The World of Dragonfly

Ladies,

Picture this scenario.  You’re a young woman, perhaps in your twenties or thirties.  Maybe married.  And maybe with children.  You’re dining with either one or both of your parents in your hometown.  You’re munching on our salad when along comes one of your parents’ friends.  Almost immediately, your mother and/or father starts bragging on you, about your career, your parenting, your children, your talents… pick your topic.  Is your reaction to blush, smile, and say “thank you”, or is it to roll your eyes and say, “Mom, Dad, really.  I’m not nearly as perfect as you’re purporting me to be!”

I think a lot of us women approach the Proverbs 31 Woman in the latter manner (see Proverbs 31:10-31).  I know I used to.  Like, how on earth could I do the following:

• Do good and not harm to my husband not just today but all the days of my life? (v. 12)
• Seek wool and flax [maybe in today's terms make wise shopping decisions]? (v. 13a)
• Work with my hands willingly [like sew clothes.  Really?] (v. 13b)
• Rise before dawn and provide food not only for my husband and wife but kids, not to mention the hired help? {v.13)
• Consider a field and buy it (make big purchases without husbandly input?)? (v. 16a)
• Work late into the night (and does this coincide with the early rising mentioned above)? (v. 18b)
• Make her own bed linens and clothing for her family? (v. 22)

Are you tired yet?  I could go on with many, many other examples, but they’re listed right there in Proverbs 31:10-31.  Me?  Usually, I’d groan and flip to another, more encouraging passage, with a resigned sigh as I admitted that no way on earth would I ever amount to anything if I kept comparing myself to the Proverbs 31 woman.

Then came last Tuesday.  You see, I meet with some women of my church for a Bible study each Tuesday night.  This year, we’re studying women in the Bible and have so far handled real women like Esther, Ruth, Sarah, and Rahab.  Then came the fictitious Proverbs 31 Woman.  I approached this chapter with a fair amount of trepidation, especially since I’d tripped myself up and because I thought I’d left the book at work so I couldn’t read the passage (long story there).

When we started discussing the passage, our leader for last week mentioned how she’d heard a different take on this passage.  One of an image where God is bragging on His daughters.  See what they can do?  How they serve their families tirelessly?  How her husband views her as his equal and trusts her in both large and small decision?  How she’s so talented?  Doesn’t that sound like how our own parents brag on us to their friends?

I thought about that for awhile.  And to be honest, it was freeing.  No longer did I have to measure myself against a woman who I viewed as perfect.  Instead, I began seeing myself as a woman who has weaknesses just like every other woman.  But also as a woman who has many talents and strengths.  Talents and strengths that those who love us like to brag on.

So, as you ladies read Proverbs 31, remember one thing.  You are loved by God.  You are His daughter, and He loves to brag on His daughters just as much as His sons.

**Many thanks to Terry for her kind words and a new take on the Proverbs 31 Woman.

It’s a New Year again.  And this year, I had one resolution – to not have any resolutions.  The reason?  I never keep them.  Instead, I wound up getting frustrated about not keeping them and instead rebelled against the reason why I made them.  Take eating healthier.  Very vague.  A nice, vague resolution.  And easy to break.  Which I did so quite nicely and instead went the other direction.

So this year, I have some goals.  Not too many because I don’t want to get overwhelmed.  One?  Get the three novels I have ready to go out on the street by writing query letters for them.  Another, run the Patriots Olympic Distance Triathlon in Williamsburg.  Big goals, I know.  A home run.  And impossible to achieve by just stating that goal.

The key to reaching those two is to develop a series of smaller goals.  So, with a lot of thought and more to come, I’ve done that.  For the writing goals, the steps are baby steps.  Tonight, I drafted a query letter for one of my novels.  Tomorrow night, I’ll revise it, and this weekend, I’ll revise it again with the hope of sending it out to one agent on Monday.  And after that?  I’ll send it to other agents.  Regarding the triathlon, I’m planning on entering at least two sprint triathlons, maybe three, with one of those being in a tidal river.  I’m still working on the smaller goals to reach the sprint triathlons.  All of these?  Base hits.

Maybe, after 38 years of living on this earth, I’ve realized that God works in our lives more by base hits than home runs.  So I’m hoping that these are base hits that will help me reach my goals.

How many of you have read the Book of Ruth in the Bible?  If you know the story, then you remember how Ruth met Boaz on the threshing floor in a match made in heaven.  It took me a long time to realize just what a threshing floor is.  If my memory of reading commentaries serves me correctly, the threshing floor in ancient times was located on the top of a hill where the breeze would be almost constant.  The farmers would harvest their fields and bring the wheat stalks to the threshing floor where they would break the heads of wheat open (this is where my knowledge gets fuzzy).  Then they would toss the wheat into the air.   The breeze would catch the chaff and blow it away, allowing the grain to fall back to the threshing floor to be collected.

Monday evoked that picture for me.  The entire nation and world was caught up in events beyond their control, tossed about like chaff in the wind.  Now, I’m not going to go into the whole root of the financial situation.  That’s the topic for another blog, and I’m sure many people with more expertise than I have already obliged.  No, yesterday exposed in me something that required God’s discipline.  Fear and doubt.

You see, my husband and I are considering buying a house.  Now, some people may raise their eyebrow and ask, “In these economic times?”  To which I’ll say, “Well, no time was a good time for Noah to build an ark.”  We’ve prayed about it, and God has given us the vision to have a house that can be a place of refuge for both missionaries who are Stateside and refugees who need a place to rest before continuing on their journey.  Both my husband and I share this vision.

So when the markets plummeted this week, I sank into despair.  Fear took over.  And worse, I began frantically thinking of options that could only echo the Wall Street panic.  My husband and I began praying about it, and in the end, we both heard and felt the same thing.  “Hold the course.”  We decided keep on like we had.

So what did I learn?  Well, lots, which was brought out in a Bible study on Deuteronomy.  In the last half of Chapter 1 (vv. 19-46), Moses recounts how the Israelites were preparing the first time to go up into the Promised Land.  They had some concerns, some doubts.  When they asked for spies to go into the land ahead of them to spy it out, God obliged.  Moses appointed 12 spies.  They came back with the bounty of the land and also with stories of how formidable the people and fortifications were.  All spies but two were afraid.  The people began murmuring against Moses.  God got angry and decreed that the people would wander in the desert for 40 years as a form of discipline until the present, doubting generation died away and those who remained truly trusted God.  Of course, no one liked that, not one bit.  So they decided to go up and fight anyway, without God’s blessing.  It was a rout and one that wasn’t in their favor.  So not only did they get routed, but they still wandered the desert for 40 years.

So why am I rambling like this?  Because doing that lesson and talking with my husband made me realize several things.

• God gave us this vision.  We’ve walked with Him on each step so far.  If this is the plan He has for us, it will come to pass.
• Fear is not of God.  If fear is not of God, then it means that we’re trusting in our own weak flesh and strength, not His strength.
• We need to move boldly when everyone else thinks we’re crazy.  When Noah started building the ark, I’m sure everyone thought he was crazy too.

God gives us the desires of our hearts.  The key is that it takes extensive prayer for our will to align with His.  He is a loving Father, and He delights in giving us our desires, so long as they aren’t selfish.  Hence the need for prayer.

So as I lay first in bed crying as I felt His gentle hand disciplining me and then on the couch so I wouldn’t keep Hubby awake, I came to the realization that I had no choice but to trust in Him during this time.  He’s provided financially for us before.  There were times I thought I couldn’t pay the rent.  He provided.  Then when I thought we couldn’t pay our bills after first getting married.  He provided.

So we’re holding our course.  Waiting.  Knowing that if God is for us, who can be against us? Check it out in Romans 8:28-39.  I hope that in the future, I’ll be the wheat that falls at the feet of God instead of the chaff that gets blown about in winds of uncertainty and worry.

I know it’s been a long time since I’ve posted something.  I could say that life got into the way, and that’s partly true.  But it also seems like too wimpy of an excuse as well.  I’ve committed to a blog, and now I need to to it.

The Tag Line on this Blog is “Learn More about this writer’s life.”  I’ve covered the life part pretty well, but I realized that I haven’t talked any at all about my writing.  So from now on, I’ll try to occasionally bring up a writing topic.  So for my first one?  Characters.

My principal genre is Christian fiction, also known as inspirational fiction.  I tend to go into two sub-genres, romance (no, sorry, not the bodice ripper types) and suspense.  So what, exactly, does this mean?  It means that I write from the worldview created by my faith.  Some folks may say that writing from that worldview results in boring characters.  I disagree.  We’re all imperfect.  It doesn’t matter who we are or what are faiths are.  We all have strengths.  We all have weaknesses.  We all are human.  That’s what makes creating characters so fascinating.

Why are they fascinating? Creating characters lets me explore human nature.  One thing that I do before writing a novel is to sit down and create why I call a character profile.  In this profile, I use an outline to draft up everything that I can think of about the character.  What do they look like?  What is their personality like?  What are their interests?  What food and music tastes do they have?  What are their strengths and weaknesses?  What types of books would I find on their shelves?  What do they keep in the trunks of their cars?  (Yep, this can reveal a lot about a character.)  What is their past romantic history like?  What is their faith history?  This may seem like a lot of work, and it is.  But it pays off in creating characters that can come alive.  If you’re an aspiring fiction writer, I highly recommend this exercise.  After you complete your profiles, you’ll be very surprised at how your characters come alive.

My current favorite male character is an antagonist.  He’s brilliant.  Devious.  He takes no prisoners and lets nothing get in the way of completing the missions set before him.  Yet though he’s on the wrong side of the law, he’s got a compassionate side that can pop up at the most unusual times.  I’ve enjoyed writing about him so much that I plan to have him in four novels, three part of a trilogy.

And then there’s my favorite female character, a heroine.  Though she’s a heroine, she’s got her own set of weaknesses.  She yearns for her father, who was never part of her life.  This yearning is a huge weakness that is exploited by the antagonist mentioned above.  Yet she’s got a strong, gritty side to her as well.  She doesn’t mind locking horns with the antagonist.  Before she becomes a Christian, she’s well-versed in the less polite forms of the English language and had a lifestyle that isn’t the best.  And becoming a Christian doesn’t mean that she drops all of these characteristics at once.  No, gradually, she relinquishes some of them, but other traits like her grittiness and strength remain behind to be refined.

Okay.  So I’ve talked about how I create characters.  It’s no secret of mine, and I hope that aspiring writers will endeavor to make their characters come alive.  For my next writing post, I’ll discuss ideas.

I admit it.  I have a hard time memorizing Scripture.  A really hard time.  Give me a number to memorize, no problem.  For example, until about 10 years ago, I still remembered my locker combination from junior high.  I have my bank account number memorized as well as my charge card number.  That one makes my husband a little nervous.

So yes, I have a harder time with words.  Tell me your name, and I forget it just a few minutes later.  Or, if I haven’t seen you in awhile, I’m likely to stand there and fumble around for it until you look at me as if I’ve lost my marbles.  I’m sure it has something to do with the way my brain is wired.  Maybe that’s why I was a physics major with a concentration in applied mathematics.  But I still love to write.  Go figure.

Back to my original topic.  This past summer, the pastor at my church, Peace Church, issued a challenge to the congregation.  If a certain number of people memorized Psalm 19, then the September fellowship dinner would be catered.  Never one to pass up a challenge or turn down a free meal, I decided I’d do it.  But of course, being one to procrastinate, I needed a swift kick in the pants that came in the form of Ladies Weekend at the beach.  One of my friends brought copies of Psalm 19, and so began the memorization.

But then I went back to the reality of work and my crazy life, and once more I decided to procrastinate.  Still, God wouldn’t let me go.  He kept on tapping on the shoulder of my spirit and quietly reminding me of the commitment I’d made to myself.  So after a lot of moaning on my part, I finally buckled down.

It was still hard.  Like I said, I’m a numbers person.  At first, nothing sank through my skull.  The words were a mystery to me, like they were written in a different language.  I wanted to stop with the reasoning that some other folks would memorize it, and it wasn’t my responsibility.  But gradually, I began yielding.  Not only did I just try to memorize the words, but I pondered the meaning of them.  What was God trying to teach me?  What was He trying to impress upon me?  And while I cleaned that weekend, I kept dropping by my Bible and taking a peek at Psalm 19.  It took awhile, but I finally memorized.

So what did I learn from Psalm 19?  First, God is a magnificent creator.  “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky proclaims His handiwork.”  (Don’t ask me verse numbers.  It was enough to memorize words.)  How true is that!  I also learned that God’s word is indeed going throughout the earth.  “Their [words] go out through the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.”  Also, the middle part of the psalm goes through the characteristics of God.  “The law of the Lord is perfect . . . The testimony of the Lord is sure . . . The commandment of the Lord is pure . . . The fear of the Lord is clean . . . The rules of the Lord are true . . .”  Wow!  And finally, “Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins.”  I pondered that one for a long time and essentially realized that presumptions I make about the way my life should look like can easily cause me to drift into sin if I’m not careful.

Okay.  So now I realize that yes, Virginia, I too can memorize scripture.  Not only that, but I can delve into it.  Ponder it.  Learn from it.  I’m now much more motivated.  And not by food.  But hey, the free meal doesn’t hurt either.