The voice behind the congressman

Not long after I surrendered my life to Jesus, I co-founded a small offset print shop. My partner was a fourth-generation printer, and I handled sales and promotion … though I wasn’t particularly good at it.

In 1984, I got a call from a friend from church who said she felt the Lord had told her to contact me about an opening in her office. She was the receptionist for a U.S. congressman.

It sounded so little like me and so much like Holy Spirit that I scheduled an appointment.

As I sat with the congressman in his office, he asked me if I had political experience.

I didn’t.

“Do you know your way around Washington?”

“No.”

“Have you ever written a press release?”

“No.”

“Why are you here?”

“I just feel the Lord might be leading me here.”

I started on Monday.

I had just been shown where my typewriter was when the chief of staff called me in and said the congressman needed a press release. So, I returned to my desk and wrote one. Minutes after I turned it in, it came back. I rewrote it. It came back. I edited it. It came back. I edited it again. It came back.

It was nearly 5 pm (I won’t say it was nearly the end of the day, because time on Capitol Hill is measured in sessions, not hours). I winced when I saw the chief of staff heading for my desk again. This time, though, he told me he had sent the press release to the congressman and it had been approved.

That began a crash course in a whole different kind of writing for me: letters-to-the-editor, op-ed columns, fliers, tabloids, brochures and speeches, official correspondence, campaign literature, radio/TV scripts and magazine articles, in addition to coordinating news conferences and serving as liaison with constituents, federal agencies, administrative officials and special interest groups.

I couldn't have known at the time that all of these skills would be invaluable for the work I would do one day as an author and ghostwriter.

God, of course, knew I would need every one of them.