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But Christian publishers weren't snatching her up. Perhaps they were thrown off by her history in secular publishing, perhaps they questioned her convictions or marketability, but they steered clear of offering her a contract. "When they rejected me, it was like God was saying, 'Do you really want to write for me?'" she says. Deborah answered Him with a prayerful "Yes." She continued to submit scripts and to court agents, all the while living on her credit cards and praying for Christian publishers to open their hearts to her work.

Three years passed without her selling a novel—one of her stories appeared in a compendium called The Story Jar (Multnomah, 2001)—and she was questioning her career change. Then publisher Jamie Raab of Warner Books told Deborah that Warner was planning a new Christian imprint and invited her to become part of it. "I knew God had a special place for me right there at Warner," she says.

Her writing has thrived since then. "It's wonderful writing for Warner," Deborah says. "So many of the letters I've gotten say, 'This is the first Christian book I have ever read and I want to read more like it.' And I'm getting so many letters, maybe ten times as many as I got before."

Paul writes in Romans 5 that "suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope." This truth is evident in the story of Deborah's personal and literary conversion.

This change is giving her a chance to literally rewrite her own history. She's currently acquiring the rights to her previously published novels and writing a "redeemed version" of each. In addition to making cultural updates (on fashion, language, the advent of cell phones), she will revise other passages to reflect her new understanding of living out her faith. "Sex is out and God is in," she says.

So far, her faith-based rewrites are working well. She says deleting scenes that don't honor her Christian beliefs and replacing them with depictions that celebrate her new values is "almost like using interchangeable Legos."

Bearing witness to faith is the crux of Deborah's latest work, If I Had You. The novel tucked under her grandmother's pillow at the nursing home is a story of hope and healing and a testimony to the power of God's love and the work of the Holy Spirit. She offers her readers a melding of the lessons gleaned from her personal experience with abortion, faith, and the healing power of God's love. Through this work she explores her faith, and hopes to nudge others toward finding God's peace.

The novel also prompted conversations with her mother and her grandmother about Deborah's abortion, the healing she's experienced, and her choice to go public with her story. "My mom and my grandmother have talked about it now," she says. "It's been a beautiful thing."

Sarah Sawyer is a Minneapolis-based culture writer and arts critic. For more information on Deborah Bedford, visit www.deborahbedfordbooks.com.

Copyright © 2005 by the author or Christianity Today International/Today's Christian magazine.
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