Progress

After yesterday's three half-hour segments of Quigley wailing and yowling in the crate, I was feeling like a pretty big failure as a puppy trainer. Everything I tried to do didn't turn out at all as I'd expected. I scrambled up some of the instructions (partly because I drew from several different sources and the instructions tended to contradict each other; or else they didn't exactly apply to my situation) and just made a general mess out of things. During Bible class last night he started out okay, then turned crazy, trying to chew on all manner of things in the room. So I put him in the crate. And he yowled and yowled and it was VERY difficult to concentrate.

I was certain I had made him hate the crate and would now have to begin anew with baby steps to get him to even go near it.

About nine o'clock that night, Stu called me to "come and see." Quigley had gone into the open crate all by himself and was lying inside of it, dozing. Later, when he turned into Crazy Quigley again, Stu had to put him in it for a time-out and he accepted it without a peep.

Today I've put him in the crate a number of times and the longest he's protested is five minutes. Other times he didn't protest at all, and several times he walked into it all by himself. I just closed the door after he fell asleep. When he woke up he made just enough little noises to let me know he was awake, whereupon I let him out.

So today, he's been a lot of fun. He's sooo cute. He knows his name and we've been playing hide and seek. The biting is way down -- I tell him no and offer acceptable alternatives when he tries -- and the other things, like attacking the couch as a way of getting attention... or maybe just a thing he does when he's super-tired and has no idea why he's doing it... are not nearly so manic. Progress has definitely been made! Hallelujah.

Grace,
Karen

Pictures
Top: Quigley in the box he sleeps in beside our bed
Bottom: the coonhound with his raccoon (eyeless, of course)

Quigley in the Crate

Quigley is in the crate as I write this in the late afternoon of Wednesday. I put him there because he was deliberately attacking the couch to get my attention. I figured he would scream a bit and then quiet down, as he did this morning, and I'd go tell him what a good boy he was and let him out. Instead, he's been shrieking for nearly half an hour. My resolve is wavering. My mind fills with doubts of the rightness of what I'm doing, even though everything I've read and even the vet said you absolutely must not take him out of the crate while he's screaming.

This was so not my intention when I put him in there. Now I only want him to be quiet for a few minutes so I can let him out. But he's not letting up.

I wonder how often we are like that with God. If He isn't up there tapping his foot, waiting for us to submit to the situation and accept it and stop complaining and demanding and howling about it. If only we'd stop and be silent for a bit, he'd come and open the gate -- which He dearly wants to do -- and let us out. But first we have to learn the lesson... The blessing and release come in His timing, not ours.

Grace,
Karen

The Little Bully

Well, Quigley is turning out to be more of a handful than we expected and seems to be turning into a huge test. I prayed God would bring us the right dog, and I believe He has. It's just that I don't know what "right dog" means in God's eyes. It seems that it's one that will drive me crazy and force me to claim promises and go to Him for help on a daily, hour by hour basis. But then, what's new with that?

I had all these thoughts of blog posts about the conference (when it was going on) and also a few reader emails I wanted to address, and now it seems that all I'm going to talk about is the dog. We have never had a puppy that goes into the manic wild phase that Quigley does. The more tired he gets, the harder and more continuously he starts biting. He's like a whirling dervish. He goes wild attacking his little dog bed (see accompanying photos). He comes over and starts biting my chair repeatedly. I tell him no and unhook his jaws from the chair and he bites bite me -- my hand, my arm, my leg, then immediately goes back to biting the chair. His teeth are sharp as I mentioned, but I really don't like the intensity of the biting, both in frequency and in force. If I tell him no, he ignores me. If I yell no, he barks back...

To his credit, he only does this when he's starting to get tired. It's worst in the late afternoon. He works himself into a frenzy, then finally collapses into a sound sleep. When he awakes, its sweet little Quigley again. He's so nice and gentle and calm...We've never had a pup like this, and all our methods of dealing with it are not working.

So I've been doing research... Googled "puppy manic mode" and got some hits, including a blog by SF writer Robin McKinley who has some sort of sight hounds which she calls "hellhounds" and which also apparently display this mania. Another site, on training Irish Wolfhounds (also sight hounds) had a bit more in the way of suggestions and advice, so we've decided that it's very important not to "play" with him when he gets like this and that if we can't get him to lie calmly and chew on one of his toys, then we'll either put him out in the back yard alone, or crate him.

I haven't crated him since the first day I stayed with him. That was Monday, when I waited until he was very tired and then put him into the crate. He started screaming, but fell asleep in about two minutes. About half an hour later he awoke and screamed again, so I let him out, but I think perhaps I was premature. Anyway, there are going to have to be a lot of behavior changes on my part. The information I read gave six different types of puppy personality, and my husband has concluded that Quigley falls into the "bully" category. That's a pup who takes himself much too seriously and would be the leader in a pack of dogs. Thus he expects to be the leader with us as well. They are difficult to train, but it can be done with patience. A lot of the things I've been doing have told him I'm a puppy, too. Not good.

Everyone said Bear would be difficult to train, too. And he sure wasn't easy, especially when compared with the other dogs in the training class. He wasn't as aggressive as Quigley in his puppy stage, though. But my information says that puppies do what gets them attention, hence our plan to crate him or exile him for the bad behavior.

One way I do see the Lord's hand in this: never before would I have been ready for this kind of dog, neither from my experience with dogs themselves, nor spiritually. Previously I know I would be freaking out. Now, I just keep falling back on the Lord, trusting Him to solve the problem, refusing to speculate and leap out into a future full of scary and dire what-ifs, asking Him for guidance on what to do... both generally and moment by moment specific. Seems I've had a lot of practice with this sequence, since it's exactly what I have to do with the book.

Speaking of, I need to tell my editor whether or not I expect to finish the thing by Mar 31. I have no idea. I have no schedule, because, as many know, schedules never work. I no sooner make one than I break it. Or life breaks it for me... But I can't keep not answering, so I guess I'll have to bite the bullet and make a decision. I really want to try for Mar 31...

With Quigley thus far, though, there's not been a lot of time to do much other than deal with him. I'm hoping that will change. Well, I'm sure it will, because this is God's problem and if He wants me to write the book, He'll have to provide the time for me to do that.

Grace,
Karen

Quigley and a Bible Conference

A whole lot happened this last weekend which is why I missed my posts for last Thursday and Sunday evening. Even today I'm fairly distracted and know I'm not going to get much written.

On Thursday the preliminaries for our annual Arizona Bible Conference began, with old friends arriving from out of town and many of us gathering to help with the setup of the conference room occurring at the Doubletree Hotel that evening. Because Pastor McLaughlin is on hiatus, dealing with personal issues, Pastor Farley taught the entire conference, giving us an in depth look at Psalm 23 not only from a shepherd's point of view but from a sheep's as well. (If you want to listen to them, check out the AZ Conference 2008 lessons at http://www.gbible.org/ where they can be streamed or downloaded.)

They were a fantastic series of lessons, which I will no doubt be drawing from for blog posts in the near future. (Though at the rate readers are asking questions that I'd like to answer, who can say.) The best thing about it for me is the image I will carry with me of the shepherd/warrior, the strong, wise, gentle man who at the same time is fierce and well armed and prepared for fighting off lions, bears and thieves sometimes single-handedly to protect his sheep. The one who must make sure the sheep are protected and feel completely safe before they will eat from the pasture of choice grasses He has led them too. But more on that later...

...Because the second event of the weekend, almost as significant in details of life terms as the conference is in spiritual terms, is that on Saturday my hubby went to Phoenix and brought home Quigley, an eight week old redbone coonhound pup, who even at this young age seems nothing like Bear and is quite a handful. His arrival meant that in interim moments during the conference and attendant activities (which included the ordination of Pastor Rory Clark and three deacons; eating out and a trip to Sabino Canyon) I slipped home to meet and play with the puppy. Who is incredibly cute, but has very sharp teeth and claws and seems to be far more fixated on biting and chewing than I remember Bear being.

His presence means that I must do my chores and especially any writing activities during his naps, because at this point we haven't forced crate training on him, and aren't comfortable leaving him in our not-puppy-safe yard yet. He is quite comfortable outside, but since he seems to want to bite and chew on everything in his periphery, the yard is not ready for that...

Since I am not ready for him to attack the wires of my computer yet, either, I don't want him in my writing room and so...I have yet to work out the details of how I'm going to get any work done apart from naptime. The Lord knows how, though, and I'm trusting Him for all of it.

Also, I'm happy to report, my shoulder pain has abated, and I decided maybe the kingdom of darkness was the real source of my finger problems and have chosen to ignore them for now. Just do the things I have to do, and leave it to the Lord to handle. If my hands turn into claws, then I will have to do something. But so far that doesn't seem to be happening. Though they are now covered with scratch-scabs from the onslaught of tiny, knife-sharp puppy teeth!

But isn't he cute?
















Grace,
Karen

Planting Thoughts

A reader commented on my post about spiritual schizophrenia, saying she believed that "demons listen and find our natural flow and weakness and then shoot darts of thought and emotion in rapid fire till we receive and embrace one... they can according to my knowledge and experience implant thoughts and hope you will embrace them. Kind of like fishing. He will toss it in and see if he gets a nibble. There is a whole host working against you making it to the finish line, and if I may be bold to say, he takes more out with a sense of goodness in self than they do with the wickedness of evil."

Maybe. I'm not sure there's really a scripture to support this, though there is to support our unceasing, internal fight against the sin nature. The fact that our battle is not against flesh and blood -- people -- but against the forces of darkness in the atmosphere, however, does imply that people can be used by the demons to hinder and attack us. How exactly that's accomplished isn't spelled out. But Satan primarily went after Job's body and outward circumstances. There's no mention of his planting thoughts in Job's mind.

I definitely don't think there is a whole host of demons going after every believer, however. That's because Satan rules the world. He is the prince of the powers of the air. And what goes through air? Words. What are in words? Thoughts. His whole system of thinking -- independence from God: "I can do it myself, thank you" -- saturates the world. We are born into it. We inhale it, hear it, digest it, learn it, have it reinforced every day, all day. By everything around us. Our sin nature cleaves to it. Loves it. Gobbles it up.

Even the majority of believers live in it and embrace its principles, though often they cloak those principles with spiritual words and make them seem like something they're not. But Satan has his ministers of light that teach people how to be righteous, many believers are said to be enemies of the Cross of Christ, and we are specifically told to avoid those who have a form of the spiritual life but not the power, ever learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth.

"Worldliness" is not just sin, immorality and antagonism toward God. It's also morality and religion and outward "goodness." (The Pharisees were very moral, very religious, very "upright."). Worldliness is thinking in accordance with Satan's thought system, which is a counterfeit of God's. His initial desire, remember was not to be opposite of God but to be like God. To take God's place.

Since we cannot turn on the TV, radio, cell phone, read the paper, magazines, books, converse with others, go to work meetings or school meetings, etc, without being drenched in this thought system, and since most believers have adopted it in some way or other, what need have the demons of going after all of us? Since we all have a sin nature that loves the cosmic way of thinking, all they have to do is sit back and let that nature work as they control the media, the "air."


The biggest way I think they go after us is trying to get us away from the intake of God's word on a daily basis, which is our only hope of standing against this ubiquitous and continuous deceptive brainwashing by the world. That and try to get us to believe there is no angelic conflict. To reject what I said in the previous paragraph. To think there is something more important than God's word.

And while some of the thoughts we have may seem to us shocking and wicked... well... we are sick. From the tops of our heads to the soles of our feet, there is no soundness in us (Is 1:6). The hearts of men are full of evil and insanity (Eccl 9:3). Don't like to think that a part of you is evil and insane? Guess who's prompting that thought? Not the new nature (which is perfect and cannot sin, remember). When you sin, do things that shock you, think things that shock you... what's the big deal? You just fall back on what the scripture says about what wicked sinners we are in the flesh. Where's the shock when that flesh gets the better of us from time to time? We can really only be shocked if we think we're better than the Bible says we are.

And while the Bible does say we're nothing in the flesh, it also says the real us is not the flesh, because technically the flesh is dead. It's been dealt with -- so far as sin is concerned -- on the the cross. The real us, if we've believed in Jesus's atoning work on that cross, is that perfect new nature which carries the very righteousness of God in it which can never be lost. It's not I that sin, as Paul says in Romans 7, but the sin nature that dwells within me. And when that happens, all we have to do is confess it to get back into fellowship.

None of that to say the demons can't or don't plant thoughts in people's minds or move them in some undisclosed way to do things that hinder others who are going forward in God's plan. Nor even that they don't plant thoughts occasionally in the folks who are really far along in their Christian walk. I just don't think that's the case with me. I think my sin nature more than does the job they need it to do.

I will say that they do know exactly how to push my buttons to get that inner dead man to react... But that's for another post.

Grace,
Karen

Iconoclastic Arrogance

An iconoclast is someone who destroys religious images, or images that are worshipped by self or others. Iconoclastic arrogance, then is a technical term for a form of arrogance whereby the subject destroys something he once worshipped.

Whenever you put someone on a pedestal, admire them, worship them, try to emulate them, you are probably guilty of the beginning stage of iconoclastic arrogance. You've created an idol. The image of a perfect person. Unfortunately, no person is perfect. We all have a sin nature and eventually that wicked part of us will reveal itself. The feet of clay will show. The idol's golden facade will crack and the worm within will be exposed.

When that happens, the iconoclast goes into full bore destruction of the idol. Suddenly the person once admired and respected is despised, accused, judged, and condemned. Sometimes the iconoclast will do whatever they can to bring that person down -- gossip, malign, put down, lie...

I've known about iconoclastic arrogance for awhile and never thought I had much problem with it. Until a couple of lessons last month brought up the fact that our sin nature can do an iconoclastic arrogance trip on our own selves. My sin nature believes that it's important to do well. To have the respect of others. To have, in fact, the approbation of others. When any of those qualities are threatened, it gets very upset. The idea that I am a good person, that I am doing okay, that I am worthy is suddenly replaced by this inward attacker that does all the same things the iconoclast does. Suddenly there's all this inner condemnation -- you're late, you blew it, no one is going to like that post, they don't like your book, you're a lousy writer, whatever made you think you could write anyway, no one cares, why do you even bother...

The derision and accusations go on and on. Often as I'm preparing a newsletter to go out, or after I've put up a blog post, the sense of inadequacy will descend. Or if I'm not getting "enough" done in a day. Or have done something not quite perfectly.

My sin nature seems to go after the emotions first. There's a growing sense of unease, of darkness, of condemnation. As the bad feeling gets settled, my motivation drains away. I don't want to write. Don't want to do anything -- except email, in the unconscious, unacknowledged hope I'll get a stroke that'll make me feel better, though if I do, it's never enough to dispel the cloud. Eventually I stop and start to analyze what is wrong. That's when I realize what I'm doing.

I've become adept enough at this that my feeling bad intervals are getting shorter and shorter and I'm starting to nail the problem sooner. But I'm also finding many, many areas that are triggers for my sin nature to start acting up. To start creeping back, trying to regain that lost control. It flashes a thought into my mind. I can pass it by, or latch on... If I ignore it, the thought will come again. And again until I stop and confront it. No. That's against the word of God... I know there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. These accusations are not from Him. I am perfect in His sight, and the only thing that really matters is what Jesus did, not what I'm doing or not doing. Perfectionism is so not where it's at when it comes to this life.

I think I'm understanding more and more how I'm to use that command in 2 Co 10:4,5 about taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. But it's a slow process.

Grace,
Karen

Spiritual Schizophrenia

Over the past few weeks, God has been teaching me many exciting things (exciting to me anyway). One of those things is about my sin nature.

Galatians 5:17 says "the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please" -- my sin nature is against the Spirit that indwells me and it's against God. I knew that.

The old sin nature can only sin and do evil or produce human good. The new nature, conversely, cannot sin (I Jn 3:9). I knew that, too. Here's what I learned, or maybe "saw" in a way I'd not seen it before: Before I was saved I lived only in my sin nature. I had no choice. It controlled my soul. It controlled the thoughts in my soul. I was a slave to it, and didn't even know it. One of the reasons for that is because the sin nature doesn't just sin. It also, as I said, produces human good, which can seem -- and feel -- very good and very right.

When I got saved, God gave me a new nature which cannot sin, and pronounced the old nature dead, crucified with Christ. It had lost its power at that point not because it was "dead" in the sense that it has become inert and inoperative (it hasn't) but because from the point of salvation on, I can choose against it. No longer does it have automatic control.

Now, as I live my Christian life, I choose on a moment by moment basis which nature I live in: the new one, which cannot sin, which loves God and His word, or the old one, which can sin and which hates God. Like all believers, I am a spiritual schizophrenic, at any given moment operating from one of my two completely opposite natures. All it takes is rebound (confession of sin) to get back in the new nature and under the control of the Spirit. All it takes is a thought to get back under the control of the sin nature. And that sin nature is trying its hardest to regain that control. Constantly.

And this is another thing I "saw": my sin nature, the thing that is part of my flesh and that I will have with me until the day that I die, HATES God. It hates the Spirit. It doesn't want to have anything to do with truth, except as it can distort it and use it to its (the sin nature's) benefit. It is just as bad as any demon.

I used to think that some of the negative thoughts I am plagued with (more on that another time) came from demons. But I know that as a believer indwelt by the the Father, Son and Spirit, it is not possible for demons to indwell or possess me. My friends and I have discussed whether they can read our minds, though. How else can they know exactly the thoughts that are needed to disrupt whatever it is we're doing/thinking for the Lord? I'm sure they can read our faces and expressions, and guess our thoughts from that, since they have vast experience dealing with humans. But read our minds? And actually place thoughts into them?

With this new revelation regarding the wickedness of my sin nature, I realized they don't need to read my thoughts -- or place thoughts in my head -- to get to me. They have an inside ally. My sin nature knows exactly what I'm thinking and it is the source of most if not all of the negative, accusing/condemning thoughts that plague me. It has its own agenda -- approbation lust, power lust, selfishness, etc -- and it does not want to do things God's way. Recognize/admit that there is no good thing in the flesh? That we can do nothing of ourselves and God is the one who does everything? That HE has begun a good work in me and HE will perfect it?

This is absolutely anathema to the wicked nature that dwells in me. The last thing in the world it wants to acknowledge is that there is no good in it. (Unless it can get into a competition with someone else for "least good," and thereby manage to exalt itself in a bizarre distortion of what it sees as "humility".)

How is this helpful? The more I know about it and how it works, the better I can fight it. Now when the negative self talk comes, I realize quicker that it's from my sin nature, and can deflect it, refute it, refuse to let it control my soul. Accusation and condemnation are from the devil and His system of thinking, which my sin nature loves. But there is NO condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. (Ro 8:1)

Grace,
Karen

I'm Back!

From the day of my last post, December 20, until today, I've done no writing. First there were Christmas preparations and activities and then we left for California to visit my stepmother who is 86. Her sister (who is 87) is living with her now, and they have the house filled with belongings that were suddenly taken out of a much bigger house and put into a storage shed, and from there into the current small house. There was no room for us to stay there, so we stayed in a hotel. First time we've ever done that on this trip. In fact much of this year's trip was different and we really didn't know what was going to happen from day to day. But all turned out well, and we had a good time. Visited the Aquarium of the Pacific, the beach and found a great Chinese food restaurant in Cerritos.

It seems to me that God has been doing this constantly in my life now -- much fog and uncertainty, no plan ever allowed to stand as it was conceived. Something always changes, and often everything that you thought was going to happen collapses entirely to make way for something new. Or perhaps people or circumstances prevent a plan from being developed in the first place. The lesson then, is flexibility and the importance of focusing on Him -- rather than circumstances -- on a moment by moment basis.

I'm also seeing more and more the reality of the fact that true to God's word, those who desire to live the spiritual life will have problems and sufferings, and they are not going to go away. A particular problem might resolve but it will soon be replaced by another. Details of life. The charge of the mosquitos. There's been clouds of them lately.

The tendonitis I mentioned last month has continued unabated, actually worsening after the trip, probably because I did none of the recommended treatments for it. Oddly, repositioning my pillows at night (the ones I use still to prop up my arms) seemed to have had the worst effect, all that gripping and pulling through the night. Or maybe it's just been all the things I've had to do with my hands in the process of the aforementioned Christmas activities, cleaning, carrying and the stuff on the trip. Or maybe it just takes a long time to get better.

Besides the hands, a muscle spasm has started up in my right shoulder that manifests with burning intensity every time I sit down at the computer. Like a knife in the muscle. I don't know what to do about it, beyond stay away from the computer. I don't know what to do about my hands; either, though I'm thinking about calling a hand surgeon tomorrow.

And even when I decide that I am GOING to sit down and right, things come up that must be dealt with or attended. And I fall back on the knowlege and conviction that God has everything under control, that I might not have a clue what is going on, but He does. This book I'm supposed to be writing is His work, not mine, and He's going to have to see that I have time/energy/health and mental clarity to do it. Period.

I'm hoping that I can start again tomorrow. But that's tomorrow. For now, it's enough I've done this blog post!

Merry Christmas 2007

Imagine you agree to have yourself, your soul, your immaterial essence, all your thoughts and experiences and hard-won lessons, all your knowledge and vocabulary and understanding, all your memories -- to have all that put into the body of a newborn baby. To be raised by your own children, if you have them. Or maybe your younger siblings. You can't talk, you can't move, feed yourself. You must depend upon them utterly to feed you, clean you, keep you safe. You have to be taught things you already know, maybe even things you yourself invented or devised.... Imagine that and you have some vague inkling of what it was like for God the Son to take on the form of a man. Starting with babyhood.

It's not the best analogy because Jesus became fully human in his humanity and had to learn like any other baby, so it wasn't as if there was a fully mature "soul" in the baby Jesus. But the deity part of Him was still there, the power that holds the universe together, and He voluntarily put aside the use of it, and also the privileges of treatment and respect that go with deity to become a human baby. A creature that in those first few weeks couldn't even roll over! It's mind boggling what He did. For us.

I pray that as the Christmas season enfolds us, you’ll take time to reflect on the significance behind this. That He temporarily set aside his privileges as deity to take on the form of a baby, grow to manhood and lay down his life for us on a Roman cross some 2000 years ago. Jesus Christ, the only true celebrity, our hero and savior, born to die so we might live forever. May His love and life touch your heart in a special way this Christmas.

I'll be back blogging again sometime after the first of the new year. See you then.

Karen

Trigger Fingers

Based on the number of hits the writing parts of my body are taking, I'm beginning to think I must be writing something really important in Black Box. Now, just as my left arm is finally getting to the point of being useful and not too troublesome, I find I've developed tendonitis in my right hand, particularly my thumb. I think it's from too much housework, too fast.

It's not the first time I've developed tendonitis from housework -- scrubbing the tub is something I have to do in parts or I'll get it in my elbow. I've also developed painter's elbow when I painted the outside of the house a few years back. This is the first time I've gotten it in my hands (and I do have it in both of them, though it's much worse in the right hand)

Too much squeezing and scrubbing led to my fingers growing stiff and painful. I can't make a fist. In the morning they are especially stiff, and when I try flex them and straighten them out they lock and then suddenly spring open. I researched it last night and discovered this is called trigger finger or trigger thumb. And I have it in my thumb, as well as the fingers, and lately it's been worst of all, because when it "springs open" it sends a sharp pain through my thumb and palm. It's also visibly swollen.

It's officially called tenosynovitis and involves the inflammation of the tendons and sheath around the tendons, which prevents them from flexing open smoothly. The treatment? Advil. Ice and... of course... immobilization. They advise a splint. I'm just trying not to do anything. It's been going on for about a month, and seems to be getting worse, so finally I went to the Internet and realized I really have to stop doing everything. Which is what I've done today. I thought I'd give it a couple of days of the above treatment, and if it doesn't get better I guess I'll have to see a hand surgeon. I can't open bottles, turn faucets, door handles, locks, open the car door, or turn on the ignition. I can type, but I feel I need to do so on a limited basis because I can't always tell while I'm doing something if that's going to bother the thumb or not. Writing longhand is definitely problematic. (Does that mean I should just sit down and start typing out scenes and stop making notes?)

Sheesh! What a crazy year. But as with all the rest of it, I know this is the Lord's problem not mine. If He wants me to write, He'll have to work all this out.

Grace,
Karen

To Write a Good Book

Back when I was thinking about what makes a good goal, I asked myself what my goal was for writing, and the first thought that came to mind was "I want to write a good book." A few moments' thought led me to the conclusion that this is really not a good goal.

For one thing, what is a good book, anyway? Who gets to decide? Me? Other people? God? Well, yes, God, but how can I know if He thinks it's a good book? I suppose if He was intimately involved in its writing you'd have to conclude He thought it a "good book" but this whole concept just seems bizarre when you think of it as from God's viewpoint. He called me to write the thing. He's promised to provide me everything I need to do it. He's promised to enable me to do it, and I believe He does so. So... if all that is true, than "good book" just seems irrelevant. If it's what He wanted me to do, then it must be good.

And here's the corollary: If I am filled with the Spirit and writing from a soul prepared with doctrine and with craft (preparation He provided) then it would be impossible to write a bad book. That doesn't mean people will necessarily like it. Some might. The majority might not. Many, in fact, might reject it outright or with general disinterest. Is that a bad thing?
God had Jeremiah write some things that his "readers" didn't much like, either, and in fact, outright rejected. They made him a laughingstock, and sang mocking songs about him. Moses said things at God's leading that his congregation didn't like, either. A few of them tried to depose him. Paul said things in the power of the Spirit that people disliked so much they stoned him. And last we have Jesus, the only perfect man, who did only good, and the people rejected him, chose the criminal Barabbas over Him and crucified him. So you obviously cannot base the value of your work on its public reception.

That's hard stuff for a perfectionist mind that builds its worth on what others think. But it's true stuff and the perfectionist, as I've already established, is deluded and masochistic. So "writing a good book" is not a good goal, nor even an achievable goal. I must come up with another, better goal. How about, "write a book"? It's measurable, it's doable and you know exactly when you've accomplished it!

Grace,
Karen

Plan Z

I love how the Lord is just pounding in the lesson that it's HIS plan, not mine. That He wants me to be flexible, not fuss when my plan gets demolished. Even when it's plan Z for the day (plans A - Y having previously been demolished).

This being a Monday after a very full three day weekend (my hubby gets every other Friday off), I shouldn't have expected to get much done writingwise, but having done nothing since Thursday I was hoping... Alas, it was one thing after another including a hail storm with lightning late in the afternoon. I finally got started writing around 4:45pm, planning to work until 7:30 or even 7:45 since my husband would not be home until late. I'd worked an hour when he suddenly appeared. The rain had canceled his pole vault practice. No problem though, because he would do his practice in the street. I went back to work and around 6:24, bam! The power went out and unlike last summer, this time I was plunged into total darkness.

I groped my way through the house to the flashlight, then went around trying to find our puck lights. Finally found one, but couldn't turn it on. Was it my hands, weakened from tendinitis? Or were the batteries out? It took me some time to figure out how to take the back off the thing, and when I did, I discovered one of the batteries had leaked all over it. So I gave up on that and went to candles and the petzl head lamp and sat down to read a book.

Then my husband came back and we went out to eat at the Mongolian Barbecue where you put together your own bowl of fresh/raw ingredients, and they cook it for you. It was fun and yummy. From there we cruised back toward home, but since the power was still off, we went shopping. I picked up a couple of Christmas gifts and some other things we've been needing. Then it was home again, and finally the power was back on. Just in time for bed!

You just never know what a day will bring.

Grace,
Karen

The Need for Blood

I recently read a book about a civilization set in a pre-Messianic times, and one of the things that struck me – bothered me, truth be told – was that there were no animal sacrifices. God was portrayed as powerful and loving, but His righteousness and justice were completely ignored.

There was one line where the stones of the demon temples were blood-stained from the rites of child sacrifice, whereas no blood stained the stones of God’s temple. And yet… and yet, it DID. Much blood stained the floor of the Tabernacle and later the Temple. When you consider the Levitical offerings of ram and bull and ox and goat and lamb, and the fact that the head of every family was to bring an offering to the Temple on the holy days, you realize that's going to result in lot of blood. The beast was tied on its back to the altar and its throat cut so that the blood spurted out. There would have been blood everywhere. On the priests, on the stones, on the altar. And it was supposed to be that way. The pure and helpless and unblemished and innocent white lamb, bright red blood spurting out with every beat of its heart. It’s a shocking picture for us. I suspect it was shocking for them…

And one thing was sure: it was very clear a creature was bleeding and dying for the sins of the person who had brought it. A death was required. Just as a death was required from the very beginning. The first thing God did after Adam and the woman fell was to give them the promise of a redeemer, and the second thing was to kill at least one animal and more likely two to provide for them the skins to cover the nakedness brought about by their sin.

Abel’s blood sacrifice of a lamb from his flocks was required and accepted while the work of Cain’s hands, even the best of his human efforts was rejected. We know because God is fair and because of the way he questioned Cain after his offering was rejected, that Cain had been instructed as to what sort of offering was needed. No doubt he resented having to go to Abel to get a lamb for his own sacrifice and thought God would like it better if he did a lot of work and offered something his own efforts had produced. He didn’t understand the point of the sacrifice at all – not to give something of ourselves, but to obey the command so we would understand that one day God was going to provide that ultimate sacrifice – the perfect seed of the woman who would crush the serpent’s head.

By blotting out all the blood-sacrifice imagery of the OT, we lose the impact of what Christ did. The life of the animal is in its blood, says , but the life of man is in his soul and spirit. Jesus didn’t have to have his throat cut like an OT lamb or ox, because he wasn’t dying physically for our sins. The blood spurting was to make a picture of the death. The substitutionary and spiritual death He would one day die for all of us, Jew and Gentile, believer and unbeliever alike.

Why is this needed? Why does it matter if a story left this out? I’m sure some readers wouldn't care, and others would even be grateful to have been spared such gruesome imagery. But for me, it circumvents the most vital aspect of salvation, the whole reason Jesus had to come. God does love us, and does want to give to us and have a relationship with all of us. He is love; it’s part of His essence. But He is also perfect righteousness and perfect justice and He cannot compromise any aspect of His essence or he would cease to be God.

So even though God loves us, if He were to ignore our sin, his righteousness would be compromised, His thwarted. So here we are, sinful people. He loves us and wants to give to us, be He cannot because His righteousness demands that sin be punished, destroyed, separated from Him… put to death. That’s what death is, really, a separation. We are born spiritually dead – spiritually cut off from God. We have no relationship with Him as sinners born and we cannot establish one with Him on our own. He has to do it.

So He sent His son, who put aside the powers and rights of his deity to take on the form of a man, walk this earth for 33 years and then die spiritually on the cross outside Jerusalem when the sins of every person that ever lived or ever will were poured out on him and judged. Righteousness was satisfied by this payment, and Justice declared God free to bless us – but only because of what Jesus had done. So yes, He loves us and he seeks us and draws us to Him, but only through Jesus’s work on the Cross. He offers us an eternal relationship with Him if we will acknowledge we are sinners in need of a savior and believe that Jesus is that savior, the perfect one who paid the debt we owed and couldn’t pay.

Karen

Holy Days

When God became a man, He took a HUGE step down from where He was. He chose that humiliation because of His great love for us and because it was the only way to give us eternal life and bring us out of the darkness in which we were born. A darkness which was our total lack of relationship with Him, and our total helplessness to do anything about. It was the biggest problem any of us would ever face, and one God solved without any work on our part.

How ironic, then, that at this time of year, during the holidays that are devoted to recalling this great sacrifice on His part, this work of His on our behalf, is when we get most frantic about doing things. We go into overdrive -- gotta get this done, gotta get that done, gotta go here, do this, send that... In fact, on top of all our regular activities we add more -- holiday preparations, parties, activities, shopping, decorating, etc. At least, that's what I realized I had done today, even as I wondered why I didn't seem to have enough time for it all!

A holiday, though, is a Holy Day. A day set apart from the others as special -- to relax, to remember or to consider and honor something or someone. If anything we should stop doing at least some of our regular things so we can concentrate not just on preparing for the "holiday," but also on the reason. And of course, the reason for the Christmas season is the Lord. More than any other, this holiday should not be spent out of fellowship with Him as we enslave ourselves to the details of life.

Yet this special "set apart" time seems anything but set apart. We leap into frantic mode, buzzing from one task or activity to the next with hardly a breath between before falling into bed at night. Oh, and let's not leave out the tension, stress and frenzy of lashing ourselves as we try to get all this stuff done and inevitably fail.

This is not God's plan for us. Yet, it's become a confusing time. Routine is altered and compressed. Things don't happen according to plan. The weather intervenes. Needed items break at the most inopportune time. Worst of all, priorities get muddled. What is it that is really the most important thing to get done today?

I decided today that I didn't want my season to be one of frenzy, but of peace, quietness, and focus on the Lord. There's always time to do the Will of God, I just needed to know what that was. So midmorning, when nothing was going as I had planned -- starting with when I overslept by an hour -- I switched over to "step by step consultation mode." I recalled my basic priorities (Bible class, morning routine, exercise, sleep) and purposed to take things one day at a time, to make it a habit to go to the Lord when I got confused and ask Him what I should do next.

As a result, I got quite a bit done today, some of it what I'd planned, some not. But I maintained the peace and quietness of staying in fellowship, and that's really the only thing that matters.

Grace and peace,
Karen

Messiah Sing-In

Monday night we went to the annual Tucson Messiah Sing-In which, according to what they said, is the longest running community sing-in in the nation. In the sing-in Handel's Messiah is performed with a small orchestra and four soloists; the audience serves as the chorus. The Tucson Sing-In has about 1200 in the audience/chorus. Some of them have been going all 31 years of the Sing-In's history. I sang the Messiah first in college, then with a small town chorus up in Northern Arizona. When we returned to Tucson I attended the Tucson Sing-In when it was still in its infancy. Once I started home schooling, though, I didn't return until last year.

I love it. All the words are straight out of Scripture, much of it from the Old Testament: Isaiah, Haggai, Psalms, Malachi. It lays out the prophecies of Christ's coming, the promises to the Jews that a Savior would be sent and then it brings in the New Testament verses that confirm it. Ending with the fabulous Hallelujah chorus and then the shiver-producing Worthy is the Lamb (that was slain), it's awesome.

This morning when I woke up it occurred to me that in singing the Messiah, the chorus is like the Body of Christ. First there are four different parts designed for four different types of voices -- soprano, alto, tenor and bass. You need to find the part your voice is ranged to sing and sing with that group. That's where you're going to sound the best.

Once you get in your correct group, you have to sing the part you have been assigned. Of course first you have to know what the part is. Since I've been practicing my part by itself for a month or so, I've found that it wasn't always what I'd thought it was. Sometimes the notes weren't at all intuitive. And it didn't always sound as good or as fun as the soprano part. Still, alto is my part and it has a place in the whole. And the better I learned it the more I came to like it.

As a result of learning your part, when you get to the performance, you will be prepared to sing it. That may not be the case with everyone else who comes. In fact, though I did practice, I didn't do nearly enough to meet the challenges of singing in the big group. For one thing, there were others who didn't practice at all, and some who'd never been to the Sing-In before. They knew the Messiah from listening to it whole, which is a lot different from singing a part. Some people could read the music, while others had just muddled along, trying to guess what they should be singing. That means that when you are singing, those around may not sing because they don't know what they're supposed to sing. Others sing notes of their own choosing, feeling they have to sing something. Still others sing the wrong notes, thinking they are right. And of course some are the old pros who have it down pat and don't have to have a group of other singers to help them along the way.

I saw parallels to living the Christian life in all the above. One of the things that really hit me was how hard it is to sing when you're the only one doing it. You wonder if you have made a mistake and shouldn't be singing, even though you've prepared and are pretty sure you should be. In retrospect I realized that most of the people around me weren't singing because they didn't know what to sing, not because I was singing when I shouldn't be (though sometimes I was...) I learned also that you need to keep your own time and not depend on cues from other parts of the chorus because you might not be able to hear the cue you were listening for. Also, the director doesn't always tell you when to come in, so that's not something you can rely on either.

Sometimes I wasn't surrounded by silence. Sometimes the people around me, or a particular voice in my periphery would be sounding heartily -- just not the same notes I was singing. When that happened, I always felt a pull to match with it, even if I thought the notes I was singing were right. Sometimes my notes were right and sometimes they weren't. But even when I was certain I was on track, it was still hard to hold my own.

The solution to all of this? More practice. You really have to know what you are supposed to be singing, and you have to have it down. You have to be confident in what you've learned and practiced. In the confusion of the whole chorus, with people who are at all positions on the scale of knowledge and expertise, you can't afford to rely on others too much. And you have to be ready to sing out what you know to be right even if no one around you is singing with you. Though if you're lucky the voices of the old hands down in the front rows may come drifting back to comfort you and encourage you to stay the course...

Just like learning and applying doctrine in the spiritual life.

Grace,
Karen

Unhurried Tinkering

"Good rewriting demands easy, unhurried tinkering with words. Each unsuccessful try eliminates another wrong solution and leads you to the right one. I can’t emphasize too strongly how important this is, the fact that writing leads to writing, that failed attempts lead to eventual success, that the solution to a rewriting problem is made up of all the attempts that led nowhere." - Dorothy Bryant, novelist (I made no note of where I got this quote from when I copied it into my journal).

And here's John Gardner again, whom I've quoted before...

"Fiction ... begins with a rough sketch. One gets down the characters and their behavior any way one can, knowing the sentences will have to be revised, knowing the characters’ actions may change. It makes no difference how clumsy the sketch is – sketches are not supposed to be polished and elegant. All that matters is that, going over and over the sketch as if one had all eternity for finishing one’s story, one improves now this sentence, now that..."

Just more examples of taking Baby steps.

Karen

Notes on the Process

Where did the week go? I don't know. Nor do I know why I kept forgetting to write a blog post until I was too tired, but... it went. And I forgot.

Last Thursday a storm blew in, the first in a long time. It rained in the morning and again in the evening. I enjoyed that -- I always enjoy the rain -- and I also had a bit of a breakthrough in my writing process. In the days before I'd set myself to get to work, using the timer and, eschewing perfectionism, determined that I would write out a sketch of the notes I'd come up with for a scene. I did it and was quite pleased with myself. What I wrote was bad, just as I'd said it could be.

So then the next day, Thursday, I got myself behind the computer at 9:30am (my new tentative time to get there - Flylady's routines are working splendidly) but instead of pressing on, I was just dismayed and confused, upset, hamstrung. The scenes I had written the day before weren't right. And I just had to get them right. I had to do that right then, on Thursday. But every time I looked at the work, my thoughts would snarl and I would run away.

So I went back and reviewed earlier entries and recalled -- duh! -- I was taking BABY steps. When I wrote that draft, I was letting it be completely bad. Of course it would be flawed and grossly imperfect now. Nor was there time to let the perfectionism take over, either. Baby steps needed to be applied on subsequent drafts just as much as on the first draft. Every day, in every project, it seems. Just like I'm not going to get the house decluttered or completely cleaned in one day, so I'm not going to get the chapter, or even the scene right in one day. In fact, it almost never works that way. Whatever I do today, the work is better, clearer, closer to what it will be when it's done.

So I decided to set a specific, concrete goal for the day: I would go through the material I'd written paragraph by paragraph and note briefly what was there and any thoughts that occurred as I did so. When I began to do the work, though, I suddenly became aware of the awful negative, mocking tone of my thoughts as I analyzed. When I noted something illogical or out of the blue, my approach with myself was critical, dismissive and mocking. "What an idiotic development!" my inner voice would say. "WHY in the world would THAT happen?!" And so on. Since Flylady has addressed this aspect of the whole perfectionism syndrome -- be aware of the negative voices in your head and shut them down -- I think I was better able to be aware of them. And being aware of them helped me to tone them down.

Instead of heated denunciations, I was able to ask myself why such and such might have happened, or what could be the result of something that I'd written as occurring. I think that was very helpful, not least because you don't give yourself such a feeling that it's all horrible and there's absolutely no hope. The very language you use with yourself reminds you it's a process, a series of steps and adjustments and it's not all going to get done today.

Having done the analysis, I did a summary of it and discovered what the problems were: contradictions and/or nullifications in the dialog, no stakes, no goals, no consequences for any of the supposed threats and no specifics. Seeing all that was great because now I knew what I needed to do. Lay out the contradictions and decide which way I wanted to go. Set up some goals and stakes and consequences. And work on being specific.

Best of all, I did all that in 3 hours.

Have a great week!
Karen

Zoolights

The local Reid Park Zoo, which is not far from our house, sponsors a zoolights program each year around the holidays. They decorate the zoo with lights, trees, blow up Santas, bears and snowmen and invite the public in to stroll about after dark. The animals, of course, are all in their beds.

On members' nights, they also provide entertainment -- quartets of singers, choirs, a jazz band, a harpist and, our favorite, a steel drum group. They serve hot chocolate and cookies, have a snow machine set up and the kids can visit Santa. My mother and I have gone every year for a long time. In years past when they sponsored group-decorated Christmas trees, our homeschool group participated, and I was the leader of that project. It was a lot of fun.

I took the camera tonight and got some not so great pictures, though they capture the feel of the event. At right is a picture of the long line of trees along one of the zoo's paths, their lights reflecting in the water of the elephants' pond in the foreground.

Today was the first since the Tuesday before Thanksgiving that I got any work at all in on Black Box. I don't know what happened, but though I tried Monday and Tuesday, I could not get myself to work. It was one thing distracting me after another.

But today was good, and I'm hoping tomorrow will be, too.

Grace,
Karen

Next

Recently I finished reading Michael Crichton's Next, another book on my list of novels for research. Like his previous book, State of Fear, this one takes on an emerging and increasingly political scientific problem, that of genetic engineering. Like State of Fear, this one has a significant bibliography of intriguing books in the back, as well as the author's conclusions as to what should be done about some of the problems raised in the book.

The first is that we stop patenting genes, which seems to me to have been a harebrained notion from the start. As Crichton points out, a gene is a fact of nature, not something someone invented. It's like patenting a disease or turtles. Or, noses, the examples he gives. If noses were to be patented then everything to do with noses would require a license from the patent holder -- glasses, cosmetics, breathe-right strips, medications, etc.

I didn't like this one quite as well as State of Fear, because it was much more focused on its technical subject and the potential consequences than the characters. And while I found the subject fascinating, there were a lot of characters -- at least fourteen viewpoint characters that I can recall off the top of my head. And in the end I rooted most for the transgenic chimpanzee and parrot. I especially enjoyed the parrot, Gerard, who could do math. He was very cool.

I made notes as I read, some directly applicable to Black Box, some just for personal interest. Like,

"Persistent hype lends unwarranted credulity to the wildest claims. For example, stem cell research is being touted as the coming miracle. Because of all the hype, people believe miraculous cures are just around the corner... and so do scientist." (Who are people, too, after all, and just as subject to hype as the next person; maybe even more subject to it if it happens to coincide with their own hopes and dreams of finding those cures)

"Scientific institutions love hype -- it brings grants. Yale, Stanford and Johns-Hopkins promote hype as much as Exxon or Ford. So do individual researchers at those institutions."

"Science is as corruptible a human activity as any other. Its practitioners aren't saints; they're human beings and they do what human beings do -- lie, cheat, steal from one another, sue, hide data, fake data, overstate their own importance and denigrate opposing views unfairly."

This latter makes me think of American Gangster, which ended with a note at the end to say that when Richie Roberts finally brought Frank Lucas to justice, Lucas agreed to help him root out the corruption in the New York Police force at the time -- in exchange for a lighter sentence, naturally. It turned out that they indicted something like two-thirds of the drug enforcement section of the police department. Of all people, you expect police -- and military personnel -- to be upright and have integrity. And I suppose you would expect it from doctors and pastors. And since scientists are allegedly on a quest to discover the truth about how things work, you would think they would be especially scrupulous about objectivity and honesty. But that's only if you forget that they, like all the rest of us, have sin natures and are vulnerable to greed, pressure, intimidation, and the prospect of becoming fabulously successful. Also arrogance, stubbornness, bias, subjectivity, blindness and delusion.

It was interesting to see Crichton mention this. Especially in light of the book I'm reading now, Intuition, also about science, and taking all this to a new and intriguing level. But more on that later.

Grace,
Karen

Wild Turkey and American Gangster

Well, the Thanksgiving holiday is over. We had a nice one. I cooked a wild turkey this year. I don't think I'll do it again for Thanksgiving. It tasted okay, and didn't have a lot of fat on it, but the meat was a little dry and a little tough, and the skin was just yucky. Not crispy and good, but thick and rubbery. Also the dark portions of the drumlegs and thighs were veined with tendons and connective tissue that made it harder to eat. Didn't taste bad, but not as good as a Butterball.

I read in today's paper that the reason chickens and turkeys have white breast meat but dark leg meat is because they hardly do any flying. Muscles that are used a lot are usually dark with blood. Muscles that are fast twitch muscles, used for sudden bursts -- like a chicken's quick flight away from the dog -- are white. So duck meat is all dark, because ducks fly and swim and move around a lot. Wild turkeys run and jump all over the place, which is why their leg meat is darker and tougher...

We also went out with our movie group on Friday night to see American Gangster with Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe. Excellent. I really liked it. The lead actors were fantastic. But the story, which is based on a true story -- the principles are still alive, in fact -- was fascinating. Frank Lucas, the Denzel Washington character, presented a chilling picture of the way Satan is. The one thing I dislike most about fantasy films is that they always portray the evil creatures/people as hideous, repulsive with bad teeth and overactive salivary glands. Of course, Satan's not like that at all, but rather the most beautiful creature ever to come from the hand of God. And though he is fallen, he still has that beauty. He is still incredibly attractive, charismatic, charming, wealthy and powerful. He values authority (as evidenced by Ephesians 6 where the run down of his organizational structure is given) -- so long as it's his own! -- and he has no compassion whatsoever for those under him. He uses them and casts them aside when their use runs out or they displease him.

I can't get over how well that was portrayed by Denzel Washington as he brought Frank Lucas to life. Right down to his ability to drag all his family into his corruption. Some of the reviewers I've read seem to struggle with his goodness -- he's always well dressed, poised, almost always in control and amiable, unless you cross him. He lives in luxury, beauty, order. He provides order to the streets, gives graciously to the poor, takes his elderly mother to church every Sunday... and can whack a guy at the drop of a hat. Put the gun to his forehead and pull the trigger without a blink. How can this be? some seem to ask.

Consider this quote from a review by Frank Wilkins for Reeltalk:

"We're disgusted at seeing small children wallow in the filth of their heroin-addicted parents, yet we can't help but be charmed by his aristocratic courtesy, amiable nature, and impeccable appearance. Washington is so convincing, we're forced into an uncomfortable struggle with our own moral beliefs. Is a crime-riddled world acceptable if it's kept neat and orderly by a man of wealth and integrity?"-- An American Godfather by Frank Wilkins, Reeltalk

No it's not acceptable. What is neat and orderly about addiction? About all the thousands of people who died from using the product Lucas was selling? The children left orphaned because of it? And how can he ever be regarded as a man of integrity given what he's doing? His facade was nice, but underneath was evil, arrogance, and self-absorption. Just like Satan, who goes forth as an angel of light and who wants to be like God. Not the opposite of God, but to take God's place, and in his very independence and self-will is the essence of what evil really is. Not sin. Not nastiness, but independence. And the kind that tries to be good -- apart from God -- is the worst of all.

Russell Crowe's character was, on the other hand, not neat and orderly. His Richie Roberts was slovenly, and his personal life a mess -- divorce, custody case, promiscuity -- even as he maintained the highest level of integrity when it came to his job as a police detective. I enjoyed the contrasts, and the way the two men were set against each other. The good vs the evil, but done in a way that makes you sort through what things really matter, and what things don't.

The acting was awesome, the sets fascinating, the whole cast fit together well. There was violence, yes, but not the gross out, blood and brains spraying everywhere every five minutes of some gangster films -- this was more subdued and did not happen that often. There were also yucky scenes of needles going into arms, legs, whatever; naked girls processing the drugs in the slum lab (naked so they couldn't steal anything); the ravages of drug addiction shown pretty clearly; quite a few bad words; and some rather active dogs-on-the-street-corner sorts of sex scenes. Not for children, as its R rating indicates. But it's a movie that fascinates, that held my attention, mostly riveted, for the entire two hours and 40 minutes, and left me with much to think about. I think I might like to see it again.

Grace,
Karen

A Long Way

"Being thus arrived in a good harbor and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of heaven, who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean, and delivered them from all the perils and miseries thereof, again to set their feet on the firm and stable earth, their proper element..."

Yet, "this poor people's present condition..." was hardly promising. "...no friends to welcome them, nor inns to entertain or refresh their weatherbeaten bodies, no houses, or much less towns to repair to, to seek for succour..."

With winter storms howling around the tip of Cape Cod, "whichever way they turned their eyes (save upward to the heavens) they could have little solace or content in respect of any outward objects. For summer being done, all things stand upon them with a weatherbeaten face; and the whole country, full of woods and thickets, represented a wild ad savage yhue. If they looked behind them, there was a mighty ocean which they had passed, and was now as a main bar and gulf to separate them from all the civil parts of the world... Let it also be considered what weak hope of supply and succor they left behind them... What could now sustain them but the Spirit of God and His grace?"

~William Bradford, Of Plimoth Plantation, Wright and Potter Edition (Bradford's History of the Plymoth Settlement 1608 - 1647)

Oh, how far we’ve come!

This season may we take time to reflect on all the blessings, security and comforts we too often take for granted.


Happy Thanksgiving!
Karen

Perfectionism is Nasty

There are SOOO many doctrines against perfectionism! Or maybe I should say so many of the elements (ways of thinking) that combine to produce perfectionism are so wrong!

Like, Perfectionists focus on the end result instead of the process. They tend to live in fear and doubt (out of the innate knowledge that they're very unlikely to produce the perfect product their warped standards demand). And guilt (which comes from the inevitable failure to attain their unrealistic goals). They live in "shoulds": "Oh, I should've worked on Box today! I didn't. I'm baaad..."

Except on the day that I wrote this, I did work on it. I got the notes for the next scene out and pulled together all the info on the viewpoint character forit. But no, that's not enough. I should've done more. Now I'm going to be behind and might not finish in time.

What is that last line? It's worry. What is worry? A SIN! Stop worrying about anything, says Phil 4:6.

"I am not behind." (A Flylady saying) "And God is not interested in me catching up." (a paraphrase of a Flylady saying) He doesn't need me to catch up. He just wants me to stop beating myself up with guilt, confess it and get back in the plan.

Perfectionism is just innately wrong. It's arrogance. It's thinking you are something when you're nothing. It's thinking you can do things perfectly, which is a lie, or that things depend on your performance, which is a lie. It's setting up your own standards and believing that if you fulfill them, then you are good and God is pleased. Total legalism.

The idea that you must do things perfectly to win approval of other people or even yourself is completely against grace and the word, which says we're all dust and we can do nothing apart from Him. Everything done in the power of the Spirit has worth. Everything done in the power of the flesh is utterly without worth. And things done for the wrong reasons = things done in the power of the flesh. Like desiring the favor of men; like wanting to feel approved and worthwhile because of your accomplishments when the Bible says you're already approved and worthwhile in God's eyes because of HIS accomplishments; like thinking that blessing and success and whatever it is you want actually comes from your efforts rather than the grace of God. Perfectionism is a terrible insult to God and His grace.

But I realize it's not going to be easily set aside. Mental habits don't change overnight, or because you want them to. You have to confront them daily and replace them with truth, over time. In some cases you have to turn to a different way of thinking entirely. (Like how do you focus on the process and not the end result? but that's for another post)

Grace,
Karen

Goal Work

I'm pleased to report that I finished Chapter 10 on Friday! Hooray. On Saturday I pulled out all my notes on the next possible scene. I'm still wrestling with how to assign myself good, attainable goals, especially when things are as amorphous as they are now. One thing I've thought is that I will try to work for three hours every day on the book.

Another thought I've had is to break the book down into sections, like Flylady's zones, where you work on each room/chapter for a specified period of time (say a week) and when the time is up you move on, knowing you'll come back to it later. In the case of the house zones, they repeat every month. In the case of the book's chapters... well, coming back to them could be when I go through the next draft. Probably in a couple of months.

It sounds good on paper. I'm not sure I can do it, though. I'm pretty sure I could start out writing something and making myself stop at week's end. What I'm not sure of is whether I could keep going with it. When I've tried this in the past I've eventually run into a wall where no matter what I did I couldn't write. Or if I wrote it bored me to tears.

I see I shall have to work on this...

Oh, and I touched base with my editors at Bethany House on Friday and I have a new deadline: March 31, 2008 with a planned release in the Spring of '09. That's a whole year and a half away. Which is nice -- it gives me time to work, where I haven't had that in awhile!

Grace,
Karen

Back to the Biofreeze

Today I saw Dr. Meaney, my orthopedic surgeon, for what I hope is the last time. My arm is doing well, and I should have full recovery of my range of motion by the first of the year. To celebrate I came home, worked a bit on chapter 10 -- I think it's very close to done -- then went to the Y. My arm was doing so well there, when I got home again, I decided to do the set of arm exercises I'd forgotten to do at lunch time. I was quite vigorous in my pushing, figuring, I suppose, that I wouldn't wait for the first of the year to get that range of motion back, but regin it all today.

For that idiocy, my hand is now throbbing for the first time in a couple of weeks. And my right hand has been sore for days from too much housework after next to none for way too long! So, I'm walking about with two flippers again <<>> and am now going to go and put on some Biofreeze and ice the thing in search of relief.

Which is why this post is so short. Have a great weekend.

Karen

Mopping the Ceiling

I'm really tired tonight. Had a big day, with lots of things in it. I had to do my morning routine, including arm exercises, then get in some writing time, then more arm exercises, so I could leave at 11:30 to get the car washed and then take my mother and sister to an art show. From there it was off to my physical therapy appointment, hurry home to walk around the park and get back in time for Bible class... With little time to spare between activities.

I had it all mapped out. Not surprisingly, God had other plans. I'd just finished my routine, was on the verge of going to the office to start writing when I accidentally dislodged a bottle of root beer from its six-pack carton in the laundry room and it fell to the floor. Amazingly it didn't break, but the fall built so much internal pressure it popped the lid off and sprayed the kitchen. Root beer shot across the floor to the opposite side of the room, doused the stove, the fridge, the cabinets, the walls... It also puddled into the doormat beneath the bottle and spattered the carpet in the adjoining bedroom. what a mess!

I cleaned it up, hosed off the mat, then found root beer on TOP of the microwave. How did it get up there? I wondered. Then I looked up. My white kitchen ceiling had transformed itself into something out of Carlsbad Caverns -- a brown wash, gathering itself into an array of stalagtite drops, which looked as if they'd fall to my newly cleaned floor/microwave, etc, at any moment. Aaack! I grabbed the mop I'd just used on the floor, rinsed out the head and mopped my ceiling. I've never done that before. It works rather well.

Since I had to move the dog crate to get the mat out so I could take it outside to hose it down, I decided I should use the opportunity to clean under that as well, even though it was root beer free. Then about two hours later, when the mat had dried, I had to put it all back.

I lost about an hour to all that, but the rest of the day went more or less as scheduled. I'm starting not to be so bothered by things like that. Even though it undoes a lot of what I'd just done, or puts me back on my schedule, I'm realizing that it doesn't matter what kind of obstacles come up. The system is solid and if I just keep with it, all will get back to normal eventually.

And as it turned out, I did get in some work on chapter 10, despite it all. I'm doing revisions right now, changing the direction I was going with the scene, and got about half way through it before I had to stop. And I have the next few scenes after this outlined. The 15 minutes on the timer method is working well (for writing and decluttering!). In addition to getting me started I use the timer to remind myself to get up, stretch a bit, walk around, and then come back -- which is good for my hands. I don't always do that after the first 15 minutes, but always after the second.

Sometimes I even use it to write a blog post! And now, the time is nearly up and I need to get ready for bed. I have high hopes that tomorrow morning will proceed more smoothly than today, and I will get at least 2 hours of work in. Maybe even three. But I don't want to get unrealistic in my goal-setting. LOL.

Grace,
Karen

Sasquatch

Last year (2006) when we went to the Oregon conference, we took a trip to the beach, which was very different from the one we took this year. Then it was cold, windy, so misty it fogged your glasses. We left much sooner than we expected because everyone was freezing. But one of us managed to catch this picture of Sasquatch!

Well... maybe not. But we were in the Pacific Northwest.

I've followed the Sasquatch saga off and on since I was a teen and the film footage captured by Roger Patterson on October 20th, 1967, of a bigfoot in Northern California had just come out. I went through a period of being intensely interested in all things weird -- UFO's, the Loch Ness Monster, Sasquatch and Yeti.

On the one hand I think maybe they do exist. The habitat they are said to live in is rugged and remote for the most part. And it's not as if they're never seen, just not seen at the right time to prove their existence. And proving their existence would only come through actually capturing or killing one of them. If they are as smart as some suggest, maybe this would be difficult enough that it's not happened yet.

Anyway, I like the idea that they're out there, and while I think Patterson's footage doesn't look very realistic, despite the claims of some "experts" that it does (there's no zipper, they couldn't have made a costume like that in those days and some people claim to see muscle movement), the legend is fun to contemplate. For example, maybe they're descended from the Nephilim!

Okay, true, we have no record of Nephilim being hairy and living like animals, but ... perhaps it's a result of inbreeding! LOL.

If you want to see stills from the footage and maybe read a little bit (or a whole lot) about the Bigfoot case, check out the Crypto-Bipedal-Primatology website, which offers a "Study of Unclassified Bipedal Primates: SASQUATCH"

It think the thing that I find most interesting is the whole attempt to prove it's true, when proponents really don't have the one thing that would nail it all down: a body. Which, of course, doesn't mean it's not true. We only just got actual footage of a giant squid in action, so it's possible -- likely -- there's still quite a bit about the world and its creatures we don't know.

Have fun!
Karen

Realistic Goals

The perfectionist sets standards and goals that are unrealistic and unreachable. A good goal is specific (so you'll know when you reached it) and attainable -- that is, some action you can actually to to attain a certain result.

The goal of emptying out the closet and throwing away the things I no longer want is specific and something I can do. However, Flylady would say that goal is still too big. Better is, 'I'm going to work on the left side of the shelf in the closet for 15 minutes.'

I think I understand that, but now I want to translate that to writing. I was noticing last week (before I was struck with this realization of perfectionism) that my writing goals for the day had gotten vague and grandiose: "Work on Chapter 10." That could be anything from writing ten pages of prose to staring out the window to finishing the chapter entirely. (In fact, I think much of the time that was the hope that lurked at the back of my mind when I set that very poor goal.)

The reason you make the goal specific is so you'll know when you've completed it. "Work on Chapter Ten" could conceivably be considered finished after giving it one second of thought. Or, at the other end of the spectrum, only when the chapter is finally completed to my liking, which could take weeks. On any given day I could work all day and still not complete the goal. Which is probably why I so often feel like I'd accomplished nothing, even though I'd worked for hours. Because I've set the wrong goal. Or set no conscious goal at all, relying merely on that "work on Chapter 10" thing.

So this week, I'm going to set more specific and reachable goals. "Work on chapter 10 for 3 hours." That can be broken down into 15 minute increments: "During this 15 minutes I will read through the beginning of Ch 10 which I wrote on Friday and make whatever notes or changes as occur to me." Or, "I will address the notes I've made, one by one." Or, "I will make the changes I've proposed," or "write one paragraph of description of this place."

Small achievable goals. And with the timer going off every fifteen minutes, I will also remember to stop and stretch!

Grace,
Karen

Perfectionism Revisited

"Perfectionists tell themselves that their determination to be
perfect will win success..." (From Perfectionism: A Double-Edged Sword)

I know that I cannot personally be perfect, and don't try to be. I know that in much of my life I'm not going to do things perfectly and I'm fine with that. I try to do the best I can, but hey, we're not perfect. Even in the Christian life, I'm well aware of how weak and stupid I am, and how easily I fall and fail and have to get back up again. There's freedom in all that.

But there was one little spot... maybe one of those little rooms that Eph 4:27 references in "do not give the devil and opportunity" ("opportunity" translated from topos which means a spot, a location, a room). A place in your thinking where you are blind to what you're doing. Those motivations we don't always know we have, or that we've slipped back into.

One of those little areas where I was operating in full blown perfectionism and didn't even know it. If I could just come up with the most scintillating plot, exciting, compelling, profound, why then the book would be successful. If I fail to do that, of course the book would not be successful. It all depends on me. I have to do it.

I thought I had already jettisoned that nonsense from my thinking and yet, here it was, back again. Like those nasty spirits in Poltergeist. "They're ba-ack..." Ick.

Of course all this is a battle of thoughts. Thoughts like that must be confronted and brought into captivity to the mind of Christ. And the mind of Christ says I am already accepted by the only one who matters -- God, Himself -- and that God is fully able to bless me with adundant success if He chooses, success that would have nothing to do with my striving for the perfect plot. One look at the industry would show me books I don't think have good plots being wildly successful while books I think have good plots fade into the background. So... the whole thing is just nutty. Especially when I let it push me into procrastinating and then into guilt and fear and all the rest of it.

** I wrote the preceding paragraphs on Tuesday, figuring that Wednesday and Thursday I would proceed in dealing smoothly with this newly identified relapse into perfectionism. Of course, that approach is perfectionistic in itself. And there were so many things that happened in these last two days that... I didn't really have the chance. One thing I did realize is the importance of babysteps, as Flylady says. Babysteps in the writing as well as in all the other things. But how can I apply the concept of BabySteps to writing?

That's for next week, by which time, hopefully, I'll have figured it out.

Have a great weekend,
Karen

Perfectionism: A double edged sword

I know I have perfectionistic tendencies, and I've fought with them before, but mostly I thought I'd overcome them. Then I started reading the Flylady essays, and she mentions perfectionism and its ugly head quite often. Perfectionism is why we start decluttering the closet for fifteen minutes and then can't stop. Why we wait so long for things to get dirty, because we need the satisfaction we get from the big contrast our efforts make -- nasty transformed to nice.

And I'll admit, I have had a lot of trouble stopping after my timer goes off. Yesterday I went through some stuff, the timer went off and it took me more than double that time just to get all the stuff thrown away, bagged up, etc. I should have just stopped and done all that throwing and bagging the next day but I didn't. I felt compelled to get it gone because it felt so good.

It just didn't feel so good later when I'd used up much of my time for writing. Using up much of my time for writing has been happening a lot. I've not been overly concerned most of the time, but I have noticed it. I have noticed that I'd rather clean or dejunk the closet than get down to business. Or research. Or make birthday cards. Or, lately, get organized. For awhile I told myself it was nothing. But more and more I've been thinking it was something I should address.

Today I did it again. Used up my time on this and that (all worthwhile pursuits) and then sat down about an hour before lunchtime. I finished up chapter 9 and then was faced with 10 and a bunch of questions I had no answers to and ... kept thinking of other things to do. Finally I stopped and went to the Lord because I was pretty sure I was sinning, but I wasn't sure how.

He showed me right away: fear I wouldn't write a good enough book, self-condemnation because I wasn't getting anything down, implacability toward every idea that I came up with. They were all bad. They were all mundane. They weren't special and I needed special.

This immediately reminded me of a testimony that just came through the Flylady email loop where the woman couldn't seem to get down to the business of establishing her daily routines because she was spending all her time researching on the net, trying to find a better/the best calendar to keep track of her activities. Finally realizing that was wasted effort she stopped... only to get sidetracked again trying to find a better/the best feather duster...

Instead of calendars and feather dusters, I was trying to come up with a better/best event, string of events, etc, for my plotline! Well, yes, I know I already have a plotline. One that the Lord gave me when I was writing the proposal. One my agent actually got excited about and Bethany House contracted me for. But it was no good. I needed something better. Was this not... perfectionism rearing its "ugly head" yet again?

It was. I googled perfectionism then, and found a couple of sites, which I read. Right on. One of them was at the University of Texas site here. I especially liked what this article said regarding the myths about perfectionism. Like "I wouldn't be the success I am today if I weren't such a perfectionist." Actually "there is no evidence that perfectionists are more successful than their non-perfectionistic counterparts," whereas "there IS evidence that given similar levels of talent, skill or intellect, perfectionists perform less successfully than non-perfectionists."

Whoa. And that leads right into the realization that perfectionism is all screwed up from the get-go because it's the striving to do something perfect, in hopes it'll be accepted/approved by people, thus earning success from one's own efforts and shoving God right out of the picture.

God's called me to write this book and promised that He will provide me with everything I need to do it. So... why not just take Him at His word, stop searching for the perfect sequence and just sit down and do the best I can in the time I have? In fact, give myself a specific time period to come up with a solid outline, with chapters and scenes and linkages and all that. Not a perfect outline, not a thrilling outline, not a spectacular outline, not even an outline I think is splendid. Just an outline. Okay, a coherent outline. Or, maybe not even that.

So that's what I think I'm going to do tomorrow.

Grace,
Karen

Progress, not perfection

Time for a picture.

This is a shot of a canyon tree frog taken by a friend of mine on her travels through the riparian areas of our desert. I think he's pretty cute.

Well, it was a busy weekend, and promises to be a busy week with doctor's appointments, rehab appointments, birthday celebrations, and Thanksgiving already looming in the near future. We're going to use a wild turkey this year; the one that's already in our freezer. Should be interesting.

We have just discovered the return of the termites -- they build little exploratory mud tubes down from the ceiling in the living and dining rooms. Last night (after I'd just finished decluttering the bed in the office/bedroom) we had to take everything out of the closet and put it on the bed so my hubby could climb (literally) up into the attic and see what was going on. He replaced some boards, but still needs to treat the area with termaticide, so the stuff is staying on the bed for now. But! I am using this opportunity to start decluttering the closet.

One of Flylady's sayings is "Progress, not perfection." I'm adopting it in my cleaning (whatever I do, it's cleaner than it was if I'd done nothing) and also in my writing. It's a nice little mantra to head off the, "But I don't know if this is the best/perfect way to do this scene." Instead, I just plow ahead, shoehorning the stuff in as I can and moving forward. I'm on chapter 9 now, having redone parts of 4 and 8. I had thought last week that I would be radically changing the second scene of ch 9, but now I think I'm going to leave the flow of events more or less as they are, and tweak them a bit. That's for tomorrow.

Have a great day
Karen

Transformers

Last Friday we finally saw Transformers, a film I wanted to see when I first saw the trailers for it -- and was thwarted first by my broken leg and then my broken arm.

I'd always loved the way my son's transformers worked and the way the ones in the movie changed looked even cooler. It is a kid's movie, and in my opinion, walks a fine line between too kid-oriented to watch and pretty good. It does a lot of things right. Shia LaBeouf, who plays the lead, is an intriguing actor, reminding me vaguely at times of a very young Russell Crowe. I love the soundtrack. There are some very funny parts. And the transformers were very cool to watch as they shifted forms and engaged in their battles.

Even more interesting to me were the places where the film touched on elements of the real angelic conflict. A friend suggested it provided a cool visual aid for spiritual concepts in that you are watching these huge, powerful superbeings engaging in violent conflict over the right of humans to be free to live their lives. One is even assigned as a personal guardian of the hero. (Though I admit, I had some believability issues when the guardian's name was revealed. "But that was one of the transformers real names, Mom," my son informed me. Still... Bumblebee????)

Other things that struck my fancy:

At the end, the bodies of these huge robot warriors are dropped into a deep trench in the ocean, where pressure and frigid temps would immobilize them -- reminiscent of Bible's mention of an abyss under the sea, place of imprisonment of angels following their defeat in battle.

The main transformer villain was found frozen in the arctic, and was kept frozen as he was studied -- the secrets taken from him allegedly sparking our human "discoveries" of the microchip, and other things I can't recall. The Bible says that in the end times it will be like the days of Noah. In those days fallen angels walked the earth in physical form, and according to the Book of Enoch (an extrabiblical writing classified as pseudapigrapha but useful in learning what people thought about such things at various times) were said to have given men technological information like fire, medicine, astronomy, astrology, metalworking, etc.

The transformers' ability to take on form of common machines/electronic instruments and move amongst people unnoticed (the good and evil ones) also echoes angelic operation. Since they go among us unseen. The Bible even says (Heb 13:2) we are to be hospitable to strangers, because by this some have entertained angels without knowing it.

So I guess overall I'd recommend it. It was a fun way to spend a couple of hours and I came away with some cool images and also, fabulous writing music roaming through my brain.

Grace,
Karen

Flylady Report

Well, my week has flown by, as I suppose is no surprise with all the things I'm suddenly doing. I remain very pleased with the guidance, encouragement and ideas I've gotten from Flylady.com. It's all about establishing routines -- habits, really, but in "baby steps" as they like to say. You work on one at a time for a month.

Well, as it turns out, a number of the small habits and routines she's advising people to establish I've already established. When I get up in the morning, I automatically get dressed and make the bed. Hardly even have to think about it. As for the sink -- I've been doing that almost a month now and I found myself at a friend's wiping her sink down after I'd finished washing my hands. Seems like maybe that habit is already taking.

I've also made a habit of using a calendar (though the degree to which I consult it varies -- Flylady's emails are helping me with that). What I haven't made a habit of is putting things away when I'm done. No. That's not exactly right. I don't put away the projects I'm working on that I intend to come back to later. When she suggested that I do so, I was stunned. Well... yeah. Especially in a small house this makes sense. And it's not like it takes all that much time. A whole minute maybe.

So putting things away when I'm done for the day or even moment, is a new thing I'm developing. I like the lack of clutter this produces. In a small house leaving things out really does make a significant difference.

The other thing that has just blown me away (besides the effects of the sink, which are ongoing) is her use of the timer. "You can do anything for 15 minutes" is one of her sayings. Using it has made a huge difference. I use it for different household tasks but also for writing. I've started working 10 minutes a day on fan mail. The key to timer use, it turns out, is not so much getting you going (which it definitely does) but STOPPING when it goes off. I still don't do this very well, but it's a big part of the system. Whether you're done or not, you stop. And that's the big help because my tendency, once I get on a roll with something, is not to stop. And then I don't get the other things done that I really needed to do that day. Resulting in not doing the first thing (like the email) at all the next day, and then many days afterward, for fear of falling into the two-hour time trap.

Anyway, I'm pleased to report that I continue to stick with Flylady, am more comfortable with all the emails as I understand the intention, and am delighted with the difference in my life they are making. If you're interested, the website is http://www.flylady.com/

Have a great weekend!
Karen