Bloom Where God Has Planted You

A clump of yellow primroses on a rock cliff caught my eyes today when I was walking. Flowers cheerfully blooming where God had planted them in spite of the improbable and impossible-looking location.

We Christians should take a note from God’s creation and bloom cheerfully where God has planted us. There are no perfect places on this earth and there are no perfect people in this life. Everyone has problems. Everyone has storms. Sometimes, the blame is on us. We make bad choices and suffer the consequences. Sometimes, a storm hits unexpectedly – sent by an enemy intending destruction. Sometimes, God sends a storm to teach us to push our roots of faith deeper into Him.

After losing everything he had on earth including his health through no fault of his own, Job was able to declare that after God had tried him – he would come forth as gold. Job claimed victory over the storms in his life and God rewarded him.

My two favorite Bible verses are: In everything give thanks and All things work together for good to those who love the Lord. These are victory-winning verses.

Thinking about those lovely primroses today reminded me of my two most recently published books, “Killer Conversations,” and “Bridge to Xanadu.” The characters in both of these books walked through storms. Instead of blooming where he was planted, the main character in “Killer Conversations” became a serial killer. Texas Miz Mike in “Bridge to Xanadu” learned to bloom where she was planted even when it was a totally new and unexpected place in her zany life.

My books are fiction, mostly mystery-romance-suspense although “Killer Conversations” is a psychological suspense. However, I’ve been through some of the same storms in my life that these characters have weathered in words. With the help of Jesus, I’ve learned to bloom where God has planted me. It’s been a hard lesson at times. Sometimes my roots have nearly slipped out of the Rock of faith holding them. Thankfully, Jesus is the Friend who sticks closer than a sibling and He never lets go, never leaves us, never forsakes us.

If your roots feel dry and unprotected during whatever problem or storm you are facing, stick them back into the Rock and bloom cheerfully. Your heavenly reward will exceed any possible earthly riches and God’s accounting is both perfect and eternal.

http://www.amazon.com/Stephanie-Parker McKean/e/B00BOX90OO/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

Run Through Pain

Sometimes, we just need to run through pain.

No one knows this better than best-selling Author Bruce Van Horn whose book “You CAN Go the Distance” contains great advice on how to run a marathon and how to run life – even when it involves running through pain. Bruce ran this year’s Boston Marathon just a year after cancer surgery. Prior to that, he recovered from depression, a knee injury and foot surgery.

God gave us the gift of pain as an early warning system when we are ill or injured and need to rest. But, sometimes, we need to run through pain.

Michael Jordon was cut from his high school basketball team. Albert Einstein never learned to talk until he was four and was told by a teacher, “You’ll never amount to anything.” Walt Disney was fired from his newspaper job for lacking imagination and not having original ideas. Dr. Seuss received 27 rejection slips on his first book. Oprah Winfrey was cut from a newscast because she was deemed “unfit” for television. All these famous failures ran through pain and found success on the other side.

I didn’t feel like running a couple of days ago. When I first grabbed up my weights and headed out the door, my right leg hurt so badly that I almost turned around. I walked nearly two blocks before I could get my leg to accept the full weight of my body and start running. When I finished running through the pain, I had covered five miles and my leg felt fine. It hasn’t hurt since.

On the way to our Monday Night Bible Study, I got a dog bite on the back of my hand. It drew blood. By the time we got to our fellowship group, my hand was so swollen that it looked like it had somehow inhaled a tennis ball cut in half. I received prayer and the swelling left instantly as if Someone had pricked the tennis ball with a needle and deflated it. Someone had. His name is Jesus and He is the same yesterday, today and forever. Jesus is still in the healing business. What a great testimony to our group to pray and watch Jesus heal instantly. But for that testimony to be possible – I had to run through pain.

God created a perfect world and never planned for pain to be a part of it. When sin entered the world, it dragged a toolbox behind it filled with spiteful implements of torture: pain, illness, sickness, sorrow, anguish, disappointment, depression. Because God loves us so much, He sent Jesus to destroy those tools and give His followers victory.

But sometimes on the road to victory…we have to run through pain.

http://www.amazon.com/Stephanie-Parker-McKean/e/B00BOX90OO/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

Seagull Sex & Romance Writing

Living as close to the water as we do it is impossible to get through spring without realizing that seagulls like sex. The males beat wings of love over the females crying in coarse ecstasy while the females add their own chortles of joy.

God invented sex. It’s biblical. Song of Solomon is a marriage manual for sex. “A bundle of myrrh is my beloved to me that lies all night between my breasts…Until the day breaks and the shadows flee away, be like a gazelle or a young stag upon the mountains of Bether…Your lips, O my spouse, drip as the honeycomb; honey and milk are under your tongue…Let my beloved come to his garden and eat its pleasant fruits.”

Since my favorite genre as a writer is mystery-romance-suspense, I’m thankful God created sex. It’s a gift He gave humans to glue their marriages together and keep them intact through difficult circumstances. God’s perfect plan for marriage is presented in the Bible: a man and woman leave their parents, become one flesh, and stick together until death parts them. Marriage doesn’t always follow the guidelines – but God’s plan always works best. Sex helps.

God’s gifts should be revered and valued, not re-gifted or treated as cheap bubble machine ornaments to be given away, tossed or trampled. Sex matters. God intends it to be a gift that a husband and wife open after the marriage ceremony. That’s why my Christian mystery-romance-suspense books are fun, entertaining, clean, safe reads.

My sexiest and most enticing hero in the Texas Miz Mike series thus far is likely Native American Indian Chief Alan Bitterroot. Readers will discover passion, love, and amazing adventure and suspense in “Bridge to Xanadu.” They will also discover two Christian characters facing the ultimate temptation to open the sex gift – with our without marriage. Do they?

Sex is good. It’s not “dirty” or “shameful.” Christians are like seagulls. They enjoy sex. Good thing – because it keeps romance writers working!

From finding a dead body in the dumpster at the sheriff’s office to being straddled by a knife-welding rapist and serial killer, Texas Miz Mike is back in her most gripping and humorous mystery-romance-suspense ever, “Bridge to Xanadu.”

Oh – and did I mention that “Bridge to Xanadu” puts Mike on a collision course with her newest hero and tests them both to see how they will handle the temptation to open the sex gift early?

http://www.amazon.com/Bridge-Xanadu-Miz-Mike-Book-ebook/dp/B00WFC67V2/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1429593376&sr=1-1&keywords=bridge+to+xanadu+stephanie+parker+mckean

qid=1429593376&sr=1-1&keywords=bridge+to+xanadu+stephanie+parker+mckean

God and Passwords

Why should I, a mere human, expect to understand the Great and Mighty God, Creator of the universe…when there are mere human existence questions which mystify me?

For example, living in Scotland. When friends invite us over for “tea,” I am greatly perplexed. Do they mean we should come to eat dinner with them? Or do they mean we should come over and have a cup of tea? It can mean either one. So I invariably have to ask. Sometimes asking is embarrassing because kind-hearted friends think I’m inviting myself to dinner and will quickly respond, “Oh, yes. Stay and have a meal with us.”

Panties. This might sound like a strange thing to be perplexed about but it’s something that has flummoxed me since childhood. Are panties worn under a nightgown or pajamas, or does one just wear the night attire next to the skin? It’s something my mother never told me. On the rare occasions when I slept away from home – like attending a summer camp – it was a question I couldn’t ask the other girls. My pride wouldn’t let me admit that I didn’t know the answer. The problem with being too proud to ask a question is that sometimes you go through life never knowing the answer.

Computer passwords. This throws me every time. When I visit a website and it asks for a password, I stare at it stupidly. How dare it ask for my password! I don’t give out my password to strange sites. Or…is it asking me to make up a password for that website? Sometimes I look at the website and declare, “If you’re trying to get business you should drop the password thing, because really – looking at what you’re trying to sell – it isn’t worth making up a new password and trying to remember it. Then I go away…still not knowing which password it meant.

So if I am too thick-headed to know the life answer to these three simple everyday problems, why would I expect to understand Mighty God, Creator and Miracle-Worker?

Some of our friends and family members are going through severe trials at the moment. They are lovely, kind, wonderful people who love God. Why are they suffering?

I don’t know.

We are in the middle of a storm that feels like the eye of a hurricane – except hurricane eyes are supposed to be calm and our storm isn’t even calm in the middle. Why?

I don’t know.

What I do know is this secret to the universe that unlocks every blessing of God and makes it available to us if we just exercise enough faith to believe and accept it: God is in Control. “ALL things work together to good for those who love the Lord.” Romans 8:28.

God may be a mystery. His way of working may indeed be mysterious. Yet He made it so simple that a child can understand it.

Trust. Just trust.

http://goo.gl/wmLNDy

“Smite Them, LORD!”

It’s been a “Smite them, LORD!” kind of week.

I think the Lord is testing me on my most recent book, “Killer Conversations,” which is real, edgy, gritty, and addresses topics that can’t be turned into something sparkling and palatable like Jell-O. How can child abuse, child sexual abuse, rape and a serial killer be turned into comfort food? Nevertheless, Killer Conversations indisputably contains a strong Christian message…of not judging others.

The world celebrates Good Friday today. Jesus, who had never done anything wrong, was falsely accused. Jesus was whipped until His back was raw; had a crown of thorns pounded into His head; had His beard plucked out, and was spit upon, mocked and ridiculed. He was subjected to a bogus trial, found guilty, and nailed to a cross where He suffered horrendous agony before He died. Through it all, Jesus never fought back, never turned angry words against His tormenters. As He hung on the cross, Jesus said, “Forgive them, Father. They know not what they do.”

Wow!

So after departing from my usual bouncy, fun, entertaining Miz Mike mystery-romance-suspense books (Bridge to Nowhere & Bridge Beyond Betrayal) to pen a book like “Killer Conversations,” it would seem that God decided to test me and see if I really believed and was willing to live the premise of the book: “There but for the grace of God go I.” Instead of saying that this week, I have wanted to say, “Smite them, Lord! They’ve been mean!”

We all face human-spun ugliness at times in our lives that make us lust for revenge. When that happens, we need to remember Jesus, our example. He could have called legions of angels to war against His enemies and save Him from death on the cross. Instead, He bowed down His head and died that our sins might be forgiven and we might live forever.

So my Good Friday message to myself is: “Forgive them, Lord. They know not what they do.”

Message to self: no more departure books like Killer Conversations. Go back to funny Miz Mike. Laughter is good for the soul. Besides; the testing is a lot easier!

http://goo.gl/wmLNDy

http://goo.gl/Qua7H0

Bye-Bye Baby

Spring is here! Folks are thinking about flowers and babies. Appeals arrive daily to save badger babies, elephant babies, endangered species, whales, dolphins…even trees.

The majority of people who rescue stray dogs and cats; scream for laws to free whales and circus animals; demand a stop to the slaughter of badgers and dolphins – are okay with killing unborn humans. Defenseless little boys and girls – especially girls and especially black. Abortion is murder. It stops a beating heart.

It is ironic that it is illegal to kill baby eagles, but it is legal to kill unborn children who are created in the image of God.

Some of the same people who run campaigns to save trees, go green to save the planet, and give personhood status to chimpanzees say that parents should get to decide whether their children live – right up to the time of birth.

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution promises every person the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Unborn children are defenseless victims of a political system that listens to the green color of money rather than the agonized shrieks of the country’s most defenseless citizens who are ripped apart inside the womb and flushed down the toilet.

Unborn children are not a part of their mother’s bodies. They have their own DNA from conception. Life begins at conception. Unborn children have beating hearts at 21 days; fingerprints at nine weeks; can feel pain at 10 weeks; smile at 12 weeks; and are fully male or female at 16 weeks.

To make the “choice” of abortion palatable (babies are given no choice), different labels are applied. A baby is a “fetus.” Murder is “abortion.” Pregnancy is “terminated.” The Bible says that God forms a child in the womb and calls him or her into His purpose. Abortion has murdered generations of unique God-created individuals. Some might have found a cure for cancer, invented safe traffic-hopping cars, found the key to ending world poverty, or built a system of lasting world peace. We will never know. We do know that a dearth of children living to become productive, working adults is undermining tax and retirement programs.

The real horror is that abortion is murder. God will not hold a country guiltless for slaying innocent children. Labels don’t change facts; they play to emotions. If it’s not a baby, the woman is not pregnant. A woman’s right to choice ends at her body; the baby is NOT her body.

Smell flowers, enjoy spring. Pretend babies are trees and save them.

Read “Love’s Beating Heart” and let it sing into your spring.

goo.gl/9TQsK5

http://goo.gl/wmLNDy

Is a book about a Serial Killer a good Valentines’s Day read?

Yikes! Why would someone equate a book about a serial killer to Valentine’s Day? I won’t answer that question. It’s better if the answer comes from readers of the Christian psychological suspense thriller, “Killer Conversations.”

Without argument, the Christian Bible contains the greatest love story ever told. No author could pen a more inspirational love story. Jesus said, “Greater love has no man than this – than a man lay down his life for his friends. I am your friends.” Then Jesus died.

God wrote a Love Card for all ages in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

No matter how many or how few Valentine’s Day cards you received on February 14, God has already given you a Love Card that is for today, every day, and all eternity. No human-crafted earthly creation can beat that!

Back to the serial killer question. A synopsis of “Killer Conversations:” He walks a lot and is a loner. She pegs him as a serial killer. People in the small Scottish village don’t believe her. They attribute her suspicions to a “writer’s imagination.”

Then there’s a new murder.

She stalks him looking for evidence. He stalks her to find out if she has evidence. When the two collide, it’s in a deadly life and death struggle.

Texan Kevyn Skye Lamar’s quest to find a story and write the “Great American Novel” may end up with her as the serial killer’s next victim. What a tragedy that would be after she has finally found love. And…she wonders…do serial killers go to Heaven?

No, I didn’t answer the question about why “Killer Conversations” is a good book for Valentine’s Day. To do that, I would have to add a spoiler. I never give away the twists and thrills that make for good reading.As encouragement, “Killer Conversations” made it to Amazon UK’s top 100 best sellers’ list within hours of its release!

U.S. http://goo.gl/HkXYc0 or U.K. http://goo.gl/Qua7H0

Your Everlasting Love Card

Saturday is Valentines Day. Poor Charlie Brown is already sitting against his mailbox waiting for cards that never come.

A host of folks never get Valentines cards. I know. I used to be one. Fortunately for the card-less of this world, God has already written a Love Card for every single person, and it’s redeemable every day of the week and not just on special occasions.

Some U.S. stores carry huge Valentines cards. Big or small, no card could ever contain the world’s greatest love story. There have been great movies and television shows celebrating the power of love. They fall short of recording the world’s greatest love story. Authors write romances and sprinkle romance into books – but the language of love is never complete in these books no matter how peerless the writing.

The world’s greatest love story is found in only one Book, the Christian Bible. Jesus said, “Greater love has no one than this; that a person lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends.” Then Jesus proved it by dying on the cross in our place and purchasing Heaven for us. Unequaled love that cannot be matched in any card, movie, television program, or book. The greatest love story the world has ever known.

God created us. He has always loved us. Before Jesus was born, Jeremiah 31:3 carried this promise from God: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; with loving kindness have I drawn you.”

God’s Love card is not new.

Probably one of the most famous verses in the Bible is John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

God’s Love Card is for everyone. No matter how many or few Valentine cards you get – even if they add up to zero – do not despair. You are so loved that Jesus stretched out His arms and died for you. And that much love would never fit into a card.

http://www.amazon.com/Stephanie-Parker-McKean/e/B00BOX90OO/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

Proof…You Really Are What You Eat

Whoever said, “You are what you eat,” had it right. Our rough collie, Angel Joy, is a living testament.

Angel Joy developed irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). For nearly a year, life at our house was miserable. Angel Joy’s stomach made runaway train sounds at night. She woke me up repeatedly to take her outside because of constant diarrhea. After each trip outside, she had to be cleaned up before we went back to bed. She lost stamina and energy. Our daytime walks decreased in length. A few times I picked up the fifty-pound dog and carried her part of the way back. Every few days, I had to cook chicken and rice for her. She had pills and tube medicine to take three times a day.

Because it took so long to diagnose and the vet wasn’t completely assured that IBS was Angel Joy’s only problem, expensive and time-consuming medical procedures were planned that would require us to take her nearly 200 miles away. As a stop-gap measure, the vet put Angel Joy on a gastro intestinal dog food. For treats, she could have cooked chicken – nothing else.

Even the vet was amazed at the result. For the first time in nearly a year, we slept through the night. Angel Joy re-gained the weight she had lost and recovered the joy reflected in her name. Walks lengthened as her energy and stamina returned. Anything Angel Joy eats – other than the special diet food and cooked chicken – causes a return of IBS symptoms, even something as seemingly insignificant as one fry that drops on the floor.

There is a spiritual parallel to this. Proverbs 23:7 says that as we think in our heart, so we become. Jesus said it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles a person, not what goes into the mouth, because we speak from what is stored in our hearts.

The cliché, “Garbage in, garbage out,” is as true as “You are what you eat.” We become what we allow to pass through the physical gateways of our body, our eyes and ears. Whatever we read, whatever we watch on television or movies, whatever we hear – all these build us into what we become.

The Bible provides a reliable filter for spiritual health, “Whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there in anything praiseworthy – meditate on these things.” Philippians 4:8.

Guarding physical and spiritual health in 2015 builds us for now and eternity.

Celebrate torn, worn pages!

May God bless y’all with joy, peace, love, success, and prosperity in 2015 and beyond.

It’s already nearly a week into the New Year. How did that happen so quickly? It reminds me of a book I started writing when I was fourteen. I can’t remember the plot, only that it involved a young woman falling off a horse, being knocked unconscious (which I undoubtedly spelled wrong) and falling in love with her rescuer, “Father Time.”

One thing I do remember about the book is that I knew absolutely nothing about writing a book! My idea was to make every sentence in the book as beautiful as I could. Even though I was born in Texas, I mainly grew up in Georgia in an area of red clay, rolling grassy green hills, and pine trees. I must have used every adjective in the Thesaurus in an attempt to make red clay, rolling grassy green hills, and pine trees sound lovely enough to catch and hold my readers’ attention. I still have that worn Thesaurus sitting on my desk. The cover is gone; it’s now in three parts and a few spare pages. All the pages are yellow-brown with ragged-looking, torn edges. I must have been born to be a writer because that Thesaurus is the only surviving relic I have of my childhood.

Life has moved on from Georgia and from sheltering places green and growing. Some of my life has been spent in barren deserts. Some has been spent in hardship, heartache, sorrow, and unbearable pain. I sometimes feel as torn and worn as my Thesaurus friend, but I’ve learned to wear the broken with pride. God has used brokenness to change me.

Very few sentences of my life have glowed with the resplendent magnificence of the sentences I so laboriously penned for the unfinished book. Paragraphs and entire pages have been ripped out and soiled. Some pages suffered loss as they tumbled down the corridor of time. Others were hastily gathered and clumsily glued back together. Of this I am confident; God kept intact all the sentences He needed to write my life into one that reflects His glory.

My writing has also progressed. Verbs and action replace strings of adverbs and adjectives. Christian mystery-romance-suspense has proven my niche and zany Texan Miz Mike, in Bridge to Nowhere and Bridge Beyond Betrayal, is fun to work with – because she hijacks the stories and transforms them into what she wants!

If you look at your life in 2015 – and it looks like my Thesaurus – rejoice! God is in control and He will glue your life back together in a way that gives you the most joy and Him the most glory.

Celebrate worn, torn pages!

http://www.amazon.com/Stephanie-Parker-McKean/e/B00BOX90OO/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0