Encouraging From Life's Patchwork
by Jeanne Zornes
Her
life is like the quilts she loves to display in her home--a bit of
this and that
which Lucinda (Cindy) Secrest McDowell has pieced into encouraging words for women
around the world. Author of Quilts From Heaven--Finding Parables in the Patchwork of Life,
three other books, and dozens of articles, she's a popular speaker on women's
and spiritual life issues, known for stitching memorable life stories into biblical lessons.
"Quilts
are a metaphor of what God does with our lives," she said. "He wastes
nothing."
She speaks from experience--a southern gal, world traveler, and now pastor's wife in
New England where speaking engagements keep her going somewhere almost every week.
Growing
up in southern Georgia as the middle of three girls, she skipped her
senior
year of high school to start college, deciding at 17 to make her life verse Isaiah 58:10-11,
which speaks of spending oneself on behalf of the hungry and oppressed.
That led her as a missionary to Appalachia where she washed her hair in a bucket
of rain water and learned quilt making from the mountain women.
"They
taught me more than technique," she said. "Their quilts evoked a
sense
of wonder and story. Quilts started out being utilitarian items, but women--being women--
made them beautiful." Her book Quilts From Heaven, with stunning photos of traditional
pieced quilts, meshes quilt pattern history with storiesfrom Cindy's own colorful life.
After
college she joined the staff of Carolina Country Magazine
(circulating
to 250,000) later returning to Appalachia as a teacher for the blind in 20 North Carolina counties.
At
Urbana '76 Cindy made a life turn, enrolling in Gordon-Conwell
Theological Seminary.
Author/speaker Elisabeth Elliot, recently widowed, had contacted the seminary for a
first-year student to lodge in her home and help her; Cindy got the job.
"It
was a God-thing," Cindy said of her lodging that year. "I remember
her telling me,
'Cindy, God has given you a gift to write and you have a duty to give it back to him.'
That made me realize I wanted to pursue the whole area of communication."
Following
seminary, she moved temporarily to Wheaton, IL as
communications
director for the 1980 Council on World Evangelization in Thailand. She fit
writing courses at Wheaton Graduate School into her busy schedule.
After
the Thailand meetings and some world travel, she became the first
director
of missions at Menlo Park Presbyterian Church, charged with giving people living near San
Francisco's Silicon Valley a new vision of the mission mandate. In her four years
there, she trained 60 missionaries a year, taught and wrote about missions.
One
advantage of living in San Francisco is the Mount Hermon Christian
Writers
Conference, just down the highway a bit. "Going there in 1982 really opened my eyes
to writing for a large audience on a variety of topics," Cindy said.
Meanwhile,
Mike McDowell, an InterVarsity staff member from Seattle whose
wife
had died of cancer, met Cindy through her missions role. She accepted his proposal of
marriage, moved to Seattle, and became the adoptive mother of two boys ages
nine and seven (one born with mental retardation) and a four-year-old daughter.
Life
got even busier. Mike became dean at a Christian college in North
Carolina;
Cindy had a baby girl and worked for a radio station. She came to 40 and a mid-life crisis
concerning her future in the writing world. Frequent-flyer miles, use of a friend's cabin,
and a camper scholarship got her back to the Mount Hermon conference.
"This
time," she said, "instead of hitting every possible writing class, I
spent a lot of
time with God, seeking His will." To her surprise, the conference named her Writer of the Year.
"It was like God saying I want you to continue writing and go deeper,and begin
a new chapter." she said. "So I went home and promptly had writer's block for six months!"
Yet
over the next eight years she saw four books published:
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Amazed by Grace (Broadman), Women's Spiritual Passages (Shaw; also released in Britain as Women
Celebrating Faith),the quilt book, and a Christmas compilation, A Southern-Style Christmas
(Shaw/Waterbrook, featuring contributions by celebrities like Liz Curtis Higgs and Jan Karon).
Plus
she worked part-time as pastor of caring ministries and director of
women's ministries
at Wethersfield (Conn.) First Church of Christ, a historic congregation "gathered" in 1635,
where Mike is associate pastor. She also saw two children finish college and
her special needs son on his own with a job and shared apartment.
Cindy
admits her busy schedule always meant a struggle to find time to
write. "I write a lot
in my head in the middle of the night," she said, "and then I hope and pray that I remember it."
Her writing "office" is a converted breakfast nook in their 1924 colonial parsonage.
She's
currently working on a book for new Christians, and her web
site
www.EncouragingWords.net includes devotional messages from the patchwork of her life.
These range from her son's triumphs in winning gold in tennis at the World Special Olympics
to the trials of her husband's emergency heart bypass surgery during Easter week of 2000.
Cindy
is also committed to encouraging women in ministry. Since 1995 she
and ten other
writers and speakers living in New England have held a yearly retreat they call Heartspring.
"Our name is from Luke 6:45 that it is out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks,"
Cindy explained. It also relates to her life verse, Isaiah 58:11
"You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail."
"We're
here to guard each others' hearts," she said, "so we can go forth and
speak and write
words of hope an healing to a needy world. Most of all, we pray for one another." The retreat
fellowships, she added, help her feel "like I've been comforted and wrapped in a big quilt."
Thus
encouraged, she's ready again to encourage others with
messages
from the fabric of her
life.
copyright 2001 Jeanne
Zornes
Jeanne
Zornes,
Wenatchee WA, was a Wheaton Graduate School
of Communication classmate of Cindy's in 1979-80. She is also a conference speaker and
author of seven books, includingThe Patchwork Family (Cook) which she dedicated to Cindy.
You can contact Jeanne at zornesj@crcwnet.com and Cindy at cindy@encouragingwords.net
published in The Christian Communicator, November-December 2001, American Christian Writers
copyright
2002 Lucinda Secrest McDowell ~ All Rights
Reserved
