A Tenacious Focus

Even if you have a difficult father to overcome, as I did, God wants to father you into all he's made you to be. That sentence capsulizes my memoir, Trading Fathers. When I first began to write my story of wrestling with God, honing that sentence took six months. Getting the story in a sentence is a good starting place for writing, especially a piece of creative non-fiction. "Creative" means using fiction techniques, like dialogue and scene, to tell a non-fiction story.

Writing a book requires a tenacious focus. Every scene chosen must contribute to the story's forward movement. Dialogue must be carefully crafted to convey character. Every page needs to express the theme. 

Sometimes I wonder. Has God formulated our story in a sentence? Is he writing the story of our lives with a similar intensity of focus?

He knows where he wants the story to go. His general theme is "making us into the image of Jesus" so we can walk with him in holiness, lest we burn up near his "consuming fire." Is he crafting the scenes of our lives as carefully as I crafted the scenes of my memoir?

And what's our part in the story? We seem to be more than characters, but less than authors.What mysteries we populate. Plots and subplots yet to be lived. Endings sure but unclear to us, the characters. And yet, most of the time, I'm grateful not to be the author of my own life. I've written a book. It's hard work. Being a character is God's great story isn't always easy, either, but not so hard as being the author.

Father, author of life, source of being. May we submit our whole hearts to the story you are writing.

Beauty That Lasts

For many years, the entry to our bungalow was a door comprised of scraps of redwood. My craftsman husband had built a redwood strip canoe, leaving leftover narrow pieces. On the jobsite of architecturally designed houses as an electrician, he’d also gathered pieces of 1 x 4 redwood lumber. Putting them together, we designed an elegant entrance of alternating wide and thin vertical lines. Carefully offsetting the horizontal lines of the varying lengths of the wide wood, from scraps we made order and beauty. The thick and thin lines carried one’s eye along the oiled hardwood, interrupted only by the rectangular brass knocker, proclaiming peace to all who entered.

Artists save the smallest scraps of material from destruction. Without our artistic eye, the scraps of redwood would be languishing in our basement or a garbage dump. Bits of sparkly dichroic glass in my husband’s studio will someday accent a lampshade or a pendant. Architectural salvage in the form of the metal stars used to anchor old brick buildings together hang in a threesome on our wooden fence.


Our artist God can take the scraps of our lives, too, and make beauty. Nothing is leftover or salvaged in God’s plan. From childhood mistreatment, he can make resilience. From divorce he can deepen dependence on him. From a lost child, he can build deep compassion. Papa-God is using the residue of our lives to shape us into the beautiful image of his dear son. The spiritual beauty he creates is more solid than our redwood door. Our door only lasted for a season until it sagged on its hinges. Our artist Papa makes beauty that lasts forever.

Papa, May we long for the beauty that lasts.

The Last Act?

"When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near."Luke 21:28

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Lately, this scripture plays in the back of my mind, like a soundtrack. Is it my age or the stage of the world?  At 58, I'm at the beginning of my last act here. So maybe it's just looking forward to the epilogue, which I'm expecting to turn out to be the play itself.

And yet, the world's play begins to feel like it's in its final act, too. America is in deep debt. Many would have us believe there's only this story, so why not eat, drink, and be merry? Maybe I'm reacting to the pace of technological change. I'm getting tired of Twittering and Facebooking and who knows what the next big thing will be.

In Luke 21, Jesus talked about earthquakes, war, and famine. We're all aware of Haiti's grief. America fights two wars. People continue to starve to death. Those signs are already on stage. And yet, Jesus also mentions other signs of the end. "Jerusalem surrounded by armies"–not yet. "Signs in the sun, moon, and stars" –not that I can tell. Is "fainting from terror" like stress-related heart attacks? Is that sign is already in costume, waiting backstage?

Maybe it's just America's strutting on the stage that is coming to an end. Or just mine. Whether regional, global, or personal, there will be an end. What can we do?

We can lift up our heads to look for our redemption. We can be careful, as Jesus warns, so that our hearts are not "weighed down with…the anxieties of life" so we will be ready. He said he'll come unexpectedly, and yet he also gives us some warning signs to listen to. When the curtain comes down, whether on our life or the life of the world, may we have ears to hear his music.

Father, you, alone, know the time of the end. Please prepare our hearts.