"To Be a Boy" And Some Life Updates

Plenty going on...and I miss you all!

Hello! It’s been over two months since I stopped writing this newsletter weekly. I hope you’re all doing so well.

I miss all of you, and I miss writing this newsletter even as it has been made clear that shutting it down indefinitely was the right decision. So I figured I’d send over some writing and some life updates for you.

This is not me restarting the newsletter—just checking in and saying “Hi” is all! :-) ¹

First, we welcomed a second daughter in September!

Daisy Josephine Martin was born in the afternoon on September 23, 2023. Both Susie and Daisy handled the delivery process wonderfully, and our three-year-old, Magnolia, is enjoying her big sister status. She has been glad to snuggle her sister and even help by fetching pacifiers, burp cloths, and the like.

I’ll tell you what, having two little ones is exponentially more difficult than having one! Of course, Maggie was born in April 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic, and that actually made the earliest weeks and months easier in some regard, I think. For instance, Daisy has already been sick a good bit—which was not the case for Maggie this early! I wrote two books while parenting a single child, and I can barely find time to think with two so far! Ha! But it is a season and I’m enjoying plenty of it despite the exhaustion.

A view from the steps of my new “shed office” (as Maggie calls it) a few weeks ago as the leaves began to fall in earnest. I live for gray fall days like this. Stick season approaches.

Second, I have a new job!

In September 2020, I left Lifeway Christian Resources after seven years for a role at Moody Publishers. I joined the team as “content marketing editor,” and my primary charge was to be a mad scientist in a publishing lab and skunk works some non-traditional publishing projects to support our main, traditional work as a Christian publisher.

The fruit of that work is Bible to Life, a resource library that has about one thousand articles and is growing every day. This fall, we’re averaging about 150,000 users and 180,000 page views per month, which is pretty good for a shoestring budget website built in 2021!

As of the beginning of November I accepted the role of “director of creative and special projects,” or “creative director” for short—at Moody Publishers. I will maintain my ownership and responsibility for Bible to Life, but I will also now be responsible for leading a team of in-house and out-of-house designers on our cover design, copywriting, and other creative processes. I am not an artist at all, but I am grateful to lead a team of amazing creative people, and I’m just hoping I make their jobs easier as I get to lead them.

I’ve always been a big fan of Owl City—since I discovered him on Myspace in 2007—and it was a joy to see him in concert for the fifth time on my recent work trip to Chicago.

Third, I have attempted to write a children’s book.

Well, two really. And they aren’t working right now, but that’s fine.

I randomly came up with an idea earlier this summer for a set of children’s board-style books called “To Be a Boy” and “To Be a Girl” that help Christian parents push against both the cultural erasure of gender distinction and some Christians’ unhelpful promotion of unbiblical gender stereotypes. I tend to think that good children’s books are at their best when they minister to the parents reading them as much as the children hearing the words. And that’s what I’ve attempted to do with this. While a two- or three-year-old may not really grasp all of the words in the poem below, the parent would, and I hope they would be encouraged.

It wasn’t appealing to publishers for a handful of reasons that I won’t get into, but I really like the poem I wrote at the heart of “To Be a Boy,” so I wanted to share it with you all. It’s definitely possible this could turn into a book at some point, but right now I need to do some work before publishers will be interested in it. So here it is for your enjoyment:

To be a boy is to be tough.
How tough?!
Tough enough to face your fears.
And tough enough to cry when you’re afraid.

To be a boy is to be kind.
How kind?!
Kind enough to say please and thank you.
And kind enough be nice to people who are mean.

To be a boy is to be patient.
How patient?!
Patient enough to wait your turn.
And patient enough to listen for a while.

To be a boy is to be brave.
How brave?!
Brave enough to step up and lead.
And brave enough to know when it’s time to follow.

To be a boy is to be joyful.
How joyful?!
Joyful enough to celebrate your best days.
And joyful enough to praise God on your worst days.

To be a boy is to be loving.
How loving?!
Loving enough to help a friend in need.
And loving enough love those who don’t love you back.

To be a boy is to be peaceful.
How peaceful?!
Peaceful enough to take a deep breath when you’re angry.
And peaceful enough to walk away when you want to fight.

To be a boy is to be strong.
How strong?!
Strong enough to stand up for what is right.
And strong enough to get on your knees and pray.

To be a boy is to be disciplined.
How disciplined?!
Disciplined enough to know when it’s time to be serious.
And disciplined enough to know when it’s time to have fun!

To be a boy is to be faithful.
How faithful?!
Faithful enough to fulfill your promises.
And faithful enough to trust God to be true to His.

To be a boy is to be gentle.
How gentle?!
Gentle enough to sneak in for a silent hug.
And gentle enough to whisper “I love you.”

To be a boy is to be good.
How good?!
Good enough to know that only Jesus was.
And good enough to point others to him.

To be a boy is to be who God made you to be.
Being a boy isn’t about how fast you run,
Or how strong you are
Or how well you behave.

To be a boy is to have faith
That the God who made you
Loved you enough
To give up His boy for you.

So that’s that. A work in progress and perhaps never to be published in print, but I’m tinkering with it and wanted to share it with you!

Let me know if you have any suggested edits to it! (I wrote it in about 30 minutes back in August and have made a handful of edits to it since.) And if you have a little boy you’d like you read that over before bed or something, print it off and do it!

Miss You!

Like I said at the top, I miss all of you, and I really do miss the rhythm of writing this newsletter every week, even if I know it wouldn’t be sustainable in this season.

I am slowly but surely making a little bit of progress on my fiction writing, but as noted above, free time to write is hard to come by. I am doing a bit of contract work writing that is helping pay some bills and save some money for college funds or weddings, but I haven’t had much opportunity to write beyond that. I am hopeful that the holidays will provide some time and space to blaze some trails on one or more of the fiction projects I’m eager to pursue.

I’ll leave you again for now. I’m not sure I’ll write again before the new year, so have a wonderful holiday season and I hope to write to you again soon, perhaps even with a little more frequency in the new year.

(Also, I am still writing The Funnies every week, if you’d like to receive that.)

-Chris

1. I have started to think I may restart the newsletter sometime in the new year not in the same form as before—and perhaps even with a different name—just as a place to infrequently share brief thoughts, links to stuff I like, etc.