When I was in sixth grade, my grandmother made a gorgeous yellow dress for me to wear at our school’s Easter program. Then I learned that I was to be excluded from the Easter program because…I can’t sing. When the song leader saw the tears of disappointment weaving down my cheeks he said, “You come to the program. You wear that dress your grandmother made. You stand up on the stage with your class. You open and close your mouth. But don’t let any sound come out.”
So I wore my lovely yellow Easter dress and stood proudly on the stage opening and closing my mouth—doing my best not to let any noise escape. Years later in college, our drama professor’s wife, who held a doctorate in music, told me, “Stephanie, everyone can sing. I have never met anyone who can’t sing. I’ll work with you for one hour a day for the next week. You might not be good enough to get the lead in one of the musicals, but you can at least be in the chorus.”
On the first day, Mrs. Estes worked with me for thirty minutes. She stopped. She looked as confused as a blind dog in a sausage factory. “Stephanie,” she finally said, “I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but I can’t help you. You really can’t sing.”
And I still can’t sing. It’s one of the many splendid failures in my life. Splendid, because I am about to publish book number 41. If I had been able to sing—the count would never have reached even one. I would have been pouring myself into singing and performing the way I pour myself into writing. I would like to believe that God has allowed me to use the life experiences—joys, sorrows, disappointments, achievements—and weird, unusual things like getting tossed to the ground and bitten by a lion—to write books that entertain folks who my life would never have touched if I had lived my dream of singing.
“All things work together for good to those who love the Lord.” Romans 8:28.
My father was an atheist. His code of life? If it was good for him, it was right. If it didn’t benefit him, it was wrong. Because money was tight, he ignored the State of Georgia’s traffic laws. He did not have our vehicles safety checked. Like our family, they were so dysfunctional they would not have passed.
One day when I was selling magazines to raise money for our senior class, I stopped at a house along a minor road. A man with an unbuttoned shirt and boxer shorts answered the door, an attractive blonde woman some ten years younger hanging on his arm. He curtly informed me that he did not want magazines and he didn’t appreciate his Saturday being interrupted by a panhandler. I made a few more stops along that road before turning onto the main highway. Oops! There was a Georgia State Trooper roadblock about a mile ahead.
There was only one dirt road between me and the roadblock, so—I took it. A highway patrol car left the roadblock and drove to the entry of the dirt road. The trooper sat in his car watching me. Attempting to hide the fact that I was quivering like pudding, I parked the car, got out, walked boldly to the door of the house and knocked. The man in the boxer shorts, still adorned with the blonde on his arm stared at me in disbelief before he bellowed, “You were just at my front door. Get out of here and don’t ever come back.”
I chanced a look back to the end of what I now realized was a long driveway—not a road. Yup. Highway patrol car still there. I gulped. “Do you mind if I go around the side of your house?”
“I don’t care how you go—just get!”
So I drove up a bank, across rocks, through a flowerbed and around to the front of the house to the main road and drove home watching the rearview mirror all the way.
Had I stopped at the roadblock, perhaps the old Cadillac I was driving would have been off the road before the frame broke in four places and the car fell down on the tires in downtown LaGrange when I was on my way to college.
Had our vehicles passed Georgia’s safety inspection, perhaps the brakes on the VW Beetle I drove after the death of the Caddie would not have failed at a traffic light causing me to jump the sidewalk and drive uphill into someone’s yard to keep from having an accident.
Then there was the tie rod end that broke at highway speed on the truck that replaced the Beetle. I wasn’t a Christian at the time and didn’t know that Jesus had saved my life, but the driver in the oncoming car did. He stopped and said, “Girl, someone up there really loves you. You could have been killed.”
Then there was the car that replaced the truck. It lost one front wheel—the entire wheel—at highway speed when I was taking my grandmother home from shopping. Flames shot up into the air over the roof of the car as it careened down the road on a metal rim. Poor Grandmother, who must have been in her seventies at the time, had to walk home with me—two miles on a dark road along a narrow shoulder.
There is usually a good reason for the roadblocks in our lives. It pays to stop.
Roadblocks direct relationships, too. After my husband’s cancer death, I fell in love with a man 10 years younger than me. We enjoyed being together so much that he hired me to travel around Texas with him selling merchandise. He proofread my second book. I went to his church. He went to my church. I met his family. They loved me. I loved them. When his dad—who was in his eighties—died, he would receive more than one million dollars. We discussed marriage. I told him I had to marry him—he was one of the few men I knew who didn’t say, “ain’t.” We sat down and disclosed everything about our pasts that might prove a roadblock. I told him about the childhood sexual abuse I had endured from my father and explained that as a writer—I might need to go public. That bothered him, but it wasn’t a roadblock. He still wanted to marry me. Then he admitted that he smoked pot regularly. I was shocked. He had never used it around me. That roadblock stopped me. While we were together, I had completed two books which were not yet published.
After we parted at the roadblock and I met my husband Alan and moved to Scotland, the first two books were published. I have now written 35 more and re-written the first two so I could self-publish them. That would never have happened on the road in Texas with the man who—however briefly—flung stars into my night sky and painted sunrises and sunsets in vivid colors. Quite a few of the books including the soon-to-be-published “Grey For Murder” are set in Scotland.
There is usually a good reason for the roadblocks in our lives. It pays to stop.
“For this is God, our God forever and forever, He will be our guide even to death.” Psalm 48:14.
To those who don’t know the history of this tree—it may seem ordinary, perhaps even…ugly? Don’t be fooled. This is a hero tree.
Two years ago, this tree blew over during a strong gale. There it lay on the ground, roots sticking up in the air. There it stayed for months until someone came along and whacked off all the branches, leaving the tree and its frame flat on the ground with the roots still exposed. There it lay for another year.
For some strange reason—since it wasn’t replanted—someone lifted the tree back up and stuffed the exposed roots back into the shallow hole which had once cradled them. The tree is not straight. Its roots are still exposed. Whoever lifted the tree back up and stuck it back into the hole didn’t bother to cover the roots with dirt.
This hero tree is starting to grow again. After two years of abuse, abandonment, and struggle, the tree is putting on new growth.
We humans get hit with gales. We go down. Battering and circumstances beyond our control keep us flat. As we heal, we are faced with two choices: get up and draw from the hard place we’ve been to put on new growth, or remain inert and withdraw from life.
The more years I live the more I realize that no one is gifted with an easy problem-free life. No matter how far inland or how deeply planted along the shore one is, nothing can guarantee that we won’t be battered by the hard winds of adversity. When we are, recovery and success depends on the choice we make; withdraw or start growing again.
Fortunately, we have Someone who will come along beside us and give us the strength we need for whatever storms we face.
Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Hebrews 4:16
“So we may boldly say, ‘The LORD is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?” Hebrews 13:6.
“Behold, God is my helper.” Psalm 54:4.
The best news: when life knocks us down and God picks us up again—He covers our roots, too.
I truly enjoyed reading an autobiographical book written by a Texas friend of many years and many seasons, “Struggling Against the Wind: Living With NF1,” written by educator Dan Zavorka. Dan’s diligent work with students and his dedication to teaching has resulted in Bandera decathlon team winning clear up to the state level against much larger high schools year after year.
The journey that Dan, wife Sheila, and daughters Sara, Gina, and Dana have shared is amazing, heartwarming—and at times—scary and heartbreaking. Shelia, Gina, and Dana all battle the genetic condition neurofibromatosis. They not only fight a private medical battle against NF, but reach out to teach others about it and spread awareness.
Additionally, “Struggling Against the Wind” is inspirational. Dan discovered and fell in love with one word early in his life: providence. Dan’s recounting of his family’s life experiences illustrate Divine Providence and the rewards of putting God first.
Dan is not the first author in the family. Daughter Gina has written a children’s book, “Andy’s Moustache.” Sara illustrated it.
Dan grew up on a farm in Wyoming and can look into a cow’s face and identify its breed. Using humor, Dan illustrates the problem with standardized tests for all students. When the word “taxi” hit him on a test, Dan had no idea what it was. He and his dad—who survived getting struck by lightning and later falling from three stories—knew about tractors and cattle, but city taxis were alien to them.
I related to that. I remember a visit to an upscale Dallas, Texas Restaurant many years ago. Like Dan, I was a country girl. When I went to use the restroom, I couldn’t get the toilet to flush. Embarrassed to leave the toilet without flushing it, I finally opened the door to the stall anyway. The toilet flushed and my long skirt, which was still trailing over the seat, got soaked.
Next the sink. I tried to get soap on my hands to wash them, but no soap came out. I pushed, prodded, shook, and tried desperately to get soap. Zip. Zilch. None. But when my hands came off the soap container and slipped under it as I was looking for the water—soap poured out and covered the countertop. Next was the water. Zip, Zilch. None. Then, when I bent down to look more closely at the facet (I had to have water—my hands were coated with soap), water poured out and wet my forehead. I jumped back from the streaming water and heard a “rumph, rumph, rumph” noise beside me. In horror, I found paper towels pouring out of the automatic dispenser and filling up my purse. By the time I got back to the table with my boss…I was a nervous wreck.
Country folks like Dan and I might get “caught out” in different situations, but the God we serve is never caught by surprise. “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows His handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night reveals knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard.” Psalm 19:1-3.
Praise the Lord, my husband Alan is finally home after five months in the hospital. Have you ever heard the expression, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?” For five months, I took the passenger ferry from Dunoon to Gourock and then took a taxi up to the hospital to visit him. So simple, so easy. Just purchase a ticket right on the ferry from one of the friendly workers. Then for whatever reason—the ferry company changed their ticket purchasing system and suddenly—it was no longer simple, nor was it easy. It was impossible. For the last three days that Alan was in the hospital I traveled on the ferry for free because the new ticketing system was broken. For the last two of those days—everyone coming back on the ferry traveled for free. The friendly ferry workers didn’t even bother coming around the cabin with their “new improved” payment machine that didn’t work. The company “fixed” something that wasn’t broken.
Today I walked Savannah down to see about getting a jump start for our car which had a dead battery. My next stop was the grocery store. By the time I had walked that far and waited for the lunch hour to end at the garage, and then reached the store, I needed to use to the bathroom—but the door was locked. I went to the cashier and waited in line to get the key. She looked around and said someone must be in the bathroom because she didn’t have the key. So I went back and checked the door again. It was still locked. I waited outside the door for quite a few minutes, but no one came out and I didn’t hear any noise inside. I knocked on the door. There was no answer. I went back to the cashier and waited in line again for the key. She searched a second time and assured me that someone must be in the bathroom because she couldn’t find the key. “Knock harder,” she suggested.
I marched back to the bathroom and knocked on it as decisively as I had recently heard a police officer knock on someone’s front door. No answer. Back to the line to wait again. The cashier rolled her eyes. “Someone must have pocketed the key and gone home with it,” I told her, “because it’s still locked and no one answers.”
The lady in line ahead of me—who had just unloaded a full cart of groceries and put them on the counter—turned to us nonchalantly and said, “Oh, the bathroom key? I have it. I’ll give it to you after I get through using the bathroom.”
Huh?
Some things just don’t make sense.
One thing in the world never fails and always makes sense. “And this is the promise that Jesus has promised us—eternal life.” 1 John 2:23
Twice in two days I’ve been called out at the hospital for using the word “handicapped,” instead of “disabled.” I’m sure my lack of respect for political correctness offended the walls. There were no people—handicapped or not—within hearing distance—only walls.
The U.S., where I’m from and where I grew up, passed the Americans With Disabilities Act in 1990, but signs remain intact for handicap parking. The only complaints seem to be about non-handicapped folks being lazy and inconsiderate and parking in handicapped spaces, and these folks are so thoughtless that they would treat a “disabled” sign the same way.
My car is disabled when it won’t run. It is totally unable. I was never disabled when I spent two years on crutches—but I was handicapped by the challenges of going up and down steps, etc.
If I needed to choose between the words handicapped and disability for one of my books, I would write, “She was handicapped by her small size and lack of height.” I would not write, “She was disabled by her small size and lack of height.” She’s not disabled, for heaven’s sake—she just can’t reach the top shelf!
Handicap: disadvantage, challenged.
Disability: incapacitated, impaired.
I don’t find the word handicapped offensive; I find the word disabled offensive. Handicapped means it’s difficult; disabled means it’s impossible.
And I especially find political correctness offensive.
People need to get real. They need to sail out of their comfort zones each morning with an attitude of doing something to make the world a better place even if it’s just smiling—rather than creeping out to look around warily and discover what offends them today.
Enough, already! Handicapped, disabled. They are just words. Words are what people make them. Only God’s words are eternal.
Proverbs 30:5 in the Bible promises, “Every word of God is pure.”
My parents would have failed a health and safety course. Perhaps because there were seven of us. If one child was lost, there were six others to replace him or her. Whatever the reason, they were an epic fail in the safety department.
They let us throw chicken bones to wild alligators we found in the ditches along Florida highways. Alligators can run 35mph. A few chicken bones would not have satisfied a huge reptile’s hunger with a tasty morsel like a child standing in front of it within easy reach.
For my eighth birthday, I got a baby alligator as a pet. Alligators are not petable regardless of their size. The power of their bite depends on the species and their size, but they can exert up to 3,700 pounds per square inch when their jaws snap shut. For comparison, humans exert 150 to 200 pounds per square inch in their bite. News headlines like the following are not uncommon: “Florida officials search for alligator that ate man,” “Crocodile eats man in front of his family.”
I am currently reading and enjoying Beth Haslam’s newest book, “Fat Dogs and Welsh Estates.” Although I love fiction, and fiction is what I write, I get every book that Beth or Valerie Poore write. As I read this book, I am fascinated by the closeness of Beth’s family and the kindness and nurturing of her parents. Like our family, their family surrounded itself with animals. But not alligators like my birthday “pet,” and not half-grown African lions like our Ebenezer who could easily have eaten one of my younger brothers when my father brought him home in the back of a station wagon. By the time Eb left us, he weighed 450 pounds and had pinned me down on the ground and bitten my stomach.
When school was out for the summer, Mom rarely knew where I was. With the choice of a bicycle or a horse to ride, or exploring the woods on foot—I roamed miles from home and didn’t get back until dark. Once when I crossed a newly cut tree across a stream, a horrifying roar split the air and a black bear rose up from under the leafy section of pine. I ran away so fast that when I hit our property fence, I flipped over it and ripped both jeans and skin on three strands of barbed wire. Mom was furious about the riddled jeans, but less sympathetic about the slashes on my legs because she thought I was being careless and lied about the bear. My bear story was not believed until months later when we watched a black bear munch blackberries from the thicket behind our pond.
Except for the once-a-year week-long tent camping vacations to Florida, my family never went places together. There were too many of us and we didn’t have enough money. My mother took us shopping. We kept our hands clasped behind our backs and were not allowed to touch things. She also took us to the library. We all loved reading and won the county-wide library sponsored reading contests for the most books read every year. Other than that, we mostly went our own separate ways except when I—being the oldest—talked the others into risky adventures like climbing up and down the 150-foot cliff left by the highway department when they built the interstate. When a rock dislodged under my foot leaving me hanging, it took the quick intelligence of my sister, fellow author Leslie Garcia, to save me. She instructed our neighbors Billy, Bobby, and Ronnie to get down on the ground and form a human chain to grab me and haul me back up. Her job was to cry. My parents never knew about that misadventure, or many others. We simply weren’t as connected as other families.
When I look back at the dysfunction of my childhood (without even revisiting the sexual abuse), I am amazed that at age 71—I am still alive. I can’t credit my safety-unaware parents for this miracle. Even before I knew Him, God had my back.
Perhaps this is why from childhood—long before I knew God or understood the Bible—Psalm 27 was my favorite Psalm. “When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take care of me.”
My parents did not intentionally forsake me—they just made a lot of mistakes. We all make mistakes. Some are potentially deadly. Whether we know it or not, we owe our next breath to the Lord God who made us. He has our backs.https://www.amazon.com/stores/Stephanie-Parker-McKean/author/B00BOX90OO
Rocks speak to me. They always have. Mountains are majestic, the sky is magnificent, the ocean is marvelous—but rocks—well, they rock.
Even as a five-year-old, I was fascinated by rocks. I would pick them up and carry them around the yard and my mother would shout, “Put that rock down. You’re going to hurt yourself. When you drop it on your toe, don’t come crying to me.”
And I didn’t. I carried the rocks around rearranging them and when one slipped out of my hands and hit my foot—which invariably happened—I never went crying to my mother. I sat in the corner of the yard cradling my foot and whimpering until my toe finally quit hurting. Then I would find another rock that needed relocation.
As a child, I built rock mansions for roly-poly bugs and furnished them with grass and jar lids full of water. I seem to remember my mother remarking to my grandmother, “That’s odd, Maybelle. I’m sure this jar had a lid.”
As an adult, I learned to build rock steps, rock walls, and rock siding around houses. To build with rocks, one must first have rocks. I spent countless blissful hours collecting rocks from local ranches and filling the pickup truck up with them until it settled down on the back wheels and the front end was light driving home. Rocks speak to me.
Once I found a huge rock along the side of the road. I was driving the car, not the truck. I stood the rock up on end at the back of the car and wrestled it into the trunk. When I got home with the rock, it took my son and two of his teenage friends to lift the rock out of the trunk. In the tussle, the trunk lock got bent, but I had to take that rock home with me. It hollered at me as I was driving past.
Why this passion for rocks? I can’t explain it. Nor can I explain why as an unchurched child who didn’t own a Bible and didn’t even understand the lyrics to Christmas songs like “Silent Night,” my favorite Psalm was Psalm 27: “In the time of trouble He shall hide me…He shall set me high upon a rock, and now my head shall be lifted up above my enemies.”
“The LORD lives! Blessed be my Rock! Let God be exalted, the Rock of my salvation.” 2 Samuel 22:47.
Physical rocks have sometimes failed me. They have strained my back and arm muscles, dropped on my feet, smashed my fingers, proved to be a hiding place for scorpions that sting when disturbed. But the Rock of my salvation has never failed me.
God is The Rock. He made rocks. The rocks speak to me.
I remember a song from when I was a kid about walking on the sunny side of the street. Walking our rough collie dog is a constant reminder. When sun batters through clouds in our part of Scotland—which is extremely rare in a marine climate where it rains nearly every day, I want to walk on the sunny side of the street. The best grass and the best sniffing places for Savannah, however, are apparently on the west side of the street where the sun is blocked by eight-foot high hedges and stone fences. So dog happily walks in the shade, sniffing…and I shuffle along behind her casting yearning glances at the other side of the street—the sunny side.
“On the Sunny Side of the Street” was written by Dorothy Fields in the 1930s. Here are a few of the lyrics:
Grab your coat and grab your hat, baby Leave your worries on the doorstep Just direct your feet On the sunny side of the street
Can’t you hear the pitter-pat That happy tune is your step Life can be so sweet On the sunny side of the street
The nearly magical aspect of the sunny side of the street is that you can walk there even in the rain—if you let the peace of God rule your thoughts. You can be someone’s sunshine even on the darkest days.
I failed this morning. I’ve heard of “justifiable homicide,” but I engaged in… justifiable crankiness? Alan received an appointment letter for a home visit from a doctor from the local hospital. The letter directed, “if you are unable to keep this appointment call (number) as soon as possible.” Alan is still in the hospital, so I called that number several times—but it didn’t work. The letter head identified the hospital, but gave no phone number. So, feeling sympathy for older people who don’t have access to the internet, I looked up the number on the computer and called. I should have saved the sympathy for me. The number went to a switchboard, which went to another switchboard, which went to yet a third switchboard that finally quipped, “You cannot leave a message at this number. Please call…” I was on the way out the door to catch the ferry and get across the water to visit Alan, so I didn’t have a pen. I ran back to the desk for a pen and jotted down the number. I called. Yay! A live person. The live person said, “I’ve never heard of that doctor. I have no record of that appointment. If you will just hold…”
“I can’t hold. I’m on the way out the door to catch the ferry.”
“If you will leave your number, I will have someone call you.”
“I won’t be here. I’m on the way to catch the ferry.”
“Someone will call you later…”
“I don’t want anyone to call me latter. I just want to cancel the appointment and catch the ferry.”
“Let me give you another number…”
I hung up. Epic fail. I left the sunny side of the street.
I got to the ferry just in time. The sun came out. It was a beautiful day for riding on the sunny side of the water, but I had left a person behind somewhere at some switchboard sitting under a storm cloud, because I forgot Colossians 3:15, “And let the peace of God rule in your hearts.”
It was Scotland’s NHS. Did that make it justifiable crankiness?
Scary words. When did they see me? What was I doing? Picking my nose? Scratching some unsavory body part clandestinely? Wearing old clothes—undoubtedly that. Or was it even more sinister?
Was I wearing a grumpy frowny face instead of a smile? Was my attitude or expression akin to the signs some folks post on their gates: “Beware! It Bites!”
Was I slumped over with worry and distress resembling depictions of Atlas condemned to hold up the heavens and the sky—an unacceptable posture for a Christian who is to cast all their care upon God.
Was I being kind? Or unkind? Loving or spiteful? Helpful or impatient?
A smile is such an easy and essential fixture to install—but did I forget and leave my smile at home. “I’ve seen you…”
Stephanie Parker McKean 