Rain pelted the roof of the Big Barn, a tin roof high up as a Cathedral. Place reminded me of one with the soaring hand hewn beams, knot holes of light, and space all the way up to the roof. We stored our hay on the wooden floor that I thought of as a threshing floor. On either side the barn went down to dirt and logs were laid over it. The southwest corner of the foundation was gapped large enough for children to crawl through.
It was late winter, snow was melting into ice. I’d taken to having my quiet times there. I took my Bible and my border collie and sat on the bales. There I prayed and read and sometimes cried my longing, “Oh Lord let me write a vision of glory.” I’d been reading The Chronicles of Narnia for a paper I was writing about C.S. Lewis. God I wanted to write like that. My call to be a writer began there, in that barn, in that intense desire to create a world for my readers. Read the full story »