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Encouragement

Three Types of Editing You Need (Even if You Aren’t an Author)

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One of the more tedious parts of being a writer is the editing phase. When you proudly send off a manuscript and get it back with over 1,000 suggestions, it’s pretty discouraging. But once you get the nerve to start looking at those suggestions, you find that most of them make sense and do indeed improve the flow of the story. You make the changes, knowing that the story is better as a result. But in the vast majority of cases, one round of edits isn’t enough. Most writers go through at least three rounds of edits before they reach a final manuscript. So once you’ve sent back the revised manuscript implementing the suggested changes, know that you aren’t done. You can expect to receive yet another marked-up manuscript. And another…

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Tried and Found Wanting

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Looking at my friend’s list of goals for the week, I started to feel rather unambitious. She and I are accountability partners, so we check in every week to report progress and set new goals. It’s a lovely arrangement, but last week she sent me her list that included seven items, many of them multi-faceted. My list had all of two things on it, both related to writing. I told her my goals looked completely lame in comparison, and she laughed and said, “I was thinking my goals were lame! You’re writing a book, and all I’m doing is finding people to fix stuff around our house!” Then she reminded me of a saying someone had once told her: “To compare is to despair.”

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Broken Resolutions

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I broke my New Year’s resolution on January 2. It was my daughter’s birthday, and with everything else going on that day, I just didn’t get in the 30 minutes of decluttering that I’d vowed to do each day.  Understandable, sure, but what a downer all the same. I didn’t even make it two days into the new year before I broke my resolution. So much for a fresh start.

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Santa Sightings

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I saw Santa Claus in the post office the other day. He ended up in line behind me as we waited for the postal clerk. Now, my kids don’t believe in Santa, but my three-year-old was gawking at him, so I decided to have some fun. “Is that Santa I see here?” I asked my son. “What’s he doing here? I didn’t think Santa mailed stuff from this post office! Isn’t he supposed to be in the North Pole?” The pretend Santa smiled,  but otherwise remained silent. I have to admit, I was a little disappointed. I’d hoped for an obligatory, “Ho, Ho, Ho!” After all, he was wearing the costume. The least he could do was play the part.

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Why I Don’t Do Christmas Anymore

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I’ve decided I’m not going to decorate for Christmas anymore. I made the mistake of putting up our tree with the kids last weekend, and it was a disaster. While I’d love to be instilling happy memories for the kids in our annual Christmas decorating, I’m afraid the opposite could well be true. I’ll spare you the details, but suffice it to say that there was much fighting, and in the end we had two broken ornaments and two children in tears. So much for quality family time. Who needs this, anyhow? So I’m done. No more decorating for me.

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Obsessed with Death

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A visitor to church might have wondered what was going on yesterday. All Saints Sunday is somewhat of an unusual one, as we remember with joy the deaths of those saints who have gone before us. In churches around the world, we took time to list the names of church members who have died within the past year. We even sing in gory detail about the deaths of the saints of old:

They have come from tribulation And have washed their robes in blood,
Washed them in the blood of Jesus; Tried they were, and firm they stood.
Mocked, imprisoned, stoned, tormented, Sawn asunder, slain with sword…
(TLH 471, v 3)

A glorious band, the chosen few, On whom the Spirit came,
Twelve valiant saints—their hope they knew And mocked the cross and flame.
They met the tyrant’s brandished steel, The lion’s gory mane;
They bowed their necks their death to feel—Who follows in their train?
(LSB 661, v 3)

Nice thing to be singing about with the kids, isn’t it? Being stoned, sawn in half, eaten by lions, burned to death, beheaded… Yep. Nothing to see here, folks. Just an ordinary church service, singing about various ways to die. What is it about Christians, that we’re so obsessed with death?

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Foolish Giving

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An adult never would have done it. It wasn’t logical. In fact, it was downright embarrassing to offer such a small amount for such a large crowd. And besides, it made more sense to keep it for oneself for the journey ahead. Yet the boy didn’t think about any of that. He just knew he had some food and other people needed it. So he found Andrew and told him he had five loaves of barley bread and two fish. Perhaps the people around him snickered at how naive this child was. But Andrew brought the food to Jesus, who multiplied it to feed over 5,000 men, plus women and children.  The leftovers alone were astounding. But in order to multiply the food, first the boy had to give it away.

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A Perfect Rescue

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It was the perfect rescue story. We found a stray cat nearby, looking dirty, hungry, scared, and overall pretty pathetic. We didn’t want to commit to another indoor cat, but we figured she could be an outdoor cat if she so chose. So we took her home, fed her, brushed the burrs out of her fur, and the kids gave her lots of love. They made a little bed for her inside a box, and she curled up in it rather cozily to spend the night. The next morning we couldn’t find her right away, so the kids went looking for her. They found her in a hole the dogs had dug in the backyard. This hole goes underneath the patio, and the dogs slide under there to stay cool in the hot Texas sun. We tried coaxing the cat out, to no avail. We bribed her with food. Nothing. So my oldest son volunteered to slither down as far as he could to reach her. I had visions of him pulling her to safety while she purred gratefully, glad to have been rescued. Only it didn’t work out that way at all.

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Perfect Timing

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Timing is everything in music. No one wants to be the one who miscounts the measures of rest and comes in at the wrong time. Take the iconic ending of G.F. Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus,” for example. The music is climaxing with the singers repeating, “Forever and ever! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!” (Dramatic pause) “Hal-le-lu-jah!” It’s that rest right before the last “Hallelujah” that makes the ending. If the singers ignored that final rest or sang one too many “hallelujahs,” it would ruin it. Like I said, timing is everything.

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