WHEN LIFE HAPPENS

I had all kinds of plans. And anyone who has followed my blog even a little knows that. I have taken online writing courses, expounded my latest theological musings, and just shared from my heart in general. I had every intention of continuing in that same vein. I even considered entering ACFW’s Genesis contest. But then….wham! I boot up my computer, log into my email, and get one of those letters akin to a dreaded middle-of-the-night phone call: “Mom has had emergency open-heart surgery.” Huh?

Folks, Mom lives in Las Vegas, Nevada. I call Quilpue, Chile home. A whopping 5,600 miles separates the two cities. But within 24 hours I was on the plane. You see, I only have one mother.

The image I had of her was the same as six months ago–a fairly spry 82-year-old working woman who could run her life and that of anyone else smart enough to go along with it. Not this small, frail, hollow-eyed woman, who while sleeping gape-mouthed resembled Munch’s ghostly “Scream.”

If I ever thought my life was my own, I can forget it. Practically every waking hour, whether physically or mentally, is taken up on how to bring this little lady back. But it’s a labor of love. Did I mention that I only have one mother? Stay tuned for Mama’s progress. And how my own life evolves.

GOD: Pure and Simple–Eternal

I have been doing a lot of critiquing lately, which has been fun and rewarding, but it also means not posting on this blog for a while. And it shows. Nobody is reading it, either.  But today I want to share something important. And although it is an attribute only God can call his own, we do take part in some of it.

God always was, is, and always will be. Period. Nobody created him, therefore no one was before him. He is the source and sustainer of all. What if one day he thought, “Hmmm. I’m kinda tired of holding the universe in place. Think I’ll take a 5-minute snooze”? You think you’ve seen chaos at some point in history? Forget it. Anyway, although my point is to emphasize God’s “eternalness”, I want to share a thought.

Once we came into existence our eternity started. What? Yeah. We are formed in Mama’s womb,  live here on earth, and whether we want to believe it or not, after that only two possibilities exist:  continuing on in a different place after death FOREVER with God or continuing on at a different place FOREVER away from God. At this moment, I am not going to discuss the part after this life–just the part between Mama´s womb and death.

How long do you think an average life expectancy is on earth today? Taking into consideration a lot of factors like race, place of birth, etc., it is about 65 years. You live in Boca Raton and take care of yourself? Okay, let’s say yours is seventy-five. A good chunk of that has been used just growing up and getting to a place where you can read this, make sense of it, and analyze. So, how many years do you have left? You do the ciphering.

Do you remember when Russell Crowe’s character in Gladiator shouted, “What we do here echoes in eternity”? I imagine that after that, people came up and slapped him on the back. “Awesome, scene, Russ. Good job.” I don’t think the actor had ever said anything truer in his whole life and career. But my guess is that he didn’t give it another thought.

Sometimes I live my life as if it stopped here. I fret, I fume, I waste time, I get sidetracked. Today, while writing a note to a friend, it hit me once more just how important it is to remember what this life is all about. First of all, to get to know God. The gift of heaven is awesome, but I don’t want to meet face-to-face with a stranger when I get there. Second, to get my priorities straight. What am I truly accountable for and what do I take on that doesn’t correspond to me? How important is it really what consumes my mind, energy, and time? Third, if Jesus promised an abundant life here (and he did to his children), I need to live it! Can I do something to change whatever is thwarting that? He did not give his life and promises in vain.

What I have begun to do is take stock of what I do, think, and plan and determine its importance in the face of eternity. When I have to make choices, how does it hold up after I am gone from this earth? Making decisions could be a whole lot easier if I would just remember this principle, don’t you think?

God is, has always been, and will be. I am and will be. How is what I do here going to echo in eternity?

GOD: Pure and Simple–His Immutability

Having established that God is way out of our league in knowledge and everything else that I have not even touched on yet, he wants to be known. He makes himself available to us. This really blows me away. He is all the things our finite minds can’t even fathom, yet he wants to be known. And well, if not, he would never have started his plan in the first place.

If you read scripture in the Old Testament (regardless of one’s stance on its validity today), it doesn’t change what it is. God had a plan: to have a people and him to be their God. Period. That was the whole plan. Whether the people wanted to adhere to it and thus have an easier time of it, was a whole other story we could go into later on. But his strategy was simple. He didn’t just want to create a mass of people and let them have at it like a bunch of blindfolded kids thrashing at a piñata out of their reach. He wanted to lead them. And yes, he wanted their praise and their glory and their obedience, but have you checked out what the payback would be? Ahem! He would be their GOD.

I tried looking up in the dictionary what god means, and amazingly it is not easy to just find a definition. Several qualifications are adhered to it, but here is one: one that is worshiped, idealized, or followed. The rest talks about a superior being and tagging on a bunch of attributes or explaining what it means depending on the religion one follows. But this one serves our purposes. He wanted to be worshiped, idealized (don’t like that one too much, but oh well), and followed. That is all. I hold that God is simple. He had a simple plan. He still does. But we have found a way to complicate ourselves into a corner where it makes it virtually impossible to discover who he is anymore.

Theologians have done brilliant treatises on the attributes of God, and I don’t want to even infer that the words in this blog come close to that, but we do need to take a fresh look at who God is in the twenty-first century. Oh, but did I mention that one of his attributes is immutability? That means unchanging. If he is unchanging, and our post-modern world is revolutionized, computerized and all the other izeds you can come up with, what does that mean?

That even today, a far cry from when the world was created, perhaps some 10,000 years ago, God is still the same. The same God who asked Abraham to sacrifice his boy and then provided a substitute, the same God who told Moses to lead his people out of Egypt and across the Red Sea, the same God who came to earth in the form of Jesus and healed multitudes, died on the cross, and then was resurrected. The same God. So, is he like blind and not doing anything today? Did he decide that he is not going to burst onto the scene during our times like he did in the “old days”? Indeed not. He is here and very much aware of all that is occurring. So, why doesn’t he do something, you ask? Like what? Tell me. Like what?

God: Pure and Simple–His Omniscience

It is mind-blowing that God knows everything.
Maybe not that much to know is out there, and a human could come pretty close to doing the same thing? Not in his lifetime, not EVER is that going to happen. We have to remember an important detail: omniscient means not only knowing everything, but knowing it all the time. Meaning, everything, ever since the beginning of time and everything as long as earth and eternity exist. Eternity. Now, that simply is a long time. So, Omniscience means knowing everything, all the time, for all time. Don’t think a human can do that.
And one more glitch. That includes what goes on in everyone’s minds every moment, for all time, since the beginning. Only a “superior being” as some call the Almighty could pull that one off. Come on….admit it.
Okay, obviously we do know stuff. Why is that? Omniscience is one of the transferable attributes of God. Which means he gives us a little bit of what he has all of. That is saying that we can acquire knowledge, think, reason, delve, create, etc. Another important detail: the fact that God gives us a little bit of what he has by no way means that any his own is diminished. Not like he only has only so much knowledge available, so since he shares it with us, his is depleted. He has made us in his image with the ability to reason and acquire knowledge, but the infinitesimal percentage doesn’t even exist to quantify our knowledge in comparison with his. It is a waste of time even to try.
How does it make you feel to know that God is not only Independent (meaning, ultimately he doesn’t need us; he wants us) and that He knows absolutely everything–always has and always will?

GOD: Pure and Simple–His Independence

I am going to give the theme of writing and defeating self-defeating behaviors a rest for a few days. I want to talk about something more elemental and close to my heart. In fact, it is the backdrop of everything else we do, whether we recognize or admit it or not. The world is in an uproar, the average person is wondering how to pay bills, marriages are dissolving, many are crawling into private, computerized bubbles trying to survive the very real pain they are suffering.  Some declare, “God is on His throne.” Others cry,  “Where is God in all of this?” While the majority either doesn’t care or is too afraid to say what is really in their hearts because they might be struck my lightening for thinking it, little less saying it.

I long to have a picture of God as he is—huge, magnificent, the Almighty, Lord of the universe, who loves us enough to come to earth and do the necessary (a plan he came up with, by the way) for us to have an abundant life here on earth and then eternity with him. That whole concept is mind-boggling as it is.

God, the independent God, goes along, happy as a lark (the lark he created, of course), not needing anyone decides, out of love, to create man. That is a head-scratcher. How was it out of love for us, when if he had not created us, we never would have known the difference? The other angle is that it was for his glory, and that is when some people come up with the conception that God is an ego maniac. He created man so he could praise him or not, that the angels just weren’t sufficient for the task? That’s one to ponder. On the other hand, would it be worth it to him then to cook up the whole plan of coming to earth and redeeming the man he never had to create in the first place?

He would have been happy in heaven with Jesus and the Holy Spirit and the host of angels, so he didn’t need us there, either. And well, he could have created us and then when our time on earth was over, chao, but he chose to allow us to share it with him. Under one condition of course—that being that we repent of our sins and confess Jesus as Lord and Savior. Simple enough at first glance—if all it entailed was raising your hand and saying “I do.” But when we talk about change in conduct and lifestyle, things get sticky. Ahem! How quickly we forget who it is that created us and therefore should be able to call the shots. And then what we don’t get is that since he did create us and this world we call ours, he actually knows what is better for us and for it. He knows everything, you know. And that’s what I want to discuss on the next post. I welcome your comments.

THE “GOTTA GET PUBLISHED” MONSTER

So, the inauguration is over, and real life is setting in. I mean, folks are even beginning to forget Aretha’s hat! Time to move on. And well, I don’t think anyone would like to be in President Obama’s shoes right now. And some are having conniption fits over what appears to be a sudden change in policy. Gasp! That wasn’t the change most were anticipating. But that isn’t what I want to discuss today.

Until yesterday, I felt under a lot of pressure to publish–whether external or self-imposed, it niggled at me. Niggled isn’t the word–it threatened to consume me. And no doubt I will struggle with it today. But, I will just jab at it with a mental chair and whip while it growls and threatens to attack me.

About a month ago I read an article in Writer’s Digest about the guy who was commissioned to write the sequel to The Godfather. Incredible feat and privilege, to say the least. At the end, as usual, the interviewer asked him what tips he had for budding authors. He had a few, but the one that stuck out most was not to be in such a hurry to get published–to work on the craft and put out quality products, and the publishing will happen. Remember the Kevin Costner movie, Field of Dreams? “If you build it, they will come.” That is basically what he was saying. I remember breathing a sigh of relief and SO agreeing with him. In principle. . . but it wasn’t long until I fell prey once again to the attack of the You Gotta Get Published Monster.

I don’t know what happened yesterday. Maybe it was my muse. Nope, don’t have one of those. Maybe it was something my Change Coach said about not publishing your first three novels so you don’t have to look bad and feel ashamed, or something of the sort. Could be, ’cause she’s a sharp cookie….but more than likely it was God.

I confess to being consumed enough by the anxiety of getting published or not that it takes away some of the joy and creativity of my writing. Is that shooting myself in the foot, or what? I do know that part of what goes on in my mind is that I am not the youngest chick in the flock, so I tell myself to hurry up before it’s too late. Too late for what, is what I should ask myself.

So, instead of being stuck in that one place and going around in circles, fretting . . .I am moving on. I ‘m going to finish my present wip, revise it to the best of my ability, and query. And then write the next, all the time reading more, studying more, picking brains, attending workshops, all the things that will help produce a better pr0duct. After all, I’m not doing this just for anybody. Take that, you vicious Gotta Get Published Monster!

Anybody else struggle with this?

INAUGURATION DAY FROM A DISTANCE

Today all the various and asunder communities will make their presence known in one way or another. The gay community is indignant because Rick Warren is praying, and even though back in February of last year the Ku Klux clan declared that anything was better than Hillary Clinton, they are now encouraging white supremacist groups to wear black armbands and fly their Yankee flags upside down. It will be a record day for security.

A lot of evangelicals felt uneasy about President Obama setting up government in the White House because they weren’t sure where he stood, but as time goes by one thing is certain: he is in, and needs support and prayers.  What he has to face is so daunting, it would require an  unprecedented  amount of fortitude to even take it on. And during this transition time, that is what Mr. Obama  has shown, far more than a hunger for power or recognition.

I feel far removed, but only by distance. In my heart, this is the election I have most felt connected to and affected by in the almost six decades of my life.

While writing these words, milestones during my lifetime march through my mind: When Elvis first swiveled his hips and the Beatles took the world by storm, when the first man stepped on the moon, the assassintation of America’s probably most-loved president to date, the invention of the computer, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the discovery of DNA, and the list goes on and on.

We are making history, people. But my heart tells me that today’s inauguration is a lot bigger than having elected our first African-America president. Something bubbles under the surface, something we haven’t yet seen. I am no prophet, but what I can tell you is that God continues on his throne and in control, no matter who sits in the Oval Office. May our new president embrace that with all his strength. And may we support and pray for him during the process.

ABOUT MY MOTIVATIONS . . .

Reading about Jesus’ crucifixion today, something gave me pause. Now bear with me, this is not an exegesis–it is a personal interpretation, but I wanted to share it.

The man Jesus has expired. His disciples have dispersed.  But much to Pilate’s surprise, Joseph, a member of the Sanhedrin, comes to him and asks for Jesus’ body–probably a relief to the governor.  What motivated Joseph, the man from Arimathea, to do that?

First off, although he probably abstained or opposed, Joseph was a member of the group that conspired to kill Jesus. So by going to get Jesus’ body he put his life in danger consorting with the enemy, not to mention risking his reputation.  This act was definitely not going to up his popularity on any scale.

Second, he didn’t do it for his own well-being or because it was fun. Jesus’ body was mangled, bloodied, and filthy. It was not a pleasing task, by any stretch of the imagination.

Third, he couldn’t have done it for personal or financial gain. He donated a brand new tomb, bought the sheet to wrap Jesus’ body in, and although his buddy Nicodemus also brought some of the elements for a burial, the burden of it was on Joseph–all in the midst of a huge celebration that already would have been a drain on his pockets, no matter how deep.

Although it is impossible for me to be in the man’s mind, I can only come to one conclusion as to why he did it: love.

So, I started thinking about my motivations. I love God, right? Okay, so when I write I do so because I love God and I want my stories to touch others. I love God and it would be great to generate some income. I love God and I enjoy doing it (you know we do).

The appendage motivations aren’t bad. I just have to keep them in check so they don’t become primary. I long for my motivational pendulum to swing toward my love of God. That when I give a reader a refreshing drink, it is as for Jesus. That when my words visit people imprisoned by their minds, emotions, or metal bars, it as if it is for Jesus.

I want to write out of love for Jesus, but reconciling that with pleasing readers can be daunting task. Do you struggle with this?

Am I Worthy?

I mentioned in the post before last that I am taking an online course from Margie Lawson: Defeat Self-Defeating Behaviors. Although some of the information is not necessarily new to me, the format and the grouping of the concepts is, making the whole thing fresh and thought-provoking.

Among others, one of Lecture Four’s assignments was to make a list of Am I Worthy writing-related questions and then simply answer yes or no, without explanation or qualification.  Here are some of mine:

Am I worthy of getting an agent–yes

Am I worthy of my being being a bestseller–yes

Am I worthy of landing a huge book contract–no

Am I worthy of giving lectures on writing–no

Am I worthy of having a successful writing career–yes

My list was longer than that, but it would only bore you. Another question was whether or not I considered myself more worthy when I was productive.   My immediate answer was yes.  Please remember this questioning of worthiness is writing-related. The next part of the assignment was for me to determine what I needed to do to feel more worthy.  My response?  Work harder, press on, make and meet goals.

What is interesting to me is the conclusion I came to after doing this work: My worthiness as a writer is so different from my worthiness as a person.  My merit or value as a writer is not inherent or based on what someone else can or cannot give me. It rests on my work and achievements.

However….my worthiness as a Christian has nothing to do with me. It only has to do with Jesus. What a relief! Because if it was at all like how I am doing at writing, I would be in big trouble!

Have you ever felt unworthy? A loaded question, right? I invite your comments.

A Clean Read for Tweeners

House of Dark Shadows by Robert Liparulo is Book 1 the Dreamhouse Kings series, a YA mystery/suspense (published by Thomas Nelson).

Fifteen year-old Xander is anything but happy when his dad takes a new teaching job in a small California town. Especially when it means he, his parents, and two siblings, David and Toria, will have to leave their beloved and familiar Pasadena.

Hanging out in a motel and eating fast food and restaurant fare is fun for a while, but the real fun begins when his folks buy an old Victorian house hidden in the forest. The place promises to afford them all the comforts of home. Until things start to happen. Strange things—unaccounted-for noises, thundering footsteps, growling voices—dangerous things. And inexplicable worlds behind closed doors. More than once the men in the family risk their lives to unveil the mystery surrounding the house. And it’s all wrapped up in a secret Xander’s dad is unwilling to reveal until it just might be too late.

This tale is an animated blend of fantasy and suspense. Although the end doesn’t afford a totally satisfactory resolution, the cliffhanger will urge you to continue reading the King Family’s adventures to discover whodunit and how.

This first book in the series would appeal to young people between the ages of 10 and 14 looking for a suspenseful adventure.

Note: Parts can be scary and some fight scenes are explicit. Nothing spiritual is overt or necessarily implied.