September 2008

I’ve been reading in Genesis lately and discovered something. Actually, I had considered this before, but yesterday it hit me afresh, made me consider my own thoughts and responses to things.

The portion is Genesis 3 – the fall of man into sin. The serpent deceives Eve, she eats the fruit as does Adam, and their eyes are open to their own nakedness. They sew fig leaves together and hide from God when he walks in the garden later in the day. (As if anyone has ever successfully hidden from God…but that’s another topic.)

God asks them why they hid and they admit their fear because of their nakedness. They didn’t want God to see them the way they saw themselves, though He already saw far more than they could imagine. Then God asks them who told them they were naked?

Adam’s response is most telling – “The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” Emphasis mine.

Notice that though Adam casts blame on Eve, he is really blaming God for giving Eve to him in the first place. Not willing to accept the blame for himself, he places it elsewhere. And don’t we do the same thing?

How many times have I thought, “Things would have been different if God had not allowed this, or why didn’t God stop that from happening?” The fact that God is all-powerful and all-knowing adds to the frustration that since He has the power to do as I ask, why doesn’t He do it?

We get caught up in the “if onlys” and the “whys” of life blaming God for things we know He could control, that are beyond our ability to influence. Or perhaps we could have done things differently, as Adam surely could have, but didn’t, and then find excuses to suggest that God should have stopped us, shouldn’t have allowed the temptation. “The woman you put here with me-she…”

The blame game never stops. What began in the garden with the onset of sin, continues today among people of all faiths – Christian or not.

I woke up yesterday upset about something and found myself doing this very thing – blaming God for my circumstance, because He didn’t answer my prayers as I would have liked. Then I remembered Adam, and decided I could play the blame game along with him or I could own up to my failings and sins and accept the consequences for my actions.

I wonder if the curse would have been different if Adam and Eve had confessed instead of blamed. Surely, God would still have allowed the promised consequence of death, for blood had to be shed to cover their sin. But perhaps the sting and pain of sin’s fallout might have been different. We’ll never know.

Ultimately, their actions are given to us as an example of what not to do. The hard part is learning from their mistakes and not continually repeating them myself!

I’m beginning to understand part of why God had Ryan and I attend the ACFW Conference this year. I’ve been thinking about Angela Hunt’s talks a lot today.

In one of her talks, Angie took a song by Nichole Nordeman called Legacy. (I’m including the YouTube Video of the song here.) Angie put the words and music to her own slide show of pictures and applied it to authors. The message was both positive and poignant.

Here are the words to the song:
Legacy by Nichole Nordeman

Not well traveled, not well read, not well-to-do or well bred
Just want to hear instead, “Well Done” good and faithful one…

Listening to the song again today (over and over again to memorize the words) made me think about how much I need to work on loving those around me. It reminded me of the forgotten people in the nursing home where my dad now lives. Taught me a lesson in patience and made me realize how much I love my folks. I’m so glad they’re still on earth with me. Someday too soon we’ll part ways until heaven reunites us, but I’m not in any hurry to experience that parting. I treasure each moment even while hating that my dad has to be in that place, nice as they are to him.

Other lessons at the conference – Angie also talked about pride and how we are all in the middle, not better than another and not lowest of the low. And really, writers aren’t more special than anyone else. Being published doesn’t make someone more loved in God’s eyes. All the accolades of this world don’t last. It helps to keep such reality in perspective. I needed to hear these things again.

I also believe God led me to want to go to the conference for Ryan’s sake. He learned a lot and made some good contacts. Here we are at the awards banquet.

My friend Deb Raney won three awards that night! First place in three categories for Book of the Year. Clean sweep! I’m pretty proud of her. :)

And here’s one with some of my favorite author friends, some of whom are my critique partners but who really don’t critique each others’ work any more – we hang out for friendship and moral support now. From left to right: Tamera Alexander, Deborah Raney, Meredith Efken, Maureen Lang, and me.

All in all, it was a good conference. I’ve got more pics with more wonderful people. I’ll try to post tomorrow or the next day. Had a headache most of the day and am still sleep-deprived, but I things are slowly getting back to normal. And I’m jumping back into working on Abigail while Ryan is working hard on his fantasy. I have high hopes for him! :)

I’m home from the 2008 ACFW Conference. If they turned out all right, I’ll post pictures later. It was a good trip, and an enjoyable conference. Angie Hunt is an amazing speaker and right on. She put our focus on the Lord and obedience to Him above all, which is as it should be.

The conference as grown to over 500 people in attendance. As always, there are faces I recognized, friends I reconnected with, and more often than not, people I didn’t know. More young adults this year than in past years, which helped my son, Ryan, connect with those his own age. I think it was a great conference for him. He made good connections and learned a lot. And I would bet that he wrote more words at this conference than anyone else there this weekend. He told me he wrote 9000 words during the conference, but still managed to make his appointments and some of the workshops.

As usual though, we missed most of the workshops due to other commitments, so I bought the MP3 to listen to later. Still, the experience was a good one.

I wonder though, as far as I was concerned, why I went. I had nothing to pitch, no book to sign (yet) :) and no real reason that I personally needed to be there.

I told a friend before the conference that I hoped God would use me to bless someone else while I was there. I hope that happened, but at the end of the conference this morning, I told her I still didn’t know why I’d come. I’m not bemoaning the going – perhaps I needed to go for Ryan’s sake. I just can’t figure out what God had for me. And I still don’t know. But I’m praying about it. I think there is something He may still show me even though the conference is past.

Or maybe I’ll never know. And that’s okay because many people there blessed my life. One very kind author prayed with me, a few others allowed me the privilege of listening to their stories. Some gave me timely advice and helped me to see things more clearly. So I came away with good memories and things to chew on.

The worship was so God-honoring, the music filled the banquet hall. The choir sang a beautiful song written by one of our talented members. So much creativity in one room! At the awards banquet one young woman won first place for her category in the Book of the Year contest. Her speech was delightful! She thanked the “voices in her head, her imaginary friends, and whoever made the wonderful desserts each day.” To which I heartily agreed. :) Though I do not want to get on the scale tomorrow morning.

I was also able to hook up with a cousin I haven’t seen since I was 17. She and her husband met me at the Mall of America, and we got to catch up with each other for an hour and a half. An unexpected treat! :) (If I’d had a book to sign, I would not have had the chance to talk to her, so it’s good that Michal doesn’t come out until March.) Ryan introduced me to Godiva decadent chocolate mocha cold drink (I can’t remember the exact title) and it was way too yummy for its own good. Another unexpected treat, but one that only adds to my reasons to avoid that bathroom scale. :)

I also discovered that most people don’t know how to pronounce the title of my book. Many people are pronouncing Michal as the male version Michael. I used to do the same thing, but I asked a Jewish friend once how to say the name and it’s Mi-call (short i, almost with an e sound), emphasis on the second syllable. I can’t do the Hebrew roll of the tongue very well, but I love the way it’s supposed to sound. Now if I can just let everyone else know that… :)

All in all, it was a good conference. But it’s even better to be home.

I had lunch with my editor Lonnie Hull Dupont today. What fun! We talked for nearly three hours and had a great time. I hope I am privileged to continue to work with her for years to come! I got to share a new idea with her that she wants to see, so when I get back from the conference next week, I’ll work to get that proposal to her.

I received revised galleys for Michal a few days ago – due next Tuesday. I finished reading through the suggested changes, so now all I have to do is read through the whole book again to see if everything flows okay. Once the galleys are approved, the book goes to page proofs, which I think is how the book will look once it’s in print. Harder to make changes then, which is why I’m being so careful now.

Eventually, perhaps in a few months, we plan to drive to Grand Rapids to take a tour of Revell and meet everyone who has worked so hard to bring Michal to print. I’m so looking forward to that!

Before the galleys came, I was putting the finishing touches on Abigail. I’ll be sending that to Lonnie in a few weeks. I hope she likes it. I love the story, but I worry that I’m the only one who feels that way. My crit partner, Jill Stengl, tells me not to worry, it’s good – so maybe Lonnie will like it too. :)

Started researching more on Bathsheba and also began Community Bible Study this past week, which is studying Genesis. All this and the new proposal makes for about four or five stories juggled at the same time. But I enjoy this type of juggling. :)

I lost a piano student this week as well, but since I recently gained a new one, I’m at the same place. Since my goal is to write full time, I don’t want a lot of students, so this works out well – only one day a week.

Saw my dad on Thursday. I take him McDonald’s or other fast food each week, which makes him happy. It’s such a small thing, yet important to him. The hardest part of every visit is seeing him so helpless and so unable to help himself. I wish he had never fallen…I wish things were as they used to be…I wish he wasn’t in that place. But we don’t always get what we wish…

Been watching Hurricane Ike attack Galveston, Texas, praying for the people there. I know a number of authors in Houston and hope this doesn’t affect them, though it sounds like it will. Scary indeed!

Ryan did some rewriting on his novel today, and I got to read part of his first chapter. He’s grown so much as a writer in the past year! I’m impressed! :)

Less than a week until the ACFW Conference! I’m looking forward to seeing friends again. I wish my agent could be there, but not this time. Maybe next year. I hope I can go next year, but there are a number of other places I also hope to travel, Lord willing. A year can bring a lot of changes though, as this year has already shown, some good, some not so good.

The best change has been the even greater closeness I’ve felt to the Lord, the joy of seeing Israel, and the insatiable desire to read His Word. To know Him has been the greatest privilege of all! Such knowledge puts everything else in right perspective.

I downloaded pictures from our camera the other day and came across a bunch of photos my guys took as they were painting and setting up the prayer room for 40. I’d been inside the room before 40 began, but somehow I missed one corner. They had constructed a wooden cross and set candles around it, not as a shrine, but as a reminder of what our salvation had cost Jesus.

Then in our AFG (adult fellowship group) yesterday we watched a DVD that put our big God in perspective to very tiny us, to get a glimpse of how great He really is. The speaker, Louie Giglio read Psalm 33:6 “By the word of the LORD were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth.” He went on to show us pictures of some of the biggest stars known to man and how the size of earth fits in comparison. He called God a “star-breather” and according to that verse, that’s exactly what He did. Can you picture it? God breathed and the stars were formed! (See part of Louie’s talk here)

Some of those stars are so huge! When you see pictures of earth just compared in size to the sun we are small, but compared to some of the biggest stars discovered by NASA with the Hubble telescope, we are minuscule! And yet God not only sees the earth, but sees us individually on it.

Louie went on to talk about a black hole within one of the stars and showed a picture that looked like this one – at the center of the black hole was a cross shape. I followed the link from this picture and found this about black holes:

“Strong evidence that black holes do sometimes collide and merge was recently discovered by David Merritt, of Rutgers University, and Ronald Ekers, of the Australia Telescope National Facility. They studied patterns of radio waves given off by a group of distant galaxies. One strange feature that these galaxies have in common is a curious X-shaped structure at their centers.”

X-shaped or cross-shaped? I’m not sure that a cross in the center of a black hole means anything scientifically, but from a spiritual perspective it holds abundant significance. Because whether we want to admit it or not, every one of us has a black hole in the center of our soul, a God-sized vacuum that only He can fill. Isn’t it telling that even in nature we can see the answer to filling that void – for those with spiritual eyes to see it?

The last thing Louie Giglio spoke about had to do with the human body and cells and DNA structure. He explained molecules and something called Laminin that is the glue that holds our bodies together. I’ll admit, I have no real medical knowledge to explain these things, so I won’t even try to here. But this is the picture of the Laminin molecule. Notice the shape.

Which is really the whole point of these observations. Colossians 1:13-17, 19-20 says it better than I ever could.

“For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.

…For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.”

Whether in a prayer room or in a black hole or in a connective molecule, all things hold together in Christ, through his blood shed on the cross. The cross in different forms is just a greater reminder of Him.

I’m watching one of the older versions of Batman right now, the one with Jack Nicholson as Joker and Michael Keaton as Batman. Tiger is curled at my feet in the recliner. He likes to share the chair with me. :) I like all the Batman movies, though I’d forgotten this one. It’s not quite as high-tech as the newer versions with CGI and other technologies. It’s classic story is one that keeps returning though. I remember the TV series for Batman that I used to watch as a kid. My friends and I liked to pretend we were the characters – yes, even girls liked to be Batman and Robin! :)

Last weekend we watched two movies – Unforgiven and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Unforgiven was a Clint Eastwood movie – interesting story line, a little bittersweet. Sky Captain reminded me of Indiana Jones and King Kong. It was a fun adventure set around the 1930s or so.

I finished reading through Abigail today. I’m hoping to send it to my editor soon. I love the stories of David’s wives. I’m looking forward to getting into Bathsheba’s story soon.

The ACFW Conference is in less than two weeks. Ryan and I are going again. This year will be a little weird for me as I’m not planning to pitch anything, just enjoy the company of those I meet, see old friends, and learn from some great writers. Angela Hunt is our keynote speaker. I love Angie’s writing – especially her Biblical fiction. I’m looking forward to hearing her speak and finally meeting her in person.

I had my first newspaper interview for Michal, printed in our church newspaper. It’s so fun seeing the cover – they even put it in color.

It’s been a busy day, cleaning and baking, among other things. Time to finish watching the rest of the movie without distractions. :) My guys don’t understand how I can write and watch or read and watch – women are better at multitasking, I guess. :)

It’s all good~ :)