Brandi Willis Schreiber is our Woman of the Week, nominated for her work as an Orthodox author of books for both adults and children (including her recently released book The Island and St. Aidan). We asked her to tell us how she got from where she started to where she is today: 

“I would say by the grace of God only. I think I have stubbornly and consistently served my vocation from God, even when there was no worldly success associated with it. A vocation is not necessarily a paying job, your 8-to-5. I have learned over the years that a vocation is the calling or service that God is asking you to respond to, that He's given or impressed upon you, and sometimes made you crazy over. 

“Your vocation could be mothering, or homemaking, or art, or rescuing dogs, or mowing the lawn, or engineering planes. It could be all of those things, but most often, it will not result in money. This has been a humbling and inspiring realization for me, and I've entered into a bit more peace about my “writing work” because of it. God will do with my writing what He's going to do, and I’ve learned my job is to be faithful to it because this is the strange and wonderful gift He’s given me to cultivate. Surrendering to this understanding is the means by which we serve grace, and in turn, grace serves us, I believe.

“I think I've always wanted to be a writer, ever since I was a child. I didn't really think about literature seriously, however, until I was in my last year of nursing school at Texas Tech University. My entire college career was spent working extremely hard to get into that program, and I did. I was excellent at the book work, but terrible at the clinical work. Then I panicked and realized I did not want to be a nurse. God bless every healthcare professional for your skill!

“When I thought about what I did want to do, I realized I wanted to read books and think about books. Maybe someday I would write, but really, I wanted to study literature seriously. Well, I dropped out of nursing school and changed my major to English (where - alas! - I had to take algebra). I was so close to graduating into a career where I would probably always have a job and a paycheck. But I knew enough at the time that I needed to do this for myself, to fulfill something that was speaking to me very strongly. I was blessedly able to get a BA and MA in literature and creative writing. I loved every minute of it, and I would have loved to get my PhD or MFA and teach, but I simply didn’t have the money. 

“I did an AmeriCorps internship in volunteerism and worked in nonprofit for a while, promoting youth volunteerism in the community. Then I worked in higher education for a long time, directing a tutoring program to support college students with learning differences, autism spectrum disorder, and ADD/ADHD diagnoses. All of those wonderful jobs involved writing, teaching, and communicating constantly. But then I had my baby in 2020, during COVID, and God, in His mercy, gave me another vocation: motherhood.

I left my higher ed career in early 2021 to focus on our son, and that was when I realigned my heart and goals and attempted to write anew. About a year before I got pregnant, I started on A Long Walk with Mary, A Personal Search for the Mother of God. I wrote that through my pregnancy and my son’s birth. (I finished the epilogue when my son was a few months old, lying in my lap. He’s lying in my lap now as I type this. It must be a comfy spot.) The book came out in April of 2021. That was a great boost to me, because I’d had some poetry published, but I did not know if I was ever going to produce a book, and I was 40 years old.

After that, I was asked to be a contributor to Behold a Great Light: A Daily Devotional for the Nativity Fast through Theophany (Ancient Faith Publishing, 2023). In 2022, I started my St. Aidan book. Four years later, here we are!

“It takes time to discern our vocation and a lifetime to serve it. And sometimes our best laid plans are like dust in the wind, right? That algebra class I had to take led me to meeting my husband. I do believe God guides our lives, and if we are willing to cooperate with Him and do our work - whatever it is - for His glory, He will help us understand our paths (what came before, and maybe, what is ahead). I have to respond to life through writing: by witnessing it, making meaning out of it. All of these things, together, are my vocation.” 

“There's no perfect formula, and there's no perfection. I accepted a long time ago that the work, or the art, that I attempt in life in order to testify to Beauty may or may not result in “success” by the world’s standards. I think 99% of what I create just goes out into the void. Maybe distant stars read it. But I keep writing and trying to improve because that is the “talent” that God has given me. I just have to surrender to it, while being faithful to everything else in my life. 

“I think if people want to write, or create art, or use their gifts to respond to the world in any way with integrity, they have to be open to the fact that God is going to shape them and shape their work in ways that they can't possibly imagine. The outcome of that is a great big mystery, but it's a mystery we have to accept. Ultimately, it's for our salvation. When you're an artist or a writer, you struggle to bring something to fruition. But all of us are also struggling with our relationships, our health, our grief, our paying jobs, and the Christian life in general. God is here to work through us in all these things and help us with them, if we're willing to release our ego a little bit and cooperate with Him. 

“I think that's been the biggest lesson I've learned: simply work faithfully on something and see what happens. If my writing moves someone to Truth, Beauty, and Goodness (my three guidelines in pretty much everything), and I’ve written with skill, then it's a “success” by my standards. But there's no perfection in it. You just have to respond to everything in life the best you can with the best love and attention you can muster.”

As always, we asked our Woman of the Week, Brandi Willis Schreiber, to tell us about her morning routine: 

“I love this question because I love reading what everybody's morning routines are. I'm definitely a morning person. But that's probably because I'm not a good sleeping person.

“I love the feeling of getting up in the morning before everybody else, in secret, and seeing what the rest of the world looks like. I get up really early, around 4:30 a.m. My preferred morning routine includes getting my coffee that I have set on a timer to be hot and ready, and then going on a walk in my neighborhood.

“This is when I say my morning prayers, so I'll walk and drink my coffee and pray. Sometimes I’ll pray the full litany of the formal morning prayers, and sometimes I’ll just say the “Lord, have mercy” prayer over and over again. I like to pray while walking because it’s physical and sets a pace and wakes me up to gratitude about the day ahead.

“If creation is an icon of the face of God, then the morning, for me, is the detail to which I first look. All of God and His saints are there. And every morning, I see something different. I like to see what the moon and foxes and raccoons and skunks are up to. I'll walk through my neighborhood down to a playa, and I'll walk around the playa several times. That was the routine I had for A Long Walk with Mary. I would get up early and go walk, pray, think, dream, process, cry, or give thanks for whatever was going on in my life at that particular time. 

“After I walk, I’ll come back to the house, before my husband and son wake, and I’ll read or write until my little boy gets up. He wakes up anywhere between 5:01 to 7.01 a.m. It just depends on when he senses that other people are having fun and doing things without him.

“We have snuggle time on the couch, and sometimes he will fall back asleep on me. If so, I'll keep reading, or taking notes, or writing. Our formal prayer corner is right across from where I sit, so I pray then, too. I also always have a prayer book, whatever book I'm reading at the time, and a notebook nearby, so I can keep at these things while he snuggles. This is my “corner” of time. It’s the spot in my day in which I do the most writing work.

“So some mornings, I'll get 5 minutes of actual writing work done or maybe I'll get an hour's worth. Once my son is up, however, I put my writing work away, and I just focus on him and what the day requires.

“When my husband leaves for work, we have breakfast, and read more books before the day and all its busyness begins. That's what I allow my morning routine to be like right now, and I want to keep it like this until my son doesn't seek me out anymore in the morning. Oh, my heart. I know this time with him in the morning is not going to last forever and someday these little corners of time and their contents will change. But for now, this is what it is, and I love it.” 

Thank you, Brandi!