“It occurred to me that you can have it all in the sense of having a rich family life and pursuing excellence in your work, but you’re going to need to reimagine what having it all looks like.”
It’s not often that I read two books by an author back to back. A family member recommended One Beautiful Dream to me at a family Christmas party. I checked and it was available from the library right away as an ebook. I didn’t start reading it until a few days later. In One Beautiful Dream, Fulwiler talks about the process of writing her first book, Something Other Than God. I had to read that one, too, to get a full understanding of her journey. That book, too, was available right away from the library as an ebook, allowing me to read one right after the other.
Jen Fulwiler is an author and a mother of six children, born in less than seven years. While many people around her gave her the advice to put her writing dreams on hold while her children were little, she just didn’t feel alive when she didn’t have time to write. It was a long process to finally find peace with pursuing writing with young children – she had to deal with guilt, time, pregnancies and health issues. She finally learned to pull her family into her writing process instead of vying them against each other after a long talk with a priest. At the end, she ends up with a published (after a huge rewrite) book that she is able to show her grandfather before he passes away. That book was Something Other Than God.
Something Other Than God is the story of Jen’s faith journey. She grew up as an atheist but fell in love with a man who was a tepid Christian. They would talk about faith once in a while, but Jen had trouble dealing with mortality and the atheist worldview. One day, she felt drawn to a book in a bookstore from across the room and found The Case for Christ by Lee Stroebel. Reading that book led her on a long journey that eventually ended with both her and her husband joining the Catholic Church.
In both books, Fulwiler is absolutely honest with her struggles. Neither motherhood or her faith journey were easy roads. With her honesty, she is very relatable. I am also a writer and had four children in six years. It was hectic and yet I always felt the pulled to pursue my writing. I often did with freelance jobs and then I finally started writing books and had one published the summer of 2019. I also related with Jen as I also joined the Catholic Church as a adult. It wasn’t an easy journey and it took a lot of research and prayer.
I would highly recommend both One Beautiful Dream and Something Other Than God to any mother out there who also feels called to use their talents and follow their dreams. To see what she wrote about during that time brings her story full circle.
What do you believe your talent is? Share on the blog!
