Captain's Blog—Winter Déjà vu

Stardate: Dinnertime

Despite my best efforts to manipulate the time space continuum, dinner time rolled around again tonight. I believe I'm caught in some kind of diabolical time loop. The crew still resists the idea of fasting, so I made pancakes in self-defense.

Captain's Blog—Winter

Stardate: Dinner time

Suggested today that we fast tonight in order to avoid having to make dinner and clean up afterwards. Idea not well received by the crew.

Fe-e-e-e-eelings (insert music here)

I really don't feel like writing today. The past couple of weeks have not been easy, and the emotional drain that came with them makes me feel like curling up in bed and going to sleep for a LONG time or escaping in a book (written by someone else). Sigh.

So it's time to overcome the feelings and get to work. Face set like flint. Neither rain, nor sleet, nor darkest night (in my case, deepest snow) shall stop me from my appointed word count.

I'm only letting you all know this because it's on my mind, and I haven't blogged for a few days.

Happy New Year

I say this with the possibility of being redundant. I was in a classroom with 28 four- and five-year-olds. We had a short service and then moved on to what was top in all of their minds: popcorn and a movie (Bolt). As one of my assistants remarked, they were surprisingly quiet. And as I carefully avoided giving them anything with sugar in it, they remained so for the entire evening. With ten or eleven assistants, counting Crew, we had an excellent adult to kid ratio that we don't often enjoy.

I remember the first New Year's Eve service in what was at that time the new church building. I think we had over one hundred four- and five-year-olds. And not enough assistants. And it was a four hour service instead of three. That was a wild ride that makes you appreciate evenings like last night, where we just had fun, and it was not overwhelming for the kids or the assistants.

How did all of you spend your New Year's Eve? I hope that however you did it, it was a blessed time to look back at a good year and forward to a better year. Happy New Year!

Captain's Blog—Christmas

Stardate: Christmas Day

Even captains make mistakes, and so I have to make an awkward confession to make. There we were, zooming through the stratosphere, when we detected a small blip of unidentified nature on the imaging radar. Believing it to be of enemy origin, we launched a warning shot off its starboard bow, and it would have sailed safely past, except the blip made a hard right.

For those of you who previously believed in Santa Claus, you may want to rethink that in the 364 shopping days we have until Christmas rolls around again.

Good News!

Are you sitting down? Are you composed and ready for news? Good!

I am pleased to announce that Magination Press has contacted me about my favorite picture book manuscript, Melba Sue and the Cactus Kid. They would like me to make some revisions and then resubmit it for possible publication.

I Married Mr. Perfect

This morning I was meditating on the idea that most women would give anything to be married to Mr. Perfect. In their dearest thoughts, he would always be gentle, funny, caring, protective, conversational, intelligent, and loving. He would never notice any of their faults, and always magnify their strengths. He'd be encouraging and the best companion they could have. If they smashed the family van, he'd laugh it off and say, "That's okay, honey. I never liked that van that much anyway. Why don't you pick out the car of your dreams to replace it."

Now I'll let you in on a little secret: I married Mr. Perfect.

In those times when I'm really struggling, he is there for me. He never let's me down. I never hear an unkind word from him, and he's always cheering for me. It doesn't matter how I look in the morning. He believes I'm beautiful just the way I am. You might say that love is blind, in that case.

But here's another secret. You can marry Mr. Perfect, too.

I'll never forget one of the times Pastor Grace was talking to the ladies at our church. She said that whether you're single or married, you need to be married to Jesus. She was right. When you have the relationship with God's Son that He created you to have, you will be fulfilled in a way that no earthly relationship is able to satisfy you.

But you'll be happier married to Mr. Perfect if you understand his character better. This means you'll have to get rid of some of those goofy religious ideas about him. He doesn't walk around wearing a bathrobe while carrying a lamb in the crook of his arm. He doesn't sing Gregorian chants in Latin as he somberly struts down the streets of gold with never a smile on his lips.

He's got a good sense of humor. (I don't think he's just laughing with us.) He's so smart that he not only knows calculus, physics and chemistry, but he created them. He's fluent in thousands of languages and dialects, and he knows everything about everything, but never comes across as arrogant. He not just capable of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control, but he's made up of them. And he loves us so much he actually died for us, but was raised from the dead so that we could spend eternity with him. Now that's commitment.

So if you have a little free time this Christmas season, give some thought to how awesome it is to be married to Mr. Perfect. (And just in case my earthly husband is reading this, I think he's pretty cool too!)