Welcome to Beautiful Warrior Wednesday!
I met this week’s recipient of the Most Beautiful Warrior Award on sunny-outside, stormy-inside day. Knowing the economy had whacked publishing with a two-by-four, we writers made nervous talk while presenters smiled confidence.
Except Mary.
Mary E. DeMuth appeared real. I liked that. I slid into the seat next to hers and asked her to sign Daisy Chain. She scratched, “May you find redemption in this pages.” Her penmanship lack perfection. I liked this about her too. Not a faker. Sweet. Maybe she’d tell me the truth. She did.
We spoke of publishing and of dads too distraction by depression to love their little girls. The allotted fifteen minutes vanished, and I found my next conference appointment, but I thought of Mary.
She makes safe places to chase away secrets, even at writers’ conferences. Among her first books: Building the Christian Family You Never Had and Ordinary Mom, Extraordinary God. Tenderly, honestly, she says run to God, run, run, run. He is the answer. He loves you despite your secrets.
Painful secrets. Dirty secrets.
“You’re the first person I every told this to” secrets. Her memoir Thin Places, available January 2010, reveals her healing heart.
“For those of us who have survived sexual abuse, life twists and turns in alleys of confusion. Thank God He picks us up thousands of times, dusts us off, heals us, and enables us to continue walking. That’s been my story. I was sexually abused by neighborhood boys throughout my kindergarten year. That was nearly forty years ago, but the mark they left on me, though faded, is still there.
“Someday, when the New Earth dawns, I’ll be free of this mark forever. And Jesus will use every trauma to beautify me — not with the earthly type of beauty I sometimes long to praised for here on earth, but an ethereal, eternal beauty. I pray the Lord would truly, deeply use my own markedness to change the landscape of the Kingdom of God. In this way, I can revel in the mark, be openly cautious about the vulnerabilty the mark creates, and thank God for His protection and provision along the journey.”
This is the one-minute trailer for her memoir.
Besides her books and Relevant Blog, website, e-Newsletter, speaking engagement, and writing spa — whew! now I’m pooped — she has squirrelled a pearl: My Family Secrets, another safe place where you may share your family secret anonymously.
She says, “So many of us live with secrets that haunt us, keep us awake at night, or noodle their way into our lives. Some secrets are 
funny (think: embarrassing moments). Some are tragic. But many hold us captive. . ..That’s why I created this site. . . Because the truth is, despite the darkness, there is hope.”
Yes, Mary, there is hope. Thanks for your willingness to share, to care. You are a Most Beautiful Warrior.
You Are Beautiful, Lucy
