Producing Passion from Pain



Photo credit: Billy Alexander



“Art begins in a wound,” according to John Gardner, and the same could often be said concerning ministry. As writers, often our writing and our ministries are connected. Let’s talk a bit about passion and then look at how you can use your passions to influence your ministry and your writing.

What are Passions?

Passions, in brief, are strong feelings. The emotions can be positive like love or loyalty. They can also be negative emotions such as hate or rage. Synonyms such as zealous, ardor, and enthusiasm may help bring it into focus. It is interesting to note that the word enthusiasm comes from the Greek en theos, which literally means “with God”.

How Do You Find Your Passion?

Since passions are, by definition, strong feelings, then that is where you start. You observe what causes or beliefs evoke strong emotions in you. Whether it is a news story, an activity, or the lunch table discussion, what are those things that make you want to weigh in? What makes you cry? What evokes feelings of righteous anger? What brings delight to your heart?

You can also notice what draws your attention. When you read a newspaper or scan the television channels, what captures your eyes and your heart? When you are in a group setting and have the choice of several conversations to dive into, where do you gravitate?

One last test you can use to discover your passions is to ask yourself this question: What do I most long to see God accomplish. Your answers may lead you to your passion. Do you want to see orphans set in families? Would you like divorce to be a thing of the past? Perhaps you’d like to see people find freedom from addictions. Possibly it is a group of people you’d like to see helped such as single moms, teenagers, those suffering from AIDs.

What Do You Do with Passions When You Find Them?

As mentioned before, many times our passions rise as beauty out of the ashes of our pain. The woman abandoned as a young mother feels a burden for single moms. A post-abortive teenager grows into a woman determined to keep others from that pain. A child of divorce seeks to help marriages thrive. Working out our passions in our writing or in our ministry helps us to bring “comfort to those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves received from God” (2 Cor. 1:4). Our trial gains meaning and value when God allows someone else to be helped and healed because of a pain in our past.

Whether you write fiction or non-fiction, your writing can reflect your passion. Fiction writers often give characters painful pasts or character flaws. In the course of the novel, as the character comes to a place of healing or surrender, this brings comfort to readers touched by the same hurt. Non-fiction writers can shed light on problems, offer their own journey to healing, and give comfort and hope to others still mired in pain.

Ministries within and outside the church abound, bringing help and healing from nearly every painful experience that might shadow your history.

One caution is needed when taking a painful past and transforming it into a ministry of healing whether through your writing or another outlet. You must have already found healing and, if necessary, forgiveness from the painful experience. Christians should always minister out of a place of fullness. If writing is therapy for you, then write until your soul is purged; just don’t expect to publish it. Your readers don’t need to be shielded from the raw emotions or messy consequences of your pain, but they need to see it as only one part of a journey of wholeness whether you are writing fiction or non-fiction. The same is true in any other ministry.

We live in a sick and hurting world. People desperately need the hope and healing Jesus offers. What are those beliefs and causes you will choose to champion? Who are the hurting people you will choose to help?

How do your passions come through in your writing?

By Nikki Studebaker Barcus

Restoring What the Locust Has Eaten

Lifeway Christian Corporate Sales Meeting - 2007
“You’re on!” Mary-Beth, my author relations person, shout-whispered, running toward me as I walked out of the ladies room and down the hall of the Life Way building. I wasn’t supposed to speak until 9:30 AM but apparently they were running early. What luck! I didn’t even have time to get really nervous as they introduced me. Instead, I had to burst through the door, scoop up my notes and head toward the stage, hoping I wouldn’t trip in my high-heeled, platform sandals. As I headed toward the microphone and the podium, my knees began to shake and my palms started to sweat. I prayed one of my more eloquent prayers, “Okay Lord, this is it.”

Time to give my speech.

I stared out at the sales and marketing people, eighty or so upraised faces, and tried to smile, opening with a crack about the high probability of me blacking out. My voice shook while I promised to “come to” if they would wave some Starbucks under my nose. That got a laugh, and so, a little encouraged, I plunged into my Olympic relay-race analogy. Which, I hasten to mention, the Lord had just given me the night before. I’d worked hard on my speech, had it mostly memorized according to instructions . . . but the night before, in a lovely hotel room that the publisher put me up in, I lay wide awake most of the night while God…rewrote….my….speech. Ahhh! Why does He always wait until the last minute? But I was sure. I knew what He wanted me to say, and while it was pretty raw, “very transparent” as my editor later said with a kind smile, I was certain it was His message for this group.

After explaining to the crowd how much I viewed this process as a team effort – first me writing it, then the editors and art department polishing it up and then the sales team taking it on the road – and how incredibly blessed I felt to just be standing up there (I finally have co-workers!!) I plunged into how I began writing in the first place. It’s the question I’m always asked, “How did you start writing?” or “What made you want to become a writer?” or “Have you always written?”

In trying to honestly answer that question, God reminded me how it all began. On one hand, I have always loved lyric writing. As a girl, I used to swing on my swing (one of those 10 pound weights at the end of a rope tied to a big, old walnut tree in our yard) and make up song after song for God. I didn’t care who was around or if anyone heard me, I just worshipped him, loud and long. I also wrote some poetry and had a “diary” as we called it then, which my brother would find and break into (those locks never worked!) waving and taunting me until I chased him down and wrestled it back. But on the other side, the darker side, stories became a sort of salvation to me throughout my life. In the second grade I began having night terrors. One, in particular, was so bad I wouldn’t leave my mother’s side for three months (literally). I lost weight, I couldn’t sleep, I was as white as a sheet – the fear dogged me until I felt like I was living from panic attack to panic attack. I looked like I was being haunted in my early grade-school pictures, and I felt like I was being destroyed. My parents prayed for me, encouraged me and tried everything to help me overcome my fears, but nothing worked.

I have a son who was diagnosed with ADD and Dyslexia. For years he struggled to read, doing phonics programs over and over and then taking a special “Discovery” class in 4th through 6th grade. It helped and he’s a much better reader now, but something happened during those early years that has become a special strength for Seth. Because he couldn’t read the world around him, he saw everything differently. Seth can easily remember faces, pictures and symbols. He remembers little details, saying things to me like, “Mom, did you see that man with a red hoodie? He had on a couple of rings on his left hand, curly black hair and a big, jagged scar on his arm?” I look around clueless. “What man?” Now, when Seth looks at signs he doesn’t just read them, he notices things like – letter shape, color, lighting, a missing bulb, etc. While I just read it, Seth really sees it and I know that someday God is going to use this gift in Seth’s future work. That’s kind of what happened to me. To help myself sleep at night, I started to focus my mind on building stories and characters, not allowing the fearful thoughts a chance to come in. This took intense concentration. But after awhile, I got better and better at it until eventually, I could fall asleep within minutes of lying down. Years later, I now see that what the enemy had planned for my destruction, God used for good. When I first sat down to write a novel, the scenes played out in front of my eyes with the ease of long practice. Praise God, He really does make beauty from the ashes of our lives.



Last Saturday I had the privilege of being in the Vincennes (my hometown) Christmas Stroll and Parade. I had the even greater privilege of seeing a dear friend/mentor that I haven't seen in over twenty years - Joyce Crockett. Joyce was my neighbor girlfriends' mom. She was, and still is, I'm sure, an awesome mother and wife and now grandmother. And Joyce is the person who first introduced me to historical romance novels. By the grocery sack full!! I can't imagine that I would be writing in this genre without her influence and it is, to me, another amazing example of God's will being done in my life. How he was giving me the tools I needed as a teen to help fight all the anxiety in my life and how He turned those hard times into something He could use for His kingdom and His glory.

How great is our God? How worthy to be praised! It was a full-circle moment and this Thanksgiving I am so thankful to have had that gift.


What about you? Who inspired you to write? How can you thank them this Thanksgiving?