Denae Stevens

I grew up overseas, as the daughter of missionaries. My childhood was full of moving from place to place, and this is a trend that I’ve carried with me into adulthood. At the moment, my husband and I are living in England with our five children, developing relationships with some extended family that live here. Stateside, we call Missouri home, and both have ties to Concordia Seminary.

I think a lot about the idea of vocation, especially as a woman who has spent most of her adult years as a homemaker. In college I studied theology, early childhood education, and music, but didn’t really feel called to any sort of career in those fields. Today I enjoy writing and painting, which bring me true joy, yet both are still very much on the fringes of my day-to-day existence. I’m in the process of trying to slow down and listen to God’s tugs on my heart, responding to the call I feel to create without neglecting the other vocations already established in my life: to be a faithful spouse, a good mother, and someone who serves her neighborhood in love. But such is the story of every woman–the struggle to find balance in a world that will stretch you out in a million different directions. While I know true balance can never be achieved, I do believe that with Jesus we can find wholeness, a single identity from which all other vocations flow, and never ending grace for the many times we fail. It is these meditations that lead me to write; that other women might be encouraged in their search for true harmony of purpose.