Knife to the heart

There’s no knife to the heart in this short blog about Major Luke Gaines Parker who graduated from the U.S. Marine Corps to Heaven on Nov. 17, 2013 – except for the wound left in the heart of his mother. But there are knives in the story – so keep reading!

Luke isn’t dead. His plane crashed. The outer shell of his body will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery on Tuesday, Dec. 3, but Luke went straight from the sky into the arms of Jesus. So many people have poured out love, support and praise for Luke that I wanted to share a bit of what made him special.

I was raised an atheist. When Luke was four, I had only just discovered Jesus and started reading my Bible and going to church. We had no vehicle and sometimes we nearly missed the bus home from my work. So my four-year-old said, “Mom, why don’t you pray for a truck?” I was afraid to pray for a truck. What would happen to Luke’s faith if we prayed and didn’t get a truck? What would happen to mine? Luke had no doubts. He prayed for a truck. We got one the next day.

Luke read his Bible and believed it. He read that with faith, a person could move mountains. So when he got warts, he asked Jesus to remove them. Jesus did.

When our truck was sputtering and I didn’t think we’d make it home, Luke slapped his hands confidently on the dash and said, “Get the hens, Satan. Get the hens.” Puzzled, I asked him about the hens, only to find that he meant, “Get thee hence, Satan.” God wasn’t confused. The truck made it home.

From snakes and turtles to all things bigger and smaller, Luke loved animals and rescued them. He saved songbirds from bee traps and raised a one-legged baby raven. I found him hanging upside down in a tree one day teaching a baby opossum how to climb. When he ran a marathon in New York City, a bird landed on his shoulder. He fed it drops of water until it revived and flew away.

Luke accomplished everything his heart set out to do. When he wanted to learn to play the trumpet, he did. When he wanted to learn to play the piano, he did. When he wanted to join the Marine Corps and was told he couldn’t because he needed a steel rod to straighten his back, he got prayer for his back. Jesus healed his back and Luke started running up to eight miles a day – every day – to prepare for basic training. He worked his way up in the Marine Corps from enlisted to major. He graduated from college even though he froze during tests. He learned to fly a plane, then bought his own plane. He flew in air shows and preformed aerobatics. But that’s not why I’m so proud of him.

Luke walked with God. When he was in basic training, some of the guys got drunk and tried to get Luke to drink. He refused. When their mocking and taunts continued, Luke got into his bunk and covered himself with a sheet. In the morning, Luke’s mattress was slashed all around his body. One slash had just missed his heart.

When Luke was in Iraq, one of the men wrote in the newsletter, “No matter what we do, we can’t make Captain Parker cuss.”

Luke loved his wife and daughter. He was a great dad to his little girl. He walked with God. The Marines lost a man. I lost a son who walked with God.

Life is never long enough

Today, November 19, 2013, I learned that I must say goodbye to the best son any mother ever had, Marine Corps Major Luke Parker, who was killed in a plane crash Sunday. Life is never long enough when you love someone.

When I look back to my time as Luke’s mother, I know I was blessed by the LORD that He chose me out of all the other women on earth to be Luke’s mom.

Luke was hyperactive before hyper became a buzz word. At the doctor’s office, other children sat in their mother’s laps. Luke jumped off furniture, tore around the room like a wild fox, and shouted with laughter when I tried to catch him. When I finally caught him and attempted to restrain him, he screamed so loudly that we were taken into a waiting room in the back. There wasn’t enough space for him to bounce and run there, and by the time we left the doctor’s office I needed treatment for a raging headache. The Marine Corps was the perfect career for his boundless energy. He began training before he was out of high school, running four to six miles a day in every kind of weather.

Luke was born loving animals and they sensed that and loved him in return. Once when he was walking in New York, a thirsty bird landed on his shoulder. Luke feed the bird drops of water until it recovered and flew away. With Luke’s help, we rescued and saved dogs, cats, ravens opossums, frogs, tadpoles, snakes, lizards. I walked outside one day to find Luke hanging upside down in a tree teaching a baby opossum how to climb.

When Luke was four, the “experts” at a children’s clinic in Reno, Nevada, informed me that Luke had learning and developmental issues and would never do well in school or be particularly successful. My answer was, “As long as he loves Jesus and serves Him, I don’t care.”

The experts were wrong and Luke achieved everything he ever wanted to do. When he decided he wanted to play a trumpet, he learned. When he wanted to learn to play the piano, he took a few lessons and wound up playing in church. He was a skilled artist and poet, and in spite of the fact that he said he hated writing, he was entrusted to write newsletters for his Marine Corps unit. He decided he needed a college diploma and graduated from Stephen F Austin. He decided he wanted to learn to fly and earned not only a pilot’s license, but also his instrument and instructor’s ratings. He fell in love with an old army jeep and bought it and rebuilt and painted it from the ground up, learning as he went. He decided he wanted to buy a plane and found one of the only 19 surviving Focke Wulf planes in the world, which he kept in pristine shape. He and the plane went down on Sunday, Nov. 17. If he could have chosen the way to go – that’s what he would have chosen. From the sky into the arms of Jesus.

I could be proud that Luke made the rank of Major; that he graduated from college; that he and his plane performed in air shows; that he ran marathons. I am proud of all those things, but what I am most proud of him for is for having been a great dad to his daughter and walking with God.

Luke read his Bible nearly every day and prayed constantly. He would want me to use this opportunity to encourage you to consider where you will be when you die and make sure it’s heaven. You’ll get to see him there! Because of Luke, one of my favorite Bible verses is 3 John 4, “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.”

Proud of you, Son. Thank you for walking in truth. I’ll see you soon!

Feather in the Wind

The old cliché birds of a feather flock together proves itself daily here in Fortrose, Scotland. Crows congregate in the stand of evergreen trees along Rosemarkie Beach and seagulls monopolize the rock-strewn mouth of the stream that gladdens the glen. Being sociable critters, they do mix and mingle – but at the end of the day – they are totally segregated.

Jesus named God’s greatest commandments as loving Him first, then loving other people as much as we love ourselves. First John explains: “For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another…let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and truth…let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God…God is love.”

Jesus’ Holy Spirit draws Christians together. Like birds, we gravitate toward other Christians in joyous fellowship. Unlike birds, however, we should never segregate ourselves from non-Christians. The way we conduct our lives may be the only Bible that some people ever read. We need to be close enough they can see the print!

The famous passage in Ecclesiastes states, “To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven.” There is a time and a reason for segregation. It’s called sin. Christians are commanded by the Bible to come away from sin and be separate.

Just as the ground at the cross is level and everyone born into this world has an equal opportunity to reach out to Jesus for salvation and forgiveness, so too are sins level. Viewing actions from our human perspective we condemn murder as the ultimate crime. Yet God hates all sin. The same God who said, “Thou shalt not murder,” also called profanity, gossip, evil speaking, pride, and anger sins and forbid them. Under God’s law, the penalty for sin is death. Any sin. Anger as well as murder.

Thankfully, Jesus died for us so that we can be forgiven and have eternal life. We don’t have to die for our sins. Jesus already did that. Even so, to know something is wrong and do it anyway is rather like nailing Jesus to the cross again. That’s why things like clean conversation and lifestyle, both in my life and in my books, is important to me.

Want to live a victorious life with such deep peace and joy that no circumstance can uproot it? Release sin, cling fast to God. Dare to be a feather in the wind, dependent on God for the journey.

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

Prophet on Fire!

Bible prophet Jeremiah faced constant ridicule, mocking, and cruel physical treatment including imprisonment and incarceration in a muddy dungeon for his faithful witness and warnings about how lifestyle choices earn God’s blessings or God’s wrath. Jeremiah became so fearful, bitter, and hurt by ill treatment that he decided to quit preaching God’s Word – but he couldn’t.

“His word was in my heart like a burning fire shut up in my bones,” Jeremiah lamented. “I was weary of holding it back, and I could not.” (Jeremiah 20:9) So the weeping prophet kept preaching.

I feel somewhat like a prophet on fire! I’ve been holding back on introducing my newest Christian mystery-romance-suspense, Fear of Shadows, until it is actually released. But it should be released sometime this week and I simply can’t hold back. It’s like a burning fire shut up in my bones and it’s begging for release. Also, we will be gone and away from a computer for a week – so here’s a synopsis of Fear of Shadows.

I was about to loose my virginity against my will in a moldy smelling house with plaster falling off the walls, critters crawling up through holes in the floor—on a torn, stained bed with no sheets and rat droppings bouncing around me when I moved. I deserved better than this. I deserved the right of choice. I deserved the right to the joy of making love for the first time with someone I loved. I deserved to give myself to a man for the first time in a clean bed with clean sheets.

Self-sufficient Texas Eugenia Thornhill espouses many rebellions including giving a man—any man—authority over her heart, or her life. She hates the mother who named her “Texas” after her birth state instead of loving her enough to give her a real name. She hates the mother who ran off and left her young child with a cold, emotionless father.

Texas likes to brag that she’s not afraid of anything—not even spiders or snakes. Her boast proves empty when she meets childhood friend West Strom and realizes that she is deathly afraid of shadows, but clueless as to why. Time and again she shatters their nascent romance by mindlessly shrieking and running out of her childhood home, fleeing the shadows that terrify her.

Pranksters also seem intent on sabotaging the relationship. A dead raccoon is hung on the refrigerator, a rock is thrown through the window, furniture is trundled around the room in total disarray, then righted again before West arrives to investigate.

Texas is tricked into holding a séance. West, a strong Christian, is appalled that Texas is involved in witchcraft. That almost ends their friendship.

But the most destructive force entering her life proves to be the seemingly harmless fun of frequenting a Texas dancehall with Thornhill Ranch manager Jason Peace. She finds herself accused of murder and forced into hiding. When she escapes and clears her name, it only adds to the dystopia at the ranch.

Texas exhibits her paintings in a feminist art show in San Antonio and meets her mother. Her mother apologizes, but does not explain her abandonment. When they say goodbye, Texas is saying goodbye to a stranger.

West arrives to rescue her from what Texas has realized is a nefarious art exhibit revolving around hate and discord. But even though West gives Texas a kiss that stuns her with its passion, how many times can her childhood hero rescue her from her foolish choices and paralyzing fear of shadows?

When Texas finally solves the mystery of her mother’s disappearance and learns the truth about her fear of shadows, it is a truth that threatens to destroy every single person she loves.

So, hope Fear of Shadows makes it out this week and hope you’ll buy it and enjoy it! I’ll be sharing the link when we get back. Meantime, you can probably find it surfing the web. And – hey – thanks!

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

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

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

Fog Vision

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lighthouse in the fog, Fortrose, Scotland

Walking on Water

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Broken Sticks…

One day that bat-fowled fiend satan was smarting off to God and God asked him, “Have you considered my faithful servant Job?” That ornery ole devil smarted off again and said that the only reason Job worshiped God was because God had blessed him so much. So God allowed that mean ole devil to take away everything Job had except his nagging wife. Job said, “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away and blessed be the name of the Lord.”

So that cursed serpent said, “Let me at him again! Then he’ll cuss you up one side and down the other.” So God allowed slimeball, sleeze satan to touch Job’s body. I mean to tell you, that poor ole boy had boils from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet. He was so messed up he had to take his boots off to scratch. Job still blessed God.

Then along comes these three friends to comfort Job. Let me tell you: when you’ve got friends like these, you’re up to your armpits in enemies. They started in on Job something fierce about how he must have done something powerful bad to get punished by God and how he was a terrible secret sinner. After a bit, Job had had about all the comforting he could stand from these fellers.

So Job says, “How long will you torment my soul, And break me in pieces with your words?” (Job 19:1)

I challenge you. Take a stick and break it. Put it back together. Does it fit right? Is it as strong as it was before you broke it? Can you put it back together perfectly so that you can’t tell it’s been broken?

Your words can break people or heal them. When you get angry and break people with words, an apology never quite does the job of mending the relationship. There is always that jagged, hurting shard of memory that spoils the symmetry of the friendship and mars its previous flawless beauty.

Proverbs 18:21 says, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue.” Choose to speak life with your tongue instead of breaking sticks that will never mend.

At the end of Job’s story in the Bible, God held Job’s three friends accountable for their stick-breaking words. He told them they had not spoken what was right and true and ordered them to apologize to Job and have Job pray for them. Then…”the LORD blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning.”

Words are powerful. Communication is a gift from God. Use yours to build, not break.

Orkney, Guns & Collies

Just got back from a lovely trip to the Scottish island of Orkney. Even though Orkney’s history was written in spilled blood from Viking longboat invasions along the coast, the island is quiet and peaceful now and you don’t need a gun.

My past was written in the western drama of Texas. My Christian mystery-romance-suspense book Bridge to Nowhere (Sunpenny Publishing) is set in the imaginary Texas town of Three Prongs, much like Bandera, “Cowboy Capital of the World” – a place where misfits fit. Guns are important to folks in Bandera. If you find a rattlesnake in your driveway, a wild pig killing livestock, or a rabid coyote chasing your dog – you’re gonna want a gun.

Fish Soup (Sunpenny Publishing) author Michelle Jayne Heatley, from Brixham here in the UK, inquired about becoming an honorary Texan. It was suggested that she get a gun, an answer she quickly negated. To folks in the UK, including picturesque Orkney, guns are not needed and are despised. They are not written into the fabric of the country.

I never owned a gun in Texas (but I can shoot one) for the same reason I don’t train collie dogs. You have to be smarter than the dog to train it. And if you’re using a gun for protection, you better be smarter than your attacker – or he will get the gun away from you and use it against you. Why make it easier for him? I know the sum of my intelligence. I failed high school math.

But not owning a gun doesn’t mean that I can’t protect myself. I have a mobile security company on the job. I own stock in the company. “God is our refuge and strength a very present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear.” Psalm 46:1. “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.

So I would encourage you wherever you are in the world to seek your protection from the Source of security Who will never let you down. You don’t have to be smart enough to train a collie or own a gun and you don’t have to live on an idyllic island like Orkney. Only one condition is demanded for 24/7 security…faith.