By Leisa Parsons, Area Media Specialist
As another school year comes quickly to an end, we celebrate graduates from high schools and universities. On the launchpad of their own dreams and successes, their eyes reflect a mixture of hope, freedom and anticipation all mingled with a healthy dose of anxiety. Their goals and aspirations are inspiring.
As someone once put it, “life is so daily”. Sometimes those dreams and goals, especially for women, are lovingly placed on the back seat as children are reared. For one San Antonio woman, her dreams of being a writer came after her children were reared and just before she retired from a career in higher education. Marci McPhee always loved to express herself through writing. Her career as a writer and editor took off, quite simply, as she was in the thick of daily life.
McPhee was serving in a volunteer position in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She was overseeing the children’s organization for several Latter-day Saint congregations. Working with her two counselors, they began writing a blog to help the various congregations with scenarios with which they were experiencing. Drawing on her degree in social work and child development, they tackled topics such as how do you teach about ideal families to children who live in less than ideal situations, bullying and channeling boundless energy.
As the blog grew with more posts and other contributors, McPhee realized that this could be compiled into a book. She edited the various contributions, stories, lesson and activity ideas into her first published work, Sunday Lessons and Activities for Kids. McPhee says her writing “is about the intersection between the Church and the real world.”
She has since edited five more books all dealing with the application of principles, taught in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in everyday life. She is adept at coaching others as they tell their stories, struggles and triumphs along this “intersection” of real life and Church teachings. She has tackled topics ranging from the LGBTQ community to a multi-racial family accepting the gospel 55 days prior to the 1978 revelation extending the priesthood to blacks.
McPhee’s latest editorial effort comes out this week, with Steve Young’s new book The Law of Love. She met Young through a mutual friend, Richard Ostler, as she was editing Ostler’s book, Listen, Learn and Love: Improving LDS Culture. McPhee started working with Young in the fall of 2020. Ostler initially told McPhee that he had a friend who “wasn’t going to sit down and write a book, but he had a book in him, he just needed to talk it out.” That process of “talking it out” resulted in zoom interviews with Young, conducted by McPhee and Ostler. Eventually McPhee took the leading role in shaping the interviews and transcribing Young’s thoughts. She said she would “download the transcript and shape it and push him in certain directions. She said, “It was an iterative process, a creative process between the three of us…. I would say, ‘Steve I need a story to fill this hole right here’….Steve would say, ‘Let me think about that’ and then at our next zoom meeting he would say, ‘Well, I don’t know if this is going to work but…’ and then he would tell me a story. I would say ‘Oh Steve, I am not a fiction writer, but if I were, I could not have concocted a better story than that!’”
So, what is the “law of love” according to Steve Young? It is: “Loving as God loves, seeking another’s healing and expecting nothing in return.” McPhee said “this is something that Steve has been thinking about for a long time.” He explains and illustrates this principle from his life experiences and from a host of diverse contributors. McPhee says some of the stories come from his football career and his career in business. She said: “He shares some pretty personal stories about his relationship with his wife and children … illustrating this principle from his life and the lives of others.”
McPhee shared one of the big points in the book, it is that many people think that the gold standard is obedience. She explained: “Do the right things and then you’re good. Steve’s point is that you can do the right things in a really empty way. You can do it for all the wrong reasons. It’s not a bad thing. You do these checklist things and you get the checklist blessings. When you really do it out of love that doesn’t take away from obedience it just draws it forward in a different way.” She said that the analogy he uses is that obedience, chastity, honesty, tithing and others, are boxcars. The law of love is the engine that just pulls it all forward. According to Young, without the love, those boxcars are just sitting there on those tracks. They are great boxcars, but they do not have life in the same way.
For her, working on this book was life changing. She said, “As I was working on it and living my own life facing my challenge de jour, each draft reminded me of those principles. They helped unlock some logjams in my own life.” She continued, “I feel that I am the most blessed of anyone by working on this book. Most people will read this book once, maybe twice. I’ve read it over 100 times in its different drafts and have had these really powerful and mind expanding principles distill into my soul.” She said, “At the same time, he’s miles ahead of me because he’s been thinking about this for decades. There were times when I would say, ‘Yes, but…’ and he would say ‘Marci, that’s the old thinking. You’re stuck in that obedience boxcar there. Let it go and come with me to this higher, holier place.’” McPhee said that this book was a blessing to her “to help me meet my own challenges. I think this book has such potential for powerful changes in the world.”
What was it like working with Steve Young? According to McPhee “He’s really every bit as warm, kind and humble as his reputation.” She said they were working on the book during the big winter storm that Texas experienced last February. She said, “During that Texas freeze, he knew that we had no power and Steve asked, ‘Oh Marci, are you okay, can I send you some food and water or something?’ And he was dead serious. He would have ordered it and had it delivered to my door.”
McPhee explained that Steve Young has already written his biography, but this is more like his legacy — his life lessons that he wants to impart. McPhee asked Young, “Steve what if you had all of this professional success in order to have the largest possible platform and the broadest possible exposure for this really powerful message of love to deliver?” She concluded, yes, “he can get it places where it wouldn’t have been able to go.”
They are hoping that with an invitation extended in the book, they will receive feedback and perhaps write a second book with further experiences illustrating “The Law of Love.” Young expressed his gratitude for McPhee’s expertise. He said, “Once I got the book out of my head and onto paper, there was no one more vital to this project than the best editor in the world, Marci McPhee. Marci was a trusted source of inspiration, and without her, this couldn’t have been done half as well.”
For Marci McPhee her dreams of writing and editing are a great inspiration for many who have had to tuck away dreams temporarily. Coming so many years after graduation, rearing a family and working in other pursuits, McPhee is an example of never giving up those dreams and working hard to realize them.