October 2007

Waiting is something I’ve had to do quite often over the years. Homeschooling taught me more patience than I thought possible. Seeking publication has only added to that need. As with many businesses, seeking publication is filled with many “hurry up and wait” situations. For authors, the waiting can be excruciating. So we focus on other things. :)

Today I’m in “wait” mode as one of my projects is being discussed for publication. I want the phone to ring with good news (who doesn’t?) and yet, I know that God is in control and I must submit to His will, His timing.

In the meantime, I’m fighting a splitting headache, which I’m thinking might be withdrawal from caffeine. But then it could be a weather headache – pressure changes. It’s hard to tell. I took a step back from caffeine for today because of a virus I’ve been fighting all weekend. Not sure whether I prefer the virus or the headache. Sigh.

My boys returned from New York yesterday. They went to a film festival there, because their short film Subject 74 made it in as a contestant. They didn’t win anything, but they learned a lot. Apparently film festivals are more for features than shorts. So maybe the next big project they’ll do will be a feature…someday. (Hopefully, sooner than later.)

In the meantime, they wait…and write. Something their mom is doing as well. A family pastime.

Last night I spoke with one of my critique partners who had finished a pre-read of my suspense. She actually liked it! I am thrilled because I know she isn’t one to say things she doesn’t mean, and in the past has taught me much when it comes to writing. She did point out a few areas that will help enhance the story, which is great, but I am relieved to know I actually kept her turning pages. :) She said she read faster in places trying to find out what would happen next. I am pleased to hear it as I was beginning to doubt my ability to fully execute that story. It’s a challenge to write in two genres, but I love a good challenge. Keeps life interesting.

And it helps with all the waiting…which I’m still doing…wishing the phone would ring…fearing it will…thinking it won’t…guessing I’ll probably still be waiting until tomorrow or the next day for an answer. Will the series sell? Or not? I’m asking God to open this door wide. But above all, may His will be done.

In the meantime, I wait…

I’ve always considered myself blessed to have parents who love Jesus and who raised us to know Him. Of course, one is not born a Christian – it is a choice a person makes when they are old enough to understand the truth. But to be taught the truth from childhood is a blessing, and to have a family legacy of faith is a blessing indeed.

Not everyone in my family believes as I do, but among those who do are my parents, and at least some of my grandparents, and perhaps my great-grandparents, though I did not know them. My mom’s mom was the grandparent I knew best. She lived with us for a time and used to babysit me when I was too young to stay alone. She taught me how to play pinochle and bake pie from scratch and every Christmas I would watch her and my mom make the best fruit cake (as far as fruit cake goes) and to-die-for chocolate 8-layer cake, which was really more like a torte. The layers were so thin they barely covered the cake pans. And the frosting was made from Cadbury chocolate bars.

In the summer, when my mom worked, I spent time with Grandma. In the mornings we worked on baking projects. Then she’d watch her one favorite soap opera, and when it ended, she would get out her box of pictures and tell me about her past.

Perhaps that’s one of the reasons I love history and historical fiction. Grandma would take a picture, and I would ask about the people. She would regale me with stories of her youth and her young married life, and in some cases I could still detect the emotion that went with the memory.

Grandma was the ninth out of ten children, though she never knew her four oldest siblings as they died, probably of some epidemic, before she was born. She did have four sisters that lived, two of whom she remained close to until her death.

She grew up in Detroit and lived to see Prohibition and the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression. I have a picture somewhere of Detroit when the main roads were dirt and people could plant gardens and raise chickens. It was Grandma’s job to pluck her family’s chickens to ready them for cooking. As an adult, she didn’t like eating chicken all that much. She even doctored her chicken noodle soup with ketchup!

Grandma loved words, a legacy she passed on to me. She could play a mean game of Scrabble. I still have her original set, and on those rare occasions when we pull it out to play, I think of her.

There was a time in her life when things didn’t go so well for my grandma. I came along later in her life so I only knew Grandpa through vague images of memory and whatever Grandma told me. He died when I was three, leaving her a widow in her early sixties. But she was a strong woman and always rose to a task. She loved to cook, and she loved to give. If she hadn’t used something in a year, she gave it to someone who could.

Grandma went faithfully to church every Sunday, but it occurred to me one day that I had never asked her about her faith. I knew people often attended church without knowing Jesus, and I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t ask Grandma what she believed. So one day I stopped by her apartment and asked. She’d been ill, and when I asked her about her faith in Jesus, she told me that when she suffered physical pain she could only imagine how much worse it must have been for her Savior when he died on the cross for her. The thought made her heart break in gratitude.

She died a few years later of cancer. My mom spent those last hours with Grandma, and she told me that right before Grandma took her last breath she spoke. She did not speak to my mom. Perhaps she was too miserable to notice anyone else in the room with her. Or perhaps her gaze was already focused on the next life waiting beyond, because she passed into eternity with one final word on her lips. A name that is above every name.

Jesus…As though He were waiting there to take her home, she said His name and breathed her last.

When my time comes, I want to leave such a legacy.

Why do we, as finite humans ever think we can control anything? God is God and He sits enthroned on high. All of heaven does His will, and ultimately all mankind will do the same, whether they want to or not.

We are not puppets as though we have no choices, and yet, we are subjects. And subjects obey the master. In God’s economy, those subjects who love the Master and His beloved Son are adopted into His family. So it is love that makes the difference. And yet we only love because He loved us first. Our love is a mere reflection of His. He displayed His love in all its majesty and tragedy on a cruel, Roman cross. His bleeding arms stretched wide, open for the love of the whole world.

But only those who come close enough to be covered in that blood will be wrapped forever in those loving arms. Those whom He has drawn are the ones who respond and love Him back.

So even this is not a choice and yet the choice lies with every subject of the King. Will they be a slave and obey without choice in that day when “every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord?” Or will they be a son who willingly, in love, subjects themselves to the Father’s will here and now?

A true subject starts out a slave to his own designs, then in surrender relinquishes the control he thought he had to the Master. In the process, he becomes a willing, grateful servant and a beloved son clothed in the riches of the One who called him.

It is a paradox, hard to get our minds around, impossible to understand. And yet a simple truth even a child can grasp.

A slave or a son. Which are you?

There is a Christian family who lives not far from me who recently suffered great loss. The husband lost his job and subsequently they lost their home, then their oldest son was seriously injured in Iraq. While the father went to be with the oldest son, now stateside, the two youngest sons drove their mom to a retreat center. On the drive home they were killed in a car accident.

Sometimes we think we can explain suffering. Well-meaning Christians look for reasons and might suggest any number of possibilities for pain. Perhaps there is sin in our life, or we don’t have enough faith. Maybe God is testing us or Satan is attacking.

Health and wealth advocates assure us that we can expect good things in this life. As children of the king, we can claim blessings that are rightfully ours.

I have a problem with this. And I dare say that Christians in countries other than the United States who suffer daily persecution would not agree with that line of thinking either.

And then there is the problem of the Apostle Paul. In 2 Corinthians he was forced to defend himself to the people of that church who were giving him a hard time, questioning his authority. He gave them a list of what he had suffered for the sake of Christ.

He said, “Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my own countrymen, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false brothers. I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches. Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn?” 2 Corinthians 11:25-29

It’s hard to say who suffered greater loss, Job or Paul. In Philippians 3:7-8a, Paul says, “But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things.”

Lost all things. We’ve seen it happen when a hurricane or tornado or fire strikes an area. And today I read where in the U.S. there are 114,000 orphaned children, who have certainly lost everything they ever held dear.

In a world wrought with hurt and devastation and loss, how can we expect to deserve the best and biggest blessings in this life? What then, do we do with the problem of suffering? Paul was willing to lose everything to gain Christ. To him, there was nothing on earth of greater value – no perceived blessing here came close to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus his Lord.

Even if it meant suffering in the process…

“I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me…I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”

The best of life’s blessings – the prize for which God has called us heavenward – are yet to be.

Yesterday my contributor copy for The One Year Life Verse Devotional came in the mail! My devotional, “Whatever You Say, Lord” is on April 14. While I’ve been quoted in other books or listed in acknowledgments, this is my first printed contribution. What fun!

Other than that, I’ve been taking a writing vacation for a couple of weeks in between projects. I finished my mystery/suspense and am waiting for a few friends to read it and comment before I tackle it again to for its final draft. Final in the sense that it will hopefully be good to send to my agent by then.

I’m also waiting to hear on a project that is under consideration at a Christian publishing house. The story has made it past the editorial board but we’re still in that “wait” mode for the final decision. I’m praying it sells. Wouldn’t that be something? I’m not sure what that would feel like, but I have a feeling I would enjoy it. :)

In the meantime, I’ve been doing lots of reading. I read two books by Deeanne Gist – The Measure of a Lady and Courting Trouble. Both well done. Right now I’m in the midst of reading Fancy Pants by Cathy Marie Hake. I won two of the books in Dallas. I bought six books at the bookstore at the conference and won four more in a drawing. A wonderful surprise!

Monday was my husband’s birthday, but we won’t celebrate until this Friday due to schedule difficulties. Subject 74, my sons’ short film made it into a festival in New York! I would love to go to New York someday. That, and the rest of the east coast, is one part of the United States I’ve never been. Been West and Midwest and South but never East. Need to remedy that someday.

I stopped at the Post Office today and picked up passport applications. We’re thinking about going with our church on a trip to Israel next year, but nothing is certain. I would love to see the place – it’s always been a dream trip – and what a great opportunity to research my Biblical novels! But many things would have to line up – most importantly God will have to open all the doors. It’s fun to think about though…

Not much else happening around here. I’ve had a horrible headache this afternoon and evening. I’m not sure why my neck muscles tighten to give me these tension/migraines. Even three cups of my chocolate coffee didn’t help! I think I need to go to bed.

Which sounds like a great idea about now… :)

Goodnight~