Finding a Voice

Last Friday, as part of my trip to Write! Saskatoon, I detoured to Rosthern to interview Margaret Epp. Her nephew Gerry and his wife Ruth met me there and were a great help with filling in gaps and moving the conversation along at points.

Here's a quick draft/remembrance of our visit:

Miss Epp, winner of the Leslie K. Tarr Award in 2003, was a professional writer from age 35 to 77. When she was just seven years old, God told her that she would be a writer. At 95, she recalls that moment vividly. She was at a boarding school in China when “the revelation” came, and went outside to stand under a tree and absorb it.

Even so, did not begin writing for another 28 years. It wasn't a practical for a Mennonite farm girl, but the depression made space for many young people to receive higher education, so Margaret attended Bethany (now Bible College) with her brothers. After graduation she was invited to stay on to teach English (which included manners). She taught until age 35, at which time she just knew it was time to start writing, and spent that first writing winter alone in the old family farmhouse: wood stove, no electricity, no car, only a phone and dependence on the neighbours. Her family was dubious about the living arrangements, but they did not questioned the writing, unlike other people in the community who were convinced that writing fiction meant Margaret was dealing in lies.

So Margaret wrote fiction, mainly for children and teens, mainly for Sunday School publications through Moody and Zondervan. When that stream dried up in her late 50s, the Lord led her into several projects that required major travel: a travel diary, a history of Bethany, a history of missions at Prairie Bible School, a missionary biography, a fiction-based-on-fact historical novel about women in the Steinbach area, and the story of a mission church in Europe. I love the thought that these travel projects came later in her life. You just never know when and how you might literally take off!

Just as clearly as when she had begun, she knew at 77 that it was time to lay down her pen.

Now at 95 she lives in the Mennonite nursing home in Rosthern. She has been blind for 5 years. Gerry and Ruth say her world is closing in, and being without sight is a terrible loss for someone whose life was words. Margaret told me, "I am lonesome for writing." In the nursing home, Margaret said her writing doesn't matter: “No one asks about it.”

During our visit, a childhood friend stopped in and when the friend left, Margaret was disappointed she couldn't stay longer and said, "I have been longing to see her."

Lonesome and longing. This haunted me all day at Write! Saskatoon. Gerry & Ruth said Margaret kept office hours, but we couldn't work out her schedule. When asked what hours she kept, Margaret said, “Seven and a half in the morning, seven and a half in the afternoon, and seven and a half in the evening.” Mmmm ... maybe not. Never mind the details for now. She wrote A LOT and diligently. Pages were her constant companions. No wonder she gets lonesome for writing.

I asked what she's been hearing from the Lord lately. She replied, “Be still and know that I am God.”