Shannon McNear, Author

I have some darling friends who remember occasionally to ask me what I’m writing, or what I plan to do now, after Mom’s passing.                 That’s a very good question. The very one I keep asking myself these last few weeks: what now?                 I managed very little writing last year, in the midst of Mom being with us. During the weeks I was couch-bound with my knee injury, I finished another novella (unpublished at the moment), but later, with caring for Mom? Not happening. And now? Still not really happening. (Although I do have a start on a new story; more on that later.)                 There are times as writers the words flow so fast we can hardly get them down quickly enough. Times when we can’t help attempting to capture our emotions on paper, whether that means joy or sorrow. Grief, though, is such a strange blend of emotion—not just sorrow, but anger and apathy and disbelief. We hardly know what we're feeling. We peck out a few words, but they sound st

There’s a teaching that says because Christ Himself bore our griefs and sorrows, Christians never really have to suffer those things. It’s true that God’s mercy and grace mitigate so much sin-based pain and sorrow we’d have to bear otherwise. But if you live for very long at all, loss and therefore grief are unavoidable on this journey across Planet Earth. (I almost wrote Thulcandra ... see C.S. Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet. ) The point of Christ taking our griefs and sorrows was not to completely remove them in the here and now—there’s still the business of refining us, while we walk this earth—but so He, as God Incarnate, could taste the fullness of human experiences and then someday let us trade them for glory. But in the meantime ... they are still our experiences. I have dear friends suffering from many kinds of loss. One, a beloved husband after a long, painful battle with cancer, and then, as if that isn’t enough, fractured relationships with family because of the r