by Maggie Wallem Rowe

Last month in this space, we talked about the problem of platform – will a publisher be interested in your work without a big one? (For a refresher, click here.)

But before you even begin to build a platform, you need to establish your identity as a writer – one with credibility in the publishing industry. That’s what conferences like BRMCWC are for: helping you find your voice, craft your words, and learn the mechanics of getting your work out into the world. Many who are new to our industry find it hard to articulate those first four confident words: “I am a writer.”

Why is it so hard? Because in a world that worships celebrity, it’s hard to feel like a somebody if you think nobody knows your name.

As Christian writers, our work springs from the identity we find as God’s beloved children. Romans practically shouts this truth:

“Hosea put it well: I’ll call nobodies and make them somebodies; I’ll call the unloved and make them beloved. In the place where they yelled out, ‘You’re nobody!’ they’re calling you ‘God’s living children.’” Romans 9: 24   The Message

BELOVED.  Yes, you.

A cover story in my local newspaper some time ago has been nudging my soul again, elbowing my ribs that God has that word for someone reading these words today.

It was about a woman nearing 80 named Ella Bird who lives in Snowbird, a Cherokee community not far from my home in western North Carolina.  They don’t take pictures in these parts, they make them, and the one they made of Ella arrested me, practically brought me up on charges of gawking.

Her face was like a burnished chestnut, lines carved out by laughter curving up to her fringe of shiny black hair. “Ella Bird,” the headline signaled. “Beloved Woman.”

You’ve never heard of her.  She’s not listed in Wikipedia, and the national news has never mentioned her. How can they with crazed killers, perfidious politicians and suchlike grabbing us by the chin and forcing us to look at their doings?

But here in the Smokies, a quiet woman from Snowbird was the headliner.

In Cherokee tradition, the title of Beloved Man or Beloved Woman was bestowed on warriors once acclaimed on the battlefield who have grown too old to fight. The days of defending hunting grounds long past, the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation now reserves the honorific for men and women who demonstrate the Cherokee core values:Spirituality, group harmony, strong individual character, stewardship, tribal identity, education and sense of humor.  (Smoky Mountain News, March 6-12, 2019)

Education? Ella Bird never went beyond the seventh grade at her Snowbird school established by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. An accompanying photo, though, captured Ella in full academic regalia, resplendent in a black gown and purple velvet hood as she received an honorary doctorate from the University of North Carolina Asheville.

Group harmony? Ella raised her five daughters and five sons with help from her mother, papa present but income mostly absent. Despite the privation, members of her community point out with pride that none of Ella’s children fell victim to the true enemies of their people: drugs and alcohol.

Spirituality? Ella’s nomination for the highest title the tribe can bestow cited the virtuous woman in Proverbs 31. As one member testified to the Tribal Council: “She’s rare, she’s decent, she’s nice, she’s pure, she’s slow to anger…We all love her dearly and everybody calls her sister or mom or grandma, because that is what she is to all of us.”

According to the tribe’s website, only ten people have been honored as a Beloved Man or Beloved Woman in the last 75 years. Ella Bird is one.

Our white majority culture has no such honorifics, and yet we worship the same God Ella does. Red and yellow, black and white, we’re all precious in his sight.

And you know what He calls us?

Beloved.

Maggie Wallem Rowe is a national speaker, dramatist, and author whose first book, This Life We Share, was a finalist for the 2021 ECPA Christian Book Award in the New Author category. Maggie has also been a TEDx presenter. Her second book, Life is Sweet, Y’all: Wit and Wisdom with A Side of Sass, released from Tyndale House Publishers in 2022. Maggie writes weekly from Peace Ridge, her home in the mountains of North Carolina. MaggieRowe.com.