Stepping It Up Profile #2: Janalee Shadburn

Each Friday, I will profile a different religious female blogger. I would like you, my readers, to check out her site, add it to your links, favorites and bookmarks, and tell one person to do the same thing. If we are to tear down the discriminatory walls that have been built over the millennia, it will take a lot of us wielding a lot of hammers.

I met Janalee in the summer of 2002, the same year I met my wife. We were all staffing a camp together, and the magical bonds that somehow gel folks for a season often times carry over into later chapters of life. I’ve kept in touch with Janalee since that summer, and have watched her grow and transform.

Over the last four years, Janalee has learned a lot about what the word ‘community’ means. She has fallen deeply in love with her church in Waco, Texas, not because it gave her something to do, but because it gave her someone to be. And that someone wasn’t a farce, concocted out of fear of being ostracized or out of pressure to be someone everyone else was missing. I imagine she darkened those doorways of that church in the same ways she darkened St. Louis doorways in 2002, with a “this is me, take it or leave it, love it or hate it” kind of attitude.

Janalee is deep into the emergent conversation, not because it’s trendy, but because to not be there would feel like she were not at home. A recent graduate of Truett Seminary, Janalee currently lives in Dallas where she is looking for work, trying her best to live deeply with a new community. Not wanting to pick up and leave because of money, and wanting to stay in order to plant roots and help others grow, her time is limited if she can’t find employ soon. So if you’re in the DFW area, throw her a bone.

When I found out she had a blog, I was proud. She had actually been keeping it for some time before I ran across it, so I went back to read every post. What you see is a life transformed via the magic of HTML. Chronicling her journey as a student, a friend and a traveler, she shows us all how to live deeply and expect the best.

This is still one of the best lines I’ve ever read anywhere:

The person I was is not like the person I am becoming, yet the passions and scars of the past will always haunt my perspective.

Everyone needs a friend like Janalee.