Honestly!

Recently my wife was reading one of the "Conversations With God" books, and she mentioned that apparently God told his 'buddy' that one should always tell the truth, even if it's painful to the recipient - because one should always uphold one's personal integrity.

Whoa.

If the truth is, "you're bleeding from a sucking chest wound", that's probably...no, definitely...a good thing.

The problem is that it leaves open the option of criticizing, of telling someone the truth as you see it and feeling righteous. In other word, let fly with everything you wanted to tell your spouse/child/parent/friend/boss, and stand back feeling good...I mean, you're acting on God"s orders, right?

Wrong. Dead wrong. To get the Scriptural stuff out of the way, in 2 Cor. 6:3 Paul tells us not to give offense to anyone, lest the church or ministry be discredited.

Sound stuff - what you say stands for who you work for.

But beyond this, our words can have a huge effect on people - far greater than we might expect. A word of encouragement can lift someone through a hard day, through the decisive hard day of their life.

But conversely, a negative comment can run a long way on its short little legs. As a personal (and embarrassing) illustration, years ago I was told by a woman (not my wife) that I had less romantic sense than a piece of plywood.

She was a friend whose opinion I valued, and later said she didn't mean to hurt me...but it stuck. Previously I'd tried to be 'sensitive and romantic', trying to understand what might make a woman happy. But after that, my efforts were dead on arrival and I knew it. I tried, but I was like a hog on roller skates.

My fault for letting someone get under my skin? Sure.

Did I try to work on it? Sure. Successfully? Not in my heart. It feels awkward, and whatever grace I had will never come back. (Fortunately my wife doesn't mind, but honestly - she deserved more.)

Point is, whenever you're tempted to criticize someone, ask yourself - are you doing it for their sake, or for yours?

Because if you're doing it for you, you may be asking someone to carry a far greater burden, far further than you realize.

Stayin' Alive

Some weeks teach really cool lessons.
Some really suck.

Last week really sucked. I thought I knew a lot about living with pain, and its attendant twins of melodrama, despair and disillusion. But, no.

For what it's worth, here are some ways I coped.

1. Reaching out - I wasn't up to doing much, but I did let friends know what was happening, and asked for prayers and good vibes. Getting to the computer was physically difficult, but the prospect of an uplifting email made it worth while.
2. Reading - Having a selection of books available that are involving and uplifting (that word again!) made long days pass more quickly.
3. Movies - A 'feel-good' DVD in the middle of the night is good medicine, but a good choice is essential. Perhaps not something like 'Ghost'.
4. Work - I freelance, and work from home - I tried to keep hands on some renumerative work every day.
5. Dogs - Always a tonic. And sometimes a lifesaver, and in biting me and barking in my face to get me to breathe.
6. Prayer - 'Nuff said.

One other thing I learned - if you aren't up to posting in a week, blog readership REALLY goes down!

For those who still might be left...what would you add to the list above?

How To Write A Novel

I didn't know how to write a novel until I wrote one. (I'm not going to talk about getting it published...that's a whole 'nother subject!)

But if you were wondering, here are my suggestions.

1. Come up with a simple idea. Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy works like a dog to win girl's heart again is a story that will always appeal, and it's dead simple.
2. Come up with characters whose company you enjoy. Write down their characteristics, their loves and hates. Keep a notebook, and tape in pictures cut from a magazine to give you a visual anchor. Do it for the main characters, and the most important minor characters.
3. Sketch out the plot. Not just as a numbered list of chapter headings...take a big piece of paper and draw a timeline, that shows what happens when.
4. Write every day. Try to write a LOT every day, because there's nothing like a rapidly increasing word count to make you feel progress! Don't worry about perfect. Editing will come later. Just get the story written.
5. Give the characters freedom. usually the fastest way you write is the best...if scenes just rip through the keyboard, you're on to something. If you have to think through every line, you're struggling, and it will show. Go with the rip.
6. When you're about 3/4 done, write the ending. Then build a bridge to get you there.
7. When it's done, it's done. You can cut it up in the edits to your heart's content, but for the first draft, get a finished product.

I'm about to finish my fourth novel in four years. Did I do these? Some of them. Well, three of them...5 through 7.

What I did was to just sit down to a blank screen, and I started to write. I invented names on the fly, made up the story as I went along, and in NO case was the finished product anything near what I'd envisaged in the beginning. I don't recommend doing it this way, though. You can write your way into a story that's foreshortened, on one that's a shaggy dog story...a joke without a punch line.

So...go write your novel!

Rules For Husbands

I was going to make this '10 Rules For Husbands'. then I thought about it...maybe five would be better.

Well, five's still a lot. let's try three.

1. Do at least one job that you consider 'women's work' - Are there chores in your house that are gender-specific? Like the dishes? Like the laundry? Do you even know HOW to turn on the vacuum cleaner (Shop Vacs don't count)? If so...you need to offer to take over one of these jobs, learn to do it the way your wife wants it done, and do it without complaint, and without expecting reward or recognition. In other words...do it the way she's done it for you. Until now.
2. Ask your wife how her day was, and listen to the answer - When you walk in the door, take your wife aside...on the porch, in the living room, in your bedroom...and ask her how her day was. And...big important point...listen to the answer. Don't think about who's playing Buffalo this week, or who's in line for the promotion you're afraid you won't get. Listen, no matter how long it takes. Listen as if you might be quizzed. Listen as if you really cared...because it's your duty, and your PRIVILEGE, to care.
3. Sex is not a reward, and not an obligation - if you put your wife into a situation where she feels obligated to physical intimacy as a reward for something you've done, or as something she owes you, you've taken the best gift she can give you out of her hands. That gift is herself.

A lot of men might read this, and ask, "Why should I do any of this? I bring home all, or most of the money...I do the heavy work around the house and yard...I take her to dinner every week..."

All very well and good. But if you go just a little bit further, do these three things, and you'll be acknowledging something important.

Your wife had a choice. She didn't have to...but she chose you. And she validates that choice every day, with every cup of coffee, every piece of clean laundry laid out for you to wear, every kiss.

Legacies

The political conventions are over - how wonderful! Kind of.

I may be slow on the uptake, but for the first time I realized that they actually have a certain charm, if you listen to them carefully. That charm comes from a perception that what these things are all about is legacy. It's about how these groups of people, and the individuals within them, and leading them, want to be remembered.

Fortunately for us, the US government is far too ponderous a beast to be directed by any one candidate, or really any one party, into accomplishing dramatic legislation during one or two presidential terms. The amount of bickering, backstabbing, and general incompetence that infests all legislative proceedings insures that change is incremental, when it occurs at all. Even a 'landmark' bill like Obamacare has a legislative trail that goes back to the Clinton years. Obama merely got a majority of Congress to sign off on it; Clinton put it on the map, and the intervening tears massaged the concept into something that could be passed.

So, sweeping individual initiatives aside, what are the motivators? these people don't need money. Obama was a wealthy man before he became president; he'll merely be very wealthy, and have a rather restricted lifestyle, when he's done. Congresspeople are also generally rich to begin with, as well...the days of Mr. Smith Goes To Washington are long gone.

I think it's legacy. I think that these people want to leave some mark, however small, on the direction that government too while they were there. They want to be identified with the flavor of the time.

If I'm right, this quest for a sort of legacy - Remember Me! - isn't a bad thing at all. It's an innocent gesture of hope and faith against the inevitability of Time.

We may not agree with all that they do...and we don't, and shouldn't. But perhaps we should look at them more as the humans they are, rather than the caricatures they aren't.

Prayer Warriors, and Prayer Wienies

On the afternoon of one of the worst days in recent memory, I heard a TV preacher cheerfully say that if you r prayers aren't being answered, it means you haven't 'filled up your prayer vault' in God's Throne Room, so it'll 'explode like a volcano' and thus gain God's attention. Pray without ceasing, and be focused and diligent, and your prayers will be answered.

I'm trying to think of something snide to say, reflecting my disgust with that kind of smug and ultimately disrespectful attitude, but all I can really say is, What An Idiot.

Forget about me. I'm really bad at prayer. Mind wanders, can't hold my hands together because one's kind of broken.

But think back eleven years, almost to the day. Think about the people photographed jumping from the World Trade Center Towers. Think about their clothes, rippling in the wind. Clothes that they selected only hours before, to look nice.

Not to be their shroud.

You think they didn't pray hard enough to be delivered from their fate? I don't. And I hope with all my heart that God heard their last, desperate prayers and calmed their hearts in their last few seconds of fall. I hope, and believe, that they were His greatest priority. Not to rescue, but to save.

In advanced math, you use functions called 'transforms' to solve some difficult problems...you transform your original problem into an easier one, solve it in the 'transform space', and use the reverse of the transform to get back your result in the real world.

I'd think prayer is like that. God hears every prayer, and answers it in God-space...and transforms it on the way back to us. So that a prayer for a hand, catching us from a physical fall, will become a Heart, embracing us in our spiritual plummet.

I hope so.

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

That's Invictus, the masterwork of William Ernest Henley, and was fist published in 1875, when Henley was only 26. He contracted tuberculosis of the bone when he was a child, and at the age of 17, a leg was amputated. he was about to lose another when he chose to work with a different doctor, Joseph Lister (yes, the guy who invented 'Listerine'). He saved the leg, and went on to live a full life.

Invictus was a major support to Nelson Mandela during his years on Robbens Island (and lent its title to a 2009 movie about Mandela - well worth watching!); the last two lines are probably some of the most-quoted lines in English poetry.

I'd love to be able to claim a strong sense of identification with the spirit of this poem...but I can't. I've certainly seem my share of fell clutches of circumstance and bludgeonings, but if I'm honest, I've just gotten by. I can identify more with the Viet Nam mantra, "don't mean nothin'".

What about you? How do you relate to Invictus?