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Why I Never Write About My Faith
Vulnerability is good. But I’m not there yet
Writing about my faith is actually how I first got published. In the small farming town where I lived for seven years, I ended up with a weekly newspaper column. It was a secular paper, mostly about dairy farming, growing giant pumpkins, and the school pet day, but for some odd reason they allowed me to write a column about God. I wrote for a year and then stopped — writing about my faith started to feel incredibly vulnerable.
It wasn’t that I was getting trolls, or negative feedback. Actually, I had the most fan mail that I’ve ever received in my ten years as a writer. I was sent gifts and beautiful, touching notes. Everyone was very positive about it. I stopped anyway.
Since then, I haven’t written about my faith once.
Researcher Brene Brown became famous with her Ted talk on the power of vulnerability. “Vulnerability is not winning or losing;” she says. “It’s having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome.” Vulnerability allows us to connect with each other.
We love vulnerability in writing. We encourage writers to reveal their pain and their secrets — to show their real selves and risk being vulnerable to the world. And the world either loves them or hates them for it —…
