Author Archives: Jane

At the Foot of Your Cross

Praying Hands Gold

AT THE FOOT OF YOUR CROSS

End Scroll   I fall at the foot of your cross,

My Lord Jesus Christ,

And raise my eyes to fix upon yours,

Begging to draw down the power of your love and forgiveness

Offered to me without deserving.

End Scroll  Please, Lord Jesus, carry my longing

With you to the throne of Almighty God,

Holding my heart in trust

Until the day I find myself with you at last.

End Scroll  May I, Lord Jesus, with your love at the cross

As my witness to the power and mercy of God,

Accept the gift of this one day,

Glorifying you and the Almighty

With each thought and deed.

End Scroll  I beg you, Lord Jesus, to stand between me and

Every evil temptation casting a shadow on my path.

Let your brilliance light my way

So that when evening falls,

I might lay my head upon my pillow

And lay my day at your feet as my best,

In love,

End Scroll  My offering of thanksgiving I give, that you loved me enough

To go to the cross as My Light

And My Salvation.

Amen.

 

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Copyright 2013.  All Rights Reserved.

The Silent Pen

Writer Page Finished

 

 

 

Not forgotten;
Ignored.
Six years set aside.
So many words unspoken,
Forgotten;
Each a message undelivered,
Never missed.  Inkwell Tiny

Once upon a time
Ev’ry thought held down by ink.
Thought birthing thought,
Captured,
Shared –
And filed away.  Inkwell Tiny

Now, unwritten essays
Recognized,
The psalmist cries my tears;
My praises sings.
No loss today
The thoughts I had
Yet did not give
My silent pen.  Inkwell Tiny

Plain recognition
Of who I am,
Standing,
Kneeling,
Before the Infinite One.
Love
Unspoken,
Unrecorded,
Is enough.
Praying Hands Glow

 

scroll-divide-horizontal-2Copyright 2016.  All Rights Reserved.

Signing an Agent

January 15, 1998

Hi, my name is Jane. I’ve written a book. Will you be my agent, please?
Yes, just sign on the dotted line.
What will I get, if I sign?
Depends.
Depends on what?
Depends on if I sell your book.
How do I know you will try to sell my book?
Depends.
Depends on what?
Depends on how good your book is.

–Pause–

My kids like my book.
Of course.
My friends like my book.
What choice do they have?

–Pause–

Why don’t you read my book?
I’m busy.
Doing what?
Selling books.
Books you haven’t read?
I’ve read the book proposals.
Oohhhh…this is a concept market. I get it. Well, then, here’s the concept…
Wait. I need the book.
Why?
Because I need to see how well you write the concept? Can You Write??!!
Glad you asked. Here’s the book.
Could you reduce that, please, to three chapters, starting with the book proposal?

–Pause–

Look, before I go any further, how…if my book is good enough for you…would you sell my book?
Let me have it, and I will give you feedback from the publishers.
How long will that take?
A year…
…or more.
A year?
Are you in a hurry?
Well, I wrote it in a month, I read it in a day….

–Pause–

…I hope you aren’t offended by my asking. Have you sold any books for other authors?
Depends.
Depends on what?
Are you counting future possibilities?
Are you serious? What do you mean?
Well, I’m waiting to sell the first book. Once I do, then I can tell publishers I have sold a book, and then they will buy a book from me.
Wait. If you have to sell a book in order to be able to sell your first book…why do I need you?
Because.

–Pause–

None of the publishers will accept an un-agented manuscript.
What does that mean?
You need me. Sign here.

–Pause–

Are you serious about being a writer?

–Pause–

Depends.

Shadowchild

End Feather

 

Writing is an odd world of contradictions.

Three months ago I decided not to write. It was not a writing issue. It was a life and death issue. There was no food in the house.

I might have gone to the grocery store and solved the problem there, if not for the ten family members coming to spend the month with us. For three months, I shopped, cooked, drove children here and there, helped pack and unpack suitcases, traveled to Tennessee, and taught math workshops. We survived. And I survived.

I quit writing, and I survived. If you had asked me in April, “What would you do if you couldn’t write?” I would have told you, “Die.” I would have killed myself to prove the point. But here I am, a survivor…alive…not having written a paragraph in three months.

Unexpected things happen when you’re working to survive. For one solid year I wrote up a storm, Praying Hands BW Dotsa literal storm. I wrote about family, being lonely, about writing, and about God. Some of my best pieces were prayers to God, extended prayers of supplication, God, make me a writer, and make me a humble writer. I really meant the humble part. I had a serious tendency to think I was hot stuff, and it seemed dangerous to let this flaw go untethered, wreaking havoc on planet Earth. God could fix it.

He succeeded. So much so, that as I sit here at the computer, I am held back from typing by the realization that everything worth saying was said 2,000 years ago. And who’s listening? What do I have to say? How could I ever add to the life of a perfect man who chose to go to the cross as a love gift for me and all of mankind?

I’ve got things to write. But more than that, God seems to point me toward things to do. I have difficulty thinking any page of words will accomplish more than what I can do with my two hands on a Saturday afternoon at a food kitchen.

I reach out to writers of influence hoping to catch the power of their words. King David in his 23rd Psalm 23Psalm has given courage and comfort to countless men and women. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John each preserved the life of Jesus and sealed the witness of the apostles who gave their lives for me. Paul carried God’s offer of reconciliation and His promise of salvation down thousands of miles of dusty roads, leaving behind his enduring words of encouragement and exhortation.

I sit in awe of the power and majesty contained in the words of believers in Christ. Bonheiffer, John Henry Jowett, St. Francis of Assisi, Thomas a Kempis, Fulton Sheen, Basilea Schlink, Mother Teresa. These are the lives of Mother Teresa 1people who have earned the right to speak in words. Because their actions speak louder.

Here I sit, a whiney, demanding, lazy, cowardly believer, my belly full, cooled by refrigeration, and my day secure enough for me to dawdle at the keyboard. What can I possibly write of significance?

God has definitely whittled me down to size. Now, with time on my hands to write, I struggle to think of an idea worthy of His confidence. In May, I wanted to write the book that would reach millions, the words that would explain the depth of God’s love with such persuasion that atheists would stop in their tracks and look up to the sky with an open heart. I wanted to write for world peace. Cure social injustice. Give loving homes to tiny babies before anyone could abort them.

Several months later in August, I shake my head at my audacity. I laugh at my pathetic ego. I cringe in embarrassment, afraid to read any of my essays written in headier days. What can I possibly write? How can I hope to touch the heart of one human being, when I’m painfully aware of my own need for improvement?

I prayed, God make me a writer, make me a humble writer. He has succeeded. And now the humility is so complete, I sit immobilized, afraid to be a writer, ever.

While the hopelessness of the situation grows, I stare through the computer screen, through the lamp’s reflection behind the words on the glossy white, past the bits and bytes inside the monitor, Shadow Personand out through the wall of the office into space. If I hold that thought and close my eyes, I can barely make out the shadow of one person. And, looking closely, I can just make out the empty space in their chest where a heart should be, a hole, a hurt that explains the droop of their shoulders and the quiet splash of a tear at their feet. Don’t leave Shadowchild. I think I share your pain. If you will be patient with me, perhaps I can write an honest thought with enough clarity so that you will recognize yourself in me. If we sit together and read a true and loving line, perhaps we can fill our own eHeart Treempty space with the love of the other, and maybe together we can reach out to pull just one more shadowchild into our circle.

If God approves, I think I could write to at least one person. That’s the least I can hope for. And the most.

 

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THE WRITER’S LIFE
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Featured at:  THE LOVE THAT CHANGES ME
www.thelovethatchangesme.com

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Copyright 2013.   All Rights Reserved.

September

For over one year, I frantically pushed groceries and children in and out of the car and house, trying to squeeze writing minutes out of each passing day. If someone asked me why we were out of milk, I counted to ten several times and promised sweetly to buy some tomorrow, all the while squinting my eyes and wanting to shout, “Go find a cow and get it yourself!”

When I could grab precious minutes and push children away from the computer, I literally hurled myself at the keyboard, pounding keys and making sentences, certain the flood of words tumbling out of my pent-up mind would call aloud as they inched out of the printer, bringing themselves to someone’s attention. Words pulsated on the page. I waited for a passerby to glance at one single word, for even one person to get caught in the literary genius of my imagination and grab every page strewn across the desk, devouring my brilliance. They didn’t. Instead, teenagers leaned from the hallway into the office. “Are you at the computer again? You’re always typing! Did you know we’re out of peanut butter, too?”

My one solace was my weekly writing group. Each Tuesday, I gathered all the hard-won pages and brought them to my friends for critiquing. Six pairs of experienced eyes poured over the stack of printed pages I passed around. They gave serious attention to all aspects of my writing: commas, topic sentences, allusions, and meaning. But it became clear as the year progressed that, while the paragraphs on one given page seemed to mostly hang together in an almost coherent idea, the pages from any particular week had absolutely no connection with the pages of the week before or the week to come. In the kindest, most optimistic critic’s mind, it would seem I was writing ten different novels, jumping from the introduction of a book on loneliness to the middle of a family memoir, to a devotional on gardening, and on to a ranting political treatise on the evolution of the modern world. Everyone around the critiquing table always smiled encouragingly at me, if only because the slightly manic sparks shooting from my eyes suggested I might blow up the western hemisphere if pushed too hard.

My writer friends preserved world peace by bolstering up my wilted psyche, my husband went to the grocery for milk and peanut butter, and my son learned to cook French toast, fried eggs, pancakes, toast, and cold cereal—depending on the contents of the refrigerator.

This was our average, normal life.

Slowly, as the school year played out, May began to loom large and threatening. As I tore April off the calendar and began to cross out the early days of May, I couldn’t help but notice the coming winds of a hurricane. Jamie was coming home from college on May 6th, moving all of her belongings, her clothes, an apartment fridge, stereo system, television, rolling plastic drawers, trunk and more clothes into her small 8 by 10 foot bedroom, right across the hall from the office and my writer’s desk.

And the hurricane settled in to stay. Vic’s sister and her two kids arrived from North Carolina. We stuffed the kitchen with food for family parties, one gathering after the next. We partied, ate, did laundry and packed the van. And finally, somewhere on highway 18, heading into the Rocky Mountains on our way to a wedding in Colorado, it dawned on me that I’d have to either murder my own family and all of their nieces, nephews, aunts and uncles, or I’d have to postpone writing the History of the World According to Jane. A small shrug settled it. I lifted my shoulders, looked up into the Colorado mountains, following their peaks into the clouds and said, “September.” And I let out a small sigh.

Small miracles do happen. Mom surrendered. And we survived. There is life after the end of writing.

In Colorado, we laughed and cried as two ‘youngsters’ promised to love and cherish each other until death, and then our entire extended family plus two more returned home to Arizona. Our house again filled with guests; I remembered I did know how to cook. My children were amazed when we had completely new and different home-cooked dinners five nights in a row. We stopped going to restaurants. And we didn’t starve. We never ran out of clean clothes, we learned how to talk and tell stories. Jamie found crayons in the bottom of the closet, and she drew pictures with cousin Katie at the dining room table. Justin and his cousin Shayne went swimming at the community pool. Vic and I actually saw two theater movies. Two. Both movies in the same year! I didn’t write one sentence. And the world survived.

Whenever my writer’s panic set in, whenever I looked too far ahead into the summer calendar, I closed my eyes. September. The syllables developed their own rhythm. Sept—em—ber, Sept, Sept, Sept—em—ber. If I repeated the mantra, it reminded me I was only responsible for one little thing each day. Each morning, I opened my eyes, rose from bed, and walked to the calendar. If today the calendar said, Party, then we partied. Tomorrow didn’t exist. Only today. And September. Sept—em—ber.

One day at a time, we made it from May to June to July. I taught a workshop in Tennessee. I visited Tennessee relatives and picked black-eyed peas. As I stepped off the returning airplane, Jamie grabbed my navy blue duffel bag on wheels for her travel to Spain. Justin spent July in Mississippi. I wrote checks to keep the water and utilities turned on. We never ran out of peanut butter, and we had a steady supply of three kinds of milk, providing for the various gradations of fat content required by our household crowd: people afraid of gaining weight if they say fat out loud and children who burn thousands of fat gram calories when poking each other in the ribs.  And I continued to walk around several piles of college linens and one gargantuan cardboard box filled with college dorm decorations, all of them blocking the path to the computer.

As we moved into August, anticipating the return of school, an amazing thought occurred to me. No anxious editor had called me during the summer to plead that I get back to writing. Neither had Newsweek magazine cut its “My Turn” feature for lack of receiving Jane’s 1000 urgent words about world peace. Oprah Winfrey seemed to have a new show each day…without me…or my latest book. The Tribune newspaper called us 23 times during the summer begging us to renew our subscription. They didn’t call once to ask why I had stopped e-mailing them my incisive, to-the-point, letters and editorials. Marriages were breaking and healing, self-helped with John Gray and his Venus/Mars analysis. Not one bookstore cleared a spot on the shelf and set out a sign, “This spot is reserved for the upcoming best-selling book from the new and promising author, Jane Noesitawl.” President Clinton saved himself, and he didn’t follow one piece of advice I offered. Amazing.

September. It’s 14 days away,…and counting. The stock market leaps up and crashes down, Y2K is four months away, six Republican presidential candidates are slugging it out in Iowa, Al and Tipper Gore are working to convince us they have personalities and priorities, Christians are trying to rescue African children from the slave market, and the water heater is broken. I sit unmolested at the computer, but I can’t think of one way to prevent a worldwide financial meltdown on January 1, I won’t be able to vote for the President I want because my man will never make it through the political gauntlet for nomination, Jamie’s safety in Spain for the next year cannot be secured by Vic and me in Arizona, and even if I could buy one child out of slavery, it would only reward and encourage the evildoers to capture another.

What’s left for this writer to do? I do know the pork chops are thawed. That may be enough to save my own marriage, but it certainly won’t cut into the sales of Mars and Venus by Mr. John Gray, Ph.D. And I don’t really want to be on Oprah. More than anything, I appreciate knowing I can make a peanut butter and wash it down with a large glass of cold milk, full fat. This is certainly not the type of attitude that will fill a three-book contract and sell as a mini-series.

Time to close my eyes. Sept—em—ber.

 

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THE WRITER’S LIFE
TABLE OF CONTENTS

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Copyright 2013.   All Rights Reserved.

Planning to Be Inspired

Lately, as I write, I feel the effects of my decision to get organized and dressed in the morning as part of the writing process.  For years I celebrated the impulsive, emotional, inspirational quality of writing…flinging myself at the computer in my pajamas, my hair stuck out wherever the pillow had pushed it in the night before.  While the impulsive passion to write was wild and wonderful, it was also just a bit too crazy.

Writing had become one hundred percent emotional outburst.  At odd moments of the day, words had to be contained inside my mind, building up pressure, because I had no desire to discipline my writing to fit into the times of the day, the later moments, the planned afternoons when I was dressed and subject to organization.

If I couldn’t write a burst of words in the early morning, then the day was useless for writing.  Once errands called me to buy groceries, pick up Justin from school, or deliver tax forms to the accountant, then all the “fun” of inspiration evaporated. Afternoon writing was only good for letters, notes and lists of tomorrow’s errands and duties.

When morning writing was interrupted or delayed, I collected the words inside my head, hoping that tomorrow, while still in my pajamas, before anyone could mess with my mad inspiration, I would be able to run to the computer for just a little “work” and pour them out all over the page.

I had confused my own madness with God’s inspiration.  Funny.  Now that I insist on eating breakfast, applying makeup, and dressing before I walk to the office and boot up, I am hugely surprised to realize that God can still use me.

Better still, perhaps He can make better use of me because I am willing to submit to the quiet of the moment as I sit, planning to write, whether I “feel” emotionally free – or not.

My passions may feel cool now in my first minutes in the office, but I have finally made room for God’s passions.  Where my mind is empty and dry, I trust anyway.  I close my eyes and lay my fingers on the keys in trust.

And where my mind is quiet…my fingers dance and pull out thoughts I never knew I had.

 

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THE WRITER’S LIFE
TABLE OF CONTENTS

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Copyright 2013.  All Rights Reserved.

Coming Into Focus

It’s fun to read other writers’ thoughts about writing.  Loula Grace Erdman, describing her life as a writer, helps me accept my own idiosyncrasies.  She reinforces my decision to back away from the Christian writer’s conference.

I know I can write short stories that will sell.  It’s just that what I want to say won’t fit inside a short story.  And it can’t be “felt” with the proper passion if I have to mimic a non-fiction narrative style that resembles a Walter Cronkite newscast.  Life is poetry.  I don’t want my life to end up as a newspaper account next to an advertisement for denture cream.

I know I could write my own story about the Cox cable programming debacle.  But it’s definitely more satisfying to feed my information to Tamara Dietrich at The Tribune.  While she busies herself as a reporter tackling the details, I can turn my back on The Tribune and write my own escapades and ruminations.  Truthfully?  I rather enjoy anticipating how Tamara will weave the details of the Cox story together…guessing whether I will come off as a nosy busybody or a valiant Jenny-on-the-spot citizen.

Each writer has her own place in history.  What does publishing have to do with writing anyway?  I hear others explain how much they want to be published.  They envision fame garnished with fat royalty checks.  I am a stranger in their world.  I don’t want to publish.  I want to communicate.  I want to share.  I have something to say.  And publishing has nothing to do with that.

Writing experts say there are too many writers focused on publishing.  I say there are too few writers focused on the message.  When I run out of message, then I’m finished with writing…no matter how well I can craft a sentence.

 

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THE WRITER’S LIFE
TABLE OF CONTENTS

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Copyright 2013.  All Rights Reserved.

Half of What I Am Now

March 1980

It is quite interesting to reflect on how fluid the human mind is.

Wedding RingsTen years ago I vowed that I would never marry. Men did not disgust me, but it seemed an unnecessary contrivance. Now, I am happily married. Vic and I would be just as happy unmarried, I am sure. But the contrivance was necessary for family peace.

I had never planned on children. Now, my daughter is napping at her grandmother’s house. She is a joy, and she was completely planned.

At ten years of age, I didn’t understand why my father didn’t go to church. I don’t think I really enjoyed going myself, but it seemed the right thing to do. Church Simple

My high school friends introduced me to the Mormon religion, and that pushed my religious fervor into high drive. Mormonism seemed the perfect way for life, and it was all my mother could do to postpone my membership without pushing me to join out of youthful rebellion and retaliation. All of this seems like the life of a stranger to me now, as I find it impossible to conjure up the emotional commitment to a God I no longer acknowledge.

Absent God, I do think about the possibilities of mental telepathy and extra-sensory perception. But there was a time for me, not too long ago, when these ideas were nothing more than hocus-pocus.

What is required for succeeding in life?  When I taught school I rewarded every student equally with a check mark. It didn’t matter that their sentences were nonexistent or that the spelling was like a foreign language. I finally quit teaching because it was Heaven on Earth Forest Gloweasier than trying to enforce some kind of proficiency which would result in failing half of my students.

Today, I feel so confident that I have sifted through all of the muck and have chosen every worthwhile philosophy for my own. But if history holds true, ten years from now…I should expect to be only half of what I am now. The change will come. The only question is from which direction it will come. Either the John Birch organization or the Communist Party is due to have one more member.

Currently, a major philosophy of mine says that none of this matters anyway. I will die, and the world will know nothing of my internal struggles to separate truth from fiction. As long as I have personal Mother Teresa Rich Quotecomfort…mental peace…the path I follow is irrelevant.

All right. That idea makes me feel peaceful. I must be on the right track.

But finally this weekend, I heard someone effectively give voice to that persistent thread of discontent that has been running through all of my Hug Twin Babieslaisse-faire attitudes.

Humanity.

 

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All Rights Reserved.  Copyright 2014.

 

 

A Romantic Notion

May 13, 1979

What a beautiful day!  Taking a break from morning sickness misery, I drove with Vic up to the 4-H camp, trading dry desert for cool mountain pines.

Tree Pine ForestOn a backwoods cutoff to the camp, Vic took us through scenery so beautiful that it made the worn and rutted road almost unnoticeable.  Spring rains had carpeted the hills with waving velvet grass.   Tall pine trees were bursting with boughs, heavy with bright green needles glistening under the high sun. Spring Tree Pine Boughsnow runoff had turned the normally chalky brown dust to a rich spongy brown, the dark mud  accented by sparkly patches of white snow, the last of a late spring cold spell.

Every turn in the road revealed a springlet of water running down a trail of mud and rocks, eventually to culminate in a mini-lake in some mountain or hillside valley.  Where the ground was more level, the Tree Snow Meltwaters settled in patches of tall grass looking like a series of misplaced swamps.

The slightest breeze kept a steady balance with the gentle rays of sun.  I waited for a chill in my spine to prompt putting on my gold fuzzy jacket, but the weather must have sensed how soothing the surroundings were, and out of sympathy for a body needing soothing, decided to deliver perfection.

Overhead, the sky was one vast brightly tiled floor that had just been washed and waxed.  To think I had even considered substituting a Sunday of work for this wonderful journey!Clouds Blue Sky

A romantic notion sprang to life.  In all my searches for meaningful work, even the most lackluster of jobs (waitressing, cashiering, ditch digging, filing, cleaning) gained immeasurable desirability if the job could put me in touch with serenity and solitude…the cool breeze, the chirping and scurrying of untamed animals, the wide expanse of the outdoors.

Never before had I foreseen a day when I could willingly trade in the big city supermercados, convenience Ks, swift roads, crowded neighborhoods, matched houses and yards, and intense shopping…all that…for the loneliness of small towns and secluded homes.

The drive through the forest was soon over.  The lure of the cities is ever-present.  But it no longer can hold its own against the lure of wordless conversation held in high mountain solitude, nurturing in my spirit a hidden nature…suggesting I was…and am…more a part of the raw ground and green canvas than any structural steel beam.

Forest Meadow

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All Rights Reserved.  Copyright 2014.

Out of the Maze

Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness because of my enemies—make straight your way before me.
Psalm 5:8 (NIV) Scroll Divide Horizontal 2

 

Cornfield NewThe shoots of corn stood eight inches tall. The sun had only just come over the horizon, giving a pale pink glow to the morning sky. We were in the middle of the long western expanse of the cornfield, Vic holding the paper map in his hand and surveying the project. The smudge of jam on the corner of the map recalled the fun of last night as he and the kids had penciled in and erased lines. Together, they worked hard to plan the maze. Better yet, they had fun.

Today Vic began putting their plan into action. The map was filled with straight Cornfield Maze Enterlines. He stepped forward, pulling all the corn out of a row of dirt in an exact copy of the straight lines on his paper map, leaving a walking path through the cornfield. The trail through these baby corn plants would be almost invisible today, but what a wonderful adventure it would be when the corn eventually grew green and tall.

Cornfield Maze KidsCome fall, the great cornfield would hide a complex trail pattern of lines, turns, dead-ends, and hidden “rooms,” the whole maze drawn out in the map in Vic’s hand. One way into the corn maze. And among all the twists and turns…there was only one special way out.

As Vic worked, I thought of life’s trials this past year. Oftentimes, we had felt blinded and lost in a maze. Catching the flutter of God’s map in the breeze, I was every day reminded of the Lord’s incomprehensible plan and His protection in our journey through life’s maze. He is the great Creator and Protector. He makes the crooked way straight.

Looking ahead to the fun of children laughing in the middle of the cornfield, I bowed my head in thanksgiving.  God watches us in life’s maze.  He will bring us safely home.

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 Lord, strengthen our trust in your plan for our lives. Help us feel the love you surround us with in the midst of our daily walk.  Amen.