24. July 2009 by Starr.

I truly believe we aren’t meant to be settlers in this world…but travelers and adventurers.  We should always be overcoming and always becoming, for how do we become if we don’t overcome?  I’ve sometimes felt afraid of doing something I’ve never felt before or of being something I’ve never been before, and have not understood why I was afraid.   How mortal, life sometimes reminds us that we are.

I have done things, and have not always known why.  I have just followed that beating vessle inside of me.  We can’t worry about the why or the fear…and I think sometimes we just need to grab life by the collar and run.  Sometimes, that life we are grabbing is different each day…sometimes we wake up on one road…and find ourselves like I did just this morning, standing in my pajamas, without running water for coffee because my plumber was in my  kitchen.  My phone was ringing continually and life was being “normal” …then suddenly, like a shot in the dark, something changes the course of our day and we find ourselves on a new road, unfamiliar. 

 Whatever road we are on, if we allow ourselves to stay on course, and not sway from what we know that we know that we know, deep in our hearts…we learn about ourselves in that, and others, and become stronger.  We learn that change is a good thing…it is necessary…for nothing living ever stays the same.  What can we ever hope to accomplish on the same road each and every day? 

So, today, as I work in manuscript, doing what I do…I feel change heavy on my heart.  Today I had to say goodbye to a situation to say  hello to a new chance. To quote Maya Angelou…”The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.” 

 I’m good with that. 

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16. July 2009 by Starr.

Once, while taking a writing course, I learned the importance of “braiding” in a story.  Braiding, is when the author takes completely different, unrelated events or subjects, and braids them together, weaving them in and out of each other to create a story that ties everything nice and tidy at the end, wrapping everything up.  I love how the living God, who, scriptures tell us, is the Author and Finisher of our faith, does that very same thing in our lives.

Recently, I experienced His awesome “braiding” power, personally.  First, consider these three unrelated events in my life:

          1.  A few years ago, I read that over the doorway in a monastery, outside the room where the monks wrote and studied, the words “The Book Is Finished, Let the Writer Play,” were carved in the archway.  I decided I liked that thought, and so I started using the phrase, “Let the writer play,” on my business cards and etc.

          2.  I have been working on a mystery chapter book for children titled, “The Mystery of Mouster’s Maze,” off and on for about four years.  Recently, within the last month, I picked my manuscript back up, (Toby Small was mentioned in another blog.) and have begun the process of crafting it together.  One night, I was going over a list of things that Toby, the main character, had in his backpack as he entered the dark corn maze in the middle of the night.

          3.  I had been enjoying a catalog that a friend loaned me.  It had items from the awesome website www.thinkgeek.com.  This site had various interesting gadgets, and the night vision goggles caught my attention.  Since I first heard of night vision goggles as a kid, I have wanted to own a pair. 

          4.  I had written an article, that was recently purchased by Insight Magazine, titled, “The Father’s Day,” and in that article, I had written about how God, as our Father, knows our every thought, desire, interest and need.  He knows us personally.

On the surface, the night vision goggles, the Father’s Day article, the Toby Small character, and the “Let the Writer Play,” have nothing in common….except me and that they are things that interest me.  But beneath the surface, God was braiding, and he saw things from a different perspective.

 While I was in my private prayer and worship time the other night, I had been talking to God about many serious things…work related, manuscript related, and decision related issues.  I had also been praying about confusion I was having about some of my work.  I had been struggling with feeling an emotion, that was almost like guilt, for writing and working hard on a manuscript that WASN’T Christ related.  I wasn’t sure if that was okay with God.  For, wasn’t everything we were suppossed to do, for Him? 

After everything was said and done, and after I had cried, prayed and paced for quite awhile…I felt peace washing over me.  That’s when the braiding occurred.

—I felt God reminding me that He knows all, that He’s my Father and He cares for each and every concern that I brought to Him.  (#4 event).  Then, I felt as if He wrapped His loving Fatherly arms around me to comfort me.  After some quiet time of just basking quietly in His presence, I then felt the Spirit say (not in an audible voice, but in my spirit) “My daughter, you might want to get those night vision goggles.  After all, Toby might need them.” (#2 -#3 Events).  Suddenly, something occurred to me and I smiled.  God had a sense of humour…and he knows about Toby’s story, and he’s okay with that!  It’s okay for me to write just for fun, not only for “work” for the Kingdom.  It’s okay to play.  I thought of my business cards…”let the writer play.”  That’s when it all came together for me at the end…the “wrap up” of God’s braiding…and I was thinking to myself….all of those centuries ago…when the monks etched those words, “The Book is Finished, Let the Writer Play,”  that the monks, also, knew that after the work is done, it’s okay to play.  (#1 Event)   They knew it back then.  I finally got the picture, now. 

I felt elated, and excited.  Just the thought that, it’s alright to play, that God wants us to enjoy life, and enjoy the gifts He gives us…He wants us to sometimes just have fun…is awesome to me.  I love how God proved to me that He knew about all of those situations in my life…and He worked them all together, to show me and teach me something about Him. 

     “For God is greater than our hearts, and He knows everything.”   

1 John 3:20  

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8. July 2009 by Starr.

The scent from my honeydew melon candle gently wafts across the room as I work today.  Today I keep thinking about endings…not only endings of stories, but endings of lives.  I think, as a writer, that chracters must either live on forever in the mind of the reader, or their life must end.  I simply can’t leave them hanging.  

I started thinking about endings when I stood at the grave of Laura Ingalls Wilder a few weeks ago.  I couldn’t help but think, that after all is said and done…after all of the living, the writing, the rewriting, the revising, the editing, and then writing some more….we all end up in the same place at the end of the day.  Mortality is something I have felt alot of as of late…and it helps keep me motivated to create characters that are quite mortally immortal.  May their lives live on…even after I am gone.

 Right now as I write this, I can’t help but think of the character, Toby Small…the little red-headed adventurer that is filled with fear, who lives in his setting in a file that rests dusty in my black filing cabinet downstairs.  Today I’m going to pull out Toby’s file and work on telling his story. 

Here’s to Toby….may he find his way through the mazes in his life and find his way home.

“Commit your activities to the Lord and your plans will be achieved.”  Proverbs 16:3

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