To everything there is a Season

More than 2,000 years ago, King Solomon wrote in the book of Ecclesiastes, “To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven.” He added, “God has made everything beautiful in its time.”

Fall foliage reminds me these Bible verses. Trees take turns dressing in their fall flowering of red, gold, streaked and spotted colors. It is, as some have said, as if God individually paints each leaf and takes turns striking each tree with a swath of His glory. The result is bright cheering beauty to break a drab and dull world preparing itself for sleep.

Sometimes we want to rush our goals and dreams in life, and who could blame us? Life on this earth is short. The Bible equates it with a grass blade that soon withers; a vapor; a flower bloom that fades. Not happy thoughts – if we believe this life is it. But the same Bible that describes the brevity of life also promises that faith in the Lord Jesus Christ gains entrance into eternal life with Jesus in Heaven.

As much as we want to press ahead with our plans, we need to remember that God is in control. He holds our lives in His hands. He knows the number of our days. Sometimes he withholds the answer to a prayer; a promotion in our career; recognition that we’ve earned because He is too wise to make mistakes and too good to be cruel. God knows that waiting will either bring us something better than we could ever ask or think, or will build us into the kind of person that He wants us to be. So if the wait seems long, remember that God is painting the leaves one-by-one.

I don’t understand why as a writer it’s taken me forty years to build a successful life as an author when some people as young as 14-years-old break into the publishing industry. I don’t need to understand. That’s God’s look out. What God requires of me is faith and gratitude. It’s been a long wait, but I think the five Christian mystery-romance-suspense books and the one pro-life adventure-romance have benefited by the wait. (The newest, “Fear of Shadows,” will be out this week!)

Like fall leaves, God has painted my books one-by-one using the colors mixed by a waiting heart.

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

Texas Grit

Dreaming and following your dreams is awesome, but success demands work, effort – and even a measure of true Texas grit.

For weeks now, I’ve wanted to get a picture of a house along the beach with the sun setting behind it, but it’s always been too clear, too cloudy, the wrong time of day, or I’ve been too far away. I wanted to capture the image for my sixth Miz Mike Bridge to Nowhere series. Sunpenny Publishing has yet to release the second one, but I’m working ahead to number six.

When Miz Mike leaves Texas to live in Scotland, she gets stuck in an isolated, lonely beach house. Even there – somehow – trouble finds her and she stirs up enough mystery, romance and suspense to entertain any reader – with a big dose of humor added.

When I went running today, I stuck the camera in my pocket. Since I’m running on a stress fracture, I stuck to the sandy beach. I turned around sooner than I usually do and headed home. I was too tired to run more. My foot was complaining. I hadn’t felt like running in the first place. Then I saw the sky. It was perfect for the picture I wanted…except.

Now to serve up the Texas grits – grit. To get to the cabin would mean turning around again and heading back down the beach, then cutting across a hard-packed path to the main road. Not only would it add about half-a-mile to the run I didn’t want to make in the first place, it would result in running on pavement – stress fracture and all.

I turned and went for it. Yes, my foot throbbed by the time I got home – but I had the picture. My entire writing career has been painful. Dream the dream, yes! Never give up on the dream. I didn’t, even after receiving 150 rejection slips (along with some checks!) over the span of forty-five years. Becoming known as “Author” Stephanie Parker McKean has taken work, effort – and even true Texas grit at times. Everyone brave enough to dream a dream must also be brave enough to make the journey to reach it.

Wise King Solomon got it right in Ecclesiastes 9:10, “Whatever your hand finds to do, do with all your might.”

Grow Right

Weight gain is insidious. It creeps up with such stealth and subtly that the person gaining the weight doesn’t notice until – seemingly overnight – their clothes won’t fit. Or, at least, that’s what happens to me.

For years now, I have refused to buy the next size up in jeans no matter how tight the old ones get. When the old ones get too tight, I start running again. But UK sizes are different that US sizes and when my old jeans wore out – I couldn’t find my size. Instead, I got the next size up. They were loose. They didn’t stay loose. I filled them. It was only after they became tight that I realized I had a problem.

Another indicator was my blood pressure. It’s always been perfect. One day I took it and was so shocked by the numbers that I decided the cuff wasn’t working. I hid it. For the next two days, I surreptitiously checked my blood pressure without telling Alan. If he had known, he would have sent me to a doctor. I don’t do doctors or pharmaceuticals. So I started running again. Thankfully, my blood pressure is normal again and I’ve gone down two jean sizes.

Let’s get this straight. I don’t like running. I’d rather sit and write. I run because I have to run to maintain my weight without changing my diet. I try to eat healthy foods – but I’m not fanatical. I love chocolate milk. I drink a carton a day. There are two things I do enjoy about running; I love being outside viewing the scenery as I run past (I run very slowly, so I get a good look at it!) and I love the writing ideas that the Lord gives me. Most of my blogs follow a run!

We are in charge of our health and the size clothes we wear. Some people have legit health problems that make exercise impossible. But to a large extent, the lifestyle choices we make grow us into the people we become mentally, physically, and spiritually. Don’t want to be an alcoholic and die young of liver disease? Don’t drink. Don’t want to become a drug addict and wind up homeless with HIV? Don’t take drugs. Don’t want to get lung cancer? Don’t smoke. Don’t want to get obese? Don’t overeat. Do exercise. Want to keep our minds so pure that we don’t mind Jesus taking a peek? Don’t fill them with profanity, pornography, hate or violence.

Grow Right. Even when the entire rest of the world seems to be taking a different direction, go right. Let Jesus, not the multitude, influence what you say, think and do. Every time I see a tree with two forks or roads branching off in different directions, it reminds me that God wants us to go right and grow right.

“Awake to righteousness, and sin not.” I Co. 15:34

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

Hanger Sex

I credit the late American humorist Erma Bombeck, newspaper columnist and author of 15 books, for alerting me to the fact that hangers have sex.

Actually, I didn’t believe Bombeck when I read it in one of her columns. She alluded to the well known fact that clothes dryers periodically get the munchies and eat socks, but only one of each pair of course – to heighten the entertainment value. Then she disclosed the secret that clothes hangers reproduce.

At the time Bombeck revealed the truth about hangers and closet sex, I didn’t believe her because I could never find enough hangers. When I moved to Scotland two years ago, I still had my doubts. Shirts were hanging two and three on one hanger because of the shortage. Then we had an unusually warm summer here in Scotland, meaning it got about as warm as Texas stays in the winter. And it happened. Scads of empty hangers. Sex leading to procreation, it seems pretty clear about what happens when the closet doors shut and it’s warmer than usual.

Hangers are not the only things that reproduce wildly and crowd space. Mean, cruel, wounding words and profanity steal and kill joy, feeding off the carcasses to multiply sorrows. This is why there are so many verses in the Bible warning us to guard our tongues and use them as trees of life instead of weapons.

I love reading! My choice is mystery-romance-suspense. One reason I decided to write what I love reading is to provide Christians with exciting action-packed books – without the profanity, drinking, and risky lifestyle choices in a lot of other fiction.

Bridge to Nowhere, published by Sunpenny, finds older protagonist Texan Miz Mike hunting down mysteries and romance. She can’t help it that she’s funny and gets herself into “pickles,” she just can’t let an adventure pass by unmolested.

Love’s Beating Heart is a parallel adventure story. Pregnant teen Natasha and best friend Dena find themselves plunging down a flooded river on a quest to “save Baby” from the abortion her parents have demanded. Meanwhile, Dena’s older sister Cat escapes from an abusive boyfriend and is rescued by a Christian homeschooling family. Cat thinks they’re crazy – but she would like to claim dad Skylar for herself.

My favorite of my Christian mystery-romance-suspense books is probably my first, Heart Shadows. Set in the Nevada desert and full of Native American history and desert scenery, Hear Shadows is a gripping story.

Shadow Chase and Until the Shadows Flee are set in the Texas Hill Country, as is the soon-to-be published Fear of Shadows. So…my Amazon Author’s Page will soon have six mystery-romance-suspense books listed on it. It’s expanding – sort of like the hangers!

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

Designing a spiderweb

Spiderwebs serve as metaphors for tangled facets or confusing patterns of human life, even though they are intricately engineered and designed.

Even the strongest and most creative spiderwebs depend on outside support. The fine silken threads must be attached to a frame before they can be woven into patterns of life and death – continued life for the spider, death for unwary insects that crash into the web.

Even when not tangled or confused, our lives resemble spiderwebs. With the creative and engineering wisdom that God gives us, we can transform our lives from the loose ends of our dreams into something lasting and beautiful. Like the spiderweb, we need outside support to make it stick. Families and friends can help hold the threads while we weave them into patterns, but that is temporary help at best. Only Jesus can pin those threads to the wings of hope and fly us over obstacles that would impede and destroy.

Atheists tie their webs to the clouds. They don’t need God, they don’t need Jesus, they don’t need Christians. They don’t need to become Christians. They can do it on their own. They build webs to the sky and boast loudly of their success and victory. But one day, the wind of death blows into the web, shearing the threads, bending and tearing the pattern, folding the unsupported web into a broken tangle.

The wind of death blows into the lives of Christians, too. It hits with just as much fury and relentless energy. But the web, pinned to the wings of Jesus, is safe, secure and supported. Spiders may die, wind-torn webs may fall, but those who love Jesus pass through the shadow of death into God’s presence where they are forever safe from pain, injury, fear, death or danger.

Webs tied to clouds have no future.

Bird Brain

Calling someone empty-headed and foolish a “bird brain” might be complimenting them. God put a baby seagull in my path this week that proved amazingly wise.

I was walking our collie, Angel Joy, when I saw a fluffy-grey baby seagull settling into the sand. I edged up to take a picture. When it didn’t run or fly away, I realized something was wrong. I picked the gull up and discovered that its legs weren’t working.

That created a dilemma. Angel Joy hadn’t finished her walk. I had nothing with me for the transport of wildlife. Yet if I left the baby alone, other dogs running along the beach might find it and tear it to pieces. Hoping there might be a cardboard box at the distant cafe along the beach, I promised the baby seagull that I would return to help it.

I had only walked a few feet when I heard frantic wing-beating. I turned around. Baby Seagull was following me. Because its legs weren’t moving, the little bird dug its beak into the sand and pulled itself along, flapping its wings to speed up progress. I cried. I stood on the beach with tears biting into my eyes as the helpless bird flopped over to me and stopped.

I picked up the gull and tucked it under my arm, rather hoping that it didn’t poop all over my new jacket. I carried the baby home and called wildlife rescue. Before they arrived to pick it up, the gull drank a cup of water, ate an entire piece of bread – and pooped – not on my new jacket! With treatment, Baby Gull survived. But how did that little bird realize that I was a friend and would help?

Psalm 104:24 says, “O LORD, how manifold are Your works! In wisdom You have made them all; the earth is full of Your riches.” One of God’s riches is wisdom. The baby gull was wise enough to realize it needed help and wise enough to realize that I would help it.

So next time you want to insult someone, think twice before you call them a “bird brain”!

Better yet, don’t insult them! The Wise and Mighty God Who directs flocks of birds across the trackless sky also said, “A soft answer turns away wrath.”

Sometimes all the only help wisdom needs to conquer and triumph is our silence.

Twisted

Perhaps because it was an unusually difficult day – even, twisted perhaps? A serpentine limb along the beach captured my attention. I stopped to look at it, marveling that one limb could have suffered enough injuries to cause it to fold and unfold through the vegetation around it without breaking into pieces. And, yet, this twisted and re-twisted limb was alive, thick and solid, with vibrant green leaves dressing it in showy splendor.

Are we not like twisted limbs? Most of us can empathize with this storm-lashed tree that has healed after each North Sea onslaught that left it broken and frayed. Just as punishing winds and water-flung fury strengthened the limb, transforming it into a unique, interesting mini-portrait of Jesus’ creative wonder, we illustrate the same elements in the character growth of our lives.

Had we never been injured, how could we find compassion to help something else that had been injured? Had we never known pain, how could we understand another’s pain? Had we not been grieved, how could we comfort? God is too good to be cruel, too wise to make mistakes. Every bashing, thrashing storm that God has allowed to blow into our lives has brought something new and miraculous with it. Every turbulent wind has whisked away something old, unlovely and unprofitable.

Because I once lived under a bridge, painting signs in exchange for meals and washing in frigid river water in winter, I understand struggle and hardship. God allowed the storms in my life to blow away self-centeredness and blow in ideas for my Christian mystery-romance-suspense “Bridge to Nowhere.”

Because I was sexually abused as a child and forced into two abortions as a teen to hide the abuse, God used that storm in my life to blow away my atheistic vision and bring in new vision that enabled me to write the pro-life adventure-romance “Love’s Beating Heart.”

What gift is God attempting to send you through whatever storm blows through your life today? Don’t be afraid to be twisted. You could be one of the best portraits God ever painted.

Believe in the Lighthouse even when you can’t see it

A foggy day along the beach toyed with my senses. I knew we were making progress walking, knew that we were going in the right direction – yet for long minutes – the lighthouse at the point was invisible. Our local landmark was whited out with dense fog, turning every direction into an amorphous wasteland of nearly tactile white.

While the lighthouse was invisible, it was hard to believe it was there. Yet even as we were surrounded in a surreal swirl of seawater-enhanced fog, the lighthouse had never moved. That reminds me of times in my life when painful, confusing circumstances drew blinders over my life making me doubt myself and the future. Why God? I would ask. Are You there? Do You see what’s happening to me? Do You care?

God was there every time. He did see. He did care. During days of dancing fog that confused and nights of oppressive fog that chilled the mind and stole sleep, God was working out His plan and purpose – and it was perfect for me. I needed to grow. I needed to move. I needed to change. I needed to increase in faith so that I would never doubt the existence of Jesus, the Light of the world, the Lighthouse for the lost and hurting – even during the times that I couldn’t see Him through the fog.

How can one appreciate the gift of the sun without the experience of stumbling around in the darkness? How can one appreciate joy without having shed tears of grief and misery? How can one trust God to catch them without ever jumping off the cliff?

No child should face the abuse and hardships that I did. My prayer is that no child ever will.

No adult should be subjected to the living conditions I have – living under a bridge and sleeping in the back of a pickup truck. Living in an open-ended garden center in the winter with no heat, no running water, no bathroom or kitchen facilities; sleeping on planks held up by concrete blocks and sharing “home” with scorpions, birds, toads, a wild cat and a curious skunk. Yet I wouldn’t exchange the life I’ve had for anyone else’s life, no matter how idyllic. Suffering childhood rape and forced into two abortions to hide it wrote pro-life adventure-romance Love’s Beating Heart. Living in the Texas Hill Country with all its marvelous mysteries and unique hardships penned mystery-romance-suspense Bridge to Nowhere. Had I not actually lived under a bridge to escape abuse, I probably wouldn’t be writing a series of six Bridge books at all, including the first Sunpenny publication, Bridge to Nowhere.

If I had never jumped off the cliff and been lovingly caught by Jesus, I might doubt that the Lighthouse is real, even in the fog of misery and trial. Each book I’ve written (Heart Shadows, Until the Shadows Flee, Shadow Chase, Bridge to Nowhere, Love’s Beating Heart) tells a compelling, exciting story through the eyes of faith. Faith grown in the rock of hardship and watered by the confusion of swirling fog.

The Lighthouse never moves, even in the fog.

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!