An Announcement from Editor-in-Chief Lanie Anderson

February's Edition of "Field Notes from the Shadowlands"

Dear readers, at the end of this month, I will be stepping down from my role as Shadowlands Dispatch Editor-in-Chief. I want you to know what a great honor and joy it has been to serve you and The Dispatch in this capacity over the past 18 months.

About three years ago, I became a member of The Society for Women of Letters (SWL), which many of you know launched Shadowlands Dispatch. I was a new mom staying home with her babies and missing the edifying conversations I’d had during my days in college ministry and seminary. Joining this group and their monthly Zoom discussions on books, film, and other works and their relation to the things of God was a gift to me in that season.

In 2024, I began working as a contractor for SWL, designing its social media content and managing those accounts. Later that year, the leadership council asked if I would like to join them and serve as Editor-in-Chief of Shadowlands Dispatch. Anyone who knows me and my love for writing and editing also knows what an easy “yes” it was for me to give.

I believe deeply in the power of language to “give wings to the spirit,” as Gladys Hunt once wrote. It has been my great privilege to work alongside talented, creative people to publish content that inspires re-enchantment with the true, the good, and the beautiful, as well as their Source: the loving, triune God and His creation.

Listening to Limitations

Why the change? I’m excited to share with you that our family is growing in March. My husband and I have two small children, a six-year-old daughter and a three-year-old son, and we will be welcoming our third child, a daughter, at the end of next month! With this and other changes ahead of our family in 2026, I have made the difficult decision to step down as Editor-in-Chief.

Six years ago, I was forced to grapple with my limitations as a human being in the early days and weeks of motherhood. In the discipline of theology, we talk a lot about orthodoxy (right belief) versus orthopraxy (right practice). As a theological principle, I knew that God alone is the only limitless being. (We often describe this with all of the “omnis”—His omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence.) However, I found it hard to practice that truth daily as a new mom.

In What’s Wrong with the World, G.K. Chesterton writes,

God is that which can make something out of nothing. Man (it may truly be said) is that which can make something of anything. In other words, while the joy of God be unlimited creation, the special joy of man is limited creation, the combination of creation with limits. Man’s pleasure, therefore, is to possess conditions, but also to be partly possessed by them; to be half controlled by the flute he plays or by the field he digs. The excitement is to get the upmost out of given conditions; the conditions will stretch, but not indefinitely… because [man] is not God, but only a graven image of God, his self-expression must deal with limits; properly with limits that are strict and even small.¹

I read these words from Chesterton several weeks after our first child was born, and it hit me—I was constantly anxious because I was fighting my God-given limits as a mortal mother. In a sense, I was trying to “play God.” It never occurred to me that a “special joy” or proper “self-expression” was mine to discover in surrendering to my limitations as an act of glory and worship to the God who has none.

Because we’re submersed in a culture that prioritizes productivity, optimization, efficiency, and achievement, saying “no” to something that could move us toward those ends might feel like participation with creation’s fall rather than its design. But Jen Wilkin writes in her book None Like Him,

“Our God is self-sufficient, needed by all, needful of nothing… We were created to need both God and others. We deny this to our peril. We are not needy because of sin; we are needy by divine design. Certainly, we can need in sinful ways, and we habitually confuse needs with wants, but we were not created to be self-sufficient. Nor were we re-created in Christ to be so. Sanctification is the process of learning increasing dependence, not autonomy.”²

I thought something was wrong with me because I couldn’t juggle “all the things” as a new mom, but my anxiousness was a siren warning me that I was never designed to keep all the balls in the air. Since that time, I have learned to ask for help more or say “yes” to less not out of my brokenness, but out of my design. Neediness is not what’s wrong with you or me; it’s what’s right. Our “special joy” as image-bearers is “limited creation, the combination of creation with limits.”

I share all of this with you because, although this article began with an announcement about stepping down as Editor-in-Chief, I hope it is also an encouragement to you. We all face seasons in our lives when we must reckon with our limitations and even say “no” to some things we really want to pursue in order to say “yes” to others. My hope is that you see these moments not as obstacles, but as invitations from your loving Father to rest in His unlimited power to sustain you and others in your limitations.

Know, too, that these moments ebb and flow. In this season of personally stepping back from some responsibilities to embrace others, images of an ocean’s waves have come to mind a lot. Sometimes, we have the capacity to roar toward the shoreline, saying “yes” to several things at once. Other times, we must recede, embracing our limits and saying “no” to some things so we can say “yes” to others. I’ve learned that these seasons of receding aren’t forever, and God usually blesses them in ways unforeseen.

Thank you for reading and supporting Shadowlands Dispatch during my time as Editor-in-Chief. This responsibility has been a true blessing and joy. I will be taking a break from writing my monthly column, “Field Notes from the Shadowlands,” as we welcome our daughter next month, but I will be back, writing here again soon! Until then, may you discover your own special joys in creating with limits.

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—Lanie Anderson is Editor-in-Chief of Shadowlands Dispatch and a member of The Society for Women of Letters Leadership Council. She earned her MDiv with a specialization in Christian Apologetics from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and also holds a BA in English from the University of Mississippi. Lanie has written for Christianity Today and The Center for Faith and Culture. She currently stays home with her two children and works as a creative contractor.

1. G.K. Chesterton, The G.K. Chesterton Collection [50 Books] (Catholic Way Publishing, 2014), 442, Kindle edition.

2. Jen Wilkin, None Like Him: 10 Ways God Is Different from Us (and Why That’s a Good Thing) (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2016), 59, 62-63