Biography
Joyce Landorf Heatherley has written more than twenty fiction and nonfiction books, including bestsellers Mourning Song, Silent September, and Balcony People. A uniquely gifted writer, speaker, and singer, she conveys spiritual principles with relevance, humor, and conviction. [Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date noted above.]

"Monday through Friday" 
Almost a hundred years ago, a writer by the name of Charles Reynolds Brown wrote of the Christian people of his day.  He said that they were puzzled because on Sunday they came to church; they heard wonderful, warm assurances of faith; they heard about a God who listened to them and who knew their needs.  They heard about a God who was such a friend that even a sparrow couldn't fall without Him seeing it.  They heard about a God who was a real person to them.  That was on Sunday.   

Then, he said that on Monday they went out into the real world.  He says,  

"On Monday morning, then, they went out into the real world, not to some imaginary world as men have agreed to picture it to themselves, but the real world as it is."    

He described what for him was a hundred years ago but what for us is right now:  

"They rub against the unplanned side of it all.  They find the world rough.  They find it full of knots and splinters and they are torn and bruised by its contacts, or happily, if they themselves escape for a time, they painfully witness the discomfiture of their less fortunate fellows.  They ponder the apparent discrepancies between the warm theories of Sunday and the pulpit and the cold facts that face them on Monday." 

I don't know how you make it from Monday through Saturday until Sunday comes again.  It is puzzling.  Some of you are thrilled by what you see on this program.  Perhaps you can't get out to go to a church, so this is your church.  This is your moment of hearing about God as our friend -- as a kind, loving Father.  Maybe this is the only point in your Sunday when you have an opportunity to worship and this program provides that for you. 

Monday comes and the hurts and pains of Monday happen to you.  There is the pain of loneliness; there is the pain of illness.  You have a job and you go to it.  It is the same old rat-race and it's getting worse.  There is a relationship in your life that is not just fractured but perhaps splintered apart so badly that you really don't think it will ever be put together again.  That faces you on Monday and you say, "How am I going to live and whatever happened to Sunday?  Whatever happened to the warm assurances of my faith while I am now facing the cold facts of reality?  Whatever happened to it?" 

I don't know what the noises are in your life, but I am reminded of the time when my little grandson, James, was two years old.  His mother, my daughter Laurie, brought him out for a visit with me.  As mothers and daughters do, Laurie and I were chatting away.  We were in the back yard of my home and I had put James down at my side on the patio.  He was very happy playing with his little trucks going, "Ruum, ruum."   

As he was playing, my daughter and I heard the garbage trucks passing by.  It was Tuesday.  We heard the sound; we knew about trash trucks; we heard them and we went right on talking.  James was down there, though, and he had never heard the sound of trash trucks.  As he was playing and as the trucks got closer and closer, the noise got louder and louder.  Their brakes were screeching.   

He looked up at me.  He didn't know what the noise was.  He said, "Hug! Hug!"  I picked him up and wallpapered him to my soul.  I held him real close; he went white; he didn't move; he didn't want to get down; he didn't do anything.   

I said to him, "Honey, it's okay.  It is just the trash trucks.  You hear their brakes and the mechanics of the trash being dumped."  He didn't buy it for a minute.  He just stayed wallpapered to my soul.   

I have often remembered this particular moment with him.  His face said, "Hurry, hurry" and his voice said, "Hug, hug," because he was desperate and didn't understand the noise at all. 

I have often remembered that because here it is Monday.  I don't know what the noise of your life is.  It could be cancer; it could be depression; it could be divorce; it could be plain old loneliness.  You can identify with David in Psalm 88 when he writes about his loneliness.  He was the king of Israel, but he was so lonely that he put it down in a Psalm.  He breaks my heart with his loneliness.  Apparently, he heard the loud noises of loneliness.   

I don't know what your loud noises are.  But, how do you get through?  How do you make it from one Sunday to the next?  What do you do Monday through Saturday? 

I have had some difficult years.  I have had six years of some terrific trials for me and I'll not walk you through them.  You have your own.  You have your own places of pain; you have your own moments of brokenness; you have your own unworld things that happen to you; the unbelievable things that happen to other people.   

May I share with you what I have been learning in the last six months about the noises -- the loud ones -- the ones that crush my eardrums, the ones that drown out the voices of normalcy, or the voice of the small, still spirit of God who whispers to us in the middle of the night.   

For me, there have been two factors.  One is I know that I can trust God.  I can trust His character.  I don't have to worry or wonder about that.  I can trust God's character and His forgiveness. I can go to Him with anything and trust the fact that God not only cares for me and loves me, but that His forgiveness is real.  I can trust the character of God in response to His mercy; I can trust the character of God in response to what He would do about grace for me.  I know I can trust those things. 

The other factor of getting from Monday through Saturday is not just remembering God's character can be trusted -- His grace, His mercy, His forgiveness, His joy and His peace that can be ours -- but looking for the ways God works through his children.  We can watch for the special things He does through His own children; watch for those people who will stop their race and walk back to you when you are down flat on your face.  We can watch for those people who will walk back, leave the race they have started to run and come back, help you up and help you to move on.   

We can get from Monday through Saturday even though it is a cold world.  We can because God can be trusted and because He does love us so much that He works through other people. 

Interview with Joyce Landorf Heatherley
Interviewed by David Hardin

David Hardin: Joyce, what are you working on now? After twenty books, I figure you have another one coming.

Joyce Landorf Heatherley: I think someone figured out I have written one book every ten months. That sounds like an awful lot to me! I signed with Thomas Nelson Publishers and I am doing a book called, My Blue Blanket. It is a talk I have been giving around the country. All my books are talks first. That way I can see if I am pushing any buttons; if I am making any sense at all; or if somebody has written it and said it better, then I don't have to bother writing it.

Hardin: My Blue Blanket. We can't end there; we have got to know what that means. What is that all about?

Landorf Heatherley: It is taken from the great Jewish psychiatrist, Dr. Viktor Frankl's, words. It really gripped my heart when he said that when we are stripped of every freedom, we have one freedom left and that is the freedom to choose our attitudes.

In the last two or three years I have been aware of how people's attitudes and my attitude affect my whole world. It affects everybody who is close to me; it affects everybody who is out here in this sphere and in my public life, too. If you work in an office where somebody has got a bad attitude, it infects the whole office.

I began looking at my life saying, "OK, what attitudes should I be choosing?" I came up with four attitudes. One is that I choose the attitude of accepting my hurts and watching for the way God is going to heal me. If I don't, I am not going to be able to get on with life. I am not going to be able to heal; I am not going to be able to mend.

Second, I am choosing to fold up and lay aside my blue blanket. Everybody has an escape route or method, or a blue blanket. When their world falls apart and the pain is really heavy, they run for that blue blanket. It could be something as simple as sleeping, reading, overeating or whatever.

Hardin: Or something worse, like drinking.

Landorf Heatherley: Drugs, yes. Mine is wanting to go home to be with God when the pain gets too severe. I am beginning to see a response from my audiences this past year. A great number of people are saying to me, "My blue blanket is the same as yours."

I also want to choose the attitude of being a wounded healer. What do you do with the hurts of your life? What in the world can you do? You can't let them sit inside, let them fester and become bitter. How can you change any of that? Henri Nouwen, the Dutch priest who wrote a book called Wounded Healer, was very influential in my thinking. I can say to myself, "OK, where are my wounds; how can I use those wounds and the suffering that those wounds have caused me, to help others?"

Hardin: A wise person almost welcomes these wounds because they are the places where we can grow.

Landorf Heatherley: And, we do. I am not sure that I like being wounded, but every time I have another wound I think, "OK, maybe this is God giving me the opportunity to reach out to another person as a wounded healer."

Then, last, I believe it was Phillips Brooks who wrote, "Pray the largest of prayers." I choose to pray the largest of prayers. He also said, "Don't pray for crutches, pray for wings." Don't just pray that God is going to get me through today. Pray large prayers. Ask him to fill your life with light and life.

So, I have chosen that my attitude about prayer is going to be to pray the largest of prayers. I am going to try not to pray in A, B, C. "Lord, please answer A and, if you can't, then B is okay and C is my third choice." I found that as I have prayed over the years, God has never answered in A, B and C. He has always answered in Q, R and S. It has always been way out of range in that regard.

Hardin: I just want to go back to the point you made about hurting. We all spend a lot of time trying to avoid hurting. Yet, it really is part of the journey and part of the message. For example, I think A.A. (Alcoholics Anonymous) does a wonderful job of saying, "Don't carry your hurts with you. That's yesterday."

Landorf Heatherley:  But you have to admit that you have a hurt, and in A.A. one of the Twelve Steps is recognizing that you do have this problem. Some of us are in denial about how badly we are hurting. I know that attitude really makes the world go around and especially our world. So, I have chosen those four things and those are the only four things I am talking about in My Blue Blanket.

Hardin: Let me ask you, as an author, are there some people who have particularly inspired you?

Landorf Heatherley:  Henri Nouwen and Keith Miller, both of whom have been on this program. The writings of John Claypool; John Fischer, who wrote a very small book called Dark Horse. These are some of the men. In my early career as a musician and singer, before I was ever writing -- I started as a late bloomer when I was 37 -- my mother introduced me to Christian books. One of the first books I read was Angel Unawares by Dale Evans and from there I moved on to other books. My mother was a voracious reader. It was contagious and caught on to me. David, I don't know any author who isn't a reader first.

Hardin: Speaking of Keith Miller, A Taste of New Wine was very important to me. I don't know if it was because I was ready for it or if it was the only book that would have worked. You don't know.

Landorf Heatherley:  I was on a beach and I read Keith Miller's A Taste of New Wine. It was at the point when I was writing my second book. I read it and thought it was the kind of writing that I wanted to do. He really inspired my heart. I love Keith.

Hardin: Tell me, do you ever have writer's block?

Landorf Heatherley: Of course.

Hardin: What do you do about it?

Landorf Heatherley: You try not to stop writing when you get writer's block. This means you set that down, jump ahead in your story and in the paragraphs. Sometimes it is just best to walk away. Get up and walk away.

Every writer has her own mode of writing. Some are absolutely devoted to a word processor. I have to do it all by hand and a pen. When it comes, it is devastating because this is your work. This is your life and suddenly you have got this blank wall up here. You just have to wait it out or try to write something else and then come back to it.

Hardin: So you have learned how to do that because you are doing so well. Thanks very much for being with us.