Author Interviews
From Black Hills Picture Books
Martha, what (or who) inspired you to write this book?
When I was first diagnosed with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS), I joined a couple of email groups for Christians with the condition and began to read the same types of stories over and over again from people of many different faith traditions and backgrounds. The common pattern was for people to get progressively sicker from chemical exposures at church while they tried and tried to get church members and leaders to understand the issue. They would eventually give up trying to attend and would feel forgotten and abandoned when they did.
It didn’t take long to realize there was a need for a book that educated Christians about MCS and toxicity issues. The conviction that I should write it myself took longer. It seemed like a daunting task, and I fought the idea when I first felt that God was asking me to do it. At one point I told God I was willing, but I asked him to be very clear in his direction. Not long afterwards, my sister sent me some tapes of a Beth Moore presentation. In one of them she said “Tell your story” and remarked that some of us should write our stories down. Then she talked specifically to someone named Martha. I assume she was talking to a Martha in the room with her, but when I listened to the tape, I felt pretty sure that God was talking to me.
What did you enjoy most about writing it?
I enjoy research and learning new things, and what I learned for this book was directly applicable to my life, which was nice.
What was the hardest part about writing it?
There’s a great deal of pain in the MCS community. It was hard to be reminded of the overwhelming needs day after day and to feel so limited in my ability to make a difference.
Does this book apply to people who are not Christians, too?
The warnings about how untested and potentially unsafe common products are and how we’re all being affected by them absolutely apply to everyone. I also write about the struggles that are common to people with MCS regardless of their beliefs. I address church members and leaders directly at times, but a great deal of the book is information that anyone can use.
What would you say to someone who has no family or friends who understand their MCS?
First I would say that I’m sorry and that trying to help with that situation is one of the reasons I wrote the book. The challenges are both emotional (we need validation) and physical (we need people to take our needs seriously and to avoid exposing us to things that make us sicker.) Joining a support group can help with the first part of that equation, but the second half is trickier. I would urge people not to give up hope, though. I know of many situations where family members and friends slowly began to understand and change harmful behaviors. Sometimes it just takes time.
What message would you most love for Christians to come away from the book sticking in their heads and hearts?
Seemingly small decisions about products we use can have big consequences, both for ourselves and for people around us. Caring for our bodies and loving others means paying attention to chemicals.
What is the easiest thing churches can do to minister and bring about hope for those with MCS?
I’d love to see churches both find a way to include people who can’t attend in person and make their facilities more accessible and toxin-free. Bringing people into Bible Study and other groups through video conferencing or even just by phone really isn’t hard. As for making changes to the physical environment, getting rid of fragranced products (air fresheners, cleaners, hand soap, etc.) is probably the easiest first step to take.
What is your favorite song or Scripture that relates to this illness?
There are many, many songs and scriptures that have sustained me on this journey of MCS. Today what comes to mind is Isaiah 43:1-2 which says, “Do not be afraid, for I have ransomed you. I have called you by name; you are mine. When you go through deep waters, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown. When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up; the flames will not consume you.”
From the standpoint of trying to educate and advocate, I find God’s instructions to the Israelites about mold (in Leviticus 14) to be helpful. God didn’t tell them to just ignore the toxin or pray it away or assume that their faith would protect them from its effects. He gave very detailed instructions for avoiding and removing it.
What is your favorite way to relax or bring calm and refreshment to your soul and body?
As you implied in your last question, turning to scripture and uplifting music can be extremely helpful. I have a 30 page list I made of some of my favorite Bible verses and I go back to them again and again.
I also find that my mood can be improved with humor. I have a lot of humor sites bookmarked on my computer, and I’ve learned that spending 10 minutes or so reading “dad jokes” or watching cat videos can generally pull me out of a funk. I walk as often as I can, and when I do, I try to remember to focus on gratitude and thanking God for all his gifts to me. When I turn to him, he’s always there, and when I remember to look for blessings, I find them.
Thank you so much for sharing today! Thank you for the beautiful work you have created in this book.
Why did you decide to pursue a career as an author?
I was a missionary in South America when I got very ill and was forced to return to the States. When I returned, I needed to earn some money from home (essentially from bed) and the options seemed rather limited at the time. I have degrees in Education and English, so a job writing Continuing Education Unit courses was a natural fit. I wrote test questions and later began writing online articles.
I never had any intention of writing a book, and when I first felt that’s what God was asking me to do, it seemed like an overwhelming prospect. Eventually, though, I began to see it as an extension of the missionary call I first felt as a teenager.
When you are writing, what does your daily schedule look like?
I try to write when I’m feeling most alert and have the most brain power, which tends to be early in the morning. I often write early in the day, take a break, and pick up again in the afternoon. The tricky thing for me is that I have a long list of things I want to do first thing in the morning (prayer, exercise, sauna, etc.) and there are only so many early morning hours to go around. I’ve finally given myself permission to write when I’m not feeling my best, knowing I can edit and improve things later, when better mental functioning returns.
When writing non-fiction, what kind of research do you normally have to do?
For many years I wrote articles on addiction and behavioral health and was often self-conscious and paranoid about the research I needed to do. Usually a formally worded online search through reputable scholarly journals would give me the information I was looking for, but occasionally I found a need to google phrases like “What’s the cheapest way to get high?” which I was always afraid would put me on someone’s radar screen. Once I was on an attorney’s site looking for information on an addiction-related legal question and a chat box popped up asking me if drug use had gotten me in trouble with the law. I left the page pretty quickly.
When it was time to write Chemicals and Christians I really didn’t need to do a lot of research, because I had been studying the topic for personal reasons for years. It was mostly a matter of just organizing the information I already had.
How do you choose the topic for your books?
I’ve only written one book, and I would say that the topic chose me more than I chose it. I became very ill and in the process of trying to regain my health I learned how potentially dangerous the products we use every day can be and how unregulated and untested they are. I also learned about (and joined) an entire underground world of people shut out of society because of their reactions to commonly used chemicals. It began to really sadden me that people were continuing to get very ill because no one was warning them to avoid problematic products, or at least warning them loudly and insistently enough that they got the message. I was also deeply grieved at the lack of accommodations for the chemically sensitive, especially in the church setting.
The common advice is to find a market niche and write for it. I didn’t do that. I wrote a book because I had something to say. I felt a bit like the prophet Jeremiah did, when he talked about trying to hold back the message God had given him to share: “It’s like a fire in my bones! I am worn out trying to hold it in! I can’t do it!” (Jeremiah 20:9b, NLT)
When writing non-fiction, how do you keep the books from becoming “textbook”renditions to making the stories come alive so people are interested in them?
I spent a lot of time thinking about that issue when writing Chemicals and Christians. My goal was to make the book interesting and engaging, of course, but I also really wanted readers to be able to see themselves in the stories I shared. I wanted them to take the warnings seriously and to avoid the tendency we all have to think “it couldn’t happen to me.” I did my best to break up fact-heavy sections with personal accounts from chemically ill people, and I made sure to include quotes from men and women, old and young, in the hope that all readers could relate to at least one personal account in the book.
More from Martha
When people talk about taking the road less traveled, the implication is generally that there was a choice involved. I’ve made choices at times to wander down lonely trails, such as deciding to become a missionary and move to a country in crisis. Water and electricity were rationed, grocery store shelves were empty, a cholera epidemic raged, the president disbanded congress, inflation hit 10,000 percent, and active terrorist bombing shook our house on a regular basis. Most mission organizations and all non-essential embassy personnel left the country and those of us who chose to stay found ourselves on a very sparsely populated path.
At other times in my life I’ve ended up on roads less traveled not by any decision of my own, but by circumstances beyond my control. During my decade of missionary service, my health steadily declined and I was forced to return to the States to look for help. It wasn’t easy to find, but I eventually learned that Lyme disease, mold exposure, and the chemical onslaughts of a third-world megacity had overwhelmed my detoxification system. I discovered I could climb out of bed and function if I avoided anything that would make my full metaphorical barrel of toxins overflow. I also discovered that was much easier to do in theory than in practice because of the overabundance of untested and unregulated chemicals in common, everyday products.
My health condition introduced me to a world of chemically sensitive people, all of us living isolated lives, unable to safely access most medical care, shopping, schools, and churches. I’d been deeply saddened at having to leave the mission field and wondered why God had removed my ability to serve, but not the sense of call I felt. I gradually began to understand that I still had a calling, but to a different population. I felt God asking me to speak for people who are generally unseen and unheard. I want the Christian church to not only see us, but to find ways to open their doors and provide the spiritual nourishment and connection we so desperately need.
As I was discovering the needs of the chemically sensitive population, I was also learning how quickly it’s growing and how easy it is for anyone to join. I began to understand the connection between everyday chemical exposures and common mental and physical health conditions and symptoms. So the other side of my call is to warn healthy people, or those who haven’t yet connected their chemical exposures and health complaints, that it’s wise to be careful – that being a good steward of the physical body doesn’t just mean getting eating, sleeping, exercise, and relaxation right, but that avoiding toxins is a huge piece of the puzzle.
I’m not someone who always had a burning desire to write a book. I wrote it because I had something to say and a conviction that God wanted me to say it. I want healthy people to stay that way, and I want chemically ill people to be seen, heard, and reached with God’s love. My deep desire is for Chemicals and Christians to help save people from unnecessary suffering.
From For the Love of Literature
When/how did you decide to become a writer?
I grew up in a family that valued words. Both of my grandmothers were college English professors and my father was a pastor who consistently preached beautiful, lyrical sermons. I started writing poetry almost as soon as I could hold a pencil. I still have a copy of a poem/prayer I wrote as a young child in which I thanked God for sleet. I needed a rhyme for “everyone we meet.”
I studied English in college and grad school, but unlike most of my fellow students I never had any desire to write a book. I did enjoy writing poetry and essays, and after I married, my husband and I wrote music together.
When my health forced us to return to the States after serving as missionaries, I needed something I could do from home. I began writing Continuing Education Unit courses, and then online articles. I was comfortable keeping my writing projects short and still had no inclination at all to write a book. Bit by bit, however, I began to realize I had something to say and to become convinced God wanted me to say it. Choosing to write a book felt a lot like choosing to become a missionary: less of a self-directed decision and more of a saying, “OK, God.”
Who was/is your biggest inspiration?
I’m deeply inspired by many of the chemically ill Christians I’ve met on my health journey. Their suffering is very real, but they hold tightly to their faith and encourage me with their examples of Christlike character in the midst of very challenging circumstances. I’m also inspired by the healthy friends and family members who support those of us with chemical illness, especially the spouses who take their “in sickness and in health” vows seriously.
Describe your book in five words.
Be careful with common products.
Do you have a favorite or special place to write?
I write outside on my patio as much as I can. There’s a lot of wildlife in my neighborhood, so sometimes deer or rabbits will join me, and I almost always have a chorus of birds to listen to. I’m outside now, and I have a butterfly and hawk in view.
Do you prefer traditional books, ebooks, or audiobooks?
I don’t listen to many audiobooks, but whether to purchase a book in traditional or ebook format is a question I constantly debate with myself. There are certainly pros and cons to each, and they seem evenly enough balanced that I generally end up making purchase decisions based on price. When price isn’t a consideration, I often find myself buying print versions of nonfiction books and choosing the ebook format for novels.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers?
The most helpful advice I got and would pass on was from a fellow author who counseled me to keep my book title clear and simple. She told me that sales from one of her books were lagging, but took off again when she simply changed the title to something plain and straightforward. By the time I talked to her I had already experimented with three or four titles, all of which were attempts to be clever or artsy, but none of which clearly communicated what the book was about. I often download Kindle books when they’re offered for free and don’t get around to reading them for a while. Thinking about the frustration I sometimes feel at seeing titles in my list that give no clue to the books’ contents convinced me she was right. Readers may not know exactly what Chemicals and Christians is going to be about, but they can at least guess that it’s not going to be about flowers and Buddhists.
From Artistic Nobody
Does writing energize or exhaust you?
Most of the time writing energizes me. Something that exhausted me when writing Chemicals and Christians, though, was trying to keep up with the ever-changing internet links in my endnotes and resource section. It felt like bailing water from a leaky boat. I finally just accepted that even if all links were active and correct on the day of publication, there was a good chance at least one of them would be wrong a week later.
How did writing this book grow you spiritually?
At various points in my life I’ve felt the need to re-examine my theology of suffering, and writing this book provided a natural reason to do it again. Do I still believe there’s purpose and meaning to suffering? Do I continue to trust in God’s love for me even if he hasn’t chosen to heal me yet? Do I truly expect him to bring good from the pain and messiness of my life? It was helpful to stop and ask myself those questions again and to reaffirm that yes, I still believed those things.
Share something your readers wouldn’t know about you.
In the midst of the COVID-19 craziness, I began thinking about the fact that I was less anxious than most people seemed to be because I’ve experienced similar circumstances before. When I was a missionary, I lived through a cholera epidemic and also frequently shopped in stores with empty shelves. The experience of being stuck at home for long periods of time is also not new to me. It’s my daily reality because of the limitations imposed on me by chemical sensitivities. While everyone else was feeling their world getting smaller, I was feeling mine getting larger because of the sudden abundance of online entertainment and social connection options.
What is the most difficult part about writing for you?
In general, the hardest part for me is knowing when and how to bring a piece of writing to a close. If I’ve been given an assignment with a specified word count, it’s a bit easier, but when I’m writing a blog post (or book), I’m always navigating the balance between including all the information I want to share and keeping the piece short enough that I don’t lose the reader’s attention. I’m also a fan of neat and tidy endings that refer back to points made earlier and tie things up with a bow, but those aren’t always easy to write.
How do you do research for your books?
When I wrote Chemicals and Christians, I didn’t follow the pattern of choosing a topic and then diving into the research. I’d already spent years studying toxins and how to avoid them so I could improve my own health and keep myself out of bed and functional. Writing the book was a matter of sharing what I’d already learned through books, journals, and conversations with doctors and fellow chemical illness sufferers. I can still fall into a rabbit hole of study and exploration on any given day, but it’s such an important topic and so relevant to me personally that I can’t imagine not continuing to try to learn as much as I can.
I recently had the opportunity to chat with author Martha McLaughlin about her new book, Chemical and Christians. I’d love to have you get to know her, and check out her book. It’s such an important subject in today’s chemical world.
Martha, let’s start out learning about a bit about you. Tough question here: If you had to give up snacks or music while writing, which would you choose?
Despite the fact that my late husband and both of my sons earned degrees in music and my house has always been filled with it, I really prefer a quiet environment when I write. I find it challenging to manage two verbal tasks at once, so trying to put words together while vocal music is playing (or a television is on or people are conversing around me) isn’t something I enjoy. Instrumental music distracts me less, but sometimes relaxes me to the extent that I lose my focus. I don’t actually snack much when writing, either, but at least snacks don’t interfere with the writing process. I could easily give up both.
What was your funniest moment as an author?
I’m not sure anyone else will find this funny, but it amused me. The background is that I’ve often experienced “imposter syndrome” – the tendency to downplay achievements and feel somehow like a fraud. Once when I was serving as a missionary in South America I met someone who worked with another mission agency, and after I answered a few questions he said “Oh, you’re a real missionary.” I stared at him in utter shock, because I had the completely opposite view. He was the real missionary and I was just someone commissioned by a mission board who was stumbling along, doing the best I could.
I’ve experienced the same thing with other roles. I was getting paid to write for over a year before I could comfortably say, “I’m a writer.” Somehow in my mind, though, there’s a difference between writer and author, so when someone asked me if I was an author, I wasn’t prepared for the question. I was in the post office mailing copies of my book to friends and family members when someone remarked, “Those look like books. Are you an author?” and I froze. It felt like everyone in the building was staring at me while I stammered, “Um, uh, well” before finally managing to squeak out, “Yes.”
On the drive back home I replayed the scene in my mind and concluded that yes, I was technically an author, just not a real one. By the time I got back to my house, though, I’d started finding my thought process funny. I was mailing copies of a book with my name on the cover. The words and thoughts inside the book were mine. What exactly did I think a real author was? I’ve been practicing this and I’m going to say it now. I’m Martha, and I’m an author – a real one.
What is your favorite time of day to write, and why?
In general morning is my favorite time because I tend to be most clear-headed and energetic then. On the other hand, I like to write outside as much as possible, and the weather is best for that at different times of day depending on the time of year.
Does writing your book bring healing to you, personally?
Writing Chemicals and Christians was helpful for me in some ways, and challenging in others. It was good for me to delve into scripture and to remind myself of God’s promises and faithfulness. On the other hand, it was difficult to spend so much time being reminded of the challenges of chemical illness and the very real needs of the chemically sensitive community.
Why did you write this book?
I wrote Chemicals and Christians so I could be a good steward of the information I’ve been forced to learn the hard way. Every day I see people being harmed by chemicals in the products they use, and it saddens me. I’m also grieved for the people with chemical illness who have no, or very limited access to church. Deciding to write the book wasn’t a decision I made lightly, but I became convinced that God was asking me to do it.