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It's lunchtime, and Karyn Henley, author of the popular children's Beginner's Bible (Mission City/Zondervan), is serving seconds of her delicious homemade soup around the big oak table in her sunny Tennessee dining room. But suddenly everyone stops eating. Her two teenage sons, Raygan (called Ray), 17, and Heath, 13, break up with laughter as they listen to their dad recount funny family bloopers. Soon, everyone joins in. "Is this a typical meal in the Henley house?" I ask, but only Ray hears me above the din. With a broad grin, he nods vigorously.
After lunch, Karyn, 44, chuckles about her family's antics as we settle into comfortable rocking chairs. "Our life is kind of crazy, but it's always exciting," she says, clapping her hands to break up a mild skirmish between her cats, Nip and Tuck.
The exciting life Karyn refers to includes the myriad children's products and home educational resources she's written—such as My First Hymnal (Sparrow), Snip & Tell Bible Stories (Group Publishing), and Great God, Grateful Child (Allen Thomas)—as well as a jam-packed schedule of seminars and family concerts that keep Karyn, husband Ralph, Ray, Heath, and musician/puppeteer Sheri Smith on the road nationwide and overseas. Their family-run ministry, which included performances in churches and at conferences twenty-five weekends last year, equips parents and educators to become more "child-sensitive." At each presentation, Karyn sings songs and tells stories from her books and tapes, Heath plays a mime called Mimic, Sheri plays keyboards and performs with her puppet, Monica, and Ray and his dad run the sound. Ralph, 45, works full-time producing Karyn's products at a nearby office/studio.
Despite Karyn's passion for children, fourteen years ago she found her work as an up-and-coming music writer often taking precious time away from her young family. She met frequently with other writers on songwriting projects and attended exciting but time-consuming writers' meetings with the likes of Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith.
When she became pregnant with Heath, she realized she had to make a choice. "I knew I couldn't be the mother I needed to be and pursue my career full-time," she says of her decision to back away from a promising career. "If I couldn't take care of my family, I had no business trying to take care of anything else. I told the Lord, 'I don't know what you want me to do, but I only want to do what you want me to do.' My life hasn't been the same since!"
Karyn began changing her priorities, started homeschooling her older son, and slowly found herself writing books to help her as a mom. One such project eventually resulted in the best-selling Beginner's Bible, which has sold 2.9 million copies and been translated into seventeen languages. New this fall is Karyn's latest project, God's Story (Tyndale), a chronological verse-by-verse Bible for children who've "graduated" from the preschool Bible storybooks. And to follow up the popular video Five Little Ladybugs (Allen Thomas), she's added two more to the series—I Feel Like a Giggle and Kitchen Band Parade, both out in May.
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