Frost Light
This book I am holding is not my first book.
I have two others, completed and sitting untouched that have never seen the light of day, and until almost exactly a year ago, I was planning for this one to join them.
I had a plan: I was going to finish it, try editing through it for the first time, just for experience, and then be on my merry way, beginning another work that would not be seen for ten or twenty years, until the time felt right or maybe my kids were grown.
But, that was not God’s plan.
Last January (‘22) I was talking to a very dear dad friend of mine, who has been like a mentor to me and he randomly turned to me and asked, “why haven’t you published a book yet?”
I probably turned red, and I know I wanted to ask him a hundred questions of why, but all that came out of my mouth was a bland, foolish protest; “but you haven’t read any of my books yet!”
I went home that night, and I prayed on my way home, and I prayed at home. I’d thought of publishing, but now? It was January and I knew life in the summer was looking to be crazy. I had so much to do. Who on earth would buy a book I published anyway?
I prayed. And I thought about putting it away. And I prayed somemore.
A week later, I started looking into publishing. I was going to do it. And I was going to do it by November.
I didn’t do it by November.
If anyone ever tells you a story comes out of a single thing, they are either looking at it in a strange way, or they are lying. That would be like saying that you came out of just one thing, though in a much smaller way. Stories come out of a hundred, thousand things. And people are made up of hundreds of stories that have made them who they are, day by day by the grace of God.
This story is no different.
I first starting writing Frost in October, at the end of a year that was hard and long and dark. God’s faithfulness was ever so present in that year, and cannot be understated, but I was recovering from some major things and I felt worn out. Frost was begun in an effort to start writing again after months of not, to have something to work toward, to work on, spurred on by two important men in my life who I don’t think knew they were involved in it, my older brother and the same mentor friend I mentioned before. I needed something to work towards again, and they both knew that, and this book was that.
I penned the first words of it in the back of a chunky notebook about a different place in that world in October, and then I scrawled the first few words in another notebook and putting pen to paper I wrote this opening line; “there is a stream that runs down to a cabin, from the tops of the Norame mountain range.” Or something like that. And then a week later, I scraped it and started over again, and then scraped that and started over again. I had one simple quote, scrawled crookedly in the back of that first notebook that belonged to another project, years old, and I started over again. I wasn’t sure about it anymore, but the idea was set enough and so I set to work, set a deadline.
This book was written all over the country. In the plains of Kansas, and on a ranch in Colorado. In my favorite coffee shop in Abingdon that is the same age as this story, opening only a few weeks after the first lines were written. Between weddings and on the roads of Oregon where I got distracted by the evergreens and bridges.
Parts of it were penned in the backseat of my car, in the dark and the crevices of Utah at night, and I tried to write in Montana, but got distracted by mountains and tea. I scrawled a few words crossing Wyoming and I wrote page after page in our Virginia farmhouse, interrupted by the voices of family and the stories they had from normal life and laughter.
And I wrote in a beach house in Florida, while my grandfather still breathed downstairs.
If I’m being honest, this book is really only here, not because I was persistant, but because two times in the last three years, I got a dumb idea and then a kick with it, either before or after. And I ran with it, like an idiot. And I failed, so, so many times. And I found God to be more than sufficient each time.
In December of 2020, I decided I was going to write an entire book in a month to surprise my sister Phoebe who had just read one of my other books and enjoyed it. I thought it was a great idea. Many people have written a book in just one month.
And you want to guess?
At the end of that month, I had 20,000 words and hundreds of ways to not write anything. So I told my sister, who had known nothing of it, that I was going to have a book for her at the end of January. And by the end of January I mean October. The end of October. After months of travel and learning to see beauty again and of God’s grace and laughter and His wonders making me lose my own voice at the sight of them.
Today, this book is here because God is faithful to those who make big messes and don’t know what they are doing but pursue Him.
It’s here, because there is grace in brokenness and pain.
It’s here because wounds do not heal themselves and relationships take work, they are made to, like most of the best things in life are.
And it’s here because we get to share what we learn, what we know. That is what we strive to do each day of our lives, for better or worse, for good or for ill. It’s here because winter is beautiful. I learned that through the words of a friend and God’s grace that is new in the morning, that is just as abundant in the quiet places, in skies that are still just as full of stars in summer, but in the winter months with strangely clear skies and dark silence, you can see them a little better.
Because there is rest in those quiet things.
Because sometimes, we have to learn stillness through hard things—through sharp breaths and long winters and frost and the death of living things.
And sometimes in all the living and striving and running and doing, we forget how to tend the things right in front of us, the simple in the every day life, and the small moments.
It’s here, mostly, because God is good.
This was a story born out of adversity, out of darkness and stillness and long nights, and I am honored to get to share it with all of you guys now, and to get to hear your thoughts and stories about it. It’s been more of a joy than I can express, and it is such an honor to be here with you guys today, and to get to share this time with you to talk about this story.
