Anne Marie Miller

Category: Writing

  • A Free Advent Devotional for the Hard and Holy Holidays

    Growing up, I didn’t know much about Advent.

    Christmas cantatas, yes.

    Live nativity scenes, yes.

    Advent…not so much.

    A few years ago, after I began attending St. Bartholomew’s in Nashville, Advent really took a hold on my heart: a time to prepare and reflect upon the coming Christ, his birth, death and resurrection, the narrative of Mary and Joseph, angels, dirt, mundane, pain, rejoicing.

    Over time, I’ve written a few blog posts inspired by the season or on Christmas in general. Because as mystical and ponderous Advent is, the holiday season is hard for many people–myself included.

    Family and travel and money and parties and finals and bad weather and schedules and so…many…things that distract and hurt and delight and remind us of a broken world, not a healed one.

    We yearn for hope.

    Last year, I compiled a month-full of Advent writings and made a little eBook.

    It’s free. 

    Just head over to Noisetrade and download it. 

    Please share it with your friends, your family.

    Study it by yourself or with a group of people.

    Print off a million copies of it and give it to anyone you think could find it helpful.

    It’s yours.

    It’s my prayer that by taking just a couple of minutes each day as we approach Christmas to stop and breathe and pray and hope and to know we aren’t alone in this hard and holy season, we can live vulnerably in the dualities of joy and sadness and pain and peace.

    Those tensions have been lived and wrestled in since the beginning of time but in this season we know the most beautiful moment is in our rest.

    And we can rest and know we are loved and can love, we can rest in knowing hope and holiness, and we can rest knowing our Savior has come (and is here, now).

    O’ come let us adore Him!

  • My New Book: 5 Things Every Parent Needs to Know About Their Kids & Sex – Cover Reveal!

    My New Book: 5 Things Every Parent Needs to Know About Their Kids & Sex – Cover Reveal!

    In Summer 2013, I wrote a letter to parents –Three Things You Don’t Know About Your Kids and Sex – and published it on my blog. Within a few days, millions of parents read, shared, and responded. They needed resources. With the help of doctors, psychologists, attorneys, counselors, law enforcement, technology and sex-industry experts, I researched, interviewed, and uncovered five things every parent needs to know about their kids and sex.

    Now the book is written, has been edited, and is on its way to be printed. It publishes in May 2016, but I don’t want to wait another moment to get this conversation started. So…here we go.

    You can go to the full landing page for the book here.

    [endorsement cite=”Rhett Smith, MDiv, LMFT”]’This is Miller’s best work. Miller’s book is really raw and really powerful, and an important lead in to this topic. She speaks as one with experience and authority, and has compiled a great list of stories, interviews, tools, questions and resources for parents to use with their kids.” – Rhett Smith, MDiv, LMFT [/endorsement]

    https://youtu.be/7xusuJ4XyZY

    Five Things Every Parent Needs to Know About their Kids and Sex: Real Help for the Toughest Talks

    Most parents dread talking about sex with their children. Anne Marie Miller loves giving “the talk.” As she has shared her personal story and talked about God’s gift of sex with almost half a million young people, she’s noticed some disturbing patterns:

    • Google is how kids learn about sex
    • Kids are learning about sex and viewing pornography earlier than parents think
    • The sexually abused often don’t tell anyone for fear of getting in trouble
    • Sexual messages are being consumed daily through mainstream and social media
    • Most parents think their child is the exception

    In this immensely practical and well-researched book, Anne:

    • Equips parents to have meaningful and age-appropriate conversations with their children about sex, pornography, and sexual abuse.
    • Advises parents on how to keep the lines of communication open so that their children know they can trust them with their fears, struggles, and mistakes.
    • Offers hope to worried parents that their children can grow up with a healthy biblical view of sex as a gift from God.

    [endorsement cite=”Dr. David Long, M.D.”]“Anne Marie Miller has done the work.  Her passion, intelligence and talent intersect and bring us something truly important in her book “Five Things Every Parent Needs to Know About their Kids and Sex.”  If we are honest with ourselves, it is easy to recognize the spiritual and sexual crisis facing our children today.  We may lack knowledge of the depth of this crisis that would stir in us a sense of urgency (Sometimes, we don’t know what to do with that sense of urgency!) Miller informs and instructs with humility and a confidence that is compelling. The intertwining of her research and her personal history gives the reader the distinct sense that she knows this topic inside and out, and it makes her determination to win back the hearts and minds of our children contagious. I am more equipped to be a better father after reading this book.”  [/endorsement]

    preorderbanner

    To inquire about Anne Marie Miller speaking at your event, please click here.

    For other requests (interviews, information, or trade review copies), please click here.

  • Look What God Did

    Dear 25 year old Anne,

    It’s me. Anne. Today you…me…we…? turn 35.

    Holy Moses, has it been a decade?

    I wanted to tell you four words: “Look what God did.”

    25 year old Anne, 2005 was the year you landed in the hospital so stressed out and so hurt from working at a church. You were 40 pounds overweight, working 90 hours a week, and glued to people-pleasing. You thought doing things for God was the same thing as being with Him.

    But it wasn’t.

    And over the next two years, as you resigned from that church and healed, you wrote about your journey. You helped others.

    God took that terrible mess and made it beautiful.

    A few years later, you had to do something terrifying. You had to open up to a group of strangers who were investigating the man who sexually abused you 12 years beforehand. Memories you buried so deep emerged and you even went into shock as you recalled them. You put words to the actions of what a grown man, a trusted youth pastor, did to a vulnerable high school girl who just barely had her driver’s license.

    It was like watching a horror film in your mind on repeat. But God gave you the words and the strength and the right medication and friends to help. The man was finally caught. His sins finally came to light. And God healed you and the shame and gave you ways to share your pain and His healing with others.

    God took that terrible mess and made it beautiful.

    When you turned thirty, everything was in full bloom. Life. Was. Good. You just finished writing your second book and still had a contract for more. You rode your bicycle across the flipping United States. California to South Carolina. You made friends in those two months that forever changed you and shaped you. And then the tragedy of divorce fell into your path. Grief swept you away but friends held on to you for dear life. It was a long, quiet, tough road of healing. And God was good even when everything was going bad. You learned this about Him then.

    A few years later, a strong and Godly man with a passion for truth and holiness and loving others and serving everybody who comes into his path humbly and out of the abundance God gave him met you in the most lovely Michigan town. He won your heart, even though you were still timid to give it, afraid of being hurt again. Then, when you were afraid, God met you in a living room on a cold night and music played singing “night must end.” God gave you this moment and said, “You can trust your heart to him.”

    So you did and you married this man on a beach at sunrise because you and he wanted to raise an ebenezer to the fact that God’s mercies are new every time the sun rises.

    God took that terrible mess and made it beautiful.

    And now, here you…me…we? turn 35. You live in west Texas and you pretend you’re Tami Taylor from Friday Night Lights and you’re minutes away from the church where you got baptized thirty years ago. Life has come in such a full and glorious circle. You’re surrounded by new friends, loving neighbors, and people who pray with you with babies on their hips and in the midst of toys in the kitchen floor. You sing praises to the God who took those messes and made them beautiful surrounded by the voices of others you call your church–your friends, your small group. Twice a week you get to see a few dozen teenagers who are uncovering the depth and breadth and faithfulness of God and it’s so exciting to watch your husband lead them and their eyes light up with every moment of new truth revealed to them through your Word.

    God took that terrible mess and made it beautiful.

    So, as another ten years passes and the wrinkles on your face grow deeper and gravity continues to pull you down, as people come in and out of your life and as you come in and out of theirs, even when those you love are dying or are sick, are broken and are hurt, know that God is good because God is good. He is not good only because He redeems; He is good because He allows things into our lives that need to be redeemed.

    All this to say, and always say, and never stop saying to a world who always needs to hear it:

    In everything, in every moment, God took it all and made it beautiful.

    Look. What. God. Did.

  • Managing Anxiety and Making Friends

    The fine folks at Christianity Today had me write a little bit about the challenges of community when you’re struggling with mental illness (or when you love someone who has a mental illness). Enjoy!
    With mental illness, community becomes more challenging… and more essential.

    I was a high school freshman when I had my first panic attack. Heart palpitating and lightheaded from heavy breathing, I laid down and tried to take deep breaths, but my lungs didn’t want to cooperate.

    What was happening? Was I having a heart attack? My heart kept pounding and my head kept spinning, and I wondered what they’d say the next day at school if I died. I could see the memorial page in the yearbook. Why couldn’t I take a decent school picture? I’d forever be remembered as the girl with a spiral perm and uncooperative ‘90s bangs. This fact only worsened my condition.

    My dad comforted me by telling me my “irrational fear” would go away, and it did—for a little while. But then it came back and stayed, 20 years of constant panic.

    Some days here and there, I’ll find mild relief, but I’m almost certain it’s here to stay. Most of the time, I’m functional and happy, and my anxiety lays dormant in the chemicals and synapses in my mind, hushed by medication that knows when it starts getting too loud.

    Even on the quiet days, my anxiety can put a wall up around me, whispering (or shouting) how it’s not safe to go outside, how I’m better off alone. But I know God desires more for me. He wants me to have community, real friends. People I can lean on and people who can lean on me.

    No matter who you are, cultivating friendships is a difficult process. As our developed societies have become more independent, we’ve felt the effects of disconnectedness on such a deep level, we’re afraid to admit it at times. Even though we have screens and pixels to connect us to anyone, anywhere, any time, we’ve never felt more lonely or unhappy in any decade in modern history. We’re surrounded by people everywhere we go—both physically and virtually—yet the need to feel that we belong somewhere is undeniably palpable.

    As if the symptoms of an anxiety disorder aren’t damaging enough, coping with any mental illness (to name just a handful: depression, bipolar, ADD, and obsessive-compulsive disorders) can add to the challenge of finding community.Real community. Friends you can be vulnerable with. People you let into those places in your life that seem unbearable…

    [[Read the rest of the article here.]]

  • Happy New Year!

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    Happy New Year from the icy plains of west Texas. Tim and I are almost back to Lubbock after a few extra days of adventurous travel. The new manuscript is due in two weeks and wow-it has been a wonderful learning experience. I hope you and yours had a wonderful holiday season. I’ll see you back online in a couple more weeks after that next book is turned in!

    Much love-Anne

  • Until 2015, I Bid Thee Adieu.

    You finally close the day’s work after reading and taking notes and asking questions.

    You stack the books, the printouts, the papers, the highlighters, the notebooks; you stack it all, on the dining room table for tomorrow.

    You save the manuscript.

    You close the computer.

    You walk away.

    And you hear a small voice whisper, “Add a chapter.”

    You argue back, “The title of the book is ’10 Things Parents Need to Know About Their Kids and Sex’ – You can’t just go and add a chapter!”

    He says, “Chapter 10 needs to be: Parents Need to Know There’s Hope.”

    And you get it.

    So you walk back, you make a quick change in the Word document and you press save again.

    Because no matter what the statistics, the stories, the reports, the trends, the media…no matter what:

    There is hope.

    It is with this post that I will bid you all adieu until the new year. I have 45 days until this manuscript is due and evidently, a lot more listening to do.

    See you then.

    With much love and gratitude,
    Anne

  • Free Devotional: Surviving Christmas: Advent Devotions for the Hard and Holy Holidays

    Growing up, I didn’t know much about Advent. Christmas cantatas, yes. Live nativity scenes, yes. Stolen baby Jesus dolls, yes. Advent…not so much.

    It was a few years ago after I began attending St. Bartholomew’s in Nashville where Advent really took a hold on my heart: a time to prepare and reflect upon the coming Christ, his birth, death and resurrection, the narrative of Mary and Joseph, angels, dirt, mundane, pain, rejoicing.

    Over time, I’ve written a few blog posts inspired by the season or on Christmas in general. Because as mystical and ponderous Advent is, the holiday season is hard for many people.

    Family and travel and money and parties and finals and bad weather and schedules and so…many…things that distract and hurt and remind us of a broken world, not a healed one.

    This year, I’ve compiled a couple old blog posts with a few other reflections (if you received my Advent emails last year, those too) and made a little eBook.

    And it’s free. Just head over to Noisetrade and download it. Please share it with your friends, your family. Study it by yourself or with a group of people. Print off a million copies of it and give it to anyone you think could find it helpful. It’s yours.

    It’s my prayer that by taking just a couple of minutes each day as we approach Christmas to stop and breathe and pray and hope and to know we aren’t alone in this hard and holy season, we can live vulnerably in the dualities of joy and sadness and pain and peace.

    Those tensions have been lived and wrestled in since the beginning of time but in this season we know the most beautiful moment is in our rest.

    And we can rest and know we are loved and can love, we can rest in knowing hope and holiness, and we can rest knowing our Savior has come (and is here, now).

  • Enjoy A Free Chapter of “Lean on Me” from the Folks at FaithGateway

     

    The fine folks at FaithGateway posted a free chapter of Lean on Me: Finding Intentional, Vulnerable and Consistent Community today. Here’s a little tease; you can click over to their website for the rest!

    They’re also offering 20% off the book, too! (Insert your own verbiage about stocking stuffers or Christmas shopping here…I’ll save you the grief.)

    Much love,

    Anne Marie

    ***

    Sometimes the only way to return is to go. — Josh Garrels

    Leaving behind four years of friendships in Nashville, I moved to California, confidently running, fearless in my decision to escape. It was like my runaway attempt when I was in kindergarten, except now I was taller than the corn stalks and could see my way to a new home. The safety I craved appeared to exist in anonymity. I had nothing to prove to anyone, no questions to answer or expectations to meet. Surely this was the right choice. The voice of my independence distorted the voices of my friends in Nashville telling me to stay.

    A new job, new friends, and the healing air of the Pacific Ocean blowing through the windows assured me my decision to move to California was a good move to make.

    After work each day, I drove to the house where I rented a room, perched up on the side of a mountain, and watched the sun drop into the ocean as though it had a five-hundred-pound weight attached to the bottom of it. This was my daily commute, and in spite of the small fortune I spent in tolls each way, it was breathtaking every time. My days were kept busy at a growing architecture firm where I helped plan events and managed publicity. It was easy to spend twelve hours a day at work finding something to improve or a new project to begin.

    The busyness didn’t bother me at all; in fact, it was a welcome distraction to the grief I was experiencing over the loss of my marriage. Soon, I found myself hopping from plane to plane, running across airport terminals all over the United States for company events. That accomplished two things: it caused a diversion to the growing pain I was desperately avoiding and it separated me from the beginnings of community I was starting to form in California. In the midst of my new job, I was also on a book tour promoting my second book, Permission to Speak Freely, which took me away from my new home in California even more.

    The stress of being a full-time author and speaker as well as a full-time publicity manager affected me physically, and I lost weight and couldn’t sleep most nights. But somehow this was okay. Only a month and a half into my new life as a California girl, in between a taping for a Christian television broadcast in Texas for my book and an architecture meeting in Arkansas, I sent a text message to my friend Liz. Liz was a friend who I knew would speak words of truth that I was willing to listen to.

    Me: Can I be honest? I’m not sure if moving to California was the right thing.

    A few moments later, she replied. Can I call you?

    Sure. Give me fifteen minutes to get to my hotel room.

    Fifteen minutes later, I sat cross-legged on one of the double beds in my hotel room in Little Rock and waited for Liz to call.

    “Why isn’t it working out?” she asked.

    “I just feel so disconnected. From everything. I’m traveling so much I can’t do things with my new friends in California. The time zone makes it hard to connect with my old friends back in Nashville. I’m starting to recognize flight attendants on the Dallas to Orange County segment I’m on every week. I feel as if they know what’s going on in my life more than my roommates even do.”

    “I think moving to California was a mistake,” she said without pause.

    “Um, well, that’s a bold statement.”

    “What do you want me to tell you, Anne? You’re running.”

    “I just needed a fresh start.”

    “No, you need to heal.”

    “I am healing.”

    “Are you?”

    I sat silently, staring at the dated pink floral pattern of the bedspread.

    “Go,” she said. “Go to the place where it hurts your heart so much you simply can’t stand it and you feel like you want to die. Go to the place where the infection is thick and rotting and it smells and burns. You have to go to the bottom of the wound and start there. It is the only way to begin healing. Where is that place for you?”…

    (READ THE REST OF THE CHAPTER HERE…)

  • How Do You Know It’s Safe to be Vulnerable?

    Do you have solid community in your life? I thought I could answer that question with an easy “YES!” until a crisis hit. It took that crisis for me to evaluate how I relate to God and to others.

    Today my book Lean on Me: Finding Intentional, Vulnerable and Consistent Community is officially out and available for your perusal.

    lean-on-me-endorsement

    My dear friend Shelia–who is a character in the book, and a protagonist in my life–said this about it:

    “Lean on Me is not a stale “how to” book with seven action points to automatically fix all your relationship woes. It is a story. A glorious, difficult, hope-filled story.”

    In order to have a rich community surrounding us, one of the key values we must embrace is vulnerability. In Lean on Me, I talk about this complexity.

    “A great misunderstanding in the world is that we must wait until we feel safe to be vulnerable with other people. They must earn our trust and show us they will not take our wounds and cause them to bleed more. We misconstrue the wisdom of guarding our hearts, our life’s wellspring, as a command to build a fortress around them.

    We are never safe from pain, and safety has nothing to do with vulnerability.

    Vulnerability will hurt…It is a paradox: once we realize being vulnerable is never safe, we are then free to be vulnerable. We guard our hearts by giving them to the Guardian. We accept the fact that hurt will come. We see wounds as gifts. When this dramatic shift in our spirit occurs, fear no longer controls us.”

    You can order Lean on Me: Finding Intentional, Vulnerable and Consistent Community as a paperback and as an eBook.

    If you want to read a few sample chapters of Lean on Me, you can do that here.

    We need each other and we get to carry each other.

    Much love,

    Anne Marie Miller