Interview

WOF: You and Steve don't hold back, do you? Television evangelists and weight issues are both hot-button topics for a lot of people—and you take on both of them in a novel, of all things. Why?

NANCY: That was actually the origin of the Sullivan Crisp series. Steve came to me and said, "I want to see novels about real people on their real journeys. Those dark paths that people think they're not ever going to return from or that aren't going to lead them anyplace. That is not at all a putdown of any other kind of Christian fiction because I think a lot of authors are taking on the tough subject. But because of his psychological background he just felt like we might be able to dig a little deeper and really get to the places where the healing can happen.

The "healing part" of Healing Stones, Healing Waters, and the next one will be Healing Sands—that was kind of an organic thing. That just sort of evolved as we wrote the books and realized this is healing fiction. Why go for just healing a scratch when maybe you can get in there and tackle cancer.

WOF: This is your second collaboration with Steve Arterburn; was the process of working together different this time?

NANCY: No, we've actually refined our process. The way it works is that one of us comes up with a germ of an idea. The woman committing adultery was my idea; the woman with the weight issue and the tackling of toxic faith were Steve's ideas. Those are two things he's very passionate about.

Then I do a kind of skeleton of a plot and we get together and flesh that out. We delve into "How's the best way to show this? Who can these people be?" Then I write a first draft and we begin to compare. I send hunks to Steve, he send back suggestions. Then when all is said and done, the book goes out there and Steve does a lot of the marketing, because he has the capacity to do that. We've really refined our approach; Steve, this time, did less of the "Why don't you put in this sentence? Why don't you put in that sentence?" and did more big picture kinds of things. We had some—I wouldn't say differences of opinion, but we definitely sat down and hashed out some things. We were very much in sync.

WOF: The book is filled with people who are "faking it." Sonia, Lucia, even Sullivan Crisp all have issues they're covering up. Do you think that's true of most of us?

NANCY: I think our lifelong journey is to peel off the false self that we all start plastering on probably the moment we're born and get down to that true self, our real soul, what we were created to be. I think it's everyone's journey, actually. Perhaps that's why these novels resonate with people. Even if you've never had an affair, you don't have a weight problem, you've never had a facial burn, or any of those things, you can still relate to "I am still afraid to let people see who I really am."

I hope that not only do the books resonate in that way, but I hope they also help people see "How am I preventing other people from being comfortable about being authentic? What kind of judgments do I make, what conditions do I put on people's love? How am I a part of this society that makes it so difficult to be genuine?"

WOF: After the accident, the damage to Sonia's eyelids meant her eyes were always open. (Opening her spiritual eyes took a little longer.) Does it always take some sort of trauma to get us to see things clearly—or does it just seem that way?

NANCY: I think it takes that for some people. I think we all have, at least, our small wake up calls and our mini epiphanies. I think our lives are filled with those. I'm not going to say that God creates those traumas just so that our eyes will be opened, because I don't think any of us really, really knows that. I think Sullivan puts that into his podcast in the book, where he says, "I can't tell you why people suffer, I just know that they do. I just know that something can come from it." So in Sonia's case, it definitely took that. I know that in my own life, it has taken that from time to time. But I also hope that through stories like this, people can read them and say, "You know, before I have to be hit over the head with a divine baseball that, maybe I ought to get a clue." I really do think we can learn from other people's stories. I think that is the power of story.

I think all we can really ever do—and I'm trying to teach the young girls who are on my tween blog—let's not be giving each other advice, judging each other, critiquing each other. Let's just each tell our own story. "This is what's happening with me. This is where I'm going. This is how God's worked in my life." That's what Jesus did. How many times did people ask him a question and he didn't even come close to answering the question, he just told a story. People were kind of left befuddled, but they went away thinking rather than, "OK, I've got that answer. I can move on, do the laundry, make the pancakes…"

WOF: Lucia shares the attitude of a lot of people who believe the amount of suffering they experience is in direct proportion to how much God loves them. Why is that so easy to believe?

NANCY: Because it somehow sounds reasonable and we want things to be reasonable. We want them to be easy and clear. I also think it's easy to believe because we see that in human beings. Just ask any teacher in an elementary school classroom: Do you really love all of those kids equally? Isn't that little kid with ADHD—who when he's absent, things go so much smoother—isn't he harder to love? If we're honest with ourselves, some people really are not as easy to be nice to and do things for. So it's real easy for us to think, that's the way God is. Yet I think the most comforting reassuring marvelous thing about God is that God isn't like that. It's not that God gives more suffering to people he doesn't love as much; it just leaves us with the question, "Why do people have to suffer?" and we can't even answer that. I think instead of imposing what people do on God, we as people need to see ourselves more in the image of God. Making an effort to love those people who are unloveable.

WOF: Where did Sully's Game Show Theology come from?

NANCY: That was Steve's idea―because he's wacko! I had to start watching the Game Show Network to get that going. He was great on the first book, very helpful with Wheel of Fortune and Family Feud. He had all these ideas. The second book he said, "I don't know what we're going to do with this!" and I had to go into Dancing with the Stars. That's our Steve: he's a visionary, he gets people inspired, he gets them going…not so much with the follow-through. I had to be very creative with this one.

And I will tell you that in the third book, he said that one or two of his readers said they got tired of that so maybe we should drop it. So I kind of phased it out in the third book and my editor was all over me. "No! People love that! They're going to be very sad." The people I have talked to have loved the buzzing and the ding-ding-dinging.

WOF: It's easy to understand.

NANCY: Exactly. There are some things we need to be reminded of. What are you saying to yourself? What are you saying about yourself? What are you saying about God? These things are not true, wrong answer. I think we also need to be reminded when we do get it right. It's just so Sullivan Crisp. It became such a part of him, right up there with his "dang's" and his "holy crows." I do have a serious crush on him.

WOF: He's a great guy.

NANCY: He is. And very human and very flawed, which I think is, again, what helps people relate to him―that he doesn't have all the answers. He has a lot of the answers, but he has his own demons to face and his own journey to make.

WOF: It's fascinating for a lot of people to see the whole counseling thing from the other side, as it were.

NANCY: Steve and I, because Steve is not seeing clients daily in that one-on-one way that Sully is, we have a consultant whose name is Dr. Dale McElhenny. He has been with me through all three of these books and his expertise has been so valuable. He goes over every single scene with me after I've written it, line by line, tweaking little words. "This sounds a little bit cold, this sounds a little too flippant." Or "No, he wouldn't touch her because you don't go there." That's been incredibly helpful. I have been in a lot of therapy myself in my adult life and I have worked with three different very gifted therapists. I gleaned a lot from them. I've been fortunate, because I've also heard the horror stories about unqualified or not-very-inspired psychologists and counselors who have really sent people off in the wrong direction. So this is not just something we made up and gee, wouldn't it be nice if it existed. It actually does exist.

We really hope that people who are in need of therapy, in need of counseling, will look until they find the right fit. It's the same with medication. I think it's two-thirds of the people who try an anti-depressant have to try at least two before they find one that works for them. So it's not just, "If one doesn't work I guess medication is not for me." Or "If one therapist and I didn't click I guess therapy's not for me." I also think what Sullivan Crisp does is help people to see that if you could just hear a Bible verse and that would make everything OK, we wouldn't need to go to counseling. Yes, the Bible is full of the wisdom that we need, but we very often need helping applying that to our lives. It's more than just "Here's the verse: follow it." but "Here's the verse: follow it inside of you where you can find out what's hurting. What is it that you're feeding, that you've buried in there?"

WOF: Bethany didn't think she was allowed to see her mom "without her face." Why is it important to let the ones we love "see" who we are without a barrier in place?

NANCY: That becomes really vivid with Bethany because if we don't let those people close to us see who we are they make up stories of their own about us. They, especially children, immediately take the fault for that on themselves, because everything revolves around them. She got the message, "There are things I'm not good enough to see." It affected her already as a 6-year-old.

I think the reason we have so much trouble is it takes courage; our little ones don't innately have that. It's so important to put it out there and trust and let people say, "Eeuw, I don't like that about you." so we can work that through. Is it more about you or more about who I am? Do we need to make a compromise here? Do I need to work on change because this is affecting people? Our relationships are a lie and we can't have the kind of intimacy that God wants us to have with each other or with him. Intimacy is a gift that really only human beings have. It's the gift that separates us from everything else and shows us that God does love us. But if we're going to have that intimacy we have to dignify ourselves as human beings then we have to have the courage to be honest. I truly believe once one person becomes transparent and behaves in an authentic way it gives other people permission to do the same thing. You create a safe environment. Of course, that sounds sort of Utopian; we're never going to be able to do that perfectly. But I think what it leads to more is more authenticity with God, a more genuine relationship with God. That is the one being whom you can always trust with who you are because that's who created who you are.

One of the things with being absolutely true to yourself and being authentic is not everybody's going to like you. Women, even more than men, tend to try to become chameleons and become who other people need them to be and want them to be so everybody's happy and everybody's comfortable. Everyone will like you and you're happy. Except that is an endless, fruitless attempt that doesn't ever make us perfect, it just makes us always feel like we're not good enough. To be able to accept that not everybody's going to like me when I am being who Nancy Rue is, is a toughie and yet it's so freeing. Our goal is not for everyone to like us; our goal is for us to love everyone. Liking and loving are two completely different things.

WOF: Lucia took responsibility for almost everything that happened in her life—and yet, much of it was not her fault. How do we know where to draw the line between owning up to what we're legitimately responsible for and taking credit/blame for too much?

NANCY: That's a life-long journey of discernment. A couple of things are essential for that: one is prayer. To try to figure that out for ourselves is futile; we really can't. Some of it is so complex and intricate. Prayer is essential―a daily conversation with God. "Do I need to do something about this? I feel guilty about this―is it because I really should feel guilty or is it just society telling me I should feel guilty or is this my narcissism because I think I'm in charge of everything?" It requires some focused intense time every day saying "Can you please show me?"

The second thing is paying attention; not simply doing what we always do. Pay attention to those little signals God gives each of us. For example, when I'm being too controlling―being too b-o-s-s-y as we say at our house―or taking on the blame and responsibility for fixing everything, I get a sort of pointed feeling, like everything in me is coming to a point. Almost like I'm prickly. I don't like myself; I feel like a shrew. It's become my signal. My jaw starts to hurt; that's where all my tension rests. It's a signal to stop, take a breath, and say, "What are you doing? Is this really all up to you?" We each have to look for those signals in ourselves. It's hard. It's hard to own up.

So many women in their forties and fifties say, "I've gotten to know myself! I found things I just loved about me." I think in my case I found a lot of things I wasn't so crazy about. The more I got to know myself all this junk came to the surface. But then once it's there you can get rid of it.

Thirdly, having people that you trust help you with that. My husband is wonderful at saying, "Is that something you really need to worry about? This is not your fault. I know you care, but let's get this in perspective." He is wonderful about that. I have couple friends who say, "You're doing it again!" I really, really trust that. Those relationships are vital.

So again, prayer, paying attention, and having people to help you. I don't like to use the term "hold you accountable" but to give you that friendly nudge. Someone you can call up and say, "All right, here's the situation: should I be doing something here?" It needs to NOT be someone who says, "NO, let's go have a coffee instead." But someone who can really help you work it through.

We're going to make mistakes in that regard. Going right back to God and saying, "Forgive me. I screwed this up again. Let's push the reset button."

WOF: There will be one more in the series, correct? Give us a little preview: what can we expect from Healing Sands? WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS.

NANCY: In Healing Sands Sullivan Crisp winds up in Las Cruces, NM. At the end of Healing Waters when he finds out the so-called therapist his wife was working with knew she was suicidal and didn't tell anyone, that ticks him off. He feels like he needs to find out if she is still practicing and either he's going to have her license rescinded or find out if she's still working in that same vein. He feels like he didn't help his wife enough. He didn't know…but now he knows and he wants to try to prevent this from happening to someone else.

The book occurs a year later, after Lucia's book. He has tracked [the therapist] down to Las Cruses and there is a Healing Choice Clinic there that's kind of falling apart. So it's fortuitous that he would be there. That is his journey at this point. The client he sees, her name is Ryan. Ryan is dealing with anger issues. A lot of women do and yet we tend to cover them up. It's more likely to come in with depression or guilt, those kinds of things, but she is mightily ticked off. She's divorced; she has two sons that she's estranged from. She's a well-known photojournalist; she's come to Las Cruces and taken a job at the newspaper there so she can be near her sons who are living with their father. One of her sons is accused of a hate crime and she just knows in her gut that he didn't do it, so she is on a quest to prove his innocence. Yet the quest is really much more about her finding out where her anger comes from, when is anger justified, when should we act on it, and when is it more a result of some deep-seated hurt that we have. We really deal with the issue of rage.

And Sully has a love interest in this book. Isn't that wonderful for Sully? That was really fun. There are some mysteries in the book. We also lay open some racial issues. Steve wasn't sure that race was still an issue. Are you serious? I said, "All the more reason if people like you think race isn't an issue." Especially since we have elected an African-American president, I think there are a lot of people who think, "Well, we're done with that." That is all the more reason to realize we have so, so far to go.

Check out the 1st book in the series, Healing Stones (Book Club July 2008)