My Blog
The Sound of Silence
I have a friend who is a dental hygienist. She has been working for the same dentist for 25 years. This dentist has windows facing a beautiful garden. My friend said that, 25 years ago, when she asked patients if they wanted a magazine while they waited for the dentist to come, they would say no. They wanted to sit and just enjoy the view.
(this isn’t the actual garden…but it is lovely, isn’t it?)
Today, though, when people are asked if they want a magazine while they wait, they still say no. But it’s because they have their phones and they text or update or check e-mail. But no one, she says, sits silently and enjoys the beautiful view. Not anymore.
I talked to a fellow teacher today who loves philosophy. People who love philosophy like to spend a lot of time thinking. He enjoys silent moments when he can ponder the purpose of our existence, the free will of man, whether or not Adam and Eve had belly buttons.
Silence. Thinking. I think we have too little of both today. We’re so busy and have so much to occupy our time (says the woman sitting behind her computer screen typing a blog post). But when do we just sit back and enjoy the beauty of nature? Relax and ponder life? Slow down?
I know I don’t take advantage of opportunities to enjoy silence. To think. But I need to. In fact, I’m going to do that right now….
No Crack in Front or in Back
One of my former students is attending a Christian college. I asked if her school had a dress code. She said yes. I was waiting to hear a long list of what could and could not be worn on campus. Instead, she told me their policy was just seven words:
“No crack in front or in back”
I laughed. Because the images that popped into my head were pretty funny.
But, seriously, does it matter what you wear? Do Christians really need to dress differently? Or is that just for those strict ultra-conservative folks who want to suck all the fun out of life whenever they can?
Here’s what I think: how we dress is important. It reflects who we are, how we think of ourselves. If you look at my daughters, you’ll get a glimpse of their personalities right away, just by what they wear. Emma, 13, loves fashion. She shops for hours to find just the right outfit, wanting every part of it to go together. If the super-cute shoes she bought are a little uncomfortable…oh, well. Ellie, 11, is much more of a free spirit. She wears what’s comfortable. And when she finds something she really likes – like her knit cap or her fuzzy moccasins - she wears them every day. Does she care if they don’t exactly go with her outfit? Nope. She likes them. That’s all that matters. They are different people and their styles reflect that. I love that! I wouldn’t want cookie cutter kids.
But here’s another thing: how we dress doesn’t just affect us. Other people have to see us. And, girls, guys are looking at what you wear. And what you don’t wear. Guys are WAY more visual than we are. When we see a guy in short shorts, our first instinct is to gag (really — what are they thinking??). But when guys see girls in short shorts, their brain starts going places we, as sisters in Christ, don’t want it to go.
God made us beautiful, girls. But there are certain parts of our anatomy that need to stay covered. We don’t want to advertise what is not for sale. Yes, I know – it’s hard to find clothes that cover “the cracks in front and back.” But those clothes are out there, I promise.
So, yes, this is a “mom” post. But we moms aren’t out to get you or make your life miserable or keep you hopelessly out of style. We love you and want the very best for you. We want people to see you, not just for who you are, but for whose you are — a treasured daughter of the King.
So, please, just say no to cracks.
Starbuck’s Fridays
Rachel McRae, Lifeway’s fiction buyer, invited me to be a guest blogger today.
Thanks, Rachel!
Check out this fabulous website to find out what “Starbuck’s Fridays” were, and how those days led to the creation of First Date.
It Could Have Been Worse…
Tonight I had a book signing at my church. It was fun. Except for the part where I wrote down the wrong Bible verse.
My favorite verse is, and has been for years, Psalms 19:14: “May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be pleasing in thy sight, O Lord my Rock and my Redeemer.”
But what did I put on almost every book I signed? PROVERBS 19:14. I figured it out about ten minutes before the signing ended. Prov. 19:14 says “House and wealth are an inheritance from fathers. But a prudent wife is from the Lord.”
I felt pretty stupid. But then slightly relieved because that verse works. Okay, so it sounds a little like me bragging about being a great wife. But other than that, it’s fine. (and I am a pretty great wife:))
At least I put Proverbs and not some other book. It could have been so much worse. So I looked up some other 19:14′s to see just how much worse it could have been.
Check it out:
Gen. 19:14 “…Up, get out of this place, for the Lord will destroy the city…”
Num. 19:14 “This is the law when a man dies in a tent: everyone who comes into the tent and everyone who is in the tent shalll be unclean for seven days.”
I Sam. 19:14 “When Saul sent messengers to take David, she said, “He is sick.”"
Job 19:14 “My relatives have failed and my intimate friends have forgotten me.”
Ez. 19:13 “…This is a lamentation, and has become a lamentation.”
I’ll stop there. I’m feeling better already.
Moral of the story: Even if you’ve had the same favorite verse for almost 20 years, check the reference one more time before signing it to a couple dozen books in your church’s coffee shop.
Is Fame Fatal?
Like so many others, I am deeply saddened by the tragic death of Whitney Houston.
She, of course, is not the first celebrity to have her life cut short. But her vitality, her beauty, and her incredible talent, leaves us all mourning what should have been, heartbroken by what is.
It seems that fame often leads to some type of tragedy. Why is that?
There’s a lot that goes into it, I’m sure. But I think that the biggest reason is a loss of hope.
The average person is looking forward to some future event — graduation, a wedding, a job, a trip, a raise, whatever. There is hope that the future will be better than the present. And that hope keeps many people going, trudging through the daily grind, sure that tomorrow or next month or next year will be better.
Stars, however, often lose that hope along the way. They dream of having a Top 40 single, of starring in a blockbuster film, of being on the cover of People or having their biography play on E! And then it happens…and then what? The song eventually drops from the Top 40. The movie goes to DVD and ends up in the $10 bin at WalMart. That magazine cover is being used as Fido’s training pad. And someone else is “it.” They’re forgotten. Hopeless. So they try to escape the hopelessness they feel, often with tragic results.
The fact is that the desire to hope for a better future is right. God has placed that desire in the hearts of all his children. But that thirst can’t be quenched with anything on this earth.
C.S. Lewis says, “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”
This world is not our home. It is temporary. It is imperfect. It will disappoint. If we put all our hopes in this life – whether we are celebrities or not – we will be disappointed every time. We will become hopeless. We will make choices we regret.
But if we live with our hope in an eternity with Jesus, a home that is perfect, with no tears and no pain and joy beyond what we can imagine, then we can deal with this life’s disappointments. We can accept both tragedies and triumphs. We can be anchored in the Rock, and though we may be shaken by life’s storms, we will not be destroyed.
Coloring Inside the Lines
My son’s K-3 teacher was named Mari Paz. She taught at a bilingual school in Madrid, Spain, and she had very strong opinions on how to properly educate preschoolers.
In our first meeting with her, Mari Paz held up a drawing of an apple and told all of the parents in the room that every child will color that picture inside the lines. If they didn’t color inside the lines, Mari Paz said she would throw the paper away and give them a new one. The children would keep working at coloring inside the lines until they got it right. She had plenty of blank apples for them to practice on.
I came home one day, not long after that talk, to find Thomas sitting at the table with a coloring book open, his little tongue stuck out, his tiny fingers moving slowly across the page, trying desperately to stay inside the lines. It made me want to cry, to give him a blank peice of paper and let him create whatever he wanted.
This is sad when we think about a sweet little three-year-old. But what about us? How often do we feel the pressure to “color inside the lines”? We females, especially, get this. We need to look a certain way, dress a certain way, fit into a certain “mold.” And we sit, our tongues stuck out, our stomachs sucked in, trying desperately to stay inside those “lines.”
It’s just as crazy for us as it was for Thomas. We are fearfully and wonderfully made. God loves us, he created us for a purpose. And that purpose is most definitely not to try to fit into someone else’s ideals. That purpose is to be exactly who God made us to be. And we are created to be different sizes, different shapes, with different talents and interests.
So toss out that “picture” you’ve been trying to fit into, and look instead at God’s portrait of you. Beautiful. Made in His image. His precious child.
Besides, life would be incredibly boring if we were all pictures of apples colored inside the lines.
Cinnamon Challenge
Yesterday, my first period class showed me this video (yes, technology in the classroom is a wonderful thing).
It made me laugh.
I came home and showed my kids, and they tried it.
It’s even funnier live.
Too bad I didn’t tape it.
You’ve got to be pretty bored to think, “I wonder what would happen if I put a spoonful of cinnamon in my mouth and kept it there for ten seconds?”
And you have to be pretty bored to sit and watch someone who actually does it.
I’m sure there were much more constructive activities I could have done those three minutes and four seconds. But none would have made me laugh quite so hard.
We have the day off school today, and I am still feeling a little bored, so I am up for some more suggestions. What crazy videos have you seen recently??
teenreads.com Valentine’s Day Contest
Love books?
Love chocolate?
Then you’ll love teenreads.com’s Valentine’s Day Contest:
Teenreads.com Books to Fall in Love With 2012
The countdown to February 14th is on! And we’re spreading the love with our first-ever Valentine’s Day contest and feature. From now through February 9th, readers will have the chance to win one of our five Teenreads.com Valentine’s Day prize packages, which includes one copy of each of our featured books and a bag of Ghirardelli Chocolate Squares.
Our featured Valentine’s Day titles are:
- CINDER: Book One in the Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer
- FALLEN IN LOVE: A Fallen Novel in Stories by Lauren Kate
- FIRST DATE by Krista McGee
- THE LUCKY ONE by Nicholas Sparks
Narrow-Minded
Does it ever make you uncomfortable believing there’s just one way to know God? It makes me uncomfortable sometimes. I’m a people pleaser. I want everyone to be happy. I really want everyone to like me. I hate knowing people are annoyed with me or think I am intolerant or narrow-minded.
I’ve had to wrestle through this several times in my Christian life. I have gone back to the bible to make sure I didn’t miss something. Maybe God isn’t really saying Jesus is the only way. It does seem awfully rigid, doesn’t it? So I study again and, yep, there it is: Jesus is the only way to heaven.
So am I narrow-minded?
Only if what I believe is purely opinion. Like when I say ”Costa Rican coffee is the best coffee in the world.” You can choose to believe something else. I know that’s my opinion. But I think I’m right. I mean, have you ever tried Costa Rican coffee? It makes Folgers taste like…well, Folgers.
But what if I were to say, “The Giants won the Superbowl last night?” Could you disagree? Sure you could. You could yell at me and tell me the Patriots won. You could really believe that. You could do your best to convince others that I am wrong and narrow-minded in my belief that the Giants won.
But that wouldn’t change the facts (sorry, Pats’ fans. I don’t mean to rub it in).
The fact is, Jesus is the only way to heaven. People can argue that’s not true. And many do. And those people are smart, they do good things; I know many non-Christians who are far nicer than many Christians I have known. This isn’t about who is the “best.” It’s about facts. True and false.
But don’t take my word for it. Check it out for yourself. Pick up the Bible. The book of John is a great place to start. See what Jesus says about himself.
So I’m labeled narrow-minded. Big deal. I’ll add it to the list of names I’ve been called in my life. And I’ll ignore those names in light of what God calls me…
Beloved.
Somehow, everything else just pales in comparison.
Big Hair and Big Prayers
13 wasn’t the best year for me. I was heavily into perms. Addicted to hairspray. Hungover on blue eyeshadow. I slathered on baby oil when I went to the beach, where I read the entire Sweet Valley High series in one sitting. My double-layered shirts always matched my double-layered socks, which slouched above my cool white Reebok hightops.
(This is me at a family reunion in 1988 — my hair is so big it blends into the background. That’s my sister, Alexis, next to me. I could have cropped her out, but I didn’t want to be alone in my back-in-the-day humiliation)
But I did do one great thing when I was 13: I started praying for my future husband. A Sunday school teacher suggested it, and I thought it was a great idea. I didn’t know who he was or where he was, but I determined to begin praying for him.
What I didn’t know is my future husband was 19 at that time. He had just started college. He had grown up as a pastor’s kid, so he knew the Lord. But he hadn’t really been living like he knew Him. But Dave says he remembers being 19 and standing on his college campus and thinking, “I need to make a choice. Either I’m going to serve Jesus or I’m not. I’m tired of sitting on the fence.”
Thankfully, he chose to serve Jesus.
Would he have made that choice had I not prayed for him? I don’t know. What I do know is that God impressed upon my teenage heart to pray for my future spouse, and I did.
We have been married now for almost 16 years. Dave is one of the godliest people I know. A great father and husband and friend.
I take all the credit for that.
Well, me and Jesus.
And big hair.
Book Release Countdown
