'Where's Your Jesus Now?' author's new book asks

She has friends who have buried children, and her own child was briefly paralyzed at age 3. She's in regular contact with victims of crime and disease, and in 2003 she boarded a plane to Vietnam to make peace with her deceased father killed in the war.

The experiences aren't wasted. They make their way into stories and into books.

Karen Spears Zacharias, homegrown in Columbus, now finds herself an editorial writer for the Fayetteville (N.C.), Observer. Editors offered her a job there -- twice -- and after she turned them down the second time, she rethought her decision. "You know that still small voice?" she said in an interview this week from North Carolina. "I try to listen to that voice." Her latest book, "Where's Your Jesus Now?" pushes readers to think of Jesus not as a task-master but as one who loves deeply and gives mercy and grace beyond understanding.

"As long as we view God as the Great Punisher, we will continue to behave like an abused child," she writes, "in a constant state of fear and condemnation, unable to give or receive a restorative love and constantly trying to fix everybody and everything."

Following is the recent interview with Zacharias.

Being a Southerner, I have to ask -- How's your mama? Mama is good. She's still in Washington state and has taken up painting.

What kind? She works in acrylics, and some oils. They sell her paintings in the little beach community where she lives.

Being published by Zondervan is a big deal. How did it come about? I was in Fairhope (Ala.), as a writer-in-residence. I was working on the crime story, which has not been published yet... . With "After the Flag," a professor I know in Chicago said to them, 'You have got to read this book,' and they did. The editor said it was one of the most redemptive stories he'd ever read. So I did this one for them. I have a deadline for a second, and the third is under consideration. It was great; it was the easiest way for it to happen... . Want to know the new title? "Will Jesus Buy Me a Double-Wide?" It's the anti-"Secret" book.

Where are your kids now? Stephan is 29. He's an actor in Colonial Williamsburg. Our daughter Ashley is 26 married and she works for the Boy Scouts in Spokane. Her twin Shelby just finished her master's at George Mason and is now job-hunting and husband-hunting. That's a mom thing to say. Konnie is 24 and she works at St. Charles Hospital in Bend, Ore.

And Tim remains in Oregon? Yes, we are still married. We just had our 30th.

Your personal stories in the book -- from your own life and from people you know and from the news -- they're mostly about hurt and pain and grief. Was that intentional? I don't know. Maybe it's because a sad person finds sad people. I just think those stories are about life. What is it Anne Lamott says? We tend to our own two acres. I have been friends with Sherri Callaway (of Harris County) since childhood. She and Ken have lost two children. I cannot imagine that grief. When we were girls, I never imagined that's how her story would unfold, and she didn't either... . It rains on the just and the unjust and we have to find hope. We have to find a way to rise above the despair.

Just before you called, my best friend from Oregon called. She has cancer and it's spread to her liver and lungs. Today she called and said her husband, who's worked for Weyerhaeuser, has just lost his job. He's worked there for 30 years. You know what this is going to do for this family. She's dying and for her to buy private insurance would cost $3,000 a month.

These are things that are an unfolding of everyday events. My faith is such an important part of that, yet I have nothing to offer Connie. What I have is the ability to say, "I do believe that God will be faithful." To believe anything else is too dark for me.

You mention your childhood church (Rose Hill Baptist) in this book. How did it form you? It wasn't about the church building, of course, but the lives of the people inside. It was the community. The Internet is a classic example of how hungry we are for community. We want to belong. For me as a child, everything about my life became disconnected. (Zacharias' father was killed in 1966.) Everything until that point had been about Dad. From the moment I got to Rose Hill, that community came around me. They genuinely cared about me. I had no wealth to bring them. My family wasn't going there. I was completely a taker. It was a picture of God's grace. If we all learn to do that, we could change the world.

How do we get there? We get to it relationally. What Rose Hill gave me was grace and a home and a safe place to be. Some people find that in a library or school and I have also benefited from those places. But the people at Rose Hill did not dismiss my pain. They didn't marginalize me. All of the Columbus community seemed to take me in. Every time I'm there, Bill Smith (retired from Rose Hill) will pray over me and my ministry.

Have you found another such place? I have traveled a lot, but there is no other place that feels more like home to me than Columbus. Fairhope came in a close second. The four months I spent there were wonderful and I found a good church there. I have lived a life well-loved. As a writer, I am able to travel in and out of people's lives.

In this book, you write about forgiveness and one person you mention is Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Who else models forgiveness for you? One of course is Bill Smith. And another is Debbie Good, whose sister Sandra is a Charles Manson follower. When Charles Manson directed the murder of Sharon Tate in 1969, Sandra was back at the (Spahn) ranch but there was still a huge grief that came to her family. Debbie and Sandra grew up in a wealthy California family. They had everything. They had credit cards when they were 13. After the Tate murders, Debbie had such a hatred toward her sibling. Then she really felt called to forgive her. She went through intensive Bible study, and she said that every morning, from the moment her bare feet hit the floor, she said, "Today I choose to forgive Sandra." I think that's what forgiveness is.

More like a process? It's absolutely a process. We tend to treat forgiveness like salvation, like a one-time event. Things hurt. They hurt every day.

Anything else? I do want to say that I think the fastest-growing religion in the world is a word I came up with called Certainosity. It's a faith being embraced worldwide, from fundamentalists in Iraq or Iran or Kansas -- or the war in Iraq, for that matter... . I've had this thought lately that we are always on a search for truth, but we tend to think of truth as a creed or a law; but truth is a Being. Instead, we keep going back to the law book, but Truth is living and relational. We like rules. We feel safe with the rules.

KAREN ZACHARIAS' BOOKS

• "When the Flag Has Been Folded" (renamed from "Hero Mama"; HarperPaperbacks)

• "Where's Your Jesus Now?" (Zondervan 2008).

• "Benched: Judge Rufe McCombs" by Rufe McCombs and Zacharias (Mercer University Press)