Because the Cynthia Elsomens with heart at the matter radio, for women seeking the elegant subcut wisdom. In Song of Solomon, the bride in the grim expressed their love for each other. Here's an example of the writing in the early chapters of this book. Let him kiss me with the kisses of his lips.
You are all together beautiful, my love. There is no flaw in you. You have captivated my heart, my sister, my bride. You have captivated my heart with one glance of your eyes.
God intended for marriage to reflect the beauty of Christ's love for the church, but they're often bumps in the road and sometimes chasms that seem impossible to overcome. In fact, life can present impossible pitfalls. Cynthia Rupte is our guest today and she wrote Aswater's Gone Pie, which is a novel about shipwrecked marriage and a broken line. Welcome, Cynthia.
Thank you so much. Cynthia, can you kind of give us a short synopsis of the story? Aswater's Gone Pie is the story of a woman whose husband has been incarcerated for the last five years. He's just about to be released from prison.
Everything had fallen apart really before he went to prison and there's been very little communication between the two of them. So she's not at all sure when he's released. Are they going to have a home and are they going to be able to rebuild their marriage from the scraps that are left over from it? Now lack of hope seems to be a theme in this book and I'm wondering if you have picked up on that in our society today or it's just something that you wanted to address because you thought it was a good topic.
I have often been reminded that everything that I write both in fiction and nonfiction truly can all be boiled down to this idea that we need to be hemmed in hope if we're going to be able to survive what life throws at us. And so for 33 years when I worked for Christian Radio, I wrote and produced a radio broadcast that was called The Heart Beat of the Home. It began and ended every broadcast with hope and over the course of time I came to realize that I was drawn back to that subject over and over again. And yes, you're right, in this present world, it seems like there that most people have a hard time hanging on to that concept for very long.
It seems very fleeting. They long for it. They all long to have hope whether they're a person who is walking a path of obedience to God or they're walking far away from God. They want hope for their situation.
They just don't know always know where to find it. And where do they seek it? That's interesting thing. Where do you see them seeking that hope?
Well, kinds of wrong places. Remember that phrase that sung from a while ago that said, looking for love in all the wrong places? I think people often look for hope in all the wrong places too. They either put their hope in someone else and every human is human, so they're going to fail.
We're going to disappoint one another. They often look for hope in just busyness and activity in trying to fill their schedules as full as they can and they somehow feel, and I don't know where we as Americans especially ever got that idea, but they somehow feel that full activity was the equivalent of hope or the equivalent of joy. And very often times it's the exact opposite that stepping back and acquiring ourselves is where we're going to reconnect to hope, the hope that we need. We know that there are people who turn to things like alcohol misuse or drug misuse or any number of self-destructive habits or activities because they've got this longing for hope and they don't have any way to capture it and hang on to it.
So I don't think there would be much argument if we talked about it, even if we just walked out on the street and interviewed people on the street today and said, does this seem like a hopeful world to you or not? Many of them would say very rapidly without even thinking about it. They would say, no, this is a place where hopelessness is trying to overcome hope and our role then is to overcome that sense of hopelessness with a true hope. I sense that too and even believers are struggling with that in a lot of ways because so many changes are happening in our society so quickly that it's easy for us to just kind of be like it just kind of weighs us down a little bit more.
So how can we keep from getting there? It's interesting you would say that because all of us respond a little differently to the crisis that are thrown at us and some, it seems like it rolls off their back a little bit more easily just because of their personality or maybe because of the foundation of the home life that they had, the education that they had, the way they grew up, the people that they have around them now or their faith foundation that they've had. And it seems like they whether just a little bit better, there are others who are completely devastated when these hopeless situations come into their lives. But I was reminded just last night that God says in his word is my arm too short that it cannot save.
I believe that's from Isaiah 59 1. And I that as I applied that to the things I was concerned about and the things I was worried about at that moment, I realized we always trace back to that. Our God is not a dinosaur with short arms that can't reach the food that he needs. Our God is a God who even expresses that to us.
Do not fear that I am unable to save or rescue. There's a verse in the New Testament that says that we have this hope as an anchor for our souls. I definitely believe that that is so critically important in this day and age. It was in the book and it is in our lives.
Yeah, I agree. And as I read, I just felt it too. I just I sensed it in my soul and I thought that I have done that myself even as a believer. I've gotten to the exact same place where I have felt that way because I've let myself get distracted or like you were saying, even believers get really, really busy.
Can you just address? I mean, not everybody is an introvert. I tend to be an introvert. And you as a writer, you probably can't relate to that.
But what about the extrovert? Does he need that quiet time too? How would you advise someone who gets their energy from people to have that moment with God to get clots to him? That's a very interesting question because I approach most of those kinds of things from my own perspective as we all would.
And I'm trying to think about the people in my life who are truly energized by being around other people. Oftentimes, it's the camaraderie of maybe a small group that during that small group time, they're really connecting with God in a deeper way than sometimes those who would stay home from the small group because they're that introverted. My husband is one of those people who he best connects with God in nature. And if I stand in the way of him going out for his fishing trip that day, I may be standing in the way of him having his most intimate moment with God that day.
So we're all different personalities with extroverts. I still believe and I think it was unqualified when God said in quietness and confidence, you will find your strength that there probably is an innate place that needs to get quiet. There are very few places in the word where God is asking us to get noisy or get busy. There are a few but they're very specific.
But we hear so often quiet your heart, still your soul. He leads us beside still waters to refresh and revive us. What are those places that take to get noisy? Well, I know in say Psalm 150 where it's talking about he wants the praise to sound like clashing symbols and loud trumpets and he expects us to express ourselves during those moments of great joy and celebration with noise and we can pull out all the stops and do that.
But those I think are the and that isn't even noise really, it's loudness but it's not even really noise. But when we think about Jesus and we think about his own character, he may have been introverted even though he had a very public ministry for three years. We see that for him that taking time away even from the 12 men that he had drawn around him and his close followers, even the women that were following him, he took time, he had to take time to pull away from all of that and be with just with God his father, just that, nothing else. Nobody else that had any input or encouragement for him, not even the people that were ministering to him at the time were what he needed.
He needed a lone time with his God and we do. One time I remember writing a radio script that talked about our appointment with God to be there, to hear from him, to commune with him, to be in his presence and we related it and it was a poor metaphor but we related it to someone who doesn't show up for blind date. God will always be there waiting, he'll always be there and then the question is are we going to show up? I really like that.
You know, I think about what you're talking about and I see, you know, the Lord has helped me to see as I have gotten older that those moments when I don't even have to get upset but I start doing it and I have to just say okay but God is in control, let it go because he's here with you and you can trust him and that's a lesson I learned in kindergarten. Why is it taking me, why is it takes so long for it to sink deep? You know what I mean? I think you probably have been living it all through your life since those kindergarten days but then when we come to those really big deep crises, those are the times when God has to drill it deeper into our hearts and when we when we when we kind of open our eyes to what we know, when we open our eyes to that idea of what we know in our spirits and let that dictate what our body does, what our mind does, what our emotions do, what our responses do, what comes out of our mouth.
That's been embedded deep inside since we memorize verses as little children which is also a call to parents to make sure that even as little children they're learning the word of God because that is our only link to the hope that we're going to need later in life and then that will come kind of bubbling up where it can't go deeper down when we come up against those situations that really press us into a place of that seems hopeless. Most of the time when it seems hopeless is because we can't see anything happening. We almost would call it a mental exercise to just turn that thought around. There are so many things in life where if we speak a certain thing about ourselves that is the meaning or that we know feeds into the self-esteem problems or feeds into our inadequacies and everything that there is another way to frame that phrase and the enemy wants us to keep us, wants to keep us to feed it all the time and the Lord wants us to be not just lifted up but empowered to go into what we need to do.
Turning those phrases around and just looking at it from based on the truth of what we know from God's word. And you know you can see why growth is important because as you get older you see God take those same passages and touch you with the same passages in a different way and you understand them deeper. Isn't that beautiful? Yes.
Yes. And it's like the scripture just kind of jumps out and grabs you. So true. I think when we probably first learn that phrase that talks about it being a living word we, especially if we learn that young we think what can that possibly mean and then we see that.
It's alive meaning it too is not stagnant. It's not ever stagnant or static. It lives and moves and breathes in us and through us and we see new things like you said every day something new. I went through a passage of scripture the other day with my highlighter and I knew I had read that passage many times before but I thought let's just see if there's anything new in this.
And I found myself underlining almost every word. It was just alive in a new way and I wanted to hear from God. And so he responded to me and showed me things in his word that were meaningful right before a real tough test that I was having to walk through. It was a book deadline that was a hard one for me.
I determined that I was going to read the book of Philippians every day that I was writing that until I reached the deadline. I just felt that that that was a place in the Bible that was going to help me and make me strong enough to finish that task strong. And after the first two days I thought well I think I got it now because I read every word and I underlined a lot and I saw beautiful things but it turned out that through the entire process of the time up until that deadline I got something new every day from that same short passage of scripture. Dispelments.
Dispelments. There are no limits. That's true. I was thinking about this book and how there's a struggle with a marriage here.
And we as women there's always times in our lives that even if we have a good marriage there's a rough spot. How can we as women be careful that we come alongside in a positive way through those marriage struggles? Obviously the Lord brought someone to this lady. How can we do that for others?
That's a great question. In the book is what is gone by. There are a couple different scenarios of kinds of people that would find themselves in a situation like that. For some it might start off with a good marriage but then there's a crisis that hits the marriage and topples it.
And for others it's that they're trying to maintain a home but the spouse is deployed or there might be a situation where the spouse works away from home all the time. So the spouse who remains at home is trying to maintain this, hold it all together in their home life. They're trying to maintain a relationship, having to do so much of it long distance if they're able to be in communication at all. And it's the most natural thing in the world for that to fall apart or for that to be so difficult that one person or the other might grow weary of that.
So part of it I'm sure is our building in safeguards against that sort of thing. Realizing ahead of time being prepped ahead of time for how this particular event or this job or this deployment or this incarceration is likely to affect a marriage and then guarding against those things. And I'm watching that happen with someone whose husband is serving a prison term right now and we would assume that wow that's going to be really hard even if she says I'm going to be faithful and remain true until he's released in seven years. The truth of the matter is that we all wonder how is she going to do that.
And there was only one solution. She and her husband intended and did plow deep into their connection with the Lord individually and that obviously affected their connection with one another. In the book it took a long time before them to realize that's what had to happen in the life of this family that I'm watching. It was over a course probably of nine months or so where they were really wrestling with the event that was going to send him to prison.
And as they both of them completely surrendered a band in themselves to Lord we believe you can lead us out of this stronger than the way we went in. And they're a testimony to that it's happening every day and being such a witness to other prisoners. Now there is such a band of prisoners in that particular prison where he's serving who come to him for marriage counsel because they walked through the cell doors and thought that meant it was over and it doesn't have to be. So yes how can we help other people with that?
That's another layer of it that can be very tricky. Many of the people in Emmelon's life in the book were great listeners. They did not preach to her but they just lived their faith before her and they embraced her into their circle of faith. They gave counsel when counsel was welcome and they stepped back from offering counsel when she wasn't ready for it.
They watched her and loved her and cared for her and served her with no hidden agenda just because they believed that's what God wanted them to do. And it was this beautiful outpouring that came out from her very soul that responded to that kind of love and affection and attention that she hadn't really known in a lot of other ways before in her life. When you're with the Lord or you see the Lord at work it is so much grace and it's like that verse in John 1 16 that talks about how he has given us grace upon grace. It's just dumbed out and poured and pounded and piled up.
And there's a sweetness about his presence and when you've been there you can sense it. For Emmelon also once she came to a place of believing that grace and that mercy was for her she also came to a place where she could serve others and it was in the serving others and giving other people second chances that she began to get hope and get encouraged for her own relationship with her husband that there was a courage that was built up by her reaching out to other people. That so often happens when we're in our own broken places or our own hurting places but we see someone else who's in pain. When we reach out to them we find that our own pain has somehow lifted.
We would call it a miraculous thing because there are not enough words to describe the way that God works in this in these sort of situations but it's really true. We can read the word of God, we can pray, we can have friends circled around us who are going to encourage us but then it's in reaching out and serving others also that we often find that's a big part of our healing. Yes, yes. The Lord has shown me that and I think as I've got older I've realized how much I as a woman need other women and I did not catch that earlier.
So can you talk a little bit about how we can spend time together and you don't want to go into a ladies group or going out to women with the idea of give me but yet you do need that. So can you give a kind of a balance there? I think that in almost every book I write there's a pattern of strong female friendships in the books because I too understand how much that means and in my particular life my sisters happen to me among my strongest friends and they're always there for me and they're not hovering when I don't need them to hover but there's such a beautiful part of my life and I'm so grateful for them. They're truth tellers but they would never tell me the truth in a harsher and unkind way.
Even when they have to confront if that would be the circumstances. It would be couched in such love that I wouldn't even feel the sting of it. That's a real lesson for me too as I reach out and talk to other people or as I look at the hurting around me and look for ways that we women can band together and be strong together in what we are facing each of us. I think there's a lot of it that has to do with dropping all our masks and all our barriers and all our pretending and all our facade that everything is just fine with us and being real vulnerable with one another.
Not in such a way that we're just spilling it all on the table and making a bigger cesspool of problems than there already are. But being willing to be authentic with one another is a key factor in our ability to really not just relate to one another but then it kind of paved the way for God's truths to come back in a rush and a flood into that life of the one that is hurting. There's so much parallel to not just the women in the Bible and the way they cared for one another but also to even pioneer days when the women in pioneer days had to be so tightly knit whether they liked each other's personalities or not. They formed a circle of protection around each other to be able to make it through the grave things that they were facing all the time.
Oftentimes it's real easy in today's culture for us to get so caught up in the world's mentality that we are asked to or that were compelled to protect ourselves alone. That the me is what I need to protect. That we really lose one of the greatest gifts is the us that we need to protect. Why if you don't have sisters?
Do you look for that in your church, neighborhood? What suggestions do you have? One of the first suggestions is to plug into a great church and not everybody has the opportunity to do that. Oftentimes when you plug into a great church whether you're male or female it will take a while for you to really feel connected with them and that's another one of those places where serving is probably going to build some of your strongest relationships within the church.
If you walk into a church and you're a newcomer and you still feel like a newcomer six months later if you can find a way that your gifts can be utilized within the church, some way that you can serve. During those times of serving on a team with other people those are sometimes some of the sweetest friendships that you build. I think that it friendships on the one hand it's not something that is easy to go looking for. I remember a time in my life when I was without that dearest friend that I felt like my spirit really needed and I began to I prayed for that friend to come into my life.
It seemed like it took forever and then the day dawned that this woman who happened to be my neighbor who was also 22 years older than I was had expressed some things that had been longings of my heart and we formed a friendship forged a friendship then that has lasted for almost four decades. And it's a different style now she's well into her 80s and I'm not yet but there is a different style of friendship in a different way that we communicate with one another but so making it a matter of prayer can also be an important element of that. It sounds selfish sometimes to pray for a friend it sounds like a little third grader praying for a friend on the playground or something but God knows the importance of those friendships they're so they're protective and they provide for us and they help us think clearly about something that we're really muddied about and they will laugh with us when we need to laugh and cry with us when we need to cry and those those female friendships are just vitally important. And I think that's what you show in your book is that you see the woman in the beginning coming into not only a difficult situation but a difficult marriage and then the Lord puts people around her and surrounds her and you see her soften and change and it's a beautiful story and I just want to thank you for taking the time to pour yourself into that book.
Thank you I appreciate that Cynthia. And so if anyone would like to get in touch with Cynthia you can contact her at CynthiaRootte.com and it's about R-U-C-H-T-I. That's it. And I want to thank you again for just being here with me.
Thank you so much.