Emily Parker spoke with author Andrea Lucado about her new book English Lessons, what it was like growing up as a pastor's kid and how to handle doubt.

Oxford

Andrea: I don't know if I've always done a great job at that. I feel like as I get older I can trust myself more and trust my gut more. I am a big believer in getting in a silent place and listening to what your inner voice is telling you. I think everyone knows what that's saying and to not ignore that and to listen to it and follow it as much as possible.

As a Christian I do believe that the Bible is true and I do believe that I can trust what's written there as the truth and so when I start to lose my way, or start to feel confused, I can trust that book; opening that book and reading the words in that book as something that has always been true, is true now and will always be true. So being able to cling to that is something that helps when all of those voices are too strong or too loud.

Emily: What does God's love mean to you?

Andrea: The first thing that comes to mind is the Bible talks about how God showed His love for us by sending His Son. The nature of God's love is very sacrificial. Sending His Son was a sacrifice and it's something that, according to the Christian faith is something that had to be done, because we were headed toward damnation in our sin and needed someone to redeem that.

I see God's love manifested in my life in the person of Jesus Christ. In Jesus I have this freedom to know that I'm going to fall short in life; I am going to do the wrong thing and say the wrong thing. I'm not gonna be enough in my job and in my relationships and in my workplace, but because of this sacrifice that He made, that's okay.

God's love for me lately has been a release of, "I don't have to do all of this stuff. I don't have to keep juggling all of these balls that I have in the air. I don't have to prove myself, because Jesus Christ did that on my behalf." That is one of the most freeing truths for me.

Emily: What led you to write English Lessons?

Andrea: I had a friend suggest that I sit down and write something for fun. I had been freelance writing on the side of a full-time job. I had been blogging, but I hadn't been writing anything for fun.

I know that this is wrong when you write books, but I accidentally wrote English Lessons, at least the first three or four chapters, before I realised what I was doing.

When I sat down to just write for fun, to just write for me, I wrote a story about a park that I remembered in Oxford, and a conversation that I had with two friends and what I was thinking and feeling during that conversation, and a flood of memories came back of my time there. I started processing it for myself, just looking at old journals and remembering that year. It had probably been six years since I'd moved back and I hadn't processed that year very much or thought about it.

As I was writing out these memories, I was seeing these lessons in each one. I was realising, this is a story that happened to me, but it's a lesson that connects to people universally, and what if I turned this into something.

I didn't read many books growing up about Christians who doubt their faith. I think that there are several books out there now about it. I wanted something to be out there that would give people permission to have those doubts. I was reading stuff that makes me feel like I have permission to be myself, or to think what I think, or believe what I believe, or question what I question, and I wanted to be able to write something that would give a reader the permission to do the same.

Emily: When you got to the end and you'd finished the book, how did it feel looking back on that part of your life?

Andrea: It was strange, because I hadn't realised how much had happened that year until I really reflected on it and looked at it. I was in a really different place as a person by the time I was writing the book, and so I wasn't having the same doubts that I had had in Oxford.

I was recalling how dark those days felt and how difficult those days felt and I was really grateful that I didn't feel like that anymore. I still have questions about Christianity and about stuff I read in the Bible and stuff that I hear, but they are different types of questions now. It's not so much the basics of a religion, like can I follow this or not, it's more about the specifics of it. So I was really grateful that I wasn't in that place anymore and it was just cool to see that a story was being written that year, a story of darkness to light, or sadness to joy, that I hadn't really pieced together until I sat down and wrote it out.