The Sattler College Podcast
This is the Sattler College Podcast, where President Johnson dives into topics of Relational Discipleship and Academic Excellence with the staff and faculty of Sattler College and beyond.
The Sattler College Podcast
Unlikely Friendships: The Story of Turtle Heart
In President Johnson’s final podcast episode as president, he interviewed former Sattler student Lucinda Kinsinger. Luci shares how her love for writing—nurtured by a quiet childhood and a bold leap into blogging—led to the publication of two memoirs and two children’s books. She reflects on her time at Sattler College and the unexpected friendships that shaped her most, especially her relationship with an Ojibwe woman whose story inspired Turtle Heart. Now a stay-at-home mom, Luci speaks candidly about the challenges and joys of balancing motherhood with creativity, offering a moving testament to pursuing one’s calling, embracing each season, and forming deep connections across cultural lines.
Learn more about Sattler College: https://www.sattler.edu.
Mentioned in this episode:
Anything but Simple - Luci's memoir about growing up as a Mennonite
Turtle Heart - Luci's memoir about an unlikely friendship that changed her life
Christian Light Publications - website where Luci's childrens' books are sold
https://lucindajkinsinger.com/ - Luci's Personal Blog
Timestamps:
0:00 Introduction to Luci Kinsinger
2:13 Luci's Writing Journey and Passion
5:38 Balancing Writing with Motherhood
9:54 Embracing Singleness Before Marriage
11:28 Impactful Friendships Across Cultures
21:27 Luci's Books and Creative Works
23:21 Developing Unlikely Friendships
It is May 8th. It's still May 8th, 2025. And I'm here with Luci Kinsinger, who actually was one of Sattler's inaugural students. Can you remember, Can you believe it's been like how long has it been, Luci?
Luci Kinsinger:Well, we've. You know, we had our 50 year anniversary, so it must have been like six years.
Zack Johnson:That's right, that sounds about right, but I think Luci came to August in 2018, the fall of 2018, and spent two semesters here. And then, luci, where are you right now?
Luci Kinsinger:I'm in Oakland, Maryland. It's like the little triangle on the very end of Maryland's tale.
Zack Johnson:Well, first of all I'd love to hear about maybe rewinding a little bit when were you at when you decided to spend that year at Sattler and then how did things unfold in your life? And maybe just try to catch me up so I know sort of a timeline. And maybe just try to catch me up so I know sort of a timeline, and usually I love to ask people their general stories so that people know who you are before you came to Sattler and those kinds of things.
Luci Kinsinger:But I'd love to love to be filled in. So before I came to Sattler I was really just kind of hungry for some higher education. I always loved school and when I saw Sattler it kind of just hit something in me like this sounds really cool Going to this, going to Boston, interacting with professors that had been educated in places like Harvard and that had been educated in places like Harvard and the, especially the, the kind of niche worldview, not necessarily Anabaptist but yet having that early. Christian perspective.
Zack Johnson:Right, I was like I really, really liked it and and before. I think you're still. Your claim to fame here, at least in my mind, is you're the only student that's maybe written a book before showing up as a student. And and I'd love to just talk a little bit about where did your, you know, where did you develop a habit or a passion to write and then we can follow up with at this stage in your life, how do you fit writing in with all the other things that you're passionate about, and I'm sure your life has changed since you were here in Boston with that.
Luci Kinsinger:Yeah, it's changed a lot. I've always loved. When I was a little girl, I loved reading. I would just, I spent my whole childhood just reading, reading, reading, and you know, I guess it's kind of a natural. I was a shy person and so I would. I would vent by writing and I learned to love writing on that way. And then I started, I started a blog and it was very scary, publishing my first blog post and having people, actual people, read what you wrote. You know that was so terrifying. But then it was also really thrilling when you got good feedback. You know, people read this and they're like I really like it, and so it was kind of intoxicating, I guess, and just, it was a way that I could. I still feel that way that I can express myself. Maybe parts of myself that I would not probably verbalize, I can express through writing, and so I just it's just part of me, um, a creative part and an expressive part, that that is my art, I guess all right.
Zack Johnson:So since, since, uh, marrying and children, how do you fit writing and how do you keep that alive as a passion at this stage? And being a? I think you're, I think I saw that you wrote yours you can say you're a stay at home mom. I always, I always joke with my wife about better titles or alternative titles, but it's a very important, one of the most important roles, so how do you fit it in now?
Luci Kinsinger:So I fit it in where and when I can. Sometimes it's when I can't sleep at night, sometimes it's in the early morning, sometimes it's over nap time, sometimes it's with a child on my lap, just here and there. And it's really hard now to find that quality time, that time where you can just focus and zone out. And I think the very best time that I actually get that is when Ivan has the children, for you know, maybe he's working outside or something and they're with daddy and then I. That's the then. I love it. I come out of those times so happy because I actually got some some writing time, some real writing time, where you're in a different world of your own.
Zack Johnson:I'll make sure to. I'll make sure to send this, the recording to him, so he knows that. I'm sure he knows that. Um, and then even I actually think this Luci this is actually we actually make internal jokes here that we have a strange retention rate, because more of the women who come here do end up getting married, maybe midway through their college career, maybe not midway, and they thought they wanted a degree, but then somebody comes along and asks them to date, and then dating leads to all the things that dating leads to marriage them to date, and then dating leads to all the things that dating leads to marriage. So how do you fit? I know you've probably thought about how do you square away those seemingly two dreams that seem at odds with each other, or maybe not? How do you square the education with motherhood? And where did all those dreams fit in? Do you have anything to say to other young women who are in your shoes and have similar passions?
Luci Kinsinger:I guess it's going to be different for different people, like what your priorities are.
Luci Kinsinger:Writing is really important to me and even though I feel like I don't really get the quality that I used to or the time, I do still try to do it a little bit here and there and just keep it up. You know, I know there will come a time when I have more time for it, but I think and I've heard this from more than one people, and it's what I embrace, try to embrace, and I know that you know, this is how it is for a lot of women who love their families and love their children. You know, you're not going to get those years back when your children are little, when they're tiny. You know, yeah, those, those years are so precious and I do realize that and and I really love, you know, being a mom to my children and it's okay that I can't write the way I used to, because I'd rather, you know, I'd rather be there for my children when I can, as much as I can, as much as I know how to be.
Zack Johnson:Yeah, I. I just wanted to affirm you that I generally think that any any given point of time I also try to tell women who say I might, or young women who might get married, is it even worth starting a degree If you even suspect that you might get? You might start dating and get married midway? Do you have, do you have, anything to say to somebody with that kind of in the back of their mind that they're like is it even worth starting something if I'm going to have to stop at midway or choose to stop at midway and feel free to say it's not worth it if it wasn't worth it for you?
Luci Kinsinger:I'm just curious what your thought is on that well, I mean, if you sit around your whole life waiting to get married, you might be disappointed, and then you won't have a degree or children, and then you know like I think, it's totally worth doing what you love and being happy in it.
Luci Kinsinger:Because I was very happy as a single woman and very fulfilled.
Luci Kinsinger:You know I always, you know, I had my eyes open, you know, if God had somebody for me, but I didn't. I didn't feel like that's what it was going to take to fulfill me and I'm glad it was that way. I'm glad that I was pursuing things I loved and I'm glad that I had a passion and that doesn't not everybody just knows right away what they're passionate about. Um, but when I started writing I you know it did a lot for me, it gave me a lot of courage and, yeah, it just um helped me really step out of my comfort zone and I'm very glad that I pursued that and I will continue to pursue my degree as one, or my dream of writing as one that I can really take anywhere ask you a follow-up question here, because I have a lot of conversations with people who you said like really getting the most out of your singleness and I feel like there's there's a certain people who the last thing they want to be a single and they're like trying to fight against it.
Zack Johnson:Do you have, do you have, any advice on how to just suck the marrow out of singleness for all it's worth? I know that that's a hard question, but I think that it's really relevant for people in their early 20s who are like, hey, I'm single and I don't really want to be, but I also have tons of time and opportunity. So what would you, what would you say to somebody in that that sort of life stage?
Luci Kinsinger:I mean, everybody's different, and I pursued what I loved, naturally, and my husband he was single for a while too and he really wanted to be married. I mean he really, you know, but he just went there with the right person, didn't come along. But now he looks back and he's like, oh, he's glad he got to travel, because he traveled a lot, like he was to every state in the US, he was to quite a few different countries, and now we, you know, try to travel with children. It's really difficult.
Zack Johnson:So there are really a lot of opportunities as a single person that are so much more complicated. In some ways, when you're married, life changes a lot. No, I agree, and I won't give my advice, but I always think it's really interesting where, as soon as somebody starts focusing on what they can do with being single, that's exactly when they start attracting people to themselves. It's a really odd. It's an odd paradox that I've sort of noticed, where, like, if all you think about is not being single, but anyway, yeah, I just think I have things to say on that.
Luci Kinsinger:I love being married and I'm so thankful that God brought Ivan into my life, but like I miss part, there's a part of me that misses the old single Luci. Like I don't know, I changed, you just change and it's OK, but I kind of miss that single person. I don't know.
Zack Johnson:I understand what you're saying. Speaking of missing people, I know that I always like to talk to people about people who have shaped them and friendships that have made an impact on faith, and I know that you have a lot of people in your life that have done that for you. Would you mind talking a little bit about friendships that have impacted you deeply and strengthened your faith? I'm just sort of reading some stuff I had written down to talk to you about.
Luci Kinsinger:Yeah, yeah. So the friendship that's most deeply impacted me was, well, I actually wrote a memoir, published since I was in college, called Turtle Heart, an older she was like in her 70s Ojibwe woman, and she was a very unique person. She came to know God the Creator. She always called him the Creator. I mean, she grew up in a Catholic home so she had the church teaching. You know, she said the nuns didn't really teach the Bible. She went to Catholic school. The nuns didn't really teach the Bible but they taught about the Ten Commandments. I think that's what she said. So she had some of that.
Luci Kinsinger:You know, maybe not the strongest Bible background, but she did have some knowledge. But she really came to a love of the Creator, I think, just through her love of nature and through the sense that God gave her of himself. Because he does, he has that connection with each person that is open to him and I really learned that through her. I really learned about that God connection that is inborn and that none of us can manufacture or we can't give it to ourselves or to another person. Like that is a very private and very precious thing, um, and I just I learned so much. Um, I was trying to help her and I believe I did, um, you know, through our friendship she came to read her Bible and I feel like she really came to peace with dying Um.
Luci Kinsinger:But she also really broadened my view of God and of humanity and of myself. One thing she did is help me step outside the box of Mennonite. I'm this little Mennonite girl that feels shy in the big world and doesn't think that other people are going to understand the way I think world and doesn't think that other people are going to understand the way I think. But when I got to know Char, we really connected at this deeper level that I realized you know what? Yeah, there's. I mean, yeah, we're all different, but they're individual differences. It's not because I'm a Mennonite doesn't make me just automatically different, like I just grew up feeling different and then just realized that that was kind of in my head through our friendship and through our connection um, and can you say again where was char from or what was her background?
Luci Kinsinger:she was ojibwe um chippewa. Um, she was just a local woman that lived there in a town near me and I I got to know her through um. I for a while I did this thing where I would drive people to doctor's appointments. It's kind of like a little in-between job that I did, and so that's how I got to know her through driving her to um her doctor's appointments that she needed. Oh, we just hit it off and I kept going back to visit and yeah yeah, and we were.
Zack Johnson:We corresponded a little bit via email and I think this, the unusual friendships could. It's actually great to sort of think about that. It's not. It's not like the very vanilla or stereotypical friendships that always shape people, like the mentor or somebody you grew up with or a pastor. Are there any other unusual friendships that you have in mind in your own life or others that are worth noting?
Luci Kinsinger:I like people, and especially like people from different cultures and people that think differently from me, because it sharpens my mind and it helps me.
Luci Kinsinger:It just helps me see a different perspective, and so I, so I I kind of pick up these friends from different places.
Luci Kinsinger:One friend that I really we corresponded quite quite at length and we still correspond, not as much as we used to, but is a woman that actually, like she, was very I guess anti-conservative Christian would be the right word you know pretty skeptical about even there being a God, or and so just a lot of those arguments and and, and she actually, strangely enough, like my arguments, I guess, with her about God and about Christianity, about the Bible, whatever, they actually helped me realize, because I've had a lot of doubts in my past about even, you know, if there is a God, that sort of thing.
Luci Kinsinger:Just a lot of questions, things that that I struggled with, doubting my faith, and she actually strangely strengthened my faith because I just didn't want what she had, like I'm not saying that she had a bad life, she has a very good life, you know she's, you know she's, she's very, she's chosen what she. You know, you know she's, she's very, she's chosen what she, you know she's chosen what she wants and she's happy with it, but it's not what I want, and knowing her made me realize that, like I want God, you know. And it also made me realize arguments are just arguments, like you know. They're intellectual exercises that we do but they don't really get down to the heart of things, and so, like we connect with God at a way deeper level than our intellect.
Zack Johnson:I love that, Luci. And then you mentioned that at least some of the focal. Can you remind me the names of your books that you've written, just so everyone knows and they can find them if they're interested?
Luci Kinsinger:so I've written two memoirs. One is anything but simple my life is a Mennonite. That's the first book I wrote that I had already published when I was a student at Sattler and that just tells about me growing up in my community there in northern Wisconsin and my journey as a Christian, you know, as a young person growing into an adult and as a Mennonite. You're bringing in some of those cultural experiences and just the way I grew up. And then Turtle Heart is a second memoir that really focuses on my friendship with Charlene and just an intimate look at our friendship and the ways we changed each other. Then I also have two children's books that I published with Christian light publications. One is called the arrowhead and kind of it's based on my dad when he was a little boy, and then one is Rosanna in the middle. That's my most recent book and that one's based on my mom when she was a little girl.
Zack Johnson:So one's based on my mom when she was a little girl. So well, and then. So it is true that your focal points are about people and and how they've impacted you. And then I'm just, I'm curious. I'm curious on the second title. Why did you on the the turtle, um, the the turd, I can you say one more time, turtle heart.
Luci Kinsinger:So tell me, tell me about the book title and why you, why you titled it, titled it turtle heart so charlene was a storyteller and that's the old ojibwe lady that I you know, that's the one the book is about. She was a storyteller and she told me a story one time about the turtles, a turtle heart. She said one time the neighbor man wanted her to help make turtle soup because he had had a turtle and his wife wouldn't touch it. So he wanted charlene to help help him with his turtle. So anyway, they took the turtle and they chopped its head off and they hung it on the clothesline. Hung the turtle on the clothesline, and she said she said it was an hour before the turtle stopped kicking and so when it finally stopped kicking, they cut open the turtle and she said there was the heart. And the heart was still beating. And she said there were, there were four chambers and and they stopped beating, one at a time. But she said it was like three days I forget it was a few days before it stopped beating altogether. And she said now she wants a heart like the turtle heart, and the reason she said that is because she had a very poor heart. That was a part of her health issues. She had a lot of health issues and one of them was a really weak, bad heart, and so she was wishing for a turtle heart.
Luci Kinsinger:But when she said that, it became symbolic to me of all of us and the hearts, the broken hearts that we have, the misshaped, weak hearts, and we're asking for a change of heart, weak hearts, and we're asking for a change of heart, like, as people, like each one of us. We want to be different in some way, and and sometimes the me, we, the person that we want to be, seems so far from who we are and and what we can achieve. You know, and and I guess it's it's her cry, or her desire for a new heart became symbolic of like her and how she wanted to change, because you know the addictions that she battled, the ways of being that she battled, that she tried, was trying to change. I could see her trying, you know, in her life, to become a better person. And it became symbolic of just reaching out for something better and of all of us and how we're reaching for that and asking God, you know, give us a new heart. And so that's where the title Turtle Heart came from.
Zack Johnson:That was better. That was a better answer than I could have ever anticipated. That's great. And then, just how do you I mean I don't know if you've been asked this before what's the secret to developing some of these unusual friendships? For your average person who thinks about probably like, is open to the idea of developing, uh, unusual or unlikely friendships, how do you? Are there any like tips or hints you have for people who are like man?
Luci Kinsinger:I wish I could spend more time with people who aren't exactly like me, etc it seems like people are all around like, and people are interesting, like, if you're interested in people, you will pick them up. I always tend to go for the ones that are not quite fitting in and I ask them questions what about this and what about this? And most people really connect or are open to someone that's just interested in them. So I don't know if that's a good answer just out of curiosity.
Zack Johnson:No, I it makes sense. I don't know if you have like a, if you pick up a ball of your friendships through that job or something, but I mean, having a job like that feels you're automatically going to brush shoulders with unlikely people, but I don't know if you've developed their friendships.
Luci Kinsinger:You mean a job, you mean like with Char.
Zack Johnson:Yeah, like taking people to doctor's appointments.
Luci Kinsinger:That was just for a short period of time. I didn't have that job very long.
Zack Johnson:Right.
Luci Kinsinger:Yeah, I don't know Just here, and I just, I you know meet people. I met one of my, a really good friend of mine, who's from Somalia. She has a very interesting story.
Zack Johnson:Where did you meet your friend from Somalia?
Luci Kinsinger:So, yeah, that was really like just random. You asked how do I meet these? You know how do I meet friends? I said I like people from a variety of backgrounds and I do. I love having friends from lots of different places. But I can't really tell you how to meet them because, yeah, like my one really good friend who is from Somalia, I just randomly met her at the mall of America, which is, like, I think, the largest mall in the U? S or whatever, but it happens to be about two hours, a few hours, from where I grew up.
Luci Kinsinger:And so one day my siblings and I went to the Mall of America. We were just felt like doing something different and we went there to do the ride. So we were doing all the rides at the Mall of America and this lady comes up and says are you Muslim? Because she had never seen. You know, we were Mennonites, wearing our Mennonite dresses and caps, and she had never seen Mennonites before and she was trying to figure out where we fit. And she said are you Muslims? And we're like no, we're Christians. And she said, oh, she's a Christian too. You know, maybe she could come to our church sometime. So we connected and through that, we have kept up our friendship and we still talk about that, how we just randomly met at the Mall of America and it really does feel like a God thing that we came together, because it was really unique. But yeah, that's how I met Jacob.
Zack Johnson:For anyone who wants to know a little bit more about you or your books. Where can we find you? I know you said CLP, but is there a website or somewhere else we can find your work?
Luci Kinsinger:So yeah, Christian Light carries my two children's books, but with my memoirs probably just Amazon is the easiest Amazon or Barnes Noble, if you do online shopping. Yeah, that would probably be the easiest spot to look for my two memoirs.
Zack Johnson:And you mentioned that you were a blogger at one point in life. Do you still blog, or is that a thing of the past?
Luci Kinsinger:I recently resumed blogging a lot less frequently than I used to, but I am starting to post again. I kind of took over a year break after the birth of our little teddy, but yeah, I'm starting again, and that's lucindajkinsingercom is where I blog.
Zack Johnson:Perfect and Luci, I just wanted to say thanks so much for joining and just giving people a tiny insight into your life, and I just wanted to say thanks and blessings and I hope that some people can find your books and be inspired by your life.
Luci Kinsinger:Yeah, thank you. It was fun to be able to do this.
Zack Johnson:Yeah, God bless you.
Luci Kinsinger:Yeah, thank you.