Time to Edit

Best Friends with God: Falling in Love with the God Who Loves You

Best Friends with God is scheduled to release in April, which means that the clock is ticking on finishing up the project. My editor sent me an annotated copy of my manuscript and now I have two weeks to make changes based on her feedback. At first it seemed overwhelming because I have lots of revisions to make, but ideas are already beginning to take shape so perhaps there is hope. Still, this phase of the writing process is the most challenging, not only because of the time constraints but because I have to re-think my ideas and try to clarify them.

You probably won’t see another post from me until I have this project done in a couple weeks. Until then, I would appreciate your prayers. Thanks.

Have a Thankful Day

I work in a small retail shop and spend all day greeting guests. I grow weary of the culturally accepted small talk:

“How are you?”

“I’m fine. How are you?”

“Not bad.”

I have that type of conversation 50-100 times a day. It wears me out, to be honest. It is so repetitive, so unnecessary, and generally only intended as a cultural greeting (not that we really want to know how total strangers are doing).

On the other end of the conversation, we tend to robotically say, “Have a nice day.” At least I manage to vary that one by saying, “Have fun.” I work at a ski resort and people are there to have fun. People are accustomed to saying, “You, too.” Then they realize that since I’m working, I may not ‘have fun’ in the way that they get to have fun so they stammer and take it back. I find it amusing.

Today I encountered someone who turned out to be a friend of a friend of a friend. She tracked me down because she heard from her friend that I wrote Christian books. We talked about my books briefly. On her way out, she said, “Have a good and thankful day.”

That was refreshing. Instead of a meaningless cultural cliché, it was an exhortation of Biblical significance. And yet, it was not limited in application to Christians. Any person—Christian or not—can be reminded to have a thankful day. Who among us doesn’t need to be more thankful?

To be honest, I needed to hear it. I was secretly grumbling about something and it occurred to me that I should be thankful instead of complaining. Being thankful changes our entire outlook on our circumstances. Her parting comment caught my attention, imparted a positive word of wisdom, and infused my attitude with some positive energy. It also directed my thoughts back to God, where they should have been anyway.

Paul often included similar exhortations in his letters:

• “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (Philippians 4:6)
• “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body; and be thankful” (Colossians 3:15)
• “In everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 5:18)

I’m going to start experimenting with ways to vary the cultural conversations I have with others so that I can incorporate healthy exhortations such as “Have a good and thankful day.” Maybe a few words from the heart, rather than rote protocol, can change someone’s day.

A Missionary Mindset

The other day I met a lady standing on the sidewalk near the post office who asked if she could give me her missionary letter. We spoke for a few minutes. She has been a missionary to various Indian reservations and now she lives in a local retirement community. She fills the basket of her walker with Christian literature and heads out to public places to meet people.

Her letter contained a basic salvation message on one side of the page and the other side told about her missionary work. She was not asking for money, but she did list the quantities of supplies she goes through in a year (a partial list follows):

• Salvation messages—1000 copies
• Tracts—1500 copies
• Bibles—50 copies
• Books of John—400 copies
• “Our Daily Bread”—300 copies
• “Upper Room”—300 copies
• Bible studies—500 copies

God’s Spirit has been tugging at my heart. I need more of a missionary mentality. It’s not that I cower from talking to people about God. On the contrary, when people find out I’m a Christian writer, it starts conversations about God that can go in a variety of directions. Actually, what seems to be tugging at my heart is the notion of being intentional, prepared, and generous. I carry a backpack every day. I could stash a few copies of a devotional or New Testament to give away.

When I was a teenager, I was constantly giving away Bibles to my friends at school—to the point that my parents were a little distressed that every time they bought me a new Bible, I would promptly give it away. It’s been two or three years since I gave away a Bible. Why? What if I bought a box of Bibles or New Testaments with the goal of giving one away each week? I could probably do that.

Ever since I met this lady, I have felt challenged. Look at those quantities…300, 500, 1000, 1500. That’s a lot of literature distribution. I can tell that the ideas are churning at the back of my mind to see what unique opportunity might work out for me. I don’t know that standing on the sidewalk is my style, but I encounter plenty of people every week—on the bus, at the store, and at the post office. I can be a missionary. As a believer in Christ, I AM a missionary. I just need to start acting like one.

The Book of Job And My Job

I’ve been thinking about Job.

I have a boil right now. It hurts. I can’t imagine having my whole body covered with boils. I can imagine why Job was scraping them with a broken piece of pottery, trying to get some relief.

A few days ago my air mattress sprang a fatal leak—in a seam that won’t hold a patch—so I’ve been sleeping on the couch.

I caught a cold and spent two whole days sleeping on the couch.

While sleeping on my couch, I kept having a recurring dream that torments me. I dream that I’m in a building trying to go up or down stairs, but a section of three or four steps are missing just big enough that I can’t jump. On the side, there appears an intermediate level of the building that seems like it would bridge the gap for me, but there seems to be no other way to get to this intermediate level. In my dream, I’m confused and searching, and wondering why other people can get to places that I can’t.

I’m earning $45 a day on my job. When I was sick on my couch, between my recurring dreams, I kept wondering if it was worth getting off the couch to go back to work.

The over-the-counter medicine I normally take for my asthma is no longer available in Montana because the state thinks I could make Meth out of it. I can’t even order online because it is illegal. I ran out before the holidays, so my symptoms are getting worse—perhaps contributing to getting a cold.

I’d go to the doctor for the asthma and/or the boil, but I’m earning $45 a day.

I’ve been thinking about Job.

Job didn’t complain. It doesn’t help to complain about our troubles and focus on the negative (but it may lead to recurring dreams).

Job didn’t blame God. It doesn’t help to blame God. He didn’t make the hole in my air mattress, it just happened.

Job didn’t blame himself. He accepted his suffering as part of life: sometimes we have good times and sometimes we have bad times. It’s normal. I keep reminding myself of that. I tossed and turned on my couch wondering if I should quit my job. I began to blame myself for living in such poverty when I could be climbing the stairs to somewhere better, but I couldn’t seem to get there in my dream.

Job knew the pain of suffering. Physical pain is, well, painful. Emotional pain can be more painful—downright torment at times. I’m wrestling with the balance between learning to be content in my circumstances and knowing when to take charge of my life and claw my way to the next level of stairs. Contentment seems like the more godly answer, but I sure would like to do something to get out of the suffering I’m in.

Everything to this point, I wrote last night. Today, my pastor called me to tell me he misses me at church because I work on Sundays right now. He reminded me to be thankful for the job I have right now. He had no idea that I’ve been wrestling with these things, so I took it as a word of encouragement from God to hang in there and be content with the $45-a-day job for now. God knows how to encourage us when we are down.

New Year’s Goals

I always spend the week after Christmas evaluating my goals. Each year I set ten goals, so this is the week that I review how well I’ve done and set ten new goals for next year. I don’t set resolutions, like many people do, because resolutions are easily broken. I could resolve to give up COKE (and I’d like to), but even one indulgence means failure. No, I prefer to have goals that I can work up to, like “Read 6000 pages.” I can steadily watch my progress toward my goals throughout the year. I’ve saved my goal sheets for the past ten years and here are a few of the goals I’ve set over the years:

• Read through the Bible four times.
• Outline twelve books of the Bible.
• Make a quilt.
• Walk 350 miles.
• Bike 1200 miles.
• Submit twelve articles for publication.
• Submit a book proposal.
• Read 4800 pages of leisure reading.
• Attend a writer’s conference.
• Save $200 a month.
• Participate in NaNoWriMo.

These are my rules for setting goals:

1. Each goal must be measurable. I must be able to quantify my progress and know when I reach my goal, such as “Read 2400 pages of leisure reading.” That would be 200 pages a month. Easy. Even if I fall behind, I can still catch up during the year.
2. Each goal must be achievable. A goal has to be within reach during the course of the year. For example, I’d like to save $10,000 for a down payment on a house, but that’s not going to happen in one year. Instead, I could set a goal to save $200 a month.
3. Each goal must be dependent solely on my efforts (not results). For example, I wouldn’t set a goal to publish six articles because whether an article is accepted or rejected for publication is out of my control. However, I can set a goal to submit twelve articles for publication. That measures my effort, not the final results.
4. The ten goals must be mutually exclusive. One year I made the mistake of setting a goal to pay off my student loan and another goal to pay off my VISA. It was not feasible to do both. I learned to set goals that can be achieved individually, where one does not depend on or hinder another goal.
5. Generally, the ten goals represent five categories: personal, professional, physical, spiritual, and financial. I usually try to have at least one goal for each of those five categories in order to have a well-balanced life. However, one year I felt like my goals were a list of chores, so my goal for the year was to do ten things that I have never done before. I did three.
6. The goal must be a challenge. I set my goals high. In a good year I achieve four out of ten (40%). Each year that I reach a goal, I raise the bar the next year. For example, I started with a goal to read 2400 pages. The next year it was 3600 pages, then 4800, then 6000. When I was unable to read 6000 pages, I dropped it back to 4800 or 3600 (one good book a month). I keep adjusting to what seems like an appropriate challenge. If a goal is too high, I give up entirely. Maybe I’m too goal driven, but if I realize that I cannot read enough to catch up, I’ll quit reading entirely—I won’t even read for fun.

In recent years, my overall success rate has dropped to 20%, so this year I’m going to adjust my goals to easier levels. I want it to be a challenge, but I want it within reach. I’m thinking I want to break 50% this year, for the first time. I was tempted to make ten goals that were super-easy so that I could achieve 100% because I need some positive re-enforcement to keep me motivated. I’m trying to resist that urge and keep my goals reasonably high, yet achievable.

That reminds me…I need to go work on my list now.

Christmas Seems All Wrong

This year, Christmas seemed to sneak up on me and slap me in the face with the sudden realization that I’d almost missed it. Last Friday I found out that my family was celebrating Christmas Monday night (dinner) and Tuesday morning (presents). All of a sudden I realized that I had not mailed my Christmas cards or finished my shopping, or done anything thoughtful for my coworkers. I skipped a Friday night Christmas party to start work on the more urgent matters.

I’ve made four attempts at writing a Christmas blog post. My heart just wasn’t in it this year. It wasn’t necessarily a “bah humbug” kind of year; I just found myself searching for answers and finding none. Christmas seems all wrong:

• If Christmas is the celebration of Christ’s birth, we should be giving gifts to Him, not to each other.
• With decorating, shopping, parties, wrapping, cooking, and sometimes travel, the holidays are the busiest time of the year, which hardly seems like a fitting birthday celebration for One Who said, “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).
• We get all dressed up for parties and buy gifts for each other that we can’t afford, which seems like an inappropriate way to honor the Christ-child who was born in a barn.
• We spend several weeks—from Thanksgiving to New Year’s—gorging ourselves on lavish feasts, baked goods, and party buffets, and yet Mary and Joseph were so poor that they could not afford the stated sacrifice for their son’s birth, so they offered two pigeons as prescribed for the poor (Luke 2:22-24; Leviticus 12:6-8).
• We buy things for each other—things that we don’t need, and perhaps don’t even want—in a vain effort to honor the One Who said, “Sell your possessions and give to [the poor]” (Luke 12:33, 18:22).
• We mentally prepare our Christmas wish list, focusing on the things we covet instead of focusing on our blessings.

As I said, I’ve been searching for answers and finding none. I mean no offense at anyone’s Christmas traditions, for my own traditions seem contrary to the above thoughts. What can I do? Cancel Christmas as I know it? Am I to offend my family and friends by not honoring them with gifts? Or, do I offend Christ by honoring others instead of Him?

I’ve come up with three possible things to try:

1. I’m going to spend more on my gift to Jesus than on all other gifts combined. I’m not talking about giving a check to charity; I’m talking about giving to a needy person, for Jesus said, “to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me” (Matthew 25:40). That is the kind of birthday present that would honor Christ. I remember a Christmas when my dad was unemployed and a family gave us a box of food, with each can of food individually wrapped in Christmas paper. That was so much fun. That was a gift that honored Christ and maintained the tradition of having gifts to wrap and unwrap.
2. I’m going to suggest to my family that we return to simple, “homemade” Christmas gifts for each other. Some members of my family may protest that they are not talented at crafts, but even a box of homemade cookies is probably sufficient to tell our friends and family that we appreciate them.
3. I’m going to start a “Blessing Book” in which I chronicle all of God’s blessings to me in a journal. One time a friend told me to write down three things I’m thankful for at the end of every day. I did so for several months and it gave me a more positive, hopeful outlook on life. When we look for the good things in life, we find them. God blesses us with so much but we always focus on what we don’t have. What a joy to look back over the pages recording all that God has done for us over the years! That’s better than any Christmas wish list.

Wish-a-licious

Tonight, on my 41^st birthday, I have no cake and candles to blow out, but I can still make a birthday wish. One wish. Hmm. Better make it a good one. Better make it wish-a-licious. What makes it wish-a-licious? It’s ability to satisfy.

What is the most satisfying wish you can think of? Ponder that for a moment while I tell you about my week…

For the past week we have had sub-zero temperatures. That always makes me cranky. I live in an apartment above a carport (which I like because it keeps the snow off my car) but the cold air radiates up through the floor. I placed a thermometer sensor on the floor and it read 37 degrees. I sleep on an air mattress on the floor and I nearly get hypothermia in my own bed. Yesterday temperatures warmed and last night a pipe burst in the floor of my apartment. Water gushed out of the ceiling in the entryway below for two hours before we got someone to turn off the water.

What’s the most satisfying thing I can wish for? There’s no point in wishing for material things because those things won’t make me happy. I could wish for a change in circumstances, but that won’t necessarily make me happy either. Instead, I can wish for a change in me that will help me be more content, despite circumstances. I’d like to wish for a new place to live, but my lease goes through May, so for now I’ll have to wish for a better sense of humor to help me cope with my circumstances. This morning the flood waters had turned to ice. Not many people have an indoor ice rink in their apartment building.

So for my birthday I wish for a sense of humor. Those of you who know me already know that I have a quirky sense of humor, but sometimes I let tough circumstances get under my skin instead of finding the humor in them.

Laughter warms the heart. For my birthday, you can wish me laughter and a warm heart (warm hands and feet are nice, too).

Final Thoughts on NaNoWriMo 2009

I won.

For the past thirty days, I have lived with some elves, fought Leviathan and Kraken, toppled dictators, and destroyed the earth with a nuclear war. It’s been a busy thirty days. I’ve worked long hours dreaming up impossible situations for my characters, and even longer hours trying to get them out of impossible situations.

Writing a novel makes you feel like the god of your own little universe, creating new worlds out of nothing and creating characters to inhabit those worlds, and then watching over those characters day and night until you see them through from beginning to end. And, believe me, novel writing occupies your mind day and night as you work through developing character personalities and plot twists and all the rest.

Better than feeling like god of my own universe is the feeling that I get as I cross the finish line of writing a 50,000-word novel in thirty days. I want to throw my hands in the air and shout “I am invincible!” Then I look around at my family, friends, and co-workers—who really can’t appreciate what incredible feat I have accomplished—and shout “Well, pour the cooler of Gatorade on me! I just won!” Oh well, writers are their own breed and we get used to celebrating our own victories because no one understands us.

Then my family, friends, and co-workers ask, “What did you win?” That get’s even more complicated because I get a cheesy paper certificate to pin on my bulletin board, but that’s not the point. The point of NaNoWriMo is to push yourself to do a little more than you thought you could . . . and that feeling can’t be beat.

And my stats? I logged 104.5 hours of writing time (five hours more than last year), plus countless additional hours brainstorming, plotting, and scheming. I only count writing time because it is impossible to count the time spent thinking about your story at the grocery store, in the shower, or while trying to go to sleep at night. Writing 50,000 words in one hundred hours is an average of 500 words per hour. That’s a pretty average writing pace for me, whether I’m writing fiction or nonfiction. Sometimes the words fly; other times they crawl. On days when the words crawl, I can remind myself that it will all average out. That’s the nature of writing.

Writing is about discipline. It takes discipline to turn off the television, video games, or other favorite distraction and put your seat in the chair and write—for hundreds of hours. I meet a lot of aspiring writers and most of them will remain aspiring writers because they have desire, but lack discipline. If nothing else, NaNoWriMo is a good exercise in discipline. I’m an experienced writer and even I felt like giving up at times.

I hope to carry this writing momentum into some nonfiction projects on my agenda. However, after spending a rather intense month with my new “imaginary friends” (after all, we’ve been through a lot together), I don’t think I can ignore them entirely. I’ll keep tinkering with the story until it becomes something I’d be willing to let my friends and family read. Guess what they get for Christmas.

Third Printing for Devotion Explosion

Devotion Explosion (2007)

This weekend I received notice from Discovery House Publishers that my book, Devotion Explosion: Getting Real with God, has gone into a third printing. I am so thankful for how God has used this book in the lives of so many people. When I wrote the book I was a little nervous about how it would be received in the Christian community because I encourage people to dispense with the duty of having a daily quiet time in favor of spending time with God because you love Him more than anything else: “Devotions are a matter of discipline; devotion is a matter of desire.” When your perspective changes to spending time with God because you want to, it changes your whole perspective on what a relationship with God really means.

The positive response has been so encouraging. I occasionally get letters from people telling me how the book has changed their thinking. After reading the book, many people have tried to track me down on the internet, so I’m making an increased effort to be more accessible this way. I recently started a fan page on Facebook (note: a fan page allows anyone to view the page, even if they are not a Facebook user). In addition, I plan to go online with a website in January, so stay tuned for updates on that.

I might also remind everyone that my follow-up book to Devotion Explosion is tentatively scheduled to release in April 2010, Best Friends with God: Falling in Love with the God Who Loves You. It will go deeper into the concept of developing an interactive relationship with God that affects our entire life.

I’d like to close by thanking everyone who has helped make Devotion Explosion a success–Discovery House Publishers, distributors, book sellers, and especially readers! Thank you so much. I love you all.

Return of the Elves: My NaNoWriMo Novel

November is National Novel Writing Month

For those of you who are curious, my story for the novel writing contest is called “Return of the Elves.” It begins after the onset of a nuclear war and two Navy pilots flying over the Bermuda Triangle see a portal in the ocean and are taken to the underwater world of the elves. Many vessels travel over the Bermuda Triangle without incident, but those who see the portal are taken captive in order to maintain the secrecy of the elves. The elves have been collecting these humans to repopulate the earth because they knew that eventually the human lust for power would cause the race of Adam to destroy the earth by moving beyond the God-given mandate of dominion to domination.

 

The elves are the Nephilim (Genesis 6), who survived the Flood by learning to live underwater. They inhabit the earth at various times, identified as giants such as the Anakim, Rephaim, Emim, and Zamzummin by the Israelites, but they are later identified in literature as elves. The Nephilim, or elves, are both sons of Adam charged with cultivating the land, and sons of angels charged with caring for humankind. This makes them uniquely qualified to intercede after the nuclear war in order to re-vegetate and repopulate the earth.

There are a total of four underwater worlds inhabited by elves: Bermuda, Atlantis, Utopia, and Lofoten. The different tribes of elves have differing views of humans. Some see themselves as caretakers and they make appearances on the earth to heal humans in the aftermath of nuclear devastation. Other elves believe that man’s stewardship of the earth has failed and they look forward to the day when elves will rule the earth–and they are actively trying to achieve this.

There’s more, but I don’t want to give it all away right now. And to be honest, I don’t know exactly how the story will end yet. I’ll have to wait and see how the conflict develops.

I’m at 13,376 words so far, pushing for 15k by tomorrow.