A New Season: After Maternity Leave

It’s a fascinating thing to step away from a job for 10½ weeks. Those projects you never thought would be complete? Someone finished them. That final endorsement? It arrived. Deadlines were met. Periodicals and books and curriculum were mailed.

Publishing is cyclical, and I was delighted to watch those cycles progress while I was on maternity leave. (I mostly watched all this from afar via Facebook and occasional emails.)

What I was doing and reading

All this happened while I was getting down to the “Tooty Ta” with my two-year-old (over and over and over again)

and feeding a baby or shushing said baby into dreamland (repeat countless times).

AmeliaAndGraceIn these weeks, I enjoyed reading books on “theology for new parents and other tired, anxious people,” parenting, children and sleep, newborns, and a fascinating book with many points of resonance called Mothering Mennonite.

Points of connection

All these books fit my own life as a parent of a newborn, and now that I’m back to work I want to know about the seasons of your life right now.

What kinds of books and resources interest you right now? What concerns or life events are you facing? Is there a topic that you’d like your congregation to engage?

As we at MennoMedia and Herald Press work on titles for 2014 and make plans for 2015 and beyond, please send me your ideas.

A glimpse ahead

Here is some of what we at MennoMedia and Herald Press are working on for 2014:

  • Shine, our new Sunday school curriculum for children and junior youth. (Take a sneak peek at the story Bible here.)
  • Vacation Bible School, with “Welcome! Give and Receive God’s Great Love” as our theme.
  • A book called Faithful Living, Thoughtful Dying: Preparing for a Good Death.
  • Historical fiction called Jacob’s Choice, the first in our Northkill Creek trilogy.
  • A memoir called Bonnet Strings: Loving and Leaving the Amish.

Hopefully some of these forthcoming titles spark your interest or connect with your own seasons of life.

Amy Gingerich
Amy Gingerich, Editorial Director