About – Indy Wild

Hi!

I’m Indy Wild! Welcome to the adventure!

This is my headquarters, in essence. Before I tell you what that means, let me explain who I am.

As I understand it, I’m a human completely under the providence and power of God. My aim, having been empowered by God to do good, is to glorify God. I believe, firmly, that God is most glorified in me when I’m most satisfied in Him. That’s what I mean by Christian hedonist. My Christian life has been heavily influenced by the Bible through the mind and hands and God-gifted talent of John Piper and through my own reading and praying.

My entire allegiance belongs to the Kingdom of Christ, which will reign on Earth after Jesus sets up His reign here. The country that I reside in is the United States.

More specifically than that, I come from a large family.

I have several, I believe, God-given talents. Coming to terms with the fact that I have talents was a long journey. It may sound silly, but (man) getting to the point of accepting that has been harder than some might imagine. When I did agree that I had talent, I could only assume that it was worthless talent.

These talents, as I understand them, come in a few different forms.

Artist.

First of all, visual art seems like it should be in different category than writing and music composition. But, if Andrew Peterson put them together (THAGS anyone?), it’s good enough for me.

I started writing at 16. It was kind of an accident. I kept telling myself I just want one book and I’ll be happy. One book, and I’ll stop writing. I’ve got other things to focus on—and all writers are unfashionable and awkward (see how your mind can change?). Nope. Definitely not being a writer. Just writing this one book.

All it took was one book and the dam had completely broken. I’d written about four books before graduating, and I’ve added book upon book ever since then. It’s a captivating art. I’m up to 16 completed books (eight of those being in my WIP fantasy epic). It’s crazy to think I’ve written that many books, and I hope that I can really begin to serve people out there with my writing.

At the core, that’s what writing is. I’m not competing with you—I’m competing with my own sinfulness and my own love for my flesh so that, in the power of God, I can wash your feet—by handing you a fantasy epic that I know will make your soul long for the Shepherd and Overseer of your soul (1 Peter 2:25).

For sure, the only way that I can do that is to serve with the strength that God provides, so that God may be glorified. (1 Peter 4:11) I pray that God gives me the strength to serve you like that one day.

One way that I believe I can serve my audience is through visual art. God’s given me a talent (it’s a happy thing to say that God’s given me a talent to serve others) in visual art. It is not mine—I did not produce, did not know to ask for it, and did not steward it well in my younger years. It is God’s. And I believe that He wants me to use it.

In my writing of this, the notion of money has awkwardly jumped into my mind, over and over. Of course, Indy, you want to serve your audience, because serving your audience is the first step to making money. I know that as much as anyone does. I have an understanding of marketing, which is subconsciously always at work, but I don’t believe that undermines my mission or my servility. Do I not have the right to make money from the work that I do? I do. And I do pray that I will make an income through writing and serving. I do not believe that receiving monetary retribution—a natural blessing for a spiritual blessing.

The talents of writing and art are, I believe, supernatural blessings (James 1:17). Obviously, for our THAGS to be complete, we must discuss my skill at music. It is not readily apparent that God wants me to use music to serve people who aren’t directly in front of me. I play the guitar, I confess, somewhat mediocrely at this point and do not make a habit of practicing reading tab sheets—no doubt because I’m caught up in trying to protect what feels like mine (talent) but is, of course, not. I’ve had the toxic notion that if I’m not the source of the creativity, rather a puppet of someone else’s creativity, then I am not fulfilling my mission. But I don’t think that’s correct. Playing someone else’s music is a powerful ministry—and I need to pray to get back on track in that respect. That got raw very quickly, didn’t it?

However it is, I do play the guitar and make a practice of songwriting, though I’m not exactly prolific in either. In reality, I just want one song and I’ll be happy. But we’ve seen how that goes, haven’t we?

And that about wraps up my view of myself as an artist. I believe art is my way to be a servant. And I want to be your servant, so I keep you all in mind whenever I write, make music, or draw.

Foraging/Gardening. Dreams of farming.

At 14, I was caught up with a wonder for gardening (and was granted with plenty of leash to practice gardening to my heart’s content). With a blurry start at 15 or so, I started foraging.

As soon as I was a gardening, I wanted more. I wanted to be a farmer. We’d been raising chickens for a year or so at that point, and livestock seemed to be the way to go. Over three years, we had several flocks of chickens (and I had more than several emotional break-downs).

We also had a few ducks. Elusive, but constantly happy—what’s not to love about having a few ducks who quack out hello every time you step outside?

Other than that, I learned how to garden, mostly through failing.

I also do a lot of foraging nowadays. It’s a great way to harvest plants without having to have grown them.

What makes me do these things? I believe it’s the power of seeing the best in each plant. Where others see a weed, I see Rumex Crispus. Where other people see probably-just-poisonous berries, I see Callicarpa americana. It’s a gift from God. It’s absolutely nothing else.

And it’s not just me. Thousands of people are like this, or can become like this. If I can help others onward on their foraging journeys, that’ll be serving people.

The results from my telling one person about a plant could be that millions of people are fed through the hands of thousands of foragers, who learned from hundreds of influencers, who were told about that plant by tens of friends, who all learned it from one of my blog posts. There is an unbelievable ripple effect in everything we do when we just bend the knee to serve.

Medical aspects.

I have, I suppose, a natural instinct toward helping people heal. This urge has taken me so many places where I wouldn’t never stepped had I not been given this urge. It’s an itch, if you will, toward sewing people up, slopping up blood, clasping warm vials of blood in one hand. So far in life, it’s guided me in strange places, and I’m fascinated by where it will take me in the end.

Maybe most importantly (remember, the ripple effect?), this fascination goes straight into my fantasy. My fantasy has become about healing instead of death. There’s a vast difference between someone writing fantasy full of death and someone writing a story about the type of death and wounds that have healing.

The point of my fantasy.

I want to be like Phil Wickham, but the epic-fantasy writing version. I want to see the same peculiar glory—the same weighty glory—of the Bible like Spurgeon, Ryle, Edwards, Lewis, and Piper, and write from that place.

When a God-saturated, Bible-believing Christian turns to tell a story, fully submitting his will for fantasy to be done as it is in heaven, I believe Jesus will fulfill that resolve for good (2 Thessalonians 1:11) and use it for His glorification.

How that creates this blog.

Now that that treatise is over, let me steer us back to where we started.

This blog wouldn’t exist without me, so I felt it was good to explain who I was, in order to give you a full view of what you’re looking at.

Here is where I’ll share my foraging posts, some writing updates, and, every once in a while, things that inspire me to write fantasy.

This wasn’t me pitching myself. This wasn’t about me reasoning together my existence or justifying who I am. I hope you understand me more and you’re ready to be served by what I can do.

May the Lord bless you and keep you,

-Indy Wild

…

Fill out the form to say hi, if you like!