written word, the pull toward pen and paper is more than just a hobby. It’s a lifeline. Many of us flourish when there are words flowing from our soul onto the page — we’re able to make sense of things better when we’re writing, and we think our thoughts most clearly when we write them down on paper.

For those of us drawn to the written word, writing is more than a hobby--it's a lifeline. #amwriting Share on X

As unique as the personal writing experience is for each of us, research is starting to reveal a universal reality that many of us have inherently known for a long time: writing about our lives is healing. Several studies point to the fact that when we honestly write about our own lives, working through our questions and challenges on the page, we can experience emotional breakthrough. That’s because when we take time to write about what’s bothering us, the act of writing enables us to see our lives in a new way and release past burdens. Writing can help us reframe our experiences and see ourselves as active participants in our lives, rather than as victims or observers.

Additional research has found that people who take time to intentionally write about their emotional state “were able to create the distance between the thinker and the thought, the feeler and the feeling, that allowed them to gain a new perspective, unhook, and move forward.” When we write about what’s happening internally, it enables us to parse experience from emotion — and then decide how to change.

Writing is a powerful tool.

If you’ve never taken the time to write your story down, maybe this is the nudge that you need. While writing about our journey and the emotions that we’ve experienced may feel initially overwhelming, the work that it can do in our hearts and our minds might actually change the course of our lives. It can help us to really see how we’ve been living and what it might look like to flip the script in our current story.

Read the rest of the article here, at Darling Magazine!

And if you want to write your story, check out my online writing course, Writing with Grace: Memoir. Registration is open until October 6^th, and I’m offering a discount to blog readers: save 10% with the code: MEMOIR10. I can’t wait to join you there!

Image via Maddie Greer

Filed Under: Guest Post, Life, Writing Tagged With: Ann Swindell, can writing help me, Christian writer, Christian writing class, Darling Magazine, faith, memoir, write your story, Writing, writing for Darling Magazine, writing is healing, your story matters

When it Feels Like You’re Losing Yourself

August 18, 2016 by Ann Leave a Comment

This is the start of my newest piece for Today’s Christian Woman, and it is about something I felt so deeply after my daughter was born: the fear of losing my identity. My hope is that these words can encourage not only fellow moms, but anyone who feels displaced or confused by their current season–because the good news is that in Christ, we can’t ever lose who we truly are.

When I was in college, I had a lot of friends who told me that what they really wanted to do in life was be a mom. Yes, they were getting degrees and they wanted to work, but really, their highest hope was to become a mother.

I nodded and affirmed them. I hoped that one day I would become a mom, too—but I never really knew how to respond to their longing for children. I’d never felt that; what I did feel was a desire to pursue other things—dreams of writing and teaching and speaking—and I wasn’t sure when having kids might fit into my life.

Perhaps that is part of the reason why, at first, becoming a mom was so difficult for me. I had gone on to teach and write and speak . . . and then I became a mom. Once she arrived, I loved my daughter fiercely and relentlessly. But I also felt that I had somehow misplaced my identity—my very self—in the process of becoming a mom, and, like a missing wallet, I felt waves of panic when I couldn’t find it, no matter how hard I looked.

I felt I had misplaced my identity—my very self—in the process of becoming a mom. Share on X

I felt subsumed by motherhood. I couldn’t get my bearings; I couldn’t find my footing. Without the trappings of my former life, my identity was deeply shaken. When I didn’t have time to read and study, or when I didn’t have margin to talk with my husband for uninterrupted hours, I felt misplaced. When I didn’t have the emotional energy to meet with a friend for coffee and discuss our faith and our friendship, it was then that I felt that I was losing myself. Add to that the exhaustion I experienced, the raw responsibility I carried for another’s life, and the unrelenting needs that my daughter had, and I felt like I was drowning.

I remember looking at our living room one day: my daughter’s burp cloths and toys were scattered around the space, and a stack of papers was waiting on the coffee table for me to grade. Who was I? I knew, intellectually, that I could say that I was a mom, and I was a wife, and I was a teacher. But who was I now, really? Nothing felt the same. My life had been rearranged when my daughter was placed in my arms. Where was the Ann I knew before I became a mom?

Losing to Gain

In Matthew 16:25, Jesus tells his followers that in order to truly find your life, you have to lose it. This is a radical, upside-down statement, and it jars me every time I read it. Because what Jesus is saying here tosses my idea of identity very far out of the proverbial window.

Losing my life for Christ’s sake is actually a good thing. It’s not something to be feared. Share on X

What the Bible tells me is this: Losing my life for Christ’s sake is actually a good thing. It’s not something to be feared. And in truth, I hadn’t actually lost myself in my new role as a mom. Did it feel like it? Certainly. I felt confused and disoriented as a mother. But motherhood didn’t actually change my identity; it simply stripped me down to the marrow of my existence by altering the external circumstances of my life.

Read the rest of the article here, at Today’s Christian Woman!

Related blog post: He is our Brave

Filed Under: God, Guest Post, Motherhood, Parenting Tagged With: Ann Swindell, how do I find my identity, I feel like I lost myself, identity in Christ, losing myself, my identity is lost, my soul is tired, true identity, what does it mean to have identity in Christ, what is my identity

Don’t Write to Get Published

August 5, 2016 by Ann 2 Comments

I have a deep respect for The Gospel Coalition and the work that they are doing online and in the “real” world as an organization that unabashedly proclaims the truth of the Bible. I was able to attend The Gospel Coalition Women’s Conference in June, and just this week I had the opportunity to write for their blog. It was an honor to write for TGC about one of my favorite topics! You can link to the full article here.

And, if you’re a fellow writer, make sure to read all the way to the end of the article at TGC, where I offer a discount code for my Writing with Grace course–registration is open until the 17th of August (and don’t forget to check out the site and the brand-new video I released)!

Here’s the start of the article for The Gospel Coalition:

For those of us who love words, we’re drawn to the clack of the keyboard and the parsing of meaning on the page. We feel alive as we wrangle words into sentences; some of us even feel closer to God as we work out our faith by writing about it. Time spent writing feels important, even holy.

For those of us who love words, we’re drawn to the clack of the keyboard. We feel alive as we wrangle words into sentences. #amwriting Share on X

But for many of us, running parallel with our love of writing is the desire to get published. This desire can be fueled by the culture at large, which says our writing only matters if our readership is huge and our byline well known. Publication is commonly assumed to be the goal of the writing life, and seeing our words in print the truest form of validation for our work.

As an author and teacher of writing, I often have conversations with other writers fixated on publication. They’re desperate to see their work published somewhere. They want to know how to start a writing career, or how to get the inside scoop on writing for a top magazine.

In response to their questions, I have to ask: Do you want to be published? Or do you want to write?

Do you want to be published? Or do you want to write? Share on X

These aren’t the same question, although many of us confuse one for the other. For as much as writing is tethered to publishing, getting published doesn’t make a writer. Writing makes a writer.

Read the rest of the article over at The Gospel Coalition, and don’t miss out on open registration for Writing with Grace!

Filed Under: God, Guest Post, Writing Tagged With: am writing, amwriting, Christian writing, I want to be a Christian writer, I want to be a writer, I want to get published, The Gospel Coalition, Writing, writing class, writing for the Gospel Coalition, Writing with grace

Three Ways Counseling is a Gift You Give Yourself

July 11, 2016 by Ann 2 Comments

As someone who has benefited immensely from Christian counseling, I was thankful to get to write a piece about the gifts counseling offers us for
Darling Magazine.

We’re still settling into the rhythms of life in our new city, and last week we had dinner with a family that we’re trying to build a relationship with; we go to church with them and our kids are about the same age, so it’s an easy connect.

As our kids ran around one another, I talked with Lesley about life in the last year and a half — all of the transitions that have taken place as we’ve moved cities, changed jobs, and essentially started over in our adult lives. I mentioned that professional counseling has been a game-changer for me in the last season of life, and Lesley paused to ask me more. She had recently been considering counseling but wasn’t sure if she should pursue it, or if it would be a good fit for her. Here’s what I shared with Lesley that night — the three ways that counseling was one of the best gifts I’ve ever given myself:

1. Counseling helps us to walk the journey of health and wholeness intentionally.

Most of us long to live in healthy, empowering ways in our daily lives; we want to respond to ourselves and others with kindness, and we want to live from a place of love rather than fear. But there are very few practical ways to determine if we are actually growing in wholeness and personal wellbeing. There’s not a to-do list that we can check off at the end of every day. Rather, the journey to healing and health is one that will take a lifetime of intentionality. Committing to counseling sets at least one clear step before us on the path to wholeness, and it offers us tools for not only coping with, but thriving in our daily lives.

The journey to healing and health is one that will take a lifetime of intentionality. Share on X

2. Counseling helps us to own our brokenness and our glory.

A good counselor — one who is seeking to help us rather than trying to appease us — is a person who will speak truth. And when that truth is about our brokenness and the ways we have failed, it can be hard to hear. But it is necessary for us to come to terms with the brokenness that we carry so that we can better understand how we respond when confronted with pain and anger and fear. We need to hear the hard truth so that we can forgive and change and grow. And the good news is that as we better understand our brokenness, we can better understand our glory, too. For we are not solely broken; we are those who are choosing to try again, to ask for forgiveness again, to show up again. We have more strength than we know, and more resilience than we might have imagined. These are gifts that a good counselor helps us to see in ourselves.

We have more strength than we know, and more resilience than we might have imagined. Share on X

Read the rest of the article here, at Darling Magazine!

Filed Under: Guest Post, Life, Parenting Tagged With: Christian counseling, Christian writer, counseling, counseling is a gift, Darling Magazine, how to write for Darling Magazine, should I go to counseling, the gift of counseling

Creating Friendships that Last

June 2, 2016 by Ann Leave a Comment

This is the start of my newest piece for RELEVANT Magazine.
You can read the article here.

In a world bloated with quick fixes, instant gratification and social media profiles, it can be hard to know how to build—and keep—lasting friendships. And while we may want to portray a particular side of ourselves online, the truth is that we need friends who know us here and now, in the middle of our mess and our daily routines. And we need to be those types of friends, too.

The secret to these kinds of friendships is actually pretty simple: You just have to show up.

The secret to the best kind of #friendship? Keep showing up. Share on X

The Scriptures calls us to draw near to Christ and to draw near to one another: “let us draw near [to Christ] with a true heart in full assurance of faith,” and “let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near” (Hebrews 10:22, 24-25). As people of faith, we are called to live so that we are encouraging those around us toward love and good deeds. I think this comes most obviously and importantly through deep, meaningful friendship.

Here’s how to start—and build—friendships where we spur one another on to godly lives and where we reflect God’s love to one another:

Show Up With a Meal.

A friend doesn’t have to be sick to need a meal. A new baby doesn’t have to be born, and it doesn’t have to be a holiday. Many times, we need a friend to care for us—spiritually and practically—in the midst of our everyday lives when things just feel like a little too much to handle. I’ve taken meals to friends who are emotionally overwhelmed, to friends who have sick kids and to friends who just need a break from adulting. If you don’t cook: Take a pizza. Breaking bread together—sharing meals—is something that marked the early church, and it’s not hard to understand why. Sharing a meal together feeds both the body and the soul. It’s not hard—it just takes intentionality.

We all need friends who give us a break from adulting. Share on X

Show Up With Prayer.

Hanging out and talking, watching a game together, laughing together—these are good gifts of friendship. But being friends who follow Jesus also offers us the rich opportunity to pray not only for but with one another. I’ve found that my times of prayer with friends have been some of the deepest and most steadying parts of our friendship.

Can it be awkward, especially if you’ve never prayed together? Sure. But it can also crack open the opportunity for deeper relationship and trust. Maybe you can’t help your friend practically, with her need or with his struggle. But you can pray with your friend, right there, asking God to meet that need and provide grace in the struggle. If you don’t know what to pray, consider getting a copy of The Book of Common Prayer and praying a liturgical prayer together. It doesn’t have to be fancy. But when two or three of us get together in the name of Jesus, He’s there with us (Matthew 18:19-20). When we pray, He hears us, and moves on our behalf.

Read about other ways to show up here, at RELEVANT.

Filed Under: Friendship, God, Guest Post Tagged With: Ann Swindell, Christian friendship, creating friendships that last, friendship, how to start a friendship, long friendship, RELEVANT, Relevant Magazine, show up, writing for Relevant

Come and Write Your Story

Yes, the World Needs Your Story

And if you want to write your story, check out my online writing course, Writing with Grace: Memoir. Registration is open until October 6^th, and I’m offering a discount to blog readers: save 10% with the code: MEMOIR10. I can’t wait to join you there!

When it Feels Like You’re Losing Yourself

Don’t Write to Get Published

Three Ways Counseling is a Gift You Give Yourself

1. Counseling helps us to walk the journey of health and wholeness intentionally.

2. Counseling helps us to own our brokenness and our glory.

Creating Friendships that Last

Show Up With a Meal.

Show Up With Prayer.

Look Around

Past Posts

Come and Write Your Story

Yes, the World Needs Your Story

And if you want to write your story, check out my online writing course, Writing with Grace: Memoir. Registration is open until October 6th, and I’m offering a discount to blog readers: save 10% with the code: MEMOIR10. I can’t wait to join you there!

When it Feels Like You’re Losing Yourself

Don’t Write to Get Published

Three Ways Counseling is a Gift You Give Yourself

1. Counseling helps us to walk the journey of health and wholeness intentionally.

2. Counseling helps us to own our brokenness and our glory.

Creating Friendships that Last

Show Up With a Meal.

Show Up With Prayer.

Look Around

Past Posts

And if you want to write your story, check out my online writing course, Writing with Grace: Memoir. Registration is open until October 6^th, and I’m offering a discount to blog readers: save 10% with the code: MEMOIR10. I can’t wait to join you there!