Sand and Storms

Where we live, the sand along the beach is wet, smooth and flat—until gale force winds blow.

Strong winds change the sand, swirling it into patterns and pushing it up around rocks and pebbles. When this happens, the beach changes. Interesting patterns and textures emerge, replacing the mundane scenery with sand pictures and a kaleidoscope landscape of infinite variety.

Our lives are much the same. Left in peace and comfort, the pages of our life turn in humdrum sameness. Nothing new, nothing scary, nothing unsettled. But when the winds of adversity howl around us, the landscape of our lives suddenly change. Like seagrass along the shore, we must dig roots deeper, strengthen fiber, stand resolutely against the storm. When the wind hushes to a whisper and the sand quits blowing blindingly, we have grown. We have changed. We are stronger.

We could live out our lives in comfort and peace if storms never battered us. But we would be like weeds growing up through mulch—protected—but with shallow roots that hinder maturity.

God-sent wind and storms should not alarm, frighten or discourage us. Just as God promises in Romans 8:28, “All things work together for good to those who love the LORD.”

Nor should man-made storms alarm, frighten, or discourage us. God does not send every storm that comes into our lives. Sometimes storms are a result of sin—ours or others.

It was not God’s plan that I should have been sexually abused as a child and forced to flee home and live under a bridge. It was not God’s storm that forced me into two abortions that nearly killed me. Yet God took the broken reeds left behind by those human storms of sin and depravity and strengthened them into a deeply planted life. He built new structures on the tragic and hurtful experiences of the past to bless my future. God’s blessing explains the success of my two “inspirational” and “life-changing” books, mystery-romance-suspense Bridge to Nowhere, and pro-life adventure-romance Love’s Beating Heart. Neither of those books would have been inspired by calm comfort.

Welcome storms into your life. You never know what blessings they will blow into your life.

Fog Vision

Since childhood, I have loved fog. It shrink wraps the world into a manageable space and draws mysterious misty stage curtains across the landscape hiding imperfections. For the writer, it falls gently down into the world like fresh inspiration for a stalled novel. Background for dreams – new fire for romance.

Non-writers hate fog. For drivers and pilots, the opaque, morphing water droplets translate into a nightmare. Limited vision endangers travelers, slows down roadway traffic and clogs up the skies.

Me? I love fog. It reminds me of all the times in my life when the future has been as invisible and uncertain as ground to sky clouds that hide and confuse. Like a dog looking for a comfy place to nestle in grass, I’ve turned endless circles around present circumstances in an effort to find a storm-cleared path past present trials and hurts. I’ve looked for a warm, level, sunbathed path to an idyllic future.

If that describes your search – give it up. This is earth, not heaven, and there are no easy paths. Everyone has trials, testings, troubles, heartbreaks, failures, disappointments and hurts in their lives. You wouldn’t want to exchange sets of problems with another person. Their circumstances might be worse!

Having survived child abuse, living under a bridge, single-parenting, having my property stolen out from under me while I lived in an open-ended garden shed with no running water, bathroom or kitchen facilities and no heat in the winter – I consider myself an expert on hard times and survival. It helps to live in the fog.

When you learn to trust two Bible verses – in everything give thanks and all things work together to them that love the LORD – you travel through life in a spiritual fog that protects you from pain and injury. You still have to work hard. You still have to face problems, trials, temptations and grief. But you can ride through these like rainbow reflections on soap bubbles.

It’s not necessary to see where you’re going in the fog just so you make it safely to your destination. With Jesus in control, safe travel is guaranteed!

Lighthouse in the fog, Fortrose, Scotland

Real Men Wear Skirts

Here in Scotland, real men wear skirts for special occasions, only they’re not called skirts, they’re called kilts. It takes a real man to wear a kilt for several reasons.

Reason number one that it takes a real man to wear a kilt is that in some parts of the world, clueless individuals mock and call the kilt “a skirt.” Kilts have been traditional wear here for hundreds of years. Scots people are proud of their historic clans and the colors in the tartans denote individual clans, just like the 1950s movie Brigadoon, which I hasten to add is not popular over here.

The second reason it takes a real man to wear a kilt is that kilts are worn with nothing under them. Besides the obvious danger of strong gusts of wind or leaping about with joy, it is cold here. I think it’s very brave to expose that part of the anatomy to cold with limited protection.

The third reason real men wear kilts – refer back to reasons one and two. Suffice it to say that kilts matter here because they are a badge of honor, identification and national pride.

God doesn’t demand that Christians wear kilts. But He does demand that we put a difference between ourselves and the world. We should be so like Jesus that we become walking Bibles that can be read by our words and actions. James 1:27 says, “Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.”

Christians are warned not to follow a multitude to do evil and not to envy evil people no matter how wealthy or socially respected. Christians are ordered to be salt and light, the salt for cleansing and light to lead others to Jesus, the Savior of the world. Jesus said “I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.” Like real men who wear kilts, real Christians who wear the breath of Jesus are frequently mocked.

I’ve had a lot of people write to me, email me and call me to tell me that they loved my mystery-romance-suspense Bridge to Nowhere. But I’ve had people yell at me for having written my pro-life teen & up adventure-romance Love’s Beating Heart. I’ve been accused of stirring up the abortion issue to sell books, even though I wrote Love’s Beating Heart with a prayer that it will save the lives of unborn children.

Ultimately, it is not either the people who have praised me for Bridge to Nowhere, or the people who have criticized me for Love’s Beating Heart who matter. The only opinion that matters is God’s. His approval is eternal.

Real Christians wear spiritual skirts. They willingly wear the heart of God and accept mocking and derision. Then, following Jesus’ command, they step it up a notch. They forgive those who have criticized and condemned them just as Jesus did. They realize that non-Christians are clueless and need love, prayer and forgiveness.

So…kilts, skirts, or just a smile…wear whatever spiritual dress God sends to you, and wear it proudly. You don’t have to be from Scotland to wear a kilt.

Walking on Water

You’ve probably heard people say, “I’ll believe it when I see it with my own eyes.” The eyes are a poor benchmark for truth. I saw someone walk on water today.

Here I was wet up to my knees from plunging into the outgoing tide to retrieve the dog’s ball. I look out across Moray Firth to the lighthouse and see someone walking on water. It startles me. “Only Jesus can walk on water,” I say to Angel Joy who is more interested in getting the ball back than in what Jesus did. I’m thinking, “If I could have walked on water, I wouldn’t be wet and cold now.”

When I get closer, I realize that whoever is walking on water is actually standing on something. Then I feel better about being wet and cold.

That’s just one example of how our eyes can trick us. All of our senses are vulnerable to deception. Atheists hit those vulnerable spots when they attack our faith. “Look at the world,” they say. “If God is a God of love, why is there hate, war, crime and hurt? Show me proof that God exists.”

When you try to explain that sin, not God, causes everything evil and bad in the world, they don’t want to hear and they refuse to accept. Instead of honestly seeking the truth for themselves, they laser beam their energy to cut down your spiritual foundation of faith and truth.

Don’t fall into that trap. The proof is in our hearts. When we have Jesus in our hearts, we know He is there. Nothing including vitriolic attacks or faulty accusations and arguments from the world can shake our faith. We know that we know that we know.

The evidence of God’s existence is everywhere in every part of the earth. Here in the lovely Black Isle of Scotland, God’s voice speaks from the water. His creation reflects His glory in color and beauty in every rock, on every hill, in the soft petals of each flower blossom and along the flaming rims of sunrises and sunsets. God is as close as the next heartbeat the next breath. But it’s hard to convince someone who doesn’t want to hear or see for fear of losing their own authority and giving place to God.

So when you think you see someone walking on water, look into your heart and see what your spirit has seen. Trust the evidence of God in your heart whether He speaks in a still small voice or in the mighty roar of storms and waves.

The Bible advises: “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.” Proverbs 2:5

Taking the Bridge to Nowhere to the Loch Ness Monster

Taking the Bridge to Nowhere to the Loch Ness Monster.

Taking the Bridge to Nowhere to the Loch Ness Monster

When I was in the fifth grade, I read about the Loch Ness Monster in our SRA Reading Program. I informed all my friends that when I grew up I was going to Scotland to search for the Loch Ness Monster.

Prophetic boast? Because here I was some fifty years later taking a tour of Loch Ness and waiting for Nessie to appear. I had a present for her. Such a mysterious creature, I felt, would love reading my mystery-romance-suspense Bridge to Nowhere, published by Sunpenny. Just in case her reading tastes were not what I expected, I took along a typed copy of my pro-life, adventure-romance Love’s Beating Heart (electronically published) and my husband’s two time travel-adventure books The Scent of Time and The Scent of Home.

Yes, I understand that Nessie lives in a 755-foot deep lake which contains more fresh water than all the lakes in England and Wales combined. But she’s been in there a long time. Surely she needs some place to get out of that cold water and I’m envisioning a cozy little cave carved into the rock sides of the lake where she can rest, read, relax – and enjoy all the non-monster pursuits that her heart desires. She has often been spotted around Urquhart Castle, which reportedly sits on a rock shelf with deep water underneath. Strange claims have been made of 30-foot eels frightening divers away when they searched around the castle.

Not everyone believes in Nessie. She was mentioned back in the 7th Century. Legend states that Saint Columba rescued a swimmer under attack by ordering the monster away in the name of Jesus. Since then, there have been more than 1,000 sightings, the most recent of which began in 1933. The evidence for Nessie’s existence is anecdotal with disputed photos and sonar readings. Many of the sonar studies have recorded creatures of up to 30-feet long and more than five-feet wide following boats at great speed and depth. Sound recordings have monitored strange clicks, knocks and swishing noises.

Famed monster hunter Jeremy Wade looked for Nessie without success, but noted that with so much evidence having been accumulated over so many years – something strange lived in Loch Ness. His best surmise was that a rare Greenland shark chased salmon into the loch from the North Sea.

Back to my own personal search for the Loch Ness Monster. I can’t claim to have seen Nessie. So I didn’t get to give her a copy of Bridge to Nowhere or any of the other books. However, I did discover something that gives me hope for future searches. Loch Ness is so huge and deep with so much water – that she could easily be real. There is simply no reason to assume that Nessie is a hoax. So you are welcome to go online and buy my books or even private message me for a signed copy – but I’m keeping Nessie’s copy for next time I get to search for her. She doesn’t know me yet, but I feel we share a special connection. She’ll want to meet me.

Some people search for God with all the inconclusive results that professional Nessie hunters have accumulated. Not only do they mock and scorn Christians, they attempt to push an atheist agenda hard enough that Christians and their faith in God will decline like the Nessie sightings of recent years. How sad. The evidence for God’s existence is all around these non-believers, pulsing with every beat of their heart and borne on the wings of the wind. Nessie might not have popped up on my monster-hunting expedition, but God’s awesome majesty reflected from sky to waves and bounced off the mountains, trees, flowers and wildlife along the shore. God made it all. It’s His perfect creation. And Nessie, if she does exist, is a mysterious creation of God. Mysteries belong to God. Perhaps that’s why I enjoy writing them so much!

See you soon, Nessie! I’m keeping your books for you!

Seagull parents & baby battery

Unlike the U.S. where most schools have running tracks, the sports field here in Fortrose, Scotland, is a grassy field. When I went running today, I got dive bombed by two seagulls. The birds repeatedly swooped down at head level and split the air with high-pitched shrieks and constant chortles, clearly angry. About halfway around the field, I discovered the source of their anger. Three babies were sunbathing in the grass and attempting short, floppy bursts of flight. The parents were defending their babies.

Oh, for human parents with the love, compassion and action to defend their children with the courage of those gulls. I must have outsized and outweighed those parents 50 to one, yet they were fearless when confronted by what they perceived as a threat to their young. Every human parent should follow the example of those gulls.

Miz Mike, in my Sunpenny-published Christian mystery-romance-suspense Bridge to Nowhere, is Texan to the core – and kind. Her kindness evaporates when a kidnapper snatches her youngest grandson. When the kidnapper is finally captured, Miz Mike is on the culprit like ticks on a wild deer. A human version of protective seagulls.

If seagulls, deemed “nuisance birds” by some, can be such loyal parents, why can’t humans? The label of “child abuse” shouldn’t exist because there should be no child abuse.

Abortion is the ultimate form of child abuse. Action-centered, caring individuals flock to good causes: saving marine life; supporting no-kill shelters for dogs and cats; running retirement centers for horses; protesting the slaughter of wild animals to feed the fur industry; saving whales, trees and spotted owls. But where are those same compassionate activists when unborn children with beating hearts are impaled, sliced and diced and tossed into garbage cans like debris? Why aren’t some of these animal-loving humans speaking for unborn children who can’t speak for themselves? Why aren’t they demanding that unborn children be given the choice of life?

Love’s Beating Heart, a parallel adventure, paints a pro-life choice that allows readers to decide the abortion VS pro-life issue. Teen Natasha North is pregnant. Her stepfather threatens to kill her if she doesn’t get an abortion. Not sure that abortion is right, Tash and her best friend Dena run away. Hiding sends the teens on a wild river ride on a flooded Texas Hill Country river. Meanwhile, Dena’s older sister Cat escapes from an abusive boyfriend and is rescued by a Christian family. The more Cat helps Dallas homeschool the children, the more Cat decides the Creekmore family suffers from religious insanity…and yet…she would like to replace Dallas as Sky Creekmore’s wife. Love’s Beating Heart is non-stop action, adventure and suspense, with the sweet spice of romance tossed into the redolent mix. Called “inspirational” and “life-changing” by readers, Love’s Beating Heart was written to paint the possibility of adoption as a loving option. The regret and guilt that frequently stalks women who have had abortions are twin giant joy killers. The inspiration for Love’s Beating Heart? As the Bible says, “ask the birds of the air, they will tell you.”

As human parents, the choice is ours. Are we seagulls or baby batterers?

Fire the Rocks with Beauty

Bloom where you are planted. Light up the rocky ground with the fire of the gifts and enthusiasm that God has given you. If lovely flowers can bloom vividly on the slate roof of a building, we can light up the rocks where we’re planted with God’s glory.

I’m a Texan. I love Bandera, Texas, “Cowboy Capital of the World.” It’s my home and the setting for most of the Christian mystery-romance-suspense books that I’ve written: Bridge to Nowhere, Love’s Beating Heart, Shadow Chase and Until the Shadows Flee. Heart Shadows is set in the Nevada desert.

When my job ended in Bandera, I left. I’ve left Bandera before, but I’ve always gone back. I call it the boomerang effect. The LORD told me to leave, but I fought against going. I prayed and begged God to change His mind all the way to Alabama. Alabama had an even higher unemployment rate than Texas – which made me wonder why I was there. It took me a couple of months to find a job. I had never been out of work before in my life. But it gave me time to write my next Sunpenny Publishing release, Bridge Beyond Betrayal, and when I did find a job, it was a great job with a great boss. God blessed me for blooming where I was planted – even though it wasn’t Texas.

Now that I’m in Scotland, I realize why I was in Alabama. The LORD moved me there to shake the soil out of my roots and free me to marry my wonderful husband, author Alan T McKean (The Scent of Time & The Scent of Home). Surviving in a colder, wetter climate and adjusting to culture changes sometimes made me feel like a weed clinging to a rock, more likely to fall off than bloom. But with God’s grace, my life has blossomed around me in spite of all my human errors and weakness. Besides having a great husband, a lovely rough collie dog named Angel Joy, and living by the sea in a place that simply has no ugly views in any direction, the LORD has given me time to write. That resulted in the pro-life adventure-romance, Love’s Beating Heart, which has been acclaimed by critics as “inspirational” and “life-changing.” God blesses us when we bloom where we’re planted.

So if you find yourself planted in rocky ground, decide to fire the rocks with your beauty. You are beautiful because God created you and He doesn’t make junk! God gives all of us gifts. You may not be a writer, but God has a plan and a purpose for your life. He has a reason for sticking you in the rocks. Think of the lovely roof flowers waving cheerfully from their lofty heights on slate and be encouraged. All things really do work together for good to them that love the LORD, just like the Bible promises. If God sticks you in the rocks, He will water you with a special blessing that you wouldn’t get anywhere else.

Fire the rocks with beauty!

Missing the Click

Photographers know the feeling well. They miss the picture of a lifetime because they miss the click. One second sooner, one second later…Missing the click transforms what could have been an incredible capture into an average, okay picture.

Writing is the same. You can have written one of the greatest books of all times, yet if no one reads it…it sits in limbo with all the other millions of unread books. Promotion for the book can be off by a mere click in time. Promotion for my pro-life adventure Love’s Beating Heart hit one week too late to ride the tidal wave of public outrage when it was revealed that babies born alive at an abortion clinic had their spinal cords clipped with scissors to kill them.

Christian mystery-romance-suspense Bridge to Nowhere, published by Sunpenny Publishing, just missed the tidal wave of publicity that was generated when my husband Alan McKean – a Scottish minister – released his first book The Scent of Time, which was deemed by some as “too sexy to have been written by a pastor.” When press releases went out for Bridge to Nowhere, sales increased only slightly. I had missed the click. The fact that I had gone from living under a bridge to writing a book with bridge in the title; the fact that I was living under the bridge after fleeing childhood sex abuse; the fact that the abuse had produced two pregnancies when I was a teen – followed by two forced non-medical abortions that nearly killed me – none of those facts increased sales. It was almost as if no one cared about about what I had suffered or wanted to know how I had overcome and recovered so other victims could be encouraged. Really, it wasn’t that no one cared – it was that I missed the click.

Our Christian lives are like that. Sometimes we miss the click. Being a Christian does not prevent us from having problems. Living for Christ is hard. Even if there were no other trials, atheists can be rabid. Why they attack Christians and their beliefs and spend so much time and money fighting a God Whom they don’t believe exists, I cannot imagine. But because they do, they can cause problems, especially in the workplace. Remember, what doesn’t make you bitter, makes you better. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. All things work together for good to them that love the LORD. Pressure and criticism sometimes make us silent when we should speak. Constant attack on our beliefs can keep us from taking needed action. We miss the click.

Jesus forgives us for missing the clicks. Yet when we get it right, our life becomes the perfect symphony God orchestrated for us. So don’t miss the click!