Everyone needs a pair of happy socks. Mine are just ordinary, plain black socks—but they have brightly colored toes and tops, and they come in two different shades of yellow, turquoise, red, and green. What makes them happy socks is that I never match them. My house shoes are sandals and whenever I look at my feet—I see a yellow with green, a blue with red, etc. They are so bright and cheerful that they make me smile. Life’s simple pleasures are the best.
Today was an altogether happy day. I hadn’t realized how bad the cataract in my left eye had become until it was removed on Thursday. Today, for the first time in a year—I could read my Bible again without wearing two pairs of glasses—one on top of the other. In fact, I could read it with my weak pair of glasses instead of the strongest pair. And in church, I could actually read the words of the praise music projected on the front wall. God’s gifts to us—like our sight—are the best.
There will be more hard days. There will be hard circumstances. Until I walk through that shadow of death into the glorious light of Jesus in heaven—there will be sorrow and disappointment. But with my sight restored and with my happy socks—I’m going to make it because—the joy of the Lord is my strength.
It would be an enormous challenge for any author to compete with the iconic Dr. Seuss. One of the first books of his that my mother read to me was, “And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street.” As young Marco is walking to school he sees a plain horse and wagon. In his imagination, it morphs into an elephant pulling a sleigh that races by—followed by an entire circus. So enamored was I with Dr. Seuss and that book that when I was old enough to start school and our class had “Show and Tell”—I told some whoppers! The camel I rode to school, the lion that chased me. Instead of admitting that I forgot to bring my sack lunch to school, I told the teacher that a lion chased me and I fed it my peanut butter sandwich to stick its teeth together so it couldn’t bite me.
I have cataract surgery scheduled for next week. I will miss that cataract. I’ve seen some amazing sights through my foggy lens. Sightings of large black panthers have been reported around the UK, mostly in England. I had my own sighting recently walking Savannah. Except mine turned out to be a large tree stump with new ear-shaped growth on both sides of it.
Tonight, I discovered a small new glass dish that I didn’t know we had. We don’t. When I attempted to pick it up…it turned into a reflection on the bottom of another bowl.
Fortunately, I don’t have a cell phone, and thus don’t carry one on my walks, because I saw a robber hiding behind a trailer waiting to break into a house on our street. Since I didn’t have a phone, I couldn’t hit the speed dial and connect to the police department, which was fortunate. It was actually a tall, thin black bin with rope tied around the overspill to keep the wind from scattering it.
Then there is the sign at the corner of an adjoining street that became a man in an overcoat walking toward me; the cute little hedgehog that transformed into a street sweeping brush turned upside down; the leftover fried chicken in the fridge that disappointingly turned into a dollop of leftover mashed potatoes topped with gravy.
And the crowning adventure: I took Savannah on a long walk a few nights ago and became lost. We’ve lived here for nearly five years. For one thing, after Guy Fawks Night last year on November 5, Savannah was so traumatized by fireworks that she quit going on walks at night. Eventually, the days grew lighter, and she resumed her evening walks. However, now the days are short again. After Savannah and I left—darkness fell. I hadn’t been out walking in our neighborhood at night for nearly a year. And my cataract shattered the light from the line of streetlights into hundreds of strange shapes that warped everything I saw. So…I was lost.
Fortunately, a teen with a skateboard rescued me. Says I, “Could you tell me where the school is?”
Says she with a stare that would wilt a newly picked cabbage, “You’re standing in front of it.” Then—probably fearing I was a potential kidnapper opening up an absurd line of conversation—she fled.
I turned around. I was standing in front of the street sign for our road.
Yes, indeed. I’m no Dr. Seuss—but I will miss my cataract. It’s been an adventure.
It rains so much in Dunoon, Scotland, that the shopping carts at the grocery store are rusty. Extremely rusty. All of them.
The shoes in my closet are walked down to the heel. Totally. Both of them.
My favorite clothes resemble rejects from homeless camps. No, actually, they look like the youth fashions sold in prestigious clothing stores—except they achieved that worn-torn look honestly.
Regardless of the fact that I hate cold weather, the trees are turning fall colors. I can’t stop them. Nor can I stop the cold that will follow.
We humans believe we can manage time wisely. Most folks work five days a week and have the weekend to rest and attend church. Most have events and occasions marked on calendars and maintain a schedule. We even believe we can manufacture more time by moving the clocks back in the fall and forward in the spring…and yet…it is merely the numbers on clock faces that change. Time never changes.
Time is an unbroken line stretching from eternity to eternity. Time is the equator—an imaginary line circling the earth from east to west and west to east endlessly.
But as for me, I trust You, O LORD, I say, “You are my God.” Psalm 31:14.
As a Christian, I am thankful to possess the wisdom that God, and God alone, holds the time of our lives. Ecclesiastes says that God has made everything beautiful in its time and put eternity into our hearts.
On this earth, we will age. We will grow older. Things will wear out. They will break. But none of that matters. With the power of Jesus in our lives, we are not contained within the confines of this world. We have eternity in our hearts.
I fight dragons everyday living here in Scotland, a land not the land of my birth. The climate is horrendous. “Summer” in our part of Scotland is more like winter in the Texas Hill Country—plus it rains nearly every day. Grey skies and no sun for days to weeks at a time. But weather woes are small dragons.
Last night brought out the big dragons. It’s not just the weather that is different. I’ve changed light bulbs all my life…up until now. These light bulbs don’t screw in; they have tabs that fit into slots in the light fixture—except you must push up and turn at the same time—no small feat on a short, shaky ladder with a light fixture that hangs down on a slender wire and wiggles. Plus the ratings for wattage strength is totally foreign and most of the light bulbs are weak, mostly useless “energy saving” ones. And if you need a prescription refill, you can’t just go to the drugstore, hand it in, and pick it up after a short wait. One must tic the boxes of needed medications on a printed form, drop it off at the doctor’s office, and wait 72 hours to get it. And thus…the big boys.
I’m scheduled for cataract surgery in a couple of weeks. The surgeon won’t do the surgery unless my blood pressure comes down enough. Therefore, when I went to take one of my blood pressure pills yesterday and found the box empty…it was a big deal. How could I expect my blood pressure to go down if I missed two or three days of the medication? Yet, in customary Scottish style, I would need to wait.
That dragon snapped at me incessantly after I woke up at 1 a.m. to help Alan use the bedside potty and get back in bed. I didn’t know it at the time, but more dragons were hiding under the covers. The ulcer on the back of Alan’s leg had become sore and infected. The pain kept him awake. One dragon whispered; “Take him to the emergency room at the hospital now.” Another dragon argued, “Not at 1 a.m.! Wait and start calling the doctor’s office tomorrow at 8:30 a.m. to get an emergency appointment.” The third dragon piped in, “Just call the district nurse to come out again. Don’t panic over the infection and pain. Let her come and slap a new dressing on the leg. He will be fine.” And yet another dragon… “Savannah has quit eating her food again. It’s been three days. What are you going to do about that? And didn’t you get a bill from the vet’s office? Have you paid it yet?”
As I thrashed around in bed fighting dragons, a new story idea dropped into my mind. So when I was still awake at 3 a.m., I slipped out of bed, turned on the computer, and wrote until 4 a.m. When Alan woke up and called me, I went back to bed—and asleep this time—for two hours. The dragons were finally tired. They slept.
Me? I woke up embarrassed. I write blogs about slaying dragons. I post Jesus’ words, “Be anxious for nothing.” I post reminders on social media that the Bible contains 365 “fear nots,” one for each day of the year. And, yet, last night the dragons nearly won.
My co-author gave me a book idea more than a year ago. Not just the idea. I wrote the entire first page…then quit. Fear whispered all the “can nots” to my mind—and my mind listened.
My protagonist, a female pastor of a church, confronted the pastor of another church—a church many feared was a cult. A missing teenage girl, a murdered teenage boy, attempts on her life, and the weekly conflicts common to all pastors and churches. Enough excitement to hook and keep readers…except…fear whispered. Except, my mind echoed. I was not a pastor. I have never been a pastor. How could I possibly use a female preacher as my heroine and make the story believable?
So for more than a year, I had the title, I had most of the characters—and I knew where the story was going…nowhere, unfortunately—because I continued listening to my fear. I finally wrote up to Page 53. Then I put it aside and wrote “Grey for Murder” instead. When Grey for Murder was published, I went back to “Grace for Murder.”
Some of my books have written themselves. No, actually, my co-author has written them and I have typed furiously to keep up. Not so with “Grace for Murder.” My mind stopped at the edge of fear. Even by the time I finally got up to the first 100 pages, fear rumbled: “how can you write about something you don’t know anything about?” “You’re not clever enough to do this. Give up.”
What nudged me to tromp over the edge of fear and keep going was the story of Moses in the Bible. When he turned aside in the desert to see why a bush was burning but not consumed by fire, the Lord spoke out of the fire and told Moses that He was sending him to tell the Egyptian king to release his Hebrew slaves and let them go. Moses argued. He told the Lord that he didn’t speak well; he stammered. God asked Moses, “Who has made man’s mouth? Have not I, the Lord? Therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall say.” Exodus 4:11.
Moses didn’t want to face Pharaoh. He was afraid. I didn’t want to finish “Grace for Murder.” I was afraid. But God kept His promise to Moses and I knew He would keep His promise to me. After all, He gave me the story. He’s my co-author.
“Grace for Murder” will be released within the next week or so.
Folks often ask me where I get the ideas from for my books – especially the first eight in the Texas Miz Mike series which are filled with non-stop adventure. The best answer – I make them up – often in unexpected and unintended ways…like falling down a hole.
Like…a deep hole. Like one that would have dropped me down a rock cliff into the sea—except I was still holding Savannah’s leash and poor Savannah—all 45 pounds of her—stopped my plummet.
Plummet stopped, but it rains in Scotland. Like…a lot. Everything is wet. And slippery. And slimy. Including said hole. I paused in my fall with my head two feet below the grass rim of the hole, completely out of sight, not that anyone was around anyway. Savannah and her leash secured me on the left side and thorn-wrapped vegetation and a shrub with skinny limbs stopped me on the right side. But I was too far down the slippery hole to make it back to the top.
I hadn’t seen the hole. It was hidden by tall grass and a mass of ferns and shrubs. I had walked over to the bush to drop some of Savannah’s collie hair down for the birds. They love it to use to line their nests. I hadn’t intended to drop along with the fur.
As I struggled to transfer all my weight to the poor little shrub beside me and give Savannah’s neck a rest, a cap of white hair appeared at the rim of the hole. “Did you fall down there?” Well, I could forgive her question, because she had been pulling her car out of her driveway across the road and spotted Savannah standing at the edge of the cliff by herself. She came to check on Savannah, who had had enough sense not to fall down the hole.
Where was a video recorder when something funny happened? The lady, who must have been all of 4-foot-ten and perhaps as much as 100 pounds decided to help me up out of the hole. I’m 5-foot-seven and I’d rather not disclose my weight other than to admit that it is substantial.
Praying to Jesus the entire time—because the Bible promises, “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me,” I clawed my way up on the roots of the poor little bush and gained a little more than a foot of height. My head was now only slightly out of sight. That’s when my rescuer went to work. She encouraged me to let go of the swaying bush holding my weight and grab her arm. I might have been dim-witted enough to fall down the hole myself—but I could see what would happen to my sweet rescuer if I grabbed her arm with all of my…substantial weight. Instead, I grabbed the grass around the hole and pulled on it while she pulled on one of my arms. And therein the humor. That sweet soul wrestled with me like a Jack Russell terrier at the end of a bone. She kept apologizing for not being stronger, but what she lacked in strength she made up for in determination. Inch by inch I gained more solid ground under the upper part of my body and snake-slithered further away from the dark abyss below.
Folks here in Dunoon are amazingly kind. While I was still in a prone position on the grass with my feet dangling over the hole, a gentleman also in his eighties clomped up on his stick, dropped the stick, grabbed me, and helped hero-lady get me to my feet. I was laughing and praising Jesus. I’m sure they thought I had taken a leave of my senses—but I was just thankful to God for His protection and intervention.
Lesson from the hole incident; stay away from attractively disguised sins. They might look harmless from a distance—but get close and you will get sucked into a painful and hopeless situation.
He was an alcoholic. One could find him nearly any time day or night stumbling out of a bar and thumbing a ride home. One of his best friends had just lost his life in a drunk driving encounter with a tree. Eddie was only 21.
My personal dislike of this disgusting waste of humanity was his treatment of his girlfriend. He was so indifferent to her and her feelings that I saw him reach across the front seat of his car and slip his hand under a girl’s skirt while his girlfriend was in the backseat. I despised him.
Then just like the Bible story of Paul on the road to Damascus when Jesus smote him with temporary blindness and told him to quit persecuting Christians—Jesus zapped him. When he quit traveling the bar route, his friends laughed at him. “He’ll be back.” “He’ll fall off the wagon.” “It won’t stick. He’s one of us.”
But it stuck. Instead of circulating around the bars, he circulated around his friends’ houses asking to borrow pans and utensils. He set up a rickety wooden counter on a vacant gravel lot in town and smoked meat in a 55-gallon barrel. He borrowed the barrel. Someone bought the beef brisket for him. He started selling barbecue.
People mocked him. “It’s just a passing thing.” “He’ll never make it. He’s too lazy.” “Have you ever seen such a mess?” “He’ll be out of business within a week.”
He stayed in business. The barbecue was outstanding. The rickety wooden counter became a handsome sturdy counter. The 55-gallon barrel became a professional barbecue pit. A building grew up around the counter on the empty lot, then expanded. He married a woman a few years older than he was. She had a son. It was a church wedding.
His wedding caused new speculation among the old friends he had left behind. “It will never last. She has a kid. He doesn’t even like kids.” “He’ll get tired of all that church muckety-muck.” “Him? He’ll never be faithful to a wife.”
But he stuck with church. He stuck with his wife. He watched their son graduate from high school. When his wife became ill with a rare blood condition he sold his business and moved to Kerrville so she would be close to the hospital.
And he stuck with Jesus. Always, he stuck with Jesus.
I’ve lost track of Donald Busbee over the years. But the business he built on a gravel lot in Bandera, Texas, stands as a testimony—not to Donald—but to his Jesus. He wouldn’t want it any other way.
Today, I turned a corner in the car and spotted a tall seagull walking toward me. “I’ll have to stop and get a picture of that bird,” I thought. But when I got closer—it was not a tall bird. It was an extremely short woman with white hair, wearing a white woolly hat on her head, a white shawl around her shoulders, and a long grey coat. Perceptions are often faulty.
When we first moved to Dunoon, our old car did not pass the annual MOT, and it would have cost too much to fix it. Our rescue collie, Angel Joy, had developed severe spinal problems and was on a daily regimen of pain medication. Thus Alan went across the water by himself to purchase a used car. He bought one and made arrangements for delivery. With excitement, he told me it was melon colored. Now I grew up in the South U.S. where everyone who has a garden grows melons—watermelons and cantaloupes. Since Alan said the car wasn’t red, I pictured our new car as being orange. I was proud of my conservative husband for splashing color into our lives by purchasing an orange car. But when the car arrived, I was hugely disappointed. It was white. At least it looked white except when it was parked next to a white car. I now know that cantaloupes are not popular here in Scotland. To Scots, melons are white inside—not orange. Perceptions are often faulty. My image was the wrong melon.
When I left home and married Luke’s dad, it was to escape from my father’s sexual abuse and death threats if I told anyone. One of my earliest and scariest childhood memories was seeing him grab a medium-sized fluffy white dog by the hind legs and beat it to death against a concrete curb. He said it bit him. Not long after that, he left my pregnant mother and my two siblings behind in California and spirited my grandmother (his mother) and me away at night. He drove all the way across the U.S., finally stopping beside a lagoon in the Florida Everglades wilderness. We camped there for months, eating pancakes my grandmother cooked over an open fire three times a day. It was all we could afford. For a five-year-old child, it was a great adventure. As I grew older, I realized my father had fled from a crime he committed. I suspect murder.
The good thing about Luke’s dad, I thought when I married him, was his wit and sense of humor. It was only after I became a Christian that I realized his wit and humor actually belittled and mocked other people. His off-color jokes weren’t funny—they were cruel. Perceptions are often faulty. He was the wrong melon.
That’s one benefit of becoming a Christian and reading the Bible. It helps us pick the right melon. “For the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” Galatians 5:22.
Perceptions are often faulty—and the wrong melon is easy to pick.
One thing I miss living here in Scotland is the smell of possums.
There are no opossums in the Scottish woodlands. Nor are there snakes (except rare elusive adders) armadillos, raccoons, bobcats, turtles, porcupines, cougars, lizards, ringtails…a long list of are nots. They are not here in Scotland. But it is the smell of opossums that I miss most.
When we were kids growing up in Georgia, the Hesters were next-door neighbors—living some distance away up a long steep hill. Billy and Bobby were my age and their brother Ronnie was my sister Leslie’s age. The five of us spent almost every day outside of school hours together adventuring through the woods. One thing that made me a favorite with Billy and Bobby was that I could smell opossums. They couldn’t. Their father would send them off into the woods with possum traps so they could catch a varmint for dinner. I would follow my nose to a possum hollow and they would catch their meal. Then, before the hapless animal could be killed—I would race down the hill to my house and beg my parents—who were almost as broke as the Hesters—for a couple of quarters so I could buy the possum and turn it loose on our property. Mr. Hester didn’t care if he had a possum for dinner—or enough money to buy something else more palatable. I think he was rather fond of my possum-sniffing nose.
Billy and Bobby also depended on me to steer them clear of poisonous snakes. I took herpetology as my 4-H project and went to the state level with my project on how to identify poisonous and non-poisonous snakes. I lectured the Hester boys on the importance of not killing harmless snakes because they were good rodent catchers. Whenever they found a corn snake or milk snake in the barn, they sought me and asked if it was a harmless or poisonous. Expecting me to be an expert on anything was hitching their wagons to a falling star. I wasn’t a Christian back then and did not know even one Bible verse—like Proverb 16:18 for instance; “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”
One Saturday I appeared on the 4-H channel on TV demonstrating how to tell the difference between harmless and poisonous snakes. On Sunday, I chased a snake in our pond. I wanted to catch it so I could identify it. I caught it. It was venomous. It was a water moccasin. It bit me. So the Sunday afternoon after showcasing myself on TV the day before—I was in the hospital receiving treatment for the water moccasin bite.
Perhaps it’s a good thing there are no snakes in Scotland.
He was a thorn in my side. The most aggravating person I had ever met and a total enigma. Some folks laughed at him, mocked him, made fun of him. I totally got that.
I was an atheist. I believed my mission in life was to turn Christians away from God—a God I didn’t believe existed. For the first time in my mediocre academic career I had excelled in college and made it to the Dean’s List. That unexpected success was twofold; I hadn’t taken math yet, and two of my teachers were avowed atheists and gave me top marks in their classes for handwriting (before computers) 30-50 page diatribes on, “Does God Exist—It Doesn’t Matter—Just Live a Good Life.” And then along came JW Jennings.
Lack of finances ended my short college career and I wound up in the Texas Hill Country shacked up with the first guy who ever noticed me—one who rescued me from the sexual abuse I suffered at home. His name was Larry and he was stubborn. He thought he was a Christian. My arguments about how I could prove God did not exist did not move him. He grew up in a Christian home. His momma and daddy told him that God was real—therefore God was real.
The two of us started a sign company. We borrowed extension ladders and a wide plank, went to San Antonio and bought sign paint, and went back to Bandera and began painting billboards. And then along came JW Jennings.
Larry had a strange way of painting signs. We drove out into pastures and set up the ladders and hung the plank on the ladder racks…then Larry went to town for coffee and left me painting. And then along came JW Jennings.
Larry and I painted billboards on ranches all over the county. How that man found out where we were working is a mystery. I would be standing on a plank some 10 feet off the ground painting and enjoying glimpses of the abundant wildlife—curious deer, shuffling armadillos, capricious raccoons, soaring golden eagles—and then along came JW Jennings scaling barbed wire fences and maneuvering through prickly pear cactus and over rocks to where I was working. JW stood there ignoring me ignoring him as he told me about Jesus. The dude really believed God was real. He wanted me to believe, too.
Having atheists as parents and having had zero exposure to anything Christ-like, I didn’t understand JW Jennings’ words. I thought the dude was crazy.
But what I did understand about JW Jennings is that for some reason—he thought he had the answer to salvaging my life—and he thought I was worth salvaging. JW didn’t care that I couldn’t sing. He didn’t care that I couldn’t do math. He didn’t care that I was broken and compromised from childhood sexual abuse. He didn’t care that I was shacked up with a guy outside of marriage. He cared about my soul. He believed in Jesus so passionately that he wanted to share Jesus with me.
Sad to say, I didn’t understand enough of what JW said to accept God into my life. The words were too strange to me. But what I did understand was—then along came JW Jennings, someone who cared enough about me to climb over barbed wire fences and tramp through cactus and over rocks to bring eternity to me. And eventually, JW’s words gained traction in my soul. I understood. I opened up my heart to Jesus and eternity. And for the next 50 years and counting I’ve survived divorce, the loss of a spouse, the loss of my son, lost employment, countless moves and starting over—even moving to another country—and have written 41 Christian cozy mystery-romance books. All because, and then along came JW Jennings.
Every person needs a JW Jennings in their life; a person who will climb over barbed wire fences and through desert vegetation to meet the person where they are and lead them to safety.
“I will lift up my eyes to the hills—from whence comes my help? My help comes from the LORD, Who made heaven and earth.” Psalm 121:1.
God is our help. Sometimes he comes in human form, climbing over barbed wire and cactus.
Stephanie Parker McKean 