by Jodi Hendricks
When I first dreamed of becoming an author, I pictured long mornings with a steaming cup of coffee, quiet hours of uninterrupted study, and afternoons spent at my desk letting words flow free onto a page. In my imagination, the life of a writer looked peaceful, contemplative, and wonderfully distraction free—a rhythm where inspiration
and productivity danced hand in hand.
The reality couldn’t be further from that picture.
I am a mother of four. I homeschool each of them, which means my days are filled with math lessons, science experiments, and history discussions often conducted while folding laundry or preparing lunch. On top of that, I serve as the Executive Director for a statewide nonprofit and hold multiple roles at my local church. My “office” is a dining room table that doubles as a classroom, a family meeting space, and occasionally an art class studio.
Peaceful and undistracted?
Hardly.
Some days it feels like my life is one long string of interruptions stitched together with coffee and prayer. For a long time, I thought this chaos disqualified me from writing anything meaningful. I believed that creativity required silence, and that without perfect focus my words would be shallow and sloppy. I assumed that “real writers” had studios, office doors they could close, or at least children who could entertain themselves quietly for at least ten minutes. My life looked nothing like that, and so the dream of being an author often felt like a distant, unrealistic ideal.
But somewhere along the way, my perspective began to shift.
Instead of viewing my responsibilities as barriers to writing, I started to see them as the very soil out of which my words grew. The interruptions became inspiration. The struggles gave me stories. The noise sharpened my ability to listen for God’s whisper in the middle of the commotion. And slowly. I discovered that my writing life, though not at all what I expected, was richer than I could have planned.
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Some of my most meaningful insights have come not in silent study but in conversations with my kids. Some of my most moving paragraphs have been written while dinner simmered on the stove and chaos buzzed around me.
What I once thought was an obstacle has become a gift—because my writing is not separated from my life, but deeply woven into it.
If I had been given the quiet, uninterrupted writing life I once envisioned, I suspect my words might have been tidy, polished, and perhaps a little hollow. Instead, my words carry the weight of lived experience, of real-time faith, of finding beauty in the middle of the mess.
My writing life looks nothing like I imagined—but it is so much more beautiful than I ever anticipated.
Jodi Hendricks
Family Action Movement, where she advocates for life, family, and freedom. A homeschooling mom of four, Jodi weaves faith and family into every page she writes,
encouraging women to embrace their God-given identity and walk boldly in His truth.
For additional information, visit https://jodihendricks.com/
