First syndicated post, first blogging conference, first trip to New York City in almost 20 years, first opportunity to meet several online blogger friends in real life, first time seeing THE Martha Stewart speak live and in person.
My brain is full to overflowing.
I can quit or press on. Give up or give it my all. Be afraid or be brave. Cave to other people’s ideas of who I should be or reaffirm who I am and continue to be that person. Keep writing in series of lists—my favorite literary rhythm—or learn to break it up a bit.
I’ve been challenged in more ways than I could have imagined a week ago. In the words of THE Martha, it’s a good thing.
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. 1 John 5:5 NIV
Aaron Shust sang the perfect rallying song on the radio as I drove home from the airport yesterday: My Savior, My God.
How have you been challenged lately?
Will it defeat you or inspire you?
Write your heart out. Go for broke. Ursula K. Le Guin
Ann’s here
There are days I’m tempted to quit writing and go to work at Ann Taylor.
You may have expected me to say J Crew instead of Ann Taylor. Well, J Crew has yet to respond to my request to open a store in Wichita. Better get with the program, Jenna Lyons. Ann’s here and she’s vying to be my go-to store.
Ann Taylor. Pretty clothes. Sweet discount. Sleek space. Well-defined career opportunities.
I can hear the imaginary trolls of Nightmare on Aimee Street. “Yes!” they say. “It’s about time she got a real job.”
Why are they still hanging around anyway? Be gone, oh ye of little faith!
Back to Ann. I could work while the child is in school. Cook fine dinners from Pinterest recipes in the evenings. Sleep normal hours instead of waking up in the middle of the night to plink plink plink away at the keyboard until I’m cross-eyed.
I wouldn’t wonder where this is going, what’s the plan, how will I get there. Wouldn’t need to take a stand on controversial food, social, and cultural issues or dread negative comments. Wouldn’t fear people hating me and my blog because there would be no blog. There would only be Ann.
Ann is a possibility. She hangs like a life jacket on the back wall of my brain.
Until I remember the rush of writing and publishing and facilitating a dialogue. It’s like a throwing a mini party with every post. I can’t get that with Ann.
I can have a pleasant career, a steady paycheck, and very nice clothes with Ann. No shame in that, but it’s not my passion. I can sell dresses with cheerfulness and take joy in the new arrivals each season. But it’s not the thing that makes me sing.
no parking no waiting
There’s a little stream of stories inside me that hasn’t run dry yet.
God provides. God provides.
What if I just write until it does?
Shall we go for broke, you and I?
What do you say?
And if God cares so wonderfully for wildflowers that are here today and thrown into the fire tomorrow, He will certainly care for you. Why do you have so little faith? Matthew 6:30 NLT
You displayed grace (and some of you restraint!) for last Thursday’s post about Chick-fil-A. Whether you agreed or disagreed with me, you kept it dignified. We want everyone to feel welcomed and respected here regardless of their views.
According to their website, BlogHer reaches 40 million women each month. I’m honored, thrilled, and terrified to be published there as a syndicated writer.
Please go to BlogHer to see the post and consider leaving a comment. Whether you agree or disagree the issue at hand, I know you’ll comment with dignity and respect.
Whether you’ve been here since the beginning or since last week, you are an encouragement to me, and I am thankful for you!
My counsel for you is simple and straightforward: Just go ahead with what you’ve been given. You received Christ Jesus, the Master; now live Him. You’re deeply rooted in Him. You’re well constructed upon Him. You know your way around the faith. Now do what you’ve been taught. School’s out; quit studying the subject and start living it! And let your living spill over into thanksgiving. Colossians 2:6-7 The Message
Tell ’em Aimee sent you. Oh, and that’s not me in the photo. I have no idea who it is, but I believe that’s some kind of squash pictured with her. Now you’ve got to click over to see this!
Quite coincidentally, we’ll be talking more BlogHer news in a post scheduled for tomorrow. See you back here in the morning.
Praise the Lord, my soul,
and forget not all his benefits. Psalm 103:2 NIV
Book lovers rejoice. My copy of Seduced by Bacon has been recovered.
Guess where it was?
whoomp there it is
On the cookbook shelf in the kitchen. Who’d have thunk it? Mere weeks ago I feared it was a casualty of our move.
Found it by accident while looking for my smoothies recipe book—which incidentally is now missing. Happened upon Seduced by Bacon as I combed the cookbook spines.
Sometimes what we’re looking for is exactly where it’s supposed to be, maybe even right in front of us, whether we see it or not.
Gives me hope Cassatt will turn up, too. And I’m thinking of a new motto:
Leave no book behind.
Works for lost books at home and returns to the library. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a date with the bacon that’s long overdue.
“I was ready to respond, but no one asked for help.
I was ready to be found, but no one was looking for me.
I said, ‘Here I am, here I am!’
to a nation that did not call on my name.” Isaiah 65:1 NLT
Must have been lost in the move. Incorrectly packed with garden tools, baby toys, Christmas decorations. Shoved into obscurity in the basement or garage. Jumbled mess of relocation.
The coffee table book we bought in Chicago in 1999 was the one that tipped me off. Oversized tome documenting Mary Cassatt’s work. We’d seen her paintings at The Art Institute’s special exhibit that year.
We carried Cassatt home. Held her on the city bus and the elevator up 35 stories to our apartment of blinding white walls. Lugged her to St. Louis. Cordoned her off from the ordinary books. Separated from the pack. And now she is missing.
I hope Norton is with her. The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry is fat and stout. Ten-pound bag of sugar. Required reading for a circle of writers, hopeful and green. Emblazoned with red and orange that year, I can still see it.
Long before I had a dog of my own, Norton tagged along, shadowing me. Begging to be played with and petted and fed. I’d scratch his ears, brush his coat, and watch dreams fall out in the shedding. He slept in a basket beside my bed, cushioned with transient catalogs and nonfiction. I hope Norton’s with Cassatt.
And I hope they’ve found Seduced by Bacon. The youngest of the three, this gift from a business colleague. We displayed Bacon in our kitchen. The kitchen we’d demolished. Filled with rubble, chaos, and 90-year-old dust. Rebuilt with fresh dry wall and slate, marble and ceramic subway tiles, wood and stainless steel, and blue paint named Amelia that wasn’t quite green or gray.
Bacon came to us as we hawked the kitchen and its house. No room for another book on such carefully staged, ready-to-show shelves. So Bacon stayed in the kitchen where it belonged. Guests chuckled at its name. A cookbook attesting the truth. “Seduced by Bacon,” they’d say. “Now that’s my problem.”
These three are lost. My heart sinks and drowns, buoyed by weak hope. They’ll turn up. We’ll find them again. Normalcy will come on a day unexpected. On a Monday or Thursday, a day of no consequence, I’ll open a box labeled dish towels and there they will be. Smiling, recovered, taking full breaths of air. They’ll ask me what happened. Where are we now? What took me so long to find them?
And I will answer I don’t know. Today I don’t know.
“Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?” Luke 15:4 NIV
Between the time of writing and publishing this post, I found The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry in a box in the basement. Norton now resides behind the glass doors of a bookshelf in my office where I can keep an eye on him as I work. Cassatt and Bacon are still missing.
Have you ever lost a beloved book or other item? Did you find it again? What was that like, the losing or the finding?
Today is the National Day of Prayer. There’s a lot of hubbub surrounding the alternative National Day of Reason—as if faith and reason are mutually exclusive. Seems fitting to turn our attention to the skeptics, people who express disbelief of Biblical truth. For that, we call in an expert.
Meet the Skeptic by Bill Foster
Meet the Skeptic, by friend Bill Foster, reached number one in Amazon’s Science and Religion category earlier this week. Congratulations, Bill!
In Meet the Skeptic, Bill presents skepticism as an opportunity to see where the need for truth lies in each individual. Bill is Gen X, so expect references to pop culture alongside illustrations and Biblical support. All this is packed into a mere 144 pages. You can read that in one sitting, people.
I asked Bill a few questions about his book. He was gracious to share these answers with me.
What inspired you to write this book?
Bill: Two main things. First, my own frustrations in talking with skeptics and feeling like I wasn’t getting anywhere even when I had answers. Second, realizing there are a lot of apologetics resources out there but people are intimidated by many of them.
What makes this different than other ways to share the Gospel?
Bill: Meet The Skeptic is more about asking the right questions to get underneath surface-level objections than it is about trying to answer every objection. It’s more about understanding worldviews and where a conversation will likely go than it is about regurgitating data. Facts and evidence are always valuable and the more knowledgeable we are about a subject the better. But I think the evidence is best used as supporting information after the skeptic’s worldview is uncovered rather than as lead-off material.
What one thing would you like people to know about sharing the Gospel with the skeptic?
Bill: We don’t need to “win” the discussion. Intellectual arguments alone will never convince anyone, only God can do that. When we engage skeptics and really try to find the deeper obstacles to their faith, we have a better chance at seeing whether or not God is working on them. If He is, great! They may be receptive to truth. But if He’s not, it doesn’t mean that He never will. It just might mean that on this occasion we’re only scratching the surface of hard ground rather than gleaning the harvest.
Find Meet the Skeptic books and study resources on the book’s website and on Amazon. God bless you, Bill, as you aid in the harvest.
“The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves.” Luke 10:2-3 NIV
In celebration, everyday epistle is hosting a Poetry Slam Party.
best remembered poems
This is not your ordinary poetry slam. You don’t have to write the poem you share or read it on an open mic in front of strangers. There are no hidden judges in the audience. We’re just here to enjoy reading and remembering the selections you choose.
All you have to do is share the title and author of a favorite poem.
If the mood strikes, tell why you like it, dazzle us with its best lines, or be my guest and share the whole enchilada.
Why?
Because Poetry is the shock of cool water on the tenth day of triple digits. Bonfire smoke and goose bumps in October. A wool coat wrapped in the silence of the first snow. A nest of newborn robins in the regal holly tree.
the poems of emily dickinson
Who couldn’t use more of that?
I’ll get us started with Emily Dickinson’s My life closed twice before its close:
My life closed twice before its close—
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me
So huge, so hopeless to conceive
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.
Let the Poetry Slam Party begin, good readers. The floor is yours.
Last night, I read in said book about a Japanese novelist who awoke at 4 a.m. every morning for seven months to write his most important work. He would write for five hours, then jog. Requires discipline and strength, he said. Writing and running, that is.
So at 4:27 a.m. today, unplanned, I awoke. Beckoned by the power of suggestion. I can explain it no other way.
I lag behind the author from Japan. Twenty-seven minutes and umpteen books to be exact. He’s accomplished. I’m but a lowly blogger. Unsure. Beginning.
The blackness of the morning yields itself to the task. A complement to the blank white of the screen, the darkness hangs in the air, and all is quiet.
Requires concentration, I read in the book. Uninterrupted stretches of lonely pounding out, writing and jogging. Words to page, feet to pavement.
Two and a half hours, a thousand words later, the sun is up and I’m going back to bed. No jogging for me. It’s Saturday after all.
Will I do this again? Wake up in the third watch and write? I can’t say. Strength can come at any hour.
Stationery tells short, short stories. Briefer than novelettes. Briefer than some poems.
While substantial letters between important people aspire to grow up and be published, most stationery finds fulfillment in the common exchange of private lives shared. In the precious time it takes time to handwrite the page. To ink out whispers. Giggles. Smiles. Tears.
My husband collects plants in his garden, flowers to flood the beds. Likewise, I think my obsession with stationery is a worthwhile vice. Beautiful. Creative. Relatively inexpensive.
Best of all, though stationery is lovely blank, I can write WORDS on it.
I dig electronic communication. Oh yes, I do. But there’s nothing quite like the written word on paper.
For the word of God is alive and powerful. It is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow. It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires. Hebrews 4:12 NLT
Be Still My Beating Heart by a younger Sting. Weren’t we all younger in 1987? Happy Valentine’s Eve!
lamb’s ear, iris and Baptista in J’s garden last spring
It was the post that launched a thousand hits. And then some.
Quite by surprise, WordPress Freshly Pressed this simple story about a bike named Cindy on the last day of August 2011. A deluge of clicks and comments rolled in, making it the most read everyday epistle post to date.
Cheryl and Greg Brewer at a castle in Switzerland
Interestingly, it was last to be picked for Reader’s Choice. My classy, continent-hopping friend Cheryl Brewer came through at the eleventh hour with her unprompted selection.
Seems fitting to make it the Reader’s Choice post on this, the last day of 2011.
I have a friend who’s just two weeks younger than I am. Much smarter though.
She argues 40 shouldn’t be different from any other year. Every year we ought to live with no holds barred.
Maybe I’m a late bloomer, but 40 was different for me. It all started around 38 when I began using the two-letter word NO.
No, I will not do what you want me to do if it’s not right for me. No, I will not let you walk all over me. No, I will not play silly, little reindeer games. No, you are not the queen of the universe.
At 38, NO squeaked out as an anxiety-filled whisper. By 39, I could say it out loud with less hesitation, but the timing was all wrong. Now at 40, I can say it plainly, thoughtfully, and without much hand wringing.
The timing is better too. I’ve said NO this year to several people and things that weren’t right for me before I tried to find a way to accommodate them.
more gifts from the Garden, love that place
A polite, well-placed NO is liberating and gets easier with practice. It frees up time for YES.
Yes, I would like to try a blog. Yes, I will make mistakes, but that’s okay because I’m learning. Yes, I will have fun doing it. Yes, I will write with no holds barred.
Several years back, there was this commercial. I’ve combed the web and cannot find the actual spot. You web crawler people, let me know if you find it so I can post a link.
In the ad, a stodgy professor tells a writing class that none of them will likely ever be published. Editors sift through thousands of manuscripts. The best they could expect was a writing career at the top of the slush pile rather than the bottom.
Then, from within the masses of the lecture hall, a student’s hand pops up. Much to his professor’s chagrin and his fellow students’ triumph, he announces he’s already been published. Online.
and one more
That far-fetched dream is coming to fruition in my lifetime and yours. Imagine the possibilities. David McRaney did.
