Ready? 1...2...3...Cannonbaaaalllll!

So, it's been four months since I've written.  Anything.  That creative and thoughtful part of my brain totally shut down when we invited all sorts of crazy into our lives with Army enlistment.  We have sold the house we lived in for 8 years (which is its own crazy story), moved in with in-laws, left a wonderful school district, submitted a resignation from a job I have loved, and the hardest thing of all: preparing to say good-bye to the church that has loved us, sustained us, and changed us.  All this while doing my best to figure out what to do with my present while all my ideas about what our future would have held unraveled and then knit itself together in a radically different pattern. 

The new pattern has lots of camo in it.

And combat boots.  And automatic weapons.  And acronyms.  And long lonely nights while my soldier is away doing what needs to be done.


But this new future is lovely in its own way.  It will involve lots of change.  But change is the essence of an adventurous life.  There will even be pain.  But pain is the key to growth and, to borrow a phrase I learned recently, all growth is spiritual growth. 

Some people, upon hearing this truth and desiring spiritual growth for themselves, creep along the edge of change and dip their toes in, gradually warming up to it.  Not us.  We grasped each other's hands, took a flying leap, and plunged in cannonball-style.  Not because we are more brave or adventurous than the next family.  But because the pain of staying the same was worse than the pain of change.  Sometimes, that's what it takes to get a person to move.

I could be the type who holds a grudge against God for allowing calamity to reign down on our lives with the first devastating job loss that got this ball rolling.  At the time it seemed like the end of everything good in our lives.  Now I realize that it was only a stumble.  We got kicked in the shins  and limped along for the next few years, rebuilding, surviving, looking for silver linings, thinking the worst was over.  There were uniforms hanging in the house again.  The smell of leather and gun cleaner was like perfume to me.

But it was not to last.  The next time we got punched squarely in the gut.  While we were writhing around on the floor, trying to suck a life-giving breath into our lungs, God was quietly bringing together a plan that would set us on our current course.  But before we could take the first step, we had to be looking up at it from where we lay.  Only then would we see it clearly, accept it, have joy in it, and do the cannonball into it.

Only now I believe that its not only each other's hands we are holding.  According to Psalm 37, "The Lord directs the steps of the godly.  He delights in every detail of their lives.  Though they stumble, they will never fall, for the Lord holds them by the hand."

I'm not quite ready to look back on our lives and delight in all the details, but God, who sees the beginning, the present, and the future, does.  And as I look as far as my limited imagination can see into the new future that has been knitted together, before I take a step, I will reach my hand up and hold on tight as He takes me on the ride of my life. 

Well, you don't seem to be freaking out!

Reactions to our news--that my husband at the age of 33 has enlisted in the Army--has run the gamut from from, "I'm so proud of you," to, "I hope you know what you're getting yourself into," (yeah, we haven't been thinking about what it means for us AT ALL).  But, "Well, you don't seem to be freaking out!" is by far my favorite.  I like it because it was spoken by a friend who knows exactly what military life is.  And the truth is, I'm NOT freaking out even though life as we knew it is pretty much over and hubby ships off in less than five months.

Most people who know us know what we've been through in the last three years or so.  Job loss, followed by the struggle to be grateful for crappy, undesirable, low-paying jobs, followed more job loss, etc.  It's been difficult.  Imagine in those three years getting more letters than can be counted that all begin with the following statement: "Thank you for your interest in (fill-in-the-blank) law enforcement agency.  We've selected a more desirable/qualified candidate."  Over and over and over.  A never-ending stream.  What they're basically saying is, "We don't want you (even though you tested really well).  You have baggage (even though we all have if we're honest with ourselves).  We believe we will regret hiring you (even though you could bring with you a vast amount of training and experience).  We know your old bosses and what they say is far more influential than anything you've got to say to redeem yourself."  Ouch.

Now imagine that you are sitting in the Army recruiter's office.  It may seem like a move of desperation to some but the truth is, you are kind of excited about it.  Some guys are just meant to do this kind of work.  There's just one problem.  There are no jobs available.  The military really isn't beating down anyone's door to join up because "the war is over" and all that, I guess (does anyone really believe that?).  But the seargants you are working with are determined to get you in because they see something in you, or because your test scores are really high, or because they felt some unexplainable nudge from above, or because you brought them Slivinski's donuts at 7am, or whatever.  The point is THEY WANT YOU. 

They want you so bad they are willing to make a call and subvert the system and manually input the job you really wanted to begin with but were told it wasn't likely you could get because the availability of jobs is so limited.

Now, I'm not an empathetic person by nature but...wouldn't that just turn your whole world around?! 

I'm still too busy being ecstatically happy for my husband to bother with freaking out.  I'm not sitting here in blissful unawareness that the future will indeed hold many challenges and trials for our family.  I'm already trying to figure out how to live in the tension of security (steady job, healthcare, housing, etc.) mixed with the insecurity of not knowing where we will be living a year from now.

But I'm not scared.  I'm not sad.  I'm definitely not freaking out.  I have even entertained the notion that perhaps the difficult and crooked path we have been on for the last three years has been sifting away the chaff of materialism, needing a false sense security to feel safe, hanging on to things I need to let go of, and thinking the wrong things are important.  I am ready for this adventure.  I am prepared as much as my limited knowledge of the future can allow me to be.

This next chapter is going to be very interesting.....

Death by Beans

That's going to be the epithet on my daughters' tombstones.  All three of them.  Underneath that pithy phrase will be something along the lines of, "My mom is a cruel and heartless woman who fed me nothing but beans for forty days.  Blech."

I feel sorry for them.  I really do.  Two out of the three of them HATE beans.  And the one who doesn't hate beans doesn't eat rice.  This is going to be one long Lenten season as we choose to subsist on rice and beans for the weeks that lead up to Easter. 

Why am I doing this to them you ask?  And any mother who's ever sat over their picky eater, begging them to eat just one more bite is asking, why am I doing this to myself? 

Let me tell you a story.  Once upon a time I had a friend who traveled to Honduras on a mission trip.  He was warmly welcomed by the local community who was so dirt poor, he could barely describe their living conditions.  Nevertheless, they banded together and showed him a fantastic time.  Their times of worship, he said, were full of joy and gratitude to the God they loved, the God who provided all that they needed.  They sang and danced to the Lord, not just on Sunday like we do, but on every single night of the week, so full were their hearts.  Not only that, but they were excellent hosts to their new American friends who helped them in so many ways.  They were happy to provide the meals and served plates heaped with regional favorites: plantains, rice, avacado, and that old pantry staple, refried beans.  The only problem was, their food began to run out as the week wore on with all those extra mouths to feed.  My friend noticed that towards the end of the week the beans were thinner and thinner.  Because when they were gone, they were gone.

I thought a lot about that story after I heard it.  I thought about it when I looked in my pantry and saw it overflowing with fancy stuff like store-bought cereal, chocolate chips, packaged cookies, Nutella, and even the occassional can of refriend beans. 

I thought about it on those nights when I didn't feel like cooking and we splurged on a $10 gas station pizza.

I thought about it at dinners when my girls wrinkled up their noses at what I had prepared.  I've never made my girls be members of the clean plate club so I inevitably end up washing the food they don't like down the garbage disposal with a sigh and a wish that they would at least show a little more gratitude.

I thought about it as Lent approached and I had to consider how I should use the season to prepare my heart for Easter.  Lent is a man-made holiday.  You'll not find the word anywhere in the bible.  Even so, I find it a wonderful tool, instituted by the church, to give its people a physical way to draw close to God.  It's physical because you are depriving yourself of something.  Some people fast from alcohol, chocolate, red meat, whatever.  This season, I am fasting from normal.

Why?  Because normal equals self-reliance in my little middle-America corner of the world.  I bring the paycheck home.  I spend the money at Hy-Vee.  I have all that I  need to prepare meals for my family for a least a week or two.  Or until I get tired of cooking and want to splurge on pizza. 

But do have all that I need?  Do I really?  I don't recall a time when I have EVER danced at church because my heart was overflowing with gratitude to the God who provided everything that I needed.  And here I sit with a pantry full of food, a checking account with plenty of money, and grocery store down the street that is stocked with every type of food I could imagine and more.  Something is very, very wrong with this.

With apologies to my sweet bean-hating girls, they are coming along with me on the journey to right this wrong.  I can't make them feel that kind of gratitude to God.  I can't even make them love God.  But as a parent, I am charged with the reponsibility of putting them in the path of the divine so that He can do the work in their hearts.

And maybe by eating the same food that billions of people all over the world eat because it's ALL THEY HAVE, my girls will gain a new perpective on all that WE have.  I expect it to be difficult.  I dread day 14 or 15 when I have to face the kitchen and prepare a meal that I am sick and tired of eating.

But we will not give up, as Paul says, in 2 Corinthians 4:16!  For, "though our bodies are [being deprived], our spirits are being renewed every day."  I look foward to telling the story of our rice and beans Lent experience as the days unfold and I pray for 5 hearts changed when Easter arrives in April.

Inspiration has struck!

Did you know that the Pilgrims spent nearly 10 years in Holland before coming to America?  They left England not with the original intent of laying the foundation of the greatest nation to ever grace this broken earth.  They just wanted to get out from under the corruption of the Church of England and escape the persecution they faced for resisting its authority.  Not very romantic, is it?

I'm not sure why they picked Holland.  Maybe the politics of the region led them to believe they'd be left alone there.  Maybe someone had family there.

I want to share a paragraph that I read in a book about the early days of American history that just fascinates me.  This came from a letter written by William Bradford, a man who, though not the pastor of the congregation, had been with them from the beginning and was always considered a leader among them.  These are his reasons for giving up on Holland by the time 1620 rolled around:

"1. Their life (though they never complained of it) was so hard that almost no others were coming from England to join them..., 2. Their life was aging them prematurely (everyone old enough to hold a job worked 12 to 15 hours a day), and was so debilitating them that, should the time come when they would have to move again, they might not physically be able to do so, 3. Their children were also being worn down, and many were being drawn away by the lures of the world around them, 4. They had cherished a 'great hope and inward zeal' of at least playing a part, if as only a stepping stone for others, in the carrying forth of the Light of Christ to remote parts of the world."

Can you guess which sentence in the paragraph above sparked an idea for a new story?  Ok, ok, I'll just tell you.  It's sentence number 3 about their children.  I read that and thought to myself, "Aha!  They were humans like us!  They had the same challenges in raising their kids to love God--just like us!" 

I forget this when my kids bring home worksheets every Thanksgiving with silly-looking Pilgrims donning huge black hats and shaking hands with Squanto.  They bury the fish with the corn kernels and the next thing you know, it's time to eat!  Happy Thanksg-er, uh, Happy Turkey Day!

The Pilgrims become cartoon characters to us, ceasing to be real. But if you dig around through history, you'll find that they were, in fact very real.  Both in their superhero-like abilities to deal with hardship, and in their weaknesses, of which they had in abundance too. 

This is what makes a story really great, I think.  I don't need my hero or heroine to be so pure and flawless that his/her perfection is completely unattainable and thereby unrelatable.  In the same way, I want my villain to have some redeeming qualities because we ALL have a little bit of darkness in us, right?   

To think of the Pilgrims, or any other historical figures as any less complex than that is to misunderstand history.  And to miss out on a great story.

So, inspiration has struck.  I'm living in the world of 17th Century Holland, at least in my mind.  And when you're a teenage girl who has lived a brutally challenging life and you finally get a taste of freedom, who is the villain?  Why it's your parents, of course, who want you to stay the course of a faithful life of servitude and sacrifice.  Or maybe...it's the hunky guy who calls himself a Christian but who only lives for himself and diminishes your parents and their crazy notion to go to the New World.

Will she she make the choice in the end that honors God?  Will she end up on the Mayflower with her family?  I can't even say for sure because the characters and the plot tend to take on a life of their own as they develop in my mind.  But one thing I DO know.  They will be human.  They will breath life into a group of people that seem plastic and cartoonish even to those of us today who know our American history.

As a Christian and an American who has benefited in so many ways from the toil and sacrifice of these 102 brave souls who left such a giant thumbprint on the world, it's the least I can do.

On Getting What You Want In This Life

Take delight in the Lord and he will give you your heart's desires.  Psalm 37:4

Keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for....  For everyone who asks receives."  Matthew 7:7

And since we know he hears us when we make our requests, we also know that he will give us what we ask for.  1 John 5:15

Put a quarter into the slot and the mighty Zoltar will give you whatever you want. 

Er...oops.  Guess I got carried away.  But I could find more similar bible verses.  They're all over the place.  Old and New Testament.  Lots of little nuggets of gold in there that make even the most humble among us rub our palms together and dream of the possibilities.

Anything, God?  Really?  Ok...I'm going to be really mature here and not ask for money.  Lots of verses about money in there too and I'm past wishing--I mean praying--for more money. 

The desires of my heart, huh?  Then I want to write.  Not just put-put stuff on a free blog.  Real, meaty stuff that people read and are changed by.  And I want the things I do at church to go well instead of flop around like a dead fish until someone finally says, "Enough is enough.  Put it out of its misery."  And if it's not too much to ask, I'd like for something to go right for my husband for once.  I'm not asking for him to have his career back.  I just want a future we can look forward to.  One that doesn't involve other people's funerals, preferably.  Oh yeah.  Amen.

Tapping my foot....waiting....waiting....

It doesn't work that way, my beloved daughter.

What?!  Why not?!  That's what it SAYS!  In the BIBLE!  That's YOUR word, not mine.  I delight in you, I really do.  You can ask anyone I know.  They'll tell you.

I know.  I know all things.  And I love you too.  More than you can comprehend.  And that's why I can't give you all of the things you are asking for.

But these things are good things, Father.  Things that can bring you glory! 

And things that can bring YOU glory.

Aaaannnddd...that's a bad thing, why?

It's not bad, dear one.  But it's shortsighted.  You are only seeing the things of this world and you think you know best how to make things good.  Some of the things you are asking for, well, they're not good.  Not in the long run.  Please trust me.  I know things you don't--can't know.

Great.  Then, why bother asking for ANYTHING?!

Calm down.  Go ahead and ask.  Anything just to hear your voice.  Sometimes my answer will be yes.  Sometimes no.  But I'll tell you the secret to getting what you ask for.  Are you ready?

Yes.  For crying out loud.  Yes!

That book in your lap?  Look at those verses again.  Not the one about Zoltar.  The other ones.

Ok...says here in Psalms 37:5, "Commit everything you do to the Lord.  Trust him and he will help you." 
Matthew 7:9 says, "You parents--if your children ask for a loaf of bread, do you give them a stone instead?" 
And 1 John 5:14 says, "...he hears us whenever we ask for anything that pleases him."

Wait a minute...so, you're saying I have to give you the "whole pie," as Pastor Mike says, trust your judgment, and ask only for things that please you?  And THEN you'll give me what I ask for??

Pretty much.

How do I know what pleases you?

Do the first two things and you'll have it pretty well figured out.

Well, how do I do those first two things?

Ask me.  Those are things that PLEASE me.  I would be happy grant those requests for you.  Are you beginning to see how this works?

I think so.

It is finished...sort of

Tutto e compiuto.  That means "it is finished" in Italian.  I know this because I've had my google translator up almost constantly as I wrote my story, which takes place in medieval Italy.  It has been very handy for finding names, substituting swear words, and lending a bit of European flavor to the dialogue.  But, at last, tutto e compiuto. 

When the idea first struck to do something as crazy and time-consuming as writing a novel, my first course of action was to research literary agents and editors to see if it is even possible for an unpublished person to get anywhere in the "biz."  I was not met with any hope that it could happen.  Apparently, publishing houses don't take unsolicited material and agents don't take clients who have never been published.  Is it just me, or is that the most vicious cycle of hopelessness ever instituted by man? 

So, I thought...maybe I should just write the first chapter and send it in along with a query letter, and see if anyone bites on the concept of what I was wanting to do.  I mean, I don't want to spend all the time it would take to write the WHOLE THING for nothing!  It seemed so insurmountable when I was still struggling to figure out how to even begin.  Like it would take years to write it.  I just couldn't see how I could ever do it without a professional, real life person telling me it was worth doing, and maybe, you know, sending an advance check!  Ha!  Funny!  Naive and funny...in a hopeless kind of way.

But I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders, and started typing.  Then deleted and started again.  And I kept going.  Before long I had an 8-page chapter one.  It was...ok.  I knew parts of it were weak but I could go back and clean up the messy stuff.  So I kept going.  Chapter two ended and chapter three began.  After two solid days of marathon writing, I had four chapters and my two characters were on a roll.  Well, literally, on a journey.  And I couldn't stop.  The story had to come out.


Literary agents be damned, I was going to finish this story.


A surprisingly short two and a half months later, and a surprisingly long 298 Word doc double-spaced pages later, and......it is finished.


Already my mini HP has been closed for two days and I'm feeling a little lost without my friends, Sal and Fran. But they are big kids now. They have learned the lessons that I created for them.  Lessons about grace, and humility, and forgiveness.  They are now out in the great big world beyond my imagination doing the jobs that God called them to do.


What now?  Well, according to my creative writing "professors," Steven King and Sol Stein, I should let it sit for at least 4 to 6 weeks without looking at it.  That way, when I open it up to do revisions, or as Stein calls it, "triage," which evokes the image of a salpel slicing away big chunks of my story (shudder), I won't be so close to it and I will see the words in a fresh, more unbiased way.  After that I will have a second draft.  Then, I will go through the process again.

And the rest is up to God.


What to do while I wait?  Well, I tried to let my brain take a vacation but it is revolting against the idea and formulating ideas for the next story, against my will and better judgment.  A post-Reformation story.  Circa early 1600's.  There's this girl...she has a choice to make...  Argh!!!  Turn it off, turn it off!!!