Author Archives: Barbara Harper

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About Barbara Harper

https://barbarah.wordpress.com

Review: When the Day Comes

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When the Day Comes by Gabrielle Meyer has an intriguing and unique premise for a novel.

Libby Conant is a time crosser. She lives in 1774 Williamsburg with her widowed mother and two sisters. She and her mother took over the printing of the Virginia Gazette after her father died, but they are barely making ends meet. Creditors threaten prison. Then the Conants are awarded the public printing contract from the House of Burgesses. They print Thomas Jefferson’s pamphlets as well as public notices. The Revolutionary War is about to break out, and tensions run high between rebels and loyalists.

Libby has loved Henry Montgomery since they were both children. She thinks he has feelings for her as well, but they move in different social circles. Plus he has secrets of his own. Whose side is he really on?

When Libby goes to sleep in Williamsburg, she wakes up as Anna Elisabeth Wells, only daughter to a prominent, wealthy family in 1914 New York. Her father’s fortune was self-made, which is not enough for her mother’s ambition for rank which values “old money.” Her mother has paraded Libby around for two seasons in New York, and now they are going to London to see what the titled male population is like there.

Libby does not want to marry, at least not before her twenty-first birthday. She enjoys working with the suffragette movement, which her mother disdains. Mother Wells is one of the most manipulative women ever and overrides Libby’s wishes and protests in her pursuit of the right suitor.

War is looming on this timeline as well, though no one knows it yet. Libby only knows because her mother in 1774 was a time crosser as well who lived in the twenty-first century.

When Libby goes to sleep in New York, she wakes up in Williamsburg again, with no loss of time in either place. Thus has it been since she was born and thus it will be until she turns twenty-one. Then she will have to choose which path she wants to live in permanently. Her body will die in the path she does not choose, but she will retain her memories of that time. If she tries to knowingly alter history in either path, she’ll forfeit her life in that path.

Libby is sure which path she will choose. She likes the conveniences of the Gilded Age in 1914, but she’s not interested in status and wealth. She’s needed in 1774 to help her family and the cause of freedom. And even if her love for Henry can never come to fruition, she wants to be where he is.

But unexpected circumstances may force her into a different choice.

This book came out last year, and I kept seeing it favorably mentioned among bloggers I follow. I still wasn’t quite sure I’d be interested, but I decided to give the audiobook a try. And . . . wow. This book was fascinating. The characters are well-drawn. It was fun seeing a few historical figures in the story. The plot kept a good pace, even with the intricacies of two timelines. I loved the eventual emphasis on the need to trust God rather than strive after our own way. I didn’t see the ending coming at all, but it was supremely satisfying.

As usual, the audiobook did not contain the author’s notes. I was curious about how she got and developed the idea for this book and found an interview with her about it here.

I enjoyed this book so much, I immediately started the sequel, In this Moment. Highly recommended.

Devotional Time in Different Seasons of Life

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Good routines help us establish good habits.

Reading the Bible is not just a good habit to get into: the Bible is our food, our letter from God. But sometimes it takes implementing a good routine to make time to read Scripture.

But then we have another problem: when our routine is upset, our good habits fly away.

My best time to read the Bible and pray is in the morning, before my mind gets cluttered with a thousand other things. Having my devotions, or quiet time, first thing helps set my heart in the right position and fortifies me for the day ahead.

But if I oversleep, have to get up early for an appointment, travel, have company, or get sick, my routine is disrupted. It’s not impossible to come back to a quiet time later in the day, but it’s much harder for me.

I imagine the same is true for you as well, whether your best time is in the morning, or right before bed, or somewhere between.

And then some disruptions occur not just in one day, but in a whole season of life.

What are the difficulties peculiar to each phase of life?

Childhood and teen years. I didn’t grow up in a Bible-reading home and didn’t hear about the importance of reading the Bible until I was around sixteen. I was busy with studies, a part-time job, and responsibilities at home. But my biggest hurdle was just getting a regular routine established. I had to start over many times. Eventually, devotional time became a matter of “want to” rather than “supposed to,” though that struggle pops up again and again.

My second big problem was understanding what I read. I had not grown up in church, and I was a new Christian. It didn’t occur to me to ask someone for help when I came to difficult passages. I just shrugged my shoulders and kept going until I came to something that spoke to my heart. But because most of it was new to me, I got plenty to “feed” on and to grow. I wasn’t aware of study Bibles then which contained explanatory notes, but that would have helped.

Early adult years. College was one of my busiest times of life. I was always an eager student, but college life was harder and more time-consuming than I expected.

In a Christian college, it’s easy to just ride on the spiritual atmosphere. We had chapel most days, prayer groups and devotions in the dorms, Bible reading and prayer at the beginning of most classes, and Bible classes themselves. Those are all beneficial, but none of them is the same as meeting with the Lord alone in a personal way.

Even if one does not attend college, life as a new adult has challenges. Working a full-time job is an adjustment. All the responsibilities of adulthood, like cooking, cleaning, grocery-shopping, are now on your shoulders. You may scramble to get going in the morning, spend time with friends or take care of responsibilities after work, and then fall into bed at night.

Then when you get married, you have all of that plus the adjustments of getting used to living with another person. Though marriage has lovely moments, there are small irritations with someone else’s routines conflicting with yours.

However, this period of time was actually the easiest for me in regard to devotional routine. Life was certainly busy. But college life was very structured and scheduled. It was easy to schedule the time to spend with the Lord. And with dorm roommates or early marriage, some discussion and flexibility helped work around each other.

Parenthood. This stage of life was hardest for me to maintain a quiet time, especially after my second child was born. Schedules evaporated. What I called the zombie weeks of disrupted sleep and nighttime feeding made me groggy. During the baby’s nap time, I had to choose between cleaning, sleeping, or reading my Bible. Usually sleep won out.

Then during the second child’s nap times, I had a preschooler who needed attention.

Getting up early—if I even could—would often result in the kids waking up, too.

I listened to Christian radio more then, but like chapel services and Bible classes, that didn’t take the place of one-on-one time with the Lord.

Don’t get me wrong–I loved my children and enjoyed them. But having solitude and quiet time was hard these years. I’d get to the end of the day and pray tearfully, “Lord, I don’t know when I could have had time with you today.”

It finally occurred to me to ask Him at the beginning of the day to help me be alert to opportunities to read for a bit. I couldn’t have a big, sit-down meal spiritually. But I could snack throughout the day. I wrote more about this in Encouragement for Mothers of Young Children.

The Taxi Years. That’s what I called the era when it seemed like we spent more time in the car than anywhere else, driving the kids to school, piano lessons, sports practices, friend’s houses, church events. I had quiet time at home during the day, but I also had to run errands, clean, and grocery shop. And at this time I was also the most active volunteering for church and school.

When we homeschooled for four years, solitude during the day was at a premium. We always had a quiet time in the afternoons when everyone was expected to read quietly or do something in their rooms, if they were too old for naps. That was my devotional time if I hadn’t had it earlier.

Empty Nest and Senior years. You’d think this stage of life would be the greatest time for Bible reading and prayer. And in some ways it is. But new challenges arrive in the form of physical issues or sleep problems. When one spouse retires and is suddenly home all day, the other’s routine needs adjusting. Often one parent or the other requires extra help, if not full time caregiving. Adult children have needs we like to be able to help with.

Illness. At any stage of life, an unexpected accident or illness can disrupt life for weeks, months, or even years. Some may think that extra time resting would allow for even more prayer or Bible reading time. But you’ve probably experienced being fuzzy-headed when you have a bad cold for a few days. Imagine that feeling over the course of a long-term illness. Amy Carmichael wrote in Rose from Brier, after being an invalid for a few years:

I have not found myself that illness makes prayer easier, nor do any of our family who have been ill tell me that they have found it so. Prayerfulness does not seem to be a flower of the spirit that grows of itself. When we are well perhaps we rather take it for granted that it does, as though what is sometimes called a “sick-bed” offered natural soil for that precious flower. I do not think that it does. A bed can be a place of dullness of spirit as well as of body, and prayer is, after all, work—the most strenuous work in all the world. And yet it is our only way of joining the fighting force. . .  So what can we do about it? (p. 199).

One night, in severe pain, when she could “no more gather myself up to pray than I could turn in bed without . . .help,” she came to Psalm 109:21: “But do thou for me, O GOD the Lord.”

And soon the prayer passed into the most restful kind of intercession, the only kind the ill can attain unto, for they cannot pray in detail and they may know little or nothing about the needs of their dearest. But He knows all, down to the smallest wish of the heart. So we do not need to coin our gold in words, we could not if we tried: we are far too tired for that, and He who knows our frame does not ask us to do anything so arduous. Do Thou for her, do Thou for him, do Thou for them, O God the Lord (p. 200).

In any stage, the first necessity is to make time with the Lord a priority. Other duties and distractions will always pull us.

In my early married years, our senior pastor was an older man and our associate pastor was perhaps in his early thirties. They were discussing with someone else the struggles to keep a consistent quiet time. The younger man looked to the older pastor and said, “I’m sure this isn’t a problem for you.” Surely a dedicated man of God who had walked with Him for decades didn’t have to wrestle with time or interruptions or his own flesh to make time to spend with God.

The older man just laughed. Of course he still struggled. As long as we have an old nature pulling against our best intentions and an active enemy trying to trip us up, we’ll struggle.

But we remind ourselves that time in the Bible in prayer is not just one more thing to do. We greatly need to fellowship with our Father, to draw grace and help and strength from Him.

The second necessity is flexibility. I don’t like a rigid schedule, but I like a certain amount of structure and predictability to my days. When interruptions or distractions come, I need to look for other ways and times to meet with the Lord. Sometimes that means setting aside other reading or pleasurable activities. I admit I don’t always feel like switching gears if I sit down to read or watch something or scroll through my phone and I remember I haven’t met with the Lord that day. But when I set aside what I was doing to spend time with Him, I am always blessed.

The third thing we need to do: rely on God’s grace. God isn’t going to zap us with a bad day for punishment if we miss meeting with Him. The Bible doesn’t tell us to read a certain amount of time or verses every day. But it does tell us to meditate on God’s Word day and night. This is one area where previous memorization comes in handy.

Some days or seasons of life are busier or more exhausting than others. A. W. Tozer said, “We must not select a few favorite passages to the exclusion of others. Nothing less than a whole Bible can make a whole Christian.” We need times to dig deep and soak long in God’s truth. If we only read a verse a day or stayed in the Psalms over the course of a lifetime, we’d be pretty weak. But during busy or exhausting days or seasons of life, when we can truly only read a verse or two, God will feed us.

Have you had to change your devotional routine in different stages of life? What helped you?

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable. @ Timothy 3:16

(I often link up with some of these bloggers.)

Laudable Linkage

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Here are some of the thought-provoking blogs discovered this week:

If You Don’t Believe in Hell, HT to Challies. “Beliefs ripple. But we make a concerted effort to ignore that. Especially within the system of Christian faith, people can be tempted to pick and choose which doctrines they are “okay with” and which ones they leave behind. The problem lies in the ripples. Christians don’t always see how disbelief in one thing affects belief in another.”

Learning to Forgive Family, HT to Challies. First what forgiveness is and is not, and then why it is crucial.

The Glory of Godliness. “Frequently, I hear Christians talk about being more faithful, loving, or active in church. But I can’t remember the last time I heard someone say, ‘I want to be more godly.’ Why is there so little interest in godliness? Perhaps it’s because we don’t understand what it is.”

Don’t Fail to Capture the Train of Thought. “One of our greatest failures in Bible study is our tendency to treat the text atomistically. We look for inspirational words or sayings, while failing to grasp how the author used those words or sayings to persuade his audience of a message.”

I’ll Be More Faithful When I’m Older. “It’s folly to expect to wake up faithful twenty years from now if you’re not feeding your faithfulness today. If you desire to walk with Jesus more ten years from now, twenty years from now, or thirty years from now, you need to be feeding your faithfulness today.”

Slogging Blogging. This is an older post that Tim Challies recently linked back to, but it resonates with me. “I have little capacity to predict which articles will fall flat and which will make an impact on myself and others. I have trouble knowing in advance which are excellent and which are drab, which ones will somehow serve or challenge people and which will only irritate or confuse them. So all I can do is slog. All I can do is keep going and trust that the long effort will be rewarded with occasional success—the success of knowing that I’ve been able to bless or encourage or equip another person.”

Elisabeth Elliot quote

Friday’s Fave Five

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Here we are at another Friday, time to pause with Susanne and friends at Living to Tell the Story to stop and count our blessing.

1. Gifts from the garden. Our neighbors have a sizeable garden and bring us some of their excess throughout the summer. They just gave us some fresh zucchini last week.

2. Independence Day. We’re thankful for the freedoms we enjoy in this country that so many fought so hard for. We had grilled burgers and hot dogs for dinner along with several sides and a banana cream pie that Mittu made. Jim had bought some small fireworks and Jason had bought sparklers and “pop-its” that you throw on the ground to make a popping sound. From our lawn chairs in the front yard, we could see over the trees a bit of larger fireworks displays in other areas. It was a fun day!

3. Lunch out together Sunday. Jason, Mittu, and Timothy had joined us for church Sunday. Afterward, we proposed going to eat somewhere. After a lot of looking at apps to see what was nearby, we ended up at a Mexican food place near our house. Jim had not been terribly impressed with it the last time we ate there together, but he enjoyed the meal Sunday. So maybe we can go back some time. 🙂 As it stood, I would sometimes get takeout from there when Jim was away. I grew up in southern TX, where Mexican food was a staple!

On a side note, the restaurant had several TV screens on around the room. They were showing, of all things, a hot dog eating contest. It was pretty disgusting to watch.

4. Hours of reading. After coming home Sunday and taking a nap, I spent most of the evening reading. I fit most of my reading in here and there, so reading for hours felt so luxurious and restful.

5. Not getting thunderstorms. My weather app showed the possibility of thunderstorms for several days this week. I don’t think we got any, though we did get some rain here and there. Thunderstorms always include the possibility of losing power, so I am thankful we didn’t have to deal with any of that this week.

How was your week? Good, I hope.

Every Ocean Has a Shore

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Every Ocean Has a Shore, a novel by Jamie Langston Turner, opens with a few people in a small diner in Chicago. Suddenly a young man with a gun comes in, locks the door, and starts barking orders.

Tragedy is averted, but everyone is shaken. The three adults in the main dining room don’t know it yet, but they are bonded together even after they go their separate ways.

The only customers in the diner at the time were an older woman, Alice, and a young boy. Alice had been estranged from her daughter for years before her daughter died. Alice just found out that her daughter left behind a young son, Ian, who had been cared or by his father. But now the father is dying, and someone finds Alice’s contact information. Alice flew from South Carolina to Chicago to pick up five-year-old Ian, who doesn’t speak. They’ve just stopped at the diner for lunch when the incident occurred.

Gary is the owner of the diner. He was always a quiet man, but became quieter still after his wife died. He’s intelligent, but it takes him a while to think through things. His loneliness and the crime in the city cause him to consider moving, but he doesn’t know where or what he would do with himself. He has a sister in Vermont who needs help fixing up her home. Maybe he’ll start there.

Fawna is the waitress, a college dropout with a birthmark on her cheek in the shape of Borneo and a penchant for saying weird things. She rents a room from a crotchety old woman named Mrs. Welborn and helps her out. Her parents died, leaving her with money to live on. She’s drifted around for the past eight or nine years, but thinks she might like to settle down somewhere. The problem is, she doesn’t know where to go or what she wants to do.

The point of view switches between these three as they go on with their lives but keep in touch. We learn some of their background and issues. Fawna discovers C. S. Lewis and begins to wonder if, as Lewis suggests, someone has been orchestrating all the events of their lives.

Fans of Jamie Langston Turner will welcome this, her first new book in nine years. A few characters from her earlier books make an appearance, particularly Eldeen, the larger-than-life older woman from Jamie’s first book, Suncatchers. But this is a stand-alone novel that can be enjoyed even if you haven’t read the previous books.

Jamie’s books are character-driven, not plot-driven. This isn’t an edge-of-your-seat kind of story. In fact, the story seems pretty slow in places. But as we learn more about each character and see how everything is woven together, we find great depth. I’ve seen many people who don’t normally like Christian fiction say that they like Jamie’s books.

Do You Want to Be Free?

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I did not start going to church regularly until my mid-teens. It seems like we sang a lot of songs then about being free from sin.

One our youth choir sang was called “Set Me Free.” That’s the only place I ever heard this particular song. I haven’t been able to remember enough of the words to look it up.

One we sang often in my early married years was “Free From the Law.”

Then there was, “Power in the Blood“:

Would you be free from the burden of sin?
There’s pow’r in the blood, pow’r in the blood;
Would you o’er evil a victory win?
There’s wonderful pow’r in the blood.

Would you be free from your passion and pride?
There’s pow’r in the blood, pow’r in the blood;
Come for a cleansing to Calvary’s tide–
There’s wonderful pow’r in the blood.

There is pow’r, pow’r, wonder-working pow’r
In the blood of the Lamb;
There is pow’r, pow’r, wonder-working pow’r
In the precious blood of the Lamb.
– Lewis E. Jones

And “I Will Sing the Wondrous Story“:

I was bruised, but Jesus healed me;
Faint was I from many a fall;
Sight was gone, and fears possessed me,
But He freed me from them all.
– Francis H. Rowley

There are a couple I haven’t heard in church, like “For Freedom, Christ Has Set Us Free” and “Glorious Freedom.”

It occurred to me that I don’t hear these kinds of songs, or the theme of freedom from sin in Christ, much any more.

Jesus once said “if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36). I wonder if the world doesn’t appreciate the impact of that statement because they don’t understand that they’re not free.

They think they are.

2 Peter warns of false prophets and teachers who use false words to entice people. They appeal to greed and lust to deceive. “They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved” (verse 19).

Their chains are so pleasurable, they don’t realize they are bound. They’re so comfortable and having such fun, they don’t want to be free.

But the pleasures of sin, Hebrews 11:25 says, are only for a short season.

Jesus also said that He is the light of the world. We need to pray that He will shine in people’s hearts and show them their need of Him and His love for them.

Jesus said He is the bread of life. He invites, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink” (John 7:37). We need to pray God would create in hearts hunger and thirst for Him greater than what the world has to offer.

And we need to tell them about Him. May they find that “the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8:2).

The whole world was lost in the darkness of sin,
The Light of the world is Jesus!
Like sunshine at noonday, His glory shone in;
The Light of the world is Jesus!

No darkness have we who in Jesus abide;
The Light of the world is Jesus!
We walk in the light when we follow our Guide!
The Light of the world is Jesus!

Ye dwellers in darkness with sin-blinded eyes,
The Light of the world is Jesus!
Go, wash at His bidding, and light will arise;
The Light of the world is Jesus!

Come to the light, ’tis shining for thee;
Sweetly the light has dawned upon me;
Once I was blind, but now I can see:
The Light of the world is Jesus!
– P. P. Bliss

(I often link up with some of these bloggers.)

Laudable Linkage

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Here are some of the good reads found this week:

The Myth of a Balanced Life. “Are we looking for some perfect equilibrium—the precisely right amount of sleep, exercise, and time with family, work, and church? And if we found that perfect formula, is that then supposed to become the norm for every day of the week? What about when you have kids? What about when you’re traveling? What about the weekend?” I appreciate the better perspective presented here.

Is There a Danger of Worshiping the Bible Instead of God? HT to Challies. “I agree that there is a danger of having our faith in the wrong object. And there have been some people who seemingly hold the Bible in higher esteem than they do Jesus. But seen properly, the Bible is not a competitor with God; on the contrary, it is our God-given means of knowing Him through His revealed truth.“

A Pastor’s Journey with Anxiety, HT to Challies. A pastor shares his own experience, what he has learned, and shares how to walk alongside others who are struggling.

The Psalms: A Tool for Cultivating Godly Emotions, HT to Knowable Word. “The Psalms not only help us know what we can say in prayer (often one of our biggest struggles), they help us know what to feel. They . . . share all shades of human emotion from deepest despair to exuberant praise. We find saints processing the good and bad of life in a godly way. Reading and praying the Psalms takes us into their emotional world, how they wrestled with God and eventually found hope.”

When the Sermon Fizzles Instead of Sizzles. It may or may not be the pastor’s fault. It may be ours.

Becoming Writers Who Write the Truth Beautifully, HT to Challies. “To be published doesn’t mean you’re a good writer. There are many books out there; some contain the most beautifully written heresies while others contain solid truths slapped together with cringe-worthy analogies and dense, dry paragraphs. As believers, we want to be not just published writers but good writers. Someone who brings truth and beauty together in the written word.”

Beautiful Hand-Painted Bookmarks, HT to the Story Warren. This touched my heart. A 100-year-old housebound woman has found a unique way to share God’s love with others.

Friday’s Fave Five

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As June winds down to a close, it’s time to pause and consider the blessings of the past week with Susanne and friends at Living to Tell the Story.

1. Model rocket adventures. When our boys were younger, they had fun putting together and launching model rockets. My husband found one of our old rockets from those days and supplemented it with some new items from Hobby Lobby. We invited Jason, Mittu, and Timothy to meet at a park to launch them, and Mittu made us a picnic lunch. Unfortunately, though, she wasn’t feeling well and ended up not coming.

We had a great time, and Timothy was impressed and excited. 🙂 I wish I could put a video here of his reaction.

Putting the rocket together
Countdown to liftoff!

2. Bad news/good news. My youngest son, Jesse, works for a company that does out-service tech support for various other companies. They’re divided up into different service desks for each company. He got word this week that the service desk he has worked in for years will be closing. The good news is, his company thinks they they have places on other service desks for all the employees.

3. A benign test result. Jim had a biopsy this week and got good results back. It was expected that the results would be benign, but it’s great to get that confirmation.

4. Good feedback. It was my turn to present a chapter for our critique group, and the feedback was so encouraging and helpful. If you’re thinking of writing for publication, I can’t recommend a critique group highly enough. It helps to know where you’re on the right track and where you need more clarity, or to have a perfect suggestion for wording or arrangement.

5. Fifteen minutes extra. Our critique group has added fifteen minutes extra to our meeting time for whoever can stay, just for some open discussion time. Sometimes someone will have a specific question about their own work or a general question about writing or publishing. Not only has this time been helpful, but it’s been fun to get to know the ladies more.

And that’s a wrap. How was your week?

June Reflections

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I don’t know how a month can simultaneously feel long and yet seem to have sped by, but June was like that to me.

I count summer from June 1, though summer only officially began last week. Heat and humidity keep me mostly inside with the AC on and a cold drink at hand.

But we had a couple of outings involving a picnic lunch. We went with Jason, Mittu, and Timothy to a park at Douglas Dam and enjoyed some games as well as exploring the tailwater area with Timothy.

Then last week we went to a different park to eat lunch and shoot model rockets, something we did when our boys were small. More on that at this week’s Friday’s Fave Five.

We enjoyed Father’s Day and other family dinners and quiet evenings in-between.

Creating

Somehow Father’s Day caught me off guard—I thought I had another week. So I ended up using stickers I had on hand to make Jim’s and Jason’s cards.

The card I was trying to make for my step-father didn’t come out like I had hoped. His had to be sent early through the mail, so I ended up buying one for him.

Here is Jim’s with a camping theme:

This is Jason’s:

Jason used to make cards or notes divided into four, and that seemed like a good layout for this one. Fun fact: I accidentally had the card upside-down and didn’t realize it til the front was finished. I’ve done that once or twice before and rectified it by cutting off the whole front and gluing it to another card. I decided to leave it this time, figuring it would give the family a laugh. I wrote “OOPS!” on the inside front cover.

Watching

There’s not much on in the summer, so we’ve streamed a few more programs than usual.

We watched the four-part Shiny Happy People on Amazon Prime. The subtitle is “Duggar Family Secrets,” but it’s about more than the Duggars: it’s a kind of exposé of Bill Gothard and his teachings. I already knew much of the information from reading Jill Duggar Vuolo’s book, Becoming Free Indeed: My Story of Disentangling Faith from Fear (linked to my review).

Though there were serious problems with Gothard’s teachings and practices that needed to come to light, the series grouped all fundamentalists and almost all homeschoolers and conservative Christians under the same umbrella, which was not correct. This article from WORLD magazine, Shiny Happy People is Both True and False, delineates some of the faulty conflation.

One night when Jim was away, I watched Babette’s Feast, a1987 film based on a short story by Isak Dinesen. That led to reading the story and discussing both the story and film here.

We watched Jesus Revolution together with mixed emotions.

We watched The Battle of Britain, a WWII film made in 1969. We were expecting it to be good since it had an all-star cast, but we were disappointed.

Another pretty bad movie was God and Spies. It was a poorly written, mostly poorly acted Christian film, but it was based on a true story Operation Ivy Bells during the Cold War. The Navy, CIA, and NSA worked together to tap the USSR’s underwater cables. Garry Matheny, one of the divers, is the main character (and I think writer/producer). A few slides with photos and more information at the end made me wonder if this would have been better done as a documentary.

Finally, we saw a good one called Greater:The Brandon Burlsworth Story, also based on a true story. Brandon was an unlikely football player who was a walk-on for the Arkansas Razorbacks, but then excelled, became an All-American, and was signed to the Indianapolis Colts shorty before he died in a car accident. This was not presented as a Christian film, but Brandon’s faith was a big part of his life and was well-displayed here. We’re not big into sports films, but we enjoyed this.

Reading

Since last time I completed (linked to my reviews):

  • The Two Mrs. Abbots by D. E. Stevenson, audiobook. This is the third Barbara Buncle book, though Barbara is Mrs. Abbot now. The other Mrs. Abbott is a young woman who married Barbara’s husband’s nephew, who was like a son to them. This story takes place during WWII, with a number of subplots intertwining, including a runaway girl, an incognito author, and a spy.
  • The Four Graces by D. E. Stevenson, audiobook. The four Graces are adult daughters of the village vicar. This story continues with some of the characters from The Two Mrs. Abbotts, though Barbara is only in the first chapter. This was a sweet story as the young women face various trials.
  • A Place to Hang the Moon by Kate Albus, audiobook. I dearly loved this book. Three orphaned children are included by their family’s solicitor with child evacuees sent from London to the countryside during WWII. The hope was that their foster family might be willing to keep them permanently. Though this book was written a few years ago, it reads like a classic children’s novel–and references many classic children’s novels.
  • The Nature of Fragile Things by Susan Meissner, audiobook. I didn’t review it here, but did at GoodReads. Set during the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, this was an intriguing story about an immigrant who answers an ad for essentially a mail-order bride. Everything goes well until she finds he is married to someone else as well as her. Though the writing was well-done, some objectionable elements turned me off.
  • Humble Roots: How Humility Grounds and Nourishes Your Soul by Hannah Anderson. Excellent. I’m rereading it, after just finishing it, to try to soak in more of it.
  • Gay Girl, Good God: The Story of Who I Was and Who God Has Always Been by Jackie Hill Perry, audiobook and Kindle. Jackie’s remarkable story of becoming a Christian out of a life of drug addiction and homosexuality.

I’m currently reading:

  • Be Worshipful (Psalms 1-89): Glorifying God for Who He Is by Warren W. Wiersbe
  • Blogging for God’s Glory in a Clickbait World by Benjamin Vrbicek and John Beeson
  • The Dwelling Place by Elizabeth Musser
  • When the Day Comes by Gabrielle Meyer
  • Every Ocean Has a Shore by Jamie Langston Turner

Blogging

Besides the weekly Friday Fave Fives, Saturday Laudable Linkage, and book reviews, I’ve posted these since last time:

  • Unseen Hurts. Parallels between wounds of the flesh and spirit.
  • Why Doesn’t God Make Everything Clear? It seems like that would prevent a lot of debating. But perhaps God wants our hearts and dependence and grace in ways we might not yield them otherwise.
  • Fathers and Children. We’re not doomed by a bad father or saved by a good father.
  • A Steady Soul. Just as a firm handrail helps me when I feel unsteady, God’s Word is a firm guide and aide to keep us steady spiritually.

Writing

I completed my first draft some time ago, so now I am revising chapters. I just completed my third one–actually combining the next two chapters— for our critique group. I received helpful and encouraging feedback.

As I told the group, whenever it is my turn to present, I am excited to get back into it—but then real life kicks in, and I don’t get as much done until my next turn.

However, I discovered something that I think will be helpful. I keep thinking I need a big block of time before I can even get started writing. But in this revising stage, I can only think through so much about arranging and rearranging and whether I need to add here or cut there before my brain can’t process any more. So, realizing I can make a dent in a shorter time period will hopefully help me do so more often. Plus, the more often I work on my draft, the less time I need to reorient myself from where I left off.

Looking ahead

I’m always glad to get past the summer solstice and know the days will start shortening from here on. I like having more light in the evenings this time of year . . . but maybe not quite as late. We’re looking forward to the Fourth of July with the family next week, Jason’s birthday later, and lots of everyday life throughout.

How was your June? Looking forward to anything in July?

Review: Gay Girl, Good God

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I think I first came across Jackie Hill Perry on Twitter. I wasn’t familiar with her work, but somehow I saw things that she had tweeted. I liked what she said, so I followed her. Unfortunately, she’s not on Twitter any more.

I don’t know at what point I learned that Jackie had written a book, Gay Girl, Good God: The Story of Who I Was and Who God Has Always Been. I saw some good reviews and put it on my To Be Read list.

Jackie grew up with a single mother and a father who breezed in and out of her life. Her father once told her that he loved her, but it wouldn’t bother him if she never wanted to see him again. His absence and lack of love plus Jackie’s being sexually abused by a boy at a young age were major factors in Jackie’s gender confusion, which then led to her becoming a lesbian.

Jackie had attended church and knew that Christians believed homosexuality was wrong. She fully believed she was going to hell. But she didn’t care.

Yet she felt God’s pursuit of her. She felt Him calling her, “haunting” her.

The only thing that made sense was that someone had obviously been talking to God about me and it was the reason why God wouldn’t leave me alone. Obviously, whatever was being asked of Him, regarding me, was making my little sinful world spin. It was dizzying to live on now-a-days. Trying to stand up straight (or should I say, queer), made everything I loved, mainly myself and my girlfriend, blurry. Nothing was clear except God’s loud voice saying, “Come.” (p. 50, Kindle version).

Eventually, Jackie did come. Yet life was not then miraculously easy. She wasn’t just saved from homosexuality. She was saved from sin, any and all sin. And like every other new believer, she learned that discipleship consists of taking up one’s cross daily and following Jesus, just as He said it would.

In the last section of her book, Jackie deals with Biblical truths like our identity in Christ and some common misconceptions, especially of what she calls the “heterosexual gospel.” In witnessing to homosexuals, well-meaning Christians sometimes promise or emphasize things which the Bible does not.

A few quotes that stood out to me:

Why hadn’t they ever mentioned the place happiness had within righteousness, or how the taking up of the cross would be a practice of obtaining delight? Delight in all that God is? Even their Savior had this kind of joy in mind as He endured His cross. So why hadn’t they set their focus on the same? In their defense, they were not to blame for my unbelief. I just wonder if they would’ve told me about the beauty of God just as much, if not more, than they told me about the horridness of hell, if I would’ve burned my idols at a faster pace (p. 64).

Because a good God made the woman, then being a woman was a good thing (p. 87).

Our sexuality is not our soul, marriage is not heaven, and singleness is not hell (p. 139).

To tell you about what God has done for my soul is to invite you into my worship (p. 140).

Do you know why we have a hard time believing that a gay girl can become a completely different creature? Because, we have a hard time believing God. The Pharisees saw the man born blind, heard his testimony, heard about his past and how it was completely different from the present one, and refused to believe the miracle because of Who the miracle pointed to. They were skeptical of the miracle because they didn’t have a real faith in the God who’d done it. The miracle was less about the blind man and more about a good God. It showed Him off. His power. His ability to do what He wants. How He wants, when He wants, and to whomever He chooses (p. 107).

I especially loved this, in telling about the man who had been born blind whom Jesus healed by combing His spit with dirt, rubbing the mixture on the man’s eyes, then telling hm to go wash in the pool of Siloam: “Using his palms to brush the stubborn sections away from his eyelids, light startled him. As more mud fell, more sight came. Until at once, he could see” (p. 106).

I looked at Goodreads yesterday to see what some of the reviews said. Not surprisingly, I saw review after review with one star scathingly critical of Jackie’s story. I thought, how sad it is that her book is rated so low just because people disagree with her. But then I scrolled up and saw that only three percent of the reviews were one star. 83% were four and five stars. Yet of the ten reviews Goodreads showed on the first page, seven were one-star.

I would love to say to those who discount Jackie’s story (one review accused her and her husband of pretending to be heterosexual)—if, according to the world, life is all supposed to be about choice these days, why would anyone argue with Jackie’s choices? If everyone’s supposed to have their own truth (which I disagree with, and Jackie would, too), why would you discount the truth of her experience? Why is it that if someone has lived a heterosexual lifestyle but then thinks they might be gay, that determination is supposed to be the real, lifelong one and there’s no turning back? Why can one supposedly only turn one way, and not the other?

One can, of course. But Satan wants to blind and deceive people.

I enjoyed Jackie’s story of God’s grace. I have not heard or read her poetry, but she has a poet’s heart and her expressiveness shines through here. Her knowledge of Biblical truth is solid.

I’d recommend her books to anyone, gay or straight, Christian or not. I think it would be particularly eye-opening to Christians who can sometimes come across as glib in their witness or opinions.

I listened to the audiobook, read by Jackie. At the moment, it’s free to those with an Audible subscription. Then I bought the Kindle version so I could keep this book on hand.