Did You Think I’ve Given Up Thinking?

Considering the name of my unthemed blog–If You Could Read My Mind–you might be wondering whether I’ve forgotten about it, given it up, or quit thinking. Or whether I’ve had a long stretch with absolutely nothing on my mind. Maybe all four.

I started wondering the same thing myself recently when I looked at the date on my last blog entry. I knew I hadn’t written anything in a while, but three months?

My word! That was an all-time record–even for me!

Some bloggers–we all know one or two–write something new every day. Or invite other people to contribute an occasional post so they won’t have to. Most bloggers post at least three or four times a week–and everybody who deserves the name ‘blogger’ writes at least once weekly. I should be ashamed of myself for my irregularity.

Uh, my blogging irregularity, that is. Right?

But before I go bashing myself semi-publicly, how many of those blogs do I read on a regular basis? Or even occasionally? Easy answer: none. Not even my agent’s, and his would be at the top of my list. I don’t have the time, I don’t want to take the time,  or–yes, I admit it–I don’t have sufficient interest in what most people have to say.

Not even some yet unpublished novelist’s advice about those pesky writing rules that must be adhered to, come you-know-what or high water.

Oh, I do receive a few blog posts by e-mail–some weekly and several daily–but they’re so helpful to my non-blog writing and my spiritual life that I don’t really associate them with the blogs they come from.

So what’s wrong with me, anyhow?

Oh, I could make up some fantastic excuses for not writing regularly. Or even more regularly. More than once a quarter.

Here’s how I see it.

Some people give up chocolate or caffeine for Lent. Why not thinking? And having and expressing opinions?

Uh, okay, so most Baptists don’t observe Lent in a sacrificial way, and giving up thinking wouldn’t qualify as sacrificial, anyhow. Besides that, my season of silence didn’t fall within Lent. Not even one day of it.

By now, you’re probably impatient to learn why I bother blogging at all. Only the people who’ve made it this far are worth answering to, though. Since you’re still with me, I owe you a chocolate-covered dog biscuit of appreciation should we ever meet in person.

I blog because published authors are supposed to. Right? Same reason I’m on Facebook and Twitter.

Not really. I love to write, yes, but I’m not going to write just to write. I don’t need to prove I’m capable of self discipline. I wouldn’t have two published novels and six unpublished manuscripts (and another baby on the way) if I couldn’t make myself sit down and write.

Here’s the straight forward truth: If something special is on my mind, I’ll share it with you. But only if it’s sufficiently special that I think it’s of interest to you and is so important to me that I don’t forget to write about it.

Does that mean I have the perfect excuse to write only when I feel like it?

You betcha! Why bore you with meaningless trivia on a regular basis until you’re sick of it when I can bore you less frequently and hope you’ll actually be curious about–and maybe even enjoy–what I  say when I do write?

Everybody say, “Amen!” now. And hold out those paws for your doggy biscuits. You’ve earned ‘em today.

Bartenders, Shrinks, Dentists, Spouses, & God

Who do you talk to when you want or need to open up?

From what I’ve seen on television, the listener of choice for many people appears to be the local bartender. Of course, that’s a toughie for those of us who don’t drink or want to hang out in bars.

Hopefully, most people with serious emotional problems get professional help. I doubt that I’m the only one who’s thankful for that kind of listener.  Professionals like those may be paid to listen, but at least they’d supposed to be objective.

But what about those of us who just like to talk or want to unwind verbally?

My six-month dental checkups are a lot more pleasant–even fun at times–because my dentist and his hygienist have both gotten to know me so well that I can talk to them about a number of subjects I wouldn’t talk with the nice fellow at the 7-Eleven down the street about. They listen, they feel free to ask questions, and they really seem interested in more than just the health of my teeth.

But you know what? I’d much rather share items of interest with my wife. She’s an even better listener than the folks at my dentist’s office, and she knows me well enough to put things in the proper perspective. She can usually say the right things in response, and I couldn’t ask for a more receptive person to talk to. And let’s not overlook the fact that I can talk to her about  things I wouldn’t mention to my dentist or his hygienist.

Things I wouldn’t mention even to a some other friend. After all, she’s my best friend. Best earthly friend, that is. So why settle for less than the best?

But what about those secret–or at least those private–thoughts a person doesn’t feel comfortable talking with any other human being about? (If you don’t have them, too, I’m in serious trouble.) Most of mine are too silly to talk about. Or maybe I’ve talked about similar things so much I hesitate to revisit a path that I’ve already worn bare. Maybe I’m just being irrational because it’s the middle of the night, and my thoughts aren’t worth waking my wife over.

God, however, is still in the listening business–not His primary one, of course–and I’m thankful for that. Nothing is too silly, repetitious, or inconveniently timed to call to His watchful attention.

Of course, I do have a little problem talking to someone I can’t see. Someone whose parts of the conversation are not audible. I often have to remind myself that prayer doesn’t mean talking to myself.

God is real. He’s not only “out there,” but inside me, and He’s always listening. I don’t even have to verbalize my thoughts. Sometimes I can’t. But I always make sense to Him.

Even when I don’t make sense to myself.

I can’t explain how God can be in tune with all of His children at the same time–there are millions of us–but I believe He is. And He’s the most perfect listener of them all. He has answers–perfect answers–even though the answer is often “no” or “wait.”

And for those prayers not requesting an answer? The ones where I just want to talk with Him because He is my heavenly Father and He loves me? And He wants me to talk to Him because I love Him, too?

I imagine Him saying, “I hear you, son!” and giving a big grin of approval.

What greater blessing could this talker ask for?

A Definite God-Thing. . .or How I Came to Be Published

When I wrote my first novel manuscript in 2004, I knew getting it published would be a lengthy and tedious procedure. So my wife and I decided to use Print on Demand (POD) and do it ourselves. It was a fun procedure, and I even designed the cover myself, using a picture of my cat appearing to read a book.

The published book looked great. I bought maybe 130 copies in all and sold them to everyone I knew. Turns out I didn’t know as many people as I thought I did, though, and those review copies I gave away were eating up what little profit I was making. I don’t know what happened to the consignment copies that went to bookstores that have since gone out of business. (Not due to my book, I hope.)

The worst problem was I couldn’t spend all of my free time writing and still do the marketing that any writer—but especially a self-publisher—must do. What writer wouldn’t prefer the writing without the marketing?

Then I went to my first Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference and started learning what good writing really was. My first book not only didn’t qualify, I came to view it as an embarrassment—something I didn’t want people to associate with me. I pulled it from availability and advised people who had a copy to hold on to it; if I ever became well known, it might qualify as a collector’s item. As Al Gansky, one of my favorite suspense writers says, “An autograph will get you twenty-five cents extra at a yard sale.”

I kept on writing. And writing some more. I kept on going to writers conferences. Bought and digested enough writing books to have made me super-fat if they’d been food.

My third manuscript, Found in the Translation, won first place in the novel competition at the Blue Ridge Conference in 2006. “Ah!” I thought. “Now I’m getting somewhere.”

Wrong again. While that honor looked good on my proposal, nobody was beating down my door, and I was getting frustrated about my inability to hook an agent.

A publisher at a writers conference invited me to submit sample pages—I’m not even sure which manuscript. Several months later, I received email from a different editor at that publishing house. She explained that they didn’t publish that genre of novel, but she loved my writing and felt confident my time would come.

We continued to correspond off and on, and she read samples and continued to encourage me. I still consider her one of my biggest fans.

Then I asked James Scott Bell to read the first page of Found in the Translation at a conference appointment. “Roger, you’re not even starting with a scene.”

Whoops! At first I balked (I didn’t tell him that, though), but finally saw the light. He was the expert. A multi-published expert. So I lopped off the first fifty pages—sob—and wrote a new beginning. Much better.

I asked my editor friend if she’d look at it. She asked for fifteen pages on Monday, the whole thing on Wednesday, and on Friday told me it was so good she’d lined up Terry Burns at Hartline Literary as my agent. She didn’t just tell me; she sent me the back-and-forth email leading up to that.

And to think Terry was one of the agents I’d requested an appointment with at the American Christian Fiction Writer conference I was getting ready to attend! If God wasn’t in charge of all that had happened so far. . .

Although Found in the Translation didn’t sell for a year, Barbour was wonderfully receptive when it landed at their doorstep. Even if they did ask to take “the” out of the title.

Who’s the Real Enemy?

Three or four weeks ago, my wife and I discovered a new nest in the pyracantha bush that surrounds our front porch on two sides. As we kept watch, we noticed a mockingbird flying out from the bush periodically. I could get close enough to see four eggs and looked forward to taking pictures of the babies when the time came, just as I’d done with some baby robins a month or two earlier.

At first she steered clear of us completely, but–the closer hatching time came–the more she hung around, looking and acting like the protective mother she was. We could understand that. But we knew we weren’t going to hurt her eggs or her babies once they hatched.

We knew it, but she didn’t. I don’t know if you’ve ever looked up at an adult mockingbird that’s spreading her tail feathers and making the most ferocious of noises, but it’s enough to make a skittish person like me jump back.

Once the babies were born, I couldn’t even touch the branch that would have allowed us to look into the nest. Many is the conversation I had with that mama, some more pleasant than others. I even made imitation bird noises in the hopes I could convey my good intentions.

She backed off a couple of branches the first time I did that, but got even louder the second time.

She finally decided to dive bomb me when I wasn’t looking–and I wasn’t even that close to the nest. Fortunately, she didn’t peck me, but she did brush her wing against mine. Uh, against my arm, that is. I knew then I was probably not going to get those pictures, even though I could see the babies through open parts of the bush.

Then I went outside yesterday morning. No babies in sight. And a dead bird lay at the bottom of the pyracantha bush. One of the babies.

We don’t know what happened. A number of domestic cats are allowed to run loose in this neighborhood, and our elderly, next-door neighbor actually goes down to the end of the street to feed a bunch of feral cats that probably don’t need any help from her. Had one of these cats killed the dead bird? Had the mother somehow gotten the others to safety?

We’ll never know.

There’s a lesson to be learned here. Mama Mockingbird spent so much of her time and energy guarding against a perceived enemy that she may have ignored the real foe.

What about us? Do we do the same thing?

Do we fear Muslims more than we do the man in the White House? Do we fear ordinary criminals more than the power-hungry liberals in Washington who may or may not be real crooks?

That’s a question every adult must answer for himself.

You Need a Little Extra Fat?

You need extra fat? I’ve got some to give away, and so do a humungously large number of other Americans if my powers of observation don’t deceive me. Uh, did I say “humungously large”? See what I mean? Even my words betray me.

If I had a different type of educational and vocational background, I could probably offer more authoritative comments than the ones I’m preparing to make. But since it’s my blog and I’m using myself as an example, who will object?

I’ve tended towards the heavy side off and on my whole life. I remember weighing 148 in the sixth grade, and I was immensely (why do these size-related adverbs keep creeping up–just like my weight?) shorter then. Interestingly, that tended to be my desirable adult weight–once I’d grown quite a few inches taller than I’d been in the sixth grade.

Sometimes I think every place I ever worked liked to celebrate special occasions with food. Good food. Good as in tasty.  After all, who wants to celebrate with nutritious when tasty is available? And it doesn’t take much “tasty” to become the snowball that’s rolling down the hill, gathering fat as it goes.

Despite constant diets and occasional exercise, I never stayed 148 long–or so it seemed. My intentions were good. The best.

I tried to convince myself that good health was more important than the enjoyment of eating; and that looking fit was worth the necessary sacrifices.

Yeah, right.  Great theories that made me choke when I tried to swallow them.

Then I went on a mission trip to Romania. My plane was late arriving in Paris, and I barely made my connection to Budapest, Hungary. (We won’t talk about that word’s close, but unrelated kin.) My luggage didn’t leave Paris when I did, though, and the folks at the Budapest airport weren’t about to figure out how to get my suitcase to me in small-town Romania once it finally arrived. Not when public transportation didn’t go there.

At least I’d been wearing clean jeans when I left home many, many hours earlier.

Some kind souls from my host church took me to an open air market that sold everything under the sun. Everything but clothes big enough to fit an American-sized man like me. I found one pair of pants that was big enough–too big, actually. And one shirt, if I recall correctly. Plus a rather nice-looking sweater.

“Do these go together?” I asked my host. I’m sufficiently colorblind that I have to make sure I know which clothes match.

“Pants dark,” he answered as casually as if that part of Romania had no fashion police. “Sweater dark. Shirt white. Go together fine.”

Uh, in rural Romania, maybe. I still would’ve had my doubts in the USA.

But I digress.

The point is, I saw very few fat Romanians on that trip–if any–and I felt embarrassed at being so used to overeating that I’d ended up almost unclothable in a foreign country when my new friends obviously didn’t, uh, make a hobby of eating.

I wish I could tell you that my experience in Romania cured me forever of eating for fun, but it didn’t. Even today–not nowadays, but today June 4--when my wife and I had lunch at Cici’s (a pizza buffet where you can fill up completely for a nice, low price), I did my usual overeating thing. But it tasted great. And I still feel sluggish and bloated three hours later.

I’d looked around at the other patrons in Cici’s before leaving. Many were far larger than I’ve ever been. Only a few were actually skinny, though, and most of them were children who probably played hard and used the left-over calories for growth.

What is this thing we Americans have about eating? Are we so used to our overabundance that we’ve let it take over our lives? Are we living to eat?

Or are we looking at the state of the economy and the threat of worse getting worse still–perhaps worse than we can imagine–and doing what we can to enjoy our current lifestyles to the max while we still can? (Anybody ever watch Jericho?)

No matter what the cause, the excuse–the whatever–gluttony is still biblically a sin. And my Bible says all sins are equal.

You mean my overeating is as sinful as the terrorist attacks on 9/11?

Yikes!

Hey, Mister. Hey, Ma’am. I have some fat I need to get rid of. Quick. You want some?

No! Not you, too!

Shooting My First Gun. . .or Owning One

This past Saturday, I attended a men’s shootout–an annual event held at the home of one of our church members. There I observed approximately 150 men having fun with guns–pistols, rifles, shot guns. Even bows and arrows. Boys were there with their fathers, and it was a wonderful experience for everyone–well supervised and carefully conducted.

This particular shootout will always hold a special place in my memory, though. I shot my first gun that day. A nice simple, semi-automatic 22 caliber pistol.

You have to understand that–as a kid–I always wanted a gun and was frustrated at not even being able to have an air rifle. I don’t recall whether that was because of my parents’ opposition to a bb gun or because they weren’t in a position financially to provide every little thing I wanted. (An air rifle would’ve been a lot more affordable than the horse I wanted and never got.)

I can’t say if the event I’m about to describe was a major turning point for me, but one day I was playing with a slingshot. Slingshots were really popular in those days. My parents had strictly forbidden me to aim at any animals, but you know kids. I saw a bird perched on a telephone wire. Looking back some fifty years later at the events of that day, I firmly believe I aimed at that bird only because I was so confident I couldn’t possibly hit it.

I was wrong. I not only hit, but killed it. Whatever punishment my parents meted out to me was mild compared to how badly I felt about taking an innocent little life.

While that may not have made me disinterested in guns, I have developed an intense fear of what guns can do in the hands of careless and irresponsible shooters.

I never served in the military, and it was probably just as well. Not because I would necessarily have been terrified at seeing guns aimed at me, but out of fear that I might really have to pull the trigger to try to kill another human being. Not just a little bird on a phone wire.

And I probably passed up attending four or more of these annual shoot outs because of my fear of guns.

So why did I go this year, and why am I so seriously considering the purchase of a small hand gun within the next year or so?

I hope the second American Revolution never takes place. But I don’t have a whole lot of confidence in the Federal Government right now. While I can’t imagine ever bearing arms against any of my fellow countrymen, I never expected to kill that bird, either.

I pray–and I ask you to pray–that the electoral process will yet turn things around peacefully. After all, I missed the target Saturday with every shot, and there’s no guarantee that practice would ever keep me from shooting myself in the foot someday.

Was the United States Legally Founded?

There! If that title didn’t get your attention, nothing will.

Guess I’d better be a bit more specific now. My real question is whether Christians should have supported and participated in the American Revolution–from a purely biblical point of view.

Am I weird? Maybe. Do I want to return to having England rule this country badly and unfairly? Not a chance. I’m happy to take advantage of the battle for freedom our forefathers fought and won. But that doesn’t change the question of whether the colonists were right in starting a revolution.

If you choose to ignore the Bible, there’s no question that the colonists were justified in what they did. England did a poor job of treating her citizenry in the colonies in a fair and reasonable way. King George wouldn’t listen. Not until the colonists forced him to.

Unfortunately, I can’t ignore the Bible.

Jesus himself talked about “rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.” Were the Jews of Jesus’ day fond of being ruled by Rome? Definitely not. Yet Jesus didn’t advocate rebellion, but a separation of the spiritual and the governmental.

I believe it was Paul who–later in the New Testament–talked about the importance of obeying political rulers; he emphasized that the rulers are there because God has ordained them to be.

God ordained the Caesars? I wonder how many Jews bought that one. But who’s going to argue with Paul?

Even King David–long years before Jesus’ birth–passed up the opportunity to rid himself of an evil and persistent enemy. King Saul had been pursuing David with the intention of killing him. Yet when David had the chance to assassinate Saul, he couldn’t do it. He had too much respect for a king who had turned out to be a bad king. David even felt guilty for cutting off a little piece of Saul’s clothing just to prove he could have killed Saul but had chosen not to.

On the other hand, doesn’t Paul’s teaching mean the early Christians should have turned themselves in voluntarily to be tortured and butchered for their beliefs? After all, they were disobeying the law of the land. Sounds like a silly idea, doesn’t it?

I often hear people talk about obeying God’s laws rather than man’s laws–when they’re in conflict. Ah! God’s law says to go 85 mph in a 70 mph zone?

I didn’t write this post to convince anyone that I’m right. I’m not sure I am. But I do hope and pray that it will make you think.