Diane Roblin-Lee
Diane Roblin-Lee's article, The Joys and Surprises of Giving," is on page 171 of Hot Apple Cider. Diane's article is based on her personal experiences of both gaining and losing through giving.
As a child at the cottage, Diane Roblin-Lee loved lying on the sun-soaked dock, staring at her rippled reflection in the water, wondering who she would become.
As the years have rolled away the wrap on her life, things she never dreamed possible have been exposed—graduation in the Class of '67 from Acadia University; careers in Social Work, teaching (High School Phys.Ed. and Guidance), writing, speaking, graphic design and publishing; seven years as a regular TV host on NiteLite and Raiders of the Lost; a stint in provincial politics; 38 years of marriage with two sons and four grandchildren.
While she never thought divorce would be part of her life, she now finds herself in a new season of life. The child on the dock has grown up. The ripples have gone and she see life more clearly now. She is grateful for the things God is teaching her.
Diane now serves as Director of Communications for Winning Kids Inc. and recently accepted an invitation to serve on the Board of Directors for Heart to Heart Ministries. Through her company, byDesign Media, she does custom publishing and design work, designs the Crossroads Compass for 100 Huntley Street, and continues to write, most recently the book A Different World and a series of related booklets titled Predator-Proof Your Family.
Diane is grateful to Larry Willard of Castle Quay Books for the opportunities he has given for her work to find ever greater exposure; to David Mainse for giving her opportunities to grow in her gifts; to The Word Guild for the tremendous work that is being done to open previously closed doors for Canadian authors; and to God for being patient with her, forgiving her and manifesting His grace and mercy to others through her life.
Hot Apple Cider came together in a rather unusual way. What made you want to have your work in it?
When the invitation came, I was very busy with other projects and did not think I would be able to participate. However, when I realized that I could submit an excerpt from something I had already published, I thought I could quickly edit something down in an hour or so, submit it and get back to my projects. It didn’t work quite that way. Cutting a piece down to the required word count can be more challenging than writing a whole new piece!
However, I had no idea what a wonderful experience it would be to be included in an anthology of 30 Canadian writers who are Christian. There has been a lovely sense of camaraderie amongst the participants, and a sense of being part of something bigger than ourselves in terms of standing in a newly opened door for Canadian Christian authors.
This book is 100% Canadian. Canadian authors, publisher, printer—everything. Is that important to you?
Yes, it is very important. I began writing in 1980 and was very fortunate in having royalty publishers pick up my work. However, when I began to publish things myself and tried to get them into the stores, it was like butting my head against a brick wall. Despite the fact that I had proven myself in the industry, Canadian writers seemed to be persona non grata. It was extremely frustrating and difficult not to question the Christian bookstores who seemed to value only big-name Americans. It is wonderful to see that beginning to change. We all owe such a debt of gratitude to The Word Guild for the tremendous inroads that have been made.
In her foreword for Hot Apple Cider, Janette Oke mentions that writers are often asked, “Why do you write?” How do you respond to that question?
I never intended to be a writer. It was only after my return to the Lord in 1978, and my burning desire to share my amazing discovery of the reality of Jesus and His life available to us through the Holy Spirit, that I began to write. It had become clear to me that there was no way I could communicate the depth and breadth and height of my love for Jesus in a two-hour conversation with someone who really didn’t want to hear anyway. I thought that if I could write the whole thing in a book, I could give it to people and they would have a choice of either reading it or throwing it in the garbage, but the weight of trying to communicate to them fully would be eliminated.
You’ve had a varied background, beginning with careers in social work and teaching Phys Ed, then hosting a TV program, politics, writing, speaking, graphic design and publishing…. Did you enjoy the different things you’ve done, but see something new that looked interesting? Or was it a case of trying to find where you fit best? Or…?
I really believe that God has had His hand on my life ever since I was a little four-year-old girl raising my hand in acceptance of the salvation message that my daddy had just preached in a little old church in Toronto. Looking back, I don’t really feel as though I planned very much of it. I have worked very hard at the opportunities that have presented themselves, but I never really looked for anything to do. Things just came along that seemed to be the logical next step. The only thing I ever really planned was a career in Social Work—but after all my preparation, one year was enough for me! After that, one might say that my life just happened—but looking back, I can see God’s design, His charting of my journey. I can see how each experience, whether thrilling or painful, was preparation for something down the road. He has taken me over mountains that I could never have hoped to climb and through valleys too dark and cold to survive, had it not been for His hand steadying me.
Have I enjoyed the things I’ve done? I’ve loved everything except Social Work. I’m very disappointed that my marriage didn’t end well, but without it, I never would have had the children I have. I loved being a mom and grandma. I loved hosting a TV program that took me into the homes of people who would never have been caught dead in a church. I loved discovering the thrill of playing with words. I loved emerging from the struggle of finding notes to be able to play the piano for praise and worship. I felt so honoured to look after my father when he developed Alzheimer’s and my mother for the last 13 years of her life. I loved debating abortion and family issues when I ran for a provincial seat. I was so privileged to have had the opportunity to speak confidence into the insecurities of high school girls. I loved raising chickens after becoming horrified at the way they were commercially processed. I’ve loved driving to a speaking engagement as sick as a dog, knowing that once I got behind the pulpit, God would take over with His strength and power. I’ve loved putting a completed book into the hands of first-time authors and seeing them blossom into more of who God intended them to be.
Have I tried to find where I fit best? Truthfully, I seldom feel as though I fit anywhere. I usually feel like a spare wig at a wedding and, at this stage of the game, I’m not sure that that will ever change—and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I think that coming to the place where one is comfortable in one’s own skin is far more important than feeling like an integral part of anything external. When one reaches that place, it’s much easier to relax in whatever circumstances one finds oneself, despite feeling different from others in a group.
When you started writing, did you start with a book, or something smaller?
I started with a book. The first Christmas after coming back to the Lord, my husband and I were on our way to a Christmas concert and stopped for gas. As he went into the station to pay, I started to think about writing a book, because I had to find a place to put everything I had to share about the transforming power of Jesus. When my husband got back into the car, I said, “I’m going to write a book.” He asked what it would be about and, without any premeditation, I said, “Ministers and their families.” He just said, “Great,” as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
From that point, the book was like a wave that had to keep moving until it got to shore. I knew no one in the publishing industry. I didn’t even know how to type! But step by step, God led the way. I put a questionnaire together, but needed a tape recorder to interview ministers and their families. So—I took a job cleaning slides for my husband’s production company at 50 cents per box of 50 slides. When I made the $123.00 I needed to buy the tape recorder, I quit cleaning slides, bought the machine, and started interviewing people all across Canada and the U.S.
When I was ready to start the actual writing of the book, someone lent me a Selectric typewriter and I rummaged through some old books to find a manual of my mother’s on how to type. I knew that if I were going to get any kind of speed, I’d have to learn to put my fingers on the right keys. I didn’t have an office, but wrote on my dining room table, every once in awhile looking over at my piano, envisioning my book one day sitting on it. My children were young. My younger one was in afternoon kindergarten and the older one in grade two. I set a goal of five pages per day, beginning to write after getting the boys off to school in the morning and stopping when they got home. If my five pages were finished, that was the end of my writing for the day. If they weren’t, I’d start writing again after I got them to bed. Sometimes it was two or three in the morning before those five pages were finished. Long story short, that book, My Father’s Child, sold 12,000 copies in Canada. It’s pretty obvious that I didn’t accomplish that without some pretty special help!
You put together and published the book, Into all the World: 75 Years of The Peoples Church, which won The Word Guild 2005 Award in the Special Book category. With having to identify and organize over 1,000 photos, that must have been a huge amount of work. How did you handle such a big project?
Well—Terry Bridle, the head of missions for the Peoples Church, asked me to do the project at the end of February that year. I was thrilled, because Oswald Smith, the founder of the church, was one of my favourites. I always loved his book, A Passion for Souls, and felt extremely honoured to have the opportunity to inspire other young people to pick up where Dr. Smith left off. Terry brought a gazillion boxes of church archives up to my home office in Woodville. They were stacked three and four boxes high, all around the sizeable room.
The church wanted the book for their 75th anniversary in September, which meant that I would have to have the book to the printer by the end of June. That gave me four months to research, write, design and publish it. Many days stretched long into the night as I organized and scanned photos and generally tried to put together as comprehensive a history as possible. Sixteen hour days, all alone in my office, sorting through box after box, were the norm. No one knows what went into that book. For instance, the newsletters that I scanned were in ginormous binders that wouldn’t fit properly onto the scanner. Whole portions of columns had to be reconstructed by painstakingly drawing letter characters on the computer.
I wrote to Dr. Billy Graham to ask him to write the foreword. It seemed like such an impossible dream at the time. However, he and Dr. Smith had been wonderful friends and so you can imagine how thrilled I was when the letter came from Dr. Graham—with his foreword.
Getting the news that the book had won the award was a wonderful surprise. Unfortunately, I wasn’t at the award ceremony because my granddaughter had a piano recital that night.
You recently edited a book containing an anthology of your mother’s writing. The Wisdom of Grace: Proverbs for Living a Lovely Life. Can you tell us a little more about this project? Can you tell us a little more about this project?
My mother, Grace Irwin Roblin, was an extraordinary woman of grace, wisdom and strength. In her gentle, humble, yet purposeful life, she had a profound influence on almost everyone she touched. When she went to be with the Lord at the age of 96, I felt the world had lost a very important element for its well-being, and that it was my responsibility not to let her essence slide into obscurity, but to try to retain it through words she either spoke or would have spoken, for the continued benefit of society.
Following her death, I put 200 photos of her life in order from her birth to her final days, scanned them and put one on the left side of every page spread, opposite a few words of her wisdom. I felt that young moms, some of whom may not have been blessed with a mother like mine, could benefit from the wisdom, guidance and encouragement that emanated from her heart. With soaring divorce rates, the fracturing of families, and confusion about where to turn for stability and joy, I believed that her words and example could offer renewed hope. I believe it is very important for society to understand that progress doesn’t always mean leaving the past behind. Sometimes it means trying new things, finding that they don’t work, and then reaffirming whatever does work.
My mother was the greatest expression of the life and Spirit of Jesus Christ that I have ever seen, and I believe that anyone who knew her would say the same thing. Through the preservation of her essence, I hoped to give renewed hope to those who might wander through the pages, perhaps fascinated by the evolution of style through almost a whole century, but captivated by the truth and reality of her words.
Your book, To My Family…My Life: My Reflections, Values, Experiences and Family History Journal was published by Castle Quay Books a couple of years ago. I understand this is really a workbook with an unusual goal: to help people pass on their values, and not only their material goods, to their families. The publisher’s website calls it “A practical, user-friendly tool for the conveyance of wisdom, knowledge, understanding and experience.” Can you tell us a little about where you got the idea for this book and how you decided what kind of things to put in it?
Again, I believe this book was God-led. I was cleaning out a bathroom drawer one day and thinking about the challenges that lay ahead for our world. I was worrying about the fact that many of our youth are unprepared to meet the challenges. Spending hours in front of video games and watching television doesn’t do much for the development of inner fiber! I thought about wisdom and the fact that we are losing one of our greatest national resources—the wisdom of our elders—just at the time when our young people are going to need it. As I thought about the importance of bridging the gap between the needs of our young people and the insight and experience of our seniors, the concept of the legacy journal dropped into my mind. So—I listed the topics I felt were most important for the seniors to communicate to their descendants and began to design To My Family… My Life.
It is really an ethical will. When people die, they generally leave a few sticks of furniture or some money to their families, but their essence is lost. They die at the very point in life where they have accumulated the most knowledge and experience. The journal is a tool for passing on the most valuable thing they have to give—their wisdom. I showed it to Larry Willard and was very happy when he decided to publish it.
As you wrote in your article in Hot Apple Cider is, you’ve had a lot of ups and downs in your life. You’ve spoken of having to begin again, and I’m sure that hasn’t been easy. Can you share with us a little of the circumstances that have resulted in your having to give up some very real parts of your life in recent years?
After 38 years of marriage, just six months past my 60th birthday, I was faced with my husband’s confession of child molestation. Suddenly, he was in prison and I was living alone in our beautiful country home, forced to dispose of all the heirlooms I had gathered for children who no longer wanted anything to do with reminders, sell the house, and dismantle the business we had built together. The grief was profound on so many levels.
Although God miraculously, graciously protected me from bitterness, there was no question but that I would divorce my husband. To have done otherwise would have been a terrible affront to his victims and would have set me on a journey I was unwilling to travel. At the same time, I had to face the fact that I was not employable at my age. Neither was I skilled at anything that would bring in enough money to support me. Having developed a good foundation in the design work associated with our business, I decided to go back to school and become skilled in the latest design technology. With what money was left after all of the legal matters, etc., I outfitted myself with all of the latest equipment and, one year to the day after my husband’s confession, I registered byDesign Media, through which I do design work, custom publishing and writing.
Your newest book is A Different World: Predator-Proof Your Family. Why did you feel so strongly about writing this book and the series of booklets that accompany it?
My life has always been about family. My family was, next to God, the most important part of my life. Now it has been torn asunder and I am left to pray for the healing of each betrayed, bewildered heart.
When I was a young mom, one of my children was molested by someone my husband and I trusted implicitly, and so I have experienced the devastation of many sides of abuse. I understand the agony of trying to help a beloved, abused child work through the confusion of life issues. I understand the grief of deep betrayal. And now I understand the horror of discovering that a family member was a perpetrator. I don’t want other people to go through the challenges and brokenness that have confronted our family.
Looking back, I can see the things I should have recognized as warning signs—but I didn’t know I needed to be looking for anything. Now, however, I have been given insight to share that may protect other children from harm—that may deter potential predators from offending—that may prevent other families from being shattered. There are those who have warned me about the stigma of being associated with something like this, but if I don’t use the voice I’ve been given, predators will be able to hide in the very thing that has protected them through generations—our silence.
How did you go about researching the information you’ve put into the Predator-Proof Your Family series?
When I was helping put together the 2007 Readers’ Guide for The Word Guild, I was working with Sandra Reimer. In the course of our conversations, she made me aware of the wonderful Restorative Justice people in Kitchener. I met with them and they gave me full access to their library. I did a lot of online research as well.
Because my ex-husband was extremely repentant and wanted to do whatever he could to atone for his sin, he consented to an interview, which gave great insight into the grooming process predators use and into the mind of a molester who sits in church pretending normalcy, but who is trapped in the torment of pornography.
I’m assuming you get feedback from a lot of people because of the nature of your books, and feedback is great for the author—you know someone is actually reading your words! But I’m wondering if you’ve learned anything from your readers that you could share with us?
The response to my most recent work, A Different World, which I also produced as a series of eight booklets in the series, Predator-Proof Your Family, is uppermost in my mind right now. What I am learning from my readers is that most of them are as unaware of the critical nature of guarding children from abuse as I was. Everyone thinks it’s not going to happen to anyone in their family.
At the same time, most people are aware that we are barely seeing the tip of the iceberg with regard to the effects of pornography in society today and the numbers of potential child molesters it is training.
When I ask the question, “Are you raising a child molester?” some people look at me as though I’m asking an absurd question. They never stop to think that child molesters don’t just drop from the sky: somebody raises them—often nice people who don’t understand the effect that pornography and violent, sexual video games are having on the development of young minds. Never before in society has this type of material been so readily available to young people in their homes. My readers want to be informed; they are grateful for tools to help them protect their children both from being abused and from becoming abusers.
Are you writing something else now?
I’ve just completed another book for Gordon Williams, completed the design for a book of free verse for a lady, and reconstructed a counselor’s thesis on marriage for use in her practise. Plus I’m working on another journal, similar to the legacy journal, but for use in young families.
Aside from your own pieces, is there a particular piece or thought in Hot Apple Cider that stood out for you?
Dr. Jean Chamberlain Froese and Thoma Froese’s piece on “Where Have All the Mothers Gone?” was so well done. It called us all to kick it up a notch in our response to the pain around us.
A lot of people want to share their stories in order to help others. What advice do you have for someone who wants to write but doesn’t know how to begin?
It is God’s will for us to help others and so if that’s the motivation of their hearts, He will enable them to do it, whether it’s through writing or in another way. I would say that instead of starting with what you have to give or share, it works better to start with the needs of the audience. If you really feel their hearts, you will have the mind of Christ and He will pour Himself through your life to touch theirs. I would encourage people to be honest and not to hold back because of pride or the fear of what others will think. Some things need to be kept private if they would cause pain, and family stories should generally be told only with the consent of families because it’s not just your story—it’s their story too.
What is your prayer for the readers of Hot Apple Cider?
My prayer for the readers of Hot Apple Cider is that they would catch a fresh glimpse of the importance and benefits of making Jesus Christ central in their lives today, through the presence of His Holy Spirit. I pray that they would be inspired to get to know Him in a deeper way in every aspect of their lives.
