Writing In Perspective - Tracy Krauss

There are moments in life that bring everything else into perspective. Births, deaths, weddings… occasions that trump the mundane (and sometimes frustrating) realities of normal existence.

I’ve had a few of these recently. My second grandchild was born in early July and there is nothing like snuggling a newborn, inhaling the sweet pungency that only a brand new baby emits. Another of my daughters is getting married this fall. In the whirlwind of planning and preparing, I am grateful that such a solid, godly man has chosen to cherish my little girl. These happy events make worrying about my word count seem a little less urgent. 

But life isn’t always a bouquet of roses. There have been some stressful family situations, too. The mother in me has spent far too many nights in tearful prayer, convincing myself that ‘letting go and letting God’ really is the best solution, hard as that is to do. Then there are those sudden blindsiding events that change one’s world in the blink of an eye.

My cousin’s wife was killed tragically this summer in one such blink. An avid triathlete, she was training for a charity cycling event when she was clipped from behind by a delivery truck. She leaves behind two young children and a grieving husband.

While babies and weddings and other summer celebrations fill us with joy, sudden tragedy is the thing that really puts the rest of life in perspective. My summer has been focused on writing a new novel, with a long list of promotional items thrown in. Somehow, social media stats seem rather trivial in light of the grief my cousin and his family are facing.

This doesn’t mean that one should give up on writing or promoting. Meaningful work brings joy to the human heart. (Ecclesiastes 8: 15) It is good to have goals and strive toward them. The bible says that God put eternity in men's hearts, so I think it's natural to look to the future. But don't let the busyness, or the frustrations, or the disappointments get in the way of embracing the present.

I'm still plugging away at my next novel, determined to have it polished before school starts in the fall. I'm also making plans to attend a conference in Calgary in the middle of August. However, I'm taking some time to reflect and also enjoy the mundane moments in the present. It's about balance, I think. The past, the present and the future coming together as a whole without too much emphasis on one over the other. Celebrate the past, enjoy the present, and keep looking to the future.

Tracy Krauss is a multi-published author and playwright living in Tumbler Ridge BC. Website

Holy Spirit Whispers - Gibson

Inez the Mexican, God-lover and Jesus-follower, stands before me. Red plaid shirt, graying hair, beard. A burly man, with gentle mannerisms and eyes like dark pools. We have not met before, but those eyes tell me something: this man has a story.

I want to hear it. Even more, I feel I’ll want to tell it.

We have a common acquaintance, Inez and I. A man named Doug. Almost every time we meet, Doug brings me a story, and sometimes the people they belong to. True stories. Hard stories. Sad, sad, happy. Happy sad, sad. Like life. This one spins out long. Moisture gathers in the big man’s eyes as he tells it.

Inez and Veronica own a nursery business in Mexico. It makes a little; but not enough. To supplement  their income, Inez works as a long haul trucker.  They have four children, or did until a few years ago.

“God told us,” Inez says. “He told us our son would die two weeks before he did.” On that day Adrian, three-and-a-half years old, the youngest, attended a funeral with his family. At the cemetery, he asked an unusual question. “Mama, do they only bury adults here?”

Shocked, she responded, “No, children are buried here too.”

“Good,” he said. “Because I’m going to be here soon.”

I wait for the main character to enter the story. God. He always has a part in the stories Doug brings me. I don’t have to wait long.

In the next weeks, little Adrian often climbed onto his mother’s knee. “Hug me, Mama,” he whispered each time. “I will not be long with you. “

We’re on holy ground now. The hurt, the heart, the humanity, and yes, the hope bleeds through his words. One by one, Inez continues to list God’s gentle nudges; the things he used to prepare Adrian’s family for the ending of his short life on earth.

“I recognized the premonitions,” he told me. He begged. Prayed. Agonized. Pled with God, “Please, do not take away my son.” But when the end came, in the form of a horrific vehicle accident, Inez looked back and realized that the Holy Spirit, in love, had repeatedly assured them that God would take care of their beloved Adrian from that point on.

After the accident, Inez, who had not been nearby at the time, had the difficult task of shopping for clothes in which to bury his son. With heavy heart, he selected a checkered shirt and pants.

After the family re-united, his eleven-year-old daughter showed him her latest artwork, inspired by the reassuring words of Psalm 23, which she had copied beside the picture. “The Lord is my Shepherd…”

“Jesus watches over us when we rest,” she had titled it. The picture showed her beloved brother, sleeping. Flowers and loveliness surrounded him.  A blanket covered him. A checkered blanket, very like the fabric in the shirt his Papa bought.

But she had drawn the picture days before her brother died.

God knows. God cares. Adrian is safe, and Inez has peace.

 

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Among other places, author, newspaper columnist and broadcaster Kathleen Gibson ponders faith and life in her newspaper column, Sunny Side Up. The above Sunny Side Up column ran in various Western newspapers earlier this month.

 

The Gossamer Curtain Up Close - Smith Meyer

On our vacation this summer, within a week, we were three times confronted with the fragility of life. Most notably, a man who had become a friend over the years, came to take my husband out for the day. He had become one of the welcome components of our visits to Alberta. The two men had started out the lane, but then returned to do one more thing. Within fifteen minutes, our friend died. We quickly called 911. In less than twenty minutes, the ambulance, rescue vehicle, fire truck and three police cars descended at our son's property, but their valiant efforts were in vain.

Questions raced through our minds. What if he had died before he came to spend the day with my husband? He would have died alone, his wife away for the day. What if he had died while driving--if he hadn't come back for that one more thing? That held bigger implications. We were poignantly reminded again--that which divides life here and the life beyond is but a gossamer curtain.

The week before, a couple not far advanced in years to our own, never arrived at their destination on the west coast. Their travel van was found burned out, but they still haven't been found. Two days after the death of our friend, we were also on our way from Alberta to Vancouver. It seemed we had barely started when, at Golden, B.C., we were directed off the highway into parking lots for a two and a half hour wait. There had been a horrible accident up ahead. Two people lost their lives. The folks at the service station and Tim Horton's told us that the day before, in almost exactly the same place, three others had perished. Because of our close connection to one death already that week, we felt the present ones more keenly-they heightened our awareness of each moment of our days. The beauty we encountered driving through the mountains then, seemed even more breath-taking and exquisite; the time with family and friends in that week doubly precious.

Often unexpected experiences or a crisis will initiate changes in our lives. Just recently I realized that my life stages and significant learning times can often be connected to a book I read. Those readings often coincide with what is going on in my life as well.

In light of my summer, You COULD Live a Long Time: Are You Ready? by Lyndsay Green, a Canadian writer, came at the right time. Peter Mansbridge writes of the book, "We're not just living longer, but we're dying longer and that fact is the basis for Lyndsay Green's important new book. If you're betting you are going to be a part of the live-longer and live-better crowd, and let's be frank, we all want to be, then whether you're twenty, sixty or anywhere in between you better read this. It's full of advice, really good advice, that you'll be grateful you took when you hit those golden plus years."

I was barely into the book when I realized it was going to change my life. Aunt Jean's proactive ways and enthusiasm for life had me hooked in the introduction and kept me in her grasp right through to the end! Having worked with seniors (or elders as Green calls that age group) I have seen the difference between those who stay active and those who don't--physically, mentally and emotionally. I have seen the disparity in those who take charge of their own affairs as they age, planning ahead for the necessary changes, and those who fight the changes only to have their family step in to make decisions when they are obviously needed.

There's quite a wave of people on the verge of the elder years, getting closer to that gossamer curtain. We would be wise to make plans for ourselves and prepare not only our homes and finances, but our emotions, attitudes and relationship with God, so we can indeed live well in our dying years. (Read the book and that statement will excite you instead of making you feel gloom.) Good books help--and this is one!

www.ruthsmithmeyer

Have you thought about the finish line? - Nesdoly

TODAY’S SPECIAL: 2 Timothy 4:1-8

TO CHEW ON: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” 2 Timothy 4:7

“Shortly after noon on July 5, 1997, the doctor told me I had cancer,” writes Larry Crabb in the Introduction to his book Soul Talk. He goes on, “My wife and I cried when the doctor left. He had made no promises. We didn’t know if I’d live or die. It takes a while to realize what life is all about. We don’t ask the hard questions until we have to. That day I had to. …The curtains covering my soul fell back and I began to see what was happening inside. When that occurred, the battle began. But it’s also when life began” (Soul Talk, p. 2).

The “curtains covering my soul” got a definite tug in 2006 – the year my mom died. As I made funeral arrangements then cleaned out her apartment and gave away and sold her things, I began to know at a gut level it would be only a matter of time before the person whose heap of stuff needing to be dealt with was me. And I’d better start living more than ever with those hard questions in mind.

Questions like: Have I discovered what I’m here for? Have I made a difference? What will I be remembered for? If I died today, would I have regrets? What would they be?

Paul was able to say, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Finally there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous Judge will give to me on that day.”

What about you? Have you begun asking yourself the hard questions? It’s never too soon to begin, so that you can end like Paul did – with no regrets!

PRAYER: Dear God, please keep the light on inside me. Help me live today with the end in mind. Amen.

MORE: 

• Every Christmas, Concordia College in Moorhead Minnesota presents a program of choral music. For years they have performed it against the backdrop of a 20 x 60-foot painted Christmas mural reflecting the year's theme. For many of those years David Hetland designed the stunning murals for those concerts, then supervised the volunteers who painted them. In 2006, at the age of only 59, Hetland died – but not without a sense that he had achieved something of significance.

David Hetland talks about his life and work.

A David Hetland mural

• Gavin MacLeod became famous for playing parts on the Mary Tyler Moore show and the Loveboat series. But now that he’s older, he considers a couple of far less prestigious projects the ones that define what his life is about.

Gavin MacLeod "The Secrets of Jonathan Sperry"




If you had to make a 2-minute video like this, what would you say about your life?
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Posting this here today is really cheating. Because I wrote this devotional for a different blog. I started posting some daily quiet time thoughts at the Other Food: daily devo’s blog this January. Based on readings from the Canadian Bible Society, each devotion is divided into the parts you see here. This one will appear February 27th. Why don’t you drop by sometime?

Website: www.violetnesdoly.com
Personal blog promptings
Writerly blog Line upon line
Kids' daily devotions Bible Drive-Thru
A poem portfolio
NEW IN 2010: Other Food: daily devo's

No regrets

Surely there is nothing like the passing of a season to remind us how fleeting life is - a handbreadth, a vapor, a shadow. This summer I've had a couple of reminders of how fragile it is as well.

At the end of July my 23 year-old son fell 20 feet from a roof onto concrete (he's a roofer). In a minute his life was changed. Fortunately his mobility and brain function were spared, but his arm is still in a cast, his face still numb from surgery and he may never regain the formerly perfect vision of one eye (though he can see out of it - iffy at first).

Then about a week ago I got an email from the son of former neighbors. His mother, my friend, whom I lived next to for 24 years and was getting treatments for cancer had taken a sudden turn for the worse. In fact, I discovered when I visited her in hospital, she had nearly died a few days earlier and was now facing an uncertain future with an inoperable tumor that hadn't shrunk with radiation and another one that was interfering with her breathing.

These glimpses of the valley of the shadow are sobering. They remind me that tomorrow may not turn out as I expect. In fact, there are no guarantees that I'll even have a tomorrow... though I most likely will - and you probably will too. But we won't have forever.

So let's do our best to live each day to the full, letting God do whatever He wants in and through us, so that when our time is up, when it's our life that disappears like a fog, we will have no regrets.

"So teach us to number our days,

That we may gain a heart of wisdom."

Psalm 90:12

(Update - September 4th: The friend I mention in paragraph 3 above ... she died last night.)

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Website: www.violetnesdoly.com
Personal blog promptings
Writerly blog Line upon line
Kids' daily devotions Bible Drive-Thru
And just for fun -- Murals!

Ask Not For Whom the Bell Tolls

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee."

John DonneDevotions uponEmergent Occasions, no. 17(Meditation)1624 (published)

In the close-knit First Nations community of Norway House, where I live, the flags are quite often at half-mast.

I can't remember the first time that I read John Donne's famous poem but the words come frequently to mind, especially when I hear of someone's death or see a lowered flag.

It seems, as I mentioned above, that the flag is at half-mast more often here in this community than in any other place where I have lived. And it makes me wonder... who died? Why was the flag lowered in their honour? Were they a dignitary? A soldier? Was there a tragic event that took many lives all at once? What merited the lowering of the flag?

I've come to the conclusion that each live is so valued that it doesn't matter who it was. An "expected" death of an older person is viewed as the very sad passing of a valued community member, a wise elder, a treasured grandparent. That person's death, as John Donne says, "diminishes me."

I suppose it is because, even though the community has a population of 6,000 or 7,000, families have lived in this same place for generations - and if you don't know someone in the community, you know someone who does. There is no 6 degrees of separation here - maybe 2 or at the most 3.

It may seem strange to be thinking about death in the springtime. But the fact is, most suicides occur in the spring, especially in the far northern communities. Spring is a rather dismal time with bare trees, mud, and gray, thin ice on the lakes.

Whenever I see a lowered flag, I try to remember to say a prayer for the greiving family. I may not know them personally but they are a part of me, nonetheless.

Ask not for whom the flag is lowered. It is lowered for you.

Dorene Meyer

http://www.dorenemeyer.com/

Author of The Little Ones

"Dorene Meyer approaches the difficult challenges faced by foster parents with compassion and a deep understanding. Throughout the book, the focus is always on the promises of God to never forsake His children. Really a touching, inspiring read!"

Crying Wind, author of Thunder in Our Hearts, Lightning in Our Veins

Heros - Aarsen

I write romance novels and one of the main criteria is an easily identifiable hero and heroine so the reader doesn't get confused. And from time to time, I have been corrected on my depiction thereof when I've been told that my character's actions, either the hero or the heroine, are not heroic. And not in terms of death-defying and mountain leaping, but in terms of - will the reader be able to cheer for this person? Will the reader be able to identify with this hero or heroine? Will the reader be emotionally invested in seeing the hero/ine attain their goal?

As well as writing romance novels, I love watching movies. And again, the same rules apply. Identifiable, heroic lead that I'm emotionally invested in. It is by this criteria that I decide whether a movie is 'good' or 'bad'. Sometimes ambiguity makes things interesting and there are times that I like to indulge in a bit of that myself, but overall, I stick to the rules.

Then we bought and started watching Planet Earth. An amazing series of movies that show animals in their natural habitat, doing what comes naturally. Surviving. The announcer, with his plummy British accent, narrates the harrowing life of the beluga whale, struggling to hold on in the harsh northern waters, circling and coming up to breathe in a tiny open spot of water in the arctic ice. The whales all have huge scars on their back from polar bears trying to catch them. I feel desperately sorry for the beluga whale. Cut to a cute, cuddly little polar bear cub, a baby, stumbling through the snow. Again the narrator breaks in with dire news. If the mother polar bear does not get anything to eat, her milk will dry up and her baby will starve. As a mother, I am cut to the quick. BUT in order to live, guess who the polar bear has to eat? Right. The whales that I was cheering for mere minutes ago.

So who do I cheer for? Who is the hero of the piece?

Not so easily identifiable in nature and confusing for us as humans who, as I said before, like clearly identifiable heros. And something that we as humans have been dealing with in some odd ways. I have seen a tendency to elevate certain species. Noble eagles, wolves, grizzly bears, polar bears, killer whales. And where do these heroic animals sit? Firmly at the top of the food chain. But what of their prey? Don't they deserve a hearing? A role in their own story? And if we do write a story about the poor mother sheep, struggling to survive, suddenly the wolf will become the villain of the piece. So then, what is this wolf, really? Hero? Villain?

And then we have the Olympics. We have been inundated with stories of our Canadian athletes - the sacrifices they made to win an berth in the Olympics. I want them to win. But if they do, someone else, who has worked just as hard, made just as many sacrifices, will lose. And if someone from the Netherlands is watching and my Canadian hero beats their Dutch hero, my Canadian hero is, in their eyes, a villain. An adversary. So what is my noble Canadian? Hero? Villain?

This truly does depend on your point of view, doesn't it? Depends on who you cheer for. It has the potential to make one a little goofy.

That's nature. My husband, a country boy, has pointed out these inconsistencies to me since I, as a city girl, came to the farm. And I've never known quite what to do about them. About the sin in this world that has created an ambiguity about what is heroic.

In my own writing I have struggled with how heroic to make my hero? I want people to identify with them in other ways as well. To be able to see that my heros are human with faults. That sometimes my heros mess up. So are they truly heroic?

Thats why I am always thankful for my assurance as a Christian. That in my life, I do have a hero. Someone who has done everything right and has done everything well. And that my Saviour is worthy of all honor and praise.

And that someday, in His perfect world, we will be perfect heros and heroines. And that in that time the wolf will lay down with the lamb and the leopard will lay down with the goat.

And I'll know exactly who to cheer for.