Welcome!

Hi!

I’m Christine.

I’m a writer who still manages projects. A corporate refugee project manager who raises two crazy beautiful Ukrainian daughters. A mom who tries to be the hands and feet of Jesus. A Christian who adores my husband. A wife who loves to write.

I write about all sorts of stuff, tied together by the belief you carry a unique vision and bring something special to the world. And I believe that if you share that something special, the world will become a better place.

I write about stuff I’ve fought through, hoping to save you the trouble of fighting it too. I talk about tools or lessons to help you share your own special gift.

And every now and then, I share little bits of my own style of special — my fiction.

Sometimes I publish three times a month. Sometimes I publish three times a year. It happens when I have something to say.

If you want to make sure you don’t miss that, drop your email address here. I’ll send you a free writer’s toolkit right away, and then you’ll get an email whenever I publish something new.

I love to hear feedback about how I can serve you better. You can contact me:

All the crazy detail

I can’t remember when I knew I was supposed to write.

All my life, I’ve written. I’d write a story or a poem or just a few pages in a journal. Then something would stop me. Fear that someone had already said the same thing. Fear that I sucked. Fear that I’d run out of ideas.

So I grew up and got a real job, then another, then another after that.

I wrote training courses and technical manuals and status reports. I designed brochures and coded websites. I ran a small local business and rose through the ranks of a mammoth global one.

I cashed my paychecks.

And then God smacked me in the head and said “it’s time to do something for Me.”

Our Adoption Story

In the spring of 2006, we stumbled across a newspaper article that would change our lives.

The article talked about a “culture camp” for orphans from Ukraine. The program brought children aged 6-12 to visit the United States for about three weeks. During their stay, they’d learn more about the US and get the experience of living with a family. While the hope was to find “forever families” for the children in the program, families could “host” a child without any plans to adopt.

When we first read the article, we thought of some friends who had been considering adopting from Ukraine. We set the article aside. As the days turned into weeks, it remained on the top of the pile of coffee table books. One day, Mark turned to me (or I turned to him…who knows?) and said, “Gee, maybe we should host one of these kids.” I (or he, who knows?) answered “Sure, might be fun.”

After a false-start or two, and a whole lot of paperwork, we were matched with an 11-year-old girl named Masha for the three-week hosting program. We quickly fell in love, and in June, 2007 we finalized her adoption and brought her home to the US.

During our five-week stay in Ukraine for Masha’s adoption, we met and fell in love with her best friend, Lena. Ukrainian law prevented us from adopting Lena at the same time, but God has a funny way of working things out, and in December, 2009, we travelled to Ukraine again to celebrate Lena’s 14th birthday and bring her home.

How I became a real writer

I started blogging in 2006 to keep our story straight. I really couldn’t keep family and friends up-to-date and keep track of whom I’d told what. And then people started telling me I should write a book about the adoption.

In 2011 I decided to start taking myself seriously. I started getting up early to write every day. I started blogging and stuck to a schedule. I met other writers and visited other blogs. I drank a lot of coffee.

I kept at it for eighteen months before God told me to walk away from my lucrative but soul-sucking project management job and join a missions organization as their communications manager.

Since then, I’ve written and edited a bunch of others. As well as a few hundred thousand words here and more for clients and employers.

I figure someday I’ll get to that book.

Links, Links, and More Links

To learn more about how we decided to adopt, read about Hosting Masha through Five Weeks in Ukraine in the summer of 2007 to adopt her.

Learn about our Three Weeks Plus One Week in Ukraine in December, 2009 to adopt Lena.

Learn about our Family Mission Trip in June, 2011 to Dulce Refugio orphanage in Aguascalientes, Mexico.

Learn about the why there are 153 million orphans in the world, and what we can do to change it.