Sue Lani Madsen: For everything there is a season

Time to move on. It’s been nine years of meeting a weekly Spokesman-Review deadline, anchoring my calendar and shaping my schedule. Thinking, researching, and pulling together 800 or so words I’m willing to take flak for, every seven days. It is enough.

Journalism is a second professional career. It was an opportunity that grew out of a detour into politics as a candidate for the Washington Legislature in 2004 and 2008. Feeding the campaign website meant regularly writing political commentary and campaigning meant learning to ignore letters to the editor from critics.

Two campaigns cured me from seeking elected office again, but not from wanting to make a difference in public policy. I continued blogging on the all-digital Seattle Post-Intelligencer as a citizen journalist, which simply meant they weren’t paying me. The newspaper business is tough and getting tougher.

Practicing architecture also turned out to be good training for journalism. I was taught as a young architect to never put anything in writing that you didn’t want read back to you in front of a judge and your mother. In 30 years of professional correspondence, it was essential to separate objective observation from subjective evaluation, to back up professional opinions with evidence, and to avoid impugning the motives of others.

After taking a leave of absence to campaign full-time it had been hard to get my old enthusiasm back into architecture. The invitation to join The Spokesman-Review columnist lineup in 2015 was a literal godsend.

This isn’t the faith and values column, and I don’t write about it often, but I am an unapologetic Christ follower. In 2014 I had an epiphany. Not an allegorical epiphany, but an intense God experience in response to prayers seeking direction. It was time to write.

I applied my project management skills to this new calling. I stopped writing without pay at the Seattle P-I and worked on launching a freelance writing career. There were a few magazine pieces (paid), a few assignments for a couple of startup news websites (unpaid). It wasn’t working out. Deciding I must have heard God wrong, I gave up trying to make it happen.

There were other places to focus time supporting my family, neighbors and community. The ranch kept me busy in the summer of 2015 as we built up the goat herd and I set aside the idea of writing professionally.

Then out of the blue came the invitation from The Spokesman-Review to write a weekly column “to provide rural and conservative balance” to the local columnist lineup. And they offered to pay me.

Clearly God wanted the credit for making it happen.

I will be forever grateful for the opportunity to become part of The Spokesman-Review archives, and for the full armor of God deflecting the slings and arrows that came along with the gig.

There is a season for every activity under the heavens, a time to end and a time to begin. I had been praying over the question for several weeks before getting the “we regret to inform you” email explaining the changes in The Spokesman-Review, and it confirmed the decision I had made to resign after the election. It’s an amicable end and new opportunities abound.

Journalism will still be a part of my life, reporting for the Center Square and publishing columns on Substack. This new season also includes leading a public interest nonprofit dubbed the Washington Rural Environmental Network (www.wrensong.org). Our goal at the WREN is to bring a diverse chorus of rural voices to public policy discussions impacting rural communities. Founding board members include former Democratic state Rep. Brian Blake, of Aberdeen; educator Rick Perleberg, of Reardan; and state Rep. Joel Kretz, R-Wauconda. Joel was my primary opponent in the 2004 legislative campaign, and is retiring from the Legislature after 20 years of service.

The WREN project is another godsend.

If you are a praying person, pray for patience and discernment for my editor Kimberly Lusk as she continues reviewing letters to the editor and guest column submissions. She has always asked good clarifying questions, and improved my columns as a result. If you send in a letter to the editor for publication at The Spokesman-Review, listen to her suggestions to sharpen your writing. If you don’t think there are enough letters or guest columns representing your side of an issue, then write one. The newspaper can’t print opinions nobody bothered to send in.

Also a bit of advice for budding citizen journalists. When someone has a different interpretation of the impacts of a policy, it doesn’t mean they’re lying. That’s a lazy attack. Justify your own interpretation and explain your own motives, values and priorities. And make sure you’d be happy to read it aloud to a judge and your mother.

Contact Sue Lani Madsen at suelanimadsen@substack.com.