The Teenager in Our House

We never planned to take a teen into our house at our ages—mid-seventies. Alan is preparing to leave this earth for heaven, and all I want to do is…write books.

Still, we have a teen in our house and it’s my fault. I love children, I really do. Even teens. And I love rough collies and always have since childhood, a love that probably sprang from “Lassie” films.

What I forgot when we introduced rough collie Savannah into our home and heart is that to successfully train a dog—one must be smarter than the dog. That gets me every time with every collie. Training is completed—in me. I become well-trained. The collie…not so much.

What happened with Savannah this morning made me recognize the teen status of our dog. She reminds me of a foster child I once took into our home. Terri was stubborn and determined. When she came out of the bedroom dressed for school in a mini-skirt that a friend loaned her, I made her change. Her tears and protests rode with us all the way from our house to the school. Thus I was suspicious the next day when she meekly donned the knee-length skirt I had purchased for her. When I visited the school later in the day for an appointment with one of Terri’s teachers I saw why Terri hadn’t protested. She breezed into the office with her skirt rolled up at the top displaying her legs all the way up to her butt. Terri was good at circumventing the rules. So is Savannah.

Savannah loves our veterinary clinic. She loves the staff. She seems to believe that they are there solely for her. When she plans the schedule for the day it begins with a walk to the vet clinic to visit her friends. Once when Savannah needed treatment as a puppy, the clinic’s owner told me, “Your dog is stubborn. I’ve never seen a more stubborn dog.” Savannah apparently failed to be offended by the criticism

The vet’s office is enclosed in a fence with two gates at opposite ends. When the office is closed over the weekend, Savannah insists on trying both gates even after I explain to her that it’s closed. When I say, “Savannah, we’re not going to the vet clinic today, it’s closed,” Savannah will lead me around the grocery store to approach the vet clinic from the back. She refuses to continue her walk until she has checked both gates.

This morning I was in a hurry to get back home. I had people to meet and things to do. I parked at a different store, one further away from the vet’s clinic, and told Savannah we weren’t going there. We weren’t—but Savannah was. She tried leading me along the shortest route to the clinic. I stopped her. She tugged on the leash, whined, and complained, but she finally complied with my demand. At least, I thought she complied.

Then she led me eagerly toward the curved bridge over the burn (Scottish for little stream). There is a nice patch of grass on the other side that she loves to sniff. After we crossed it, however, I realized that her destination was not the grass patch—it was the loop around to the vet’s office on the back side. When I pulled her back this time, she sat down and turned such a pathetic look on me that I could see the conversation bubbles over her head. “Mom, I have to go see my friends. They’re waiting for me. I can’t disappoint them. They’re my friends, Mom. You have to let me go see my friends. All the other dogs are going.”

At that point, it might as well have been Terri in her mini-skirt with tears in her eyes saying, “Mom, let me wear this skirt. All my friends wear short skirts like this.
They will be disappointed, Mom. I can’t let them down.”

And that’s when I realized…we have a teen in the house.

“These words you shall teach diligently to your children.” Deuteronomy 6:6.

Amazon.com: Stephanie Parker McKean: books, biography, latest update

What to do with Fifty Million…

Wow! Fifty million! If I had that in dollars, I could buy everyone in my family a nice new home and car. Then I could find a poor village somewhere and buy all of them houses and cars. And think of all the clean water systems that could be put in to give people in poor countries a fair start for a healthy life. And if there were any money left over after those worthy projects (I’m not good at math, so I’d have to just keep track of it as I spent it rather than writing out a budget), I would build another Bible Land. One bigger and better than the one I had started in Texas.

But what if the 50 million turned out to be chocolate or blue cheese? Even as much as Bridge to Nowhere‘s Miz Mike and I love chocolate, I doubt the two of us together (if she were real, of course) could eat through 50 million anythings of chocolate, even individual candies! Speaking for myself, I have to go running already in an attempt to maintain my weight. Ditto for the blue cheese dressing, no matter how much I love salad with heaps of blue cheese crumbles and dressing.

What about people? If you were to put fifty million folks together, what an amazing amount of talent and abilities you would compile! Think of all the doctors, attorneys (forget all the lawyer jokes for a moment), scientists, writers, engineers, plumbers, electricians, builders, architects, and just plain hard working people. You could build a good world with that amount of possibilities. You would have someone who would unlock the key to curing cancer and AIDS. You would have someone who could write the next great book, like To Kill a Mockingbird, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee…or children’s classics like Black Beauty.

Fifty million could change the world. But that chance is lost. Fifty million is how many babies have died since 1973 – including two of mine – when abortion was legalized in the U.S. Fifty million means that some 3,000 babies are murdered every day. We’ve already killed the next Shakespeare; the next Jonas Sulk; the next Rogers & Hammerstein; the next Dr. David Livingston; the next Amelia Earhart; the next Annie Oakley.

My babies were stolen by non-medically supervised backwoods abortions that nearly killed me, preformed by the monster who was raping me and wanted to hide the evidence. A monster that threatened to kill me if I didn’t cooperate and let him abort the babies. I was a frightened, young teenager who didn’t even have a boyfriend and had never been on a date. At the time, I was a helpless victim. But now I wonder, what would my babies have become? I’m a fourth generation writer. Would one of my children have written the next world’s greatest novel? Would he or she have engineered bridges to connect islands to the mainland and make life easier for residents? Gone into space? Built a vehicle that could recycle fuel? Or would they have just been happy, healthy folks who worked hard and wanted to take care of their mother when she grew old so that she would never have to be put into a nursing home?

Love’s Beating Heart sends two teenage girls on a wild river Huckleberry Finn type adventure as pregnant, unwed Natasha wrestles with the hardest decision of her life: keep her baby or let it be aborted as her parents have demanded.

Love’s Beating Heart also showcases homeschooling, marriage and family life. While Dena and Tash are facing hostile wildlife and people on their river adventure, Dena’s older sister Cat has escaped an abusive boyfriend. Cat doesn’t believe in God. When she is rescued by a Christian family who homeschool their family, Cat’s non-belief collides with their Christian faith Cat suspects they’re crazy. Still, she can’t help envisioning herself as a replacement wife for the attractive family man, Skylar. If only musician Jesse Montgomery, who wrote a pro-life song called Love’s Beating Heart, would quit condemning her, Cat would happily facilitate Sky’s divorce so she could marry him.

Dena and Natasha get swept away by a flooded river. Cat gets trapped in a burning barn. Who lives and who dies in Love’s Beating Heart and are there any happy endings for those trapped in parallel stories?

Love’s Beating Heart is a teen, young adult, and adult adventure-romance, a clean, engaging Christian reading experience suitable for the entire family.