Injured

As I struggled to reach the top of a steep hill, a lovely tree captured my attention. It stood proudly straight and tall waving brightly green-clad arms against the sky. When I reached the crest of the hill, I saw the tree’s secret. Her trunk had been so badly cut, slashed and smashed at the bottom that a huge chunk of it had separated from the rest of the trunk and stood crumbling and decaying.

“How like us,” I thought. “Injured, severely injured with perhaps a part of us dead or in the process of dying. And, yet, like the tree – we keep standing. Like the tree – we keep growing. Like the tree – what doesn’t make us bitter makes us better and what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. We are just like that lovely tree with our injured damaged parts hidden from the world by the showy part we don to fool others.”

God loves us so much that He sent His own Son Jesus to die in our place. God does hear our prayers, He does answer our prayers. But God does not keep affliction from touching the lives of Christians. Psalm 119:67 says, “Before I was afflicted I went astray; but now I keep Your word.” Sometimes it takes a trial or affliction to open our ears to God.

Sometimes the injuries and hidden hurts we suffer shine a beauty on our lives that make us attractive to others and useful to God.

Our part is to trust God and keep standing.

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

Dog in a Tree!

Dog in a tree talking to you? Nothing unusual if you are asleep and dreaming – it even makes sense!

Last night I dreamed about a room full of moving sandwiches. The sandwiches flew, tumbled about and prowled through the room at will. While I was dreaming, it seemed perfectly logical. My task in the dream was to protect the one sandwich that was wrapped in aluminum foil. As the sandwiches cavorted around the room, I kept my eyes fastened on the one in foil to make sure that the foil didn’t come off. Why? I have no idea – but it made sense in the dream.

Not that all dreams are nonsensical. I’ve had dreams in the past that came true. Those are frightening because it seems that they always come as warnings of impending death or danger – and there is nothing I can do to stop the event from happening.

The Bible records dreams as one method God uses to communicate with us. Using wisdom from God, both Joseph and Daniel interrupted dreams that saved lives and promoted them to positions of honor and authority.

There is nothing we can do to take control of the nonsensical dreams that perplex and entertain us during sleeping hours. Fortunately, God has given us waking-hour dreams to motivate us to change the world. Consider Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963. His vision of a United States of America where freedom and equality walked hand-in-hand still resounds today and was named the top American speech of the 20^th Century.

Dreams do come true and dreams can change the world. Waking dreams are visions in walking shoes and working clothes. They are attainable – but only if we strive for them. As an author, I know this well. My dream to write books has never wavered or changed since I first dreamed it fifty years ago. Achieving that dream, however, has meant constantly striving and working toward it even in the face of bitter disappointment and disillusionment.

Not everyone dreams of becoming an author or writing books (which is good because the market is crowded!) Some dream of owning their own businesses, owning their own homes, becoming missionaries, traveling around the world on a bicycle. Different dreams – but all with the same measure of possibility and attainment. First step: put on the hiking boots and work clothes and prepare for a long journey!

Jesus did not leave us bereft when it comes to achieving our dreams. He said both, “With God all things are possible,” and “Nothing is impossible with God.”

So dream big and reach high. You can do it! Now, if you will excuse me – I’m going to look for that foil-wrapped sandwich and make sure it is still wrapped…

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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

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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

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

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.

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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

Where is “Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men”?

With Christmas nearly here, some look at the evil pervading the world and ask, “If Jesus is real, where is peace? Where is goodwill to men?”

We’ve given it away. Oh, not just those of us alive today – it started a long time ago. But when we don’t hold our ground and stand up for Jesus, we let the peace and goodness that we should be guarding slip away.

The Bible says, “In the beginning God created…He made man in His own image…male and female created He them.” We’ve let “intellectuals” sell us the theory of evolution and the big bang. We’ve given away our unique human creation status and gone down to romp with the apes and frogs. If we’re animals – why behave at a higher level – like humans?

We’ve allowed “intellectuals” to make us doubt that God is real. If there is no God, there is no absolute right or wrong. Everyone is free to embrace what they consider to be in their own best interests regardless of whether it is “legal” or harmful to others.

We’ve allowed schools and nations to celebrate “Santa” on Jesus’ Birthday. We’ve allowed them to celebrate eggs and bunnies on Easter instead of the Son of God Who died for the sins of the world and rose again to prove that He holds the keys to life and death and can secure eternity for us.

We murder unborn children and make it legal by changing labels: the children God created in the womb who are gifts from Him are called “fetuses.” Murdering them is called “abortion” or “terminating the pregnancy.”

The Bible teaches that a man and woman marry and become one flesh for life. We’ve replaced that with – if you get tired of each other, get a divorce. The Bible warns against sex outside of marriage. We glory in it…and suffer the diseases and heartbreaks that come with it.

God told us to live the Bible and teach it to our children diligently so they will live it too. Instead, we’ve rolled it out on a cutting board like a paper dressmaking pattern and cut it into comfortable shapes and sizes to wear for our individual lifestyles.

God gave us the gift of freedom of choice. We’ve abused that gift by deliberately choosing wrong and by calling evil good and good evil.

Someday, Jesus will return. Every knee will bow. Every tongue will confess that He is Lord. Then there will be peace on earth. Lions will eat straw. Wolves and lambs will lay down together in peace. Children will play with venomous snakes and not be bitten. Peace and goodwill will reign and rule.

Until then, we need to put peace on earth and goodwill to men into practice in our daily lives and not blame Jesus if we don’t see it in the rest of the world. Someday, we will.

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Signs, Purple Penguins & Sex

Humans attempt to make their own laws and ignore God’s laws.

Some human-made laws make sense and make life better for everyone: don’t let aggressive dogs run free; don’t clutter the landscape with junk; don’t smoke in public places and expose others to the health risk of second-hand smoke; don’t drink and drive.

However, these laws are already covered by God in the Bible. We have dominion over animals and are instructed to treat them with kindness. We are to be good stewards of God’s creation. We are not to do anything that defiles or destroys our bodies, which are God’s temples. Not smoking or drinking alcohol, for example, would eliminate an enormous number of health, social and safety issues.

Rocks thrown up by the sea in front of a “No Dumping” sign reminded me of the futility of ignoring God’s laws and attempting to impose our own. No joke…a school has decided to call students purple penguins instead of girls and boys. The Bible says that in the beginning, God created humans as male and female. Yet this school will call students purple penguins to be “gender inclusive.” If there is any need to refer to a student’s gender, he or she will be called “the G word,” or “the B word”…or perhaps pizza or hotdog.

Insane. Attempting to supplant God. Just as the “No Dumping” sign is powerless to stop the sea from hurtling rocks along the shore, so are humans powerless to change male and female by re-labeling. God made us male and female. He made penguins – also male and female.

Imagine romance writers like me in a world of purple penguins. We would never sell a book. Gender-inclusive, gender-neutral purple penguins would never read a Christian mystery-romance-suspense like Bridge to Nowhere and Bridge Beyond Betrayal. They would be shocked by cowboy Marty’s male appeal and Miz Mike’s female attraction to it. The same for other books written by other authors. Those poor pitiful purple penguins would miss out on some good books!

Thank Jesus that He is still in control – no matter how many signs we put up and how many labels we change.

Celebrate, all you authors and writers! Calling boys and girls purple penguins won’t stop these future readers from growing up and wading into the thrill of books that showcase characters who are unashamedly male and female…and sexy.

God made sex. Like everything else God created – sex is good!

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