Vanity is generally defined as excessive pride in one’s appearance, achievements and qualities. As such, it can be viewed as an expression of one’s ego, that part of us that yearns to assert our uniqueness and our value. Vanity might be considered as the triumph of image over substance. In Catholicism vanity is one of the Seven Deadly Sins, a quality so destructive as to condemn us to damnation unless we overcome it.

I chose to make vanity an essential characteristic of various characters in my “Women of the Bible” series. For example, in Rebekah Redeemed Rebekah’s aunt Mara, with whom Rebekah went to live, thought only of herself and her own needs and wants. In Mary’s Exile, Herod is known throughout his kingdom for his paranoid compulsion to eliminate any who would deprive him of his power or glory. History tells us that he was so focused on himself and his position that he ordered his own wife and son killed to protect his throne.

By using characters who are pictures of vanity in my stories I can show the great contrast between that kind of thinking and behavior and what Jesus reflected. He enters each story through what characters say about him when they hear him teach, and when my main characters meet him they have a universal experience of someone of divine carriage and poise. Through this I can begin to reveal his character as I see it. As each story unfolds I can then demonstrate Jesus’ impact through the subsequent behavior of and consequences to my main characters.

The message in every one of these stories is similar: That we are all bound to each other, that we are all accountable to God for what we do in spite of the forces we believe are “making us” do it, that life lived in service to others is the most reliable and enjoyable way of defeating vanity with spirit.

If my stories touch my readers this way then I am content.