Author: Deanna Cooner
Located in: Blanchard
Submitted: November 21, 2020
Tell us a little about yourself. I have been a story teller since childhood having spent most of my life as an only child on a farm. As an adult, I spent fifteen years writing for newspapers, trade magazines and commercial magazines. In 2006 I completed a PhD in Biblical Counseling. My counselees often had a difficult time completing their homework. Thus I penned a series of novels based on the concepts found in the biblical book of Jeremiah. The dragons in the books are the other gods and the story addresses the same issues the Israelites faced as God gave them warning. The series covers five decades from the Vietnam war to the social media culture. The series addresses the cleverly disguised teaching in churches that is not sound doctrine, feminism, witchcraft and abortion, as well as homosexuality and pornography. Book five uses the New Covenant to reveal the heart of an estranged parent from their beloved adult child, in the same way God's children, the Israelites rejected Him.
What was your motivation behind this project? C.S. Lewis wrote that pain is God's megaphone to get our attention. Any parent who has been abandoned by their adult child or an adult child that has been rejected by a parent, knows the pain God must have felt in Jeremiah 2:5, Thus says the Lord, "What injustice did you fathers find in Me, that they went far from Me and walked after emptiness and became empty?" (NASB) When my Christian daughter walked away from me, I understood the heart of God when He asked this question. The text ,"Estrangement: A Word that Spells Pain," was written in the depths of my greatest pain.
What do you hope folks will gain from this project? I pray the readers of this book will note that even in the midst of pain, God is faithful. I didn't understand then and still do not understand how my lovely daughter can be so cruel and what perceptions of life she has that would cause her to take such drastic actions to prevent me from even seeing pictures of my grandchildren. Suffering is part of life, but this suffering has no cure or relief except in the knowledge of Christ. There is nothing the rejected one can do to ease the pain except turn to the sufficiency of Christ. This is a growing phenomenon among Christian families. It is not addressed because the rejected suffers from loss and extreme shame, and the comforters have no idea how to comfort. This book focuses on God and how He dealt with his estranged children. In His grace and example we find endurance and peace and in time there may be comfort with reconciliation, but we cannot live life hoping for it. We live life in the hope of Christ for this present suffering is nothing compared to the glory of God. This book is for those who have been estranged from beloved family members and for those who seek to offer comfort such as counselors, pastors and friends.
How were you personally impacted by working on this project? The need to write this book hovered over me for months and gripped my heart with the tight grip of suffocation. I started writing my insights from Bible study as I sought God to restore my family. He didn't. Instead He showed me His heart and the rejection of His children. I don't know if my daughter will ever reconcile with me, but I know that I have a mandate to proclaim the goodness of our Lord to those who are rejecting Him. His heart is broken over the lost, "God is not slow but is patient toward you not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance." 2 Peter 3:9 (NASB)
Who are your influences, sources of inspiration or favorite authors / artists? In my story telling I was impacted most by Frank Peretti and Stephen Lawhead. In the secular writing I read Dean Kootz. From these writers I observed the craft of fantasy story telling with a biblical truth in the life of the characters. This was the method Nathan used to confront David about Bathsheba. It was the method used by Christ with parables to relate truths to His audience by sharing the events in a fictional characters life with common cultural knowledge of His audience. Everyone loves a good story and a story with truth can impact the reader and the writer.
Anything else you'd like readers / listeners to know: This book is not technically my best writing, but it is heart-felt and honest about the trial of family estrangement. There was some hesitation to releasing it to the public. However, I read others before I released it because I realized, even though the stories were all similar each one offered me a glimmer of hope. There have been moments of deep despair causing me to stop writing. However, like Jeremiah, I find a message that burns like fire in my bones. My greatest message is found in the Dragon Series books because they reveal Ephesians 6, "we battle not against flesh and blood but powers, principalities." Yet, in Christ we are overcomers and when we are fully dressed in the armor of God, the dragons will lose, even when adult children abandon their parents.
