iTV Will Change our Lives

"When we install fiber-optic, it wipes out the cable companies." A phone company worker was speaking to my husband last week, as the workers were installing new lines in our area. Fiber-optic so enriches the transmission through DSL lines that internet TV is decimating traditional TV.

The future of TV is on the internet because it can be so niched. For the last fifty years, TV has been a mass market medium. It's been programming produced by a few, for the many.  We've been expected to enjoy what everyone else likes.

Internet TV, on the other hand, can be TV produced by the many for the few. But the few are not such a small group. The niche of those who've been raised by abusive fathers, for example, is large. iTV can target the needs of that group. Whether with stories, teaching, or interviewing programs like Oprah, iTV can be more responsive to the interests of specific niche groups, in a way that traditional TV cannot.

Earlier this week, I spent some time at the studios of Hopes, Goals and Dreams iTV network.  See the video trailer I made for Trading Fathers: Forgiving Dad, Embracing God.  The technology is now so advanced that the quality is excellent.

Blogs and Twitter and the other social media are changing how people connect with others. How will internet TV change the world? I don't know. How will it change your life? My life? Who can say? We are in a time of immense change in the world, comparable to the industrial revolution. Sociologists talk about the unexpected consequences of massive social changes. We live in unpredictable times.

I am grateful to walk with a stable, reliable, good Papa-God. We can rely on him to carry us through, to bring his good from these days, and to accomplish his purposes in our lives and in history. Glory.

Father, May we rest in your arms during these unpredictable days.

God-Focused Change

I spend a lot more time "butt in chair" at the computer than I used to. Even writing the book, I didn't stay at the computer as long as I do now. For those three years of writing, I spent 4 hours, from 9-1pm, a day. That, at least, was the goal, which I met often enough to actually finish the book. Yay.

Anyway, as I engage in my new full-time job of marketing the book, I'm on Twitter (@tradingfathers) Facebook (friend me, with reference to this blog) and just keeping up with all the other ways to get the word out.

I used to spend a lot of time thinking, time reading, and some time just enjoying God's creation. I have library books due soon that I haven't touched, and I'm thinking right now, I guess, but the enjoying God's beauty in creation consists of hearing the birds outside my window as I sit at the computer.

How are you doing with the changes in your schedule in the last year? Are there any? What's changed that you miss? Is there a way for us to resist and return to what we miss? Or are some good aspects of our lives just done?

Sometimes we are done with a season of our lives. Our children leave home and we're done with daily parenting. Not done with daily prayer, of course, just the daily, in person, interaction. We lose a job and perhaps we are finished with that profession or those tasks. It's time to learn new tasks. Time to retrain. Or we realize a spouse's failing health is going to mean we can't plant the garden this year. Change comes on us suddenly or slowly, but it comes.

I try to keep off the computer on Sundays, and usually Saturdays. I take bike rides, walks, and make time to read. And to remember that his creation deserves to be enjoyed. We glorify him when we use time to ponder the splendor of his works. And we remind ourselves that he is in charge.

Papa-God, may we glorify you during the changes in our lives. Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer, Lord. Amen.

If We Let Him

"I simply could not put it down."

"You are a great storyteller."

"I found myself wishing you wrote novels because your descriptions are stellar."

As I enjoy the comments from readers of Trading Fathers, I rejoice at God's goodness. Several times in the last several years, I despaired of finishing that writing. I was sure I was not a good storyteller. I could not tell it in a compelling way. And, did my selection of scenes tell the story adequately? I didn't know.

Pushing through all those self-deprecations required faith, hope, and love. Faith that God himself had called me to the task and would therefore give me the help I needed. Hope that the story could be a means of grace to many others. And love enough to risk spilling my guts.

I have a wonderful life. The heart is deceitfully wicked, who can know it, Jeremiah reports (17:9), so I'm suspicious of my discernment about my motives. However, as far as I can tell, I did not need to write Trading Fathers. I wanted to write it. But seeing my name in print on the cover of a book does not validate my existence.

Sure is fun, though. Fun may not be the right word. Powerful, rewarding, satisfying.Grateful to add my story of pain and redemption to the multitude of stories that display God's glory in the earth.

He is a redeemer. He takes the worst pain Satan can create in a life and brings his healing, hope, and peace. If we let him.

Come Holy Spirit. Let your compassion, your suffering with us, lighten the loads we carry.