Flower

My uncle wrote a book.

A book, people! A long one!

It's not like he's a big-time writer. He's smart and funny and clever and articulate, but he's not a writer by trade. He's...you know...a guy. With a family and bills and the stuff of life happening.

I've been talking about writing for YEARS. I've been kicking around a novel premise for almost a decade. But life gets busy, and it's hard to take an amorphous mass of writing-related ideas and tidbits and turn it into written words. It takes dedication and discipline that I clearly have not had.


But Uncle Wayne did it! His novel, Flower, a Story of the Nativity, is an adventure story based on the events surrounding the birth of Christ. It's absolutely rich with historical detail, and it offers a new perspective on some of the particulars of the story that have become entrenched not through Scripture but through tradition.

I am thoroughly ashamed to say that this book was in print for over two years before I actually got around to reading it. I have no good excuse. In my partial defense, I did read portions of an early draft, but still.

The tale is impressively complex. He introduces a wide array of characters whose stories interweave as the miracle unfolds. There isn't as much attention paid to Mary and Joseph as you might think...they're in there, as is Jesus Himself, but between glimpses at their circumstances you're watching Roman soldiers, prophets, thieves, Medes, Persians, government officials, angels, and demons. (Incidentally, before I read the "to be continued"-type line at the end, I suspected that there was a sequel coming, and that I'd already met some of the characters central to the story of the crucifixion and resurrection. I think I was right.)

His writing style, if a bit rough around the edges, is energetic and imaginative. I think he was afraid of letting an English-teacher-type read the book, and as I think back over conversations where I've been vocal about my disdain for literary greats like Emerson, Hemingway, and Faulkner, I can understand why I might have given off an intimidating vibe. But to me, the success of this book doesn't rise and fall with the language. Its plot complexity, coupled with its warm tone and its thought-provoking approach to the story, makes it engaging enough that I'm already remembering it fondly.

This past December I thought a lot about the fact that Christmas is, and always was, a dangerous thing. It's fraught with conflict. We picture the Nativity as this serene tableaux with glowing saints and the soundtrack from Charlie Brown loo-loo-looing in the background. But there was rejection inherent in the story, and danger, and intrigue, and murder. It's tumultuous. There's a reason that Christmas brings up tremendous emotional turmoil in people's hearts even today...the sweet enormity of its victory cannot go unchallenged by the enemy.

And that got me thinking. In some ways, the whole thing seems like God thumbing His nose at evil. Like, "I'm coming. I could come as a warrior, surrounded by warriors, and take the place by storm. But I'm coming as a baby. And not a baby with a security detail. In fact, I'll arrive in a stable. With poor people and shepherds. And to make sure you can find Me, I'm going to put a star overhead. You see if you can get Me."

This God I serve--He's not playing.

I wasn't expecting to revisit all these thoughts when I started Flower after Christmas, but the novel hit on all of this stuff. Despite the humor and warmth of the tone, it really centers around the dangerous life into which Jesus was born and the daring plan God undertook to rescue the people He loved. I'm going to look at Christmas differently next year.

One more thing...I'm inspired to just start WRITING. Flower isn't perfect. But it's done. It's in print. The Urban Muse posted 30 writing quotes this month, and one of them was James Thurber: "Don't get it right, just get it written."

Bravo, Uncle Wayne. I promise I won't wait so long to read the sequel. :)

Regrouping

It's been nearly two weeks. I wish I could say that I've been using the time in some kind of remarkable and productive fashion, but that's not true. Productive, maybe, but not remarkable. I've mostly been inching forward, trying to tame my household...working away at piles of laundry, wrangling my kids, and picking up the same toys over and over and over again. For the last two days the house has been in pretty good shape. I'm caught up on laundry. The pantry and the refrigerator are stocked, at least for the time being. It feels nice, but it wasn't easy.

I'm a terrible housekeeper by nature. I have always found it perplexing (and frustrating) that God would intend me for a life where running a home is such a huge part of my job and then leave me so ill-equipped to do it. Why? So I'll know when my living room rug is visible that it's to His glory and not due to any greatness of my own? So that I'll mourn the relentless slide of our fallen world into entropy? To test and refine my patient neat freak of a husband? I don't get it.

This is one of the many reasons why He is God and I am not.

Anyhow, my home has been at least temporarily cajoled, bullied, and strong-armed into submission. We'll see how long it lasts. In the meantime, I'm turning my attention back to the list.

One thing I HAVE been doing lately is thinking. My list needs some editing if it's going to be both useful and fun. Some of my goals were a little overly ambitious, I think, so I'm trying to adjust. When I put the thing together I was trying to look for ideas that fit one of the following categories:

1. Things that require me to be brave, even a little bit. I have very little natural courage. Curiosity, yes, but not courage. However, I serve a great God who would have me put away my fear and trust Him. I'm working on it. If I live to be an old woman, I want to be a brave one. (ex: trips to NYC, sushi, spiritual conversations, writing, public singing)
   
2. Things that will help me to stay engaged and present in the moments of my life. I'm far too easily contented with meandering through routines, shifting my mind into neutral. If that becomes too much of a habit, the remainder of this year (not to mention the next 40) will simply slip through my fingers. I want to challenge the routine of my life. (ex: geocaching, crafts, recipes)
   
3. Things that I can, and should, enjoy now, while I'm still young by I-don't-actually-need-a-walker-yet standards. (kickball, finger painting, walking in the rain)
4. Things that will help me to streamline, to cast off that which holds me back or clutters up my life. (losing the rest of this weight, getting rid of clutter)
5. Things that make me better. Relationally, spiritually, physically, professionally, personally. (ex: travel with Mark, character plans for the kids, memorizing Scripture, reading good stuff)

All of those are true, but I think the heart of it lies in #2: I don't want to just tumble through my life. I want to live it well, and purposefully, and joyfully. That's what the list is about.

That said, I'm making some changes.

• I'm downgrading the number of crafts I'm trying to do with my kids. I still want to do them, but I'm also trying to read with them more, and to be more active with them, and there are only so many hours in the day.
• I'm going to put off my "mom's book" email for a while. It's the first step in pursuing a book idea I've had in the back of my mind, and it's a solid one, I think, but the odds of starting that AND a novel this year? Not good. It will have to wait.
• I'm switching out "host a creative night" (another good idea that will have to wait) in favor of a "Just Dance" party with some women. Reason: a creative night would be easy. I stink at "Just Dance," but it's fun and active, and it would require me to be a little braver.
• I'm ditching the flash mob. Turns out they're hard to find. It would be fun, but it's not important enough to me to force the issue.
• In place of the two things I've dropped I'm adding a complete and updated Flylady control journal (more on that later) and cleaning out all my closets.

I don't know if there's anyone still reading this thing, especially now that I vanished for two weeks. Maybe it's just me on here, and that's ok. But I'm still around, and still plugging away. If you're out there I'll let you know how it goes. :)

Mmmm...Chocolate

You know that thing I do where I say I don't have much time but then I ramble endlessly about minutiae? Yeah, I can't do that today. Way, way too much laundry.

But I made this great chocolate cake last night, and I wanted to share before I tackle Mount Washmore...

I've been wanting to try this recipe but knew I'd eat way too much of it given the chance, so I waited until our super-awesome friends Joe and Kathy came over with their brood. More mouths. We ate about half of it, and I managed to put the rest in the freezer. In the garage. The odds that I will eat it straight out of the garage freezer are at least somewhat less than if it were living in the kitchen somewhere. Not, like, incredibly less, but I'll take what I can get. I'm not throwing this cake away.

Anyhow, it's called Too Much Chocolate Cake, and I found it on my beloved allrecipes.com. It's pretty simple. Seriously not good for you, but simple. I made it as directed EXCEPT that I decreased the oil to 3/4 cup and used mini chocolate chips instead of regular ones, both based on people's reviews and comments. Then, I wasn't sure what to do with it when it was done...glaze it? frost it? serve it with whipped cream? drizzle something on it? In the end I made Kathy tell me what to do. We ended up making fresh whipped cream to dollop on it.

And...wow. SO moist, with great flavor. It was just barely still warm when we ate it, and while it would have been fine completely cooled, warm was nice. And the whipped cream was the perfect choice. (She's so smart!)

Sorry the pics are blurry. I took them in a big rush.



This cake will be great for potlucks, I think, though I would probably just sprinkle it with powdered sugar in that case. Also, it would ROCK with a little ice cream sundae on top.

Mmmm.

Kidclutter: gone.

If you're familiar with my list of 40 things, you might remember that one of my goals is to rid my home of 100 pounds of clutter this year.

Not just garbage...clutter. 100 pounds of garbage I could generate in, like, an afternoon. I can't clean anything without using a roll and a half of paper towels, and I'm famous for buying cheap cuts of meat with great intentions and allowing them to go bad in my fridge. Also, we suspect that the two-year-old is forever throwing things in the trash without our knowledge. Heavy, expensive things. I don't actually know whether he does this, but after we've searched for missing things for as long as we can handle, that's what we assume has happened. ("I dunno. Jack probably threw it out.") So he's taking the blame for it either way.

Anyway...clutter. Joy and Will produce it at an astounding rate. They share a room, and it's not big. It undergoes a pretty predictable cycle.

1. I help them to clean out the entire room, including the closets, the closet floors, the bookshelves, and under the beds and dressers. They either abandon this project or become extremely annoying in the process (which I'm starting to think may be intentional), and I finish it by myself.
2. I trot them around the room and, using a tone that is both slightly boastful and discernably reproachful, I show them where everything now lives and point out that this is what a clean room is supposed to look like.
3. For six hours the room remains clean due to grouchy vigilance on my part.
4. The following day the room descends into utter chaos. Again, Jack is blamed, and again, I can't tell how responsible he really is. I make bad faces and tell them to cleanupthisroomrightthisminute.
5. When they clean it up, a few things are left astray in hidden places.
6. We repeat #4 (with progressively less grouchiness for a while) and #5 until even when it is ostensibly cleaned, for some reason I cannot walk through the room. This seems to defy the laws of physics in some way.
7. I finally (and often without warning) reach the point where "Mommy can't take this anymore!!!", and we return to #1.

Good grief. I need to relax a little, I'm thinking.

Anyway, today we were at #1 and #2. I spent a good chunk of the day decluttering the room. There are two big boxes of toys and books that will be evaluated for relocation (to the family room), donation, or disposal. Beyond that I had 10 pounds of clutter that just got bagged up and added to my already-impressive collection of kitchen trash. 10 pounds! Woo hoo!

Here are some things that I discarded in great quantities from their room:

• Unsharpened holiday-themed pencils. Halloween and Christmas, mostly. There are so, so many of these that I'm becoming convinced that they're secretly reproducing somewhere. Scrounging for a pencil in the middle of March and being unable to find anything but an unsharpened Santa pencil is both irritating and depressing, so I'm declaring war on them. In the trash they go.
  
• Happy Meal toys. I'm really gunning for mother of the year in this post.
• Lollipop sticks. Behind someone's headboard. We had to have a conversation with one of our kids about this one.
• Barbie shoes. This I don't understand. We have a total of one Barbie in our home. She is unable to buy her own clothes. Is she ordering them online?
• Cheap stuffed animals. Blergh.
• Paper!! I thought it was grownups that were supposed to struggle with this. Notices, drawings, instructions for toys, certificates...they're getting a head start, I guess.

In the end, though, it felt really good to get it all out of there. And I bet the boxes downstairs will yield at LEAST another ten pounds, maybe twenty, that will leave our home. Maybe this time around I'll lighten up and be patient enough to teach them how to keep the room clean.

I don't know what the odds are. But, hey, Jesus is pretty big. Anything's possible. :)

Treading the Dawn

When I wrote this list, "read 8 books" was supposed to motivate me to read NEW books. Well, not new to the world (see my treatment of Eight Secrets from back in the ooooh-yeah-that-was-awkward mid-90's), but new to me. Actually, I have a list of books I've been meaning to get to, most of which are intended to help me unravel the mystery wrapped in an enigma that is my second-born, and that's where the 8 books came from.

But here's the thing. I'm having trouble motivating myself to read those books. I need to, and I will, but I keep getting distracted by the shiny objects that are the other-books-I-don't-need-to-read-right-now.


Case in point: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. We went to see the movie this week, an outing to which I have been very much looking forward. We saw the first two Narnia movies with our friends Rick and Patsy (of flat-tire-changing fame...and why can I not stay away from the long-strings-of-hyphenated-words phenomenon today? Hmm.), so we waited to see it until they got past the I'm-a-pastor-and-it's-Christmas insanity (see?). Then they waited while Mark was away. This week we were able to get there, and the planets aligned in such a way that a babysitter was actually available. But if the movie franchise ends here because of a poor opening weekend, blame us.

***Here's where I deleted several LONG paragraphs wherein I waxed rhapsodical about The Chronicles of Narnia. I have to watch myself on this subject. It distills down to this: I love literature and I LOVE these books with great passion. And you should read them in the original order. And if you haven't read them already, I feel deeply sorry for you. That is all.***

Dawn Treader is one of my favorites from the series. I've probably read it a dozen times since the age of 8 or so, but it's been a few years, so I decided to read it again before the movie. Somehow, though, in the holiday craziness, I lost track of time, and the morning of our double date arrived without my having read the book.

Now, I like a challenge. (At least when it's related to books or music or school stuff. Challenge me with something that involves a ball and I will probably start to cry.) And I'm a pretty fast reader. So I gave it a shot and pushed my reading speed hard, and I managed to re-read it that morning while I got the house back in order. This should tell you two things: first, that it is a really easy read, and second, that I am somewhat prone to showing off. (Sorry.)

Since my last reading I'd retained most of the plot, but I'd forgotten about the warm charm of the humor, the wit and accessibility of the dialogue, the tender firmness of Aslan's leadership, and (as always) the movingly matter-of-fact depiction of courage in the face of impossible danger. Love. It.


I've walked into each of the movies telling myself that there's no way they could ever live up to the love I have for the novels. There's no way they could capture the complexity of the stories or the poignant spiritual truths that periodically sneak up on you. And once I repeat that to myself enough times, I've really enjoyed each of the movies. This one was no exception. They added some HUGE things that weren't in the book, but they weren't terrible things. They sort of flattened out Eustace's character arc, but I really enjoyed Will Poulter in the role. They took the almost-Arthurian episodic nature of the adventure, condensed it, and created plot devices to artificially tie the episodes together, but I get why that was necessary. Also, there was what I can only describe as a crazy shout-out to Ghostbusters, but I'm in the process of moving from eye-rolling to laughing about that. The effects are spectacular, the plot gets loving (and really pretty faithful) treatment, and the story is good enough that even a decent rendition of it made for a great film.

If you haven't seen it, you should. If for no other reason than that I LOVE the next book and can't wait to see what they do with it. (They won't make it if this one doesn't make money, so go buy a ticket.)

BUT...and here I'm circling back around to my original topic...the book is better. Way, way better. You should read it. Seriously. In fact, you should read all 7 books in the series.

In their original order.

Somebody stop me.

Hurried or not, re-reading Dawn Treader enhanced this year-of-being-39 for me, so I'm counting it as one of my 8. It makes me want to be brave.

Man, I can't WAIT for Joy to read this book!