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Cooking Meals to Last a Week

You are really, really far away from home. So far away, I can’t drive over in two hours to bring you some home cooking. Did I ever actually do that? I don’t think so, but I love the idea.
Ok, so for a couple of weeks of food for you and Chris, here is the grocery list:
1 pound of ground hamburger meat
2 bags of frozen chicken breasts or strips
2 jars of salsa
2 cans of black beans
2 cans of garbanzo beans
2 boxes of minute brown rice
2 boxes of whole wheat pasta
2 8 oz  blocks of extra sharp cheddar cheese
2 8 oz  blocks of mozzarella cheese
4 cans of diced Italian style tomatoes
2 large boxes of liquid chicken broth (no msgs)
2 cans of corn
2 cans of green beans
2 cans of condensed tomato soup
eggs
spices you will need:
1 jar of garlic
onion flakes
garlic powder
Mrs. Dash
rosmary
italian seasoning
basil
mustard
bay leaves
thyme
cinnamon
vanilla
ground ginger
ground nutmeg

salt
pepper
bbq sauce
olive oil
teriyaki sauce
basalmic vineger
apple cider vinegar
regular vinegar
baking powder
baking soda
cocoa
flour
bread flour
whole wheat flour
sugar

frozen broccoli
frozen green beans
frozen mixed vegetables
frozen spinach

Recipes:
Quick, Easy Tacos (without taco seasoning) , Black Beans and Rice
Step I: Brown the meat
you will need:
frying pan (the big, shallow pan with a long handle)
ground beef
salsa
garlic
salt, pepper
onion flakes
salsa
To brown your meat
-place meat in pan
-turn cooking eye to 7 (or two below hi)
-put in a couple of tablespoons of garlic
-a dash of salt ( a couple of shakes)
-a dash of onion flakes
-dash of Mrs. Dash
break up the meat with a fork and stir while it cooks–the goal is to keep the meat pieces small, to break them up while they are cooking. I do this by squishing it down with the fork and then tossing it around the pan. This also spreads your seasonings evenly.
When the meat is no longer pink at all, throw in some salsa.Three tablespoons or so  should do it. This is to season the meat and make it taste like a taco, so add as much or as little as looks good to you.
Smell it as you go. You can usually tell what else it needs by smell.
*after you cook the meat, set aside half of it to cool, then place in freezer safe bag or plastic box and place in freezer.
Step II: Cook your rice
Ingredients needed:
a box of instant brown rice
salt
olive oil
a small pot (long handle, the medium size deeper pot)
follow the instructions on the box–do add a little salt and olive oil
Step III: Cook your black beans
Ingredients needed:
can of black beans
salsa
a microwave safe bowl (glass, corningware, or ceramic)
To make the beans: pour in the beans and a couple of tablespoons of salsa. Stir, then heat in microwave until bubbly. Be careful not to overcook.
Step IV: Assemble your taco bar
Lay out the following in small plates:
taco shells or tortillas
Grated cheese ( use your cheese grater and grate some cheddar cheese and put it on the plate)
A chopped, fresh tomato
a chopped onion
fresh spinach cut into small pieces
the meat you just browned
A bowl of rice
A bowl of black beans
VOILA! A lovely meal!


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Fired

The vice-regents and governors got together to find some old scandal or skeleton in Daniel’s life that they could use against him, but they couldn’t dig up anything. He was totally exemplary and trustworthy. They could find no evidence of negligence or misconduct. So they finally gave up and said, “We’re never going to find anything against this Daniel unless we can cook up something religious.”
The vice-regents and governors conspired together and then went to the king and said, “King Darius, live forever! We’ve convened your vice-regents, governors, and all your leading officials, and have agreed that the king should issue the following decree:
For the next thirty days no one is to pray to any god or mortal except you, O king. Anyone who disobeys will be thrown into the lions’ den.
“Issue this decree, O king, and make it unconditional, as if written in stone like all the laws of the Medes and the Persians.”
King Darius signed the decree.
When Daniel learned that the decree had been signed and posted, he continued to pray just as he had always done. His house had windows in the upstairs that opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he knelt there in prayer, thanking and praising his God.
Daniel 6:3-10
Daniel was a good worker. He was so thorough, so careful and so successful in his work that his co-workers were jealous and plotted to bring him down.
I have friends like Daniel who have worked hard only to have jealous co-workers plot to bring them down.
Most recently, it was an assoicate pastor brought down by the jealousy of her senior minister. She worked so hard and introduced so many people to the saving grace of Jesus that he began spreading malicious rumors about her. Eventually he was able to fire her. He lives in a posh house forty seven miles from his church and leaves ministering to his associate pastors. He shows up sober enough on Sunday mornings to preach.
Daniel didn’t focus on those co-workers intent on bringing him down.
Instead, he focused on God. He got down on his knees three times a day and gave thanks.
Wow. What a powerful lesson.
In a similar circumstance, I’m afraid my focus would be on those who brought me down, not on God.
My friend followed the guidance of Daniel.
In spite of the pain of her betrayal, she kept her focus and found another church. She poured her energy into a new ministry, and although it was a public ministry rather than a church ministry, she contined to do God’s work with a joyful heart.
Daniel’s story has a happy ending on this earth. The bad guys got punished and the good guy got rewarded.
Go, Daniel.
My friend didn’t get any miraculous rescue from her lion’s den. But she keeps her eyes on Jesus all the same.
Go, Girl.

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Humility

As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

Colossians 3:12-14

“Oh,” she said, holding my manuscript and shaking her head, “this is defininitely better than one of those trash romances.” 

She meant it as a compliment, but I winced.

“This is a literary, historical romance,” she said, smiling.

I returned a weak smile, my mouth barely able to hold its edges up.

I understood where she was coming from. After all, I had a Ph.D in literature with a Shakespeare dissertation from a university housing one of the country’s leading Shakespeare scholars. I understood literary elitism.

But I had learned humility the hard way.

Eight years ago, I decided I was going to transform myself from writing teacher to writer.

I set out to write the great American romance. In three months, I realized writing a romance was a skill that had very little to do with my scholarly understanding of Reniassance literature, or my ability to teach a classroom full of squirming freshman how to carve out an essay that mattered.

I began practicing my craft and studying the masters.

I found among those “trash romances,” fine writers who could hone a sentence until it sparkled and who could set a scene that stayed in my memory as if I had experienced in real life.

Isn’t that what good writing is about? 
I met the writers of those “trash romances,” and discovered they were intelligent women who worked hard at their craft. Most scored much higher than I ever thought about scoring on their SAT.

So much for smug, literary elitism. I realized quickly how much easier it is to write about literature than it is to write literature.

I was humbled.

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility, value others above yourselves,not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. Philipians 2:3-4

Writing is, in many ways, the ultimate vanity. In order to continue writing, I have to believe my words are worth reading. But when I step out of the way, when I pray for God to guide my writing, to show me His way, I am no longer writing out of selfish amibition or vain conceit. I am writing because I feel God’s Glory when I write.

Perhaps if God is guiding me,  I will humble myself and learn something from everyone. I will see all writing, indeed, all people, as gifts placed in my path from whom–if I am paying close attention– I can glean understanding, knowledge, wisdom.

If I can see all writing as the human desire to fill that God hole within us, to make sense of what it means to be human, then within all writing I can find God.

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Who is God?

I love Elijah’s story in 1 Kings 19:1-18. 
So here is my man, Elijah, facilitator of the greatest show-down between Jehovah God and Baal that the people of Israel have ever witnessed.
Elijah says, “Ok, guys, we’re going to have a contest. Here are the rules. You build an altar, prepare a bull for sacrifice, and then get Baal to light the fire. If Baal lights your fire you win”
There is a murmering among the priests of Baal,  their pointy white hats bauble.
The bedraggled  prophet in his black camel-hair beggar’s garb  has them in a tight spot. If they refuse, they look like frauds.
So they build their altar in the morning, and pray through noon until the sun disappears over the horizon and night falls. They pray, they dance, they scream, they cut themselves until their blood flows, trickling down the sides of their altar.
But their god is silent, and now it’s Elijah’s turn. The drama is heightened by the darkening sky. Evening turns to night and Elijah orders the people to dig a trench around his altar. They want to know why, but no one is brave enough to ask. The trench encircles the altar.
Elijah  places one stone after another on the altar, twelve in all “Asher. Benjamin. Dan. Gad…” There is a rustling among the people, an uncomfortable shifting when they hear their tribe named. It is a reminder that they were called by Jehovah God to be His people, and they have failed.
Elijah  lays out the wood and arranges the bull sacrifice.
 He orders the people to fill a cask with water.  “Haven’t we suffered a three-year drought?” they mutter, “where are we going to get a cask of water?” But they find one.
Elijah pours the precious water on the altar. The people gasp. He asks for three more casks, and one after another pours them on the altar, drenching the wood and filling the trench.
Who can ignite this water-soaked wood?
The night is now completely black, not a star in the sky, the moon invisible. Elijah stands and waits.
The air crackles with expectation.
 “Show these people, O Lord, that you are God. Bring them back to you,” Elijah says.
And suddenly, the darkness is pierced by light.  Fire falls down burning everything that is not stone, sucking the water from the trench and forcing the people back, a human wave.
Elijah, jubilant, tucks his cloak in his belt, and full of the Power of God, runs ahead of Ahab’s chariot all the way to Jezreel.  The people follow, a victory stampede.
“The Lord, He is God,” they shout.
Elijah is filled with pride.  No one will ever doubt the True God again. He imagines a cozy little house provided for him by God-loyal Ahab. He imagines taking a wife, raising  grandchildren. He has worked long and hard for the Lord his God. At last he can rest. He has earned this reward.
Elijah falls into a deep, contented sleep only to be rudely wakened by his servant who says, “Get up! Jezebel is after you. She is going to kill you when she finds you.”
“What is this?” Elijah can’t believe it. Surely, this is not happening. But he can feel the  hoof beats pounding the earth many miles away. They are coming for him.
He leaves his servant behind, and runs for his life.
 “You know what, God?” He says, angry, defiant now, “I am done. I am done with ALL OF THIS. Just KILL ME already. Do you hear me? Kill me now. Apparantly I am no better than any who have come before me.” I’ve been good. I  deserve better than this.
Bless his heart. This is when I love Elijah the best. He got confused. He thought he was going to be rewarded for all the good things he did for God here on this earth.
Because Elijah is human, he measures rewards in earthly terms. Well, why not? God came down and acted like an earthly ruler; he won the battle through fire and the gory death of the thousand prophets, right?
Even Elijah missed the point. God had to act like a human to get the attention of the children of Israel because they were just that: children.
But Elijah ought to have known better. He had lived with God for decades. He knew how God worked. God was a heart-God.
He has to remind Elijah that all that hooplah, that was just show. That is not who God is.
So the angel taps Elijah on the shoulder. “God is going to appear to you, Elijah,” he says.
First a fire comes. But God isn’t in the fire, subtext: not to be Captain Obvious or anything, but dude, I am not a fire God! 
Next, comes an earthquake Subtext: I’m not an earth God.
Next comes a howling wind, a hurricane: I’m not a wind and rain God!
And then comes a gentle whisper, or sheer silence.
God, Jehovah God,  is in the dramatic moment that is silence.
I am the God of Love and  Mercy.
Can you hear me now?

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The Journey, not the Destination

“Therefore, you will see the land only from the distance; you will not enter the land I am giving to the people of Israel.”
 Deuteronomy 32:52

Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you
 Matthew 13:11

My husband and I drove down the Florida Turnpike on a sunny, spring day. The trees dotting the wide, sandy expanse on either side of the road were leafy and green, the tiny leaves like butterfly wings fluttering in the gentle breeze.
We were headed to the Columbia Restaurant in Celebration, Florida, to celebrate our daughter’s engagement. Frustrated by the minimalist step-by-step directions offered by the short tempered female voice of our GPS, I kept punching the arrow that would show me the entire map. I wanted to see exactly where I was going and when I was getting there.
“Did you see that?” my husband asked.
“What?” I said, looking up from my Galaxy pad with its mezmerizing GPS map.
“It was the Suwannee River,” he said, “You missed it.”
I looked out the rear window of the van and watched the bridge and surrounding trees blur into the past. I completely missed the river. 
I had a happy memory of camping beside the Suannee with my best friend in college,  and waking up to a blue grass festival at the state park. I had really wanted to see the river again.
How like me to be so focused on the destination that I completely missed the journey. I felt like I had flunked Zen 101.
You would think that midway through my own life’s journey I would have gotten this basic principle of the abundant life. Stop focusing on the end-game. Pay attention to the now.
It made me think of the children of Isreal as they journeyed to the Promised Land. Did they realize the journey was all many, including Moses, were going to get? Did they savor each moment? Did they notice the barely discernable color just before the spring flowers burst into bloom? Did they note the orange sunset fading to pale pink then soft grey, the glistening sparkling stars in the vast sky, the softness of their baby’s hand? Did they see the river?
Their story is my story. I am one of those children of Israel journeying across the desert wondering where I am going. But the abundant life that Jesus promised me is right here. I can’t be so preoccupied with where my life is going that I miss the precious moments that get me there.

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Letting go

Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.
Psalm 46:10
Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth…but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven.
Matthew 6:19-20
My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.
2 Corinthians 12:9
I took my daily prayer walk along the beach today. God’s voice was pretty clear: be still and know that I am God.
“Ok,” I said.
I looked at the blue-green gulf, sparkling beneath the early afternoon sun, the sea gulls white against the blue sky, children playing in the sand, parents, their heads bent protectively down to tend them. What a beautiful world.
I prayed, and the same prayer, like a broken record skipped over and over again in my head. Why isn’t my son calling me? Why has he stopped contact? Why is he so eager to find things to be angry with me about? Why, why, why?
Life is a constant letting go. I know that. But when it is your children you have to let go, the treasures of your heart, it’s a lot easier said than done.
I thought about the verse “don’t store up treasures here on earth but instead in heaven” and wondered if the treasures I was storing up here on earth might be my children.
Is that the meaning of the Abraham/Isaac story? God knew that children were such a precious gift that hubris becomes an issue for loving human parents?
It’s true. I want to be God for my children. I want to guide them, protect them, love them with everything I am. And in return, I want them to love me.
But I have to be able to let them go.
I have to be as obedient as Abraham. I have to offer them up to the real God.
And it’s not just once. I have to do it over and over again. It is the hardest thing I have ever done.
My heart yearns for contact with my son. My heart yearns for his presence. My heart yearns for him to let me know with his calls, his texts, his visits that I matter to him.
But God never said that I would see this promised land with my son, a place where my son would actually want to be around me. That was not part of the parent-package God gave me when he filled my arms with the precious gift of my son.
God did promise that he would be with me when my son left. So I have to fill that yearning with God who promises that His grace is sufficient. I have to trust Him.
So with creaky arms, I lift up my son. I hand him off to God, my fingers clinging to his shirt, and God gently, patiently peeling them off. I lift him up like Abraham lifted up Isaac and I give thanks, I do, for all the good things in my life and in his.

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Worried about What other People Think

I was sitting outside my local car repair shop enjoying the early morning sun, writing in my journal, and waiting for an oil change when a young man said to me,
“I’ll wash it. I will. I’ve been working 90-hour work-weeks, and I haven’t had a  chance to get to it.”
I looked where he was pointing and  saw he was talking about his car, a beautiful white Mustang.
I’m near-sighted, and I didn’t have my glasses on, so I couldn’t really see the dirt and then the dent he pointed out. To be honest, I hadn’t noticed the car.
His car was his treasure, and I think he assumed I had studied it and was judging him for not keeping it maintained.
 I’m a firm believer in regular engine maintenance. But the appearance of the exterior and interior of the car?  If only he knew that the soap-box derby-looking white Honda van with the fur-covered seats (vintage dog hair) in dock one was mine.
I hadn’t noticed his car, but earlier, when he stood in line in front of me, I noticed how clean he smelled, how kind he was to the attendant, how polite he was to the other woman in the waiting room, how at ease he was when he sat down.
These, I think, were his real treasures.
We chatted for a bit about Spring Break in Panama City, about the crazy hours he was working. He said he was a bartender and a night manager; he didn’t mind working long hours. He was kind and affable with a definite gift for gab. This, too, was his treasure.
After he drove away, I wanted to chase him down and say, “you are confused about what people see when they look at you. They don’t see a car. They see a really kind person.”
The Bible tells us a number of times how silly it is to worry.
Today, my eyes are wide open. I am thinking of the many times, just like my young friend,  I’ve worried about people judging my actions, or lack of action. I think of the time I’ve wasted worrying about what people think of my children, my house, my hair.
How silly.  Most people are concerned with what they are doing, not what I am doing.
Isaiah says the Lord will be your stability when you fear Him. That fear him part just means that we love His fellowship so much that we will do what we can to keep from losing it.
I think what Isaiah is trying to get me to understand here is that God is my stability when my thoughts are on pleasing Him, not others.

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Selfishness

And God is able to make all grace abound to you so that in all things, at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.
2 Corinthians 9:8
I am very selfish with my time. “I’m working,” I tell my friends, my family when they call while I’m in the middle of writing. However, sometimes I feel like a big fake. How can earnings that average less than my monthly electric bill actually be considered a job?
In spite of this abysmal earnings-per-hour ratio, I try to treat writing like teaching a class. I would never stop teaching to answer the phone.
I will be in the middle of writing a passage set deep in the swamp of Northwest Florida in 1880. I can hear the gators bellowing, the mucky slurp of someone walking between the Cyprus knees. And then the phone rings. I am popped out of my world and sucked unwillingly into 2011. It’s very irritating.
But,  don’t my friends and family need me when they call? Isn’t it more Godly to stop what I’m doing, lay my selfishness aside and enjoy their phone fellowship? Isn’t that what sacrifice is all about?
I wish I could be like Mother Teresa, calm and full of the wisdom. She laid her life on the altar of sacrifice and gave all she had to help the poor.
My daily dilemma is this: what is my altar of sacrifice? More specifically, how much time do I give to my writing, and how much time do I give to others? God has called me to write, but he has also called me to be a mother, a wife, a daughter, a friend.
So when the verse says that God will give me all that I need to abound in every good work, how do I know which good works I’m supposed to be abounding in? Is writing a good work? Or is it better to help people? Or is my writing helping people?
I don’t know. And, not a day goes by that I don’t struggle with whether or not I should answer my phone while I am writing.
But shouldn’t this passage give me hope? “he who supplies seeds to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. 2 Corinthians 9:10
In this passage, Paul is talking specifically about giving to the poor, giving to those in need.
What does it mean for me to give to the poor, to those in need? Is my tithe at church enough money to give? Is writing giving to those in need? 
When I first started writing devotionals, I pledged all my income from devotional writing to a mission in India that saves girls from a life on the streets, gives them a home and an education.
I’m not sure my meager earnings have helped many girls get off the street.
Peace comes to me when I remember the words of a wise writer, also a Christian, who told me many years ago, “pay yourself first. If you don’t, you will get nothing done that needs doing.”
What she meant by that was this: write first. If writing is what you are called to do, get your writing done first. Every day.
She’s right. When I get my writing done first, I am much happier, much more at peace the rest of the day. I am nicer to my husband and more patient with my children.
Here’s what I’ve come to. I have to believe that God is bigger than I can even imagine. I have to believe that if I earnestly seek his guidance through daily scripture study, fellowship with Christian friends, consistent praise and worship, that God will guide me. He will give me the insight that I need moment by moment, day by day. It’s the manna story all over again. I have to stop worrying about the promised land, and walk down the road I see ahead of me right now.
Amen.

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Giving Thanks is a Discipline

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
Colossians 3: 16-17
I woke up this morning and took my golden retriever, Bones, for a nice long walk on the highway beside the gulf. The waves were fierce, red flags flying, clouds lying low.
 Bones walked happily, and I let him pull me into a quick trot. The mile is a great way to start my day, and I felt the joy of the Lord with the wind in my hair, and the insistent rhythm of the waves breaking fiercely against the white sand.
With all that beauty, and the mile trot, you would think I would come back to my house with a happy heart. But I didn’t. My heart felt heavy, anxious, stressed. I couldn’t put my finger on why.
Was I ill? Did I eat or drink something the night before that might have made me feel bad?
I thought of all the bad things that had happened to me in the past few days.
This in itself was strange. Normally, the morning is my happy time. I sink about four in the afternoon along with babies and Alzheimer’s patients. But the morning is usually good.
On this morning, I wasn’t sure how I was going to be able to come up with a devotion and craft my current novel past page one hundred.
There was a pall over and around everything. I hated this feeling, but wasn’t sure what to do about it.
I drank a couple of glasses of water and ate a cup of yoghurt, my standard cure-all for whatever ails you.
It didn’t really help.
I read my daily devotion from the Upper Room, and the scripture hit me exactly where I needed it.
 Isaiah 40:26-31 reminded me that God was right here with me ready to help me out, and Colossians 2:15-17 reminded me of what I needed to do in order to get the peace that passes understanding and the joy that is God.
Give thanks.
So, I opened a blank page in Word to make  a list of all the God moments I had yesterday, the treasures that might carry me through the darkness.
I worried about the difficulty of thinking of things I was thankful for given the mood I was in.
But once I got started, it was like the gulf waves crashing against the shore, one following another then another.
-the sweetness of our friends Janet and Nell who opened their home to us last night.
-sitting together on the 17th floor of their magnificent condominium and watching the sun set over the blue-green gulf.
 “We love it here,” Janet said, “and we just want to share it with you,”
Now I’ve seen plenty of sunsets on the gulf before, but the sweet spirit of Janet, her eager desire for us to find in that sunset the same joy that she found was a precious gift
-watching two of my children sit on a couch and chat like adults, obviously enjoying each other’s company
-my sweet sister-in-law making sure my teenagers were taken care of and having a good time.
-my daughter’s gracious kindness in appreciating all the effort Janet put forth in sharing the condo’s many amenities with us
-my husband’s loving care in preparing appetizers, and displaying them on a tray fit for a five-star restaurant
-my son’s caretaking—insisting on driving us old folks home.
 My mood lifted with every sentence I typed.
Why is it that I can slip into a dark morass even though I know giving thanks can get me out of it?  It’s such a simple thing. Why is it so hard to do?
Perhaps because it’s a discipline, and I’m not a very disciplined person. But, if I could just follow a daily regimen of thanksgiving, I could enjoy a daily peace that passes understanding.
Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful.
Colossians 3:15

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Writer’s Groups and God

“In beginning was the word”
John 1:1
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.
Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.
There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light so that through him all men might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to every man coming into the world.  John 1: 1-9
I was invited to be a part of a writer’s group a few weeks ago. I was a visitor for the first week. I felt out of place. I didn’t know how this group worked. I didn’t know if I wanted to lay my precious words out in front of them or not.
We sat around the table at our local Starbucks,  and I waited to hear how they critiqued one another’s manuscripts.
From Carole’s rollicking fun southern mystery, full of paunchy sheriffs and snake handling murderers to Mark’s fascinating young adult fantasy—where a girl’s terminal disease becomes personified in an alternative world, and it is up to her to fight its demons in order to be cured— to Martha’s mystery replete with murdering Michigan environmentalists, the manuscripts’ words brought whole new worlds to life.
And, I needn’t have worried. Their comments were full of love and kindness. They treated words like precious delicate gifts. Their goal was to help uncover the living truth of each manuscript.
In my graduate writing seminars at FSU, the writer’s heart was laid on the table for all to pick over. Her manuscript contained her hopes her dreams her fears her delights all carefully contained in 12 cpi Times New Roman with one inch margins.
The creative writers around the table took turns critiquing. And while they could easily have eaten her heart, instead, they carefully– oh so carefully–like surgeons engaged in the most delicate of heart surgeries,  pulled out the bad stuff, and carefully stitched in the good.
They uncovered the light contained in the words.
Our professor, Mark, told us our job was to help the writer see what the best possible version of this manuscript might look like.
Wow! Isn’t that exactly what God is doing with us? Trying to help us find the best possible version of ourselves?
That’s how the light is supposed to work.
As a practicing writer,  I love that God and the Word are synonymous. I love that it is the Word that is life, it is the word that is light. I love that it is the word that brings light to all.
God is in the word. God is the word.
While this truth is powerful for writers, it is also humbling. Carving truth out of words is hard labor. We need a lot of help from our friends.
In the gospel, that’s where John stepped in. He went ahead and smoothed the way so that people would be ready to understand God’s magnificent light and life.
My writer friends wrestle with words. There are words in their hearts and minds that they must get out onto the page so that others can read and understand their messages of hope, of love, of praise for the beauty of this earth.
But it is when we band together as friends and prepare the way for one another that we are truly seeking the light. And some days we even find it.
Today at 1 pm, I will meet with a group of my writer friends. We have read one another’s words, and we have absorbed them into our being. We will be quick to point out the words and sentences and paragraphs and scenes that don’t work. We will do that. We are called to do that. We can’t improve if we don’t. But our goal is to stir the manuscripts into their most flattering light.
And that’s exactly what it takes: a group of friends working together to find the light in the darkness.