Milestones and the Sound (literally) of Music

Our house has been “alive with the sound of music” lately. We’ve been holding vocal rehearsals for our next show at our new home in recent weeks, with harmonies, melodies, and foot-stomping beats ringing from the walls.

We love it.

Wednesday night was our last rehearsal here, as we’ll be in the theater from now on unless our musical director feels the need to call an extra one—always a possibility with a show that has about twenty songs and up to eight-part harmony.

But I tried to treasure up the moments that night—the bursts of laughter when we stumbled and went splat over an especially tricky bundle of notes and rhythms, the way we swayed in our chairs or clapped on our knees to the especially foot-tapping numbers, the contrasting blends of male and female parts with the narrators soaring over all, the bond of camaraderie that comes with any cast, but seems to grow especially close in one that tries to keep Jesus at the center.

We don’t know what the Lord has in store for our little theater company after this show. But whatever He has planned, I want to cherish these last couple of weeks.

I’ve been aware lately of milestones and transitions, and the importance of marking and remembering them, as my “little” sister graduated from high school last weekend and registered for her fall college classes two days later. How did she get so grown-up? Our homeschool group’s graduation seemed especially beautiful this year—the church sanctuary decorated with potted blue hydrangeas, a small group of seniors (including my sister) leading everyone in worship, the graduates lined up in their royal blue caps and gowns as we watched slideshows of babies, toddlers, and little boys and girls, now grown into young men and women looking to the Lord for the unique futures He has planned for each one.

Each culture has different milestones to celebrate. But I think it’s good to stop, remember, and take notice of these turning points, the “firsts” and “lasts” in our lives. It helps us be aware, as I tried to be at rehearsal, to treasure up and ponder in our hearts, as Mary did. To find concrete ways of acknowledging and remembering God’s faithfulness, as He commanded His people to do long ago through stone pillars, a golden ark, and festivals throughout the year—times to stop, put aside everyday worries and responsibilities, and celebrate and remember what God has done and is still doing.

This is that time of year for many of us, with weddings and graduations, end-of-the-year recitals and productions, some seasons ending and others beginning.

Amid the busyness—okay, sometimes more like craziness—I want to take time to notice, and ponder. To treasure up memories, so I can look back and remember His faithfulness. 

How about you? What special moments are you celebrating and remembering right now?

Getting Unstuck

So, remember that post I wrote about feeling stuck in my current story? Well, it worked—I’m getting unstuck, I think. With prayerfully interviewing my character, getting to know her better, and putting myself more in her shoes. Also letting things be a little harder on her, letting her struggle more. Amazing how that makes a character more real.

Oh, and getting myself sick.

Yep, I seem to get some of my best writing done when I’m laid up sick in bed. Does that happen to anyone else? When I’m feeling too crummy to be up doing the things that usually keep me from sitting down and writing, I seem to often be able to get in that “story zone” and just write. I think it might be also partly that my cold-clogged brain can only focus on a limited number of things at a time, so I get less distracted. For whatever reason, it’s a definite silver lining to a sore throat, headache, and cold.

So while I listened to my family and others in our theater company laugh, visit, splash in the spa, play charades, and sing worship songs around the fire in our backyard last night at our Memorial Day potluck (doesn’t that sound lovely? I’m glad I could hear it anyway), I fixed one chapter and wrote a whole new one.

I’m so thankful. And I hope I’m learning that regardless of sickness-enforced isolation and blog posts galore, I can only do it when He helps me. I need to learn to throw myself on Him. For apart from Him we can do nothing.

Certainly not get unstuck.

How about you? Any unstuck-ness happening? 

When I'm Feeling Stuck

So . . . I’ve been struggling with writing a bit lately. See? :)

I’ve started a new book, and I was really excited about it for a bit. But the last few days I've been feeling stuck and less-than-motivated. And only on the third chapter! Oh, dear.

But I think I might have figured out some of the reasons why. And who knows, if any of you are writers feeling stuckish—or feeling stuck in any other way—maybe we can help each other! So let’s hammer this out together.

Reason #1: This is a normal part of writing. There are always times and places in a story when you feel stuck and less-than-motivated. I know it from my own experience, that of my critique partners, and numerous “conquering writer’s block” emails on the ACFW loop.

Solution to #1: I need to just dive back in and keep writing, “feel like it” or not. And also, not forget to pray. I literally prayed on my knees before too-many-to-count writing sessions with my first book—I was so very aware of my inadequacy, on my own, to write that story God had given me. I don’t want to lose that awareness now that I have “one under my belt.”

Reason #2: I don’t think I’m going deep enough with this story. I thought maybe the fault was in the story itself—that compared to my first novel, this one was too “light” and that maybe I don’t write light well. Maybe it would get better once I got to the Navajo Codetalker part of the story, I thought. But that seemed a while to wait.

Then I remembered how shallow my original first chapter of my first story had been. It wasn’t until my mom challenged me to dig into how I would feel if she died and my dad was remarrying—a place I was reluctant to go, but the situation my heroine found herself in—that it started to go deeper and get better.

And then I realized my new heroine is dealing with some not-so-shallow issues too—starting to fall for a guy when hopes of marriage and motherhood are blooming in a twenty-one-year-old heart is no small thing. Nor is having a younger sibling with severe health issues that affect the whole family.

Solution to #2: I may not have experienced exactly what my heroine has, but I have experienced things that should enable me to empathize with her—to not just tell her story, but live it through her eyes and heart. I need to be willing to go deeper, to be vulnerable and draw on my “emotional memory” as Brandilyn Collins writes about in Getting Into Character. (Hmm—probably need to pull that one out again!) It’s not the easy way of writing, and maybe that’s why I’ve been unconsciously staying too much on the surface. But I think it’s the only good way.

So—I guess that’s my game plan. Dive back in, with prayer. And with the Lord’s help and an open heart, be willing to put in the time and emotional effort to go deeper with my new character and her story. We can’t touch others’ hearts unless we’re willing to dig into and share from our own.

What about you? Any tricks or tips for when you’re feeling stuck on a project—writing or otherwise? Any of the above resonate with you? Please share!

Those Who Wait for the Lord, Part 2

Read Part 1 here.

God is big on waiting. Sometimes I wonder why. As I told Him recently one night before falling asleep, “You know, Lord, it would be a whole lot easier to trust You if I knew what was going to happen.”

I wonder if I made Him laugh.

But the response I sensed was, “If you knew what was going to happen, you wouldn’t need to trust Me.”

Touché.

But He does not seem to make His children wait for nothing. Abraham and Sarah waited and waited—but Isaac was finally born, filling their hearts with laughter and joy like they must have never known before. The faithful of Israel waited and waited for hundreds of years for the Messiah, but He came. Today we wait for Him again, we don’t know how much longer, but He will come.

And in other areas of our lives, surely, as we trust Him and keep our eyes on Him and ask Him to act on our behalf, He will come through for us too.

Here’s a sampling of what I got from a search for “wait for the Lord." May you read and be encouraged, dear friends, however you may be waiting today.

“Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; yes, wait for the LORD.” ~Psalm 27:14

“Our soul waits for the LORD; He is our help and our shield.” ~Psalm 33:20

“Rest in the LORD and wait patiently for Him; do not fret because of him who prospers in his way, because of the man who carries out wicked schemes.” ~Psalm 37:7

“I waited patiently for the LORD; and He inclined to me and heard my cry.” ~Psalm 40:1

  

“The LORD favors those who fear Him, those who wait for His lovingkindness.” ~Psalm 147:11

“And it will be said in that day, ‘Behold, this is our God for whom we have waited that He might save us. This is the LORD for whom we have waited; let us rejoice and be glad in His salvation.’” ~Isaiah 25:9

“Yet those who wait for the LORD will gain new strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not get tired, they will walk and not become weary.” ~Isaiah 40:31

“Therefore be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious produce of the soil, being patient about it, until it gets the early and late rains.” ~James 5:7

“The LORD is good to those who wait for Him, to the person who seeks Him. It is good that he waits silently for the salvation of the LORD.” ~Lamentations 3:25-26

“…I am the LORD; those who hopefully wait for Me will not be put to shame.” ~Isaiah 49:23

Those Who Wait for the Lord, Part 1

She had almost given up hope.

No matter that everyone called her beautiful. What was beauty, or anything, if you couldn’t pass it on to your children?

And she had no children. The shame of it cloaked her, gnawed at her insides. What was a woman without children in her time? Far worse than one without beauty.

Beauty passed away, like her youth, like her years of monthly hope and crushing disappointment, like the waning vigor in her husband’s limbs, and her own.

Like her hope.

Despite the promise Abram clung to, she had very nearly lost it all.

The desperation clawed at her, as she lay beside her husband at night. What of this promise the great God had supposedly made, He was taking too long. She couldn’t stand it anymore. Perhaps He needed her help. Maybe that was what they were meant to do—perhaps He intended to fulfill His promise through action they would take. That would make sense, wouldn’t it?

Because she couldn’t stand it much longer. The waiting, this endless waiting, hoping with no end in sight, nothing she could see to hold onto.

And there was Hagar.

Young. Subservient. Strong.

Fertile.

It was not ideal, but one could not hope for ideal in this world. You had do the best you could with what you had been dealt. Clearly God had prevented her, Sarai, from having children. So He must expect her to use the wits He had given her and figure out some other way. The child would still be hers, after all, as the concubine’s mistress.

Wouldn’t it?

So Sarai bent her husband’s ear. And he listened, whether from love or foolishness.

The young Egyptian woman conceived, easily, quickly.

 

And the torment of jealousy blistered Sarai’s heart, turning her against her husband, her maid, the child. Her solution didn’t fix the problem at all.

Nor did it alter God’s plan, or block His grace. He still sent Isaac, the baby He had promised, through Sarah’s womb. He continued moving forward His plan for world redemption through Abraham’s family. And He did not forget Hagar and Ishmael, caught up in an ugly web not of their own making, but heard them, saw them, and promised them blessing too.

Yet oh, the heartache, because Sarai was not willing to wait on God’s timing, on His way of doing things, but sought to “fix” things on her own.

As our theater company rehearses for our upcoming production based on the biblical story of Joseph and his brothers, we’ve been studying together that account in Genesis, and I’ve gone back to read the earlier history of that family, bringing me to the story of Sarai and Hagar.

It always sobers me, because I struggle with wanting to take things into my own hands, to “fix” them. I long for “something to happen,” wanting to somehow “make it happen” on my own. I don’t like waiting. Neither did Sarai. And God made her and Abraham wait a very long time—twenty-five years, from when the LORD called Abram from his family homeland and promised to make the childless, elderly man a great nation, to the time when promised Isaac finally uttered his newborn cries. God was faithful despite their mistakes. But I don’t want to make the same ones.

I guess if we’re in a season of waiting, we’re in good company. Certainly a search on Bible Gateway of “wait for the Lord” brought up dozens of results. I was going to include some of them in this post, but it’s gotten a bit long . . .

So I guess I’ll make you wait for it. :)

To be continued.

When I Feel Inadequate

I’ve often felt inadequate lately.

Ever since we moved, I can’t seem to get on top of things. Blogging—writing—keeping in touch with friends—housecleaning—laundry—unpacking. Each day, it seems, I’m confronted with my inability to keep up with pretty much anything, at least to the extent I think I should.

Then I started realizing, maybe one thing I need to realize is that I am inadequate. I like to stay on the ball, to be the kind of person who has her stuff in order, at school, at work, at home—and when I’m not, I tend to be a bit upset.

As I was working on this blog Sunday night, sitting near my sister on our blue and white quilted twin beds in our new room, I told her what I was writing about.

“Did you see what I put on facebook?” she asked.

“No.”

I looked it up. Here (shared with her permission) is what she had just posted:

“Encouraging quote from church today- ‘what's awesome about communion, is when we come to the table, we don't have to have everything all figured out.’ I needed that today...it's not about me trying to get my life together, but rather about me realizing that I can't and accepting God's grace available to me through Jesus.”

Maybe sometimes our Father has to speak the same message to more than one of His children, huh?

He did for the Corinthians through Paul:

“Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God, who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant…” 2 Corinthians 3:5-6

“But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves…” 2 Corinthians 4:7

I don’t have everything figured out. But God doesn’t expect me to—that’s His job. I just need to try and press close to Him, listen to His voice, and follow what He wants me to do hour by hour and day by day—whether it’s what I had planned or not.

So it’s okay.

When We Don't Know Why

My little brother went to heaven sixteen years ago today.

Most people don’t know my sister and I even had a little brother—he was stillborn so early, at only sixteen weeks. But we could tell he was a boy, which our mom had already sensed. And he is still an unseen part of our family, our Sven Christian, remembered mostly quietly, in yellow roses and at this time of year, when he was born into Jesus’ arms.

My sister and I got talking about him this morning, about how he would be going on sixteen now—not a little boy anymore, and probably a great addition to our family theater company's current group of teen boys in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. We still need another “brother” in our cast.

Somehow it made me miss Sven more than I have in some time. And in church this morning, singing and confessing alongside my family, I struggled anew with “why.” Why did this member of our family, this son and brother, get taken from us so tiny? Why didn’t we get to know him on this earth—or the two other babies our parents also lost in the same few-year period? Why do we almost have more family members in heaven than here with us now?

My mind could answer my questions, and I reminded myself that we live in a fallen world, that death is a tragic part of that, and that really, this life is only a blip in relation to eternity, which we will share forever with Sven and the rest of our loved ones.

But my heart still wrestled, and I couldn’t seem to stop it.

The picture that came to my mind, though, was of Jesus with two other sisters whose brother had died. Jesus did bring Lazarus back to life for Mary and Martha, but first He was just there with them. And more than that, He cried with them. Death and loss, those elements of this world that came through our turning away from Him, grieved His heart with the pain of those He loved, even though He was going to make it all right.

And that is where my heart found rest—not in understanding why, but just in laying my head on His shoulder and knowing He cares. That He has not spared Himself suffering and pain anymore than He spares us, and that while we may not understand until heaven why He allows what He does, we cannot doubt that He loves us. That He cries with us when we cry. And that someday, He is going to make everything okay.

Sven is experiencing that already.