A Writer's Prayer From "The Valley of Vision"

If you follow me on facebook or twitter, you might know my love and affection for a little paperback, first published in 1975, called The Valley of Vision - A Collection of Puritan Prayers & Devotions. I try to share a few lines every Monday in a #mondaydevotion.

We have so much to learn from the spiritual giants who came before us. It was their wise and timeless words that guided my thoughts in a right and fitting prayer over my writing today.

Thy cause, not my own, engages my heart. 
Not my name, my reputation, my followers, my talent, or my success. Neither is perfection my cause, because I don't have it in me to make the story perfect. It will be full of mistakes, theological and artistic. The world may scorn it, but to the one who's eyes are open, or whose eyes are soon to be opened, it will make the Lord and his dealings with his people something beautiful. That's my hope, my prayer, and the cause which engages my heart.

And I appeal to thee with greatest freedom to set up thy kingdom in every place where Satan reigns.
There is no time and no place like the one I'm living in right now. No freer citizen of an earthly kingdom existed. I have so much time, so much access to information, so many avenues to proclaim his name, and so much freedom to do it without fear of persecution.

Glorify thyself and I shall rejoice, for to bring honour to thy name is my soul desire.
Lord, make this so in my heart, which is so dark, so bent toward my own glory. Destroy my pride so these words are always on my lips, so my joy is in you alone.

I adore thee that thou art God, and long that others should know it, feel it, and rejoice in it.
Lord, make my heart to ache for the lost, for my soul to weep over them, for my grief to be inconsolable. Let that be what drives me finish this work.

...To the eye of reason everything respecting the conversion of others is as dark as midnight, but thou canst accomplish great things.
My words, my story, are as refuse to much of the world. I am incompetent at best to tell the story I long to tell, and have it be used to soften hard hearts. Yet you can accomplish great things through feeble hands if you desire. It is only for me to stay faithful to the task and lay it at your feet to use or discard as you will.

The cause is thine and it is to thy glory that men should be saved.
Not mine. Not mine. Heaven forbid I would try to rob you of your glory.

Lord use me as thou wilt, do with me what thou wilt, but, O, promote thy cause, let thy kingdom come, let thy blessed interest be advanced in this world!
How good of God to put a version of this prayer on my ignorant, faltering lips many years ago when I first began to write. And how sweet of him to set my eyes on these words, written and preserved by men much smarter, holier, and closer to the Lord than me. How I praise him for this, and for his word which never changes.

Give me to grasp for multitudes of souls, and let me be willing to die to that end.
Can I truly make these words my own? Do I even understand them, after a lifetime of worshiping, working, praying, and writing whatever I please, without fear of persecution in America? The people whose story I long to tell were willing to die for this. Am I? If the world grows dark, and some wicked ruler puts my neck in a noose for the words I write, would I say, "Yes, those are my words."? Lord grant me the courage I require should that day come.

And while I live let me labour for thee to the utmost of my strength, spending time profitably in this work, both in health and in weakness.
O, how I need him every hour, every minute, every second, to stop my mind from being distracted, and my hands from being idle. There is so much in this world that seeks to destroy my productivity. Let me labor, Lord, to my dying day, stringing words together, crafting stories which honor you, if it pleases you to have me do it. And if it doesn't, take this longing from me, and set my heart on another.

Amen.

Waiting for Wisdom

Those are good words for me as I think about my week--the first full one with all of my kids back in school. I did spend a lot of time with my manuscript (oh, how I've missed it), making little changes, adding depth to scenes, trying to cut words.

I'm still stuck on the first three chapters. I've been stuck on them forever, it seems. These have been my most critiqued, with two Genesis, and one First Impressions entries, and the critique has been good. Worth the money, nerves, and false hope? I don't know yet. There is a learning curve with entering contests. It still creates a lot of unnecessary stress for me.

But I do know it has been good for my story to edit it with the voice of one of the judges in my brain: "Your character seems like she is just being carried along."

I was defensive about it at first. "That's kind of the point," I said out loud as I read the critique. But six months later, a freelancer who offered to edit a chapter for free made an almost identical comment. That's what it took for me to see the truth in it. That's how long I had to wait for wisdom.

Once I had that sweet nugget of wisdom, I got to work. Again. I revised the first three chapters for the umpteenth time (I literally have no idea how many times I've revised it). Instead of my character getting yanked around by oppressive forces without voicing her thoughts about any of it, I've revised those early pages to show how she longs to be loved. That's the driving force of the next 60,000 words. Now it's built into the beginning. Such an improvement! Why haven't I seen it until now?

Four years ago when I typed "Chapter One" my character was little more than a scared child, watching events unfold. Then she became a bumbling klutz, incompetent at household chores (some elements of that I have kept for the sake of the story). For a time she lacked maternal instincts, resenting her role as care-taker of young siblings, I but revised that too, making her joy and her consolation her presence in her siblings' lives.

When I think about who she was four years ago compared to who she is now, I realize that I have simply been getting to know her. She has revealed herself to me over these years, often through others' critique.


It was they who showed me she was flat, cliche, and unlikable. Now she's full-bodied and real. Her longings are clear and consistent. They make sense. It's not just about the story anymore. It's about this flesh and blood person who lives in the story. It has taken this long for me to get here.



I'm convinced it could not have come any quicker. I'm too slow to learn from critique. My imagination needs time to receive it, to think on it, meditate, make connections, and to build layer upon layer.

So for the rest of wisdom, I will wait, and I will continue to work, to revise, and to submit for critique. Because, like Calvin, I can ascribe nothing to myself.

Why I Write: Young Adult

Continuing my summer series on Why I Write.

Last week I explained Why I Write: Fiction.

Today I'll tell you Why I Write: Young Adult (or YA). I didn't intend to write YA when I began. I was reading a lot of Francine Rivers and Deanne Gist back then, and beginners emulate. It's the way of many creative pursuits.

Well into my first draft I began to have some doubts. Was my character too young? Were her problems too juvenile? Were her friends too immature? Near the halfway point, I had a sudden, liberating realization: I was actually writing YA.

This freed me in many ways, and excited me. I have always loved YA. My favorite course in college was Dr. Shively's YA Lit class, where I was reintroduced to brilliant authors like Lois Lowry, Chris Crutcher, S.E. Hinton, Sandra Sisneros, Harper Lee, and L.M Montgomery. I had read their books as a kid, but now, studying them as an adult, their work became something new, fascinating, and wonderful to me.

They speak a different literary language. They're frank, bold, and unapologetically serious about problems that plague young adults.

They don't shy away from topics, or water things down. I love that. They don't talk down to their audience, or assume their young readers need words, sentences, issues, or stories simplified. They respect their audience, and the stage of life their audience is in.

Young readers need that. I needed that.

I was such a confused, love-sick, angst-filled young reader myself. I know this because I left a paper trail of all my confusion and heartache. I desperately needed to know I was not alone. I needed to know God was still real, and he was still near; still active and working in my life and in the world.

It was a time of questioning, and doubting, and seeking answers in the wrong place, and being so darn sure about every single thing I decided was true. It was a time of rebellion, of taking risks, of making mistakes. It was when I realized how important friendship was, and now that I'm an adult, I see how important my choice of friends was.

Most tragically, it was a time when I was obsessed with trying to figure out what would make me happy. The world was constantly shoving down my youthful throat that my happiness was all that mattered. Not my parents, not my future, and certainly not God.

"Do whatever makes you happy," is Satan's battle cry. It's an insidious command that leads to irreparably broken relationships. Young adults are so dangerously susceptible to it. Even faithful young adults.

That's why I write YA.

This question of personal happiness is my character's biggest struggle. It's why she teeters on the edge of a family that expects her to obey, and why she might miss out on sharing in their great destiny on the Mayflower. She believes obedience will lead to a life of misery, and she has an opportunity to leave her family and seek her own happiness. Will she take it? Will her desire for what she thinks will make her happy win in the end? What will become of her if she chooses happiness over duty, sacrifice, and perseverance?

Readers, even young readers, who have much to learn about consequences know the answers. They know her desire for happiness will lead her down a dark path, even though they may despise her father for saying it. They still know.

It's different to see this play out in someone else's life rather than one's own. An observer can see more clearly, with less emotion.

Readers will (I hope) yearn for her to choose obedience, to see her make the treacherous ocean crossing with her family, and watch her persevere with the rest of them in the New World.

And my earnest, constant prayer, is that readers will be encouraged by this story, so that when the time comes for them to choose obedience or happiness, they will be ready, strengthened, and buoyed. Capable of seeing the grand scheme, the next step, the joy to be had in a life of steady perseverance.

Why I Write: Fiction

This is the second installment in my summer series: Why I Write. Today I'll tell you why I write made-up stories about made-up people with made-up problems.

I wrote about the Power of a Story for my other blog, Quills and Inkblotts. The purpose of this piece today isn't to argue the merits of fiction. Rather, to explain why I choose to write it, or more accurately, why I need to write it.

I love conversation. Not idle chit-chat. I hate that. If small-talk were a sport, I'd be the last one picked for the team. Give me an interesting topic (and an interested listener) and I'll win the Olympics of conversation. But, put me in a room with doughnut holes and coffee and five minutes until church starts, and I turn into Socially Awkward Penguin.

Then Facebook was invented. It's a blessing and a curse, isn't it? I've had some great conversations there. I can respond at my leisure, after thinking about what I want to say. I can read over my words a couple times to make sure my meaning is clear (and my typos are fixed). In this way, it's a great tool for the socially awkward to engage in meaningful conversation.

Until it isn't.

A few months ago I came across a wonderful, thought-provoking article on the Magna Carta in the Wall Street Journal. You can read it if you want to (please do!). Turns out, last summer was its 800th anniversary--who knew?

I thought about that article all day, the implication of the document on me as an American, as a descendant of Anglo-Europeans, who are so often thought of as the oppressors by modern...let's say "intellectuals," and how that thinking came about over the last hundred years or so.

I shared the link to the article on Facebook, but not until after carefully planning what I would say about it. I didn't want to come across as a snobbish know-it-all. I genuinely wanted my little Facebook community to be as intrigued as I was by it, to read it, to form their own thoughts, and to have a conversation about it. Of course, no one did. It turns out people have lives!

Having a constantly churning mind and no one to share its ruminations with can be lonely and stifling.

Enjolras had his men of the ABC Society.

William Wilberforce had the Claphamites.

Hannah More had her Bluestocking Group.

I need an outlet too, a more reliable source of conversation than fickle Facebook. So I write fiction. I hold conversations with myself about the beauty of the Pilgrims, about their faith, about God's faithfulness to them, about what it's like to grow up with a father who doesn't easily show love, about being a girl in a patriarchal society, about love, about grief, about friendship, about having faith in a God who feels very far away.

And the voices in my head do answer. They have comebacks I would never have the guts to say. Sometimes they scream and cry. Sometimes they laugh and enjoy each other's company. Sometimes they fall in love.

Sometimes I don't know what I know, or how I feel until the voices have had their say. In some ways it's better than engaging real life people who grow bored, or get offended, or misbehave. The voices are enough. They do more than sustain me--they energize me. They keep me sharp, focused, interested in many things. They demand knowledge gained by research, and excellence gained by revision.

When no one in real life cares about the Magna Carta, or King James, or religious persecution in the 17th Century, or Reformation theology, or being a lovesick teenage girl, the voices do. They care because these things are their fictional lives.

These things are my life. Because I need to have these conversations. Because I write fiction.

"For I am full of words; the spirit within me constrains me. Behold my belly is like wine that has no vent; like new wineskins ready to burst. I must speak, that I may find relief."

Job 33:18-20

Why I Write

It's summer (no stay-at-home-mom of school-aged kids needs this reminder). It has not been a season of prolific creativity and productivity for me. More like road trips, incessant bickering, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. That's okay. I'm forever grateful for these years, and for my presence in them. I'm not complaining. But I do miss writing. It's been weeks since I've had those long, quiet, isolated hours before the screen. All I have time for right now are quick bursts of words, dumped into a blog in the early morning hours before the monsters begin to stir in their lairs.

I needed something easy, something to get the juices flowing, something to get me writing. Writing about writing is about the easiest thing there is for a writer, so here it is: a summer series on Why I Write.

Why I Write Fiction, Why I Write Young Adult, Why I Write Historical, and others are planned and coming shortly.

Today, I'll tell you simply why I write.

1. I enjoy it. 

Every part of it. I love to feel the throb of a story aching to coming out, and the gush of words when I finally put fingers to the keyboard. I love the fine-tuning, the hours spent staring at a paragraph, a line, a word, even when I return to it the next day and decide to delete it.

I also love the hard, intellectual labor, the constant refining, and the continuous learning. I know I'll never know all there is to know about writing, and that knowledge pushes me, awakens me, and drives me.

It gives me something to work at until it's finished. I know what I'm going to do every day, from the moment I wake up.

It gives me purpose. It makes me feel useful to my Lord, who has given me the luxury of time, freedom, and a gift with words.

2. It keeps me close to the Lord. 

Not because I think writing, in and of itself, is so noble and godly a thing to do, but because I'm constantly talking to him about it. Is this a fitting labor? I ask. Does it please You? Take this dream from me if it's not from You, I beg him.

I ask for practical things too: for my time to be well-used, to be kept from distraction, for Him to show me what's missing, and what to cut.

I confess my sin to him: my pride, my shame, my hesitancy, my laziness, my fear of man.

When I get frustrated by what I perceive to be silence, as I often do, I back away from writing. I can't help it. My confidence wains, my work slows, my heart constricts.

And like clockwork, my prayer life dries up.

But I am always (so far) pulled back somehow to the labor of writing, and with it, I return to praying as I should.

I realize anew with every return, that if my writing never amounts to anything in the wide world, if it never yields earthly fruit that I can see, and taste, and spend, it doesn't matter. My writing bears the kind of fruit that matters to God. It keeps my heart tuned to His grace, mercy, and sovereignty.

3. I can't not. 

Writing is quite possibly the most all-consuming activity I could have undertaken. Even when I have to remove myself from the screen and do normal things that normal people do, I'm consumed by writing. I may have a day that's full with bible study, and picking up my husband's uniform at the cleaner's, and shopping for ingredients to make minestrone soup and homemade bread for my friend who just had a baby, but all those things are punctuated by thoughts of my story. Dialogue streams through my mind as I drive. I feel the sun on my character's skin when I feel it on my own. I use my one precious hour alone to unload it all into the Word document, and read it over fourteen times to make sure I like it.


Whether or not God does anything with it, I think, for me, there will always be writing. It's a part of who I am. It's a part of how I function. The tap has been turned on, and it flows constantly for me.



And that's why I write.

The Value of Keeping a Journal

Thinking today about the importance of telling my own story as it's happening, instead of retroactively. There's something useful about that, I think. Not knowing how the story will end, but telling it anyway.

I've been a nearly lifelong journaler, though not with any sort of rigorous discipline. I do it when I feel like it. Sometimes I write two days in a row. Sometimes a week goes by. Sometimes a year. Somehow I've managed to fill several volumes over the years. These are the ones I've managed to preserve.

In the green box at the top of the heap are my earliest scratchings when I was an angst-filled, love-starved teenager. I didn't have a fancy book with a built-in ribbon bookmark back then. It was simply lined paper ripped from a spiral notebook in which I also did homework, folded up, and tucked away some place where no one would find it.

I don't know how they survived intact and unread all these years, but I found them this morning, stuffed in a storage bin in my closet, the breathings of my 17 year old heart, and I read them for the first time in nearly 20 years. When I plucked a random folded paper from the box, unfolded it, read my old bubbly script, tried to recall my world, my circumstances, and my heart, I cringed, as you might imagine.

It was painful to see how confused I was about the world, how obsessed I was with trying to figure out what would make me happiest, and especially, how far I was from God.

I was headed down what, I am confident now in saying, was a path to destruction. I was dating a boy I had no business going out with, probably as an act of rebellion against my parents, who I was sure were disappointed in me, and who, I frequently admitted in my writing, had no reason to be proud of me. It was also a rebellion against my sister, who had been doing things right, and was about to be married to a wonderful man.

I suppose you could call it a self-fulfilling prophecy. A head-first dive into a whirlpool in which I would be sucked voluntarily into a downward spiral. My shame in my poor decisions was compounded by each deliberate step I took down that path. And when shame doesn't result in repentance, it turns into something altogether different: contempt, anger, haughtiness, and pride.

I wrote many rambling pages before and during my relationship with this boy, justifying, rationalizing, and explaining why it was okay. Despite the youthful bluster, there is a sadness in my writing. A reigning cluelessness, a desperation to avoid pain and regret.

I spent a lot of time thinking (I had forgotten this) about moving out of my parents' house before I graduated. I had a job, after all (in 1997 minimum wage was about $5.15 an hour). And the people I had been hanging around--the family of this boy--were my picture of what this life looked like, which, in a word, was poverty.

But I didn't care. I wanted to be independent. I wanted to be away from my parents. I didn't see it at the time, but now I recognize that what I really desired was to be done feeling ashamed, which I felt every time they looked at me, or tried to talk to me.

That was a powerful longing, but there was a still more powerful being at work in me, and I didn't even know it.

I broke up with the boy before summer was over, though I feared he would probably never talk to me again (he didn't). I wrote on one of these folded up papers, "I don't know what changed. I just see things differently now."

That chapter ended--just like that. The page was turned and a new chapter began. Within a year I would be far away from that town and that life, studying for a teaching degree, and reconciled to my parents. I didn't pull myself out of that pit by my own maturity, wisdom, clarity, or strength. I had none of that. I was dragged out by my collar with a mighty hand, unwitting and unwilling, by a God who had already ordained my eventual salvation.

It would be another 6 years, a college education, a husband, a teaching position, and a child, before I would be converted. But the work was begun during that awful time of rebellion. My journaling revealed that to me.

God saved me by his restraining grace and I didn't even want it at the time. He took me off that path of destruction and set me on a path that will ultimately culminate in righteousness, and I can take no credit for it.

How I thanked him this morning when I read those cringe-inducing words of my youth. How grateful I am that he prompted me to write them down, even while I was in the pit, with no desire to get out of it, so that I could, 20 years later, sit on the floor of my closet, with tears in my eyes, praising him for the good work he began in me so long ago.

That's why I spend my days writing and editing a fictional story for young adults. It's why my heroine is 17 years old, why her heart churns with the same dangerous concoction of pride and shame that mine did so many years ago. It's why she teeters on the edge of a family that expects more of her, and comes dangerously close to missing out on sharing their great destiny.

This story is my witness to the world, in the way I know best how to communicate. It's my testimony to the faithfulness of God, my response to his saving grace.

Where would I be if he hadn't pulled me from that path of destruction?

Where would any of us be?

What's your story?

How are you sharing it?

On Diligence

Thinking today about how diligence goes hand-in-hand with contentment. And the idea that contentment does not mean having everything I need or desire.

Paul, through Christ's enabling, was content, even when his needs weren't met. That's what Philippians 4:13, everyone's favorite verse, is really about.

"I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength."

People latch onto these words for the wrong reasons, I think. They want it to mean they'll succeed at their task, accomplish something great, finish something hard, overcome something big, or build something with their own strength.

But I don't think that's where Paul was going with these words.

He was in prison, facing death, uncomfortable, probably hungry, as miserable as a human being could be. Yet he was content--why? Because in that moment he was being diligent at the task he loved. He was laboring as he should. Praying, working, writing, chipping away at a monumental, impossible job.

There was no indication that he would succeed. Quite the opposite. He was suffering, and he was writing to people who were likely to suffer as well. Success, they way the world defines it, was not a condition for him. That's so important for me to get. I have said the words (how I cringe to think of them), "If I only knew he would cause my stories to be published, I would work so hard at this and not worry about my work, my time, my energy, my life, being wasted."

Do you see what I did there? I made publication, or success, as the world defines it for an aspiring writer, my condition.

I have worked halfheartedly, even hidden my work, because if it's not God's will to bring it to fruition, I will be embarrassed for having tried. So I have not been diligent. I have not been content. I have languished over the question of whether or not I should even be doing this.

How awful would it have been for Paul to do the same? Maybe that's not a fair question to ask. Paul's gifting, calling, and labor were not the same as mine. But if I can learn contentedness from him, perhaps I can learn unhesitating diligence too.

Perhaps his life and work can show me that diligence is the seed in which contentedness germinates.

Diligence when no one is looking. When no one seems to care. When no paycheck is forthcoming. When it seems, by the world's standards, to be a fruitless labor.

Only then will I look up from the screen at the end of a long work day, and say with Paul, "I know the secret." Whether men praise me or not, pay me or not, mock me or not, understand me or not.

I am content.

Content to submit. Content to work. Content to wait. Content in his providence. Content with the journey. Content to learn what he has for me right now, knowing that the temptations of "affliction and want" are easier to manage than those of "fullness and prosperity," as Matthew Henry says about this verse.

I can do this only because of Christ, who gives me the strength, not to succeed, but to be content.

Writing Tip #1: Weeding out Adverbs

I read Stephen King's On Writing like every good aspiring author should. I remember the passage about adverbs: 

"They're like dandelions. If you have one on your lawn, it looks pretty and unique. If you fail to root it out, however, you have five the next day...fifty the day after that...and then, my brothers and sisters, your lawn is totally, completely, profligately, covered with dandelions. By then you see them for the weeds they really are."

When I took to the keyboard, eager to get my story out, an adverb popped up. "It looks pretty," I thought. It can stay. It's the only one.

I dropped another in.

And another.

And another.

There was a twinge of doubt every time. But it needs to be there! I convinced myself. How else will the reader know my character is anxious, willing, in a hurry, or that this is inevitable?

I typed on, comfortable with my rationalization.

Now the MS is complete and the revisions made. It's time to edit.

Microsoft Word has a tool in the upper right corner called, "Find." Click on the little binoculars and you can find any word, phrase, punctuation, or partial word. It will highlight it for you in dandelion yellow.

I nearly spit coffee on the screen when it showed me 764 uses of "ly" in my 65,500 word MS. Little yellow dots everywhere.

My beloved MS was totally, completely, profligately, covered with weeds.


How does a writer begin to tackle this?

Now that you know there's a problem, go to the experts before you try to fix anything. Pick up a classic, timeless piece of fiction you love. My go-to's right now are Les Miserables for the complexity, brilliance, and use of metaphors. And The Hobbit because it's delightful and conversational. I feel like I'm in Tolkien's home, and he's just pulled up a cushy chair, and begun to tell me a story. It's a good style to emulate.

Pick a page at random (you're not reading for the story) and take it in. Appreciate the work. Grow accustomed to the rhythm of the writing. Notice things about it. See any adverbs? Probably not. Figure out what you love about it. Take some time with this. Spend whole days away from the screen. Designate them as reading days. Sometimes just an hour is enough to give you a fresh perspective when you look at your own work again. Your taste in your own writing will have changed--like magic. You'll see problems you didn't before.

After you've done that, and you're ready to face the mountainous 764 words, don't be overwhelmed. Pour yourself a fresh cup of coffee, take a deep breath, and remind yourself that some of those words are "family" and "rely" and other non-"ly" adverbs.

Tackle the unnecessary words like "really" "only" and "nearly" first. You can eliminate them without much thought. Maybe a minor sentence adjustment. Get those things outta there. All of them.

The other ones, the ones you thought about and used intentionally are going to be a little tougher. You don't need to get rid of ALL of them. But I hope you'll begin to see that you don't need MOST of them. Don't automatically replace them with description. Sometimes a sentence or a paragraph needs to be tightened up. Maybe you need cut words to increase pacing, not slow it down by adding more words. You won't know that until you're reading whole passages and getting a feel for how fast it's moving.

When you come across the highlighted "ly" take some time to read the sentences around it. You'll find, probably....85% of the time, it's already preceded or followed by sufficient "showing" and you can just delete the adverb. For example, you may say she looked around nervously, and then describe her as fidgeting, and eyes darting. The reader "sees" that she's nervous! We don't need to be told. Get rid of that "ly."

Don't trust your gut. Your gut is the reason the adverb is there. Your subconscious wants to make sure the reader "gets" it. The reader is smarter than you're giving him/her credit for. Don't spoon feed the reader. That's lazy. Good, succinct writing is about subtraction.

For some omitted "ly"s, you may want to add description. You have to be judicious. That part is hard. You have to treat every one of them individually, and look at what's around it. No shortcuts. It's worth it. You used that "ly" because you were trying to convey something to the reader. Make sure you're doing it.

If deleting feels like ripping off a scab, you can copy the sentence and paste it in a file called "Deleted." That way, it's there, and if you find that you still don't like the sentence sans adverb, you can put it back. But at least *try* the sentence without it, and leave it that way for a while, and see if it doesn't grow on you, and strike you as better, stronger writing.

Secrecy of the Writer's Life

I have a secret. I write and think about writing more than anyone knows. I don't like that this is true. I don't like that I answer the unmistakable urge to click on the Pinterest tab I intentionally left open to cover up the Word document I've really been working on when I hear someone walk in the room.

I don't like that 90% of what goes on in my brain can not be shared with anyone I know in real life.

It's lonely.

It makes me feel like I'm hiding a part of who I am. It hinders my creativity by limiting the amount of time I can tap into it, and the amount of feedback I can get, and the potential encouragement I might receive from people who would believe in me and pray for me--if only they knew.

I've talked to God about this, lamented all these things, asked him for boldness to share what I do in my quiet hours. I worry this intense need for secrecy is a pride issue, that it's simply fear of people thinking my writing is bad, my knowledge of history is wrong, my ideas silly, my ambition vain, my dream stupid.

I have a picture of myself in my mind, holding up a book cover, beaming, announcing to my little world that it finally happened. Then, I imagine I won't feel the urge to keep my labor a secret anymore. What a relief this will be! A burden lifted. Payoff after years of hiding this enormous part of myself. This vision is more enticing to me than the thought of my first royalty check, or the thought of my first positive review.

I don't crave a publishing contract, or professional accolades. Only enough success to crawl forth out of this dark place of isolation I'm in and be honest, open, and transparent.

I don't know if this is right or wrong or spiritually in line with a person who is mature in her faith, loves God, and seeks to honor him with her work. It's what my heart dictates.

But I wonder if, maybe, there is something God-honoring in the secrecy. If it's okay to avoid proclaiming to my world, "Yes! God did surely call me to do this even though I have no evidence. Here, look. No, wait. Now, look. No, let me work on it some more. Forget that first thing I showed you. This one is better."

Truthfully, when I look back on my first drafts, I want to gag at the triteness, silliness, and blandness of it. It's boring and awful and I think God is not honored by that, he is honored by the process. The faithfulness of returning to the same document, day after day, improving it, sharpening it, like the blade Solomon speaks of in Ecclesiastes 10:10. "Using a dull ax requires great strength," he says. "So sharpen the blade. That's the value of wisdom. It helps you succeed."

When I think of using a dull ax, I think of the wasted effort, the witnesses who snicker and shake their heads at the fool who began his work before his tool was ready. It's not wrong to go into the shed and sharpen the blade in secrecy, in anticipation of the work to come. This does not indicate a lack of confidence in the work, or in the hand of God to bring the work to fruition.

Some people don't want an audience to watch while they drag the blade back and forth against the pumice, hold it up to their eyes, and return it to the stone for a little more refinement. They may not enjoy the darkness and secrecy of the shed, but they endure it, knowing it's not forever. They stay as long as necessary, knowing they are sparing themselves and the God they seek to honor the indignity of coming out too soon, before they are ready.

I pray, O God, this secretive time is not wasted time. That there will be a time for transparency, a time when you can look at what I've made and say, "The blade is sharp enough. Step out into the sunlight and put it to use. It's not a sin for you to be confident in this."

20 Things That Matter More Than the Almighty Book Deal

When you have a voice inside your head that whispers, "You should write a book," and won't shut up until you do what it says, it's hard to believe there is anything more revered, more longed for, more dreamed of, than the Almighty Book Deal.

Almost every writer who makes it to this point is still facing years--YEARS--of waiting. The journey looks different for everyone, but the waiting is universal. In time, you grow weary of worshiping at the alter of the Almighty Book Deal, and become discouraged that the sacrifice of your time, imagination, and sanity may not be enough to appease its voracious appetite.

Take heart, Aspiring Author. Here is a list of 20 things that matter more than the Almighty Book Deal (ABD).

1. Obedience. You were called to write this book, as crazy at it sounds to your family and friends. You obeyed the call when you typed, "Chapter One," and when you followed those words with 70,000 more. Stay obedient to it now.

2. Humility. I'm going to be honest with you. If you recently typed, "The End," and have only read it a second or third time all the way through, it still sucks. Even if your mom told you it was great. The sound of crickets coming from the literary agency isn't a sign that you should give up and close the file forever. It's just a timely dose of humility. Swallow it and get busy fixing what you did wrong in the first draft.

3. Relationship with other writers. You probably started writing, in part, because you're an introvert. Worry not. You don't have to go far to leave your cocoon. For writers, email and social media can be as valuable (sometimes more so) as a cup of coffee and a conversation across a real-life table. Seek out writer friends, unpublished ones for the mutual critique and camaraderie, and published ones for the mountains of knowledge, wisdom, and experience they bring. Don't count anyone out and give back as much as you know how to give.

4. Feedback. Yes, feedback matters more than the ABD. By the time you have the book deal, it's too late to fix the problems your readers will notice. Get as much feedback as possible. Accept it with grace. Even if you don't agree. Even if it makes you angry. Fix the problems and then get some more feedback.

5. Rejection. It stings, I know. Think of it as athletic conditioning. The first workout makes your muscles scream and burn, and you would rather die than go back for more. Go back anyway. The next time it hurts a little less. And the next time you notice you're stronger. Keep going back for more. The goal is to be lean and ripped, and you won't get there until you begin to look forward to the pain, because you understand the benefit of going through it. Let the rejections pile up. Take a little pride in each one, knowing how it has served to strengthen your spine and thicken your skin.

6. Perseverance. This one is no joke. My own engine has sputtered and died on occasion, and for a variety of reasons: a rejection, an illness, a negative critique, a season of busyness that kept my mind far from my stories. It leaves me drifting and listless and disinterested. It's a dangerous place to stay because this is when it seems logical to give up. After all, who would know? It's not like you have an editor beating your door down for the next chapter. But it can also be a time of clarity. When your drive to finish has stalled, and your craving for the ABD is diminished, you can see more clearly why you've been working at this for so long, how far you've come, and how messed up it would be to quit now. Don't quit. Call a friend to give you a jump and get that engine to turn over asap.

7. Time to make it better. There's no substitute for time. Use it well. An artist's work is never really finished anyway. These aren't Bob Ross paintings, a stroke here, and a happy little tree there, and in thirty minutes, you've got a complete masterpiece. Up close those things are a hot mess. Writing is 1% creating, and 99% editing. It's cutting away large chunks, tightening up sloppy dialogue, and cleaning the mess you left in the first draft. So, let the time pass, get busy, and trust me: It. Can. Always. Be. Better.

8. Growth. As a writer, yes, but also as a human being. People who achieve success too easily are stunted. It ruins them. Embrace growth.

9. Time away from the screen. After the ABD you will be a slave to deadlines, edits, social media, marketing, book tours, and blog tours. You're not there yet. So, step away from the screen. It's ok. No one has to know. Go for a walk. Mop the kitchen floor (if that's your thing). Journal about something no one will ever see. Enjoy your freedom while it lasts.

10. Maturity. It took a stint in federal prison for Prison Fellowship founder, Chuck Colson, to realize that nothing is more important than the maturing of the soul. Not wealth, not prosperity, not pleasure. Not even the ABD.

11. Prayer. Almost nothing is better for your prayer life than waiting, wondering, and striving toward something you think God has called you to. He will not grow tired of hearing your musings to him on the subject of the ABD. Write these prayers down and watch them change over time as you grow and mature in all ways.

12. Pleading. Like the deer that pants for the stream, plead with God to take from you this dream, and set your heart on another, if he desires that you do something else with your time and talents. When you find, day after day, that your heart is still tuned to it, plead with him to go with your on your journey, wherever it takes you. Plead with him to delay the ABD, slowing you down if your pride is likely to take you farther than he wants you to go. Plead with him to open doors of his choosing and to close others, and to help you in the fight to stay humble and obedient through every small victory.

13. Small victories. Celebrate every positive critique, every tough chapter you labor through to the end, and especially those long awaited words: "The End." Take note of the little gifts of divine inspiration that serve to reveal things in your writing you didn't see before. Let it encourage you to keep going, and fill you with hope that this labor is not all for nothing.

14. Acceptance. Another rejection, another contest lost, another year passed with nothing tangible to show for it. You're no closer than you were this time last year. The answer from God is, "Not yet." Accept it. Move on. There's no point arguing with him about the timing.

15. Contentment. Make your peace with what you've been forced to accept. This is how far as he's brought you, and this is where you'll stay for a little while longer. "Godliness with contentment is great gain." 1 Timothy 6:6

16. Self-sacrifice. It's so hard to pour so much of yourself into something no one else seems to care about. So many hours lost to dreaming, typing, staring out the window, perfecting a character's expression. The creative mind is a burden, churning constantly, leaving you in a fog while you perform daily responsibilities. It isn't normal to space off at Thanksgiving dinner, creating dialogue based on the bickering of your relatives, or to fantasize about visiting historical/exotic locales all by yourself. It's a lonely and secretive life. There's a cost to it. Give of yourself for something that will be much larger than you.

17. Introspection. Sometimes it feels like a punch in the throat to have to ask yourself, "Why am I even doing this?" after years of what feels an awful lot like wasted effort. But sometimes it's good to go back to the beginning, to remember why you started, to follow the thread of this thing you've been pursuing, and to look down and see your fist still firmly clenched around that thread.

18. God's presence. It's worth more than holding your work in your hands, seeing your name on the spine, more than royalties, more than winning a contest, or landing an agent, or the ABD. It just is.

19. God's sovereignty. Despite the Disney Channel's message that "if you work hard, your dreams will come true," it may not be God's will for you, or for me, to get the ABD. That has to be ok. No amount of waiting, or editing, or pleading for it will change God's already made up mind. How can you or I do anything but fall down before this holy, majestic, omnipotent God, who is so gracious to make our little lives matter?

20. God's glory. If I am focused solely on going after my own glory (which, let's face it, is what the ABD really is), I will not have eyes to see God's handiwork. Don't misunderstand. It is possible to balance excellence and ambition with godly humility. You can stay humble without staying hidden. Your talent can be valued and even celebrated without vainglorious self-promotion. You can strive toward excellence without being proud. You can work to hone and improve your skill without being self-obssessed. You do have to step back from yourself, your creation, your desires, your effort, your fear, your insecurity. Let your journey be interrupted. Let it go on longer than you expected. Let it sanctify you and glorify him. Let him worry about the ABD.

Hope to Keep Writing: Editing and Answered Prayers

I am in the editing stages of my second first WIP (that might actually become something worth reading). I've gone chapter by painstaking chapter, submitting them to my critique partners for the last seven months. That's probably twice as long as it took to write the first draft.

But first drafts are like this:

Not that it isn't hard. It is. But editing is sifting through all that sand. It's throwing out pieces of broken sea shell, scooping away big chunks of superfluous sand, and going in with a tiny brush to carve elaborate turrets, windows, brick facade, maybe even a moat to go around it that you didn't think to add before.

It's laborious, sometimes tedious. Some days I sit at the screen and stare at the same paragraph for three hours, and I don't know what to do with it until after I've left the computer in frustration and started doing the dishes, which have sat by the sink since breakfast because I was in a hurry to begin the day's editing.

But sometimes there are magical little moments, when I discover a gem I didn't know was there, and editing becomes exciting and energizing and I think maybe I'm on to something after all.

I was mulling over a chapter the other day, really struggling with it, knowing it wasn't where I wanted it to be. I read a line, maybe for the twentieth time since writing it. It wasn't an important line. It didn't stand out in any way. I stared at it until I saw the word, "her." Just a simple pronoun. It probably occurs 1000 times in the manuscript. But this one was different. It added a layer of meaning to the sentence I didn't fully understand when I wrote it, not even when I read it the first nineteen times. This day I saw it for what it meant. "Her," and no one else. Not the whole family.
Just her.
Plot twist.
New motive.
How exciting!
I added one more pithy line beneath it, a line of dialogue, which reveals a great deal about the character of the father, a characteristic the girl doesn't know yet, but the reader does. Now.

I've made maybe half a dozen little discoveries like this during the editing process. The light bulb goes on over a word or phrase, revealing a plot twist (usually a plot hole), and things come together in a beautiful new way.

I don't usually take any special note of these moments. I just squirm in my seat, rub my hands together, and smile wickedly as I type on.

I took note of this one because it felt distinctly like something outside myself, something smarter than myself, had a hand in that. I know there are lots of writers in the great big world who have these moments, but I am always praying over my writing, so when something like this happens, I wonder if God is answering my prayer to show me things I can't see. And then I wonder if God's hand is actually in my creative work, and if I'm being obedient to His calling, not mine, and if He's blessing me for it. I wonder if He's guiding me to the next step. I begin to think that this is not all for nothing.

It could all be my imagination, but it gives me hope. It makes me crave more time with my computer. It drives me to keep at it, even when I have normal things that normal people do that get in the way. I may have a day that's full with bible study, and picking up the dry cleaning, and stopping by the store to pick up ingredients for a meal for my friend who just had a baby. But all those normal things are punctuated by thoughts of my story. Dialogue streaming through my mind as I drive, feeling the sun on my character's skin when I feel it on mine, and using my one precious hour alone to unload it all in the Word document, and read it over four times to make sure I like it.

Whether or not God does anything with it, I think, for me, there will always be writing. It is a part of who I am. It is a part of how I function. The tap has been turned on and it flows constantly for me.

Lament of the Christian Artist

Overwhelmed today with the question--AGAIN--of what God has promised me. I'm studying the story of Balaam and his donkey, which I did not want to study this week. I put it off again and again. I even wrinkled my nose at it when I saw it sitting by my computer, and checked facebook instead. I finished it without putting forth too much effort and went to bible study not really understanding it, not sure what God was saying to Israel, or to me, with the exception of his steadfast promise: Blessed are you, my people; I am sovereign over every single thing. There was, I admit, a bit of a *yawn* response from me. It's the same word from God week after week, chapter after chapter.

But as I listened to my friends answer the same questions with such profound insight, I sat up a little straighter and reread some of those prophecies from Numbers

"The God who can predict outcomes is the God who is the author of history," my teaching leader said.

I believe this about my God. With all my heart, I believe this. But the old, persistent question came to me, like a dilapidated neon sign that blinks and splutters but never quite goes out.

What did you promise me? Am I to understand your words in light of eternal victory? Or in light of my small life, which only has purpose because you give me a job to fulfill? Do you promise to use me as a writer of stories that are worthy to be read? Do you promise that I will become a published author? Is that your promise to me?

When I got to the car with these questions in my mind, I groaned and asked God if he was tired of hearing me ask because, frankly, I was tired of asking. "If this is not your promise to me," I prayed, tearing up as I drove down Abercorn, "take from me this dream and set my heart on another task, another mission, another way I can be used." I am willing to do that. I trust him for that.

But if it is his promise...if it is his promise, I will strive toward that for a decade more. Two decades. A lifetime. But I cannot spend a lifetime chasing a fool's errand. I must know if my prayers are the prayers of a self-aggrandizing bag of hot air, or a (semi) talented writer who really may one day achieve publication.

It struck me on the drive home: what if I'm not the faithful donkey, with his eyes to see the Lord's angel, but I am really Balaam, who is so single-minded, so determined to go his own way that he will beat the gentle faithful one into submission? How do I know I am not a diviner, trying to create the path I want, and blind to the path God has actually set me on? How do I know the set backs and discouragements aren't the voice of the donkey, who sees more clearly than I, that God himself is blocking the way?

"The story of Balaam abounds in comic irony," my commentary says, and I suppose if I were a Jew, a recipient of the promise, on the other side of victory with Moab, I would see the humor in it. Though the promised Redeemer has come, and God's completed Word sits open in my lap, I don't know who I am in this story.

Have I kicked someone under me? Neglected them? Despised them for interrupting my course, for keeping me from my writing desk, and my pursuit of my own glory?

I want to say that I am not Balaam. Balaam sold his soul for riches from Moab and died by the sword because of it. Balaam was willing to take a bribe. Balaam exacted revenge through wicked means when he didn't get his way.

God knows my heart. He knows it beats for him. He doesn't really need me to tell him how desperate I am for a word from him, a hint of a promise, a glimmer that I have heretofore missed because I blinked.

In asking God for an answer, I am taking a risk. I did my best, most prolific writing when I was not concerned with agents and contests and contracts. For so long I have successfully pushed aside the fear that it would be wasted, that no one would ever read it. I have convinced myself to write something down, anything, even if it's terrible, knowing that I can go back and fix it later. It has been enough to keep my fingers on the keyboard through 4 1/2 manuscripts. All without knowing for certain if this was even God's plan for my life. Without the assurance that this is his promise to me.

I stubbornly hope despite the odds.

I look at books from the library sitting on my bedside table. I see their paper, their ink, their cardboard spine, covered in that awful plastic film. I see the cover art and the dedication and I think, "This is impossible." I'm just a housewife. A nobody. Every author was at one time, I suppose. Every author wrote a terrible first draft and stuck with it until it got better...and then the clouds parted, and the heavenly chorus sounded from above, and God set them on their path to the promised book deal.

I realize now that I am still on the pendulum that swings wildly from total narcissism to crushing self-doubt, only now it has become unhinged and swings in a new direction that is a combination of both. Narcissism and doubt.

I'm sick of thinking about it. I'm sick of thinking about myself.

I won't quit. It's not a question of my quitting. It's a habit now, to turn my brain to story mode in the car, or the shower, or on a walk, or lying in bed. There is a drive to finish that will keep me at the computer every available minute of the day, even if the answer is no.

Until I am sure the answer is no.

The things that have gotten me to this point, the ways God has worked things out for me, kept me encouraged, spared my crooked little flash drive, protected my time and my health, put inspiring things in front of me, kept my computer from crashing, built me up, torn me town, taken my hand as I rebuilt again, shown me things that made my work better, given me a husband who allows me to indulge in what I have always tried to pass off as a glorified hobby, plucked me out of my old life and set me down in one of calm, and peace, and ease, so that I have an over-abundance of time to develop my craft, which I have grown to love so much--I have not imagined these things. They are not the outworking of my over-confidence, or my ambition, or my own feeble attempts.

Can I say that being a writer--an actual, legitimate, recognized, (dare I say it?) published author--is his promise to me? A promise that I should fight and claw and scratch and sweat to obtain?

God has brought me to this point and until he tells me, "No," I am powerless to stop trying.

The Prayer of a Christian Writer

You know how hard I've worked. You've been there, all those dark, lonely hours while I pinged away at a keyboard. You helped me tell the story, sustained me with time, a computer that didn't crash, a crooked little flashdrive that has never been lost. You watched me type the first word and the last word, and You knew when I changed the first word through 16 revisions.

You know how my ego has swelled with every compliment and You know how hard I have fought the battle against pride. You've seen me struggle to make myself less when my heart cries out for recognition, admiration, and fawning praise. You know how I yearn for that "someone" to notice me and make my dreams of success come true.

Don't give it to me. The same way You denied Moses when he asked to see Your face in Exodus 33:18, because You knew it would be too much for him.

If You don't go with me on the difficult road to publication, don't send me. Don't let my ears be tickled with compliments that will skew my view of myself. Don't let me hear encouragement that will push me farther than You want me to go. Don't let others whisper empty promises that deliver false hope.

Just go with me. That's what I ask. You and me. Knowing You are there and You are pleased is worth more to me than a contract, more than the pleasure of seeing my words in print.

To be published, respected, and influential--those are good things and You will guide me toward that in Your time, in Your way. I am not like the others. There are talented aspiring writers in the great big world who don't know You. They clamber for attention and due praise, and buy followers, and fight for room on a tiny stage. But I do not cross my fingers for luck when I query. I do not receive rejection bitterly. I do not blame. I do not pout. I do not lose hope as long as You are with me.

Your ways are different and your presence separates me from the pack.

Your presence is all I truly want. More than success, more than royalties, more even than sincere praise. Because those things don't guide my steps. Those things don't linger. Those things don't care about the souls of my potential audience.

So, with humility, I ask for Your presence so that Your presence will supply the boldness I need to move forward in this pursuit.

With All Due Respect, Taylor Swift, Get Over Yourself

Taylor Swift made the blog rounds the other day when she pulled her music off the streaming site Spotify, because, as she put it, streaming services undervalue artists. You can read about it on the website Acculterated. It breaks down the the math to show that streaming a million songs is the financial equivalent of selling 500 albums. I guess I can see why she's miffed.

I love Acculterated and I almost always agree with their bloggers. But this one has me struggling to care.

I call myself an aspiring author, which is code for: an undiscovered writer who's not getting paid. You'd think I would stand up and cheer for Taylor, to defend my own craft and the hallowed royalties that might be mine one day. But I just can't.

I'm a student of history and a lover of perspective and even though I'm an amateur at best, I can see without too much straining or effort how shallow and shortsighted is her position on art. She predicts that individual artists will determine the worth of their art and hopes they don't undervalue it, as if art and its worth is a new thing, yet to be determined.

As long as there have been human beings, there has been art. Cave walls, stories around the campfire, folk songs, stained glass windows, poetry. Being paid for what artists create is a very recent phenomenon.

Let's just go back, say, four hundred years. Only a handful of artists in a given generation were noticed by their king or their pope and commissioned for their work. That's it. Don't you think there must have been thousands of sensitive souls, crooning, writing, thinking, dancing, and creating whom no one knew about? No one paid them for their art. No one outside their immediate circle even cared.

Had they no value? (I'm going to borrow a quote that I found on Pinterest, a site so full of free art it has profit-driven artist quaking in their shoes and stealing hours from their craft to devote to fighting inadvertent copyright infringement and insisting on sourcelinks and other things enjoyers of their work don't think about when they notice a pretty picture and pin it to a board to show their enjoyment of it.)

"And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see -- or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read."

This was written by Alice Walker, a successful author, whose work has been recognized, celebrated, read widely, and bought and paid for. She deserves every cent, but read that quote again. She is describing generations of creative souls whose art, or "spark," never made it into the public sphere. Their beautiful thoughts and words and creations were never noticed, certainly never paid for, but were simply passed down. Perhaps Ms. Walker sees herself as the benefactor of all those thankless years that came before her.

Thank God that creative spark was passed on even though no one paid our ancestors for it.

The centuries that have passed have been kinder to artists. Gradually, the super wealthy began to pay for art and to preserve it, though the art itself was still almost entirely inaccessible to the lower classes. Books were unaffordable, traveling to see great architecture or installations was difficult, theater was rare and infrequent, music was limited to what they created in their homes.

When radios came about and public libraries popped up in every city, art was no longer limited to the super wealthy. A common person could read a brilliant work like Robinson Crusoe (the author died penniless in 1731, by the way) or listen to any type of music. FOR FREE. Anyone could take a work of art into their home and love it, be edified by it, read it or listen to it again and again and again. And they didn't have to pay for it.

The world has changed again in the last half century. People on the bottom rung of society have money to spare on cheap music, books, netflix, and other places to enjoy art. So many of us have internet, which makes virtually anything free and accessible. We have more artists creating more art than we can possibly absorb in one lifetime.  The best ones achieve god-like celebrity status. Even the mediocre ones are growing fat and rich off the populace who love them. It's a great world in which to be an artist.

Except for one teency thing. You know what, Taylor? Your music is not my thing, but my girls enjoy you and since you pass the mom test, I let them watch your music videos on youtube. They sing along and hum the tune you created for the rest of the day. But I've never paid a dime--not one single dime--on your art.

Sorry to disappoint. Sorry if this means I'm cheating you out of income that you have earned. I really am. (I am staunchly against pirating. Simply put, that's theft.) I don't dislike the notion of artists getting paid but I happen to be a non-employed starving artist. I have the luxury of choosing not to work so that I can use my time honing my craft instead of pushing papers around for a boss who will pay me money that I can, in turn, spend on your craft. I've chosen to forsake disposable income. It's not been an easy choice. We give up a lot for it. But I can still be exposed to the art I love because so much of it is out there legitimately for free.

Does this make the world better or worse? As an enjoyer of art, I assure you, it's better. I've never spent a dime on Alice Walker's art either but I've read her writing and watched the film adaptation of it, and I see the world differently--better--because of it.

But what does this mean for me, an aspiring author? Shouldn't I be more protective of other artist's work?

Not really.

Confession time: I write and I write and I write. No one knows how much of my time, mental energy, and prayers are poured out for my craft. I will continue to write until I have the confidence to hold it out, hesitantly, apologetically, to another human being. Maybe one day I'll receive a royalty check. Maybe I won't. Maybe I'll die penniless and unnoticed.

I don't really care.

That's not why I write. That's not how I validate my art or my worth. A true artist creates for his or herself, for God, and, yes, for that ethereal "someone" out there who will one day say, "I enjoyed that. I 'got' that. Thanks for making it."

Art is beautiful. Art is a gift. Art is a way we honor our Creator who is also an artist. I am in awe that we live in such an affluent world that talented artists can become as wealthy as their patrons, even surpassing them in wealth a hundred times, a thousand times, a million times over. It's all good. And so is the accessibility that we poor, we low, we struggling masses, can take advantage of. The world is better because artists have released their work, their sweat, their tears, their creativity, into it for people like me to enjoy at little or no cost.

To artists, big and small, successful and unknown, famous and obscure, please don't hoard your gift and keep it hidden away until someone offers you some money for it.

Get over yourselves.

Finding Grace in the Story of Joseph

If there is anyone in the Old Testament for us to root for, it's Joseph, that unlucky guy who was sold by his own brothers into slavery, and then falsely accused of attempted rape and imprisoned unjustly for it. We know that everything about this is unfair. He has gotten a punishment he doesn't deserve.

When a couple of men who personally know Pharaoh join him in prison, he thinks he's got a ticket out.

Joseph to Pharaoh's cup bearer:

Genesis 40:14 "And please remember me and do me a favor when things go well for you. Mention me to Pharaoh, so he might let me out of this place. 15 For I was kidnapped from my homeland, the land of the Hebrews, and now I’m here in prison, but I did nothing to deserve it.”

How many nights did Joseph stare at a rotting, festering ceiling and pray, with chains on his ankles, that God would free him? How many mornings did he wake to find that there was no answer? When he begs the cup bearer to plead with Pharaoh on his behalf it seems to be a move of desperation for Joseph, as if Pharaoh and not God has the power to free him. He is clinging to a spider's thread of hope that if God was willing, or perhaps if Pharaoh was willing, he might get to sink his toes into the desert sand as a free man again.

My heart breaks for him. I can't imagine the conditions of an ancient Egyptian prison where these human lives were worth less than livestock. But my heart doesn't break for the third prisoner, the baker, who is executed three days later in a disgusting and agonizing way, and I wonder why. Part of it is due to desensitization, thanks to a world history that makes impaling, beheading, drawing and quartering, gutting, and other horrific ways to die commonplace. But part of it is because I assume he was guilty of whatever he must have done to "offend his royal master" (Gen 40:1).

It is in our nature to want justice. The guilty should be punished. They get what they deserve.

But Joseph is guilty too, of his own offense. By chapter 40 we see a faithful, humble, intelligent Joseph, an endearing underdog who is no longer using dreams to tear people down, but to lift God up. But don't forget how we watched him in previous chapters goad his brothers to jealousy and hatred, (fueled also by their father) in a childish display of self-serving arrogance. Make no mistake. He is guilty too.

So, Joseph and the baker deserve the same fate, really. While we're at it, let's take this all the way to the top. Pharaoh deserves that fate too, as an unbelieving man, and I suppose his fate will ultimately be the same as the baker's, only it will likely be much less gruesome and will come much later. But what difference does it make how tidy your death is when it's what comes after that matters?

Pharaoh thinks it's his job, his prerogative, to administer this type of justice but that's just a game we humans play. God is over all. He's over life. He's over death. He's over dreams, and prisoners, and Pharaohs, and cup bearers who forget. He's over mercy and he's over judgment.

He was over Joseph at the close of this chapter, as Joseph faced another night staring up at that rotting, festering ceiling, with the chains still firmly clamped around his ankles.

When the time was right, God would act. He would not give Joseph the fate he deserved. Instead he would lavish mercy on Joseph. Before the end of the next chapter, Joseph would know freedom and luxury beyond what he imagined or dared to ask for during those late night prison prayers.

This is the kind of God we serve.

The kind who does not treat us as our sins deserve, but instead condescends to bend down to us, to hear our cries, and to deliver us from our chains, to exalt us in ways far greater than we can imagine.

Encouragement To Keep Writing

"Perhaps." 

Adverb. 1528. Possibly but not certainly.

"Perhaps the Lord will be with me," Caleb says in Joshua 14:12b. Which is it? Possibly? Or not certainly? Maybe or maybe not? If He is not with Caleb disaster will surely reign. Caleb will be defeated, probably humiliated.

I entered a writing contest last month.  I stumbled on it and I had just given my manuscript a read-through so I uploaded the doc and clicked submit before I could talk myself out of it.  I've been scared to submit it to actual publishers.  Scared of being rejected, of being criticized, of feeling foolish for trying.  Of doing it too soon, before the work is ready.  So, obviously it wasn't ready for a contest either but I prayed really, really hard that "perhaps" God would cause the judges to like my work. I thought it was good enough to at least place. Turns out it wasn't.  "Perhaps" turned out to be defeat.

I was discouraged the day they announced the top 30 and I went to bed without an email from them to say congratulations. My confidence wavered to the point where I wondered why I even do this. Why do I think up these stories and ping away at the keyboard of my mini-HP for hours and hours and hours? It was confirmed that my work was not that good (I even found simple, stupid flaws in it when I looked at it again) and I despaired.

I thought, perhaps...perhaps the words I string together are only intended to be shared with Him. Perhaps all the hours writing have been in vain. Perhaps God does not wish for me success the way I have defined it. Perhaps in 5 years I will look back on this time of floundering creativity and laugh at what I once thought possible.

Perhaps paralyzed me.

But I studied more closely the Joshua 14 passage and I saw that Caleb was not shrinking nor wavering in confidence. He approached Joshua with boldness, recounting all the ways God had been faithful to him over the years. He had equal boldness in facing the still uncertain future. Excitement even, energy and enthusiasm for what he expected God to do--what he was confident God would surely do.

Perhaps his "perhaps" wasn't a hesitating, self-defeating, doubt-filled request, but a proclamation of humble expectancy. Perhaps this is Caleb saying, "God is God and does not march to the tune of my fife.  It is He who makes the winds blow until the grasses bend and break under the howling, invisible force of it.  I am but a man who knows naught but what God has already done and what He promised so long ago."

Can I say the same thing?

God has done so much for me and I know his promise is this:

Yet I am confident I will see the Lord's goodness while I am here in the land of the living. Psalm 27:13

So maybe...what if...who knows?  Perhaps He is with me.  Perhaps He sees my efforts.  Perhaps He is in this fight with me. This fight to be heard, to bring Him glory, to get better at my craft, to get my words out into the world so that they would teach, edify, and uplift young readers who are barraged with words that tear Him down.

This is a fight that is so easy for Him to manipulate to His favor (it seems insurmountable to me but He is God after all). But how much would it please Him for me to go forth into the scary world of publishing, with everything I have, committing everything I do to Him? Trusting Him to help me when I cry out to Him for help, and patiently waiting for Him to act in His time, in His way?  Perhaps He delights to surprise His people with what He can do.  Perhaps "perhaps" is enough for me to venture my call on a God like this.

Perhaps the Lord is with me.

How God Comforts Through Grief

The Goodness of God in the Evening Breeze

Life is so good, sometimes I forget that God is under no obligation to make it so. This is where so many people get hung up on faith, I think: How can a God who is supposed to be good allow bad things to happen?  It's the burning question, isn't it?

We wonder about big things, of course, like cancer, war, famine, natural disaster, suffering on a grand scale, and the most ugly, fearsome father of it all: death.

But seemingly little, personal things are just as troubling, aren't they?
"I didn't get that job. Now look where we are."
"My friend betrayed me."
"I can't kick this illness/pain."
"The timing of this is just...awful."
Why, why, WHY?
My divorce.  My wayward kid.  My bully.  My addiction.  My inner-demon.  My parents.  My pride.  And on and on.  Isn't God out there? Can't he hear me?  Why won't he make himself known?  He's supposed to be good and kind and loving and merciful.  His mercies are supposed to be new every day.  This feels like a dead end.  It feels like a sort of death.

I could go on for 10,000 words, describing the senseless, often preventable suffering in this world.  Despite all of our knowledge, our GPS, our technology, our information, our compassion, our money, our resources, our superior intellect, we have not figured out how to eliminate it, or even to alleviate it.  Isn't that remarkable?  All the lessons humans have learned over the ages and we still make the same mistakes.  We still suffer for the same stupid reasons.

Yet, for all that is wrong in the world, I can still sit on my patio, which isn't really even mine.  I just get to stay here for a little while.  On it I have placed a cushioned chair and a table.  A cup of coffee.  A notebook and a pen.  A pleasant breeze.  A dog at my feet.  The sun is up.  The kids are not.  Just for a moment, this is really good.  LIFE is really good. My life.  It isn't perfect.  It would be melodramatic of me to say that I suffer but have my demons, I suppose, just like everyone.  For this moment they are quiet and THIS, my life, is beautiful.

I think this is what Adam and Even felt in the garden after they ate the fruit.  They didn't die like God said would happen.  Maybe there was a shaky sigh of relief as they walked away from the serpent, who, as it turned out, wasn't totally dishonest with them after all.  But something was broken in them and they knew it because they hid in shame.  It's difficult to fathom the dread they must have felt as they tried in vain to cover themselves, attempting to bandage what they broke by sticking a band-aid made of fig leaves to a wound that gushed and disfigured their souls.

I can only imagine (because the bible doesn't say) that before their eyes, what was once paradise became pestilence.  The flies and mosquitoes probably started bothering them.  The sun burned too bright and caused them to perspire.  Maybe Adam's sinuses began to swell with an allergic reaction to the pollen in the air.

And then God did something surprising.  Genesis 3:8 describes, "cool evening breezes."  Isn't that an interesting detail to include in this spare narrative?  God knew of their transgression, right down to the second it happened.  He understood it, probably better than they understood it themselves.  Yet he sent them the small comfort and joy and sweetness of a cool evening breeze.  He did that anyway.  An undeserved gift.

The hammer came down, as they knew it would.  They took the curse and walked out of the garden, sorrowful, humiliated, and realizing, finally, that God was truthful from the beginning.  There was a death sentence.  It just wouldn't be carried out right away.  They would get to live out their lives and yes, there would be suffering before it was all over, but there would also be "cool evening breezes."  There would be knowing smiles, and inside jokes, and laughter, and joy, and beauty.  There would be family, there would be friendship, there would even be art.

They deserved none of those things and neither do I.  God gives those gifts anyway and perhaps he adds to them the greatest gift of all--the dreaded death sentence.  With death comes the release from the suffering of this life.  Death brings life eternal.  Without death, there would be a never-ending life of shame and separation, which would be far, far worse than any suffering humans have concocted for ourselves on this broken earth.

Yes.  God is still good.

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A Mission Trip to Honduras

I am a firm believer that God gives us stories to tell.  This is one of mine.

Day 1 – November 2, 2012

We are standing in the airport at zero dark thirty, introducing ourselves.  There are 14 of us and we represent three Kearney churches.  I only know Snodderly but it’s ok.  Everyone looks friendly and I am happy but nervous about leaving the country and all the unknowns of the coming week. 

Snodderly has bright orange duct tape that he uses to mark every single bag—carry on as well as checked bags.  That way, he explains, when our things come off the conveyor or if we see a backpack on the ground, we’ll know immediately that it belongs to our group.  I’m so glad he’s done this before and already knows these handy little tips.

On the plane, Snodderly tells me that he can’t wait for me to see a million things while we are on this trip, so I begin to number them.

1.       The most amazing sunrise from 30,000 feet, somewhere over Texas I think.  A thin strip of reddish orange sandwiched between a sky that fades to black above and black below.  It changed so fast I couldn’t look away to write it down without looking up to see it different.

2.       Arrival in Tegucigalpa: A bumpy landing that gets an applause.  I later find out that it is very difficult to land here because it is surrounded on all sides by mountains.  Glad I didn’t know that before. 

Airport craziness.  Local people chatter in Spanish and poor English, with their hands on our bags, trying to take them and promising that we will see them again outside.  We are advised to NOT LET OUR BAGS OUT OF OUR SIGHT.  I can handle that.

I look around and kinda wish to be back home.  I’m pumping myself up, convincing myself that this is going to be fun and I belong here. 

3.       We spot another group of red-shirted, unapologetically suburban white bread folks on the plane with us, also on a mission trip to Honduras.  Not sure how I feel about this.

4.       Out in town.  Military presence is everywhere.  They ride in the back of a pickup truck, hanging over the sides like a bunch of carefree boys hitchhiking around town.  If carefree boys carried huge automatic rifles.

5.       Looks pretty much how I pictured.  Mountains covered in thick, green, tropical vegetation, bad roads, lots of traffic, horns honking, dilapidated but colorful buildings, folks out sitting, meandering, walking along busy and dangerous highways.

6.       Our destination.  La Villa de San Antonio.  We have a great hostess—a young, American-born woman with huge blue eyes and a great sense of humor named Heather.  She is here as a sort of liaison from Merge, who coordinates the trip.  She is newly married to Esau (pronounced Eh-saw-oo), a handsome, soft-spoken guy who’s company we will all come to enjoy very much.  They live in Nicaragua and make me remember what it was like to be newly married to my own husband.  We eat lunchmeat sandwiches, chips, and veggies with ranch for lunch.  Very American.

7.       Tired.  So tired.

8.       The town.  Trash.  Everywhere.  People sitting in their living rooms, watching TVs, eating, talking, playing with their kids.  This is not so strange—it’s the fact that they do it with their doors just wide open.  Sometimes there is a baby gate in the door way.  All we have to do is turn our heads as we walk down the street to see what they are doing in the semi-privacy of their own homes.  Crazy.

9. There are smells I notice as we walk through the streets, exploring this town.  Trash burning in the street.  Little piles of personal household trash.  Animal smells too.  Chickens, dogs, even a handful of cows seem to roam the streets with relative freedom. 

I smell freshly cooked corn tortillas, which makes my mouth water. 

I smell the body odor of an old man with missing teeth and buttons who comes out of nowhere, pushing his bike along, to tell us the history of the lone decorated ceramic tile that lays in the floor of the church we are standing in.  If we have translated correctly, that tile was formed and painted by a craftsman in 1870 who used a secret formula and died before he could share it with anyone.

The entrance to this beautiful church. I wish I had taken a picture of the tile inside.

10.   Dinner is the same: a really delicious combination of familiar and unfamiliar.  Chicken, refried beans, a tangy, crumbly queso that I love, very American French fries, and fried plantains.  All of it wonderful.

The streets, though laid out in a grid, are narrow and nothing but rocks and sand.  There are no sidewalks, really.  The people walk and bike in the middle of the street.  But that kind of traffic by far outweighs car traffic.  Cars crawl through the streets at a snail’s pace because there are deep pits and huge chunks of boulders poking up here and there.  They just slow down to a stop if someone is in their way.  No one is in a hurry.  They stare.  And then they wave.  Sometimes (often, actually) they say, “Hola!”  They never look menacingly at the gringos walking through their streets and I wonder sometimes if they ever get tired of the “Mericanos” who arrive in their expensive capris, and sandals, and straw hats, and backpacks to “do good.”  Or if the “good” we so desperately want to do has become a joke to them.  That’s cynical, I know.  But we come, we stay, we marvel at the culture, we feel sorry for them, we leave.  Though I have to say that they don’t seem to feel sorry for themselves.  I’m still wondering what I can possibly do to be useful here.

I hope and pray that when I have said good-bye to this incredible place I will feel as if I have made a difference to this community because I have already begun to see how they are making a difference in me.

Day 2 – November 3, 2012

So, I forgot to number the million things.

We have met our host family and they have graciously shown us around their beautiful home where the episode where Chandler almost proposes is on TV with Spanish subtitles. 

I love the way they live but it makes me cringe a little too.  The whole family in one casa.  All together.  They add rooms as the family grows so all (usually the sisters) can stay with Mama.  The houses become a wonderful maze of rooms and courtyards, different tiles on the floors of different rooms that have been constructed at different times in the life of the home where multiple generations cohabitate. 

In our house are two kitchens.  One with modern appliances and one that uses a wood burning stove.  The latter is fascinating.  There is a car in this rustic room because the garage doesn’t have walls.  There are clothes lines that zig-zag through the room for the laundry to dry.  Abuelita stands at the sink (which doesn’t have running water) and turns to our group in greeting.  I can tell by her face she wants to apologize for having wet hands because this means she can’t grab our hands affectionately the way people do here.  When she dries her hands and says hello properly, I am surprised by her icy hands.  She has been washing dishes in cold water.  She taps the lid to the well-used dutch oven resting on the grate that sits over the real-live wood fire and says, “Frijoles.”  “Yes,” I say, nodding.  “Beans.”  One of the only Spanish words I can decipher.  We walk on and leave her in peace.  I would have really liked to try those beans.

Back to what I both love and find cringe-worthy.

Ok, the cohabitation thing.  It is almost utopian how Lala and her adult kids sat around chatting with friends when we got home this evening.  The children (theirs and others I presume) are in and out.  Everyone loves and shares and knows what’s going on with everyone else.  They literally do life together.  In many ways, it’s very biblical.  It really is lovely and enviable, in a way.

But then I stop and remember that I have been sharing my life with my parents and in-laws for the past four months and I am so “grandparented” out right now.  I wonder if the adult children ever feel this way, or if they enjoy raising their kids in the presence of all of these other people.  I personally long for my own moving day and all the work and stress and sad good-byes that go along with it because I want to be THE mom again.  Not a child in my parent’s house.  I want my space again.  I want to be left alone again.  Just for a little while.  Just every once in a great while.  I haven’t been able to write in months because I haven’t had a moment’s peace to quiet my mind as the perpetual guest in someone else’s home.  Surely the husbands of the adult daughters must have a teeny little bit of this inside them too.  I wonder how the young husband can be the head of his family when he is living under the roof of the head of his wife’s family.  It is an interesting dynamic I’d love to explore if I had more time here.

There is not much to do today since it is Saturday.  I work my way through a painfully long hour and a half of kids’ worship with the local children’s director, a surprisingly young, wispy guy who carries around an Algebra text book and sports a faint little mustache.  I wonder how much older he is than the kids he is serving but they really listen to him and obey him.  When my embarrassingly short lesson on Daniel is finished, he saves the day by leading several games that have the kids squealing and even the adults getting in on the action.  

They have a great ministry and I can’t help but still question God in my prayers as to why I am here.

Day 3 – November 4, 2012

I have experienced what is quite possibly the most incredible worship service of my life.  And they do this every.  Single.  Sunday.

The sanctuary is smaller than it looked in Snodderly’s pictures from last year.  Just a basic square with a tiled floor and a stage along one wall.  They hang flags from the ceiling proclaiming “Lion of Judah.”  I’m not sure I understand the connection to Israel.  I think it goes deeper than it seems.

They have a worship team that has produced actual recordings and is well-known throughout Honduras.  They do not disappoint.  They are amazing.  There is a young man on the stage who sits just behind a screen on which announcements are displayed from a laptop projector (they are very high tech).  I can see him from where I sit on the left side of the sanctuary.  The man’s eyes are closed and he rocks with the beat.  The rocking becomes what can only be described as dancing as the music continues.  He thinks he is hidden and does this for no benefit other than to please God.  It is a pretty cool sight.

As the music continues, dancers come out.  They are dressed in brightly colored outfits and wave coordinating banners.  It is obvious they have been practicing and take this very seriously. They dance in complete unison with their eyes facing upward and smiles on their faces.  There is no air conditioning here and I can see sweat begin to dot their foreheads and backs but they don’t slow down.

After a solid hour of worship, Pastor Peter gives the sermon, alongside his father, Peter Sr.   Peter Jr. (Honduran-born) speaks in English and his father, Peter Sr. (American-born) translates in Spanish.  It is a great sermon and I hang on to every word.

Toward the end, Peter Jr. wants members of his congregation to lay hands on the missionaries who are about to begin a week of work in and near their community.  I groan a little inside.  I hate being the center of attention and worse, being touched by strangers.  He wants us to stand right where we are.  He tells the women to lay hands on female missionaries and men to lay hands on males.  An older woman who happens to be standing next to me wraps her arm around my back.  She is so short my chin touches the top of her fuzzy gray hair.  She leans into me as Peter prays, her embrace more intimate than even my own mom.  The prayer goes on and on.  At first I think Peter will never stop.  The woman begins to rub my back in small circles.  It actually feels pretty good and I begin to really hear Peter’s words.  Then she raises her other hand to rub my chest in the same small circles.  It is a little shocking at first, to be touched in this way.  But, with the prayer, it feels right.  It makes me emotional.  I start to cry and I pressed my cheek into her head.  I have never experienced anything like this.

When Peter finishes the prayer, I blink in the bright sunlight and look around.  I wonder if anyone else has experienced what I have.  I’m a little disappointed it’s over.  For that moment, I felt so close to the people here and so close to God.  I know it is a feeling that will not be duplicated.

I am still riding the high of it when we go to Comayagua to sight see.  I very much enjoy my time in this beautiful, historical city.  

Flanked by mountains, it holds a church steeple that we paid $1 to climb to the top of with a tour guide who informed us that the bell is 1,000 years old and rings the time for the oldest continuously running clock in the world.  Amazing.

This is the prayer I find myself saying tonight: “God, You’re worth it.  God, You’re worth it.  God, You’re worth it.”  I miss my husband so much I just want to cry.  Which I won’t do.  I will try to put “me” away and remember why I am here.  I don’t miss my girls yet.  It will hit me in a couple of days.  Right now, it’s being around all these newlyweds in this culture that loves to show affection that has me aching for my husband.  I’m so fortunate that I get to chat with him on facebook tonight.  I never expected to be able to do that.  Our hosts set a laptop on the living room table and made clear that it is for us to use while we are here.  Tonight, I use it to have an actual flowing conversation with Brian—something that is new to me since he has been in basic training for the last 2 ½ months and we have only written letters back and forth since August.  

I saw my husband for two days in October before saying good-bye again.

Now he is in advanced training and can use his phone at night.  Still in the same time zone, we share jokes and “I love you’s” until his final formation.  Gosh I miss him.

I shut the laptop and turn away from it to rejoin the rest of the people here.  Not only am I around people ALL the time, but I’m around people I just met two days ago.  They are great, wonderful, sweet, inspiring, faithful, genuine, people that I have grown to absolutely love, but this is bucking my “I am an introvert, leave me alone” personality.  Being open and friendly with the young American girls (who I pray my own daughters resemble one day--spiritually, socially, and in many other ways.  They are fantastic company!) I find myself with is one level of anti-introvert behavior, and being gracious to our completely awesome but totally non-English-speaking hosts is an entirely different level.  Both taxing for me, as I have the urge to walk into the house and close myself off in my bedroom to think, and write, and process, and reflect, but I can’t.  I stay in the living room, making difficult bi-lingual conversation, take tours of this amazing maze of a house, and stare at the closed laptop that has been so graciously provided, wondering if it would be appropriate to log on to facebook  again and see if Brian has responded to my last message yet.

I knew going on this trip would push me extremely far outside my comfort zone and it definitely has.  Maybe not so much as another person who hasn’t an interest in other cultures, or God, or healing hurting people.  I at least have those things going for me, but this whole experience is still emotionally challenging in a way that I just hope will cause me to grow by the time it’s over.

Day 4 – November 5, 2012

When we first got here I couldn’t say for sure where the hurting people were.  The ones in La Villa certainly don’t live the way Americans do but they also don’t seem to be hurting.  They don’t miss what they’ve never had and see no problem with their bucket showers, lack of niceties, and way of life in general, save for the problems that affect us all: too many unsaved, violence among the youth, unemployment, drugs.  The church here is thriving, the worship is unmatched, the congregation is healthy.  I’m not really into the remodeling updates and painting in the church.  I don’t know…it’s just not my thing.  I still have to recite “righty-tighty, lefty-loosy” before I turn a screw and tape measures scare me a little bit.  All those little tiny black marks and fractions and math….*shudder*

But then we went to San Nicolas. 

San Nicolas is like nothing I’ve experienced in real life before.  I’ve seen images of the scene on starving children commercials and now I’m truly glad to have seen it with my own eyes, smelled it, touched it, known for a fact that it exists, and that there are people in the world who know about it and want to alleviate the suffering there.

There is lots of dirt in San Nicolas.  Nothing is paved, of course.  Children and dogs are everywhere.  The children know not to touch the dogs.  Both suffer from skin diseases and I wonder if some of the kids suffer from the same sense of abandonment as the homeless wandering dogs.  We are told the kids come to this tiny school that has zero funding and is practically insufficient in every way (compared to American schools) because they get so little love at home and they know at this school they will be cared for in a more personal way.  I get the feeling dads don’t hang around long in these kids’ lives, though about half of them come in the white button down cotton shirt and navy bottoms that seem to be the national school uniform.  Their teacher is a thin, lovely woman, with skin drawn tight across her face.  Her voice is small like she is when she speaks through an interpreter to us, but picks up in volume and cadence when she chants letter and number songs to the kids.  I wonder if she is professionally trained.  It’s hard to tell.  She is at home in the classroom and seems professional to me.  I would be surprised if she lives here but it would be a pleasant surprise. 

The school is deep into the village, which can only be reached by hiking a rocky narrow trail of discarded shoes and empty chip bags and random, twisted, flattened pieces of fabric.  We just step over them and after a couple of times through the trail it ceases to be so strange.  I tried once to count the shoes I stepped on to get to the village but I kept getting distracted, wondering who wore the once lovely shoe, where its mate was, and how it came to be on this winding path.  Surely in a place like this, things are recycled until they are no longer of use to anyone and then cast aside to a pathetic little half burial in the dirt.  After enough time passes the former owners probably fail to see them at all.

Along the trail before we arrive in the village is a shanty home, pieced together with remnant pieces of wood and metal.  Raw sewage leaks out in a wet stream which darkens a narrow trough in our path.  We look up to see the family who lives in the shanty.  The older kids hide in half darkness in the doorway.  The younger ones are out in the yard, unashamed of their sad existence and of the fact that they are naked from the waist down.  They wave at us with shy smiles on their faces from behind the ever present fog of smoke that hovers in the yard.   We never see these kids at the school.  This must be the lowest of the low.  We walk past this every time we enter and leave the village.  I don’t know what else to say about it.  I’m kind of in shock, seeing it, to be honest.

The kids at the school don’t seem overly skinny or malnourished though they hardly bring anything to eat for lunch.  When the teacher says it’s ok, they clamber for ratty old lunchboxes with Hello Kitty and Sportacus on them.  In early November my kid’s lunchboxes are still clean and practically new, replaced every August at the start of the year.  These kids’ lunchboxes have endured many years in the lunchroom long before these little kindergartners became the proprietors of them. 

They open up the lunchboxes and pull out a plastic container (no ziplocks—nothing disposable, although a look around the community gives the impression that every single thing is disposable…eventually).  Pulling the lid off the container reveals a little pile of rice and beans—not even enough for one.  But three or four crowd around a dish and make a spoon out of their four fingers. 

No one is selfish.  Especially not the lucky one who actually brought the lunch.  

Girls share with girls and boys share with boys.  I saw a boy pick up the last chunk of food out of his container.  Between his fingers, it was about the size of a peanut M&M.  He pulled off a smaller nibble and set it on the table for his friend who was watching him.  It wasn’t done ceremoniously.  The boy wriggled in his seat, restless for lunch time to be over.  They popped their treats into their mouths, giggled at each other, and ran off to play.

It freaks me out to see them licking their dirty fingers because I am so programmed to be clean, and germ-free, and carry my travel-sized Purell everywhere I go.  All I can see are the wet bits that cling to their skin with their fingers hanging out of their mouths as they lick them and talk and laugh with each other.  I wonder, as I often have since I’ve been here: which is better?  To be so consumed with cleanliness that your delicate immune system doesn’t  hold up when you get out of your environment?  Or to go your whole life never washing away a single germ and building up a system that can hold up to primitive water sources and life among animals.

I am about to find out.

Sickness has taken over my body.  After getting through a lesson on Gideon which I THINK went pretty well (I’ll never know—it’s completely gone from my memory), I laid down flat on my back on the grimy, lumpy, cement floor of a covered porch because sitting up and holding a paper in front of my face to read it was just too much effort.   I tried to choke down a pb and j for lunch when we got back to La Villa, then I pretty much slept the rest of the day and the next night, which was a gift from above. 

Day 5 – November 6, 2012

I am miraculously over my sickness and am able to eat a hearty breakfast.  I am ready for the day.  Tuesday is a full day of teaching.  San Nicolas in the morning, then a lesson on Joshua the Spy at the church in La Villa in the afternoon. 

While in San Nicolas, I helped to make tortillas for the kids.  Tuesday is one of the two days a week that a woman who lives in the village opens up her kitchen to provide food for the kids.  Even though I am finally feeling comfortable in my “teaching shoes” I look back on my time making tortillas in the primitive little kitchen in La Villa as the moment when I served in my best way.  It began with two local women and Alanson, adorably clumsy while operating the broken tortilla press they used to press out hundreds of the little things.  Even though he was great company and was making everybody giggle, I shooed him out of the way and got my hands dirty for really the first time.  Not with mud or plaster, but with masa and water. 

There was a huge plastic bowl full of the pale yellow mixture.  At first glance it looked like a solid mass but was really quite soft and malleable.  I suspect it takes several years of watching mothers and grandmothers combine the two simple ingredients before these young ladies learned to make the ratio just right to produce the perfect texture.  My job, which I managed to pick up right off, was scooping up a golf-ball sized amount with my fingers, rolling into a ball, then laying it in another bowl, squished slightly so that it smashes evenly in the press.

These ladies use a recycled piece of plastic from a store bought package of tortillas to line the press because, of course, there is no Pam in this kitchen.  Then, because the press is broken and slides all over the place, they have to line it up carefully, smash down the top and lean on it with all of their weight.  If they had a proper press, they would only have to close the lid and press the lever.  It would be so much more efficient if they only had ONE working press.  A tool that I could buy at Bed Bath and Beyond for 8 bucks. 

After Alanson escaped the hot, dark kitchen to find some kids to play with outside, the women and I formed a smoothly running assembly line.  We didn’t speak because I don’t speak Spanish and they don’t speak English.  But it didn’t matter.  I knew what to do with my hands.  We formed, pressed, laid the tortillas on the fire, flipped, and tossed them into yet another basket, piling higher and higher in a perfectly concentric stack of toasted tortillas.  We worked fast, handing off to one another as if we were a team, already accustomed to working together.

It was a pretty cool moment for me.

Day 6 – November 7, 2012

Back in La Villa, I am eating my lunch in relative luxury with my sunglasses on and palm fronds waving in the breeze, casting long, skinny shadows on the red checkered table cloth.  The kids at San Nicolas sit in the dirt and eat the fried chicken and grape tang we helped prepare today.  Not sure how I feel about that.  Shouldn’t I be in the dirt with them?  Does that have to be my place in order to leave this country feeling as if my time, energy, and talents were used in a way that will make and leave behind a lasting kingdom impact?  Or is that an equation that can never be solved to satisfaction? Like saying, “I’ll feel like I have enough money when I have $1000 in the bank.  Or $10,000.  Or $100,000.”  When is it ever enough?  Having or doing more will only ever leave me feeling as if I could have had or done more and it wasn’t enough.

How could it be?

I spent the day telling God’s stories to a bunch of kids I will never really know.  I already ache for them.  For their future.  I can still see their faces.  The thick eyebrows that craw across the face like a fuzzy worm—but in truly the most adorable way possible.  The brown front teeth that show unabashedly when they smile.  The ponytail held together with an old ratty neon elastic holder.  It contains dirty hair that hangs dingy and stiff.  The boys’ buzz cuts reveal sores where the hair doesn’t grow.  And eyelashes caked with dried mucous from last night’s sleep keep the color of their eyes hidden from me because I can’t bear to look too long.  Not that I need to see their eyes to know what color they are.  With a few surprising exceptions, they look remarkably similar and share so many traits.  But I am irritated at that little chunk of mucous.  I want to gently swipe it away so I can see what’s behind it.  Not to examine the color, which I know will be brown, but to see what lies inside those eyes.  Is there an innocent naiveté—a joy in the absence of knowing just how cruel this world will be for them?  Or have they usurped that stage at the ripe old age of Kindergarten and seen for themselves what is really the cost of living in a broken world? 

For me they are giggling, joyful, shy.  When the soccer ball, which carries with it the smell of rot and decay, comes out, they pounce on it, exuberant, full of energy.  They are like us.  For a second.  And then we leave and who knows?

I am as shy as they.  I don’t yet know how to hold them, how to love on them.  It is a gift that I see in others that I am lacking.  I also lack the gift of working with my hands.  I can’t reconstruct the front porch, or hang a line of electricity so the school can have a light bulb for the first time.

But I can tell them about a God who loves them.  I use an old curriculum, more than two years old, written for an audience of privileged, spoiled, American kids who live in the suburbs and enjoy everything that comes with that life. 

It is shocking to hear how differently the words from the lesson ring when I say them to these kids today.  “God loves you,” I say.  And I hope desperately that what I say, heard in the voice of the translator who sits next to me, will implant itself in their minds and take root in their hearts, never to leave.  I pray that my words, “God has plans for you, plans for good and not for disaster,” will stay with them when the day comes, as it surely will, that the devil sneaks into their hearts to tell them they are nothing, they are subhuman, they are forgotten by a God who has blessed others.  That those Americans with their perpetual hand sanitizer and bottled water don’t really love you.  That they feel sorry you, yes, but they only come here to tease you with a spark of hope that someone out there cares.  But they only dangle it out there for a ridiculously short couple of days, and then return to their white children who they REALLY love.  That they only to this to feel better about themselves. 

That would be the deathblow because there is such a cruel little nugget of truth to it.

But maybe, just maybe, they will, one day, a long time from now, think back on a time when a bunch of gringos dropped out of the sky, interrupted their school day, and let them sit in their warm and loving laps while telling them about a God who has a purpose for their lives.  And maybe this memory will be enough for them.  Because the paper and the crayons and even the electricity will one day be gone. 

God help them remember.

Day 7 – November 8, 2012

Our time here is almost at an end.  Before we left San Nicolas for the last time we presented the teacher with little bookbags filled with basic school supplies to pass out to each kid.  I am so happy to stand in front of her and pull out each item, one by one, displaying it for her while the translator tells her what it is.  

Next, we presented the woman who makes lunch for the kids with two shiny new metal tortilla presses, purchased by our group at the local Walmart.  Such a small thing that will make such a huge difference for the women who cook every week.  Awesome.

Later, I find myself with a piece of paper in my hand, writing down a list of all the things the teacher would like to have for her classroom.  Curtains would be great, she says.  We measure the windows (and by “we” I mean “someone else”).   I write down the measurements and hope that they will come to fruition very, very soon.  But I also know that the likelihood of me returning to give them to her is not good.  That makes me really sad.

Back in La Villa the congregation of Linaje Escogido has planned a big dinner to say good-bye to our team.  I spend the afternoon in the de Hearne’s kitchen, helping to prepare authentic Honduran food.  

We make dough for flour tortilla and let it rest while we halve and seed avocados, brown sausage and eggs, cook packaged refried beans (I am surprised by this), and combine ingredients for a sweet, warm drink.  I love this and I CAN NOT WAIT to eat this food tonight.

Lots of us pitch in and help form tortillas.  They must be browned on each side and filled with one of three fillings we have prepared.  There are dozens and dozens of what we would probably call soft taco-like concoctions.

Everyone fills their arms with platters and bowls and walks across the street to the sanctuary where tables and chairs have been set up.  So many members of the congregation are there, waiting to share this meal with us.  I sit with Martin, who is one of our translators, and who happens to share many political leanings with me.  We became fast friends. 

When it is our turn to fix our plates, I eagerly place three of the smallish tortillas—one with each type of filling—on my plate, along with lettuce, pico de gallo, and some of the incredible sauces we prepared earlier.  But as the congregation goes through the line I begin to notice something.  They are running out of food.  People are only taking one tortilla so that it will last.  I feel like such a glutton for taking three.  At first I try to cover them with lettuce, hoping no one will notice my rudeness.  But I spot a woman walking toward our table with a plate that has nothing BUT lettuce on it.  I feel terrible.  Without a word, I pick up one of my tortillas—I don’t even know which one—and toss it on her plate as she passes by.  She looks at me, surprised, but smiles and says “Gracias,” and goes on.  I am relieved she doesn’t make a big deal out of it and try to refuse it.

Now, I can finally enjoy my meal and my company.  And it is fantastic.

Day 8 – November 9, 2012

Saying good-bye blows.  It just does.  It is maybe because I am somewhat socially awkward.  Hugs, hopes to stay in touch—genuinely. 

Deep breath.  No tears.

So far, our flight is on time.  Standing in the airport, I say to Snodderly that as long as they get me into the States, I can handle any hiccups and inconveniences because I will be in America and capable of getting myself home no matter what surprises come up.

Those were prophetic words.

The flight to Houston is great.  No worries.  We are sitting directly behind the same red-shirted group we flew to Honduras with last week.  This makes me laugh to myself but instead of having cynical thoughts as I did in the beginning, I find myself truly hoping that they have had a productive, life-changing week.

No mixed feelings about being in the US.  Although I feel like I should have some.  I won’t lie.  I am so glad to be on US soil.  America, America, God shed his grace on thee.  And by extension, me, because by a lucky accident of fate (or God’s design), it is the place of my birth.  May I never squander it.

We have about 45 minutes to get 14 people through customs, retrieve our bags, recheck them, go through security again, and take the shuttle to another terminal.  Not gonna happen.  But instead of missing our flight, they delayed departure.  For our group alone??  The world may never know.  They deny it but I have my suspicions.

Another delay.  We are taking it like champs, using it as an opportunity to continue discussions about God, life, faith, relationships, the future, etc.  It is a good use of time. I so dearly love these girls with whom I have shared my life for the last week, as well as the rest of the group from Northern Hills.  I’m actually grateful for this extra time with them.

We are in good spirits when we finally board the plane after 3 hours of waiting and being shuffled around from one gate to another.  But we are on the plane at last.  And we sit.  And sit.  We haven’t even pulled away from the gate after 20 minutes.  Something is up.  It would appear that we have been delayed so long that the flight crew can no longer legally be on the clock.  Flight cancelled.

I can’t imagine the stress on Kurt and April as they have the task of making sure we are all (including several minors) checked into hotel rooms in Houston and ready to go at 4 am the next day for a 6 am flight.

We are still taking it like Champs.  Can’t say that for all of the other passengers who found themselves grounded for the night.  But we are accepting it with smiles on our faces.  Alanson says, “Houston, we have a problem,” which elicits a round of laughter from the whole group.  And then Snodderly makes a brilliant suggestion.  Why don’t I see if I can get a later flight and drive over to San Antonio to spend the day with Brian?

So I do. 

Conclusion

There are so many things I didn’t include in this journal—things that it would have taken many more pages to describe.  Kevin’s healing, the opening of the senior center, the little girl, Genesis (pronounced Hen-ee-sees) who became attached to me one evening outside the Hearne’s home.  Maybe one day I will try to include it all. 

For now, I will leave you with concluding thoughts based on Pastor Peter’s sermon from Sunday that I was so privileged to hear in both English and Spanish:

“To be a missionary is not to come and change a temporary moment.  It’s to change the spiritual world.”  Billions of dollars are poured into Africa but nothing changes because they change the outside world, not the spiritual.  To change the world we need to stop behaving as if we don’t have an all powerful God who is still seated on his throne.

Revelations 22:1 describes a river that flows from the throne of God.  It is the water of life.  The river flows down the center of main street and on either side healthy life bursts from the ground—fresh crops each month, producing medicine that brings healing. 

This is the design of God, Peter says, to bring healing.  Staying connected to this river (the word of God), and to this “main street” (the community we are in) will produce fruit, resulting in healing.

People grow cold to the church and what it can do because they don’t know how hungry they are for God.  If you’re not connected to God, what’s the point of meeting every week?  What’s the point of fighting for your dreams if you’re not connected to God?   

We—you and I—are the ones who will change the world.  God has placed me as a river in my family/business/community/church/etc. but I HAVE to stay connected to God.  I have to stay hungry and thirsty to be in the place where God is.