The United States Constitution

(Preamble)

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union…

The first amendment protects our right as human beings to gather and our privilege as citizens to assemble, peacefully. I would never deny anyone the right to join as a group for any legitimate reason, such as charitable service, create, manufacture, and sell a product, or worship and study God’s Word. I believe it is critical for a healthy body politic to engage with complete strangers and protest any tyrannical actions that operate counter to the United States Constitution.

I’m glad the United States Supreme Court decided to hear the case against The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (aka, Obama Care). But it is up to us, we the people, to protect the Constitution of the United States from radicals who seem to be working overtime to destroy the document ordained and established to preserve the blessings of individual liberty. And they use the minions to do their dirty work. FULL POST

“Acutely senile in six months!” The terrible words rang in my ears, bounced off the walls of my mind and echoed through the canyons of my soul. Dr. Evers thrust long sheets of jagged lines before me, proof of my narrowing arteries, the build-up of plaque, the lack of healthy blood flow to the brain, the probability all this would soon affect my mind. I was 47 years old.

A rush of memories overwhelmed me.

Three Known Generations

I had watched the rapid deterioration of my beloved grandfather at age 52. I listened to his endless repetitions, saw him neglect daily farm chores to move a pile of hay from one spot to another for no apparent reason. He, who had spent his life trying to bring a smile to my grandmother’s face, fought her every attempt to ease his downward spiral. When he attacked her with a knife for denying him the keys to the car, Mother committed him to an asylum.

Haunted by what she had done to her father, Mother lived in fear that the same fate would befall her. At 65 she started repeating senseless questions and her behavior became increasingly bizarre. She bought a car she didn't need. She gave away large sums of money to unknown ministries. She hallucinated, seeing people where there were none, imagining they meant to harm her. FULL POST

I’m not a naturally impulsive person, but when I saw those fuzzy little peepers—in their myriad hues of cuteness—basking under incubator lamps in a feed store in rural Iowa, I couldn’t resist. It didn’t hurt that my 11-year-old daughter was already on her knees, oohing and ahhing, right next to them. I decided right then on the spot that my daughter needed to have a “farm experience,” like I did spending summers on my grandparents’ farm growing up. And, of course, she couldn’t have just one chicken; she had to have two, so those chicks would be buddies.

Never mind that this was the middle of winter, and that we’d have to somehow keep the little critters at their above 90-degree incubation temperature in the car for the entire 6-hour drive back to Chicago. (The chicks ended up sleeping…waking up to eat…sleeping…waking up to eat…sleeping in a sweater on my daughter’s lap the entire way and were toasty warm.) FULL POST

This is a topic of conversation with writers all of the time, particularly Christian writers. Many believe that strong emotions simply cannot be shown without it, or that really bad men can’t be portrayed without it. I agree, bad men use bad language, and I show that all the time. But I never use the language, I simply show them doing it. People know what the words are, they don’t need me to spell it out for them, they just want to see the emotions and the body language, to see the people using the language.

But people disagree with me, I get that. So there is a more pragmatic argument. Most Christian publishers simply will not take a book that contains profanity, graphic sex, or violence. This seems to anger the people who feel that is taking realism out of the books. They miss the point. Christian publishers are trying to walk the line between taking on relevant, current subjects, and presenting them in such a way that they are appearing to condone the behavior. Showing people in a book using bad language is being realistic, but using the language itself is an appearance of condoning the behavior. FULL POST

“Go therefore and make disciples of nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
Matthew 28:19-20

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When Jesus gave the disciples the great commission, He was specific on what He expected them to do. Does this command also apply to those of us interested in missions?

Go!

Notice how Jesus told them to go to other nations. Imagine how these former fishermen must have felt! They probably had never left the region ever in their entire lives.

I know for me, leaving the United States to go on a mission trip to Slovakia several years ago was a difficult decision. I had left the U.S. before for a vacation, but this was different. Why? I found that heading to an unknown land to meet up with strangers was scary! FULL POST

Earlier this year a friend of mine shared a secret he had learned during miles of cycling. “Don’t worry about the miles per hour,” he said. “It’s the cadence that matters. If you keep the cadence above 70 or 80 no matter how steep the hill, your miles per hour will take care of itself.”

What my friend told me turned out to be true. I had my computer set to always show me the MPH and would strain, sometimes in very hard gears, to maintain my speed even on monster hills. But eventually my legs would wear out. However, using the cadence focus, I paid attention only to how many times I pedaled in a minute. If it was at least 70, my miles per hour worked out better at the end of the ride. Changing the gears as needed to keep a steady cadence no matter what the angle of the journey is up or down, gave my cycling success.

At the time I remember thinking how my friend’s principle also applies to our lives, especially our spiritual lives. Is there a cadence I can focus on that would keep me from worry about life’s ups and downs; a cadence that would capture my focus in spite of the peeks and valleys of life. I wanted to be able to turn the computer of my life to this cadence and not worry about the miles per hour (the worldly view of how my life was going). FULL POST

Why do you want to write? What pushes or compels you to keep on writing even though you receive rejection after rejection?

Those are the two major questions I’ve often asked writers at the more than 250 conferences where I’ve spoken or taught continuing classes over the past thirty-five years.

The conferees’ responses vary, but the first ones usually begin with high-sounding tones—as if they want to please me, the teacher, or out of a desire to sound erudite. More than once someone has said, “I want to light the way for others to follow.”

Another said, “I see writing as a high and holy occupation because we’re committed to save the world from ignorance.”

That’s commendable—and maybe even true—but I knew those weren’t the deepest reasons.

“I write to make sense of the world,” one man insisted.

“Sounds profound,” I said. “Perhaps a little too profound for me.”

He added that he had so much chaos in his daily living that writing was one way he could make sense of his life. When I pushed him to explain further, he admitted he had read the statement in a book, liked it, and was satisfied with that as an answer. FULL POST

“A person really believes something when he acts as though it were so.” --Seneca

I recently had the pleasure of reading the personal story of Mary C. Crowley in her book You Can Too. Mary is a wonderful example of a woman who was able to live every day of her life to the fullest.

Mary was born in 1915. Her mother died eighteen months later. Until she was 6 ½ years old, she lived with her loving grandparents who taught her to depend on the Lord for everything and told her that Jesus was her friend and would always help her and make good things happen for her.

At age 6 1/2, she was sent to live with her father and a very cruel stepmother. During the next seven years, her life was very hard. At age 13 she was returned to her loving grandparents, but they had moved from their farm and she never felt at home in high school. Too soon she married a nice man who was ill prepared to support a family during the Depression. She realized that if she wanted to provide a happy home for her two children, it would be totally up to her. As she struggled to educate herself and to support her children, she gave the pieces of her broken heart to God. He mended them. As she prayed to have every trace of bitterness removed from her heart, she learned to delight in the Lord and to rid her life of anxiety. FULL POST

Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint. Isaiah 40:31 (NIV)

My husband, Chuck, and I have been married almost 36 years, and we love each other in a deeper, more satisfying way than the day we said, “I Do.” But that love has not always come easy or without cost.

In order to truly love someone, you have to experience the deep places of pain and agitation. Times when you feel so bewildered and frustrated you could just scream. Times when you want to walk out the door and not look back. Times of great loss. Times of disagreement when the solution is cloudy and you see no resolution in sight. This is the stuff of life that God uses to mold a marriage made in heaven. Indeed, marriage will test every fiber in your spiritual fabric.

The struggle to grow a godly marriage can be downright wearisome at times. But God promises the time invested is well-worth the effort. He promises to renew our strength, to mount us up with wings like eagles, if we will commit ourselves and our marriages to Him. FULL POST

What does it take to be a writer? Apply the lower portion of our anatomy to a chair and start producing words. That’s it. A writer is someone that is committed to writing, and actively doing it.

What does it take to be a published writer? Get our words out into the marketplace where they are readily available to the reading public. The “readily available” is the key, the more places it is available the better.

What does it take to be a significantly published author? Our words in the hands of the reading public in quantities that would be considered credible by publishing industry professionals. How is this measured? In sales, or in shorter work in publications that have circulation that would be considered credible by publishing industry professionals.

There’s nothing subjective about this, it’s quantifiable. It’s quantifiable not by how the book was published or by whom, not by how we think it is being received, but how we realistically answer these questions. Hard, solid numbers. FULL POST