The most widely published book in human history tells us we are created in the image of God.
If that’s true, then the moments when someone moves from “I believe nothing” to “I want to believe something again” matter a great deal.
On a recent episode of Created in the Image of God, I talked with Lee Ann Walling, a former journalist and political aide who published her debut novel, The Salt and Light Express, at age 69. Her story includes multiple denominations, three decades away from church, and a late‑life return to faith that began in a frozen Episcopal pew.
That scene is worth dwelling on, because it says a lot about what conversion looks like in our world—and what it means to follow Jesus in the fault lines of 21st‑century America.
“I Didn’t Want to Be Nothing Anymore”
Lee Ann described sitting in the back row of an Episcopal church in Dover, Delaware, for the inaugural service of the state’s first female governor. She wasn’t there by choice. It was part of the job.
It was bitterly cold. She didn’t want to be there. She’d spent years in politics, watching religion used as a weapon, Christianity deployed as a tribal marker. For about 30 years, she hadn’t “darkened the door” of any church. She wouldn’t have called herself an atheist, but she didn’t really believe anything.
Then, sitting there half‑resentfully, she found herself staring up at a large stained glass window: John the Baptist baptizing Jesus.
Her inner monologue went something like this:
“A billion people believe this stuff. There has to be some kernel of it that’s true. I don’t want to just be nothing anymore. I want to believe something.”
And then the rector preached—not a culture‑war sermon, not a patriotic pep talk, but a simple reminder of what Jesus actually taught. The sort of thing Lee Ann realized she’d almost forgotten.
In Greek, the word often translated as “repent” is metanoia—a deep change of mind and heart. Lee Ann said that’s what happened. It wasn’t an altar call emotional high. It was a reordering.
And you know it was real, because when she went back to work in the governor’s office, she discovered something very concrete had changed.
“I Can’t Lie Anymore”
Politics, as she put it, doesn’t always deal in bold‑face lies. But it does deal in spin. Half‑truths. Little “adjustments” to make stories more palatable.
After that service, Lee Ann found she simply couldn’t do it anymore. The metanoia had reached into her daily work.
She went to the chief of staff—not the governor, but the man who oversaw the office—and told him:
“I can’t lie anymore.”
Not, “I’m going to church now, so please respect my beliefs.” Not, “I’m holier than the rest of you.” Just a calm line in the sand.
He ridiculed her a bit. But the truth is, she couldn’t go back. The things that used to matter—status, a coveted football parking space, a flashy car, having calls returned quickly—lost their shine. She left the governor’s office within a couple of years.
She “parachuted out” into a new role: planning and environmental work in Delaware state government. Creation care. Sustainability. Something she could connect to as a believer in a Creator.
Eventually she retired, started over as a church keyboardist in a large Methodist congregation, and—during and after COVID—finally wrote the novel she’d always wanted to write.
That’s what metanoia looked like for her: not a change of label, but a change of loyalties.
How She Got There: A Very American Backstory
Her journey to that Episcopal pew will sound familiar to many.
- Childhood: Raised Methodist in Pittsburgh. Choir, Palm Sunday palms, the “Hallelujah Chorus” on Easter. Warm memories, but not much deep formation.
- Adolescence: Parents’ marriage fell apart. A move to Laurel, Maryland. A friend invited her to a Baptist revival. The standard altar call, “Just as I Am,” walking down the aisle, being “saved and dunked.” A small church where the pastor’s daughter was her friend and Sunday school teachers had them over for barbecues. It was chummy, relational, and felt like home.
- Move to Texas: Her mother chased reconciliation with her dad to Texas; Lee Ann arrived in a different church landscape. Big, impersonal congregations. Converted gymnasiums, metal chairs. Lots of churches, but little sense of warmth. Hard to ask questions in the youth group without being labeled a problem.
- College and beyond: University of Texas, then adulthood. No one was looking over her shoulder. The questions outpaced the answers she was being given. So she walked away. For about 30 years, she stayed away.
You might call that “backsliding.” You might call it deconstruction. I’d suggest it was a long, honest wrestling that eventually made her late‑life conversion more substantial.
By the time she stared at that stained glass in Dover, she wasn’t playing games. She knew what it meant to be “nothing.” She didn’t want that anymore.
Writing Into the Fault Lines: COVID, Race, Family, and the Alamo
All of that experience—journalism, politics, multiple denominations, long unbelief, late‑life faith—feeds directly into The Salt and Light Express.
It’s more than a quirky road‑trip story. It’s a tour through the fault lines of America.
A few strands:
- Grief and guilt: Chris, the main character, is an older woman traveling in a small RV to scatter the ashes of her longtime partner, Sally, at Bryce Canyon—their favorite place. A drunk, texting teen caused the crash that killed Sally, but Chris is convinced she could have avoided it if she’d been paying attention. That guilt is eating her alive.
- COVID trauma: On the road, she meets Claire, whose Black son—an off‑duty police officer—was killed in a Walmart while trying to de‑escalate a mask dispute. A white woman, assuming he was the aggressor, pulled a gun from her designer handbag and shot him. Pandemic tensions, race, and violence converge in a single moment.
- Family rejection: Chris heads to Texas hill country to reconnect with evangelical family who never accepted her lesbian relationship. Some believe she can’t be a Christian at all and be who she is. She even hears the line Lee Ann once heard in real life: “They let y’all teach Sunday school?”
- Culture‑war history: Volunteering at a Texas library, Chris helps plan a panel on the Alamo—revisionist history, heroism, myth. The event spirals into a culture‑war flashpoint and violence.
In each of these spaces, Chris has to decide what following Jesus looks like when everyone is yelling that they own Him: the family who thinks her damned, the people politicizing COVID, the patriotic myth‑makers, the loudest voices online.
She also has to confront her own impulses to judge—the oil‑money Texans in the million‑dollar RV, the Baptist preacher she expects to be a bigot. Over and over, her assumptions are overturned. The people she writes off turn out to be the ones who show up in the crisis.
It’s not hard to hear echoes of the Good Samaritan in all this.
Following Jesus Without Becoming a Loudspeaker
Lee Ann named the camper The Salt and Light Express after Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount:
“You are the salt of the earth…
You are the light of the world…”
We talked on the show about what that actually means.
- Light reveals reality. It doesn’t shout. It doesn’t coerce. You can close your eyes, but you can’t close your ears. “You are the light of the world,” I often say, “not the loudspeaker.”
- Salt flavors and preserves. A tiny bit makes the dish. Too much ruins it. There is a time to say, gently but clearly, “I can’t do this anymore.” There is also a way to become so harsh and over‑salty that no one can stomach us.
Lee Ann’s life gives us concrete examples of both:
- The quiet, stubborn light of a woman who tells her boss in the governor’s office she won’t spin or shade the truth anymore, and then quietly leaves rather than playing the old game.
- The imperfect but sincere saltiness of someone who still has questions, who has walked away and back again, who uses fiction to explore what it might mean—for a grieving, guilty, older woman—to take Jesus seriously in a divided country.
Her protagonist Chris wrestles with a very modern version of an ancient question:
“If I take the teachings of Jesus seriously—really seriously—is that enough to be called a Christian?”
That’s not an abstract theological puzzle for her. It’s tied to how she treats the people she misjudges, how she processes her guilt, how she responds to suffering that isn’t her own, and how she opens herself to love again.
Which sounds remarkably like the kinds of things Jesus Himself seems to care about in Matthew 7 and Matthew 25.
We are, all of us, driving some version of the Salt and Light Express down our own highways—through COVID fallout, political bitterness, family fractures, racial injustice, and spiritual fatigue.
The question isn’t whether we’ll find a perfect church or perfect politics.
The question is whether, as Lee Ann did in that Episcopal pew, we’re willing to move from “I don’t want to be nothing” to “I will let the teachings of Jesus reorder my life.”
Not just our labels. Our loyalties.
Not just what we say we believe. What we can no longer do.
That, I suspect, is what it means to follow Jesus in America right now.
Sneak Peek: Next Week on Created in the Image of God
Next week, we turn from a Christian road trip to a very different kind of journey: the story of a woman who was raised Jewish, found Jesus, and now lives at the intersection of Judaism and Christianity.
I’ll be joined by Dr. Jen Rosner, a Jewish follower of Jesus, theologian, and author, to talk about:
- What it was like to grow up in a Jewish home in California
- How she came to believe in Jesus as the Jewish Messiah
- The ongoing reality of antisemitism and the war‑torn landscapes behind the story of Esther
- And what it means to follow Yeshua while remaining deeply rooted in the Jewish people
If you’ve ever wondered how Jews who follow Jesus understand their identity—especially in a time of war and rising hostility—you won’t want to miss this.
Join me next week at 8:00 p.m. Central for Created in the Image of God with Dr. Jen Rosner.
