Insert [Brother]

A couple years back I got a Facebook message from a guy I went to college with.

“Heyyyyy. Have you seen [insert book title]?” He asked after a little bit of small talk. “Because they mention you in there a few times. You mighhhhht want to take a look.”

Hmmm.

Little hint for ya all:
When books say good things about you, people report exactly what they say. Word for word.
When they say bad things, people suggest “you might want to take a look.”

In my younger days, I was in more of a rush to celebrate and/or mourn the feedback of complete strangers:

[Insert time blogger dude used me as as evidence that Christian publishing is superficial.] [Insert time writer-woman implied I was spiritually shallow because my book didn’t include enough of the Romans Road to convince her I was an appropriate beacon of salvation.] [Insert radio producer who called to cancel because ‘frankly, I just don’t agree with anything you’ve said and I don’t know what I would possibly ask you in an interview’.]

But a few things have changed since then. For me. Who knows – maybe for them too.
[Insert coming to grips with the things that didn’t work out. …Er coming closer to coming to grips with…anyways.] [Insert crossing out of my 20’s into my 30’s.] [Insert the alternative school teens I work with cussing me out so many times it makes the blog-critics seem like my biggest fans.] [Insert a little growing up, a little sucking it up, a little learning to hack it.]

In fact, when I finally ran into the book my friend alerted me about in a bookstore, I was sort of relieved.
It wasn’t like…calling me names that have to be bleeped out or hating on my infant son or anything. :)
The main dilemma my friend was getting at, as I see it, was that the book plucked a few quotes from my book out of context.
It exaggerated my positions in order to build a reactionary case against a movement I’m not even part of.

Possible responses came to me.
[Insert writing flaming open letter to the authors on my blog. Bonus: extra blog hits from Christian blog vultures.] [Insert telling all my faith-world friends about it and getting them to raise a real vigilante ruckus.] [Insert keying my book title into their car doors…oh wait, did I type that?]

But this is where the 30 year old Sarah who doesn’t have the energy to waste on all the wounding decides that inserting one word over this critic puts it all in perspective: [Insert ‘brother’] [Insert email to author.]

Hi [insert name], This is Sarah, author of [book in question]. One of my friends told me about how your book mentioned me and I just checked it out. I was sorry it seemed to paint me as anti-church since I’ve struggled through a lot to maintain my allegiance to the church. But that being the case, I’m pretty sure in the end, that we’re on the same side, working toward the same end. If you ever want to talk about this topic in the future, you can feel free to write me and we can have some open dialogue. I can tell you some of my story and some of my hopes and maybe we would discover that we’re more teamed than it first appeared.”

[Insert a little more story-trading. A little more conversation. A moment or two of understanding.] [Insert releasing bitterness by, whenever possible, not making an opponent out of a brother.]