I was excited to receive an email from Sarah Cunnigham a few months ago asking me to participate in the blog tour of her new book, Picking Dandelions. Sarah is a popular church and conference speaker, the author of Dear Church, and a contributor to several other books, including unChristian. She also is a high school teacher, part-time college prof, wife, and chief servant to their nine month old, Justus.
Rather than just telling you about the book, I thought it would be fun to do a Q&A with Sarah and she kindly agreed. Check it out.
So, Sarah.. the title is called, "Picking Dandelions." I personally prefer tulips. Is it too late to make a title change?
What we could do, maybe, is photo copy clipart of a tulip and paste it onto the cover of your copy of the book. People don't pick tulips quite as much either, so you may have to alter the title too. Maybe like...Smelling tulips.
Man. Smelling tulips does have a nice ring to it. If only I had gone that direction, this book would be on the best seller list for sure.
Seriously, can you tell us a bit about why you've titled it this way and what the book is about?
When I sat down to write about my faith, I had to think of a way to explain how my conversion worked. It wasn't a dramatic conversion that pulled me out of alcoholism or something. Which is good. Because I was like four. And at that age, at least for me, conversion was a simple, sort of carefree act where I pressed my life into God's hand, kind of like a little kid might give their parent a dandelion.
I relate to the dandelion too. Its an intense flower, it brings wonder to children, but at the end, it still has the characteristics of a weed. I'm that way too. I'm very driven, I've been told a thousand times I have a child-like sort of wonder about me, but in the end, I'm also a flawed and dysfunctional human. Like the dandelion, I have had to evolve and grow in ways I never expected.
Why did you feel compelled to write this? And why now?
My Christian life has been marked by moments of revelation that spark some sort of new understanding of the faith.
One of those moments happened while I was sitting on my porch, reflecting on my life. And I realized that I had somehow adopted a sort of faith that allowed me to live years and years without changing or transforming as a person. And I was pretty sure that meant I was doing something wrong. Because even following a person, following Mother Theresa around for a few months, for example, would've changed a person. So how could a person stay the same while following God...especially for decades?
I had to get to the bottom of that. Writing the book helped me do that.
The book is a memoir. How do you think God uses everyday happenings to establish larger themes in our life? What are some of the themes you discuss in the book?
I think everyday happenings are everything. Everything, man. When your alarm clock goes off, you wake up and you decide how you're going to spend that day. Will it be aligning yourself with God and his purposes? At the end of the day, you reflect back at whether your heart and spirit really tracked with God that day. Gradually, those days add up into weeks, then months, then years...and that's how you end up giving your life to Christ. Yes, it begins with one moment of repentance, but your allegiance to God and his ways should grow across your lifespan.
So writing about everyday moments is a piece of that. Memoirs look to understand our surroundings, our experiences, our observations, so that we can be aware of whether or not those moments are going to be installments in what God is doing in our world.
As far as themes, then, I draw from my own life. There are stories about being raised in ultra-Christian-conservatism, about growing up across the street from a graveyard, about leading a relief team to Ground Zero, about teaching at-risk kids...and mostly, about trying to change.
And, finally ... you're a wife, mom, and teacher in addition to being an author and conference speaker. How do those things influence each other?
Being a wife and mom and sister and friend is me. Its who I am. Its who I want to be. Its the thing that matters.
Writing and speaking? Those are just things I do. I believe in what I write and talk about, so that holds meaning too, but its icing on the cake of my life. God is real to me in my ordinary rituals and he teaches me through my circumstances--good or bad. Writing is just a way to express what is happening as he does that.
