writing

Contours of Illness and Healing

/ Elizabeth Trotter / 2 Comments

I was sick for a while before I knew I was sick. I’d been tired. So tired. I’m normally a lower-energy person who needs more rest than others, but this was extreme. I supposed it was more perimenopause.

I had aches and pains. By the end of the day, I felt like I had the flu. I couldn’t wait to relax in a warm shower for a few minutes and then lie flat in bed. I used to take a walk in the evening, but I didn’t even have the stamina for that anymore. 

I assumed it was aging. I’ve heard you get a lot of aches and pains as you get older. I thought this was just my life now, a life where everything hurt all the time. I simply had to get used to it.

I was having a lot of what I believed to be hot flashes, even though I’m on HRT. My face would flush, and I would overheat, sweating profusely, sometimes while on a work call. It was just menopause, though. Right? 

I was so tired, I could barely work. Even when I was awake, I struggled to focus on the task in front of me. I knew menopause came with brain fog, but this was next-level. Would I ever be able to concentrate again?

I was out of breath all the time, pulling back on exercise, and it seemed not even sleep could restore my strength. I remember one weekend in particular we were going to have a family night, and after my nap I could barely lift my hands. What was wrong with me?

I was discouraged because I had just finished this beautiful month of semi-sabbatical in May. I’d spent time restoring my relationships and renewing my creativity. I had ideas and energy for moving forward in life, then bam! Hard stop.

You know how moms take their kids to the doctor — or at least call the doctor — at the first sign something is wrong, but we don’t always take ourselves? Um, yeah, that was me. Until I could barely sleep, swallow, or move for the pain.

So one morning I finally dragged myself to the doctor. I feared an autoimmune disease. They happen more to women in their 40s and 50 — and more to women in general. And I know enough of the medical world to know that sometimes people contract viruses such as Ebstein-Barr (which causes mono and which I got tested for) and never recover. They remain ill, sometimes bedbound, permanently.

Thankfully it didn’t look like my tests were pointing to anything permanent or autoimmune, but to something else: thyroiditis. The pace of recovery would be slow. Sometimes there would be no improvement day to day, and I would only notice improvement from week to week. Sometimes I would get worse instead of better, as progress turned to regress. And truth be told, I’m not fully recovered yet.

I’ve been seriously ill before, but it’s been many years. Most of the time when I get sick, I’m down for a couple days, and then I recover. And although I had lots of people praying for me this time around, I have to admit I wasn’t always very patient in waiting for improvement or healing. Whenever I was conscious, that is.

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Several months ago I asked God to expand my horizons. One Sunday during communion I went forward for the bread and the cup, and when I returned to my seat, a prayer from long ago popped into my mind, and I prayed it. 

I hadn’t thought of the prayer of Jabez in a quarter of a century, and I certainly wasn’t praying it in a prosperity-gospel type of way. Still, although I’d intended the petition for one area of my life, God seemed to be answering it in other areas. He opened invitations and pathways I didn’t see coming. Stirred my heart to long for more depth, more fruit, more of Him in my life. I started seeking, pulling on the threads of my desires.

Until I got sick. I lay on the recliner for weeks. I had a little supply bag — books, phone, sudoku, water or rehydration mix, sugar-free mints. Still, most of what I did was sleep. Monitor temperature and heart rate. Manage pain and pills. I basically lost the month of June; my children can attest to this.

As I recovered, I knew I needed to rebuild my capacity. Slowly begin small amounts of work. Slowly start to move my body more. Keep resting a lot, trying not to overdo anything or push myself too soon. 

But as I continued improving, I remembered all this deep work I’d done before my health declined. And I suddenly saw that the daily habits of my life weren’t sturdy enough to support the spiritual, creative, and vocational expansion I was longing for and starting to step into. I needed better scaffolding for my life, a better structure to hold all the plans and dreams that were being birthed inside me.

If I wanted to be more fruitful, I needed a healthier support system to cultivate that growth. I couldn’t just rebuild my former capacity. I needed to build more capacity than before.

And so I outlined ways to make that happen. I scrutinized my daily schedule, figuring out where I was losing time to news reels, task switching, internet scrolling. Ascertaining how to stack the daily routines of meal prep, personal care, household tasks. Learning how to bundle and batch, streamline and save. 

Turns out, I was scattering my tasks simply because I could. Because I work from home and can do anything at any time. And also because my midlife brain is so distractible. But then again, this is how I lived for years as a homeschool mom, flitting from one need to the next, never knowing if I would finish a task before a child needed me for something else.

I hadn’t realized that I was fissioning away my days. I had to do nothing for a month to realize that I could do more than the somethings I was doing before.

But I also know I recoil from strict schedules. I do much better being able to finish a task before moving onto the next, even if the clock says it’s time. The perfectionist in me hates a schedule. I thought back to the early days of homeschooling and how I’d approached our days. I’d developed a routine for ourselves — a particular order to our tasks and a general time placement for them, whether before breakfast, before lunch, before dinner, or before bed.

Something too structured, and I collapse in fear of failure. Something too loose, and I don’t accomplish enough. The concept of scaffolding seemed spacious enough, sturdy enough, to balance these competing inclinations and still hold my dreams and desires.

Even before I got sick, I’d had a hunger to go deeper into the spiritual life, the creative life. I’d been working through books and chatting with friends about these things. I’d been a little bit wander-y, of course, but I’d been on the right track. I feared I’d lost the momentum with this illness. 

But that doesn’t have to be true. I can build a better scaffolding to support the bigger, more expansive life I’m dreaming of. I’ve always had limited capacity, and even more so in midlife, but as I heal from physical sickness, I’m reaching for more capacity. I guess that’s what dreams, visions, invitations will do to you — prompt you to alter things that aren’t working so you can open your soul to something new.

Seen in this light, I suppose even sickness has its upsides.

The End of May

/ Elizabeth Trotter / Leave a comment

It’s the last day of May, and I’m feeling creatively and relationally energized. That seems like a miraculous ending to a month of semi-sabbatical that did not go as I had planned. But aren’t most things in life like that?

After pushing really hard with work for about six months, I was weary. Then in April I sensed an invitation from God to pause and rest. To stop my busy rushing, focus on my relationships, and work on a few personal issues I’d been meaning to address but could never quite find the time or attention for. And of course, read and write more.

That was a bit of a tall order for four weeks of only partial break. (I was still homeschooling and working with our mission agency.)

I had so many lofty goals, it’s no wonder I didn’t accomplish them the way I had envisioned. First off, I didn’t finish my April manuscript in time, so it spilled over into May a tiny bit. That first week I was so tired I took a nap every afternoon. I didn’t go to a coffee shop to write. I just slept.

Then, between various medical appointments and graduating a daughter from high school, I didn’t end up accomplishing my goals the next couple weeks either.

But all was not lost – with God, nothing ever is. Most importantly this month, my husband and I carved out some time to reconnect. To reenvision what we want our life and our relationship to look like in the next (and current) season of our lives.

Because as it turns out, when you work too hard for too long, even if you love your job and it fills you with meaning and purpose, you can start to lose contact with yourself and with the people you care about most.

I had become like a stray helium balloon, just floating away from myself and the people I loved, leaving those on the ground to wonder where I’d gone. I needed the break to come back to myself — and to them.

I was dreading this week, though, since I knew my mini/modified sabbatical was coming to an end, and I felt neither fully rested nor resolved in the issues I’d been bringing before God. It didn’t matter though – I still needed to start looking ahead to next week’s return to freelance work.

And you know what? This week ended up being the best week of the whole month. I was more engaged with my husband and children than I had been in a long time. I finally started catching up on my reading and writing plans. I said yes to an in-person ministry opportunity that felt years in the making — a sweet gift.

I helped a fellow worker finish up his manuscript for publication (my first long-term agency project!), began outlining my new book on re-entry, and communicated with a couple future clients about their own projects. I felt energized in a way I hadn’t in a long time.

Reconnecting with my people, finding answers to some of the questions I’d been asking, and cultivating creativity are all precious gifts that came out of a month that, only a week ago, I had feared was a fiasco.

The experience reminds me of a chapter in our book Serving Well: “If Your Year Has Been a Flop.” Sometimes in life we set goals and expectations for ourselves but fail to meet them. When we look deeper below the surface, though, we can see that God has been orchestrating the formation and transformation we need, even if at first glance our exploits look like failure.

Isn’t that so often how it goes? The best made plans oft go awry. We’re only clay, after all. But when we trust God with the process, we find that He knows how to redeem us from our sometimes myopic plans — and bring about the fruit He wants.

AI Doesn’t Scare Me Anymore

/ Elizabeth Trotter / Leave a comment

A year or two ago when I started hearing more about AI, my immediate reaction was fear. I’m anxious by nature, especially regarding technology, but this affected my livelihood. I feared I would lose my job to AI. No one was going to pay me to edit their work if a computer program could do it for them.

I thought to myself, These are the only skills I have! What am I going to do when I can’t get a job?! Fear about money and provision has plagued me much of my life.

As usual, I knew I was probably freaking out prematurely. I tried to quiet my amygdala and just keep going. I tried pretending like vocational Armageddon wasn’t just around the corner.

I leaned on my go-to statements of faith for dealing with money fears. I’ve got the Lord’s prayer—”Give us this day our daily bread.” I’ve got manna in the desert—God brings us what we need now, not for the future, and we don’t stock up because it will spoil. I’ve got decades of testimonies of the Lord providing jobs or clients or supporters just when we need them.

But I didn’t seem to be able to trust God when new technology was involved. It seemed too human-controlled, as though artificial intelligence were somehow out of God’s control.

Fast forward to today, and AI is still forging ahead. I’m not sure anyone really knows where it’s heading, but honestly, I no longer care. I decided that I was going to use the talents God had given me for as long as they were useful. If He sent me clients, I would serve them. If He gave me projects, I would tackle them. And if He gave me ideas, I would write them.

Now I think that not only will my profession (writing, editing, book coaching) survive, but that the main future for creativity is in faith-based writing and art. Faith-based writers aren’t looking for a shortcut. They’re looking for the Holy Spirit, and so are their readers. 

They want to tell a true story about what God has done in their lives. They want to pass the peace of Christ to their readers. They want to tell stories of meaning and hope and purpose, and they want it to be their own personal words, based on their own experiences and their own inner life with God. 

AI can never do that for them.

AI might be able to write news and business and economics and current events (albeit poorly at this point). But it can never tell of the transformation God has wrought in your heart. It can never touch the heart of God because it wasn’t made in the image of God. Only humans were made to reflect God’s heart back to Him. A computer program — even a large, sophisticated one — can never do that. 

Part of the thrill of writing and even editing is participation with the Spirit. And part of the satisfaction in the creative process is the work God does in us when we wrestle with the words, with the stories, with the truths He wants us to tell. We honor God not only with our words, but by submitting to this process.

We draw near to God when we write and also when we hold space for other people’s writing. Somehow our words touch the Father’s heart. He is the Word, and we are His children after all. When we write, when we read other writers’ work, we walk on holy ground. And faithful Christian writers — and readers — still want to tread there.

The Hats We Wear (introducing Elizabeth’s new book!)

/ Elizabeth Trotter / Leave a comment

Now available in print, Kindle, and on Audible! Check it out on Amazon here.

What women are saying:

“Raw vulnerability and profound truth. I wish I had read this book years ago.” ~ Danielle Wheeler (founder of Velvet Ashes)

“Wise encouragement. A fresh and honest voice.” ~ Michèle Phoenix (Christianity Today book award winner, TCK expert, and author of Pieces of Purple and Of Stillness and Storm)

“Thoughtful and courageous.” ~ Rachel Pieh Jones (author of Stronger than Death and Pillars)

“A readable and beautiful theological treatise on womanhood.” ~ Marilyn Gardner (author of Between Worlds and Worlds Apart)

“Left me feeling hope-filled and encouraged as I juggle all of my own hats.” ~ Lauren Wells (founder of TCK Training and author of The Grief Tower and What Made That Feel So Hard?)

I’m so excited about this book. For the last few years, I’ve been dreaming of publishing an updated version of my original Hats: Reflections on Life as a Wife, Homeschool Teacher, Missionary, and More, and it’s finally happening!

There’s tons of new material in this book. It’s nearly twice as long as Hats, but I also took out about half the original material, as it was reprinted in Serving Well. I reorganized the sections and fully edited each chapter, so this is very much a brand-new book.

Matthew Stock designed this beautiful cover, coordinating it to Jonathan’s Digging in the Dirt while also reflecting the original Hats cover that Jonathan created for me.

So that you can get a better idea for what this book is all about, I’m going to share the back cover material for The Hats We Wear, along with the new preface and the original preface from 2018. Enjoy!

Back Cover

Little girls don’t know they’re going to grow up to be women who wear so many hats. Daughter, sister, friend. Professional, mother, wife. Our hats can weigh us down, and our vocations can exhaust us. The roles we inhabit stretch us in so many directions that we sometimes fear we will break.

Sometimes we even forget who we are.

In The Hats We Wear, Elizabeth Trotter takes us back to the beginning, to the foundation of our faith and who we are as children of God and daughters of the King. She explores our intense emotional worlds and the work of embodied living, then leans into the three specific hats of marriage, motherhood, and homeschooling.

Join Elizabeth on this journey of reflection. Walk with her as she seeks God amidst the hats of female life. Sit with her in the mundane and the sacred. Wrestle with the practical and philosophical implications of living life as a woman of faith.

As you read, you’ll meet someone who frequently does things the hard way first, flailing around worrying and wasting time on unnecessary details. But in seeking the Lord and listening to the wise people in her life, she eventually finds a path forward. 

She invites you to do the same.

Preface to The Hats We Wear (2025)

In the spring of 2018, my husband Jonathan decided to surprise me with a sweet Mother’s Day gift: a book of my writings about womanhood. He gathered articles I’d written on theology, marriage, motherhood, and homeschooling and published the collection on Amazon. He called it Hats: Reflections on Life as a Wife, Mother, Homeschool Teacher, Missionary, and More. I loved the cover he designed and was grateful to have a lot of my writing in one place.

The next year, however, Jonathan and I published Serving Well: Help for the Wannabe, Newbie, or Weary Cross-cultural Christian Worker, and much of the material in Hats was republished there. Over the years, I kept writing, and eventually I realized I wanted to update Hats, adding some newer content and removing duplicate material, much of which related more to my life as a missionary in Southeast Asia than to the broader conversation of Christian womanhood.

So for this version of the book, I removed a dozen chapters and added over twenty-five more, keeping only sixteen from the original twenty-nine. I wanted to distinguish this book from Serving Well, which focuses on ministry life, though I did keep a few chapters which are too foundational to my life and faith to remove. I’ve thoroughly edited and rewritten each chapter, so this is basically a new book.

The first three sections are hats that all women wear, regardless of whether they are married or have children: the practical theologian, emotional human, and embodied woman hats. Then in the second section I dig into the more specific hats of wife, mom, and homeschool teacher. I hope that the words contained in these pages will resonate with your lived experience and that we will forge a bond across space and time.

In preparing this book for publication, I was struck by how similar my struggles have been throughout my life. How wise my past self seemed, fresh from the fires of learning a lesson I find myself re-learning in the present. We are forgetful creatures, and so the Lord must teach us again and again. Is it any wonder He tells us so often to remember?

And so I offer these stories to you, trusting that they will speak to your heart and mind through the goodness of the God who calls us to Himself. May we seek Him first, above all others.

Preface to Hats (2018)

No matter your background or experiences, being a woman is hard. That’s partly because being a human is hard. It’s also due to the many roles we women tend to carry in life. Daughter, sister, friend. Professional, mother, wife. Marriage and motherhood are indeed holy vocations, and they require much of a woman. Whether we work outside the home or from within it, our vocations sometimes stretch us so much that we fear we will break.

The truth is, there’s not a lot of preparation for marriage or motherhood. Certainly, we can read books. We can read books on how to have a great sex life or how to build a godly marriage or how to live out biblical submission, but when it really comes down to it, we marry a human person, not a book, and our husbands also marry a human person—us. A lot of marriage is simply trying new ways of doing things and seeing if they work (including, at times, seeking professional or pastoral help).

It’s the same with motherhood. We can read books on natural childbirth, healthy homemade baby food, and the most godly parenting—or the most logical. But nothing can really prepare us for meeting our child, some mysterious arrangement of our own DNA, or someone else’s. No one can prepare us for their likes or their dislikes, their strengths or their weaknesses. We have to discover these things for ourselves, over time.

What follows in this book is precisely that: the things I’ve discovered over time. There are articles and essays on marriage, motherhood, homeschooling, and the Christian life. In case you don’t know me, here’s a bit of background: As of this writing I’ve been married for nearly eighteen years, having gotten married at the age of eighteen. I’ve been a ministry wife almost that entire time and have been living overseas as a missionary wife for the past six years. I’ve been a mom for fourteen years and have been homeschooling for nine. This book is my lived experience wearing all those hats.

Find The Hats We Wear on Amazon in ebook, paperback, and audio book versions.

What toilet paper art is teaching me about life and creativity

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by Jonathan

Every evening, my little girls create.

Every evening, my little girls take the cardboard innards of toilet paper rolls and they create beauty. In the bathroom.

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Every evening they create, and every morning I find the dried up pieces piled up on the floor.

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They don’t seem to notice the great impracticalities of their efforts. They don’t seem to care that no one will see their work or admire their skills. They just do it for the joy. They do it because they like it.

And they remind me that it’s possible to make even a bathroom in Cambodia a place of art. It’s possible to see beyond the leaky sink, the bare light bulb, the plastic door, the smelly drains, the cracked tile, the rusty doorknobs, and see beauty.

I want to be like that. I want to create for the joy of it. I want to write and speak from the fire and joy inside, not for the acclimation or accolades from the outside, and regardless of whether or not the space is perfectly designed for creating.

I want to speak laughter and joy into the mundane.

And when the internet gets a bit tense and people get a bit fired up, I want to remind people that “toilet paper art on plastic door” is a thing.

And whether anyone notices, and whether my work ends up in a pile on the bathroom floor tomorrow morning, I will still create.

Will you?

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*In our house in Cambodia, the bathrooms consist of one small room made entirely of tile. The toilet, sink, and shower occupy pretty much the same space, and the door’s made of plastic.