I’m excited to have author and funny girl Cheri Williams here on my blog today. I think you’ll agree, she is a hoot. {Aside, please take this post with a large dose of humor.} She’s a fully neurotic, sometimes depressed, practically-a-pastor’s wife, who proves the castration of your man is practically a biblical mandate. She spends a lot of time on Twitter, and Facebook, and has an awesome new Oddly Godly website!

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Hello, My Name is Cheri Williams—But Please, Call Me the Castrating Christian

“Cheri, you can’t write for the general and Christian markets. One will suspect your motives, the other will object to your content.”
“No one in the Christian market will publish it. Not with that word in there.”
“You’ll definitely get hate mail.”
“Your reputation and publication opportunities may well be compromised.”
“Publication could harm your husband’s ministry, hurt your children.”

All that—from my brothers and sisters in Christ?

Because I wrote an essay called How to Castrate Your Man in 7 Simple Steps?

The Godly leaders I’ve sought counsel from say, “Yes. And more.”

I didn’t even want to write it—I swear!

The last big blowout I had with God? My refusal to write this very piece.

God whispered, “Write it.”

“No one will buy it.” I pouted. “It’ll be a big fat waste of time!”
Huffs and puffs and much stomping of feet later (uh, those would be mine), “It’s just for you and me? Fine.”
The Essay That Causes the Crossing of Legs and Clearing of Rooms flowed to doneness with record speed.

I promptly filed it under Never-EVER Share.

But then…my dear writers group friends bullied me until I brought it for critique. “Send it to Mount Hermon!” they cried.
The oldest, most prestigious Christian writers conference around. Right.

Long story short: I sent it (Hey—it’s a Godly group. When they speak, I listen.). Uber-awesome editor with huge Christian magazine bought it. It later got bumped.
I’d been obedient, gotten paid, and wouldn’t be known as the Castrating Christian. Can you say Happily Ever After?

Except…it wasn’t The End.

Castrate just released as an ebook, along with four other essays written “for just God and me.”

I’ve been a wreck. A shaking-with-fear mess. I’ve not-so-secretly prayed my husband would ask me not to publish it. I sought more Godly counsel, surrendered it to unbelievable amounts of critique and unabashedly begged for prayer. The cautionary counsel remains the same; the constant stream of Satan’s fiery arrows have yet to slow.

“Then why are you doing it, Mom?”

My daughter asks a valid question. Why am I publishing something so controversial, something with potential to offend, something that will likely bring me, maybe even us, pain?

I’m publishing How to Castrate Your Husband in 7 Simple Steps & Other Oddly Godly Epiphanies because the women who read the essays shared them with their husbands…had marriage-strengthening conversations…are re-evaluating their actions. I’m publishing it because people, who don’t know God, have never read the Bible—they read these essays. I’m publishing it because God continues to remind me: It’s time to quit blaming and start reconciling.

But more than anything, I’m publishing it because I want to be someone who follows God.
I want my kids to see, even when it’s scary, we follow.
I want them to experience what I believe—God is bigger.

He’s bigger than every fear on my list.
He’s bigger than all of it.