BJU Press Blog

Eileen

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About Eileen

Eileen is a language arts writer at BJU Press. She writes frequently outside of work and also teaches two university-level writing courses. Among her favorite pastimes are reading, hiking to waterfalls, and doing children’s ministry with her local church. Read more posts by Eileen.

The Story Behind Benjamin’s Sling

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When JourneyForth approached me about writing a Christmas picture book, I jumped at the chance. What could be more enjoyable? I loved writing, I loved the poetic possibilities of the picture book genre, and I loved Christmas. Of course, this was something I wanted to do.

But as I tossed around ideas for the project over the next several weeks, I couldn’t seem to settle on anything. What could possibly be said about Christmas that hadn’t already been said? Or perhaps the better question was how the age-old truth about the meaning of Christmas could be presented in a fresh way. I began to pore over the accounts of Christ’s birth in Scripture, and then I turned to mining my own experience.

book cover of Benjamin's Sling by Eileen BerryThe year before, my mother had become ill suddenly and unexpectedly. At Christmastime she had been a healthy, fun-loving woman in her sixties, still full of energy and zest for life. Then in May we learned that a form of cancer she had battled years before had recurred. I was able to spend only one last week with my mom before she entered the Lord’s presence on June 1, 2008. During the busy days following her death, I was a little numb, and I knew that God’s grace was carrying our family. But when the visits and cards of faithful friends stopped coming and life returned to a semblance of “normal,” I struggled with an emotion I had not expected to feel. I was afraid. I feared that the hollow feeling inside would never go away. I worried that others in our family would develop the same kind of cancer. I was afraid of experiencing more loss.

Gradually in those painful months, I came to realize that my problem was not caused by externals. My fear did not arise from my circumstances. It came instead from a fundamental problem between myself and God. I was afraid to trust the Lord who had redeemed me, written my name on His hands, and proven Himself to me over and over again. He was asking me to trust Him alone—with my past, with my present, with my earthly and eternal future, and with the future of those I loved. After all, He is utterly trustworthy. He can never be or do anything other than good.

When I looked back on all God had taught me over that year before the writing assignment, I knew that my Christmas story had to include both grief and fear. The problem Benjamin the shepherd boy faces is very similar to the one I dealt with. He has experienced loss, and he is afraid to trust. The solution to the problem is the truth of the gospel. Jesus Christ was born to abolish death forever for those who trust Him. He can be utterly trusted. Once I knew what must happen in Benjamin’s heart, his story seemed to write itself. It’s my story. And I hope that it’s your story too.

Read Cosette’s review of Benjamin’s Sling.

The Prepositions of Thankfulness

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About two months ago, I bought a small throw pillow for a chair in my home. The pillow displayed the word thankful in large gold letters. I had a mission for that pillow. Every time I walked by the chair, the pillow would remind me to think of things I was thankful for. My plan worked for a few days. I would walk past the chair and briefly consider one or two pleasant things that had happened that day. But all too soon, the pillow became both literally and figuratively part of the furniture. I had happened to choose the chair where everything tends to land at the end of the day—my purse, a book or two, the mail, and so on. And as the days passed, my plan got covered up by the busyness of life, just like the word on that pillow.

thankful pillow

The other day, after clearing off the chair, I sat looking at the pillow and thinking about my plan gone awry. That’s when I realized that maybe the plan had been tragically flawed from the beginning. After all, it’s not enough to be thankful for without being, first and foremost, thankful to. My hastily muttered prayers of thanks for this and that blessing as I dash past a pillow are not really what God wants. He wants me to sit down and take time. He doesn’t necessarily want me to tabulate all the ways He has added pleasantness to my life. But He does want me to know Him and thank Him for who He is. He wants me to love the Giver infinitely more than the gifts.

It’s only when I’m being thankful to that I can properly be thankful for. When I’ve taken time to meditate on God’s sovereignty, love, goodness, and wisdom, I can filter everything that happens to me through the lens of His attributes. I can rest my head on a pillow of thankfulness—even when the burdens and problems of life multiply or when nothing about my day stands out as a singular blessing. I can be thankful for anything that draws me closer to the God I am thankful to.

Look for ways you can be Sharing God’s Good Works with your children.

The Story Behind Buttercup Hill

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Almost every fable has a story behind the story. On the surface we see fanciful animal characters engaged in lively action, but the story is carefully crafted to touch on a real-life truth. Buttercup Hill is a fable that tells a deeper story than the surface one. It shares a lesson that I learned somewhat painfully, but a lesson well worth learning.

BJU Press book cover for Buttercup Hill by Eileen Berry

The lesson began with a few simple statements that I’ve never forgotten. For several years I had worked in a ministry to children in a needy neighborhood. One of the people our group was attempting to serve leveled a rather harsh accusation at our ministry. “You don’t really care about us. You just come out of your fortress to do good deeds and then go running back. You don’t really want to get to know us.” Although I didn’t feel like the accusation was completely accurate, it cut me deeply. I knew that, although I dedicated time each week to the ministry, I hadn’t been doing all I could to really be a friend to these needy families. That comment resulted in a lot of prayerful thought about what else I could be doing for the families I was trying to serve. I could invite a child to be my guest for a special event. I could open my home for cookie baking. I could volunteer at a school. I could drop a pie by a house at Thanksgiving. Or I could just spend a few extra minutes on a front porch, listening and trying to understand. There’s almost always more we can do to be a friend.

And so I decided to explore in a story the idea of what it means to minister to needs through friendship. Hopkin Fleet and his mother want to help their needy neighbors. But until the Flops understand that the Fleets want to be friends, their overtures are not accepted. The Fleets have to leave their comfort zone, inviting the Flops into their personal space, sharing themselves as well as their things. They sacrifice to come alongside their neighbors in a crisis. And when the crisis has passed, the result is a beautiful garden—and a friendship—lovingly planted and cared for.

Read the opening pages of Eileen’s chapter book for young readers, Buttercup Hill.

Above the Storm

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billowy clouds in the blue sky

I was aboard a small jet, flying home. On the ground far beneath us were thunderstorms. But above the clouds, the plane was flying through one of the most peaceful, beautiful worlds I’ve ever seen. The clouds spread out in a panorama of white beneath the plane like a blanket of snow. Some clouds towered up like mounds of cotton-candy all around us. The sun’s rays slanted across the billowy masses, turning portions of clouds to pink and gold. I felt as if I were traveling through a fantasy world, a world so soft and still that nothing could ever trouble it. Looking at those clouds from above, no one would ever guess that storms were going on down below them.

This is where I’m supposed to live all the time, I realized. Above the pressures of life, in a world where God’s presence shines on the clouds and where His peace rules.

I pondered that thought as we jetted on through the white, fluffy wonderland. Why is it so hard to live above the daily grind? Why is my vision so easily clouded by the storms of doubt, worry, and frustration with everyday problems? Why do I often live beneath the dark, gray undersides of the clouds instead of up here where I see them as soft, shining pillows on which to lay my head?

There’s a sense in which we choose which side of the clouds we see. We choose the dark underside when we forget to pray. Philippians 4:6–9 reminds us that in order to have God’s peace protect our hearts and minds, we have to come into His shining presence. We have to come with thanksgiving. We have to bring our specific requests to Him instead of succumbing to worry. And then we have to consciously choose to dwell on what is beautiful and true.

I don’t seem to need any help seeing the gray clouds swollen with rain in my sky. But I know I desperately need God’s help to obey, to trust, to love Him with all my mind, and to continually choose the world above the clouds.

Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.

And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace shall be with you. (Philippians 4:6–9)

Two Grandmothers’ Stories

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image of a grandmother and her granddaughter planting flowers together.

My two grandmothers were both lovely, brave women with a rock-solid trust in God. And yet, they were very different from each other. I loved them equally, and I miss them both. As a writer, I can see the stamp of their influence on my work just as clearly as I see it on my life. For the unique ways they touched my childhood, I am eternally grateful.

Grandma L. was a country woman. She gave me the gift of experiences. She was the one who taught me to love flowers—their colors, their scents, and their names. Without her, perhaps I would never have known the difference between an iris and a peony, a black-eyed Susan and a bachelor’s button. She showed me where to find mushrooms sprouting up in the woods and how to climb high in the trees to pick walnuts and cherries. She took me boating at the pond, let me drive the old green pickup down the gravel road, and pushed me on the tire swing. I reveled in the stories she made up at bedtime, scary enough to send shivers down my spine. She taught me to distinguish the hoot of an owl and the song of a bullfrog. Because of her, I learned to ride a horse, pick and shell peas, shinny up the side of a silo, and thread a lure on a fishing line. I learned to love warm June evenings under a star-studded sky and Christmases in a snow-covered farmhouse filled with the aroma of fresh-cut pine. And I learned to love writing poems to the creak of her porch swing, pausing often to chew on my pencil and gaze across the road and the open field to the line of trees at the edge of the world.

Grandma B. gave me different gifts. She lived in a modest brick apartment building downtown. Every week she rode a bus to our side of the city and spent the evening with us. And every time she came, she brought me a new book. I still have a whole shelf full of those little children’s books—ragged and dog-eared now from small fingers thumbing through the pages. I still have the memory of Grandma’s voice reading those books to me. Her voice was calm and quiet, and sometimes her wonderful laughter would bubble to the surface and warm me all through. I learned to love reading. I learned to love pictures. And I learned that the combination of a compelling story and beautiful pictures could move me deeply, lodge in my very core, and become a part of who I was.

Neither of my grandmothers lived a very flashy life. Both were widowed and spent much of their later lives alone. Neither ever lived very far from the place where she was born. Neither went to college. Neither was formally a teacher, yet both taught me things I could never have learned in school. Neither had piles of wealth to pass along to her descendants. Yet each, in her own way, made me rich. Without even realizing it, they filled my writer’s toolbox with the choicest and most useful of tools. They both gave me stories—stories I am still telling. And they both gave me the great treasure of love.