Jo Bower's Blog

There are several things that define me:

I am a pastor’s child – which means I have not lived my whole life in one place. I am fascinated by culture from exposure to Midwestern, Southwestern and Southeastern cultures. I’ve lived in cities such as Wichita, Kansas and Dallas, Texas, but also Alva, Oklahoma,Garden City, Kansas, Fredonia,Kansas, Westmoreland, TN, Bowling Green, KY and Deville, LA. All those places have things in common, and they all are very different from each other.

After growing up in the parsonage I still married a pastor. I know, that doesn’t make sense to most people. The life of a pastoral family usually makes a woman run from potential mates who feel they are to be pastors while it often pulls men to follow in father’s footsteps. That is if the father is a good man and dedicated pastor and father. If he’s not, everyone bails from the pastoral life, and sometimes bitterness causes them to run from God. Fortunately my father was a pastor, father, and person of good stature. He was a teacher more than a preacher, as is my husband. Our family is mixed church goers, but all still believe to some degree. From childhood people have told me I’d be a good pastor’s wife, and at certain stages I resented it. But, in the end God sent the right man into my life and convinced me He’d take care of me if I once again consented to the Pastoral life.

I am a musician.I always thought I wanted to be a professional musician. I’m an improvisational sacred pianist (an arranger). I play a mean piano for God. My terrific pastor husband is also a violinist, and we have wonderful times playing together.

I was once telling a friend that I didn’t think I was the typical musician in nature. After he quit laughing, he assured me. “You talk like a musician, you think like a musician, you feel like a musician….It’s too bad you don’t sing like a musician.” That’s okay… I’m a pianist. I’m passionate about the music.

But something happened to my ambition to be a professional musician. God sent me in a whole new direction. As a result, I write Inspirational Science Fiction, Readers’ Plays for Small Churches, and two-person dramas.

So, I’m a writer. My great-great-great-(I think that’s enough) uncle on my father’s side was James Fenimore Cooper. My father’s mother was a Cooper. All that does give me a bit of inherited talent. What I do with that is my responsibility. I love words… but not quite as much as I love music.

I love God. I am a God follower. I’d say a liberal evangelical. I bet you didn’t even know there was such a thing. If you say an evangelical is one who believes in Jesus as the instrument of salvation, and introduces me to God as I accept him as God’s son, okay. But I am not part of the very conservative, anti-everything I don’t understand or like movement. Godly people are found in all denominations and ungodly people are found in all denominations. Church does not define my relationship with God, but my relationship with God is the source of my relationship with the church.

My Christianity is defined by my relationship with God and others, not what I stand against. I have my personal opinions, but I don’t insist on calling them requirements for salvation. And that’s as close to a soap-box as I intend to go. I love God with all my heart, soul, strength, and mind, and my aim is to love my neighbor as myself.

My God-given dream is to reach out to people I will never meet. I have seen some of that happen, and will spend the rest of my life finding ways to live that dream.

I have been in the process of conquering a lot of stuff, very little of it caused by my father’s profession, but some made more pronounced by it. And I fell in love. Life in the pastoral home has not been easy, but not the most difficult way to live either. There is much I love about it. But some of it gives me high blood pressure. Sound like anyone’s life doesn’t it? The whole process is much more relaxed as God and I have arrived at a no longer struggling place. I’ve given up a lot,

and received a lot. I’ve turned loose of a lot, and God’s filled me up.

My life’s motto has always held up: “Life is not Dull.” And the one thing I really want in life looks like it will happen: When I’m so old I can no longer do much and contribute a lot to everyone’s life, I want to have given so much, played the piano so long, written every word in me, that I can accept without bitterness life as it is each day. I’m trying to give it all and be willing to step aside when it’s time to turn it over to the next generation.

So, that’s probably more than you wanted to know.

My struggle with God will be in a book that will be out next summer called I Think I Lost My Why.

Oh, and yes, God has taken care of me and my husband. In the last year God sent my husband a new job/calling /whatever you want to call it. He is now the Chaplain to the world’s most wonderful hospice : Compassionate Care Hospice. I have a new lifestyle that I think I am liking a lot. God is good.

I have finished a new book of devotions based on my journals. It is called “People of Faith in a Changing World.” Comments have been very positive, and one of our Sunday School classes used it for a series of lessons. It is available in paperback as well as e-book Amazon (Kindle).

I am also about to re-issue my last novel “The Snow People of Shushimee” which had a problem when Amazon changed platforms. I cannot wait until I get it finished as it has been dragging on for a while.

The covid virus attacked my husband and sent him to the hospital for several days. We certainly had a Faith enforcing experience because of the response of God’s people and God’s faithfulness. As a result I am back to writing devotions, and will add them to the blog.

We have  come full circle and have returned to the Oklahoma City area, a new chruch and new opportunities for service. God has provided a place to live, family to be around, blessings, challenges and joys. While we desperately miss old friends, we are finding new connections and reconnecting with even older friends. God is good.

May God be close to us all.

Jo Bower