Loof Lirpa & Money in the Bank

While my brothers and sisters were honor roll students, I was a mediocre student, predictably in the middle of my class. Sadly, my high school math average is – F.

However, I loved writing. Writing was the only occupation I knew where you got paid to lie. As a fourth grader, my first check as a writer was for $5 from a magazine that bought my story about the enormous snapping turtle in our pond. There was a snapping turtle. It was a whooper – just like the whooper about how much of a whooper the thing was!

Our seventh grade history teacher assigned us homework over the weekend, a two-page story on the explorer Loof Lirpa, who had discovered America before Columbus. I promptly forgot the assignment until Monday morning when I heard complaints and groans from students who hadn’t written their two-page paper because they couldn’t find information on Lirpa. No problem. I sat down at my desk and zipped out two pages feeling snug that for once – just once – I would be ahead of my class instead of behind them.

Our teacher asked how many people had completed their homework assignment. I proudly raised my hand. I felt like a champ when he invited me up to the front of the room to read my two-page report on the famous explorer.

Then he wrote Loof Lirpa on the board. Under it, he wrote “April Fool.”

Later, when I was a brand new Christian and a single parent, our church scheduled a special offering for building repairs. I desperately wanted to give generously to the project, but I knew that I only had $25 in the bank until my next check – a week away. However, when I sat down and carefully added and subtracted everything, I found an extra $100. Elated, I wrote out a check to the church for the extra $100. A few days later, checks started bouncing. Sure, my math was bad. Sure, I failed math in school. But I had checked and rechecked…and the money should have been there.

I marched into the bank with my check book to show them the deposits. They agreed with me and stopped all the bouncing checks and put money from the bank fees back into my account. They kept my check stub so their financial wizard could solve the conundrum. By the time they found the problem, I had received my paycheck and was in the clear…because the $100 really wasn’t in the account and never had been in the account. One of their cashiers had written a $10 deposit so sloppily that – even to the bank – it had looked like $100. The church got their offering, I got a week’s interest-free loan and no bank charges…God has a sense of humor!

Perhaps the reason I’m so excited about my next Miz Mike Christian mystery-romance-suspense “Bridge Beyond Betrayal,” is that it’s funny. I love humor. Bridge Beyond Betrayal is scheduled for release by Sunpenny Publishing Group on June 30. I can’t wait! I’m going to read it all over again just to get a good laugh!

Hope a lot of folks will buy Bridge Beyond Betrayal and join me in laughter. Besides, I can’t keep adding to the Miz Mike series if the books don’t sell. Even with my limited math skills, I understand that.

Writing, I love it! What other occupation pays liars?

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

What my Date with Willie Nelson Taught me about Writing

Before Willie Nelson became a household word, he worked as a wrangler at Lost Valley Dude Ranch, in Bandera, Texas, “Cowboy Capital of the World.”

Just out of high school and two years of college, I fell in love with Willie Nelson – at least with his songs. As a writer myself, the simple brilliance of his words resonated with me: Pretend I never happened, Erase me from your mind, You will not want to remember, Any love as cold as mine.

Not knowing it, I broke one of the first rules of writing: write about what you know. I was a 20-year-old kid. I didn’t know anything about anything, so if I wrote anything at all – it had to be about something I didn’t know anything about. My first full-length adult novel (thankfully still unpublished) featured a country-western singer as the protagonist. Not that I knew he was called a protagonist.

Willie Nelson wasn’t my only interview. Local celebrity and bar owner Arkey Blue, of Arkey Blue’s Silver Dollar in Bandera, was kind enough to give me an interview. I’m sure I asked stupid questions. He patiently answered them without telling me how stupid the questions were.

When he was performing at Floore’s Country Store in Helotes, Willie Nelson gave me his phone number. For weeks, I called fruitlessly. Being a Texan, I never gave up. Finally, Willie answered and invited me on a date for an interview.

Willie was married to his third wife, but I was young and stupid – and not a Christian. I wanted to be a famous writer, and I wanted to do it the easy way. Willie Nelson was the ticket. He would fall in love with me, divorce Connie, marry me, promote my books – and I would soon be interviewed by Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show.

When Willie picked me up for the Menudo Festival in San Antonio, he was drunk. I didn’t realize how drunk he was until we hit the winding Texas Hill Country road to San Antonio in the middle or on the wrong side of the road. Fortunately we arrived safely, and I clutched a notebook with answers to my questions. Willie said that when he grew long hair, men with traditional haircuts hated him. When he cut his hair – the “longhairs” hated him even more. I asked, “Are you really as sad as the words to your songs make you sound?”

Willie looked at me with humor glinting from the depths of deeply brown eyes and said, “I don’t think anyone can be that sad. Do you?”

On the way back, Willie asked if I minded if he smoked marijuana. I said, “Yes.” He pulled the car off the road and tried to kiss me. I was shocked. In my dreams, we took long walks, talked, spent more and more time together until he proposed. Even young and inexperienced, I realized the sexual advance was fueled by lust, not love, and would be meaningless and demeaning. When I resisted, he was surprised. “You mean you really are writing a book?”

A few months later, I saw Willie at a restaurant. He was staring at me, so I said, “You probably don’t remember me…” He replied, “Sure I do. You’re the girl who really is writing a book.”

That date with Willie Nelson taught me more about writing than any writing course or writing book I’ve ever read.

Write about what you know. Make characters real. Don’t put them on a pedestal because no one – not even famous people like Willie Nelson – is perfect. Your characters need flaws as well as strengths. Persevere. Never give up. Don’t look for the easy way or try to ride someone else’s fame. Even if that works, it will only be temporary, and you will realize that you cheated. That will rob your sense of fulfillment.

As a Christian, let God write the script. Even if Willie had married me and pushed my writing to success, my life would have been all wrong. He is now 80, living with wife number four. He’s a liberal; I’m a conservative. He drinks. I hate alcohol. He’s an activist for marijuana; I hate drugs. God has His own plan and purpose for Willie Nelson and I am not part of that pattern.

Most of all, if my dream wedding to Willie Nelson had taken place, it would have denied me the joy of raising my wonderful son, Luke, who walked with God his entire life.

Instead, God has blessed me with author husband Alan T McKean (The Scent of Time, The Scent of Home, and the soon-to-be-released The Scent of Eternity). We live in the extraordinary Black Isle of Scotland with such vast and varied scenic beauty that one can look in any direction and never see blight.

It’s taken me 40 years and 150 rejection slips to do it the right way and the hard way, but I am now author of five Christian mystery-romance-suspense books, and one young adult pro-life adventure-romance.

Most importantly, I can stand before God and instead of echoing Frank Sinatra’s song, I did it my way, I can say to my Heavenly Father, “I did it Your way.”

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

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Welcome Storms in 2014

When tornado-strength thunderstorm winds batter the Texas Hill Country, massive live oak trees that have stood for hundreds of years uproot and topple. Here in the Black Isle of Scotland, gale force winds sweep from coast to coast constantly – seldom uprooting or toppling trees.

Duress has provided the impetus compelling Scottish trees to grow into defiant survivors impervious to life’s storms. Scottish trees stand intransigent and victorious, feeding on the fury of the wind to send roots deeper into the soil.

That’s a good illustration for the New Year. Welcome life’s storms as challenges forcing growth and change. Storms may seem like furious, unrelenting events over which we have no power, and which will rob us of victory or success, but the power of life’s storms and our resulting defeat are both illusions.

The Bible promises that our weakness is an opportunity for God to present Himself strong and victorious in our lives. God told Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you: My strength is made perfect in weakness.”

The world has coined two clichés: what doesn’t make you bitter makes you better and what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

Storms have peppered my life over the years. As a child, I lived in a cowshed with no indoor plumbing facilities. After escaping childhood sexual abuse and two forced non-medically supervised abortions that nearly killed me, I lived under a bridge. As a single parent, I worked two and three jobs to make ends meet and slept in the back of a pickup truck on top of our belongings when moving from job to job. I spent over a year in an open-ended garden center with no indoor plumbing, bathroom or kitchen facilities, and wildlife coming in and out freely. I had my property stolen by underhanded legal proceedings. All on the same day; our sheepdog died, my mother died and I couldn’t attend her funeral because my husband was sent home in an ambulance to die, and my truck caught on fire in downtown San Antonio. Just over a month ago, I lost my only son in a plane crash. No one is immune to storms. We have two choices when storms hit us; suffer and grow bitter, or grow and become stronger.

Storms have strengthened my writing, too. From the time I was eleven, all I’ve wanted to do is write. Fifty years of rejection slips, disappointments and closed doors have strengthened my resolve into a wall that simply can’t be battered down. I’m thankful to have six published mystery-romance-suspense books, but even if I had never had one book published or one copy sold – I would keep writing. Storms have driven my writing roots so deep that they can’t be uprooted.

May your 2014 be full of calm, peace, love and joy and as few storms as possible. Should a storm find you in 2014, embrace it as an opportunity to grow stronger roots. My prayer for you: “That God would grant you according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in your inner parts.” Ephesians 3:16.

When I feel faint, I look again at this picture of a little tree determinedly growing out of the top of a fence post. If it can bloom where God has planted it, so can I!

Link to all six of Stephanie Parker McKean’s Christian mystery-romance-suspense books: http://www.amazon.com/Stephanie-Parker-McKean/e/B00BOX90OO/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

Why I Hate Christmas

I hate Christmas.

Hate it because I love giving and Christmas is the perfect season of the year for giving – yet I never have enough money to buy all the things I want to give.

I hate Christmas because imaginary Santa has replaced real Jesus, the Reason for the Season.

I hate Christmas because the emphasis is put on commercial sales rather than on the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ and the gift of eternity that He gives to the world for free.

I hate Christmas because it’s associated with snow and it must be cold to snow.

I hate Christmas because it’s been hijacked by atheists and special interest groups. School children can color pictures of Santa and reindeer on rooftops, but not the manger where Baby Jesus spent His first Christmas. School children can sing nonsense songs about a snowman, but not “Joy to the World, the Lord is Come.”

When Bob, or Marty, or Mary, or Susan have a birthday, we sing, “Happy Birthday, Susan, Mary, Marty, Bob, etc. But on the day that is set aside to celebrate the birth of Jesus, the Savor of the world…we dare not mention His name for fear of offending someone and are expected to say “Happy Holidays” instead of Merry CHRISTmas.

But, really, could anyone hate Christmas?

I love Christmas lights. Jesus is the Light of the World. His brightness is reflected in every glittering bulb that knocks a hole in darkness.

I love Christmas trees. Some equate Christmas trees to pagan history and spurn them. Jesus made trees. Wood was important to Jesus during his lifetime on this earth. He worked with His stepfather Joseph, a carpenter. He carried His cross on His bleeding back. He was crucified on a tree. Some claim a dogwood tree held the Lord Jesus. They point to the blood-stained petals in the shape of a cross with a crown of thorns in the middle. When I look at a Christmas tree, I don’t see a pagan symbol. I see the celebration of creation, redemption and victory over death.

I love Christmas because I love giving. Even though I never seem to be able to give everything I want to give at Christmas, I love a day set aside for giving instead of receiving – small kindnesses like taking baked goodies to neighbors or providing meals for the homeless.

I love Christmas because families come together. Before his death in a plane crash on November 17, my son Marine Corps Major Luke Gaines Parker was planning to fly me from Scotland to North Carolina to spend Christmas with him. He gets to spend his first Christmas in eternity with Jesus while I spend it down here missing him – but I still love Christmas. Every bright and colorful light will remind me of the blessing I had being his mother, however briefly.

So I don’t really hate Christmas. I love Christmas. I love Jesus, the Reason for the Season. And if I never received another Christmas gift in my life, I would be joyful because I’ve already received every blessing of God in this life. I was chosen to be Luke’s mother, and I have the eternal gift of salvation, purchased for me by Jesus at the cost of His blood.

Then there are the added gifts God has bestowed on me; husband and fellow author Alan T McKean, our rough collie dog, Angel Joy, and the gift of writing.

So, Happy Birthday, Jesus! And to all, Merry CHRISTmas!

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.”

Follow the Jumper!

We are blessed to live in Fortrose, Scotland, within walking distance of Chanonry Point where the dolphins come to jump and play. Well, truthfully, to eat salmon!

One thing we’ve learned about photographing these amazing animals is to follow the jumper. The firth can be full of surfacing dolphins, but if none of them jump – the pictures are boring ones of water, fins and backs. To get an interesting photo, watch to see which dolphin is a jumper and keep the camera trained on the jumper.

Life is like that. Some folks sit watching their TVs and eating snacks and let others jump out of apathy and attempt to change the world. If you want to have an interesting life – jump! You may come down on the wrong foot and end up with a sprain. Don’t let that stop you – sprains heal. Mediocre couch-sitters will despise you and attempt to break you in pieces with words so that they can build up their self-image without getting up out of their comfort zone. Not to worry. Jesus went through the same thing. He was a Jumper.

Being an author is similar. My goal is to write “jumpers.” Books that people will remember; mystery-romance-suspense books that will inspire them to leave their comfort zone and jump for their dreams. Bridge to Nowhere, from Sunpenny Publishing, follows older Texan protagonist Miz Mike who would mind her own business except for her motto to “never let an adventure pass by unmolested.” She almost loses her faith in God when her youngest grandson is kidnapped and law enforcement lets the murderer who kidnapped him escape. Her involvement in the mystery threatens the renascent romance with her cowboy hero Marty. Then she jumps.

Love’s Beating Heart jumps all over the place. A pro-life teen and up adventure-romance with a strong supporting arm for homeschooling and the sanctity of marriage, Love’s Beating Heart is out there jumping through the waters of controversy like an entire pod of dolphins!

Heart, Shadows, Until the Shadows Flee and the soon-to-be-released Fear of Shadows all contain a strong Christian message woven into the action and believable characters – not some preachy tacked on addition. They all jump.

Writing “jumpers” matters to me. I want to offer readers books that won’t discomfort them with profanity or negative lifestyle examples. Books that entertain and delight. Books that jump! Someday I will be gone just as surely as the dolphins fade away from Chanonry Point when the salmon run is over. My desire is to leave something behind that will cause others to jump up out of their ordinary lives and do something extraordinary for God.

I want to live for the jump!

Prickles & Stickles

I relate to my tough Texan heroine in Bridge to Nowhere, released by Sunpenny Publishing. Miz Mike always minds her own business, but she can’t resist mystery – so she winds up in one pickle after another when she sets out to molest new adventures. Miz Mike is adamant, intransigent, and intractable – only about important things, of course!

Me? I’m just stubborn. Take the prickles and stickles incident. No, don’t. You don’t want to go there.

When we first got our rough collie Angel Joy, she would only catch and collect balls as long as they were easy to retrieve. If they went too far, went into the water, or into bushes – it was our job. Golfers along the golf course would holler, “Can you get your dog to find my ball?” To which we would reply, “She won’t even find her ball.”

Angel Joy now goes into the water – as long as it’s not too deep – and into tall bushes and grass to find her ball. Not prickles and stickles. She’s smart.

Yesterday the wind blew off Moray Firth at near gale force. Her ball whipped into a hedge of wild Scottish roses intertwined with blackberry vines and gorse – solid prickles and stickles and thorns.

Suddenly Bridge to Nowhere‘s Miz Mike hijacked me. I body slammed those prickles and stickles and thorns and stickers and plowed a path into the impenetrable growth. Angel Joy nipped in, grabbed her ball and backed out again. It took me a bit longer since I was speared with thorns, stickers and vegetation with pickles, stickles and hooks.

Sometimes success demands that we plow into prickles and stickles. Staying in our comfort zone won’t get the job done. This is especially true in writing. It’s not enough to get a book published. After that comes the marketing – even if by pushing yourself forward you feel like you’re plowing into a rose bed and coming out with thorns rather than the fragrance, color and softness of rose petals.

Some readers will love you and everything you write. Others will hate you – not because what you’ve written is bad – but because they disagree with you. When that happens, you feel like you attempted to pluck a rose for your sweetheart and grabbed thorns instead.

If you’re a writer, I won’t encourage you to become like Miz Mike. For one thing, she and I are Texas born. It takes a while to learn how to be a Texan. For another thing – she’s my character! But I will encourage you to be stubborn. Get over your fear of prickles and stickles. They only hurt a little bit. Plow ahead with confidence and don’t let criticisms and discomfort steal your dream.

My newest book, Love’s Beating Heart, is the most stickery and prickery since it deals with issues like abortion, pro-life, adoption, homeschooling and the sanctity of marriage. It is also the most satisfying on the deepest level. Don’t get me wrong! I love stubborn, mystery-solving Miz Mike. She’s fun, funny and fun to write. Bridge to Nowhere is a great Christian mystery-romance-suspense, the first in a series of at least six.

But plowing into the stickles and prickles gave me a lasting gift to leave behind when I go home to be with the LORD. Love’s Beating Heart is more than a book. It’s a life-saving manual.

Jump out of the Box!

Alan and I are on vacation for a week. We’re not going anywhere, but we don’t have to – because we write. Alan is the author of two enthralling time travel adventures, The Scent of Time and The Scent of Home.

I write Christian mystery-romance-suspense books like Bridge to Nowhere, by Sunpenny Publishing, and Heart Shadows, Shadow Chase and Until the Shadows Flee. My most recent book is a pro-life, pro-homeschool, teen and any age adventure-romance, Love’s Beating Heart.

When we stay home, we can write. I can write my way out of a cardboard box. I did it once.

While attending UTSA, I had a socialism…I mean a sociology professor who was nuts. He couldn’t help it. He wasn’t from Texas and he was an atheist. He was always late to class. On three separate occasions, the entire class walked out because we had waited for more than 15 minutes. On the coldest day of winter, he arrived one minute short of the class leaving, wearing swim trunks, an inside-out T-shirt, and a red and black tie with white skeletons dancing across it. Without apologizing for being late, he said, “Jeans are all dirty and I lost my coat.”

Another time when he was late, he scurried into the room checking the number on a piece of paper against the door number to make sure he was in the right class. He had been teaching our class for six weeks. He smelled so strongly of gasoline that we gagged and moved to the back of the room. “Had a bit of trouble at the gas station,” he said. “Was pumping away when I realized I had the nozzle stuck in the back window of the car instead of the gas tank.” And he was teaching us?

A week before finals, I learned to jump out of the box. He arrived only a few minutes late and began yelling at us. “You’re all liars! You’re all pretenders! You’re all playing games!” As an adult with a full-time job, who was also a full-time student, the mother of a teen and the caregiver of a terminally ill husband, I resented that. I didn’t have time for games.

“Here’s what I want you to do,” he shouted. “Every one of you has a big cardboard box by your desk. That’s right – you, too!” We all looked perplexed, but I felt sorry for the student he had singled out.

“Now. Get into your boxes. Climb in and close the flaps. Sit in your box and go inside yourselves. Get to really know who you are. Find yourselves. When you have the truth, write it down.”

I tried. I really did. I visualized myself in the box and obediently closed the flaps. I looked around inside and thought how pretty it would be with the right combinations of colors splashed about. Then…the story came. I could see the twelve-year-old boy. Lanky and loose jointed, he walked along the desert path kicking tumbleweed, sending puffs of alkali dust over the top of his shoes. His parents were divorcing. His dad had left. His mother’s job had transferred her from cool, green Georgia to the barren Nevada desert. He had left all his friends behind. Instead of spending the summer fishing and playing ball, Garrett was stuck in a strange, empty land with no friends and nothing to do. I felt his pain. Saw him squeeze back tears of loneliness and frustration. Then Garrett kicked a box and it yelped. Looking inside, he found an abandoned puppy. Tansy later repaid her rescuer’s love and kindness by rushing between him and a rattlesnake in the backyard. I jumped out of my box and finished the story.

After reading my story, the socialism…sorry…sociology professor flailed the air as if beating off insects. “No, no no! This is all wrong! You were supposed to go inside and find yourself.”

“I did,” I told him. “I’m a writer.”

He gave me a “D” on the paper. It didn’t matter. I’m a writer. I sold the story to a Christian magazine. The check made up for the close encounter with misplaced gasoline.

So jump out of the box. Find out what God has planned for your life and go after it with all your heart.

Try a Bit Harder, Work a Bit Longer…

With a bit of weeding, digging and replanting, the garden looked nice…except for the dead branches and trunks of a tree along the fence. Our chainsaw will cut butter, but not much else and there are no repair or sharpening services in our area. The handsaw cuts a bit better, but the dead tree trunks were huge in circumference and grown too close together to allow the handsaw to get in between them. With our limited tools, cutting that dead, tangled mess looked impossible.

Enter determination. The same, “try a bit harder, work a bit longer,” that carried me past the agony and despair of receiving 150 rejection slips on different books over the years to eventual success. I now have five published Christian, mystery-romance-suspense books, Bridge to Nowhere (Rose & Crown/Sunpenny Publishing), Love’s Beating Heart, Heart Shadows, Until the Shadows Flee and Shadow Chase. I knew I was a writer. God had put that burning fire in my bones and I could not contain it. But every rejection slip made me quit and give up…briefly – before I remembered to try a bit harder, work a bit longer.

So, too, with the dead wood in the front yard. First the clippers to remove the smaller branches. With scratched and bleeding arms and facing those huge trunks, I started to give up. Then I looked again at the bright green garden tossed with blooming flowers and mocked by one clump of ugly dead tree. The butter-cutting chainsaw came out. The butter-cutting-plus handsaw came out. Then help arrived in the form of my gifted, talented husband (also an author, The Scent of Time & The Scent of Home). He had been out visiting folks in the parish. Still dressed in his clerical shirt and collar (he’s a Church of Scotland minister) Alan began helping. Between the two of us and the two butter and better than butter-cutting saws, the dead wood came out. Try a bit harder, work a bit longer.

Taking out the dead growth was the right thing to do. Besides looking better, the open space allows room to finish edging in front of the beds and trimming the shrubs.But it wasn’t easy. It took trying a bit harder, working a bit longer.

Having five published books was the right thing to do. Without preaching, the characters and action in the books point to God. It is my prayer that they will help readers find their way to the Cross of Jesus. Love’s Beating Heart sends two teens on a wild river adventure to save Baby. The fast-moving adventure upholds marriage, homeschooling and pro-life over abortion. If it saves the life of even one unborn child, I have fulfilled my purpose as a writer. But success wasn’t easy. It took years to achieve and a lot of trying a bit harder, working a bit longer.

When you have a dream or a task that seems impossible, don’t give up! Try a bit harder, work a bit longer.

Island Awry

Our plans showcased a great weekend trip that included visiting favorite friends and spending the night on a lovely, peaceful island. The host at the bed and breakfast cooks an amazing breakfast with eggs from his hens that are so fresh you can still smell the chicken.

We started out in Glasgow visiting Alan’s 96-year-old mother and his brother. Both are remarkable folks. Alan’s brother is a dedicated street preacher, working nearly every day. His mother still reads the Bible, prays, and sings praises to the LORD. In fact, she sings and hums all the time. Even in moments of quiet reflection, her face wears a cheerful smile. So the problem with our trip wasn’t how it started out, but rather how it ended. Clearly, we were meant to stay in Glasgow and it took three tries for God to message us.

We left early Saturday morning to keep our afternoon appointments. We were a couple of hours down the road when we realized we had forgotten Alan’s insulin and left it in the refrigerator. We went back for it. Thinking we were gone, Alan’s brother had gone to work. Wisely, their lovely mother has been instructed not to answer the door when she’s alone. So it was a two-hour wait to get the insulin and start out again, this time running late for the afternoon appointments – but still determined to keep them.

What stopped us that time was a taxi that didn’t. We stopped at a red light and the taxi behind us kept going. Our poor little car was severely crunched. The back window shattered, the hatchback sprang open, glass rained down on all our cases in the back…That disaster stopped us. We went back to Glasgow and spent the rest of the weekend with Alan’s family. I hadn’t seen them in two years and Alan hadn’t seen them in a year. Sunday was Mothers’ Day in the U.S., which made it even more special for me to be spending time with Alan’s mom.

Two Bible verses frame my life: “In everything give thanks,” and “All things work together for good to them that love the LORD.” We have already sorted out some of the things that are working together for good in our lives because of the accident. And our time here on this earth is short, no matter what our present age is. How precious to have spent that extra time with Alan’s family.

I came back on the bus and began answering emails about our books: Bridge to Nowhere, Love’s Beating Heart, Shadow Chase, Heart Shadows, Until the Shadows Flee and Alan’s The Scent of Time and his newly released The Scent of Home. Emails included a request for a press release for The Scent of Home. So as I labor over the keyboard in an attempt to catch up on everything, I realize that an island awry stole a weekend of writing. Instead of following The Scent of Home, I was following the scent of fresh eggs.